Counting days or dates?

How do you keep track of time? In days or dates? I observed that the whole of last month i kept track of time in dates till July 20.After july 20th i have been keeping track of time in days.

I found it really amusing that the way we keep time depends on what is important for us. I had an important project install on June 20 ,so for some reason i thought it was very important and for the whole of last month i kept the time in dates,Every new day was either the 11th or 12th or the 13th. When someone struggled with what date it was that day,pat and confident would come my reply.

Funnily after the install went in on June 20th, I have been keeping count of time in days. Every other day is either a monday,tuesday or a wednesday.For me suddenly the weekend has become more important,I dont have any other important dates to look forward to,i wait for the friday. Somebody asked what date it was today and i kept racking my brain a bit to come to the correct number.lol!

Life is so simple and relative when you really dig into it and start oberseving. There is beauty in small things.The 'GOd of Small things' like arundathi roy says. :)

BOSE??

I love music. So i decided to go in for a good head phone (good is very relative here,you will understand why). The first brand which came to my mind was of course 'BOSE'. I go all excited to be even searching for a Bose head phone. I think(I think) its the best in class in Audio,nothing can beat it.

But this excitement does not last long.I fortunately or unfortunately hit a audiophile forum.Boy!Did i just get revealed to a completely new world of audio freaks.These guys are truely nuts. I could have never ever imagined that we had such people in the world who appreciated music at such core levels and were so finicky about sounds.They draw charts for bass,trebel,talk about audio clarity at different decibels and in jargon which i really couldn't get much of.

Guess what? Bose is a big No-No for most of them.
Reason being its not professional equipment. It is consumer eqiupment.Also they think its popular because of all the marketing it does and really not worth the hype and produces really cheap sound and not value for money at all.

Here are a few professional audio product manufacturers they talk highly about Shure,Grado,Sennheiser,Ultimate ears,AKG,Koss,Etymotic,Beyerdynamic,ultrasone....Gawk,I had not even heard of most of these products and i had not thought they were so on the top brands.I guess now even i have been biased by these people. Some people go even as far as saying 'Sennheiser for classical and jazz,Gardos for Rock/Blues'. These guys are professional musicians,singers,sound mixers,DJ's... so i guess their opinion holds.
One forum declares its motto thus 'Pursuing the TRUTH in audio'.


Now after reading all this,I suddenly didnt feel the inspiration for getting a Bose head phone anymore, I wanted a better one :) .After a lot of research and considering my budget i finally decided on a Sennheiser which is going to come in next week. I am kind of both skeptical and excited with the purchase. Lets see. Move over Bose.... Sennheiser is here. :) :)

Now i am an audio product expert i must say!! lol!! Not quite as much as those audio philes though .. ha ha ha ..

When i told my friends proudly that i got a sennheiser,they were like ...senn..?what?

Sigh .. you mere consumer marketing scapegoat mortals .. (wink) lol!

55:2

I am tired... 2 hours of sleep in the last 55 hours ..36 hours non stop ..everything solved ..kinda fun ..really tiring fun..

The 5 stages - Kubler -Ross Model

I was watching this movie 'the bucket list' the other day, firstly i must say its an amazing movie and everyone definitely has to watch it -its inspiring,its about 2 people who have been diagnosed with cancer and have been given 6 months to live and happen to share the same room in a hospital and get to meet each other.They decide to make something called a 'bucket list' - a list of all the things they want to do before they die and go about doing it.

I heard the concept of 5 stages of grief for the first time in the movie and when i heard it i thought it was so very simple yet so profound- we do it all the time but dont realise it and somebody just gave it a model and it just becomes a conscious process and we suddenly become aware of our grief and probably we can handle it better.Here how it goes.

The Kübler-Ross model describes, in five discrete stages, the process by which people deal with grief and tragedy, especially when diagnosed with a terminal illness.

The five stages are

DENIAL - ANGER - BARGAINING - DEPRESSION - ACCEPTANCE


Kübler-Ross originally applied these stages to any form of catastrophic personal loss (job, income, freedom). This also includes the death of a loved one,terminal disease, divorce, drug addiction, or infertility. Kübler-Ross also claimed these steps do not necessarily come in the order noted above, nor are all steps experienced by all patients, though she stated a person will always experience at least two.

But in most of the cases it always ends with Acceptance.

Beautiful word isn't it - Simple but so profound - 'ACCEPTANCE'

"Uncertainty,is the only certainty there is,and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security"

Hairy day!

Weird day and story ..an embarrassing one for me though!!

I have been in this new project for about a month now.A pretty unstable system and lot of fire burning around.I never met my business clients,i was just,lets say- air dropped into the war zone without getting instructions or meeting my commanders - i get air dropped and then i am provided with the instructions as to what to do.I am daily on zillions of calls with my Business clients resolving issues in this system.I hear their voices so very often that i relate a lot to their voices.I normally find it very uncomfortable to be talking often with someone to whose voice i cannot put a face to.This just intrigues my curiosity to see how this person looks like.But when you dont have the opportunity you start trying to build a face to the voice .. That is what I did and I imagined each of my business clients to look some way ...

I slept at 2.30 AM last night(or rather today morning) ... Had a meeting at 9 AM and had to be in office by then ,I kept my alarm for 7,overslept and woke up at 8.

I went into the bathroom ,switched the light on ... gawk!! I am gonna have a bad hair day ..okay no time..
Damn ...no ironed clothes ..what the heck ..no personal meetings - only phone calls.. i pull on an un-ironed jeans and a T-shirt,just ram my feet into a pair of shoes and run ...

