Dialogues - Fuel for thoughts

I love good dialogues especially with old friends whom I'm catching up after a long time. All of us cross paths with a lot of new people during our school/college years or work life, some interesting and some not so very interesting. I was fortunate to meet some very interesting people (hope they find me interesting too... ;) ) whom I shared good camaraderie and were a regular part of life for those growing up years.

Life is moving at a faster pace than ever and friends who once were everyday buddies have become rare planned ocassions. I'm fine with that, c'est la vie..... BUT I want to grab those rare ocassions, have fun, catch up on old times and make the most out of it.

There were couple of ocassions recently where I met old buddies from USC and SAKEC and I enjoyed every moment of it. B (buddy from SAKEC) was at my place for a weekend and we met after almost 4 years. Both of us have changed (matured if you say so....) he always was, but enhanced further with an MBA which he got recently and I'm yearning for. We had some nice dialogues on so many different subjects, even hard to remember. Big conversation on why he went to Business School and what can be done for getting into a good school, good job after MBA, Marriage, Business Opportunities, Job Opportunities, War in Iraq.
Thanks for stopping by!

I also met Harish and Babloo in Virginia 2-3 weekends back and it was good to see both of them after a long time even though both are just 4-5 hours far. We had nice lunch/dinner at a restaurant in Baltimore harbor. (I love restaurants on water-fronts). It was good to see both of them.

This year I also went to my first Thanksgiving Dinner at a colleague's place which I thoroughly enjoyed without doubt. Met some really fascinating and delightful people (my colleagues family and neighbors) had sumptuous Vegetarian food and desert. Had nice chat with my colleagues family, I was struck by their humbleness, simplicity and love for simple things in life. Gave me a lot of fuel for thinking about the world and approaches in life. Looking forward to my next meeting with them. Thanks for the wonderful dinner!

I look forward to more such encounters with old buddies and new interesting people who will mature to old buddies with the investment of time and many such conversations. Anyone passing by, I'm always ready to meet for a dialogue over lunch/dinner. I'm only a phone call away!

This topic reminds me of 100 Years by Five for Fighting.

Whatever you want it to be ..... - PJP

I thought of doing something different for this post. I invited one of my FOB buddy to write a post on my blog. (will invite some more friends over time). I want all my friends to start and maintain their blog. So this exercise will give them some food for thought. I follow some of my friend's blog and it gives me a chance to see a different side of all them which I don't see while we're together hanging out. So without further adu, I introduce my good friend PJP (a.k.a Smiley baba, Hrithik) who has written this post after lot of coaxing. He's one of the people who has a profound impact on me and I'm sure on many others, he always does the right thing at the right time and I admire it. Be generous in your comments and encouarge him to start writing regularly. So here is Mr. PJP......

Well my very dear friend invited me to write an article in his blog space. For some reason he has a misconception and thinks I have good writing skills (or maybe he was just pulling my leg which I didn’t realize ....until now) In any case I thought of writing something but then the difficult part was to come up with a topic. Should I write about the Indo-US nuke bill (which by the way passed with a whooping 85-12 in the senate) or should I write about my reaction after reading a blog of an Iraqi girl (articles that makes you realize and appreciate how fortunate you are). Should I write about my conversation with an old college friend which refreshed my college days or should I write about semiconductor and technology which I work on. So as creative as I am, I thought of writing on the topic of the topic itself.

I think the topic of the blog tells the kind of person the writer is in great detail. Is he emotional? Is he a person with political views? Is he very observant? Is he a tech savvy? Usually you would find a same kind of theme in different blogs written by the same writer. It’s more like all the Karan Johar movies (infact now even the songs in his movies confuse the hell out of me.) I find it interesting to understand the psychology of the writer. Some bloggers have money as their motivation; some are just pouring their heart out hoping someone is reading it. For some writing is just a passion. Some are writing to enlighten the world (or atleast that’s what I think they think). Of course then there are people like me who don’t know why and what they are writing. My friend told me that he does not care who reads his blogs, he just writes it and feels satisfied. I was impressed by that thought.

I guess you can write about anything and everything, share it with the world and still have more to talk about. Recently, researchers have analyzed the dynamics of how blogs become popular. There are essentially two measures of this: popularity through citations, as well as popularity through affiliation. In anycase I am not looking for popularity but just wanted to write something down. A question before I sign off : Reading my blog what kind of person am I ?

Don't forget to answer his question....

Here's a pic from our Chicago trip in Dec 2004 after both of us sailed through some tough times.