25 things
25 things (tagged by rileen on Facebook)
Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.
1. I loved playing sports, especially cricket, badminton & Table tennis. One thing that could get me up at 5 in the morning & make me feel kicked about it. I was reasonably good at TT & Badminton till college. Recently one of my buddies at Microsoft thrashed me at TT, so now I know I am no good at them.
2. I still enjoy watching most sports. Most of my tweets on twitter are about cricket. This is also the single largest reason for tiffs that me & my dear biwi have had.
3. I mostly listen to Hindi songs. I enjoy the lyrics of a song a LOT. To me everything else in the song are like props. There was a time I knew lyrics of a LOT of kishore, lata & mukesh songs, but now when I try & recollect am often stuck after 1 antara (stanza) & need a cue, like the 1st few words of the antara.
4. Through most of my childhood I believed I was a good singer. The knowledge of lyrics and Mom's encouragement added to that belief. When I would listen to songs with a headset, I would sing along loud & feel that I was in perfect synch.
This belief was rather cruelly shattered when in my first month at the engineering hostel I was nominated as the co-finalist of the most besura(not in tune) singer. I do love singing, but am kind to people around me and sing for others only if my wife is singing along. (She is a very good singer).
5. I was a decent student, almost never in top 5 of a class, but not too far from there either. Dad had a transferable job & my score graph looks like a saw tooth. Move to a new place, adjust to new school, new scoring schemes, start improving, get to a decent level & we would move again.
I have no regrets about moving so often & I believe most of what I am are because of my parents and our constant moving which exposed me to different cultures & people.
6. The worst fall in my academic saw tooth graph was in 6th standard, when we moved to Jamshedpur. I got through the admission tests of Loyola - the best school that I know of in India. I was coming from a school where English was just another subject, to Loyola where folks in 6th standard were eloquent enough at English to give most of India's current media folks a run for their money. I flunked in 6 subjects in the 1st terms, only passed at Hindi, Maths & Science. I did manage to recover in the next term and did not lose a year.
7. As fate would have it, I met my class teacher from 6th who took 3 of the 6 subjects I flunked at, just a couple of years back. Was in Jamshedpur to attend a friend's wedding & turns out he was family friends with my 6th std class teacher and we stayed at her palatial bunglow!
8. I used to be an introvert in my early childhood, more so after the 6th std failures. We moved again after 3 years. Those 3 years at Loyola had taught me a lot. The new school I joined, though good by Calcutta standards was not as good as Loyola and I was instantly amongst the better students at academics & extra-curriculars. This is the time I started becoming more social & active.
9. It is around that time, when I developed some amount of faith in Numerology. It was the end of class XII, all of us would be headed in very different directions, and I was making a note of my friend's birthdays. At the end of the day I realised, ALL my good friends were a root-3(born on 3rd, 12, 21, 30). I am a root 3 as well. This belief only got stronger with time & more friends, dear biwi - most being root-3
10. My first real interaction with computers was in my first year of engineering. Prior to that I had only played Bricks at a computer center a couple of times. This is very different from most folks around me in the techie world, who started very early. I have never felt that I missed out ... I think this is amongst the easiest things to learn & do.
11. I am generally dis-passionate about most stuff, sports, biwi are the only exceptions I can think of.
12. I shocked my then-girlfriend-now-wife by telling her that I had first spotted her at her CET counseling. I was there to guide a cousin. We started interacting only 5 months later. She did not believe it, and surprising myself, I even remembered her dress. This is a faculty that I believe men are poor with, and I am no exception, so that was a rare event.
13. I am painfully adamant about punctuality. The sense of guilt I feel, when I am not on time even for Indian parties & get-togethers which I know will start late, is totally illogical. This is the 2nd largest cause of tiffs with dear biwi :). She is way more practical.
14. I learnt to ride & drive all vehicles after my younger sister had mastered them, starting from cycle, to bajaj chetak to cars.
15. My risk taking appetite has increased a lot more since then - I was the first hire at my current job.
16. I was laid-off my first job even before I joined. The company had come & offered a job in my 6th semester in Engineering. In the final semester they sent us letters saying "Sorry!". In the meanwhile all companies had come & gone, and I had no clue what I would do after my engineering.
