Is it going to be Zip/Zap??

Eating spicy food is customary for Asians. Brought up in South India we are exposed to meals that have spicy masalas, pickles, chillies in almost every day-to-day life. Since living in the United States for the past few years, exposure and the penchant to eat spicy food has dramatically declined for me. Even though I am very hesitant to acknowledge the fact that I cannot handle spice, my friends tend to disagree. It is their assessment that they are able to handle more spice than me. It has been a bit shocking to concur with this fact and hence i have to test myself in the next few weeks or so to unearth whether i dont like or cannot handle spicy food(that is too much spice). Wish me good luck!!!

Against all odds

This is my fortune today in orkut..
"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do"
Usually i get some crappy fortunes which may not have any meaning or related to me in any ways..Even though this is a generalized fortune, its amazingly true. The excitement is definitely unmatched and unparalleled if you go and achieve something against all odds. Everyday we hear stories around us like "ohh..he/she created history" . I always wonder how these people get inspired to perform or achieve something that they really are not suppose to achieve. How do they get that fire in them?? Is it because of people who support them or that extra sense/fire in them??? I have faced several situations like this before..But all of them are minuscule compared to what some great people have achieved over the years.
A typcial example was when i was stuying 6th grade in Sivakasi(place in southern part of India), in a school where Hindi(our national language) was a regular subject. Hailing from TamilNadu usually in schools Tamil would be the main language.But this school was an exception which meant that i had to clear the exam to goto 7th grade.I had no clue about Hindi and didnt know the 'abcd' of it.I failed miserably in all the exams until the finals(Annual Exam). I was against all odds, but bent my back,went for tuition..etc and got somewhere like 78/100 in the finals. Before the finals my highest was only 34. Even though my score in other subjects was 90+, it was 78 that i enjoyed the most..:)

Internet Age

How important is the internet?? I am writing this blog only because of an internet outage througout K-State. I didnt know earlier that cox is the one who provides the Internet2 connectivity. I was thinking that K-State has its own network. As a web programmer, without internet i am almost doomed and I literally cannot do anything other than maybe go through some tutorials/pdf's i have downloaded in the past. We cant check our emails, read the latest news nor refer to online help.
However its also a good opportunity to interact with other colleagues in my team freely and for once talk about stuff thats not related to work. We rely too much online these days that we are addicted to it. I dont think we can change that and i seriously hope that we are connected at the earliest. Otherwise i am in for a long long day.
Well i just got the connection back..so..time for some work..

Apprentice and Mr Trump

Apprentice is a reality TV show where some of the top successful people of various fields compete with each other and vie for a spot to work with one of my most admired businessman Mr Donald Trump. It is one of my favorite shows on television.
Lots of people I know are not fond of him because of his debonair,extravagant and cocky attitude. But i like him for his aggressive style, arrogant comments and some weird but clever business decision making skills. He pulled one of the most remarkable turnarounds in history from almost bankruptcy to a billionaire.I would term him as one of those rash, arrogant genius and lives a priveleged life that we can only dream of.
The competitors in the program are really rich and talented and hence,their personalities clash and intervenes with the task that they are suppose to accomplish. Some of the arguments they have would be so kiddish, that you would wonder how these people became so successful. Well thats just human nature..:)
The most intriguing part of the show for me is the final 15-20 mins which is known as "Boardroom" where one member of the losing team get evicted.In the boardroom they are face to face with Mr Trump and must prove their mettle in that iota of time.Some of the conversation they have are scintillating,tense,nervewracking or whatever you may call accusing each other and defending themselves.It does get ugly sometimes as not often people can keep their cool.Eventually the person who is unable to defend well loses and hears the catch phrase "You are Fired" from Trump.
I just love this show for the people involved, their vocular fluency under pressure and ofcourse the boardroom.

