Snapshots from Hell- The Making of an MBA written by Peter Robinson for all those who want to land in Business School's....

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I might have changed n number of educational institutions but neither made me a nerd or a geek nor a dumbo. I was what I was & am still, an averager. When it came to any walks of life I was just an average achiever comparing to my extra-ordinary talent. My school days I was an averager, passing out with a first class then the pre university days were quite similar too. The same kind of person was I. Then the college days were no different. I graduated out of college with a first class degree with honors. I am not sure how many students didn't do that but I was certainly aware of those who had done it, in fact done better than me. And then when it came to cricket too I wasn't a great player. I was very good at my own age group, probably the better ones I would call it and certainly not an extra-ordinary player because of which I am where I am. I may write innumerable articles on my dark sides but the truth is at the end of the day I was just an average person.
Quite sometime back my dad was talking about an article written by Sujatha about this topic. I tried renewing it but couldn't. It had compared three persons in life. Three guys Ram, Shyam & Mohan. Ram was the topper in school through college. Mohan could barely make it to the next stage of educational career. Shyam was just a little better than Mohan. He was an averager and all these guys where classmates of Sujatha. When after 20 years when Sujatha accidentally bumped into one of these guys he came to know that Ram got a job right after his graduation but now barely trying to make ends meet. Mohan on the other hand is a little better than Ram and is leading a comfortable life. Shyam is leading the best life out of these three. Now Sujatha was baffled hearing this and wanted to write about this incident. So he had a search & found out people who are averager's & why are they able to lead a better life than the real geeks & the dumbo's. I am not able to remember the fact he had to why is that so.
I wasn't sure why my dad read out this to me. But I found one common factor among all these averager’s, that factor is a term called 'satisfaction'. How many would agree to this?


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Yeah! When I meant sambhar freaks it was the actual sambhar I am talking about. A sambhar recipe awaits you below!
(The recipe below is given for two people & in no way sambhar2sydney is responsible for any injuries to health or stomach upsets & fire incidents)
This is assumption that you know what is a gas, utensils, salt, sugar, powder....
Take a utensil(small) and
1. Take 5gms of puli/tamarind & mix in 2 glasses of water so that it desolves only max upto 75%.
2. Add 1 1/2 teaspoons of uppu/salt to that.
3. Add 2 pieces of perungayam/teng/asofotida to that.
4. Add 2 teaspoons of sambhar powder & 1/4 teasppon of sugar to the solution.
Keep the utensil in the gas and boil it for 15 minutes after which without removing the heat on the utensil follow the following steps
5. (I don't how to explain this in peter's language though) Talichukottanam...
6.Add the paruppu/dal which you have boiled in the cooker alongwith rice with the water in which it was boiled.
7.Add any boiled vegetable if you want to do so now.

After 5 minutes you have the worlds best sambhar!

If anybody tries it & succeeds in doing so please do leave a comment behind, this is the recipe which my granny has been following for 21 years!

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Today was real fun at my workplace. We had a great team building activities along with some interesting presentations. I kind of had my share of fun. It was more based on understanding each other and all that sorts of stuff. We were given ten questions and given just about five minutes to complete them. So I thought let me narrate one embarrassing childhood incident which occurred when I was in my LKG (yeah! I have a long memory).
I have studied in n number of institutions and the first was none other than Velankanni School in TNagar. I used to get picked up and dropped by the school bus. Even though this was my first year in school I never used to be adamant to go to school. Not at least like the other kids who used to yell, scream, cry, jump, run, etc.etc... for getting to school. Some even cried while they came back from school as soon as they saw their mom's. Some cried till they had a sight of the teacher. Most of my teachers were anglo's & dress up accordingly and probably would be my grand mom’s age at that point of time. Since my mom worked it was my grand mom who took care of me. Picking me up from the bus, then horlicks, stories & finally to put me to sleep. This is the time of my life when I was like four or five years old.
One such day was this. Least I expected this would occur. Whole of my family had arrived at my place when I had gone to school, obviously without my knowledge. My grandparents (dad & mom's), aunts, uncles, cousins & my great grandma, who I really miss, wanted to see me in my school uniform it seems, so were seated at the entrance of my apartment. The apartment was just in the main road in mambalam and my bus used to stop at the main road for us to get down. That particular day I very unusual for me infact the only time I remember in my childhood days I peed in my pants (come on I was only 4!). So my aayama removed my uniform shorts & washed it (so nice of her). Since it was really wet she made me sit without my shorts & jocks in the bus (still curse her for that). I somehow covered my assets while coming in the bus. Least I expected my whole family to be standing in front of the gate to receive me. I got down of the bus to see the excitement of the folks. I was too embarrassed & ran like Ben Johnson to my house, nude!
Still when my family members get together this incident is spoken about. I just can't forget the expressions on my great grandma’s face when she saw me like that!

