Month: July 2014

Fate, travels and festivities

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It is late Thursday night as I write this. That movie I wanted to watch – The Great Gatsby – is playing on TV. I will probably miss a good portion of it while I write this but hey, that’s what re-runs are for. The window of my living room gives me a splendid, 7th …

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10 Commandments for Entrepreneurs

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Yesterday, I came across this beautiful blog called sketchplanations – run by Jono Hey where he has used simple sketches to explain concepts. I hadn’t done sketches for a long time (except for the doodles during team meetings), and this blog made me want to sketch again. This post is a result of my sketch-craving …

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My TV woes

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[An episode from 3 months back.]

Finally after serving us for close to 10 years, our TV died on us last week.

This one was from the generation that did not require a prefix to identify it – it was just a TV. The regular old, bulky CRT TV.

I didn’t realize I had feelings for it until it died on me – I am surprised at the grief I am feeling. For a TV.

My TV was good. I have never had to take it for repairs.

Of course, it has misbehaved at times. But 2 things have helped us (my TV and me) overcome those troubled times: 1) my being a fully qualified Electronics engineer, and 2) my being handed down the single most important equipment fixing technique from my father.

The former aspect has equipped me with the skills to tell a diode from a transistor (I had successfully demonstrated this to my visiting lab examiner in my eighth semester Viva voce too), and the wisdom that a TV has many more components than just these 2 items. So I have never tried to mess with the internals.

The second, more important aspect, is the one that has fixed the niggles really. And I am going to pass this on to you now. So take a pen and note this down if you need to.

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The dawn will come. That, and some flowers.

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“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”
– Anne Lamott

I’ve started loving quotes for the power they possess to inspire and motivate us. I have gone through some tough, testing times and these little magical lines have helped me tide over them. I will keep adding some of them here, with the hope that they help you overcome your challenging times.

While on the topic of hope and light, let me show you some more pictures that can bring you joy.

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Shhhh….The party begins in 10!

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“‘We’ll be Friends Forever, won’t we, Pooh?’ asked Piglet.
‘Even longer’, Pooh answered.“
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“shhhh…be quiet, they won’t start the party if they know you are here”, whispered my 10 year old.

Staring into the semi-darkness; illuminated only by the faint glow of a 100 stars, I lay next to him, careful not to twitch a muscle. After all, I was here to watch the most amazing party that I’d only heard a lot about. I didn’t want to risk anything that could jeopardize my chances of being part of this one of a kind, magical event.

10 minutes of total stillness went by.

Nothing.

Well, the best things in life are worth the wait, or so I’ve heard.

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My new Nikon 35 mm lens

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“Ding-dong! ding-dong!”

Our loud door bell startled me out of my lazy semi-reading-semi-watching-TV-semi-dozing Saturday afternoon.
“Must be the maid”, I thought to myself as I rose up rather reluctantly from my comfortable couch, strewing items I had stacked up around me on to the floor.

I hate getting up once I am well settled in the couch on Saturday afternoons, and so I make sure I load up the couch with everything I would need for the next few hours of blissful inactivity. This particular afternoon, I had remote controls (we have 3 of them just to operate the TV – one for the TV itself, one for the cable set-top box, and one for…coming to think of it…I don’t know what for, but I just get all of ’em just in case), a new novel I was reading (which, by the way, could put one off to sleep faster than any sleeping pill in the market, I found out), a pack of Marie biscuits (with 10 essential vitamins. Healthy. Unlike those fatty butter cookies which are yummm…err…I mean, unhealthy) and all 16 pages of that day’s newspaper.

I walked to the door leaving a trail of biscuit crumbs, newspaper pages and remote control batteries, all the while thinking who it could be at the door.

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