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My selfie moment
My favorite selfie.
This was taken by me 2 years back when we were in Mangalore on a family trip.
I am not a very water loving person and when my husband with his cousins were enjoying the water rides I was busy sitting on the shore with my son playing in the mud. I was clicking pictures of the calm sea and its surrounding when I just realized my son (who was on my lap) was looking at me with so much love and affection. I quickly changed to selfie mode and took a selfie.This was my best “Selfie experience” and frankly speaking one of the first time my “Selfie camera” was used. This is when I experienced what our elders always tell -” we are so busy capturing beauty far/elsewhere that we fail to realize that beauty is within us and with us.”
I really wish I had Mobiistar phone’s front, dual “Selfie camera” that captures a 120° wide-angle shot. One has to buy this for the best “Selfie Experience” . I checked the details here Mobiistar . Very soon this will be available on Mobiistar on Flipkart
Savior to a hungry tummy on a rainy day!!!!
I always had the mindset that good restaurants serve fresh and clean food. I never liked eating from the street side eateries… My brother, husband tried convincing me many times but I never gave in to their persuasion.
Until one day when me along with my sister in law and husband were out at around 10PM. We had gone out for a long drive and we were on our way back home when we all thought of eating something outside. I am sure you all know how the urge is to eat some thing nice, hot on a rainy day.
We were in JP Nagar, Bangalore and we started looking for a restaurant. Almost all were on the verge of closing or the ones that were open were full of people. We were thinking of going back home when we saw a small cart which had a nice shade made and there were a few people eating dosas and noodles. My husband looked at me and I just said OK with a heavy heart.
My Sister in Law ordered Egg dosa and my Husband ordered for plate of Gobi Manchurian. I told them that I needed little time to decide.A young boy came and served us what we had ordered. I was shocked. What I saw was 2 clean plates on which there was a clean plastic cover on which they had served the food. I was really shocked and also delighted at what I saw. I was happy that I was proved wrong and all my misconceptions were now cleared.
Post that we ordered another dosa , Egg noodles, vada and all this cost us only 250/- I would recommend this eatery to anyone who is in Bangalore and nearby JP nagar. There is a playground right in front of Innisfree school/ RV dental college. This eatery is in the corner outside the playground Another landmark is Rangashankara -JP Nagar. This is open post 7PM and is open until 11.00 PM. I can truly say that this was a Savior to my hungry tummy that day. 🙂
ASUS ZenFone 2
I belong to the generation who got their cell phones only post finishing college and getting a degree. Back then cell phones were considered an item of luxury and as every other parent of then , even my parents thought that it was a distraction.
However post completing my graduation I got my first cellphone, A basic model and I was on cloud9. Slowly the models changed and then came the era or smart phones. Thanks to the smart phones we can access internet whenever we want and wherever we are. No need to carry laptops or cameras during vacations as a small smart phone does the job. So all in all life became much simpler , all thanks to the smart phone,
Problems started a little later when sow;y people began to realize that smart phones do have their own defects. For instance battery dying out is one such common problem. I can browse internet and use my cell phone provided I keep charging the cell phone every hour.I can click impeccable pictures provided I have a steady hand and I do not shake my cell phone. I can keep clicking pictures and saving them provided I have enough memory in my cell phone, if not then I would surely need a Data Card.
For a person like me all this means a lot of work. as if taking care of a small kid and a family is not enough I need to put lot of effort in taking care of my smart phone. This is when I read about the ASUS ZenFone 2. A smart phone especially made for people like me who do not have much time due to the daily chores.
A phone with a 4gb Ram. Wowwww no need to think about space and no need of deleting items or apps to create space, Isn’t it a wonderful feeling. A technology where the battery can be charged really fast. Isn’t that awesome. So after a tiring day if i go to bed without charging my cell phone I still do not need to worry too much about it as a little time in the day is enough to charge my phone’s battery. With the phone’s Pixel master camera I do not have to be a professional photographer as I an capture high resolution pictures at day and most importantly I can click the same quality pictures at night (dark) too. I love clicking pictures of my little baby, but all thanks to my cell phone’s flash my baby is always startled. Now I can good pictures of my bundle of joy without startling him i.e. without the flash. These are just a few features that I came across. But from what I have heard this cell phone has host of many such features.
Thanks to http://www.asus.com/Phones/ZenFone_2_ZE551ML/. for such an awesome invention 🙂
Digital India and E Governance
After this topic was announced the first thing that came to my mind was : what is e governance?
