Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Overwhelmed!

Sometimes you go through tough phases. Tough decisions. Tough discussions. Then a few people support you, a few people say something that makes you feel that the journey so far was worth it.

So here is saying a BIG thank you to G, K, U, P and A :)

You made my day yesterday!!

PS: Sorry, I just got to be vague here :)

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Auto i

So we got home the new car yesterday. Since this was going to be a second car, we were particular about buying a small one and an automatic so we homed in on the Hyundai i10 Automatic.

They've come out with a new model recently and it is a sackful of goodies. I always loved the Volkswagen's blue backlight for the dash and the i10 also has it! First eye-catcher for me. Then of course, it is automatic. It has been ages (read 2.5 years) since I last drove an automatic and I must confess I was feeling rather weird not having to change gears and not knowing what to do with my second hand. The best feature on the i10 is undoubtedly its power steering. It is too smooth for words. It just fluidly rotates. For a small car, it has a lot of features that are not standard on some of the sedans too. I loved the iPod jack as well (USB port) since now it means I can put my first gen iPod in the car and with it that tonnes of music which I haven't heard in a while thanks to my mobile phone serving the purpose of mini music repository. All those songs I accumulated, collected, painstakingly sorted and labeled, are all now at the touch of a button. Yay!!

We got it home on Ayudha Puja day (MahaNavami) which also happens to be the son's birthday as per the Indian calendar! :)

Monday, October 11, 2010

Faux pas?

News papers do not proof-read. We all know that. With every passing day, the language in ToI gets worse and worse.

But what I didn't know is that big BOLD flash news items are also not proof-read on TV. Yesterday, there was a CWG round up where the anchors were getting all emotional about Sania Mirza's "emotional" interview. And the flash across the screen, big and bold, occupying half the screen space, read:

"NEXY GOAL IS OLYMPICS"

For a few seconds I didn't understand what nexy goal was. A new type of goal maybe? Then I got it, that they meant to say, her next goal was Olympics. You see, it is so often that you get flash news from a completely unrelated topic while some other news topic is going on, that I actually assumed they were talking about some other person who scored some kind of nexy goal.. ;)

The hand kerchief method for parking

Yesterday, Subhash, the son and I headed out at 9.30 or so in the night for an after dinner dessert. We found a sweet spot right opposite the Cream and Fudge store in Indiranagar and so we attempted to park there. We couldn't park forward on, so we decided to parallel park reverse on and we took the car ahead to align along side the car before us. While Subhash was making the cut, there was this Ford Ikon which pulled up behind us and so he cut very awkwardly and was waiting for that guy to go on before he made one more attempt. But the guy didn't budge.

So Subhash rolled down and asked what the matter was. And the guy actually said, I saw this spot before you, and by the time I could come and park, you cut in. And we were speechless. We were hovering around the cars in front of and behind the spot for 5 minutes already. Even if we didn't so what? What does "seeing" a spot amount to? :)) Anyways, I am not sure where this guy saw the spot from. And he kept insisting we should clear out and let him park. And Subhash asked him if he didn't see us attempting to park in various directions and he said no. And so all we could say is, please get on and let us park.

Like they say, you change your language, you can change your ride, but you never change what you are inside. The guy went and got a Ford Ikon for himself but never grew out of his "kerchief" methods! *

*For the uninitiated, a "hand kerchief" is often used as a tool for reserving a seat in town buses (by throwing it in from the window even before you can get into the bus) where 100% of the time demand is 5 times the supply of seats!