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I still don't know why I am writting about this, an unusually different topic in my blog lists. When I first sat down and decided to name my blog, lot of names flashed across my mind but I choose sambhar 2 sydney since I wanted to write about anything & everything. So I thought the time has come for me to unveil my own personal life which not lot of people know about.
I have no sibblings so I have no one to share the interiors of my life. I have many friends but no one to really call as a chaddi/jiggiri dosth. I land up in shit and I get out of it myself. Sometimes, why most times, I depend on my mom if it's really personal but after sometime I found it very hard to since I realised that not all things I could. I am talking about a time sometime during my early college days. I knew I had reached a phase of my life wherein I had to have some one to really lift my spirits. I am all the time in pressure situations, taking decisions in crunch moments or playing as sweetly most call it as. There was so much of crap and also so much of fun that was happening in my life. Then this particular time came.
I don't know what do I call this as crush/love, but whatever it is, whatever it was this was the first time in my life I actually cried for missing someone whom I was missing. I have had many crushes in my life but seldom they get to the place where it has to (that's why it's called as a crush maybe!). All of them fade away faster than they crop up. So I didn't have anyone with whom I was going around steady with, I still wonder why?
The first time I met her was in her house. The first impression she gave me was she was good looking, you can't call her awesome but she was certainly very good. The kind of attitude which a girl of her age would posses. She was much older than me. Infact I was younger than her sister also. We became friends in process & from talking everyday it became to meeting everyday for about an hour. It was like I couldn't sleep without chatting with her atleast once. I found all the qualities in her which I wanted my girl to posses. But the virtual reality was she was just as old as my first cousin was and she looked at me like a kid. I had the courage to tell her that if she would have been younger then certainly I would have married her. As a matter of fact I went up to my mom and told her that I wanted this kind of a girl in my life. Then came the day she got married and I was weeping like hell on the day of the reception. Then she left. It's been more than four years since I have heard about her. All I know is she is living some where in the US. I miss u sap!

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salam namaste to Salaam Namaste!

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‘Why do we play sports?’ I asked. The answer came from my colleagues ‘for entertainment, pleasure, fun, etc’. ‘Leisure activity dude!’ said one. I was doing a presentation on sports at my office. They wanted me to do it since they believed that I was (/am?!) a good player, also thought I could do it differently than others could. A presentation with a different view-my point of view! I didn’t want to go into details of which country plays cricket or baseball rather I kept a entire section on quizzing (very simple), where I had collected few cartoon strips of a sporting activity and all they had to do was to find that out. I thought mine was impressive just because one it was different and two because I made them laugh. One thing I always want people to around me to do is to laugh. The best medicine.
First of all I was really surprised that there was a successful cricket blog through anti’s site, thanks’ anti! And then when I discovered from that site that there were plenty of them I was amazed. Being a sportsman I wasn’t able to keep up one on cricket but these guys rock, trust me. I read three new posts one after another in a matter of two hours. It was just awesome. I have added that to my links.
The best was when anti wrote a post on professional cricketers for which I wanted to really reply but my comp was nearing death. So I didn’t want to take a chance, I wanted to put it up as a post in my blog but when I didn’t have time just left it as a comment in anti’s blog. I really accelerated on the words since it was something close to my heart, so expect it soon here. It was so much that he hasn’t finished reading it yet. When I chatted with him the other day he said ‘will reply during the weekends’.
‘So Hey, don’t panic reading this the worst is yet to come!’ (anyways for those who prefer the hot sambhar really hot it’s in anti’s blog, because by the time it comes here it would be really warm)….