I am sure many others would have actually tried to know what exactly this means post reading the topic. As per my understanding and in common man terms is making all the government services available to the people in a country using information or communications technology/electronic media. This immediately brings a very colorful picture where we are not going through lot of paperwork or not standing in long queues on a hot sunny day.
However as the topic rightly mentions for all the public services to be delivered effectively, country needs to be digitally sound as I feel implementation of e-governance is not a simple task. It is a highly complex process and considering the population of India if the services need to be available to all we need a lot of competent IT infrastructure i.e. Networking, hardware, software etc . A lot of research and development must have gone into this as the capacity needs to be planned also we need a proper support team in place to ensure that there are no technical hitches.
In short there is a need for the best IT infrastructure for the E governance plan to be successful and if Intel is committed towards digital India then we can surely be in peace as we are in safe hands. We are depending on a company which is one of the ‘ World’s most valuable brands’ according to Forbes and is one of the ‘100 best companies to work for’ according to fortune list.
I am not a very tech savvy person. I use laptops, high end phone but I am not a person who will try to check how best my phone’s camera works or what GB memory card is required or what processor is the laptop using etc. But when this topic came up I did my own research on these simple thing and noticed that most of the laptops have the Intel core processors. I sat with tech savvy husband and he made me go through the array of products that Intel has and I was stunned at the magnificence.
We are talking about an e governance plan in India where the population is in crores. That itself shows how huge the project is going to be and how much the government would need to invest in the IT components. So we need a company whom we can trust in terms of quality and load and what else we ask for other than Intel.
The company has the best processors:
Server products:
Networking products :
(http://www.intel.in/content/www/in/en/homepage.html.) Photo Source
But there is surely one thing that we all need to think about. When we speak about providing services using electronic media , are all the citizens of India in a position to use this efficiently. when we speak about the rural people or the underprivileged , can they use technology comfortably? when I tried to find answer to this , the faith that I had in Intel was reinstated as they are undertaking numerous programs to increase the digital literacy in people
So I would conclude that if Intel , http://www.intel.in/ is committed towards our government’s vision of a #DigitalIndia then the day is not far when we will at the comfort of our homes get to enjoy the government services at the click of a button without the hassles of paperwork or long queues 🙂
Happiness
I truly believe that happiness is any thing that can bring a smile on your face .
My mom making breakfast or any food item that I love, my little baby smiling at me when I play with him, cuddling with my lovely husband on a lazy Sunday afternoon , Small fights with brother and acting as if nothing has happened when parents intervene, taking my parents out for dinner after getting my first salary, getting a compliment for doing some good work, appreciation from managers in office, a bottle of coke on a hot day, spending time with family and close friends, a beautiful flower in a garden,a random smile in a crowded bus from a small kid after a tiring day at work, seeing youngsters helping elderly citizens cross roads or doing one such deed yourself, a yummy chocolate when u are too lazy to cook something,on a crowded road vehicles making way to ambulance irrespective of their commitments surely makes me smile and gives me tremendous happiness.
It is practically really difficult to list out all the things that spreads happiness as the list is really long, on the contrary it is endless. I can just go on and on.
But one particular moment I remember particularly is Just spending time with college friends in canteen and sharing a bottle of coke. The atmosphere was that of continuous chatter and the time used to fly like anything. This is the very reason why a bottle of coke still makes me smile as it makes me nostalgic. It makes me remember the good old days.
We decided to have a reunion last year and me, along with a few friends got in touch with my other friends and decided a neutral venue for the meet. It was so exciting to meet them after years. Most of us were married with kids and we were sure there would be lot of changes. Thanks to Facebook we were kind of used to seeing the pictures of each other. The day we met it was amazing and as I rightly mentioned we had all changed. A few had put on weight , a few had lost weight, a few who looked like nerds looked really smart. But one thing had not changed and that is COKE. That broke all the differences and initial awkwardness. Love coke forever.
As a simple human being I feel happiness is all around us. One can feel it and can spread it too. It just depends on how we perceive it. My family, My friends, My hobbies, My passion, My dreams sums up happiness.
Thanks to http://CokeURL.com/96jnc. for giving me a chance to share my route to happiness 🙂
My Baby
Just when I was beginning to feel that I had a perfect life with a Lovely family, Loving husband, Well paid job , I discovered that i was going to be a mother. Environment around me was ecstatic. My parents, My in laws, My husband and all the relatives were all excited and so was I.
Months passed as I was getting pampered from all sides. I was enjoying the phase where I was getting all the love and attention. Things were all nice as they show in typical Bollywood movies.Finally the day came when I delivered and there I was, a mother of a baby boy. It was all awesome.
