Acting on an Impulse

A passing glance at an ordinary advert within a London Underground tube station, and for reasons unknown, a decision was taken instantaneously "I want to run". So, I am running for the Royal Parks Half Marathon on Oct 12th at 10AM. I have been training for this event for the last 2 weeks or so and have managed to cover 5 miles twice in the last 7 days.
54 days to go, 8 more miles to train for, should be lot of fun.

The true Twenty20

In the movie Dumb & Dumber, Jim Carrey asks the character Mary "What are the chances that a beautiful girl like you would go out with a guy like me?" to which Mary replies slowly and uncertainly "1 in a million?". Jim is ecstatic to hear that its a non-zer0 chance and says "Yesss! So, you are saying there is a chance!!". Now, thats called hope.
At a time when Twenty20 is the in-thing and Indian test cricket team badly needs a cataract operation, nothing could have been more contrasting to the Colombo Test than the gold medal won by Abhinav Bindra in the Beijing Olympics. If Jim Carrey was ecstatic, Bindra must have been ecstatic times 1000. He is truly 1 in a billion. The nature of the sport he won his medal means that he has perfect vision. Isin't he the true 20/20 champion? Congrats, Bindra - India is proud of you.

Thanks, Norton

Silka restaurant in London was in our short-list of restaurants to dine last week because they supposedly server low-fat India food. So, the usual procedure of the google search, and then the website to get location details happened when Norton Internet Security captured and deleted a Downloaded Virus and from our short-list too. A virus in their website, wonder what would be in their food? Now, that would be useful information to collect anonymously and publish

Another Barack in the Wall

An extract from Obama's speech at Berlin - a metaphor taken too far

Speaking less than a mile from where President John F Kennedy enraptured Berliners in 1963, he warned of the danger of allowing "new walls to divide us from one another".

"The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand," he said, emphasising his lines with clipped, precise movements of his hands as his words echoed through the huge crowds.

"The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand," he continued, as applause began to ripple amongst his listeners.

"The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand," he said.

"These now are the walls we must tear down," he concluded to screams of approval.

Silly question: Was the Berlin wall Made in China?

The Gates Bill

We were on one of the London's infamous bendy buses this weekend. The windows in these buses are almost big as the doors. Anyways, one of the doors wouldnt operate in the middle of the journey. The driver stepped out of the bus, tried a few things and then came back completely turned off the engine and started again - and guess what it started working! So, I have decided to amend The Gates Bill which states that "stuck Windows can be fixed by a restart" to now include doors.
The Gates Bill is more universal than what you think

Inspired by Inspiron

A few months back, Bundar's inlaws and outlaws visited them for a few weeks. His Dell laptop was running literally 24x7 to watch Sun TV, cricket, etc online. A few days after both parents left, the heavy weight use took its toll & his laptop conked. Dell diagnosed it to be motherboard problem. I told Bundar "You had no choice, Bundar. Otherwise, your mothers would have been bored"

Courtneys

I recently called up Courtneys to enquire about gym membership rates. The guy on the other end of the phone asked me in return "How much are you looking to spend?". I was really annoyed to hear that question - no average Joe I know of is looking to spend his money. Average Joe also would rather play online bingo than play the can-you-guess-Courtneys-gym-membership-rates-over-the-phone game. Its not like I called up with a budget of £1 per month (or £1000 for that matter) in mind to haggle nor did I call up a real estate agent not did I call up my bank for investment advice. I wanted to say "Great question, wrong place" but being the nice guy I am and modesty being my middle name, I went with a simple "Why do you ask?" but I had to endure a few more rounds of stupidity & temporarily change my middle name to rude to finally get a quote over the phone.

In the end, it was really a flat rate for all practical purposes and there was really no tact whatsoever to his line of questioning. I hope its just the guy being stupid, not Courtneys in general.

p.s: 100th blog :)