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As I sit and stare at the virus hit computer of mine, which is denying me an access into the outside world, thoughts flow in & out. I always think crap at midnight & no wonder this is happening tonight. What do I write about? Was the first question to flash, then the confused state of mind as usual turned on to cricket thinking unusually how I could relate to a general life scene? Though I can’t question the wisdom inside me, even though I am nowhere near it, I am getting to feel that what a strange relation the game is to the general life itself. The funda I am going to tell you now is kind off similar to any walks of life. Compare it to any activity and you can compare!
Again as I have a theory for all, even for this I have a theory which I unusually co-related between what I learned in my office to cricket (different forms of life a.k.a (thanks lazy!) careers). Probably most of you are aware of this but for those of whom who are hearing it for the first time, here it goes.
For every activity of life there are four different stages, from which we move on from time to time. And it’s obvious that we all want to be in the final stage where we would be at our best. To give an example of an activity I take driving a car. The first stage in my words (all my words! even though) is the consciously conscious stage, wherein you are really conscious about your driving. You make sure that you are driving right, you are afraid of over taking, snail passed, etc. No matter whatever happens you don’t want to take your eyes of the road.
Then comes the second stage sub consciously conscious. Now you are a little better, in terms of making a decision to overtake, to take a right turn, climb hills, narrow streets (sandhula in amji tamil), left side views, etc. You are having a certain amount of confidence and hope that you can make it back home safely. The danger stage consciously unconscious is next. I would call it as the trying hard to pick a fight stage (after banging or smashing something). You are a touch little over confident that you can take things for granted & end up doing the wrong thing at the right time, probably during a right turn or something and invite trouble. The situation most of us land up on! (me-all the time!).
The last stage is the super duper unconsciously conscious stage. This kick ass stage is wherein you actually are the master of the art and don’t think the same way. You know you are good and do the right things consciously. For example like the way I drive (hehehe)! You end up being the perfect driver and do things unconsciously all though you are conscious about what you are doing. Things become perfect when done in the moment of unconsciousness though you are very much conscious about it. Let the blink take over!
Don’t you think this can be related any walks of life, think about it!

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I fixed it up, finally yes i did it!

my pc got hit by a virus! till i kill it keep waiting....

My dark side!

(Continuation of the post-The dark side & The dark side-revealed! please read them first to get an idea…)

my pc & me...... 

HERE ARE SOME INTERESTING COMPARISONS:-

I couldn't' stop making this comparison.. inches of rain in new orleans due to
hurricanekatrina... 18 inches of rain, mumbai (July 27th).... 37.1 inches of rain.

population of new orleans... 484,674 population of mumbai.... 12,622,500

deaths in new orleans within 48 hours ofkatrina...100 deaths in mumbai within 48hours of rain.. 37.

number of people to be evacuated in new orleans...entire city..wohh number of people evacuated in mumbai...10,000

Cases of shooting and violence in neworleans...Countless Cases of shooting and violence in mumbai.. NONE

Time taken for US army to reach new orleans...48hours Time taken for Indian army and navy to reachmumbai...12hours

status 48hours later...new orleans is stillwaiting for relief, army and electricty status 48hours later..mumbai is back on its feetand is business is as usual

USA...world's most developed nation India...JUST A DEVELOPING NATION..

oopss...did i get the last fact wrong???

