9 January 2014

Perspective on History

One advantage I have of making a lot of friends is that I get to interact with some really smart and wise individuals. Had a drink with a few of them today. The discussion went around Snowden – traitor or whistleblower? A memorable quote from a guy at the discussion I admire immensely – “History is not about the truth. History is the opinion of the victors”!!

30 December 2013

Chalu-pa run across the continents

The Sunday morning Bengali running group was on vacation. However, everybody ran at 8 am on Sunday in a virtual Chalupa run. The first five pictures are from a few members running on the beaches of Florida, the next two are Sudakshina and Manas doing the authentic run in Atlanta and the last one is myself and my brother running in India. Apparently distance cannot separate our running together spirit….

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19 December 2013

Perfect antidote !!!

After the stress of the prospect of having to cancel our India trip (visa issues for Natasha) and the scramble to end the year at office, meeting Amitesh for a few late hours was the perfect antidote that the doctor had prescribed. Nothing can take my mind off than sitting with Amitesh at a very quiet bar nearly into midnight discussing topics that few would think of as “bar topics” 🙂

Today, we spent a lot of time discussing (and researching on internet)
(*) the effect of Calcium level in heart by high level of LDL in blood. (don’t ask me how we got started)
(*) the importance of understanding why we do what we do (especially in professional life)
(*) the relativity of the definition of happiness (this is an effect of a prior FB post)
(*) the plight of gays in India (recently, India has taken a Russia-like position on gays)

While the topics can be mundane, the discussions are always lively !!

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10 November 2013

Annual Run with “Luchi Bhoj”

After our Sunday morning Bengali run today, we all gathered together for our annual post-run picnic with luchi, mangsho, aloor dum, begun bhaja, dahi vada etc etc. Do not worry if you do not understand what those food items are. All you need to know is that what we stock up in calories on this day, we spend the rest of the year running every Sunday to get rid of them 🙂
This is also a good way to attract other Bengalis to our Sunday morning run event (for the food, if not the run). So, this event is alternately also known as our Annual Membership Drive day 🙂
28 people in all – although 3 did not get a chance to run or walk with us!!

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7 November 2013

Eating gold???

I have a question for all of you…
Last night, my colleague Leigh Ann and I went for dinner in London and we ordered some champagne. You see those flaky stuff in the drink ? Those are not bubbles – those are 23K gold flakes!!!
I have never had any drink with gold flakes in it! The funny part – the price was no different than any other glass of champagne. So here are my questions:

1. What is the root of this practice of putting gold flakes? Is it just to make it seem fancy?
2. Is it not dangerous to health to ingest rare metals like gold? Conversely, is there any known beneficial effect?

It was a little jarring though. I kept having this visual in my mind where I was eating food along with the aluminum foil it was wrapped in 🙂

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18 October 2013

Sindoor Khela

Browsing my Bengali friends’ updates on FB after coming back from India, I have come to the general conclusion that dousing your face with some red powder and posting it on FB is highly correlated with your friends finding you very beautiful 🙂 I gotta try that sometime 🙂 🙂

13 October 2013

Mr. Whitney!

No trip to Dallas is complete without meeting this guy. After our business work was over and we left, I suddenly remembered that I forgot to take a picture of him.
One quick phone call later, both of us pulled over to the side of the street. Unfortunately, there was nobody to take a picture of us. So, we had to make do with a precariously balanced iPhone and a couple of stones on a raised concrete step and a misfiring camera app!!!

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