17. With no clarity, I wrote GRE & GATE. Did well in both of them. Never applied to any US university, but did get an admit to IISC (though a few days after getting my first real job)
18. Yahoo came to campus in the final semester. Grapevine was ripe with "Yahoo will hire only 1". Through a screening which had 5 interviews followed by a month's hiatus and then a day-long coding assignment & interviews at the Yahoo office, they ended up picking me. This was the best thing that had happened to me till then. This especially after the months of uncertainty - no job, no admits was like a sign of someone up above taking care of me ( I was still an agnostic at this point).
19. I started having faith after a bad bike accident. My helmet cracked & one of my best friend who was riding pillion with me was very badly hurt. It is at this point, and especially after interactions with my friend's mother & my girlfriend that I started believing. Now I believe.
This post took a lot of time, across three sitting but was easy so far .. now I don't know what to write
20. Few know that I am a marwari baniya (merchant from Rajasthan) by birth.
21. I like wearing blue, and my ward-robe is mostly while, blue, black & greys. I do not fancy clothes too much.
22. In general I do not mind looking unkempt, and do not think much before stepping out of my home. This is frowned upon in marwari families.
23. I also do not crave much for possessing gadgets. Wife gifted me my iPhone recently - first stylish gadget that I have ever possessed.
24. I have recently discovered my love for ice-creams, especially strawberries with cream & ice-cream at Corner house. From my previous posts you would know I suffered a lot from asthma & cold, so ice-creams were a no-no. Now that I have found solutions to both, I seek opportunities to eat ice-creams.
25. I am a foodie in general, willing to experiment & try new cuisines. I love chats, Mexcican, most indian rice preparations : chawal-dal, biryani, pulao. Chawal with rajma is my favourite dish and it is the only fixed item (for Sunday lunch) on our weekly menu.
Phew... that was not easy.
Thanks rileen for tagging me. I shall tag a few people on LJ & few others on Facebook...
Tagging deponti ,
fus
kalyan
anomalizer
deep_musings
Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.
1. I loved playing sports, especially cricket, badminton & Table tennis. One thing that could get me up at 5 in the morning & make me feel kicked about it. I was reasonably good at TT & Badminton till college. Recently one of my buddies at Microsoft thrashed me at TT, so now I know I am no good at them.
2. I still enjoy watching most sports. Most of my tweets on twitter are about cricket. This is also the single largest reason for tiffs that me & my dear biwi have had.
3. I mostly listen to Hindi songs. I enjoy the lyrics of a song a LOT. To me everything else in the song are like props. There was a time I knew lyrics of a LOT of kishore, lata & mukesh songs, but now when I try & recollect am often stuck after 1 antara (stanza) & need a cue, like the 1st few words of the antara.
4. Through most of my childhood I believed I was a good singer. The knowledge of lyrics and Mom's encouragement added to that belief. When I would listen to songs with a headset, I would sing along loud & feel that I was in perfect synch.
This belief was rather cruelly shattered when in my first month at the engineering hostel I was nominated as the co-finalist of the most besura(not in tune) singer. I do love singing, but am kind to people around me and sing for others only if my wife is singing along. (She is a very good singer).
5. I was a decent student, almost never in top 5 of a class, but not too far from there either. Dad had a transferable job & my score graph looks like a saw tooth. Move to a new place, adjust to new school, new scoring schemes, start improving, get to a decent level & we would move again.
I have no regrets about moving so often & I believe most of what I am are because of my parents and our constant moving which exposed me to different cultures & people.
6. The worst fall in my academic saw tooth graph was in 6th standard, when we moved to Jamshedpur. I got through the admission tests of Loyola - the best school that I know of in India. I was coming from a school where English was just another subject, to Loyola where folks in 6th standard were eloquent enough at English to give most of India's current media folks a run for their money. I flunked in 6 subjects in the 1st terms, only passed at Hindi, Maths & Science. I did manage to recover in the next term and did not lose a year.