The only certainty of life is its uncertainty! Take any walks of all of our lives. Few of us have things worked according to our plans. Most of us have it the other way. Some people make things happen, some watch while things happen, and some wonder 'What happened?' Which type of person are we? We certainly want to be in the first category, don’t we.
Planning-certainly all of us plan and want things to happen in the way we want. Planning can be explained even simpler with this example. Say on a Sunday you plan to go to a friends place near chepauk stadium and you live near mylapore. You sit and imagine (plan) assuming you are well versed with the routes. The route you are traveling in is the plan that you make and end results is your goal. Likewise all of our end result is to lead a comfortable life (the meaning may differ from person to person in terms of materialistic comforts) which becomes our goal though there are infinite routes to reach them. For example there are number of sub routes in sports itself, like cricket, soccer, tennis, etc. So eventually all of us are more bothered about the end result and not the route, which is when we make our mistakes. So that’s the point of time when we develop that dark side of ours.
We live in a society where social status is regarded as ‘the’ thing. So failure adds up to the wound of not becoming successful, ourselves. In the process we start searching for safety and security (s&s) to reach our goals. So our routes would be more based on s&s than anything else.
I too had (have) the same problem. I will reveal the rest in the next dark side continuation- My dark side-revealed!.......

'What are you doing here?'

A common question asked to me in the last two months after I decided that needed to go ahead with my life after being calm (Bcom) for 3 years in terms of becoming a MBA or in terms of even working for a reputed company. (I presume that you have read my earlier post about communication)The first question anybody would ask me is why didn't you look to take up cricket as your career?
If I would have been good enough obviously, what I am doing here attending an interview answering questions which my 12 year old nephew could? The big question was whether I was good enough to scale the heights, was there enough quality, substance, perseverance, determination and all those extra terrestrial qualities required to make it. I still don’t know what essential qualities is actually required since every single time I ask a guy who has made it, all of them have views which is very unique & contrasting to other’s and that’s why I call them extra terrestrial.
From the bottom of my heart I think I had all these, yet why didn't I continue (professionally), a big question remained unanswered for sometime. Guess it's the time to open out since I just couldn't hold it inside anymore.
I know it's the life which everyone expects themselves to be in, an Indian cricketer, Wow! How does that sound? Doesn’t it sound awesome? It’s ok in the process you don't make a peanut, even though at least you have represented your country. True I accept the greatness involved in representing one's country, doesn't really mean you need to carry a rifle around, visit exotic places, meet new people and shot them to save your country, the only tag which is attached to representing your country. I regard if you represent India playing Kabbadi (don't know whether they have an Indian team), it's a big thing. One can't get more pleasure (must be saying satisfaction) than representing his country. After this also why? What's it at the back of my mind? What is that dark side the heading refers to?

According to me dark side refers to the side which is unexposed to the outside world but you know all about it, the side which everyone has and goes through realizing it someday. Like the big question of lazy geek, a self realisation? Incarnation of god. So you have to go through those faces of life & you will. The biggest question is still that whether I can really call it a dark side or it’s just more to do with some big decision taken by everyone in our life’s and we are just still thinking about the decision & considering the probability of errors if we would have considered other opinions.

Continued
The dark side- revealed!.....

One of my post states about me as a cricketer (yeah that is true no doubt) & yes it indeed speak about communication. I am not getting into it anymore; you know why, rather I am going to get into other benefits of playing cricket. Fun! Nothing serious though very humorous. As you all know that cricket is a team game however few people make it an individual sport. Its fun to play with all those different people because every single day you meet new strange people and it keeps on pilling when you look back at the amount of crazy peers you have been with till date. Let me enlighten you about few …
there was this guy who we named ‘Edge-Boston’after edgbaston because the only shot which he possessed was the slip drive, anything & everything he played went to the slips and claimed he is from Boston…
then there was this guy who used to run into the pitch from the pavilion as soon his turn came to bat & come back running too, he thought he shouldn’t be wasting time... trust me he used to run faster than he did in between the wickets...
there was this sports coach who taught us about safety, all about wearing a abdominal guard and got run over by a bus & died.
then there was this guy who asked a sardar about the time at night 12 not realizing what it meant.. can write a blog on that incident though will certainly post one..
then there was this guy who had a superstitious belief about the number which he has to go into bat, so when the captain asked him to bat in some other order which he didn’t like, he went home?!
there was this guy who used to get nervous while bowling and bowl wide’s, so we advised him to hold the seam across and bowl, he tried and the short covers fielder had to be admitted to the hospital since he hit him in the process of trying to bowl across seam!
then there was this umpire who was scared of one of our bowler’s & adjudged out for all his appeals since we told him that he bit the previous match umpire’s ear because he turned down his appeal!
there was this guy who bowled all of a sudden 30 overs in a day from one end and never bowled for 300 days due to a shoulder dislocation!
there was this guy who claimed no bowler is allowed to bowl a bouncer to him since he was a tail ender!

