Moments

How many times have we looked at the right hand side of the menu card before ordering a dish? A recent observation during one of my trips to a restaurant is that we tend to look at the price tag associated with what we order (even though very not very conscious about it). And then this idea came up. A concept restaurant where the menu has items segregated in categories. There is a minimum price tag associated with each category and a maximum. Exact cost of the dish that you order is not given on the menu. Open your heart and order your meal and worry about the bill when it comes up. To add some more spice to this, the cost of each item shall not be fixed. It varies in real time depending upon the demand for that dish. If an item is ordered by many the cost goes up (as it shows that it is a popular dish here, it could be our speciality too). As technology advances and we have digital menu, we can give the customers the listing of the items in the menu according to this stati...

Poor bowlers!! What else to say when the batsmen complain when they cannot play properly on a tough pitch and lobby together to force the match referee to call off the match. The 5th and final ODI of the India Srilanka ODI series was called off by the match referee citing 'the pitch is dangerous and unplayable' as the reason. Sure it was unplayable because the batsmen's quality has deteriorated over the years. The don't feel comfortable when they cant hit freely through the line or can't judge the ball correctly. But what is dangerous about a pitch? Just because you cant predict the bounce makes it dangerous to face fast bowlers? What if the fast bowlers start extracting more swing and you cannot judge that and get hit in between your legs? And what if the bowler is fast enough that you don't have time to put the bat down quickly? You tell the bowler is unplayable and dangerous and ban him? Charge him with a ticket for over-speeding? Alas gone are the days...

This outing planning had its own complications. Some of which is described in the prelude ( here ). The rest were all surprises that followed. Getting the guys together One big question of an office outing is should it be short (no night stay) or should it be long. The married guys (a minority in our group) wanted a short one as they either had issues bringing family and/or dint want to be away without family. There were few who were lazy to go on an outing (short or long). There were few more (including me) who dint want to back off at the last moment so voted out of the outing. After the first round of mails for acceptance, we ended up having 6 out of 18 who were really interested in going. And one third of the team going on a team outing was not acceptable. A meeting was called up so that everybody justifies the reason of not going and if the majority convinces the other we shall go with the majority (outing or no outing). Now is that confusing!!! Anyways to cut the long sto...

All work and no "outing" makes Jack a dull boy. This was well known amongst all at office but still there were very few outings in our group. I had attributed that to the cost-cutting measures that our company was taking due to the so-called recession. After a few months of hard work amidst the rumours of layoffs, there was some discussion on the urgent need for an outing to change our moods. Now the question was "who will bell the cat" for the funds. Asking our manager was an option but we decided to take a bigger leap. Come May and our VP was in town and dropped down to our office for his customary visit. There was lot of talk about the good fortunes that are coming our way and possible expansions in some of the groups. There wasn't a better time to bell the Super Cat :-) At the lunch table, we just put up the cause and Voila!! "Few thousand bucks" should not be an issue was the reply. We began speculation of how few those thousands would be ...

This is my first post of 2009 (almost when it is in its going to end). Is there someone who still reads this? The fourth anniversary of my blog went unnoticed. It was sort of a ceremony to write a post for the anniversary ( First anniversary and Second Anniversary and Third Anniversary ). After all someone has rightly said "Enthusiasm of anniversary dies down after the third" A customary update of the year that went by. Feb 2008 to Jan 2009 flew off like a hat hit by a bullet (Is that a metaphor? Am I getting worse at blogging? Cant think of something better). Busy with job, phd, parents visiting me and some trips here and there. Number of posts reduced to 4 in that period. You would find more posts than that at my blog but they were actually posted after Feb-09 back-dated using the post option in blogger (Did u know that you could do it?) Cant guarantee more posts (than last year) before the next anniversary as it is coming up soon. But I will surely try my best and pester...