After months of lull, very busy travel days ahead. Bangalore – Delhi – Gurgaon – Chennai – Bangalore – Trichy – Chennai – Bangalore: All in the next two weeks. As they say, “When it rains, it pours”. 
Impression
As I entered our office premises yesterday, the security guard stood up and greeted me. I know he is relatively new and have been around only for about a week or so. His supervisor, who was watching him from a distance pulled him up for unnecessarily greeting me by standing.
The security guard replied “He is a senior guy sir. He sits near the CEO”.
His supervisor immediately snapped back, “No, he comes by two wheeler. He must only be a junior guy”.
I loved their definition of a senior manager. )
Teacher’s Day
On this day – Sep 5, let me thank all my teachers for making me what I am. Happy Teachers day!
At my alma mater (The Hindu Senior Secondary School, Triplicane, Chennai), the convention is to let the Class XII students run the school for the whole day. The day before, the students will elect among themselves for the key roles – Principal, Vice Principal etc. Needless to say, it will be super cool to be elected as a Principal / VP. Sitting on the swivel chair and issuing commands on and off the microphone would certainly be giving one a sense of power. There will be a clamour to be allocated to ‘teach’ for the higher classes. Ours being a co-ed school, one doesn’t need to tell the reason for the above. Over all, whether the students appreciate the role of teachers on this day or not, it will be good fun for everyone involved.
It has been close to two decades since I left school. I only hope that this tradition still continues.
London Olympics
It is an irony of sorts that we were in United Kingdom for eleven long years, but chose to pack our bags to India just a year before London is about to host Olympics. When London won the Olympic bid for 2012 way back in 2005, I immediately signed up for any volunteering opportunity even though we were living at Bournemouth at that time, which was more than 100 miles away from London. Later, around 2010 time frame when LOCOG invited formal applications for volunteering during the Games, I applied for it too.
My interest was in working at the Press area in some capacity so that I could get to know the background function of real time journalism. Although the above was my preference, I was fine to contribute to the Games in any capacity and I had indicated that as such. I was prepared to take 2 weeks off from work for this. Sometime last year, I got an email asking me to attend the interview for a volunteering position at the Press Box. Fortunately or unfortunately, I was several thousand miles away from the venue at that time.
Just because of the fact that I wasn’t able to volunteer my time for Olympics, it does not mean that I regret my move to India. There is absolutely no regret on that count. Looking at it the other way, with our new born just about two weeks old – had I got an opportunity to volunteer at one of the Olympic venues, it would have been a next to impossible job to go there with full zeal. Perhaps, this is what people mean when they say ‘If God denies you something, it means that he has got better plans for you!’.
New Baby Blues
Our little one is exactly 7 days old today. I have been saving up all my holidays this year for this and I have taken two weeks off from work. Despite having a fully staffed support structure in place (M-I-L, her M-I-L at home), our boy is driving us nuts with the volume of work that we need to do. Anirud has been on his bestest of the best behaviour during this time. He is cooperating amazingly well and till date he hasn’t given any trouble whatsoever. If we ask him to keep an eye on the baby for a few minutes, he wouldn’t bat his eyelid even for a second. In fact, we are guilty of not giving him the attention he deserves.
During Anirud’s birth in 2005 – I was in UK in a laid back mode. I was getting daily updates from my wifey on what was going on, but it is a completely different ball game when you experience things in person. Having said that, there are lots of small, little things that I missed at that time and I am making up for the lost opportunity then. Some one I know used to say, “It is interesting to watch children grow”. Yeah, that is so very true.
Wednesday Baby
Allow me the pleasure of inviting you to visit the new blog of our little one – Wednesday Baby. Much like Anirud’s blog, this new blog is an attempt to capture the younger one’s progress. Some day, when the Daddy finds time, he will integrate both the blog at some common location and try to look cool!
Second Bundle of Joy!
Little Anirud is no more the youngest in our family. It is pleasure and pride that we announce the birth of our second bundle of joy – a male baby weighing 2.95 kgs born at Bangalore at around 7:17 am today.
When the nurse placed the baby on Anirud’s hands, his face radiated the glow of few thousand watts. Not sure if he had this rehearsed earlier, he said “Hello Baby! Welcome to the new world!!”.