The reality started sinking in slowly. After the painful normal delivery that I had, all I wanted to do was rest/Sleep but my baby wouldn’t allow me to do so.As I belong to a typical Indian family I had to adhere to certain rules post my delivery. I was so used to going out every weekends and spending time with friends or family, Here I was home bound. Me, a major foodie was only given a few selective food items to eat. I was on a maternity leave , hence no office for 6 months. I was not allowed to eat what i wanted or felt like . I couldn’t walk barefoot. i was told not to get any beauty treatments done as it might affect the health of the baby.
I had piled on loads of weight, I was tired, I was bored. I wanted to run away. Away from everyone and have some quality time with self. I wanted to shout and tell everyone that I wanted to do things that I wanted to. Though my doctor asked me to be normal, my parents and in laws said I need to follow a few things to make sure my baby was healthy.
I used to cry alone and used to silently curse myself for getting in to all this. I suddenly started feeling it was good to be alone. Marriage, kids and family was a big responsibility which all of a sudden looked too much for me to handle. I spoke to my doctor and I was told that I may be suffering from depression and I was told to do yoga , listen to music and divert my mind. Nothing seemed to work.
Months passed and each day seemed like a drag. That is when a miracle happened. My baby looked at me and gave me the warmest smile. It was the most innocent and the most gentlest smile on earth. It was as if my baby was telling ” mummy I understand what you are going through and don’t worry it will all be OK, I am with you”. I was in tears. I hugged my baby tight and he giggled. That was it. I realized how much all that I had gone through was worth it. I realized that being a mother was magical. There was a sudden rush of emotions and I was just looking into my baby’s eyes. He was continuously smiling. That day changed my mind. I was a different person from the next day.
Now after a year of being a mother , that day still brings tears to my eyes. It was pure magic. I simply love my son and I am proud to be a mother. Thanks https://housing.com/lookup. for the opportunity to let me share my feelings.
A New Beginning
Isn’t it an amazing feeling when you have a family that understands you and has complete faith in you?
I Stay in Bangalore and I am blessed with such parents who have always believed in me and have given me the required freedom. I grew up in an environment which was free of restrictions. The rules were same for me an my brother. Nothing special just because he was a boy.
I finished my schooling. Enjoyed my college life and finished my graduation. I decided to do post graduation which my parents were expecting as I come from a family of highly educated people. I even got a well paid job as soon as I finished my post Graduation. Things were all perfect when my parents started discussing about my marriage plans. That is when I felt my life was going to change.
I was not ready to give up on my life , start afresh with a new family, change my habits and give up on any of my dreams. I was scared that my life was going to take a 360 degrees turn.I decided to stay unmarried. That is when I realized that my parents who had always been so supportive suddenly started brain washing me and forcing me into getting married.
I decided that moving out of home would be the best choice given the situation. I got another job which was in another city , however I heard a ‘NO’ from my parents again as they said its not the right thing to do as that point of time as they wanted me to get married and settle down and not venture out on my own in a new place.I convinced my parents that this was important for my career.
I moved to a new city, new home, new people. I set up things from the scratch. the new employer gave me a guest house till I could find a house for myself. I used to complete my work as soon as possible so that I could do some House hunting in the evening.There were days when I was so tired that i did not have the mood to cook and survived on Maggi. At one point I thought of going back. But then it was a test of my strength and I had to come out as a winner.
I went to the office one day and was tired after a day’s work when I noticed a familiar face in the office. It was my school mate. I was so happy to find someone familiar and ran to him. I tapped on his back and when he turned I asked “is that you Vikas?” . He recognized me and told me that he had also shifted recently along with his parents to the city. He took me home where his parents welcomed me with a warm smile and I also had dinner there. Home cooked food felt like heaven.
Days passed and he helped me find a new home and helped me in finding stuff at reasonable price for my new house. we used to discuss what we wanted to do in life and he was always supportive of the same. He used to take me home many times and spending time with his family made me feel good.
it was more than a year and my parents grew worried about me and decided to come and meet as it was a long time and they wanted to know if I was doing good. When they reached I had a meeting so Vikas picked them and dropped them at my place. He spent some time with them, made them comfortable and then left the place. When I reached my home in the evening my mom with a big smile told me “I think we have found our son in law”. They meant Vikas. I was taken aback but when I gave it a thought It made sense. I was comfortable with his family and he was a great human being who knew what I wanted to do.
After 2 successful years of marriage with Vikas, i can proudly say that One just needs to believe in their instincts. Trust your dreams and you shall always attain it .
