Lazy days !

After three days of holidays, it is a lazy Sunday.

Sitting on work since morning, but not touched it yet.

Its just one of those lazy days (reminds me of Robbie Willams' song "Lazy days...")

50th post !!!

To celebrate of my 50th post, I have changed the title header - not to the success I wanted though as you can see that the main heading is still there.

I am trying to go through the html code to get that out, but my lack of understanding about html means it will be some time before it vanishes!

What is it with Indian news channels?

I reached home at 6 pm Kuwait time, switch on the TV.

All the way up to 9 pm they were showing one 'breaking news' - Ash and Abhishek are getting married.

Whopee. Happy happy joy joy.

What in the world? India is such a large country, and THIS is news?

I am sorry!

Let me put this straight -
1. I am not interested in people's personal lives
2. 'News' about people's personal lives = bitching / gossip
3. It's a news channel, not a tabloid

Can't help pointing this out, but the Aaj tak and Star News have only 30 minutes of business news for a day that keeps repeating for 24 hours. The rest of the time is occupied by two - three stories, that depending on the occassion will be based either on a movie celebrity, a sport sorry cricket celebrity or a political celebrity.

I switched off the TV at 9 pm since I had had enough. If someone tells me that Indian news media has jumped leaps and bounds - that is all fake. There is a long long way to go before they catch up with BBC; the direction they are going towards they would end up like CNN or Fox!

Case in point - two years ago there were bomb blasts in Bombay early morning. BBC has video coverage within 20 minutes, the first Indian news channel to get it was covering the news 2 hours later. In fact, it appeared on the tickers after BBC.

I rest my case.

Slight cosmetic touches to the blog

As you will notice, I have added a rather sophisticated clock showing Kuwait time (I settled on the colour orange as it brings out some nice contrast to the page).

The second is a clock for India.

I want to add a weather forecast tab as well, but am looking out for something that looks neat and slick.

A few of the headings have also been renamed.

In the coming days if time permits, I will also get a new header.

Only if time permits that is...!!!

Office politics

Sick and tired of it.

I am not the guy who likes to indulge or involve himself in office politics. I would rather spend my time doing my work in a diligent manner so that I can leave home on time.

Recently our assistant manager (ass man) has been complaining about me to the powers that are (he is on their good books), and me being a senior consultant (two levels below him) am always at fault. This has been consistently going on since quite some time now. At every chance, he would try to brown nose me. The only reason I have not yet been pulled up is because there are a couple of guys at his level and above that have good things to say. My worry is that they have no plans of sticking around for too long. And even if they did, I would want to leave on virtue of standing by my principles and integrity.

Anyways, people tell me that this happens and I have to learn to deal with it. But I honestly do not know for how long I would want myself to be attached to a company that encourages, appreciates and rewards ass licking.

If walking out on grounds of principle and integrity are wrong or cowardly, then fine - I am wrong and a coward!

My patience is being tested daily, and I am praying to God to bless me with some more everyday.

Lets see how long this continues...

What I want to do before I am 65...

I want to:

go bungee jumping

do solo sky diving

climb the Mt. Everest and parachute my way down from there

ride a Ducati at top speed

fly an F-16

complete a slalom of Europe with Jeremy competing against James and Richard. Would prefer doing the slalom in either an Aston Martin Vantage, or in a Chevrolet Caprice Classic 1984

play football with cantona and schmeichel in old trafford

get my football coaching license

start my own football coaching academy for kids, and make it affordable for them as well

retire at the age of 40 and in new zealand, only after having worked in india, japan, germany, barbados and seychelles

coach india to the world cup finals

get fit, strong and get my weight to around 70 kg - 75 kg

learn how to bake chocolate muffins

learn to play the guitar

learn karate

learn to fix a car

build a car that i planned with my brother. It is based on a 4 stroke, 500 cc engine from a bike

give lectures to graduate students in college and to kids passing out of school

stitch my own suit

own a BMW 735i 1999 model and drive it on the nurburgring to make a lap record

jump higher than Michael Jordan

work as a very professional taxi driver, something on the lines of The Transporter...

drive a train

travel in space

cross the Taklamakan desert and the Thar Desert

visit the North and South pole

go scuba diving

drive a crane and a bulldozer doing some construction work

learn how to swim

perform Hajj

I guess that is all that I can think of right now. But I will keep updating this post until I list 100 things that I want to do before I am 65.

I hate my job !!!

The only reason I am at it is so that I can earn enough money to pursue what I really want.

But it just gets to my head and I have to vent out my frustration, like I have today.

They are bringing it down !

The first 8 years of my life were spent in that building. It just feels wierd. Standing there watching it all empty - ready to be brought down. Suddenly I realised that it might not be there from next week. All of a sudden memories I thought I had forgotten rush to my mind. I can remember every brick of the building.

Guess that is life. Everything old has to be replaced by something new.

A reason for me not being able to associate with Kuwait is this very fact. It takes away my willingess to have an association of belongingness with it. If I could, I would have never let 'my home' to be brought down. But alas ! It does not work that way here.

For 17 years, Kuwait has adopted me, and for 8 years I adopted Bombay.

But at either of these places I don't feel at home.

Just straying off a bit, I met someone who is from Lebanon. He took his mother to Canada, Switzerland, Malaysia, Singapore - all across the world so that she could adopt another country as home. He recited me an incident of when he was standing with his mother on the bank of lake Geneva and watching the sunset - he told his mom, "This is heaven! Look at that, it is so beautiful. Standing here you can see heaven." His mom hesitated a bit, and then after a short delay said, "When I stand in the balcony in our house in Beirut - I see heaven."

I do not have such a balcony in which I can stand and see heaven.

Its not that I am confused, torn apart or undecided - I just do feel a sense of belongingness. It is this very same reason that I used to enter chat rooms with the nick "Nomadic Yawn" (the yawn because of my God given gift of being able to sleep anywhere, anytime and in any position).

I am still searching for "home". For that balcony from where I will be able to see heaven.

Clutter

There is a lot of clutter all around, mainly due to my negligence.

I need some time to clear my mind, clear the clutter, and set everything in order.