Soccer

On July 9th,2006 almost all of the entire world came to a utter standstill for a couple of hours watching the FIFA World Cup Final. It has been estimated that over a billion people watched the world cup final between the two powerhouses Italy and France. The reason is pretty simple i.e the no of countries who play or involved in soccer is more than the number of countries who are member of the UN. That shows the power of this sport and the reason why its a big hit among the masses. Me, being an Indian was dissappointed that we did not qualify for this big stage. India, tipped to be the most populous country in the world by the year 2015, could not muster up a team that could qualify for this big cup.
I caught most of important matches in ESPN and was waiting eagerly like everybody else for the final. Most of our friends assembled at a friends place(who had a big screen flat TV) to watch the World Cup. A few of them supported France while the rest supported Italy. The game was pretty good until the final 10 minutes when Zidane's header on a Italian player sent him packing and the press buzzing. That was the talk of the final more than Italians stealing the win away from France on the penalty shootout.Zinadine Zidane, however great player he may be, let the world know how human emotions play an important role in all phases of life. He lost his control and correctly was ejected out of the game for his kiddish act.
The soccer mania didnt end just there for people like me. I joined a bunch of arab guys at our recreational service center and started playing with them. They were obviously more talented than me. Even though i am not that good in this sport, i joined them for two reasons. One to improve my stamina which isnt that great and second to learn this game. It was fun playing with them until i injured my right hand while blocking a powerful strike from an opponent. My hand got twisted badly and luckily no bones were broken. I initially thought it was a severe injury and was even thinking how it could affect my participation in the upcoming badminton tournament scheduled to start by july 21st..but thankfully its only been 4 days since that happend and i have recovered almost 95%. The irony is i still continue to play soccer with those guys and am enjoying every moment of it and i just hope i dont get further injuries.

Lateral Thinking Puzzles

For the past few weeks or so i am fascinated by a type of puzzle called lateral puzzles. In my years, i have solved logical puzzles, mathematical puzzles,riddles etc. but have never come across lateral puzzles.
So what are these lateral puzzles??Lateral puzzles are mostly called situation or scenario puzzles that needs some kind of elucidation why a particular set or series of events have occurred. The question to the puzzle itself is sort of incomplete to solve the problem at first sight and hence the puzzle solver should ask several types of yes/no questions about the situation in the puzzle to approach the problem. The best lateral thinking puzzles are intriguing and illogical, but have proper answer to satisfy you. It all started when we were driving to Kansas City with some friends. While driving we got bored and we started playing some sort of games..Then I put in a puzzle(which i didnt know was a lateral puzzle) so that we can spend some time. I could see that it generated an immense interest among my friends and within no time ideas were pouring in and all our minds were occupied with several lines of thoughts. Its really interesting to see how different people think in a different way, given the same problem. No wonder they say two heads are better than one. We almost cracked one of the biggest lateral thinking puzzle and were all satisfied at the end of the day that we atleast have some set of skill level to approach these kinds of problems. Remember that these puzzles expand your mind and at the same time helps you learn some of the interesting facts of life.
I will leave this blog with one of the most common lateral thinking puzzle.

A man comes up to the waiter and asks for a glass of water. The waiter pulled out his gun and pointed it at the man. The man said "Thank You" and walked away. Why is that?

Its been a while since i had written a blog..so i thought i should update it a bit...its very difficult to write the events about what happend for the past month or so in one blog..however i will be as short as possible...we spent the most of the weekends of june playing cricket...i was involved in two tournaments one 6 overs a side and the other is a regular 15 overs a side..we played really well during the 6 overs a side and was undefeated till the finals..we choked in the finals and lost badly even though it was against a better team(who infact we beat them convincingly in the earlier round)...it gave me a valuable lesson to prepare well before any game..I had lots of friends cheering for us in the game and it was absolutely disappointing that we were outclassed that day...later in the second tournament our team wasnt that strong and we lost both the games we played...we had our chances to win, but we couldnt finish it off and we didnt have a playmaker in our team...even though my performance was decent in both the tournaments, it wasnt good enough for a title...this being the last season in manhattan, i would have been happy if i had won any..but it wasnt the case...we played under lights and it was a very good experience..we had total fun..