Shyam's Blog

Happy Ugadi! It has been a hectic day - Morning visitors and phone calls! Mom busy with one emergency surgery. Lunch was awesome at my in-laws. Evening, my wife wanted me to get some of the digital photos printed. Went to GK Vale to order prints. I am really looking to order prints online. GK Vale has that option where we can upload album to picasa online albums and GK Vale has used Google's APIs to take customer's order online! Nice idea for Indian customers.

My colleague R approached me when I was taking a break from work in the break out area. This area is in one corner to our floor and is open to the rest of the floor. R requested me to sing a song as he knew that I sing and had listened to my online mp3s. Since it was a break time for me, I had no hesitation. My only concern was that my voice will be too loud because I can't sing in a low volume. I started to alaap in Raag Desh and wanted to sing a thillana. I had told R that I will face the wall and sing so that sound doesn't directly hit the people sitting around. A minute later, I could see people raising from their desks and peeping out from their cubicles. Once I finished the song, I was really surprised to hear applause from all over the place. I enjoyed that moment because I really didn't sing for everyone, yet, they could hear me :). May be, next time, I will really sing for them.

How much can a place make you nostalgic? This depends on what one relates to that place to become nostalgic. For me, US life is very nostalgic. I am using the word, 'nostalgic' to describe 'things which make me recollect of the past'. The dictionary meaning of nostalgia means longing for something past. 1) If I see Obama in the news! Surely that news would have been of some importance if I were to be in the US, not anymore. Still, seeing or reading something about Obama reminds me of my US life. 2) Few shirts I wear - Certain shirts have US connection since I bought them there. It is very hard to not to recollect 'when I bought this?'. 3) Eating non-home food - In US, I have eaten so much of restaurant food that whenever I eat naan, pizza, noodles, etc here, it reminds me of bad Indian food which are served in restaurants there. Also, pizza here have better taste than the ones in US. 4) Few Bollywood songs - some of the movies were releases and were box office h...

Below is the excerpt from Robin Sharma's interview. The question and answer to that is interesting ... You have criticised the old models of leadership. So how different is your model? Leadership is not about power and control, which the old models talk of. Leadership is taking responsibility for results. It’s more of an attitude and philosophy. You do not need a designation in your organisation to be a leader. If every single employee demonstrates leadership, while valuing team work, there is no crisis that can stop the organisation from succeeding.

A residential street has turned into a freeway kind of road. This is the least I can describe about our road. I stood in the balcony few minutes ago to really see the noise out there. Believe me, the numbers are huge. Peak hours of traffic is from 8am to 10am. In the 15-minute duration I witnessed the traffic, I conclude that for every 1 second, I saw atleast 1 vehicle. For 50% of the times, I saw 4-5 vehicles zooming away. If we calculate the numbers for this 2-hour peak duration, atleast 10,000 vehicles go pass our home! How??? 2 hours = 120 minutes = 7200 seconds. 1 vehicle every second would imply 7200 vehicles. With 4-5 vehicles passing per second most times, the number is sure to cross 10,000. This was not the case 10-15 years ago when my brother used to sit in the balcony and read books there! After making the 50-feet road a one-way, it has become havoc in our street. It doesn't look like a residential road at all. One good thing is there is not much dust raising up from the...

My wife and I were once discussing about events of the past. I was clearly giving the dates perfectly. When I thought 'how?', writing blog gave the answer. I usually blog the events (similar to people maintaining a dairy in olden days) and these get imprinted in my memory! I didn't know that blogging is so effective :).

Time has gone so fast that it has already been 6 months since our return to India. Things I love - 1) Public transport is the best to go around the city. Right from city buses to autos and city taxis, there is no shortage of transport. 2) Food - There is no hunting for good Indian food here. There are many favorite eat-outs in Bangalore! 3) Friends and family - Weddings, baby showers, house warming ceremonies, etc - all come under one name, "function". This is the best part of life in India :) 4) Music around - There is so much of music and art that we hardly have time to go for each and every concert. Few things which I haven't got used to ... 1) Traffic - Even though I drive around in the city, it is very hard for me to actually do that for more that 30 minutes in one go. 2) Shopping - I haven't done much shopping here. Couple of times when I went searching for things, I didn't find what I wanted. There are many shopping places to go, but it is difficult to choo...