Shyam's Blog

In the office bus, we have new topics coming up daily. Today's topic was - "how to bring up kids in a good way?" There are 4 young daddies in our bus and there were lots of ideas! One basic idea was - We need to keep the creativity ON which is missing in today's kids. Kids tend to be passive all the time with TV/computer/video games/etc. One dad told, "Four things have to be made as low priority for a kid to grow well. TV, computer, mobile phone and friends." We were talking in the age range of 5-18 till they reach college. If a person can stay away from the above 4 things for 2 days, then, he/she is really 'being himself/herself'. If TV and computer are blocked, younger gen will take a mobile and start SMSing with friends. It has become a trend to use more of SMS than talk face-to-face! Our conversation ended with a note - "Even though we do our best, kids are always influenced by other kids at school."

As I was watching the IPL finals last night, I saw an Ad on TV saying, "Watch TV on your mobile". No matter how the quality is and how small the screen is, I started to think about advancements in technology in the past 20 years. This is 2010 and 20 years ago means 1990. Things which were not even imagined have come in to place 20 years later. Below is how 1990 was. We were in Hubli and I was in middle school. 1) 'Internet' was a word unheard of. We never imagined that such a thing can exist. Add to this word, another adjoining word, 'computer'. 2) Mobile phone - A landline was a luxury. We had to wait for 6 months to a year to get a phone connection. Maximum we had seen was a cordless phone! That being the case, mobile phone was something we thought only police use. 3) TV with 180 channels - We had a BPL color TV with 12 channels. Only television channel we had was Doordarshan. How could we imagine to have so many channels that TV itself didn't support?! ...

Last night, I got an email confirmation from company 'T' calling for interview. I had applied and had confirmed my availability over email. After seeing that email, I prepared all the documents required. I don't know why these companies ask for a '1 passport size photo'! Saturday morning - I got ready and headed towards the interview location which was near Majestic. I arrived at the venue 10 minutes past 9 am which was the scheduled start. My assumption was that not many would turn up as early as 9am; that too on a Saturday. This assumption was true for the interviewers, not for interviewees. Near the security at the gate, I was told that interview is held at the cafeteria on the top floor. The guard told, "take the stairs to the fifth floor." I was surprised and thought, "no elevator??" After walking up 5 floors, I saw 50 people already waiting there. Nobody was there from company 'T'. I was lucky to find a chair to sit which soon got f...

As I was eating the first mango of this season, I was recollecting the childhood days when Summer meant 'mango season'. Summer season in childhood had these typical connection: 1) Mangos - Hubli days reminds me of 'aapus' mango. One vendor is still in my eyes who used to come just after a heavy rain. He had converted a foldable iron chair into a cart by adding small wheels to it. 2) Playing for hours - My brother and I used to play for hours - both indoor and outdoor. Creativity was touching its limit during this season. New games every day, new rules to a game every day, etc made playing interesting. 3) Kissan juice was the most preferred drink in Summer. We used to get a new bottle of juice concentrate at the start of every season. Thinking the current juices, I think that it was cheaper to buy the concentrate and prepare the juice ourselves. Benefit of today's juices is that it is instant and comes in 100 different flavors. Other popular drink was 'rasna'...

Color+Color Black-n-White+Color Saw the original image in our quarterly magazine and got to know that it was taken by one of our cab-mates. Requested her to send that photo so that I could play around to make it look like the 2nd one. Did you notice one thing? To have the color in your palm, you need to use your fingers. But, most of the fingers are clean! Answer is - there should have been one person (not in photo) who must have put colors on these palms.