Relationships...

What are the chances that my wife's fathers's uncle's daughter-in-law's father's sister's daughter is the wife of my dad's sister's son-in-law's brother? I would say one in a billion and I am very fortunate to be that one in a billion...

Online maps...

I consider online maps to be one of the indespensible inventions of the Internet era. 10 years back there were no online maps available. Today, I cannot imagine my life without these online maps. I come to realize that these online maps have become indespensible and I will not hesitate to pay a monthly service fee if they choose to impose one. This thought struck me after I rescued my frantic wife who was lost when she missed a turn signal on the way back home and called me at home to help her out. All I wanted was an intersection and I was able to guide her to the closest freeway in less than a minute using the miracle tool called online maps. I was wondering how I could have done this without the online maps and how long it would have taken me in a conventional map on paper to do the same, provided I have it on hand.
These online maps have advanced so much so that some maps can actually pinpoint the exact location from where you are launching the webpage with your ISPs IP address. This is as close it can come to being a online GPS device. The technology has now spread to handhelds and has become much more portable. Such simple advances in the information superhighway makes a giant leap in mankind's thirst for knowledge and information.

Is life complicated?...

This question came up at a dinner conversation very recently. This really got me thinking. What makes people think that life is complicated? What factors make it complicated? How can one quantify the complexity of life? What is it in a "life" that makes it complicated? The more I thought about these questions, I realized that it all boils down to one single factor. Its the people themselves. Its you and I who has the power to make life easy or complicated. Why blame it on external factors when one has the power within oneself to control ones own destiny?
There used to be times, when I used to think why life should be so complicated. I used to contemplate over things that I thought made my life complicated. Over a period of time, I realized that it is the choices one makes in every step of life that determines how easy or hard ones life can be. The decisions people make are always not right. Some decisions becomes a turning point for some people after which there is no looking back. It does not necessarily mean that their life has become a cake walk. But it is the choice that he/she made to go around that turning point makes it all worthwhile.
I strongly believe that there is no use in crying over spilt milk. You take decisions in life and live with it. Some turns out to be wise, some stupid. You cherish the wise ones and put up with stupid ones. But at the end, its in ones own hands to make ones life complicated or easy.

Google Talk for Blackberry...

Just found out about Google Talk for Blackberry(Make sure to open in IE). Installed it and it works great.. Cool, simple interface.. Check it out..

Blooks...

I was listening to NPR today and there was this feature on blooks. It was really intriguing. The first I have ever heard about it in the media. I was thinking about this concept for quite a while and few of the blogs that I frequent are very much worthy of being a blook. Too bad that someone already thought about it ahead of me ;-). They also talked about the blooker prize, which was a very unique concept. I dont think my blog would qualify for it yet. But that is something that I should work towards for the next year. Now there is one more thing to work towards with my blogs. Hmm.. Now who am I kidding???

Cruising at 65mph...

Today I decided to find out the experience of driving at posted speed limits on roads and freeways. So its 25 or 35 mph on residential roads and 65 mph on freeways. To be honest, I really enjoyed it. I was very surprised to find that I still passed more than 80% of the cars on the freeway while cruising at 65mph. The experience was very unique. I did not have to glance at the rearview mirror every 10 seconds to scan for a highway patrol car nor did I have the urge to pass the car in front of me. And I still took the same time to reach my destination.
One thing I had to accept is the fact that I had to make extra effort to drive at 65mph. I was very consciously driving at 65mph. Instead of glancing the rearview mirror, I was glancing at my speedometer every 10 seconds to make sure I was maintaining 65mph. So I have decided to make an effort whenever possible to drive within speed limits just to enjoy the driving. Trust me, once you get used to it, you will really enjoy driving and the stress level drops by nearly 80%. Not to mention the fact that you will save atleast 25% on gas and reduce wear and tear on your car, esp on bay area roads.

Bayarea Dabbawaala(i)??,,,

An article featured in NY Times today caught my attention. Below is an excerpt from it.

Annadaata, which began as a homespun operation in 2002, has morphed into a business with several delivery people distributing meals each weekday across San Francisco. Kavita Srivathsan, 29, the chief executive of Annadaata, got her start by cooking meals for her new husband and his friends.

"I didn't know how to cook, and the first two months after getting married my husband and I went out to eat all the time," she said from her home in San Jose. "Two months later our credit card bills were out of control and we were both gaining weight. At the end of the day I just wanted the basic Indian food I had grown up with."

