Upside Down

A post after 6 months..... That’s too much...

but as my posting  history shows... long gaps generally means tough time...

And this time also its true :-)

When i left Thane for Virar in 2010 after Nabha's birth, I never thought one day i would be back in thane in just a couple of years.

But Alas, Here I am... back in Thane.

Wouldn't justify, but I just wanted to move out from Virar for both professional and personal reasons.

Office was more compelling reason.... better school for Nabha was another....family feud was another.... so many things....

now though financially straining, I am much more stable on mental / emotional front.

Its a brand new start... though rented home, everything is newly purchased  something that I had not done when I had earlier shifter to thane in 2008-09, that time I had a minimalistic approach with thoughts that eventually I am  going back to virar.

But this time no such thing is planned. Its difficult to manage everything at this point, for time being Deepa's father are staying with us to look after Nabha. We are looking for a Day care centre that will look after her during our odd office hours that make us reach home at around 10 pm.

I feel things will change for better hereafter. With this I will also get some free to time to put in action my small business plans. let’s see....

it has added a lot to travel trouble for Deepa. but i still feel that decision is overall good one. I at least get time to spend with Nabha. 

This is why kolaveri....

For quite a few months now its going on kolaveri.... kolaveri.... even though the hype is almost died now... in my opinion the song has definitely highlighted the power of Internet over conventional mediums. without any other effort, it ruled just because of Internet.

Also there are few things I like about the song,
Firstly it has an amateur touch, seniors like Javed Akhtar criticized it but I think this so called lack of quality became biggest plus point for the song.

This song reminds me of the "Bodhi tree " album songs like "Sutta " and "Danda ". If not for the language used, those songs would have got great following had you tube been present in those days.  I am sure many especially those who spent time in hostels would agree .

Next thing is that the singer is not like a professional one. And still it's a hit. This gives a lot of hope for many bathroom singers of course like me  :-) it proves that it need not be very professional to top the charts.

Another point I observed is that the song tops in the favorite list of my daughter too. She is just over 20 months old. Of course there are other songs like dhinka chika... Sheela and Chameli for she enjoys dancing.
But this kolaveri still remains her first choice.  I tried to understand why and realized that this is the only song around apart from her regular rhymes that she can sing along and dance at the same time :-)
Sooooooo simple lyrics.

So much for a single song!

Review of 2011.

2011, looking back has been a mixed experience ... but overall a wonderful year...
It started on a frustrating note with ever increasing work pressure at itz... with growing impact on personal and professional life, Soon it reached the point of no return and I put down my papers.
Even the separation process was a painful one.

After a small break I joined iGate Patni. It was still Patni and not iGate Patni officially.
At iGate Patni things began to work out slowly mainly due to lesser work pressure... even though travel time had increased... pressure and anxiety levels came down heavily. Work culture and workload wise it is far better...

Things began improving thereafter.
We celebrated Nabha's first birthday which was followed by a much needed vacation at Mahabaleshwar.
in around May Deepa too resumed her career. it was a big booster since by then we were almost cash strapped. Slowly we foreclosed couple of loans which again added to savings...

Now we were feeling stable and except for some troubles on home front things were fine.
Then we started looking for a flat in thane in view with my job location airoli and also many other options available for Deepa to switch.  After searching for around a month, we finalized and booked flat around ghodbandar road area.
That was again a landmark accomplishment on personal front.

To complete the toppings, near the end of the year another wonderful thing happened.
I started thinking about something I had never done before.  My own business.
one fine day it just came to my mind that i should start something of my own in the ecommerce space.
Since i work in web application development, i had complete idea about the technical part. so i decided to give it a shot. I liked the idea myself and all others i shared it with. Also i figured out that initial fixed cost also was something i could easily bear based on my earning. It was not long before the domain... logo... the hosting services etc were done and The Indian Crafts Market was ready with "Work in progress" page.

Though it is yet to become operational,  a lot of ground work has already been done in last couple of months. This can not be completed without mention of Vrushali, only friend apart from Deepa and Nitin with whom I initially discussed my ideas in fact the she was first audience while I analyzed and discarded all my stupid business ideas. She has since been great support and guide and has lot of influence on the way things are shaping up on this business front.

Somehow I was afraid that during initial phase any discouragement would kill my core idea of a having a business in infancy. So I was kept my thoughts within my absolute trusted circle.
So far so good and now I am actually looking forward to complete legal formalities and reach next milestone.

So all in all it was an excellent end to an old year and a wonderful start for new year with some worthwhile target to  achieve.
All the very best to myself :-)

tv serials....

When I look back for memories related to tv serials...  mostly I see cartoons.  :-)

I was never interested in popular serials of time like Hamlog or later Ramayan
The ones I used to like were giant robot, HE-MAN, duck tales, Fireball XL5.among the cartoons and then chitrahaar,laurel & Hardy, surabhi  among others.
the options being so small in numbers, we could not afford to miss ;-)

So Sunday morning 9:00 I would be ready in front of tv for morning dose of Mickey,&HE-MAN and duck tales.
Then I would go out to play only to return at 12:00 for "Fun Time".

All these cartoons have played a big role in making me a big enthusiast in science and technology I believe. It all starts with the giant robot, but there were others too like the vehicle used by HE-MAN that had a unique sliding+ rotating mechanism to take it forward instead of wheels or the way fireball XL5 used to take off, in a horizontal direction rather than vertical take off by conventional rockets.

They seemed so logical within boundaries of their world.  This is one thing I generally don't like about today's cartoons, they just seem to exaggerate things just for sake of creating a funny scene. there is neither logic nor touch of real world.
Original episodes of Tom and Jerry are best example of this, watch "Yankee Doodle Mouse " episode.

Since the programs were few,  there was an excitement to watch....  I do not get that feeling anymore in channel surfing  :-(

A tv to remember

Few days back, around 1:00 night.
I had just come from office and was having dinner.
Parallelly channel surfing was on. All of a sudden i saw that one of the channel was showing that familier old screen of vertical stripes of various colours. An indicator that the channel is off the air.

I just could not believe it. I just stared at it for a couple of minutes in sheer amusement. In the age of 24x7 channels i never expected to see those stripes. Sure enough it was some regional Doordarshan.

Those stripes brought up so many childhood memories when TV used to be a prized posession.
Black and white tv's , tv's with wooden shutter doors and lock. Those knobs for changing channels and volume.
Days when number of channels used to be 12 or 16. Someone would proudly say that their tv has 20 channels. But in the end there were only 2 channels to watch.

Sometimes the picture would be disturbed and then someone would go and tweak a small knob at the backside of the tv. Or worst case scenario would be to go to the rooftop and rotate the antenna.

Another thing was related to colour tv's. With most of the tv's being black and white, a colour tv was an object of desire. And i remember one of my uncles putting up a coloured glass on black and white tv to make it a "colour tv"

Along with tv came all those fvourate programs that form an important part of my childhood memories.
But i think i will put up a separate post.