Tid Bit from My Diary

The 2022 FIFA fever is heating up in Qatar. More and more new and shiny cars are hitting the roads each day. I see hundreds of those around me while driving up to work but there are only a few that have more than one passenger inside. The streets are not being able to cope up with the influx. But streets are not the only impacted, so is the housing sector. You find an apartment to rent in the morning, it is almost certain that it will not be available if you comeback for it in the afternoon.   People who lived in Dubai in the first decade of this century may term this as the “Dubai Syndrome”. I take the cornice street to go to work every morning except Saturdays. It’s not because there are less traffic on that street, but because all the intersections along this road are manned by traffic cops. It’s got a very a scenic view too as it has got some of the greatest skyscrapers on one side and Gulf sea with paved cornice on the other busy with morning joggers. The road ...

Being a collector of stamps, calling cards and phone cards et al, I ended up collecting to a lot of plastics over the past years.The ones in the picture above have lived their natural life and are now sitting idle waiting for a new lease of life. But the question is What do I do with all these dead plastics?

Earlier this year I received a letter from my Insurance company wishing me on the birthday. This was a great gesture and there can be no debate about that. They had their reasons to be happy as one more year have passed without them having to part with the money that I rightfully think is mine. After all I am the pessimist here and they the optimists. I opened the envelope and read through the contents inside. The first thought that crossed my mind was it would have been nicer had they have used my name instead of "Customer". However I was pleased that they just did not refer to me by a number .... well the policy number. It was only later that I realized that there was a separate wish for each policy. At that point there was little doubt I was in the good hands of machines. Machines operated by more machines. For my next birthday, I wished there will be a little more Human Touch in this world!

Few of my roller ball head pens ran out of ink last week. As I tossed those into the bin, I paused to reflect on the past years. So much had changed over the past 4 decades that our entire lifestyle went for an overhaul. During our school days nothing was disposable, not even a syringe or the needle. Everything was meant to last a life time. We used to get refills for our ball pens when we got promoted from pencil to pen. As a matter of fact we were advised to use an ink pen rather than a ball point pen as it threatened to spoil our handwriting. Today we neither see a refill nor an inkpot! You either throw away the pen or change a cartridge...... Often we used to visit the stationery shop to buy one pencil while an eraser used to last for years and a pencil sharpener used to be a lifetime’s asset. But today I wonder if anyone sold or more importantly buy a single pencil. People buy erasers in dozens and box full of sharpeners. But those concerns our children and they do...

A routine drive to and from work is rather filled with interesting moments. I discovered it  and decided to  track all that crossed my mind on one particular day. All while I was concentrating on driving with no one else inside the car and keeping hands off the mobile. The first few moments of the journey are quite hectic for the brain. Adjusting to the inertia of motion is one and deciding on the indoor temperature, FM station and moving objects does the rest. The news is usually irrelevant and fails to impact the day to day existence and most of the time makes you sad with news of death and destructions! The music on the other hand has the power to rekindle sweet memories and sometimes not so sweet ones. Drifting in such thoughts I noticed a few sparrows feeding in the grass outside. The temperature in the morning was already above 40 degree Celsius but I guess food comes first. I remembered my early school days when I used to believe that sighting of one...

There are a few unwritten rule based on underlying philosophies that we assume governs the Universe or more aptly our world. In effect majority of we people abide by these including many who does not believe but still practice. As a result we co-exist in this world happily or worriedly. One such governing factor is based on the principle of “Give and Take”. You give something and you take something else in return, a barter arrangement, be it for goodies or for favors. But that probably is only true for person to person dealing. Sooner or later you will realize as I did is that the interpretation of “Give & Take” for a company is you give and the company takes.  I have never met an organization who believes otherwise. Please give me the address and details if you happen to know one! Often one ends up having to do more than one project at a time. While they never forget to bill the clients separately, they never remember to pay you anything extra. So how do you get it b...

One really doesn’t understand the true meaning of the word WE unless he start to work under a boss who happens to be a manager in the true sense. Every time when the boss comes from a high level management meeting, he usually starts sharing the information about an upcoming submission. The statement that comes out expresses the determination to succeed while evoking a considerable amount of team spirit. “We will have to submit it tomorrow… come hell or high waters!” … a dialogue many people are accustomed to! It doesn’t take much longer to discover that this particular “WE” is correctly spelt “Y-O-U”. A decade back the parting speech used to be “don’t forget to place it on my desk before you go home today (read late night)”. Today it has changed to “do remember to email it to me as soon as you are done”. Good thing about all this is that I am learning the trick of the trade and hope one day soon enough I will master the correct spelling of this m...