I think I caqn live with the blogger beta now. So I am discontinuing this tryst with wordpress which had started as a possible test to perhaps discontinue blogger! And recently had become a job to copy and paste the blogs from blogger! So for all those inhterested please follow: http://musing-o-aditi.blogspot.com/
Cheerio!
PS I liked the look of this blog better though! Sigh!
Why do I keep getting freaked out about the things/issues out of my control?
Is it because I control everything within my control??
Does that make me a control freak???
Oooo…oo Scary!! Something to think about surely!
Image Courtesy: Google Image search and this
Went to Alibaug for Lunch on Sunday!! Yeah, We are crazy enough to do that!! And at least there it was raining!
Post contains spoilers!
These books are by Louisa May Alcott and translated in मराठी by famous writer, poet शांता शेळके as चौघीजणी. Set in late 1800 and early 1900 USA, the March family, was my moral barometer as a kid! When I read it for the first time, I was way too young to understand the reasons for that. But as I grew up this book taught me something new every time I read it though there’s nothing groundbreaking about the story, though it is set in late 1800s, though the girls wear muslin gowns, floppy hats and go up the slopes to collect pine cones and play croquet!!
It maybe when I was in standard 5 or 6 when the translation was launched and आई bought it. I think she must have mentioned that she would let me read it once I am a little older! That did it!! I HAD to read the book right then!! I managed to read almost a quarter before I was caught and आई had to give up and let me read it!!
I instantly fell in love with all four sisters. Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. And being quite a tom boy myself, Jo – the tomboy and non-conformist sister of four – was my personal favorite! And the boy next door – Theodore Lawrence aka Teddy was in my opinion the epitome of a great buddy!!
Since the day I have read Jo calling Teddy, well, Teddy, I have hoped that some day I shall call someone Teddy!! And shall have in him all that Teddy stands for!! Many friends (V and Sid especially) have come close to it but never quite made to high standards of Teddy!! Closest till date has to be S and well, though Jo didn’t, I accepted my Teddy’s proposal!!
I have longed to read Dickens because March sisters loved it and have wanted to have a weekly paper published! But I think my sister was never the types and I, too, never had enough creative juices for it!! But drama society, well, that was quite different!! I tried to fulfill this dream in school!
In my teens I had a big dream to backpack in Europe and the germs of the same can be traced right back to this book!! This book gave me the idea of a surprise gift bought with your own money for the first time and my family has had to endure a lot of those right to a pair of socks for dad!!
I have cried buckets reading about Jo’s loneliness when Beth dies. I can still remember the typical summer afternoons when I would be cocooned in some corner of house and reading and crying and feeling all sad.. I remember all too clearly the tug at the heart and sting in the eyes. I have (as I grew up more so) understood Meg’s struggle to keep the marriage on even keel and not lose sight of things more important while battling everyday demons.
It is so amazing that more than 100 years later and in a completely different part of the world I have related to this book all my life!! Simply because it is talking about some things so fundamental! If you have not been privileged to be acquainted with these sisters, I suggest you hit the classics section of your bookstore right away!! It will be worth it!
On a side note, we had a glowing, radiant Beer and yummy, blushing Cosmo this Saturday night at a joint we frequent!
All photos courtesy my (new!) Blackberry Curve 8900!! Not a great camera but an amazing phone!! I just love how it made that beer glow!!
on weekends means getting up at 8am and feeling like getting up!
This world is so full of extremes! We all know it and still it continues to surprise me almost every single time!!
Case in point – recent political and therefore, impending economic developments in India. Two people expressed two opinions to me in a span of 24 hours. While one thought now within a 100days(thanks to Mr. Singh’s plan) the face of India will change, India will decouple fully (please note that all the reforms he kept asking for were to do with liberalisation and increased global exposure!), the other distressed that Congress will be ‘themselves’ for another 5 years. (Ask him which party was his choice and why complain if by being ‘themselves’ UPA indirectly grew his salary ten-fold in last five years and you won’t get no answer!)
What do people want?? Everything?? Or they simply do not know what they want??!
Another fine gentleman said to me, now the real estate will zoom past the earlier highs in no time. Why? Was UPA buying/hoarding real estate across the country?? Then why will this happen overnight – even proverbially overnight?? The equity market is allowed to swing wild and show a thumping sentiment but not a market like real estate will behave that way! And another nay-Sayer on the other hand insisted that real estate in on a doom’s day path as government will ‘actively’ (note the choice of words) bring the prices down! Where are we? In a Communist run country or a disctatorship?? And which prices? Only of the end product or the raw material as well? Is it impossible for the new business models to emerge in such a scenario?? And in any case this chap is buying a house to stay!! Talk hypocrisy!!
Honestly!!! The right of speech in democracy is so well abused!!
Including by your truly!! 🙂
The only thing that this post is – is Random!
It is raining like mad house right now!! After a very hot afternoon about 4-4:30pm in the evening it suddenly became very breezy and by 5:15 it started raining and it is more than an hour now and this is relentless!! The sound of the rain is so loud in this metal topped single storey structure that it is useless to talk on the phone and we are almost shouting talking to each other in the office!!
Rain is treated with a mixed emotion on any construction site. It is a very painful season to work during as water wreaks a havoc on speed. But it is always a welcome respite for a worker after the endless and tiring heat! We treated this rain with exact same emotions!!
I wish I had a better camera though. My Blackberry curve camera is the most unsuitable apparatus for catching the light and motion.. But still I took pictures because I wanted to remember this rain.. how it felt.. how it looked.. ‘cos some things about these days I don’t want to forget in the usual marathon that my life is!
I read a fabulous article in Wired yesterday! It unravels beautifully and simply what happened in the US that led to the credit crisis. Read it here. It is a total must must read!!
The last paragraph of the article goes like this:
“In the world of finance, too many quants see only the numbers before them and forget about the concrete reality the figures are supposed to represent. They think they can model just a few years’ worth of data and come up with probabilities for things that may happen only once every 10,000 years. Then people invest on the basis of those probabilities, without stopping to wonder whether the numbers make any sense at all.”
And OMG, I soooo agree!! I have seen a number of ‘analysts’ in analysing real estate projects ONLY on excel sheets and wondered if they really understood the reason why money will be made! The money will never be made because the calculations say so but if and only if the assumptions are executed verbatim on site. And most of the financial analysts and deal makers I met never really understood this. Some of them paid heavy price by both over investing or letting go of an opportunity! I am so glad someone’s penned it down so well!!
Musing Of An Empty Mind 