RELATION BETWEEN SINGAPORE AND TITANIC

When I first reached Singapore, I was quite amazed at the amount of comforts the city offers. All modes of transport are air conditioned and the city itself is very well connected. The heartline of all this was the supposedly very efficient power supply of the city. People here are quite proud in saying that, the power NEVER goes over here like Titanic was deemed to be unsinkable. The last power cut had supposedly occurred 10 years ago! But I guess when I came here last week, I brought with me a feature of India with me i.e Power Cuts. Presto! there was a power cut in Singapore and it was quite funny to see people getting excited over a power cut, after all it is such a common feature in India!

I realise that the literary quality of my posts are going down nowadays! What to do, NO TIME, NO TIME!

FIVE STAR FOLLIES

The best part of working in an IT company is that you get to go to most of the Five Star hotels in the city. The primary reason for these visits/treats is due to the team building measures taken by companies so that people can get to know each other well. I do not know whether this is very effective or not, but I can surely say that we surely get to know all the specialities and delicacies of each Five Star hotel! During these visits, the general ettiquette says that you should not be outwardly explicit about your eagerness for the food. From what I have observed people do try their best to engage in a serious business or technical conversation, although all their inner thoughts are about the food and the surroundings. It is a general tendency to show that you are not too impressed/eager about the food and the place and that you have been to better places. People think that this is a sign of their sophistication and urbanity. But alas how long can the mind rule over the stomach? Soon all the irrelevant conversation ends abruptly and then all signs of decency
vanish in a jiffy and people rush to grab their plates.

It was one such visit to the Oberoi hotel in MG Road Bangalore. This was my first Five Star hotel visit. I was quite amazed at the elaborate table arrangements and the display of arrays of exotic food varieties. I was terror struck seeing the fork and spoon beside my plate as I hardly knew how to use them. Then I was relieved to see that most people around us in the hotel were not using fork and spoon, but just the God-given hand. We began the treat with a general dull conversation. Most of us were really hungry by then and soon one saviour mentioned that we begin our meal. I was quite relieved at this suggestion and immediately made a grab of my plate and walked over to the food counter. There were so many dishes, half of which I could not even recognise the names. Then I decided that I would taste only those dishes whose name I recognized. So it was just the usual North Indian Dal,Rajma,Roti I had. I tried to scram in as much as food possible into my plate so that I could avoid the frequent akward refills. After I finished this course of my meal, my colleague casually glanced at my plate and remarked that "Hey dint u want to try the starters?". Of course I wanted to try the starters, because god knows when I would visit such a hotel again. So after my main course I started munching on the starters.Here I was having my meal in an upside down order.

When asked, the chef there told us that the speciality of the day was "Avial Kootu" and "Bindi (Lady's Finger) Poriyal(Curry)". These dishes are so commonly made in South Indian households that I wondered how it could be called a speciality!


Finally everyone finished their meals and we marched on to conquer the deserted dessert section. I would have surely gained a few solid pounds that day that could be directly associated with the amount of fat content in the desserts. Then came the formal session of thanking the sponsor of the treat, the team consultant, who was visiting from the States. Poor guy he had hardly eaten during this treat.Probably he could not digest the fact that so many of us were digesting his money !!

BOOKS FOR THE MONTH

I dedicated myself to reading R.K Narayan's novels for the whole of this month. I was so impressed by the two books "English Teacher" and "Guide" which I had read long ago, that I bought a big collection of five R.K Narayan novels from Crossword. The following are about three of these stories I read recently.

Vendor of Sweets R.K.Narayan
I remember seeing this story in the Malgudi days serial shown on television. The story is centered on the owner of a sweet shop. This vendor has a son who is quite detached from his father though the vendor is quite affectionate from his son. The son is quite uninterested in his studies and he suddenly decides to abandon it and take up writing as a profession. He makes hardly an effort towards this and finally realises that he wants to go to the U.S. much to his father's dislike.

Years pass by and the son returns home with a foreigner whom he claims as is wife. He has a new business proposal for manufacturing Story Writing machines (similar to type writers) for which he asks financial support from his father. The vendor gets quite attached to his daughter-in-law though he refuses to part with his money for financing his son's business.Eventually it turns out that the son has not wedded the foreigner girl at all and the son sends her out of the house too. The story ends with the Vendor of Sweets abandoning his shop and house and going and settling down with a sculptor who has plans to build a big temple.


Bachelor of Arts R.K.Narayan
This was a very enjoyable novel about the life of a B.A Graduate, his college and after college experiences. He falls in love with a girl and the girl is married off to some other person without his love being expressed. After this he enters a period of self destruction wherein he becomes a sort of an ascetic. Then he realises the sacrifices his parents had made for educating him and feels that if he carries on like this it would be really unfair to them. So he goes back home and takes up a newspaper agency where he is quite successful. His home atmosphere and involvement in work makes him forget his bitter love experience and now he becomes ready for another love affair with a new girl!


Man Eater of Malgudi R.K.Narayan
This story revolves around an owner of a printing press and his idyllic life. A taxidermist arrives as a guest and friend to stay in the printing press. He is a dangerous huge man and a big bully who causes great havoc wherever he goes. The story ends with a rather comical death of this "Man-Eater" of a guy and peace is restored in Malgudi.


Now reading the Dark Room by R.K. Narayan.

A QUESTION OF COMMITMENT

The state of being commited essentially means something pledged or the state or an instance of being obligated or emotionally impelled. One could be committed to various things like, one could be committed to a cause, his profession or to someone. The designers of the orkut portal have assumed the latter meaning to the state of being committed. I see quite a number of people listed in Orkut who are already committed and the number is day by day increasing.


I too can claim to have committed you know! But the only time I have committed is when I performed a database commit operation. I would rather prefer to remain noncommital about my intentions towards a commitment, although I feel that it is best to postpone it as long as possible, because responsibilities and unimaginable troubles are usually concomitant with a commitment. What I would prefer to do later, is to entrust this quite assiduous task to my parents who would quite happily take up this job of getting me committed with great commitment!