Friends : Real, Virtual and otherwise

One evening day last week, my neighbor downstairs mentioned casually that it was her husband’s birthday and was upset how none of his family remembered to wish him. Most of their well-knit family live in the city and get-together at the drop of a hat. Otherwise a very cheerful lady, she was visibly upset. As soon as the husband S came, V and I went downstairs to surprise him; that cheered her a bit. And, within minutes one of her friends who lives down the lane stopped by with a huge chocolate cake.

Gokulashtami : How to draw Krishna’s little feet?

I look forward to Janmashtami / Krishna Jayanthi every year for one reason. I love making Krishna’s little feet something that I’ve done since I was 13 years old. The house we live in currently has a black flooring so the feet appear beautifully against the dark background.

How to make these little feet :

Mix maida in water or soak rice for 4 hours and then grind it in a mixer. Don’t make these mixtures too thick..its consistency should be neither watery or nor like a dough. Somewhere in between like a porridge will do.
Fold your hands as if you were going to punch someone. Now place your hands in the mixture and then make the impression on the floor. This becomes the feet. Place five dots over the feet to form fingers.
Alternate this process with both hands to get the pattern of Krishna walking.
For every 3 or 4 single steps put both the feet together.

This year, I had Lil General to help me out. I put his feet in the mixture and made him stand

How I remember birthdays?

Of late, people are amazed at how I remember dates. I don’t use an organizer or any fancy gadget or any website that sends me reminders every morning. Some people find it difficult to remember dates while they can recollect a whole lot of other things very easily such as faces and names. I have a fasciation for dates but I’m very bad at remembering names.
Here’s my memory mapping secrets for dates (umm not really):

Rule 1: Association
As a kid, we remember a lot of things and this number wanes gradually as we grow old. The key to remembering newer dates is to map them to what you already know like your friend’s and family birthdays. Naturally, the dates I can remember easily are those that fall in the months of January, February, April, May, July and September (family birthdays). It takes an effort to remember the rest.The first step is to group the dates and remember them in patterns. For instance, Jan 21, April 21, May 6, June 21, July 13 and September 25 come naturally to me. So when I came across dates such as Jan 22, April 24, May 8 or September 23 it was easy to associate.

People who share birthdays or anniversaries are the easiest.If they occur on a National holiday such as August 15th or Jan 26th all the more easier!
Rule 2: Recency or the last year rule
Every morning when I wake up, I make it a point to see what date is. It is a mental action item to do it around 7:30 a.m. or just before I go to bed the previous night. I then do a quick mental run to see if the date seems familiar. If I have done something substantial such as wishing someone on their birthday or anniversary last year, I generally remember that by way of what responses to e-mails or calls that I received. Don’t ask me how. I just have a vague remeberance. The more frequently I do that, which is successively over the next few years, it becomes a habit. Usually, if I don’t remember it in the morning, the likelihood that I would through the rest of the day is very bleak!
Rule 3: Grouping Dates
This rule works best to enrol newer dates into your memory. Birthdays of people from a similar profession or friends who are associated in some way to each other are easier to remember. One such group is March 20th to 22nd, July 9th to July 15th, Sept 21 to Sept 25th.
Rule 4: Day of the week
This is an offbeat rule which hascome in handy at times. There are events and the day of the week and the month that it occurred the previous year that I remember distinctly. Such dates even if I make an effort I generally fail at it. So if it happened on a Sunday last year, it would be on a Monday this year. This cannot and will not work for long!

Despite all this, there are dates that sound quite familiar like july 19th and I can’t figure out what it represents. It is probably also worth mentioning that it is selective filtering. Not anything and everything goes in. Either the date or the person associated has to be special in some way (obviously done subconsciously) to get registered.

How to Give Up Coffee and How to Become an Early Riser - Part I

How incredible is it that I find articles on the traits I’m quite infamous for in the family, on the same day. There are only 2 possible explanations when I wake up with a grouchy mood, headaches, a long face and snap at everyone throughout the day - either I didn’t get enough sleep or didn’t have my morning tea.

There is a mental program that sends signals “your day hasn’t started yet” if the 100 ml of tea doesn’t go in by 7:30 a.m. It gets worse. I get a kick only if the morning cup of tea that I consume is made by me. I don’t adopt any special procedure..It is the regular Taj Mahal/Lipton/RedLabel mixture with 2 spoons of sugar, a little milk, crushed ginger sprinkled with cardamom powder for flavor. Satisfaction guaranteed. Thinking what a spoilt brat am I? Tea has been my favorite beverage since childhood. Mom wouldn’t allow us kids to have tea. So I would sneak in every morning and steal a bit from her cup. On getting caught, she would hold my ears

Well as Steve says, Caffeine is the modern drug of choice in the work world, easily accessible, socially acceptable, readily affordable, and of course perfectly legal. This is so true. I cultivated a bad habit when I joined my new workplace April this year. I started drinking coffee (black without milk and sugar unlike what Indians are used to) 3 times a day because of easy accessibility. Everytime my colleagues would go to get coffee and would ask me to accompany them, I had a cup. Soon I was consuming more than my body could take! I had to STOP because of the adverse side effects like acidity and it killed my hunger and my digestive system went for a toss. Here are a few steps that I followed to fight my temptation:

How to give up Coffee:

Should you give up coffee?
Anything had in unreasonably large amounts is harmful. With time it becomes an addiction. If you notice side effects like decrease in appetite or concentration, then its time. I know of people who don’t drink coffee in the evenings because they would end up staying wide awake through the night! More importantly, if you can’t live a day without coffee at predetermined times and fight the urge, then its time to kick the habit or have it in reasonable portions!

