20 December
2022
20 December
2022
I had to laugh aloud
Airports are a veritable mix of emotions. If you go to the west end of Atlanta airport, you are going to see a lot of emotional good byes, last hugs and tears. If you go to the south side, you can actually feel the anticipation of the crowd waiting for their loved ones to show up. And the excitement, hugs and tears – happy tears – when they actually unite with them.
I was at the airport this evening to pick up Nikita coming from Washington DC. As I was pacing up and down, I saw this young kid with another lady and an even littler kid also waiting there. The kid had a sign in his hand. I was walking past him and had in fact, gone a good couple of yards past him when I had to do a double take.
“Wait! Is that what I saw?”, I asked myself.
I paced back. Read the whole sign again and laughed out aloud.
I had to make friends with the kid.
I asked the lady “Did he do this himself?”
“Yes. We can’t wait to see the look on his mom’s face!”
I turned to the young kid and asked “Who made this?”
“Me”
“Was this your idea?”
“Sort of”
“What do you mean, sort of”
“Well, I had seen something like this in a video once”
“Ah! That is very funny. I want you to know that you made me laugh very loud today!”
Unfortunately, an office call came in and I had to step towards a quiet area. When I came back, they were gone.
I would have LOVED to see the look on his pranked mom’s face.
18 December
2022
What I remembered today
One of the fond memories I have of my mom goes this way…
Now, as a background, you might want to know that I was sent away to residential school at the age of 16. Thru high school and then college and subsequently while working, I used to come back home fairly often. At least, more often than most of my friends.
The first two hours of the routine in every such trip never wavered. Invariably, I would go to the kitchen where mom would be busy cooking and stand there at the door and chat with her. It would be a fairly one sided conversation. I would basically dump on her in a couple of hours everything that had happened to me since I met her last.
And after that, I would completely vanish. For the next couple of days, I would be out on my dad’s Vijay Deluxe mostly spending time with my friends or out there on the field playing with my brother.
All that changed during those years was that she moved from a coal fired oven (I still remember she making the hot rotis on it) to a LPG gas burner. Instead of sitting down to cook, she moved to standing and cooking. But other than that, my side of the routine never changed.
All that changed of course. when cell phones came. I talked to her every single day. Therefore, during my quarterly visits, there was not much “catch up” to do.
Those memories of a young boy standing at the kitchen door having a monologue with his mother is what flashed by my mind first thing this morning.
Two years later, I sometimes still instinctively reach for the phone to call her in the morning.
Today was the day, two years back, she suddenly collapsed and unexpectedly died.
These kind of fond memories are what she left.
18 December
2022
From the bartender’s corner – Drunken Mango
18 December
2022
Wish I always carried a writing pad and a fountain pen with me
18 December
2022
This has to be some kind of a record for me
Riding in 41 degrees with wind at 10 mph making it feel like 36 degrees on the skin. Good news is no part of my skin was directly exposed. I had enough layers all over. Except the gloves. I had only two layers of protection. I need to find a good solution quickly.
The fingers nails hurt the most. I could feel the stinging pain of the nails starting to get real cold. Briefly thought of pulling over and hugging the tailpipes. Finally made it to my coffee spot. After about ten minutes, I got my senses back in the finger tips to type this out.
Sipping an extra hot capuccino, I am now getting mentally prepared for the return journey. Visages of me inconsolably singing “Let it be” from inside my helmet are floating thru my mind right now…
18 December
2022
Finally home after a near twelve hour delay!
17 December
2022
Boy, was I late for the pickup !!
Natasha’s flight yesterday from JFK that was to take off at 12 noon eventually got in the air ten and a half hours late!! Apparently, after boarding all the passengers, they realized that they were one pilot short!!
In any case, throughout the ordeal, I was checking Flightaware to see what their latest info for the flight DL 482 was.
Accidentally, ran into something…
There was a flight DL 482A. I never knew that flight numbers could have letters in them. What is even more intriguing is that Flightaware kept the history and very helpfully informed me that the flight landed over twelve years back!!
17 December
2022
Book Review: Are you thinking clearly?
Written by two journalists – Miriam Frankel and Matt Warren – this book will intrigue you if you care to understand how poorly we all think. The self-conviction we have about how clearly we think (albeit with some humility that we might be wrong at the edges) could not be more misplaced.
The authors fairly comprehensively cover the various variables that often cloud our thinking – yes, simply feeling hungry (or hangry as the authors say), make people make very different decisions. This has been proven by multiple researches.
It gets into how your thinking is influenced by what you eat (thru the gut), what language was your first language that you learnt, simple marketing tricks… about 29 such factors.
In the end, you will realize that you are not one uniform identity that thinks and makes decisions consistently. Far from it. We are all social beings that change our thinking or decision based on who we are with. Or who we were with.
I have to admit that while reading the book chapter by chapter, I found no “flow”. It was like moving from one independent variable that affects your thinking to the next one in a very disjointed way.
But in the end, you realize that – that is the exact point the authors are trying to make. Our thinking is not a smooth one – it gets affected by different variables and circumstances at different times. At least this helps you understand what is likely making our thinking murky even if we do not realize that.
I think the following excerpt from the book sums it up well…
“Despite what countless other books will tell you, positivity and optimism come with plenty of pitfalls – not least that they can make you overconfident, blinkered and gullible – and the relentless pursuit of happiness will likely only make you miserable. Nor is a high IQ the foolproof solution it is claimed to be – it doesn’t make us immune to bias, prejudice or mental illness, and it won’t automatically make us challenge our own thinking. To make the most of our intelligence, we also need intellectual openness, flexibility and conscientiousness as well as emotional stability and intelligence. And if you believe love will clear your head, think again. We all know how muddled and mindless that can make us.”
17 December
2022