7. As fate would have it, I met my class teacher from 6th who took 3 of the 6 subjects I flunked at, just a couple of years back. Was in Jamshedpur to attend a friend's wedding & turns out he was family friends with my 6th std class teacher and we stayed at her palatial bunglow!
8. I used to be an introvert in my early childhood, more so after the 6th std failures. We moved again after 3 years. Those 3 years at Loyola had taught me a lot. The new school I joined, though good by Calcutta standards was not as good as Loyola and I was instantly amongst the better students at academics & extra-curriculars. This is the time I started becoming more social & active.
9. It is around that time, when I developed some amount of faith in Numerology. It was the end of class XII, all of us would be headed in very different directions, and I was making a note of my friend's birthdays. At the end of the day I realised, ALL my good friends were a root-3(born on 3rd, 12, 21, 30). I am a root 3 as well. This belief only got stronger with time & more friends, dear biwi - most being root-3
10. My first real interaction with computers was in my first year of engineering. Prior to that I had only played Bricks at a computer center a couple of times. This is very different from most folks around me in the techie world, who started very early. I have never felt that I missed out ... I think this is amongst the easiest things to learn & do.
11. I am generally dis-passionate about most stuff, sports, biwi are the only exceptions I can think of.
12. I shocked my then-girlfriend-now-wife by telling her that I had first spotted her at her CET counseling. I was there to guide a cousin. We started interacting only 5 months later. She did not believe it, and surprising myself, I even remembered her dress. This is a faculty that I believe men are poor with, and I am no exception, so that was a rare event.
13. I am painfully adamant about punctuality. The sense of guilt I feel, when I am not on time even for Indian parties & get-togethers which I know will start late, is totally illogical. This is the 2nd largest cause of tiffs with dear biwi :). She is way more practical.
14. I learnt to ride & drive all vehicles after my younger sister had mastered them, starting from cycle, to bajaj chetak to cars.
15. My risk taking appetite has increased a lot more since then - I was the first hire at my current job.
16. I was laid-off my first job even before I joined. The company had come & offered a job in my 6th semester in Engineering. In the final semester they sent us letters saying "Sorry!". In the meanwhile all companies had come & gone, and I had no clue what I would do after my engineering.
17. With no clarity, I wrote GRE & GATE. Did well in both of them. Never applied to any US university, but did get an admit to IISC (though a few days after getting my first real job)
18. Yahoo came to campus in the final semester. Grapevine was ripe with "Yahoo will hire only 1". Through a screening which had 5 interviews followed by a month's hiatus and then a day-long coding assignment & interviews at the Yahoo office, they ended up picking me. This was the best thing that had happened to me till then. This especially after the months of uncertainty - no job, no admits was like a sign of someone up above taking care of me ( I was still an agnostic at this point).
19. I started having faith after a bad bike accident. My helmet cracked & one of my best friend who was riding pillion with me was very badly hurt. It is at this point, and especially after interactions with my friend's mother & my girlfriend that I started believing. Now I believe.
This post took a lot of time, across three sitting but was easy so far .. now I don't know what to write
20. Few know that I am a marwari baniya (merchant from Rajasthan) by birth.
21. I like wearing blue, and my ward-robe is mostly while, blue, black & greys. I do not fancy clothes too much.
22. In general I do not mind looking unkempt, and do not think much before stepping out of my home. This is frowned upon in marwari families.
23. I also do not crave much for possessing gadgets. Wife gifted me my iPhone recently - first stylish gadget that I have ever possessed.
24. I have recently discovered my love for ice-creams, especially strawberries with cream & ice-cream at Corner house. From my previous posts you would know I suffered a lot from asthma & cold, so ice-creams were a no-no. Now that I have found solutions to both, I seek opportunities to eat ice-creams.
25. I am a foodie in general, willing to experiment & try new cuisines. I love chats, Mexcican, most indian rice preparations : chawal-dal, biryani, pulao. Chawal with rajma is my favourite dish and it is the only fixed item (for Sunday lunch) on our weekly menu.
Phew... that was not easy.
Thanks rileen for tagging me. I shall tag a few people on LJ & few others on Facebook...
Tagging deponti ,
fus
kalyan
anomalizer
deep_musings