See and Smile :)

Lost in Translation

With the Olympics round the corner, China better gear up if this sign translating the name of the chinese restaurant is any indication. More on this here

IT Sucks!!

This is in response to Sundar's post about the IT profession. On a purely personal note, when I go to desi birthday parties I see some odd dudes hanging out all alone playing hockey with their nans and koftas in the corner. I try to go and make small talk with them and almost always they are non IT dudes who just don't know how to blend in. To me talking to these dudes is refreshing, it's enriching and almost always a learning experience. I learn about FDA fast track for drugs, hear about how someone invented a cashew opener in Mangalore and now being exported to every African country, how there is a plan to orally dispense insulin just like the mist that cures bronchitis, how someone determines the optimal temperature of oil to fry nachos. Ok enough examples, you get the idea. The choice of listening to this anytime beats out listening to why Yahoo! should get acquired, or why twitter is cool or why facebook is not worth 15 billion or playing hockey with stale nans and kofta balls.

Kitchen Remodelling and Marriage

When someone recently asked me if I had marriage jitters prior to getting married, I scrubbed my memory to go back into the tape archive in my brain. No record found came the response. So when I bought up this topic she said she did not find any record of jitters in her brain archives either. So here were two individuals who were either oblivious of what they were in for or were totally indifferent to the whole idea. In any case we now understand what marriage jitters are now as we are attempting to remodel our kitchen. The contractor gave us a picture of the would be new kitchen and gave us the dimensions, told us about the embellishments and the financial damage the whole episode would cost. We signed on the dotted line and now have new kitchen jitters.

Kids say the darndest things!

A conversation that occured as part of our yearly doctor's visit

Doctor : What do you want to become when you become big

Twin A : Mechanic

Dad (in thoughts) : Ok, no more handyman expenses. Phew!!

Twin B (after a long pause) : cooker

Me (in thoughts): ?????????Prestige????Hawkins??????

Doctor : !!!!!!!!

Mom : ??????!!!!?????

Twin A (taking charge of the situation) : A!, Do you mean Chef?

No more excuses you squatters

All you squatters who say that too much of work prevents you from getting any excercise, your excuse is not going to fly anymore coz there's some multitasking you can do while at work.

Non violent ice hockey brawls!!

Even I thought the title was an oxymoron until I saw this.



I hereby nominate these two players for the Nobel Peace Prize for showing utmost restraint.

Toddler Conversations in Silicon Valley

Son : I think dad should throw his rusted Nokia phone into the dustbin. I feel embarassed to see him lug that piece of junk when we go out. I literally run for cover when he gets a call in parties.

Daughter : When we go out to parties I always go and stand near Ashwin's dad and hold his hands.

Son : Why so?

Daugher : He has an Iphone.

Spot the difference?

This is going to be a tough one. Can you spot the difference between these two photos.
Of course you don't get points if you said one had a train and the other does not :)

Update: The photo of the Tibetan antelopes with the high speed train was doctored using Adobe photoshop. More on this interesting story

Check this picture out

I saw this photograph on a friends blog. Could not resist sharing it.

Ain't this a nice way to start a friday.

Meeting someone world famous

I am meeting someone world famous tomorrow afternoon. Readers of this blog are encouraged to take a guess. This post will be updated with details on the meeting with this person.

Hint: This person is from the Indian sub-continent. Ok I know that might not be much of a clue given that the Indian Sub-Continent is all but 1Billion+ people strong. But that's the only clue you folks are going to get.

Update: So the world famous person I was referring to was Mohammed Yunus. They say the hallmark of greatness is simplicity and Mohammed Yunus truly lived up to that. His speech was down to earth about how everyone can make a difference. He asked people to stop considering big problems like World poverty and hunger as a whole and split it up into smaller chunks that an individual can tackle. He said if he is able to come up with an innovative way to eliminate hunger for one person, then replicating the solution is easier. Words of wisdom from a genius! and I was truly honored to rub shoulders with him (literally :)

A video to bright up a sunday night.

Here is a "Ready Set Mumbo" video to bright up a gloomy sunday night. OGIM (Oh god it's monday) but on the bright side TGIF is only 5 days away :)

Neither Indian Nor Chinese Cuisine

Temptations a restaurant on Castro st in Mountain view has come out with a new cuisine. I call it "Neither Indo Chinese" cuisine. They claim the food they serve is Indian-Chinese fusion. Seeing the long wait time and the menu card that is prominently displayed outside I thought I had discovered a gem. I went ahead and ordered more than the entire family could eat. We ordered Gobi Manchurian, Chilli Panner, Garlic Naan and Vegetable Hakka Noodles. I thought this was a slamdunk order and I was going to be one happy man at the end of the meal. Meanwhile destiny had other ideas. The food was awful. Every item was neither indian nor chinese. They seem to have taken the bad aspects of both cuisines and fused them. More Ajinomoto and more oil was the motto. In any case this place is no temptation. On the positive side the service and decor was good but hey I'm there for the food so I can tolerate bad service and bad decor :). In any cas the wait for good gobi manchurian continues.

Vendy Award for popular dosa king

Dosa the king of crepes gets attention and so does Dosa kumar who runs a dosa cart in New York. I read an article about him quite a while back and today it appears he has won an award for his service. I call it service because popularizing this awesome mouthwatering snack is just that. So have fun reading this article . And finally, fellow readers do your bit and visit his dosa stall if you happen to be in the area.

Update: Check this article which has an interview with the king himself.

Counting Puzzle

I am teaching counting to my kids. So in the process of doing some web surfing I found a puzzle combining knowledge of counting and alphabets. So here is the puzzle. Count the number of F's in the following sentence.

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-

SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-

IC STUDY COMBINED WITH

THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

The answer to the puzzle is here