Thanks https://housing.com/. for giving me a space to share this.
Together Time with Family
I was born in the 80’s and as a kid i got to spend plenty of time with my family. That was a time when jobs were 9Am to 5Pm ones and i used to wait for the clock to show 6Pm so that I could share all my day’s happenings with my Dad. My mother was a home maker and let me specify, she chose to be a home maker irrespective of being highly educated be there for me and my brother when ever we needed her.All thanks to my family that I grew up to be a very independent at the same time a very empathetic person.
I have always been a good student but due to certain things I did not score well in my Graduation days. Few of my friends whom I thought were my friends for life also distanced themselves from me. I had become very depressed and negative in life. That day my mom and dad sat me in the evening and had a heart to heart talk with me. What made me really happy was my 2 year old nephew who came running to me and hugged me. That one evening changed my entire life.My mother said “no matter what you will always be special to us and your life is precious to us”. That talk changed my perspective and has made me what I am today.
It might sound like a simple evening for people but that evening changed the way I saw myself and my life. I realized that many people come and go in life however it is during the testing times that we realize who are truly there for us. I was pretty serious that day as there were too many things running in my mind.
My dad took me out for an ice cream in the night and we sat at the ice cream corner and spoke for a while. He asked me what I wanted to do and what my plans were so that he could help me sort out the plans that seemed clattered at the moment. Things started making more sense and more meaningful.I decided to study further. I became a double graduate. The friends who had distanced themselves started looking upto me. There was no stopping from there.
All thanks to one evening when my parents just gave me some quality time so that i could find myself again.Now I am a mother myself and I want to make sure that i spend quality time with my son to so that he also becomes a very confident and an independent human beings who can take on the . I would thank https://housing.com/ for giving me an opportunity where I could share this evening of my life.
Communication Mistake
Communication Mistake #1: A Company Wide Communication Mistake
On the day that I started a new job (this was when email was just beginning to become popular–and yes, I am THAT old), I confidently walked in, sat down, and read the first email in my inbox, which had been sent to the entire company. Then, in one awful moment, I accidentally hit “reply all” instead of “reply.’” Instantly the whole office, my new workplace, was asking “Who is this Lisa Marshall person? Doesn’t this idiot know how to use email?” Needless to say, that was not my best first impression as the new program manager of technology! I simply shrugged, said, oops, and moved on. I couldn’t undo it and apologizing to the entire company would have made it worse.
Communication Mistake #2: “Crap, I Forgot the Attachment” Error
When I shared this story with one of our new interns, she told me that she used to have a bad habit of sending emails too quickly and often forgetting details such as attachments. Usually she would remember and quickly send another email with the subject line “Oops, here is the attachment.”
She didn’t think anything about it, until one day, she did it once again to her boss. He was furious with her. He sent her back an email written all in capital letters telling her to include all attachments with the relevant email and to stop crowding his inbox.
To me this was a perfect example how little unspoken communication mistakes add-up to a bigger problem. She told me that she not only apologized, but also came up with a strategy to prevent the problem from happening again.
Communication Mistake #3: A Math Mistake That Caused Me Embarrassment
On another occasion I was delivering a status presentation to the CEO of the company where I was working. The second slide contained a simple arithmetic mistake. The CEO loudly pointed that out and then berated me. He told me to sit down. He wouldn’t let me finish the presentation. I was SO embarrassed.
Communication mistakes like these teach us that different people have differing levels of tolerance for mistakes. Some people may overlook (or may not even notice) seemingly minor errors whereas others may form a significantly negative impression of overall competence (of the person and the organizations which they might be associated with) based on sloppy communication errors. (In fact, one study looked at the effects of spelling errors on the perception of the writer. The results suggested that spelling errors can affect how people perceive writers, especially when there are many spelling errors.
Stranger Danger
It was just another day at school for our five friends. As soon as the class was done, just like all other kids, Janet, Alicia, Sam, Nick and Ben also run out of their class. As they all pass through the same route to reach their houses, they start walking together.
They laugh, they tease and they even sing and dance as they walk through the road. Soon, one by one started reaching their houses, until the last one left was Ben. He walks alone to reach his house, which was the farthest when compared to the rest.
He is tired before he even gets to reach his home, because of the scorching heat of the sun bearing down on him. He sits down on the pavement for a couple of minutes in order to regain his breath. At that time, a kind man with a simple face walks towards him and hands him a packet of biscuits.
“Have them kid. You need them more than I do.” He pats Ben’s head and stands against a tree.
