How to be an early-riser?

In nursery I read a line "early to bed, early to rise; makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"

Is that true? I do not know. Never got a chance. I am one who to go to bed at early in the morning and rise late in the day. I am like the late-city edition of the newspaper which comes out late so that all the news of the previous day can be included.
In my school day I was forced to rise early. Then also I used to sleep till the time after which it would become impossible to attend school. That too after mom and dad used to bug me for about an hour.
Then came the hostel days in college (SRK Hostel @ JMI, New Delhi). I do not remember a single day when I had breakfast at hostel mess. Me and my roomie were equally good at rising late (but I think I was a bit better). But we used to have four different alarms set, still earliest time was 10:00am.
I improved on that at NCST, B'lore. Due to that appearing for the quizzes was a big headache. But there I had a genuine reason; we used to sleep really late there. How can you expect one to rise early the next day?
But after that, this habit of mine became a serious problem. Now joined a job and all the freedoms of a student life were gone. I was supposed to report at 9'o'clock in morning. It has been more than a year here but I m still struggling to do it.

I wish to consciously improve (on the early-riser side) on this. But I am at my wits' end. If someone has any innovative ideas, you are most welcome to post them in the comments. Looking forward for some helpful comments ...

A page from every 'Guy's Dairy!!!

Everyone in their lives would have had crushes, and me too had my share of crushes. But, it didn't take much time for each of them to turn to crashes.

None of my crushes took off, or probably they crashed even before they took off !! Today, when I look back, I cant manage but to have a laugh.

My first crush was on Miss R. I was in my tenth then. We happened to speak only once. It was when I had offered her a coke. She refused to have it and the very next moment I gulped it down. I still cant forget the dumbstruck look on her face. A few days later, she started going around with one of my classmates. They used to go for wonderful evening walks, Miss R, my classmate and her doggy. Unfortunately (fortunately for me), the affair didn't last too long. On one such romantic walk of theirs, my classmate was bitten by the doggy. He brought up the question: Its me or the dog......she chose the dog !!! The news gave me sadistic pleasure.

I was in a co-ed school for my 11th-12th. I got very friendly with Miss N in my class. It appeared to me that...yes...she is the girl. One day, Miss N came and sat next to me...close...really close.....my heart beats shot up. She said.. I want to tell you something....but please maintain it as a secret. I knew...this was it...yes....she went on...you know...X(another classmate of mine) proposed me......and I too like him...and I accepted. I am telling you coz you are like my brother.......WHAT THE HECK ? As if the first news wasn't bad enough, the second sounded suicidal. I looked at her with an artificial smile and said....Congrats S..S..Sis !!!

The next crush didn't take much time to happen. It was Miss S who walked in to class. I literally had my jaws hanging seeing her. We became good friends...but I never fancied my chances...given the Miss N experience. She was my Biology project partner....while she did the project...I concentrated on her biology ! Just as the boards got over, and as I was mustering enough courage to tell her, her dad got transferred. She changed the city.

Next in engineering college, there was this hottie in my class. Boy....she was a babe...Miss G. She used to stand opposite to me in the chemistry lab.I prayed for some chemistry to happen between us. But I guess, she was much smarter than I was. Miss G realised that I used to mess up all my titration experiments coz I used to be looking at her and not the lab apparatus. I called her out ALONE on my b'day. She turned up with her whole bunch of friends. The girls kept giggling and I looked for a place where I could go and bang my head. I steered clear of her for the rest of my engineering days.

Moving on from here, it was a major success story. This time round, it took some time for things to crash....just a little longer..a bit more than five years. Everything seemed like a fairy tale when the crash factor took the better of me.

By this time, I was in my job as a lecturer and I decided to use the term "interest" instead of crush. So , my interest grew in Miss L in college. I thought she was a very pretty lady. Thankfully, the growth of my interest stopped very soon, the moment I learnt that she was supposed to go on leave the next week for her marriage. She was to marry her long time boyfriend. Only one thought came to my mind....The good ones are always taken !!!

Ha ha ha.....thankfully.....I have grown out of all these......no more CRUSHES.....so no chances of CRASHES......
I live this way now.....hey...wait.....who is this girl???? !!!!!!!!!

Disclaimer: not from mine.

kunjam tamil terium

"kunjam tamil terium" means "I know Tamil little bit".

It has been little over a year since I shifted my residence to Chennai (erstwhile Madras). Tamil is the first language of the city and without it one can not get along in city. English is also used but is limited to offices, big shops, theaters, malls, etc. Day to day interaction has to be in Tamil which makes it essential to learn the language.

Tamil was very different from the languages already known to me, namely Bengali, Hindi and English. So I found it very difficult to grasp. But as it is said necessity is the best teacher. Today I can say I know a bit of the language, though a conversation is still like a river flowing in front of me. I can get some water from it but cannot get the whole river. The credit of whatever I learn till goes to my colleagues at office, who took the pains of translating me things which went over my head.

I will like to recall few of the words I need to use on a daily basis...
evlo ... how much?
rombo jaasti ... too much/high
irru ... stop
veedu ... home
tanni ... water
anna ... elder brother
tambi ... younger brother
onne ... one
randu ... two
anju ... five
elu ... seven
ettu ... eight
pattu ... ten
ambadhu ... fifty
po/polama ... go/shall go?

... I think that’s it ... ohh no one more ...
kadal ... love :)

Hope this list grows longer in coming one year.

Being on the other side of the table

The table I am referring here is the interview table. Little more than a year back I was preparing for sitting on the other side of the table (interviewee side). Though there is a bit of lie in that, I never used to prepare for any interview. I liked to handle it as a extempore.

Recently I was asked to sit on interviewer’s side of the table. This I round I was bit anxious, since I will have to be the driver. It cannot be that the other person is asking questions I am just replying to those. I have to ask questions and verify if the answers are correct.

I prepared some questions on the domains I had to take interview using the good old Google and studied them the night before (same thing what my prospective candidates would be doing for their preparation). But the hardest part was to interview people one after another for the whole day and that too for two continuous day. I was worried about how to decide whether a particular person suitable to selected. My main concern was not to select a wrong candidate rather than missing a suitable person.

I was a bit jittery on the first day, but learned a lot. The second day I felt confident enough that I can handle the thing alone. I enjoyed the experience, maybe mainly because it was something different from my regular work.

Maybe I might get many more chances in future but this was the first time. And like all first-timers I will remember it for a long time.