She did not have a job at the time, so she spent her time learning how to cook Indian foods. Using recipes from her mother in south India, she experimented in the kitchen for a few hours each day. On a whim, she advertised $5 box meals on justindia.com, a Web site based in the San Francisco area that no longer exists. "That was the only time I ever did any advertising," she said. "The very next day I got a few phone calls from people ordering the boxes, and from then on the word spread like wildfire."

Mrs. Srivathsan's business grew so fast that a few months later she decided she could no longer run it from her home. "It began as me cooking out of my kitchen, but since there was such a demand for it, I had to make it a legitimate business with a tax ID number and a rented kitchen," she said.

Because she wanted to reach a wider market and knew that Indians generally favored cuisine from their region, she hired cooks from various areas in India, including Gujarat, south India and Punjab.

Today, customers can click on her Web site, annadaata.com, to view a menu for the coming week. After choosing from among a vegetarian ($7), a nonvegetarian ($8) or a south Indian meal ($8), they place orders over the Internet and pay with credit cards.

It is interesting how entrepreneurial one can become in this valley. This is just a very small example of how a very simple idea can turn into a huge success. You just have to strike it at the right time. Hope mine is just around the corner..

My first Sudoku...

Sudoku has been creating a buzz for quite a while. I have tried to solve on of these for quite some time but was never able to finish it either due to lack of time or lack of interest. Today I had some time in hand to complete my first Sudoku. So I thought I should save it some place safe and so here it is.

Seinfeld Scripts...

Just came to know about this website which documents every word spoken by Jerry, Kramer, George, Elaine, Newman..... and every member of the Seinfeld cast.

Unfriendly skies - Part 2 of 2...

Continued from Part 1.....
Sriram waits for his turn at the ticket counter for them to give him an alternative flight. When he gets to the counter, the agent can almost see him plead to put him on the next available flight to SFO that will get him there by 2PM. The agent clicks away to glory for some time on his keyboard and comes up with an itinerary that will take him through Denver to SFO but will not get him there before 7PM. All hopes were shattered. He knew that the agent is trying his best to get him on the next available flight. So he resigns to the fact, gets the new itinerary and proceeds to the gate. His flight was at 12.45PM. He still had couple of hours left. He decides to wait at the gate and proceeds to the gate. He makes the inevitable call home to say that he is stuck at Frankfurt and cannot make home in time. He could sense the frustration on the other end of the phone. He felt helpless. He had no words to console. It was all his fault. He should not have planned it so close. He blamed himself for having so much confidence on the airlines and weather. It was a good lesson learnt.
The Denver flight begins boarding as scheduled at 12PM. Sriram had couple of hours for his connecting flight from Denver to SFO. So he was hopeful that he should be able to make that. He settles down and mentally prepares himself for the long 9 hour flight to Denver. The captain's voice confirms that they should be there on time. He looks out the window and sees that it was still snowing. The captain announces that they were next in line for de-icing the plane and they should be able to push back in 30-45 mins. So he starts waiting. With his MP3 glued to his ears and a novel in his hand, he kills minute by minute. 1 hour passes by and no sign of de-icing machine. By now the snow had increased and was falling at a faster pace. After about 90 minutes, the captain's voice is back on the PA. It was something that Sriram was fearing but did not want it to come for real. The captain announced that the Frankfurt airport has been shutdown indefinitely until the snow storm subsides and the aircraft cannot be de-iced until the snow stops. By now, Sriram was prepared for the worst. His fear of missing the connecting flight from Denver was slowly peeping up. The last flight out of Denver was at 8PM and he still had 4 more hours to make it to that flight. So the wait begins. 2,3,4,5 hours pass waiting for the snow to stop. It was the most horrible claustrophobic wait one could endure inside an aircraft. At the end of 5 hours, the snow had just started to subside and the aircraft still had to be de-iced. The passengers were given an option to get off the plane but their baggage cannot be removed. So everyone had to sit in the plane waiting for it to take off at some point.
At the end of the 6th hour, he saw a de-icing equipment pull beside the aircraft. One on each side. It normally takes about 30 mins to de-ice the aircraft. Halfway through the de-icing process on one of the side, the equipment breaks down. So the total de-icing process took about an hour to complete. After 7 hours of wait inside the plane, the aircraft finally pushed back. By then Sriram knew that he had missed the last connecting flight to SFO from Denver and he had to stay the night in Denver. By now, he stopped making any plans and decided to take it by the minute. He had been in the airport and plane for the past 15 hours and he is yet to take off from Frankfurt. He still has a 9 hour journey to Denver, a whole night wait in Denver, a 3 hour journey to SFO and a 1 hour ride before he could get back home.
Sriram lands in Denver around 9.30PM local time. Lufthansa was kind enough to put him in a hotel for the night and his flight out of Denver was at 6AM the next morning. By the time he got to the hotel, he was so exhausted that he could not sleep. But he still managed to catch about 2 hours sleep. The next morning, he takes the first shuttle to the airport and by the time he checks in his luggage, it was 5.15AM. It was a close call for his baggage to make it. He had to run to his gate and was barely able to make it to the 6AM flight. This was one of the first flight in his journey that made it to its destination on time. He was glad when the aircraft touched down at SFO. He calls home announcing his arrival and proceeds to the baggage claim only to find that his baggage did not make it into the flight from Denver and is stuck in Denver. He did not have the motivation to think or argue. So he walked to the counter, reported the missing baggage and took a cab home. Never did he imagine that he would take 40 hours to get home which was supposed to be a 14 hour journey. One can imagine how happy he was to step into his home finally a 10AM on Saturday. The missing baggage arrived at 3AM Sunday morning. Sriram knew that he could never make up for the lost time from Friday 2PM to Saturday 10AM.