Method 1:
Reduce the Quantity:
Instead of stopping the intake abruptly and traumatising oneself, reducing the quantity gradually over a week helps. That way you don’t give room for any psychotic feeling that triggers false feelings of headaches due to lack of caffeine!

Method 2:
Break the habit:

Most coffee/tea drinkers develop a rhythm and a timetable like 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., 3:30 p.m. and so on when they have to have coffee come what may. It is important to break this habit and do something else. If your coworkers call you, then don’t accompany them for a few days for the coffee break if you can’t resist the temptation. This is what I did. If you can resist, then drink something else like water or eat cookies! Or if you feel like drinking something warmer, switch from coffee to a hot beverage like cocoa or some other energy drink.

Method 3:

There really is no method 3. It is more of a mental challenge. Every time I felt like having coffee/tea at work, I remembered all those days I suffered and challenged myself, “Don’t I have even this much of self control? Am I so addicted” And remembered the one satisfying cup consumed in the morning.

For 2 weeks now, I’m surviving on just a cup of tea - down from 5 a day!

Writing without thinking

Hiromi has started blogging. Chk it out. I think she is honest and it takes a lot to write such private stuff. When I started blogging, I wouldn’t reveal anything private. Even if it referred to some specific incident it would all be shoruded in secrecy and so generic so that no one can make sense of! More like being private in public. I think ad-hoc posts are fun where you don’t think much about what you write.

Yayyyyy…the weekend is back. I’m going to cook something good (cooking is my latest passion), watch a few movies, sleep a lot and thank god there is no Formula 1 this weekend. I hate to see Schumacher losing. Bangalore Marathon, the first of its kind is happening this Sunday. Weather permitting (it defeinitely is not going to be a 1000 degrees out there ), it would be a good event!

Quotes

A good collection of quotes The 2548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said. A few good quotes:

“I’m astounded by people who want to ‘know’ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.” - Woody Allen

I have a simple philosophy: Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. Scratch where it itches. - Alice Longworth

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. - John Lennon

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits - Albert Einstein

“In England there are 60 different religions and only one sauce.”

- Francesco Caracciolo

The One on Ads

I used to like watching commercials more than the actual programs in India. However, a majority of the commercials here aren’t very appealing - they either lack creativity or use sleazy humor. The ones that I like, the ones that are annoying are listed in the same order :

Good Ones:

Six Flags - Great America. This one was an instant hit. The ads go like this - A bright red bus stops. Out steps a old man, Mr. Six with a shining head and large ears , wearing oversized spectacles and a tuxedo with a red bow tie. The quiet atmosphere is interrupted with the dance number from the loud speaker on the top of Mr. Six’s bus. There is more to it. Mr. Six turns into dancing wonder with his impressive hand movements. Party time! Mr. Six has become an idol for amusement.
MasterCard’s Priceless commercials.
Since 1998, Mastercard has sponsored a variety of “Priceless” commercials. Each ad begins with a list of stuff (or services) and a matching set of prices. Then comes a phrase identifying some intangible that can’t be purchased. And finally, there’s the single word “Priceless,” followed by the assertion that “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s MasterCard.”

–via Priceless Moments
Genworth Financial - a spinoff company of GE.
Taylor Dent is out on a public tennis court with a little kid across the net who’s hitting some pretty good shots. The kid is cute. He’s got long hair, a bright smile and is constantly sticking his tongue out at all of the good shots he’s hitting. Suddenly, Dent isn’t just having a light hit with the kid, he’s serving full force and ripping shots, and the kid is smacking them back with interest, running around the court with that big smile and tongue out of his mouth.Finally, Dent slams an overhead out of the court, raises his arms and let’s out a primal scream, as if he’s just won a grand slam. Then, a mini van pulls up to the public tennis court, just outside the fence. The driver honks the horn. Andre Agassi, rolls down the driver side window and yells to his son: “Hey, buddy. You ready?” Steffi is in the passenger seat with a little smile. Jaden Gil runs over to the minivan and says: “Coming.” He hops in the back seat, next to Jaz, who is tucked in a baby seat doing a little dance with her feet.

The commercial ends with a nice little slogan: “The right genes make all the

difference.”

–via
Coke -Low carb ad.
The Stones’ rock anthem, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” will features in the first spot followed by a second ad, set to break in July, will feature Queen’s “I Want to Break Free.”Various scenes show people in situations where they can’t get what they want. For example, a man rushes up to a crowded escalator while the onscreen super reads, “You can’t jump the line.” A group of beachgoers quickly gather up their belongings as a storm blows in. The onscreen super reads, “You can’t change the weather.” Yet another, shows a kid arguing with her parents and the line reads “You can’t choose your parents”.

As the Stones’ line, “But if you try sometime, you might find, you get what you need,” rings out, people are shown enjoying C2. The legend, “Half the carbs, half the cals. All the great taste,” closes out the spot.

The Boring Ones

Geico. All the ads show a situation where the person is in need of help. The rescuer walks in and says “I have some good news.” and then delivers a bad news. It is followed by “I just saved myself a bunch of money on my insurance by switching to Geico.”

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