Idle thoughts …..

It was back in 2005 when I heard this the song for the first time. I don’t know if I would have liked it, had I heard it in any other way than how I did back then! It was in a movie called Beautiful Girls that suddenly popped up amidst the rapid channels switchings, on one of those lazy sunday mornings in a hotel room in San Jose. Something about the movie stopped me from switching the channel again. And along came this song. The moment the movie got over, I remember frantically trying to find this song and download it. Ever since I have had no week, where I had not listened to this song atleast once.

And here’s how I heard it the first time!

I listened to it again last weekend. In another one of those frantic channel switching streaks, I chanced upon this movie……..

And in case you are interested in listening to how the actual song is, here it is - Sweet Caroline by Niel Diamond

Here is one from the Boston trip I finally decided to go for, after several weeks of planning and re-scheduling. And all we managed to do, was to spent time in the subway stations trying to decide where to go

Yet another keepalive, while I let the chaos at my work place pass by…..

For the past two weeks there has been a growing desire to have a plate of poori and masala. I don’t know where it originated from. All I knew was, one fine morning, while walking to office, I felt this sudden urge to eat pooris. Ever since, every other meal seemed tasteless and worthless. I started comparing pastas and sandwiches with poori and they all seemed inferior to this flat and round man-made wonder made of dough and fried in oil! Until last weekend…..

It was a cold and windy Sunday morning in NYC, where I had gone to meet a bunch of my old school friends. It seemed horribly difficult to leave the comforts of a blanket, thanks to the tiring Saturday we had in the city, when all of a sudden one of us came up with the idea of a “brunch” at Sharavana Bhavan. Even in my sleepy state this directly translated itself into poori and masala. Within half an hour, I was up and ready to go. The walk was harsh. Although it was just a few blocks down from where we stayed, walking against the wind almost made it feel like running on the treadmill for an hour (which was something I have never managed in the 27 years of my existence) in a room with a misconfigured air conditioner. And I went panting into a small restaurant with a big sign saying “Sharavana Bhavan”. The place was buzzling with activity, with people from all spheres of life walking in to have a taste of South India. Weather didn’t seem to bother any one of them, although I believe most of them, unlike us, had their cars parked right in front.

We were fortunate to get seats as soon as we entered. The moment we got our menu, there was nothing I looked for, but pooris which laid buried under the title “Rotis”!! I waited in anticipation, downing two “steel glasses” of Madras filter coffee, for those fried doughs and its masala served in a steel plate with three “potholes” - something that had left me hungry and sleepless in Philadelphia for the past two weeks!

What followed was bliss…..

And here’s a glimpse of the Madras filter coffee, which on any other day would have taken the headlines!

In fact I had plans to go up to New Hampshire over this weekend, just to capture those colors that mark the beginning of Autumn. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out the way it was planned and I ended up not taking the 7 hour ride up north. Instead, I made a trip down to Princeton University, which was one of those places I always wanted to visit. And this is what I saw en-route!

Over the past two weeks I’ve been on a phase of blocks in all respects - reading, writing and all the other hobbies I used to be engaged in. Call it a sporadic and delayed bout of quarterly life crisis or the impact of slowly getting into the groove of working again, but the moment I get back home after work, I see myself hitting the bed, sound asleep till 5:00am, the next day morning. Initially I thought of it as an after effect of the sudden change in the sleeping patterns, which used to be from 3:00am in the morning to 10:00/11:00am that changed to 10:00pm to 5:00am, as work started settling in. But that certainly cannot have a hangover as long as 3 months.

The result…. I have been trying to read the same book (Zorba, the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis), over the past 4 weeks and still not managed beyond 30 pages - perhaps the longest I have been with one single book, ever since Focault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco, that took me almost three months to finish. Updating my blog with just photographs was never my intention, but I find myself doing just that, simply due to the lack of ideas to write on. What took me just a few minutes to pen down, now seems to take ages!

Hopefully I shall be back soon….

Well, mathematically that number would be the same as the rest of the dates in the year, except of course the 29th with February proving a culprit. But how probable would it be that a large group of your friends were born on 13th of a month (any month at that)? To add more complexity, how probable would it be that a vast majority of those (7 to be exact) were born on the same day as you (!!!). Its interesting when they call you up and wish you, to reply back, “Same to you”!

Just another idle thought that popped completely out of the blue while on my way back from office today It could be the fatigue. I guess I need some sleep

Just an attempt to wake this blog up again!

Yet another weekend at Manhattan and like every other time, this time too, the city had a lot to offer which I had never seen before like, a street fair on the 6th Avenue which stretched all the way from 42nd Street up as far as eyes could go, winding its way through the buildings that stood tall and a presidential campaign amidst a completely unrelated procession.

And then there were places, I made sure that I never missed, every time I set my feet on this “rock”, such as the Bryant Park with its usual group of chess players and book readers, the New York Public library and its fair share of photographers and coffee drinkers and the central park, teeming with life, from street performers to caricature artists, mothers and kids on their daily dose of afternoon walks to tourists such as me, tracing a serene hiking trail around the park. Time stood still at these places, amidst the fast paced financial center that was build around them! An irony, I must say!

But one that requires special mention is the tunnel adjacent to the statue of the angel, beside the lake, at Central Park. I have spent a significant chunk of my time in this city, inside this tunnel, watching the street performers in action. Rumor has it that street performers who perform at some of the prime locations in Central Park are auditioned before letting them out to the public! I believe, this spot is one such. And perhaps that is one of the reasons why I have always liked being at this spot. There is something magnetic about this place which has always kept me glued to the spot for hours together. It must be the enchanting music that echoes through those architecturally elaborate walls and ceilings in the tunnel.

And this time too, the power of his voice just kept me enthralled.

And here is a shot from where I sat listening, almost a year ago.

Looking forward to yet another visit to this land, teeming with life……

Offbeat: Met up with Jaris and Cibin, who generously gifted me with a lens and a polarizer for my new camera.

…. I got myself a DSLR ! It was a long wait. I had been looking to buy one ever since I came to US. Two years and two months later, I finally ordered one, purely on a Sunday morning impulse (irony intended!!).

Here is a highly distorted version of how it hangs in my room now….

Although I’m yet to explore the gamut of features that it has, here is the first shot in an unrecommended “Auto” mode with a 50mm f/1.8 lens!

Over the past few years, throughout my grad school and my work right now, I have been exposed to a common term that lingered across every organization - Risk! As hot as the topic can be, risk management team is a group that is considered as an integral part of every company. Needless to say, there is a large group working just on the possible risks and their impacts, in my company too! As part of my daily work with the multitude of projects that run around me, I’ve had constant interactions with people from this specific group, which I guess is not uncommon in a company of this scale and business need.

But something that amused me right from the first day I started hearing about the term “risk”, since my graduate school years, was the fact that, from an individual standpoint, risk management is often looked upon as “What happens if you get hit by a truck tomorrow”! How can the possible impact (not the fact that you are hit by a truck) be minimized At first I started hearing this phrase from just a single person and promptly decided to avoid that as a “trademark” analogy. But I soon realised that it was a common phrase used by a large number of people, all over the world - be it a company or a school!

Just an interesting observation