4 May 2025

Another great comeback from the waiter/waitress

Do you remember the story of the young waitress who had come back with a memorable response to my “A million dollars would help” when she had asked if we wanted anything else after serving us? Or the other time when another waitress actually came back after drawing a million dollar bill on a piece of paper?

Well, we had another great one today.

We had docked the boat and walked up to Fish Tales to catch some food and drinks. Aidan was the young and very friendly gentleman who was helping us. After the four of us had finished, he came and asked if it was going to be one check.

There were four of us. To throw him off balance, I said “No, we will split evenly – five ways”!! Usually, that gets a laughter all around and creates some bon homie. And Aidan laughed his heart out too.

After about a few minutes, he showed up. With 5 checks neatly clipped to five clipboards and five pens.

I was totally confused.

“Wait, Aidan. What are you doing? I was kidding.”

And then he laughed more. There was really one check. He had simply printed out four more copies of the check to fool me.

He had me good there.

Made it a memorable dinner. I need to go back there again!!

Category: Intersection Points | LEAVE A COMMENT
4 May 2025

The best notebook I have ever had. Bar none.

Got this as a gift from Akshay. This has all the elements of stuff I like – math, writing with fountain pen and something completely quirky.

As you see, the name of the notebook is “Nonstandard Notebook” – Mathematically Ruled Pages for Unruly Thoughts!!

Check out the Contents page. I have also included two sample pages – “herringbone” and “rupture” curves and the mathematical equations that give rise to those lines!!

Love writing on it!

Category: Fountain Pens | LEAVE A COMMENT
3 May 2025

They say half the battle is in showing up

For me, these days, that is the entire battle. Insofar as 5K races are considered at least. Usually, once I show up, I realize how age has thinned the competitive field and I stand a fair chance of getting some recognition.

Woke up late today – thanks to going to bed late last night. For a brief moment, I considered dropping out of the race. Here is where the hiked up entry fees help. Felt too guilty to not show up after spending so much money.

It was a watchless run again. I had no idea of time till I reached the end of the race and saw the clock. It was 30 min 9 seconds. The race results came in quickly. Got a second spot again in my age group. There were about 24 in my age group. Like I said, I need to just keep getting older and not stop running. Speed be darned.

Interestingly enough, exactly on this day, 11 years back, I ran exactly this same race and finished 6 minutes faster than today!

The race chip on my bib malfunctioned when I crossed the starting line. So, I got the default gun time of 0:00. Which implies I was the first guy to get off the line. In reality, I was back of the line and it took about 15-20 seconds to reach the starting point. The results would not have been much different though. The guy who beat me was a clear 3 minutes ahead of me.

I am not sure I can do that kind of sub-9 min pace ever again.

Category: Running | LEAVE A COMMENT
1 May 2025

Coincidence!

I was in flight from Boston to Atlanta. Was exchanging messages over Whatsapp with my school English teacher who was visiting her son in Asheville. A bit later, while awaiting a response, I looked out and guess what I saw? We were flying over Asheville at that precise moment!!

Category: Travelogs | LEAVE A COMMENT