Come here, Don’t Fear. There’s Beer!

 

Don’t have much time, but I simply had to stop to share this.

 

That’s one more detail I have to put down in my ‘interiors’ book. Its the book where I keep a note of things I must remember while planning interiors of my dream home.

When it finally gets ready, you are welcome of course. You can come in and scream.

Never Too Late For Some Bug Fixing

I don’t know about you, but the motorcycle bug didn’t quite bite me.

But while in college, bikes were around everywhere – though I never had one – you could hop on one, zip past your campus off to the wide open and empty ring road and feel the wind against your face and all that.

But that bug just sat on me, not quite biting really. And for a while as the bug sat, there was a small possibility of a bite. I admit it might have contemplated a bite, but not quite digging into action.

And around the same time, I discovered that man, Robert Pirsig. I got my hands on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. And the bug contemplated a nibble one more time. But of course. I was studying Mechanical Engineering, sweeping the ’scalpel like a surgeon’ on all things that were meant to subdue nature’s ways – forces, energy, motion, water, by waving it on Vectors, Volts, Thermodynamics, Mass, Hydraulics and Gravity. 

I was a classic. The Spanner. Not the flower, a romantic.

And I ought to have my hands full of grease and oil. It was a natural by-product to be awe inspired by machinery. By a bike. By the feeling of the two stroke piston reverberating through the clutch plates to your grip on the bar. Up from the foot rest through your foot to the back of your neck, making the hair stand on its end.

But it was Phaedrus himself that had a bigger influence than his hippie, roadie ways and a sudden new bug came from nowhere and bit me with this line that was to stay with me for ever -

Quality is a direct experience independent of, and prior to intellectual abstractions.

And a few others like these -

Truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I’m looking for the truth, and it goes away.

To live for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 – 20 hindsight. It’s good for seeing where you’ve been. It’s good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can’t tell you where you ought to go.

‘And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good— Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?’

I guess the bike bug just got bored and left without ever making an earnest attempt.

But after all these years, this video here seemed to beckon the bug back with some desperation. I imagine this might have urged that bug to act back then.

Watch this in full screen. Dedicate a few minutes. Think of nothing else.

Did it bite you? Tell me about it.

The Week That Just Was: Perfect Work-life Balance!

 

And so it happens that this week turned out just the way I think every week should – a three-day weekend, followed by a three-day working week, followed by a three-day weekend.

The real work-life balance.

If you have read some of my earlier posts about work-life and balancing it you will know exactly what I mean. If you haven’t, hop over to those posts right after this [links served at the end of this one] .

The reason I take a helluva objection to the whole debate is, hell, why are we even talking about balancing our personal life and work life? It’s not two things. It’s life. And to live it in a certain way we envision it, we work.

And what happens slowly and silently without us even being aware of it?

Work gently eases in and seeps into every corner, takes hold of our thoughts and actions and finally like cancer consumes our whole core of existence, creating more and more room for itself and less and less room for us to live the life we envisioned for ourselves to start with.

And then we create professionals who come in and train us on finding the work-life balance. Irony of it all, is these people have chosen that as a profession. It’s suddenly their work to help us find that work-life balance.

And so they work through the night to prepare power point presentations to deliver their training.

People, we are all sheep on a hillside, hopelessly lost, refusing to see it, hating to admit it. 

The links I promised – It’s Not What You Think  and Words of Wisdom! | !modsiW fo sdroW

This post will have no name.

You noticed I have been scarce here.

You did, didn’t you?

Just been a little too tied up at work. I’m not complaining, mind you. The times are-a-changing and its good to be busy in these a-changing times.

Ok. Now that we got over the cliched apology for not living and breathing Pathe for such a long stretch, and now that we got over the cliche about the slowdown and now that we got over the shameless show-offing that I still have a job*, lets bring on the main course, boys and girls!

Hold it. Just have a small clarification to make before I tempt your tongues to drool or attract the attention of devious moral police and mutt-a-licks. The main course is not boys and girls.

The Main course, Ladies and Gentlemen, is Just Pathe!

I read this incredibly funny post yesterday and thought I’d do a shameless me-too post in the guise of being inspired by it. This is something I wrote a few weeks ago but didn’t post because I had to attend a conference call just when I was about to click the “post” button. (nudge nudge, wink wink).

So lets move on to some kick ass Pathe putting.

This time, I want to share some of my woes with you. The following incidents actually happen not once, not twice, but as many times as Ramalingaraju lied between 2005 to 2009.  Mmmm…actually not that often.

“Aapka naam?”

“Haan ji. Main Sundar hoon.”

“Haan theek hai sir. Aapka naam sir”

“Main Sundar hoon”

“Zaroor sir. Lekin aapka naam batayiye?”

“Oh…err mera naam Sundar hain!”

“Ji bilkul. Aap sundar ho toh aapka naam bhi bahut sundar hi hoga. Good for you sir. But pehle aapka naam toh batayiye!!”

“Yeah yeah my name is Sundar”

“Of course, sir. Your name too! Good for you. I am not arguing with you. You are holding up other callers, can you please just let me have your name?”

“Ma’am. I am telling you my name. My name is Sundar”

“Oh. Ok Mr.Sundar. Our Rep will get in touch with you soon. Thanks for calling”

Click.

 

 

*as of Saturday 16.56 pm (IST)