A New Record

I don't know about others, but I think I just set a new record for myself (if not the whole city) by driving from home to work and back for three consecutive days (that's six trips for the ones slow at math) without using my horn even once!

For those of you living in high GDP-per-capita economies, this may sound unusual. 'Blow the horn?', one may ask. 'What's the big deal!?', may ask another, and so on...

Well, for reasons well documented in this blog (refer to posts in July '07), driving in Hyderabad is nothing short of a minor nightmare, with the total lack of road sense displayed by motorists...especially those on two wheels. It's practically impossible to drive a coupla kilometres without a scare or two. QED.

Life in the past month or more since I posted has not been exactly easygoing. Working on a very interesting 'engagement' (no, I am not getting engaged) which is taking up days, nights and twilights of my time. Hectic as hell for sure, but fun nevertheless. Quite a bit of learning on various fronts.

Won a bet with a rather interesting person that she wouldn't recognize me when she saw me, haha, that was fun.

It's my parents' wedding anniversary today, yaiy! Got some surprises for them :)

Some travel planned for the end of the month, fingers crossed on whether that comes through. Hopefully, yes. Hyderabad is getting bloody hot, need to get out for some time. Anyone for a trip to Ladakh?

Pregnant Men

The first one's interesting.

The second one's just hilarious!

Updates updates updates

The past few weeks have been quite hectic. Work has soared to an all-time high (at least in this job) and 14 hour days with no weekends was the norm. It seems to be regularizing now.

The last week was particularly hectic with our annual strategy summit - Open Minds 2008 happening. The event is owned, coordinated, facilitated, conducted and generally pretty much the baby of the team I work with. I was designated as the support for the Emcee, which meant dealing with last minute schedule changes, script writing and generally putting on best behaviour, Sunday clothes and all. Key highlights of the three day event were:
a) Dinner with Kevin Freiberg
b) Lunch with Ram Charan
c) Evening with Som Mittal
d) A very special evening with Niladri Kumar, Vikku Vinayakram, V Selvaganesh and accompanying artistes.

The sessions were great and while some gave me new perspectives & ideas, some reinforced basic beliefs. I shall be writing about those soon.

As you can imagine, there hasn't been much of 'life' other than this in the past few weeks.

My July post on 'Driving In Hyderabad' won me a dinner prize from 040 - Explocity's Hyderabad publication. Wondering when I will take that up. Thanks Renu for letting me know that I won!

Working on some interesting ideas (partly from need, partly to keep myself busy); shall keep you all posted on those as we go along.

9 lives

Sitting inside the waiting room at kundapura railway station, waiting
for the matsyagandha express to come in half an hour. Hope to reach by
tomorrow early morning.

back to hyd on tue. The trip was great for the peace it brought. Life
goes on, it always must.

Anju's playing with a cat, simple pleasures of life. When was the last
time i played with a cat? Cant remember; though i did play with
brinkley the lab last week when i was in mumbai.

note: i hv spent more days in mumbai this new year than i hv in hyd.

note +: nothing can beat mumbai, horribly crowded bad roads notwithstanding.

Live from sarva jnana peetham

After an arduous climb, finally reached here... One place that's
guaranteed to bring me peace each time i come...

a little boy pujari blows a balloon serenely, n airtel gprs works. How
times change :)

praying for peace.

Taxi!

Just got into an ancient ambassador taxi, on our way to kollur
mookambika kshetram. Shall be back in mumbai on monday where many woes
beckon.

Planning on trekking today, hopefully I can still make it.

--
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Prophetic

I usually don't dream much. In fact, I don't dream at all. When I do dream, in exceptional cases, they turn out to be prophetic. I quite dread to dream now...

Had a sleepless night last night. Except between 4 and 5 in the morning when I did dream.

I dreamt I was in a village someplace adjoining a jungle. I don't remember the details but I know that I was the one who had built the village and managed to help the people there get some semblance of a decent life.

And then, from nowhere, a marauding herd of tuskers went on a rampage and destroyed the whole village. I remember seeing one of them throwing someone in the air... shadows of others passing by as we hid behind walls, fearing for our lives.

And then I woke up.

And the dream's already come true.