My manager Mahesh picks me up for office ..I run into the car and slam the door.He looks at my appearance and just smiles ..he has got used to this ...


I reach office and enter the building,the security guy gives me a look, this is a financial institution ,everyone is in business suits or formal clothes and I stand out like a sore thumb in my unironed jeans,T-shirt and sneakers and uncombed hair - look more like a hippie i guess in the settings.

I reach office and open my mail box ..I see my business clients want to meet us today. They want to have a face to face meeting instead of a telephonic call..they want to meet us ..

I am delighted. I finally get to meet these voices.

But the delight turns immediately to a shucks, Not today.. I am a mess. I cannot meet them like this,but I dont have a choice ..i either meet them or skip the meeting. But the meeting is important so I cannot skip it.Well .. mixed emotions .. I go to Mahesh place and he looks again at me,doesn't say anything. I tell him 'I look like a tapori, and we are meeting them for the first time,i can't believe this to be happening today itself'. He tells me 'No big deal!! Cool it'.
I tell him 'Easy for you to say, you are dressed well'. He smiles.

I keep thinking ..'shucks ..what a start for the day..why today' and enter the elevator.Again the same looks form everyone,sigh .. i have to get used to this for the rest of the day.

Someone talks behind me in the elevator.Sounds very familiar!!Suddenly i realise its one of my business clients voices.Now i don't know what to do 'should I ,shouldn't I,should I ,shouldn't I' then finally what the heck.I turn around and say 'Hi, I am Mayur'. Boy!Do i get surprised looks.Lol!! A prize scene! After some coughs and handshakes and brief introductions in the elevator itself,we go to the meeting,i realize one of them keeps staring at my Hair! Oh god - please spare me!! But then i get lost in the meeting and forget how i am looking and so do they(hopefully!).Finally its a lot more of handshakes and a lot of 'see you,bye'.

It wasn't so bad! I survived!! In fact I was wondering about what i had imagined each one of them to look like and how they turned out.I must say a 50% hit rate - not too bad at putting a face to a voice!

My second sky dive!

I did my second sky dive within an year. It was again a tandem. I thought about doing a solo,but that requires 8 hours of training and i didnt have time for that.Also i thought let me get used to jumping out of a plane first,then i will handle the solo.Here's my video of the second dive - i did a complete flip while jumping out of the plane.Its addictive.

Crash!!!

Okay! Here is another episode that happened at the Itasca trip. We were re-collecting this in the afternoon today and were laughing our butts out.Apart from Kayaking we also went mountain biking. When you give a bunch of guys each a cycle and ask them to ride it in the woods,obviously the last thing that would happen is them to slowly ride it and enjoy the scenery and whistle about.That is what the girls do and that is what they did! Each of the guys took a good 10 mins to get their 'perfect' machine - shocks - front and back,front and rear gears,7 shift ups and shift downs,speedometers,they give pretty cool bikes for rent.And then it started,within 100 meters of starting the racing began,the girls were all forgotten-they didnt count,each guy had the other guy in his sights.

So,we are going up and down speeding all the way,overtaking and being overtaken,Bhargav and Asit are leading,I am third,Rajendra behind me and Saket behind rajendra. Bhargav,Asit and myself form the breakaway and the Teté de la course,Rajendra,Saket,mahesh form the peloton and the girls the laterne rouge.(cycling terminologies - avid tour de france fan). So we are winding our way up and down and we suddenly come across a long curving wooden bridge,since it had rained quite heavily couple of hours back,the wood is moist and slippery, Bhargav and Asit go on the bridge first,they are going quite fast and close to each other,then bam! Bhargav rear tyre loses traction and he skids and goes down,Sensing bhargav going down asit tries looking back and he also skids and goes down bam!(second casualty), I luckily apply brakes but dont skid,behind me rajendra suddenly comes over the blind turn and sees the muddle in front of him and he hits the brakes and he skids and he also goes down,crash!!(third casualty) Now behind rajendra ,Saket comes in and how can he miss the party?? i shout at Saket - 'Stop!! ',Saket also hits the brakes and he also goes down bam!!

So two cyclists ahead of me ,two cyclists behind me are down and I am the sole guy standing tall in the middle!!lol!!I feel like a all conquering hero in the middle of a battle field. People are still reeling from the effects! Then i utter the words 'are you all right' - to no one in particular.This triggers off for the next couple of minutes a series of 'i am all right' 'are you allright' 'yes, i am allright,are you' 'yes,iam ,what about you' ..i hope you get the idea ...being repeated multiple times to each other and to no one in particular.After everyone is suitably satisfied with the questions and answers and after making sure no bones are broken anywhere,the spirits rise up again and all get on their bikes.Experiences are supposed to make you wiser ,but in this case it was very short lived -the wisdom gained i mean! We all cross the bridge slowly,the minute we have crossed the bridge - all caution is thrown to the wind and life resumes in the fast lane!!

After cycling for several miles,we suddenly remember that we had something called 'girls' in our troupe.We again go through the series of questions 'did you see them' 'no,i didn't see them,did you see them?' 'No, I didn't,did you?' 'No , I didn't' ..i hope you get the idea.. .After several rounds of these questions we come to the conclusion that no one has seen them and they are probably somewhere behind.We decide to wait.After like eons or ages comes the fair sex rear brigade panting and wheezing -In between the panting and wheezing shilpa asks 'Can we go a bit slow -also its dangerous to drive fast?' - Slow?? Sheesh - girls!!!!

No one talks about the accident to them!(though we eventually tell them)

Okay..okay..we admit we are fool hardy and hard headed sometimes..Come on..give us a break..guys will be guys!! (wink)