Ben, who was extremely hungry, tears open the packet and starts eating the biscuit, without even thinking about it. He finishes the packet in no time, and turns towards the nice stranger in order to thank him. That’s when he finds himself losing focus. He was going to faint, and he did.
When he woke up he wasn’t on the pavement anymore, neither was he in his home. He gets scared and jumps out of his bed to find that he was in some kind of a room. He starts shouting for someone to hear him, but no one comes to his rescue. That’s when he realizes that he had been kidnapped. The person who pretended to be so good and offered him biscuits was nothing more than a crook.
Ben now started worrying as to what he would do, because his parents had warned him not to take anything from strangers, and yet he had done it. Now, without the help of his parents there is no way he cannot get out, but they will also scold him badly when they find him.
With the thoughts of his parents scolding him, he fell asleep, the effects of the biscuits still strong on him.
By this time, it had turned very dark out there. And Ben’s parents had started to worry. They search for him everywhere. They go to the school. They go to Janet’s, Sam’s, Nick’s and Alicia’s places, but find him nowhere. They search for him everywhere possible but never find him.
With worry filling them, they run to a nearby police station and file a missing-person’s complaint. That whole night, they cannot sleep because their little son is missing.
Neither can his four friends get any sleep. That’s when Sam calls up the other three, and asks them to come over to his place at once. Nick, Alicia and Janet sneak out of their houses quietly and run over to Sam’s place.
They all meet in the garden, behind the bushes. They sit there for a long time, discussing what might have happened to their friend, and how to save him. They talk and talk, but find no answer. So they head back to their house, so that they can get some sleep before the morning comes.
When the morning comes, so does a call from the kidnappers to Ben’s parents. They ask them for some money, and give them a specified time and place, where they should give the money. They inform the parents that Ben would only be returned to them, if the money is given to the kidnappers.
So, Ben’s parents rush from one place to another in order to arrange for the money. By this time, Ben’s friends are finally up, and they got to know about all this. Sam calls up for a meeting once again.
This time, Nick has something interesting to say.
“Last week, when I was walking back home with my parents, we saw this guy take a kid to this broken down building on the outskirts of the town. I thought the kid was the guy’s son, but now that I think of it, I think it might have been another kidnapped kid. We must go to this building and check it out, if Ben is there.”
The others all agree to this, and at once they get ready to leave. They walk all the way till Ben’s house, and after that, Nick tries to remember the route to the building. Twice, they get lost in search of it, but somehow they always found the way back. Finally, they found the right path, and there it was the building that Nick had seen the other day.
They all slowly move towards the building, and crawl in through the little hole in the wall which was next to the gate. They see someone coming out and hide themselves in the bushes.
That’s when they hear a loud shrill voice. He says something about ransom and some random words which the kids do not understand. But it doesn’t matter to them. They all had a feeling that Ben could be found here in this building.
So, as soon the man moves out, they all run towards the building and slowly move in. There are no people anywhere. So they walk through the house checking every door to see if Ben is in the room. But they find him nowhere.
Just when they were about to give up and go back, they hear voices coming from below the ground. It is a shout, a scream, someone asking for help. They recognize the voice as their friend’s.
Alicia being the quick one with an eye for things finds the latch of the door on the floor. She tries to pull it up, but it is too heavy for her. Even all the four together couldn’t do much to the door.
So, they decide that Alicia and Sam would stay back and hide somewhere in the house to make sure Ben isn’t taken away, while Janet and Nick run back to the town and find someone to help them out.
Janet and Nick run as fast as they can, and before they even reach the end of the road, they find Ben’s parents rushing outside of the town with money. They stop them at once and tell them about the building and about Ben being there.
At once, Ben’s parents follow Janet and Nick to the building. His dad pulled open the door at once. Then they all went down to see that little Ben was in fact there. But he was asleep, again.
Ben’s dad pick him up and moves out along with all the other kids, as his mother calls up the police and inform them with everything.
By the next morning, Ben is feeling alright, and the kidnappers have been caught and have been locked up behind the bars. And to make things even better, Ben’s friends are all rewarded with chocolates and a day off from school for their achievement.
Moral:- Never take anything given by a person whom you don’t know. Even if the person is good, it is better not to take anything as you never know what they might do to you.
Even if you are tired or not feeling well, go to your friend’s place or be with someone you know, but not with a stranger. Unless your parents guarantee it that it is safe to be with someone, it is better not to trust them.
Strangers are a danger. It is better to stay away from them than suffer later.
My Personal Diary!! 