The last time I ran in Cancun it was 95 degrees with the merciless sun beating upon me at noon. It was while resting under the shade of a tree that day that I ran into my friend from engineering dorm – Girish!!
This time, I went out for a run in mind blowing rains. Stopped under a tree a couple of times but did not see Girish anywhere…
Most of my friends in the USA may not be aware that World Cup Cricket is going on. There are 10 countries participating. (unlike our World Series Baseball where we just invite Canada in).
Each team will play the other 9 teams resulting in 45 games and then the top 4 go to semifinals and then of course, the final.
I was looking at where different countries stand today. This is how the chart looks. Country name, points and the result of the last five games, starting with the most recent.
Study that table carefully.
In any column, you would expect 5 wins and 5 losses, right? 10 teams playing each other – 5 winners, 5 losers. That is how you would expect every column to be. And that is how the third and fifth column indeed are. But the first, second and fourth column have 6 wins or losses and 4 wins or losses.
How is that possible?
… who would count his gold coins and put them back, I did a similar thing today – but with fountain pens (decidedly of lesser valuable and certainly less sought after than gold coins). This month was special – I got fountain pens gifted to me by Karan Dhir at Mumbai airport, as well as DJ, PJ and the other Dhir here in Atlanta.
It meant I had to rearrange my inventory of fountain pens in the various storage cases.
Laid all of them out on the kitchen table this evening.
That would be
100 traditional fountain pens with ink barrels and cartridges
18 dip pens of the following style:
10 glass pens
5 bamboo pens
2 quill pens
1 feather pen
Somehow it tempts me to draw up a writing pad and start writing …
How irritating is it when the phone rings while you are in the middle of an important meeting?
I had just landed in London after a near sleepless night and was in the middle of some serious discussions with the Board when the table vibrated slightly. Everybody glanced at their phones or fished them out of their pockets. I noticed that it was my phone and it said “No Caller Id”. Well, one more of those scam calls, I concluded. Pressed the power button to cancel the call, looked at the beautiful River Thames in front and proceeded with my spiel.
Within 5 seconds, the phone rang again. With “No Caller Id”. Fairly persistent fraudster. Canceled it yet again.
And sure enough, they called up yet again. For a moment, I had a doubt that Sharmila or the daughters might be trying to get hold of me. Excused myself and picked up the phone.
“This is Alpharetta Police Department. Am I talking to Rajib Roy?”
This was TROUBLE.
“Let me take this. It is urgent”, I told the Board members as I ran out of the room, fearing some real bad news. Visions of one of the three in an accident is what kept flashing in my mind.
“This is Rajib Roy speaking. What is going on?”
“Your car is parked in an illegal spot. You need to move it now or we will have it towed.”
That was confusing. My car is at the airport. It is in a reserved parking spot. There is no way my car is anywhere near Alpharetta.
“Where is the car?”
“On Highway 9. In front of Smokejack. We have signs all over not to park anywhere on the road due to downtown events”.
“Officer, I am in London right now. I suspect that is my wife’s doing. Let me call her”
So, I called Sharmila and sure enough she and Nikita were out and about and had the car parked where it should not have been.
I went back to the room and within a minute there was a message from Nikita that they had moved the car to a proper place.
Late in the evening after all meetings, I called up Sharmila to find out what had happened.
She explained that there indeed was a sign not to park. They saw it. It said Oct 15.
“Well, why were they disallowing cars to be parked there today? It is Oct 13th today.”
She explained herself.
Unfortunately, my phone had said “No Caller Id”. If I knew the number, I was so going to call back Alpharetta Police Department and let them know that somebody thinks it is all their fault. The “From” date should not have been written in smaller font than the “To” date!
This is a variation of the Amatitan Monk.
You may remember how my friend – Mauricio Flores – from El Salvador who lives in Portugal had his brother get me a bottle of the local alcohol – Chaparro Flor de Fuego – when I visited San Salvador.
It was Mauricio’s birthday last week. To celebrate our friendship, I opened the bottle and made the “Salvadorean Monk”. This is Chaparro Flor de Fuego, Elderflower liqueur (used St. Germaine), Benedictine and lime and lemon juice.
Turned out to be very tasty.
The alcohol itself was closer to mezcal than tequila. Milder to the nose though.
