The three musketeers

Photo is taken by the birthday boy.

SFO trip

Can't recollect the joke (with bhaiya, bhabhi and Aaru)



Bob Marley and Tanya asking for some pot



Nigga style...



Thats Jaya - so who has longer hair now.



All Family

Who says so?

I just got home from Lage Raho Munna Bhai with a smile in my face and immune system boosted. Everyone has acted well. If Arshad Warsi has delivered good dialogues, Boman Irani had its own charm too. The movie as a whole was pleasant and light-hearted. Must watch, readers.

If Sanjay Dutt gave a good performance being a doctor in part one, he has won even more hearts by being a Gandhian and breaking the ice of follow-ups usually poorly directed. Sequels are bad. Who says so?

Wish Sanju Baba said that dialogue once more 'Jaadu Ki Jhapki'!!

All the way jack hammering from Brooklyn

Eight of us headed towards McLeod Park, Brooklyn around 8 in the morning for community work sponsored by our company. The project description stated bulb painting, gardening, landscaping with the children and growing plants. Couldn't have asked better than an early weekend since it was already a Friday and you all know how much I love weekends (ok, sleep).

To our anticipations, there wasn't what we actually expected. First, there were no children nor there were bulbs to paint. Second, I was shown a jack hammer that was probably more than my weight and we had to use to slam open 3 cement slabs. Trust me, it was scorching hot plus working on that machine required one to be a beast. I wasn't the right person. Nevertheless, I drove a bus so I can work on this mind blowing drill as well.

Here are some snapshots

Family get-together at Atlantic City...

Germany goes down with Atlantic City

The dice stopped rolling, dealers quit shuffling and slot machines went silent today. It was just the last weekend that I made a trip to AC and now its hard to believe that its coming down for the first time in its 28 year history of legalized gaming. Just because the state legislature could not cut a deal with Corzone's proposed budget, he bought out hundreds, if not thousands, on streets. Wow.

There is a saying from Italian job, never f^&* around with the following two.
1. Mother nature
2. Mother f%^&*&^ Ukranians.

I will add a third one to the list...politicians.

God Bless America!!!

Monopoly again ...

... by hmmm er, Microsoft ofcourse. There has been a strong discussion that Microsoft should be free to use its own search engine within their own IE7 browser. An argument to support that will be Google does the same with Firefox.

But friends, there is a difference. Google pays a huge capital to FF in order to default to Google search which we all know is a right use of its marketing capital. Plus Firefox does not hold any monopoly in the market which is important to know. On the other hand, Microsoft owns a real huge chunk of the browser market and forcing people to use Live search (less than 10% market share) is simply another word for monopoly. They are not paying a single penny for this, they dont have to.

Wasnt there a similar reason why Arthur Anderson was destroyed?

But wait a minute, whats still worst is those employees who are not allowed to change their own workstation's settings. That sucks for them. I hope somebody really rattles up the minds of European Commission and the favor goes in the hand of Google.

And so I will continue to pray....

Generation's tie-up

Recently, Apple's move to support Windows XP has caused a great deal of havoc in the MAC community. This is the comment I liked the most...

Bootcamp allows MAC to interact smoothly in both centuries (*).

* Intel-based MAC uses a technology called EFI - an interface between an OS and the underlying platform - thus providing a more efficient environment for booting an operating system and running pre-boot applications. On the other hand, Windows XP and even the to-be-launched Vista is still stuck on the old BIOS.

IMHO, Microsoft has always made other hardware vendors very difficult to offer dual-boot scenarios. Controlloing BIOS is yet another form of monopoly. But knowing from the fact that Apple cannot compete in the PC market, they felt happy to tweak Windows to allow dual-loading.

Sometimes I wonder the motive behind Microsoft - it is not just gulping more market - are they dreaming to kill Linux as a desktop OS?

PK's birthday party

Everyone's happy. Paul might be a bit grumpy, he wasnt really hungry to let go a free dinner waste.

Journey to rejuvenation

Sandeep, take a break. It has been almost 24 months since I'd been home and pampered. Besides, I had a lot more reasons from starting to use my vacation days to meet friends n family and rejuvenate myself before beginning of 2006. The time flew like a wink of an eye and I had a splendid 4 weeks vacation filled with joy and pleasure.

Holidays included a few-day trips to Baroda, Pune and Shirdi.

Interestingly, I was worried about spending time alone while heading to India which was taken care of after bumping across Payal at the boarding area who apparently graduated from BU too. As a matter of fact, we met in Baroda again and I enjoyed her glorious company.

A lot of things were straightened out in this trip. Dimpy got assistance with her Math while Kumar was put on track towards GRE prep. It was also great to see my sisters being so much matured and enjoying their college life. In fact, Bhavna is about to start her career with Infosys unless a top MBA school absorbs her. Chandni on the other hand is still working on her 12th and figuring out on what to do next. Whatever line she picks, I am sure that will be a righteous decision.

Finally, my homage to Hiren and Priya who started a new life together and their party ,'Sangeet and Dandiya', I had attended before departure which was the first that made me feel I am getting close - eh. Hiren, I wish I had days left to make it for the final reception but nevertheless, we will have a huge celebration in San Diego.

Though this trip was supposedly greening, I already feel a bit home-sick. Time for a toast!