You are dumb when ... ... someone says on the other line "Hello" as to mean "Hello there" and you ask them - "Can you hear me?" You are in the 21st century when: you work on a project for an associate of your employer the people who your first contacts at the client themselves are employees of a third party on a contract with your client your project associate is currently in transition to another city s/he works with a manager who is based out of a third city your primary liaison a the client is serving his/her notice period however people whom you interact with at the client happen to be from your own country, your own city and speak the same language as you ... .... that's Globalization for you !! :-)

Well ... getting bored of eating the same stuff, I tried out cooking rice kheer the other day. Here are some snaps. I first looked up the recipe here , and then cooked plain rice and set the milk for heating ... The next stage was to mix them up, add sugar and starts stirring ... And here's how the final preparation looks like ... Delicious ....

In 2004, on the same day as today, I made my first post on this blog, and I have loved every bit of it. Blogs are the individual's 'press releases' to the world - they are chronicles of what people do, think and feel about their lives - and by doing all this, blogs epitomize the much elusive state that mankind has been in quest of, since time immemorial - FREEDOM! And when it comes to freedom, lets hear from the perspective of freedom's champion - Mahatma Gandhi. I quote Louis Ficher: Gandhi believed in revealing himself. He regarded secrecy as the enemy of freedom-not only the freedom of India but the freedom of man. He exposed even the innermost personal thoughts which individuals usually regard as private. Guess Gandhi would have loved to have a blog :-) [I have quoted Gandhi on individualism earlier as well]. How correct Gandhi was becomes clear when you read today's authors talking about the importance of individuals in the present society. For example, Thom

Went around the city, its castle and cathedral today - check out the photos ...

Well actually nothing special - but it was the first time I made it all on my own: sandwiches. Got up lazily at 9 - and made tea - while having tea - cut some onion and tomatoes. Had put potatoes in the microwave. Once they were cooked I cut them too. Then, I mixed and mashed the whole thing, added salt and some biryani masala (since I did not have garam masala) and smeared some butter on it. This I microwaved for a minute and then mixed it to get the butter mix up. Reheated it for few more minutes. Toasted a few slices of bread - put the mixture above between them - and done! Anyone having any tips to further spice this up?

Well ... not exactly the Vegas look - but this was a picture I took just next to the New Delhi railway station. .

I am at Norwich now at my Studio apartment - nice cosy place. It has a couch like the one Joey and Chandler have in F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and I am spending most of my time at home watching Friends on TV, eating and surfing the net!! Proper Couch Potato Eh!! Yeah ... So presented below are some photos of my lunch today (Baked Beans with Onion sprinkled on a bread; the bread is smeared with butter) - tastes amazing - believe you me! And the next photo below that is the Sofas on which I spend most of time sitting and surfing! .

You might be surprised to see the title after the post I made last night. But I am really impressed the way Zapak has reacted to my post. Read on to know more ... When I made the post last night, India was still in deep slumber; and when India woke up - I was in deep slumber. But while I was asleep, the Zapak team woke up to my blog post - they thereafter tracked me through various Social networks and by the time I woke up, I had a couple requests from their team to connect to me. [The earliest one was as early as 7.57 AM India time] I was surprised (and impressed) about the speed with which they contacted me - so I sent out my contact details, and Lo! Within less than an hour I had them calling me explaining that the mail I received was because of some kind of spurious network activity and was a "security issue" which they were dealing with. They requested me to remove the image which I had put up on my blog, because it revealed some internal statistics they were tracking. W

Update : If you are reading this - please also read my follow up post Zapak - a dynamic and proactive Web2.0 company? which is an account of the events which happened after I made this post. Someone at Zapak.com (also ZapakMail) seems to have conjured up the "good idea" of sending out Birthday emails to its members. But as they say - the implementation and not the idea is what creates success - apart from the fact that the email looks like a 1990 word document [and that too hardly like a greeting or newsletter of 1990 but rather looking like some office document] - the email commits the one of the worst faux passes of the internet world. [The Image has been removed] The email [below the part shown above] contains a list of all email ID's who have registered their birthdates for the day! Not only is everyone's email ID being revealed to everyone else, their birthdates are also revealed. For so many people who keep variations of their birthdates as their passwords -

I am at one of my 'old' offices today - as I went to the cafeteria to collect my lunch, I was pleasantly surprised to see the addition of a new counter to the lunch area - Tiffin Bites: Indian curry food. The counter was serving Chhole, some paneer curry and roti & rice along with Indian pickles. Since I am on a brief trip, I decided to rather enjoy the typical British food items which I don't get back home in India - jacket potato & beans, croissants, Delis, Salads (with lots of Mayonnaise on it). But after a moment I realized that not just me, no Indian face (you can find quite a few in London at any place) was found at the Tiffin bites food counter. All of its customers were non-Indian. I'm sure, if it continues like this for another 5 years, the British will find Indian foods in their regular lunch and dinner, ahead of their own traditionals. (It would actually be a bad news for someone like me who would rather enjoy British food in Britain). I have also ob