These guys have made my life so entertaining, thanks buddies!

I have always been a chatter box all through my life so sometimes it get's me into major problems, like most people who are that kind, and other times it rescues me out from the problem I am in, although in most cases it's the earlier one. I have been a cricketer all through my life and it was a little more than a hobby to me all throughout. I remember days through my schooling after I started playing and college days where I haven't spend at least three hours related to playing. Probably because of that hard work (I don't know) I was able to represent my state and university & was also fortunate enough to captain my university, college and city teams. I have no idea why the physical director of my university has recommended me to the uni for a gold medal....
I feel most of these things are thanks to my communication skill and the other's too which I haven't been able to do, are also due to the same reason. So my end result is that communication -the hardcore value no matter what you do...rather the right communication is a hardcore value no matter which career you take up!

Skanda-The new dude in my family!
my uncles son
Welcome to the gang!!!!!

When I looked around in the dictionary this afternoon for the meaning of the word FRIEND I found "one who is on good terms with & loves another". That's not too bad for a definition, doesn't it? But if you ask me personally I would say friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… it has no survival value, rather is one of those things that gives value for survival. Do you know anybody living in this world without friends- at least I don't know anyone so far & guess will not come across one my entire life. Oh ya there may be few exceptions though-must be a real psycho.
Well this FRIENDS soap is clearly underlined and has a capital 'F' preference, distributed by the distribution giants Warner Brothers. The serial is named after a bunch of friends who hang out together basically doing nothing but certainly entertaining and also in the process having kids. The screenplay revolves around six main characters namely Ross, Rachael, Monica, Chandler, Joey & Phoeppe. Luckily there is no mention of the word Love throughout, at least for me Love is so confusing, he says she looks so beautiful and almost immediately he wants to turn the lights off. Most of the dialogues can be co-related to some of our real life experiences though few just blow us off. Probably somewhere sometime somehow even we would have encountered these emotions; if you have not yet then certainly you belong to the second category I guess.
FRIENDS an American production gives us a taste of Hollywood in most cases, exhibits loads of cultural differences between our societies to theirs and broadcasts them in not certainly an etiquette way. The fundamental difference in the basic structure of cultures is displayed and the feeling of American society approach is felt, though the fundamental idea behind is to make people laugh, certainly not at cultures.This particular episode shows how men still don't know to propose, may be a book or two on that topic will help them. But Trust me even that won't make a difference, men will always be men.
To add on, it also gives us a feel about the individual characters , who are absolutely unique like any other ,certainly in no way are interconnect or share the same characteristics, except for may be a few who all try to sail under the same ship, The Dumb Ship.
The ultimate message, rather the desired message in this particular episode, wanted to be delivered, was to be clear to a girl if you are proposing her, even though there where traces of how to become pregnant rather how Monica's parents did it while manufacturing her. Jennifer Anniston or Rachael her character name has tried her best to be as dumb as possible even when she breast feeds her child. I pity the child though it certainly has a small mouth, all babies do. Joey the best though according to me has been the dumbest and displayed niche approach supporting the concept that the universe consists of 5% protons, 5% neutrons, 5% electrons and 85% morons. Ross displaying neat acting talent about a man's life who doesn’t want to marry may be because the wise never marry if they to they become otherwise & Chandler and Phoeppe being very American.
To conclude FRIENDS was ride back through the NON STOP NONSENSE times if taken in the right spirit and hope you certainly don't need Parental Guidance to understand their idioms and phrases. To end I would say FRIENDS is 10 % what they have taken it and 90% how we take it............

Enjoy the filtered sambhar experience!