Not that diary

Or to be precise, lets talk about the weather in Great Britain. A lot has been said about it for centuries but its not enough for me. I too would like to add my little voice to the fickle, transient nature of the British weather. It is surely a joke from the creator of earth, when even the slightest glimmer of sunshine or a 3'C rise over average temperature makes you want to weep with joy. Or if you are an agnostic or an atheist, the weather is a mocking comedy enacted by the atoms and molecules that make the wind systems play a daily and sometimes hourly lottery on this little island east of the Atlantic. Aah, I feel much better now having, in the style of my English-born friends, moaned about the weather yet again within a span of 48 hours. And this time I even put it in words which gives me a deep sense of satisfaction that my moan too has been recorded in blogosphere for eternity. Just in case an alien race lands on earth many centuries hence and wants to know if ...

I sense a sparkle in the eyes of those of you who are below the 1.8 metre mark. That's 6 feet for those of you who, like me, struggle to comprehend height in metres. I exaggerate perhaps, but really most North European men appear to be more than a head higher to someone barely a few inches above the 5 feet mark. The North European women, although shorter than men, have an excellent relationship with their heeled shoes. This special relationship is usually developed, as I have been reliably informed, in their teenage years. Alas, this post is not about a super-soup that will help us pygmies gain height but rather about the woes of one who lost her 'reach'. The incident occurred some time ago on a Saturday evening. I was returning home from a social event and decided I was a little hungry. Being on an eat-healthy drive I headed to the M and S at Waterloo in search of  a light bite. I immediately made a beeline for the tinned soup section and scanned the shelves for the v...

Mmmmm.....took yet another friend visiting London to The Kensington Creperie this evening. After the usual Galettes (ratatouille and cheese being my favorite), it was time to share one of the sweet ones. For the third time in a row I went for banana and dark chocolate. Yummmmm again. But I must rate the Banana-Rum-Chocolate as the highest. Not too far behind is the Hazelnut-Maple Syrup or perhaps Strawberry and whipped cream. I'm not quite sure what they put in their crepes but its the only place where I eat one (or more), feel completely full, come home, and still find myself thinking about them!! Viva La Crepe   = D

In most mainstream Bollywood movies, actors can stand up in the middle of a happy scene, a sad scene, an angry scene, a 'flashback' scene,  a 'dream sequence' and in fact any scene to break out into a song and dance. I see some of you smirking. Well- Boo to you!  Because it is clear that humans do want to dance, and often for no rhyme or reason. What, you don't believe me ?  Then what are these people doing in Liverpool Street, London in the video below. Well that was the T-mobile advert but here's what some youngsters in South Korea were up to a few years ago. Some people have called it one of the ...... yawn...... less interesting flash mobs ever. Still, I think the umbrellas were kind of cute ;-) Its worth mentioning (if you believe Wiki) that flash mobs were used as a social experiment in 2003 where 130 people flooded Macy's  and gathered around a ... rug (!) In 2006 London had its first silent disco at Victoria tube station. And we've...

After a long hiatus, I decided to catch up with some cultural and social events in London. It was not my explicit intention to mix the bizarre and the bohemian, but that's the only way to describe how my week turned out. I started out on a Sunday of jazz music joining a group of serious jazz enthusiasts. To me jazz has mostly been something that plays in the background, or perhaps adds character to a lazy afternoon spent reading a book. So it was fortunate that the event was in fact 'The history of jazz music' and I got up to speed with the names of popular artists and change in style from 1930s, 40s, 50s.... right up to 2010. And I discovered that I was happy to be stuck in the 1930s where it seemed a lot more fun and played to the foxtrot and other interesting dance styles. Invigorated by this finding, I decided to attend a proper concert mid-week where a prominent jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp was joined by the rather-talented jazz-pianist Joachim Kühn . It was ...

Recently I read an article that said: More than half of the college students surveyed indicated that if an employer banned access to networks like Facebook at work, "they would either not accept a job offer from them or would join and find a way to circumvent." ... One in four college students, according to the report, said issues like these--while likely baffling to older generations--would represent key factors in their decision to accept a job offer. (!!!) The full article can be found  here  . Well, I do admit that I would be very surprised if I didn't receive at least some kind of a laptop or a blackberry at work, mainly because these are essential tools required for me to operate effectively in my profession. Having recently joined a firm that doesn't allow access to Yahoo/ Gmail/ Hotmail and social networking sites from the office, I noticed within the first week I had built up a massive backlog of unopened/ unattended personal emails...

I am in Delhi for Diwali and to say bye-bye to IIT Campus, the leafy academic campus once at the edges of 'New Delhi' now swallowed by the the behemoth that is the National Capital Region of Delhi today. It is the residential campus where my parents have lived for over three decades, travelling and working all over, kids in tow, but always coming back to the campus we knew as home. We love the place to bits along with the dogs, cats, mice, ants, peacocks, owls, cockroaches, spiders, wasps, mosquitoes, lizards and the occasional snake that have also made the place their home. As my sister says its a bit like being in the Australian Outback, once you block out the noise of the whizzing Delhi Airport-bound planes that is. So I'm no stranger to the creatures that appear out of nowhere and disappear as suddenly. Like the mouse that found a friend's rucksack so tasty that it chewed the plastic strap right through the night. O...