Some of you know me for some of the weirdest answers to the simple question “How are you?”. The one that gets most laughter is “Staying alive… Me and John Travolta”. The one that just throws people off undoubtedly is “Compared to what?” Another one that usually lightens up the conversation – “Much better, now that I have seen you / heard your voice” 🙂 Now you know, when asked to describe me in one word, my wife told my friends – “quirky”.

But I am getting tired of the same responses. What are some of the other funny / smart / thought provoking responses you have heard? I need to steal some ideas…

“I hold your doctrine of Memento Mori 
And were an epitaph to be my story, 
I’d have a short one ready for my own. 
I would have written of me on my stone: 
I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” 
– Robert Frost

Coming from the biggest democracy to the oldest democracy, I am always intrigued by how politics works here. I have tried to make it a point to shut up and listen to opinions and how they are articulated. After listening to my office colleagues, social friends, newspaper articles and TV/radio, I have found some interesting common grounds that both sides strongly believe in. For example, everybodyseems to be convinced that…

1. Ours are balanced and substantive arguments. Yours is “rhetoric”.
2. Your vision? Clearly “unAmerican”.
3. Our candidate has had minor transgressions. Yours is morally bankrupt.
4. Facebook is the ideal forum to declare to my friends that the other side are a bunch of idiots.

What is up with this recent spate of all my FB friends posting pictures with cute messages printed on them? Man, I long for those days where they use to post pictures actually taken by them or some witticisms (original or otherwise) that were sent as texts. I think I missed the whole new wave but I wonder if I am the only one getting a barrage of those cute messages in pictures.

Wow!! If you did not see the game and looked at the EuroCup Final score only, you would think the game went into penalty shoot out or something!!!

7 mile run at 9 min/mile. Then over ate for lunch. Now for a little wine and sleep in the sun by the pool. Would have been a picture perfect Bengali New Year had it not been for the taxes I have to file and pay today 🙁

If you ever wanted to escape the doom-and-gloom round-the-hour sensational news coverage on TV, pick up this month’s Runner’s world and read the profile of Erin Henderson. Pissed off at being 207 pounds, she started running. Ran five marathons at speeds I can only dream of. And yet, was inspired by the state of kids she saw in Southeast Asia that they adopted 8 kids (on top of their own 4). If anybody wondered what discipline can do, she is raising 12 kids, putting in 75 miles per week and the way she manages her house? – quote “People walk in and seem surprised that the house is clean and nobody is hanging from the lights”. Why can’t our TV programs focus more time on people like her? Can we see this side of America once in a while, please?