On my dad's side of the family, I go by the name "Sriram" and yes this is my story.

Unfriendly skies - Part 1 of 2...

Sriram had to be back home by 2PM on Friday at any cost. He had been planning for that meticulously for the past 1 week. On the day of his journey, he gets up at 3AM, gets ready and is at the airport by 4.15AM. Before he leaves for the airport he checks the weather to make sure that the flight would leave on time. He was happy to see clear skies. He gets to the airport well ahead of time and finds a long queue waiting at the Lufthansa counter for check-in. Sriram being a frequent traveler, looks around and finds a self check-in kiosk waiting for someone to use it. He gets out of the line, strolls to it and checks in. He then proceeds to a the baggage drop of line where he is the first in the line, drops his bags off and proceeds towards security feeling elated that he was able to get past about 30 people who had been waiting in the line for the past 30 minutes atleast. He was not aware that this 30 minutes wait would have been nothing when compared to the one awaiting him just a few hours ahead.
He boards the 6AM flight as per schedule and settles in dreaming about his trip back and the feeling of getting back home. The captains crisp voice over the PA system announces that the flight cannot take off before 7AM because of air traffic control regulations. A small knot in his stomach. He begins to calculate the time available for him to make the connection at Frankfurt and realized that it would be close call. But there was nothing he could do. He has to run to the other gate as soon as he gets out of this flight. He started praying that there should not be any more delays. He glances out his window to see a bright orange sky to the east and was glad that atleast the weather is in his favor today.
To Sriram's relief, the Captain keeps his word and takes off at exactly 2 minutes past 7. He has about 2.5 hours of flight to endure and was hoping that it should be uneventful. The first 2 hours went fine and everything seems to have fallen back into place as usual. He will still have about 45 minutes to catch the connecting flight and he should be able to make it easily. About 30 minutes prior to landing, the captains voice is back again informing the passengers that there was a heavy snowfall at the Frankfurt airport and so the landing flights are given time slots to land. So they have to be in a holding pattern for a unknown time until they receive further instructions from the ATC(Air Traffic Control). Sriram could sense that it was not going to be as smooth a trip as he had imagined. But again there was nothing he could do but pray that the connecting flight waits for him and a few other passengers who are scheduled to be on that flight.
After about 30 minutes of holding, the captain announces that they are cleared to go out of holding pattern but not cleared to land yet. So they have to wait for some more instructions from ATC. Sriram has already lost 30 minutes and his hopes were dimnishing slowly as every minute passed. His only hope was that the connecting flight is delayed due to severe weather conditions. After about 15 minutes, the captain is back online instructing the crew to prepare for landing. A sigh of relief could be seen on all the passengers including Sriram. The next 20 minutes were a little tense as the captain was trying to land this huge 30,000 ton aircraft on a snow drenched runway. There was a huge applause from the cabin when the aircraft came to a complete stop at the end of the runway. Sriram was in no mood for that. His only thought was on the time left for him to catch the connecting flight. Its already past the departure time of his connecting flight to SFO.
To his dismay, the aircraft proceeds to a open stretch of tarmac, covered with snow, with no gates and stops. A step ladder is pulled to the aircraft and the passengers were asked to deplane and proceed to a bus that would take them to the terminal. The little hopes he had of making the connecting flight disappeared altogether. He resigned to the fact that he was not going to make it to the SFO flight. The bus ride was about 20 mins to the terminal. He gets out of the bus walks to the departure display board and tries to find his flight. He is not able to see any flight going to SFO listed on the board. He then walks up to a counter and the rep confirms that his flight has already left and he has to be booked in another flight. For the first time he realized that he cannot make it back home by 2PM Friday afternoon at any cost.

To be continued.......