HAPPY HOLIDAYS

We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas
And a HAPPY NEW YEAR !!

HAPPY 2009 !!

Games growing up

When I was a kid, we lived in a colony. There were 5 of us who were almost the same age and played with each other every single day from 5:00pm to 6:30pm. It was a fixed routine ... be it weekday or weekend. We came back from school, had snacked and reported our days activities to our respective parents and got together to have a fun evening sharply at 5'o clock. We had this strange way to addressing each other ... we spelt our each other's name ... for example, my friends called me "P-R-I-D-E-R-A" and never Pridera. Our parents hated it and tried to correct us ... but we continued to follow our chosen way.
We played various games like:
* Jhute ... pretty simple game "Catch me" as it is called in most places
* Crocodile crocodile can we cross the golden river - here one person stood in the middle of road and declared a color ... if one had that color in our outfit, one could easily cross the road ... else they had to dodge the one in the middle and cross.
* Hide and seek ... which we called eyes pies
* Queen's palace: where we imagined the huge rocks near the compound to be castles
* Tree climbing: We did this most of the times ... there were 2 chosen trees on which we had gotten comfortable maneuvering from one branch to another
* MIrror Mirror on the wall
* Char pattar
* Bachcha - where we drew patterns of squares we had to hop on
* Hop and catch

We played many other pretend games (pretend like teacher, like a sportsperson, like mommy etc)

I distinctly remember, on wednesdays uncle N (father of one of my friends) used to play music on his stereo system and we all danced .... we hated it initially ... but slowly began to have fun with it.
Once we moved to Mysore ... I played less frequently because of lack of time, friends and slowly my interests shifted to classical music and dance. They took up most part of the evenings.

Now I am in the US and kids play either their homes or in designated areas .... very different from the way I used to play outside my house while growing up.

White Elephant

We are having a White Elephant Event next week in our office ... I am new to this place and have no idea what to expect !
Any gifting ideas?

It happens only in India ....

Yeddyurappa, Chief Minister of Karnataka to receive Honorary Doctorate for his contribution in "Public Life".
WHAT?????? Read here for more ...

PLEASE REMIND ME ....

the kannada serial name which had introductory song that goes

Kaala Munde ... Naavu Hinde ... Jhootaata Jhootata ...

It was aired at 3:30pm weekdays ...

PLEASE REMIND ME ....

Software enlightenment

Have you made any presentations in your work place? What have you used for your presentations ?
Well... so far I had done presentation using only Microsoft Power point. Some time back I used, Pages, a tool within iWork from Apple. I was bowled over by the various elements of this. I mean, there were ready templates available in different formats from Summer Party Invitations to Daycare Notice to Surf School program to Yard Sale. The template had relevant pictures for the different occasions as if words were hardly required. I was confident, if I made presentation to a huge crowd, I could their attention effortlessly with my wonderful templates.
That was until I saw KeyNotes today. WOW ... thats the first word that comes to my mind after having explored some of its features. I mean, here is a tool which will help me build presentations using such lovely templates and formatting capability .. I am in awe. There is this "Smart Build" feature which will help build my presentation just the way I want ... I can set my presentation text to appear like sparkles in the color I chose and have my images spin and swap whenever I need them to. And the icing to the cake ... well the audio / video feature. Yup, you can play a pleasant violin tune when you want to make presentation to students about violins and play a video demo of a tool you want to encourage users to use. Awesome or what ????

You tell me if you are awestruck by any particular application !!

49-O

Learnt about it today ...
No more "Didn't find any leader worthy of my vote ... hence did not vote" reasoning. Apparently in India, a valid voter can go to the booth and need not cast his vote if the candidates are not worthy of his vote. If the number of votes that were not casted is greater than any of the casted vote for a candidate, it calls for a re-election. And the best part, the same candidates are not allowed to contest the elections.

Please make your vote count ... check out the details here.