The Magic Word

The magic word that Ive been enjoying over the last few days is "Amma". You watch these old tamil or hindi movies where the hero and his mom do the "Ma".."Beta" thing. Well Ive always had a good laugh at those scenes and immitated the same to my own as well as others' amusement. At that time, I least expected to be enacting the act myself some 10 years down the line. But now that my daughter has learnt the words 'amma' and 'abba' (instead of appa) I do find myself not only being part of the scene but also deriving great joy out of it. Smrithi obviously is extremely impressed with the way she is able to pronounce those words, and loves to hear herself say it, because she keeps saying it all the time. Every time she says it, my heart just melts and makes me realize what i have in front of my eyes - my daughter - a human being with a heart and mind of her own, who has (ya she already has) her own preferences, will have her own way of doing things...

Motherhood is truly a gift - to be able to nurture a child and bring her up and watch her succeed in all her endeavours, is a life worth looking forward to.

The Seminar

Ive been wanting to get ahead beyond the first post that i made to my own blog.. but have been tied down with preparing for the seminar which finally got done yesterday. The seminar was essentially a sales seminar "Data to Insight" - we trying to get some new prospects for Business Objects projects. My role was to get everything organized including a demo/presentation of the product. So I have been spending the last month or so with preparations for that.
Since it was a dinner seminar event, I will go ahead and try to describe both.


The turnout was not bad, my presentation went off really well, and I even earned a few compliments on it. The first few minutes were a bit scary but after that I was pretty comfortable with what I was doing.

The food was an absolute let down (for vegetarians). First came a bowl of salad which Ive never cared for anyway, so I didnt touch it all. Then came a plate with some boiled vegetables. No Indian in his right sense would be able to eat that. The thing had no hint of salt or spice.. ugh!!! I ate a few pieces of carrot and zuchini mainly because I didnt want to faint during my presentation which was to start a few minutes later. I was hoping to return to a plate of the actual dinner (pasta or something) but returned to find only my dessert waiting.. ugh.. boiled vegetables for dinner? they might as well have let us graze in a farm..
The keynote address was about running IT as a business. It was interesting to see the perspective of top IT heads on the challenges they face in running their department. Some of it went above my head - I found it difficult to perceive probably due to my limited exposure to events that occur at that level of the management. The keynote address was followed by a presentation by our CEO - that was good too, but half way through it I had stopped concentrating and thinking about my presentation which was to follow. My presentation went on alright - no problems at least, a few questions, managed to appease the curious folks there and finally ended well.
Now what remains to be seen is if we do close a few sales as a result of the seminar. That would probably be a true measure of its success.

Finally.. my own blog!

Having pondered on the idea of creating a blog for a very long time, I finally sit down to doing it. My only hesitation with respect to having my own blog was that I always hoped I would be able to make up my mind on dedicating my blog to a particular topic... I have often looked at financial blogs etc.. but since I still havent been able to make my mind on what my blog should be about, I decided to just go ahead and get started. My blog will therefore have whatever I feel like writing about - My musings..
The last push towards doing this however was a blog that I read recently - My friend Divya Prasad's dad's blog. I was immensely impressed by it for some reason. I realized I had got left behind in the blogging scenario - the previous generation had started blogging.. high time!!!