Rose is a rose, called by any name?

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Well Mr.Shakespeare, I am not sure everyone agrees with you.

From the time I started blogging which I thought are my stupid thoughts, :) the few people who started reading it, started commenting about the name. Don't call it stupid. Well i never bothered to change it, cos i write so little and so inconsistently. But when suddenly i got 3 requests (or threats) from my friends on changing the name on the same day, well may be I ought to listen to them. I don't want to reduce my reader's list from 10 to 7.

Another thought that went through my head was, when parents name their kid, some do a lot of research or get suggestions from friends or decide to give the baby a suited name. Others just give them some name. My blog got the second deal. And as an arrogant parent i thought, well he got a name - he won't change it. Times are changing and kids if they don't like their name will change it themself.

So here it goes.... i have rechristened my blog. My dear blog, you are no longer stupid...

Friendship in Mars & Venus

Men are from MARS, Women are from Venus? Indeed!

I had an interesting discussion about friendship with two good Venus friends. I told them about my personal funda on friendship.

3 stages of friendship
Stage 1. You meet someone. You love the guy/gal. They seem to be a cool person according to your defnition of cool. He/She is my friend. People who don't meet this critirea usually don't end up as friends.
Stage 2. You start seeing the negatives in them. Man! he/she is getting on my nerves. I hate that part/attitude/behavior of him/her. Some friendship ends there or gets limited to a hi/bye friendship in this stage.
Stage 3. If you reach stage 3, I have accepted him/her as my friend with the negatives. This friendship is going to last for a long time. There will be times i just hate him/her, but he/she will be my friend. At this stage the friendship is based on "Nishkama Karma" - i am not expecting anything in return for being your friend, helping you out, i want to be there for you no matter what! (I try - cant say i always do. :) I am human!).

This is my idea of friendship and is a funda which works for me. I usually add a disclaimer when i tell this to others - "Not sure if this is applicable to the ladies' mind". And both of my venus friends who heard this said, in their own arguments, nope it doesn't.

Its very difficult for girls to go from stage 2 to 3. For stage 3, girls will try to change their friend to a better person (according to them) and remove their negatives. Its difficult to accept the negatives and say my friend has these flaws in him. Stage 2 to 3 is not final for girls. Its an iterative process. Friends do move from stage 3 to 2 :) or may be there is no stage 3.

Nish Kama Karma -- very difficult to follow for Venus. Especially if it is a :-) girl - girl friendship.

Another thing for girls, if you are not in constant touch, friendship sort of dies off. Even if he/she is your best friend in college, if you haven't talked to them, its difficult for girls to continue the friendship when you meet them after years. I met one of my best buddies in Dubai after may be 6 years and we just continued from where we left off, in our college hostel years ago. For the same point i had an argument with my cousin. She was telling me Dil Chahta Hai is a stupid movie. How can you continue friendship after such a big fight and after so many years of not talking, by just calling and talking to him. I told her, because we are from MARS, you won't understand it Venus girl.

I hope this doesn't happen to Vini, that in 5-6 years all her friends are my friends and their wifes/husbands. I will hate to see that happen.

This is my funda, which works for me. If you disagree :) please let me know. I love to hear about it.

Coincidence?!!!

In Amazon interview, i was asked a brain teaser during lunch interview with my manager.

"Imagine that you are driving to a very important meeting. You have a very important presentation to make in company's annual meeting. You have the only copy of the presentation on your laptop. You have to be there in the meeting. When you are driving through a hilly area, suddenly one of the car tire got punchured. You have no cell coverage, nobody to be seen nearby. You decide to change the tire and put in the spare one. When you remove the bolts of punchred tire, they roll down the hill. You cannot make it on time if you walk / run to the office and it is too far. What will you do?"

After going through one or two routes, i got the answer. Take one bolt from each of the other tires and fix the spare tire. So all 4 tires run on 3 bolts. Manager happy, me happy and i am an Amazonian now.

One week after joining Amazon, i am driving through Highway 520 in Seattle. Guess what, my tire blows. I park my car in the side of highway and change the tire, all the while thinking, man! the bolts shouldn't roll into highway. After putting in the spare tire, i take my car to tire shop to get a new tire. When they were removing my tires - bam! one of the bolts is broken. That needs to be replaced. So i am driving around in car with 3 bolts of one tire.

Amazon interview brain teaser... Tire puncture... 3 bolts per tire... Coincidence?!!!

Baby Steps....

One week in Seattle, it was about time that i stopped being a tourist and learned how to be a Seattleite. Atleast this was going to be our home in US for some time. And hopefully the last US home from where we will pack our bags and go back to Gods own country, Kerala. Seattle is a little over whelming for a guy who has stayed in huge but spread out Dallas & small and quiet Charlotte. So i have decided to take baby steps in exploring this city.

First things first, stop driving and start using the metro / sound transit buses. Seattle is really well connected with the bus service. Thanks to google maps, finding what bus to take even if it involves walking, transit from metro bus to sound transit bus has really been made easy. Found my bus route from corporate house and its timings. Daily travel in bus was a long lost activity, probably did this last during my early infosys days in chennai. So now i ride Bus route 70 every morning with a book. Time to catch up on reading. Joined Seattle Public Library. May be time to get an Amazon Kindle.

Later i decided to explore the South Lake Union area where Amazon has put me up. Weather was really good the first 3 days i have been in Seattle. Sunny, bright.. why is everyone complaining about weather here. Or so i thought. As soon as i started walking around the lake union park, it started drizzling. Seattle decided to show its true colors to me, now that i am settling in. Trying to become a Seatteite, but still something was missing. Walking through the South Lake union area, where all the yatches and boat houses are i realised what was missing. I walked into the nearest Starbucks and got a latte. Walking in rain with a Starbucks coffee in my hand.

Yes i was taking my baby steps in Seattle. Learning how to be a Seatteite.