What makes a couple lovers?

Bacon Breakfast Sausages à la Dan, with sparkling Cranberry juice - my Valentine's Day breakfast

I've been married to my wife, Smitha, for more than two years now. Our "love" relationship preceded our marriage by more than three years. If I search my heart, within its innermost reaches, I find that I'm still deeply in love with my wife. True, life has its ups and downs, and marriage requires focus and dedication. The recent Valentine's Day "celebration" has made me think about couples and how we show our love.

I had long-planned a surprise day filled with many acts of love; with a mysterious line accompanying each act with the day ending with my "line" for Valentine's Day 2012. A couple of days before Valentine's Day, and all my acts were lined up. I had bought what was needed to be bought, I had prepared what was needed to be cooked, and (thankfully, in hindsight!) I didn't book tickets that need to be booked (I wanted to "stick it to the cinema theaters" and not pay their convenience charge!). Smitha being out of town till 12th February morning, helped me prepare everything for the surprise. Due to certain unavoidable reasons, plans changed, and I had to quickly adapt to preponing all acts to Monday, 13th February. The second setback was my mysterious lines which were to accompany each act; due to certain other, erm, unavoidable circumstances, the planned method of delivering these lines failed completely. Then, a friend (of Smitha's) in need made us modify the plans for the evening. All in all, my wife bore the acts at sporadic, intermittent intervals with no "mysterious" love thread binding them all together. Guess what? I spent more than the entire day with my wife, and I loved each and every moment of it.

I'm OCD-ish about certain things. Planned things have to go according to the plan. But this Valentine's Day, with my plan out of the way, and Smitha experiencing me for me alone, I had to step back and realise that my memorable time with her was not because of any well-concocted plan; my memorable time with her was because of how awesome she is (great company) and the true love that we hold for each other, deep in our hearts. So, getting back to the title of this post, what makes a couple, lovers? That they hold hands when walking down the road? That they eat from the same plate? That they are found at the film theater, cuddling with each other? That they find time to cook, eat and enjoy TV together? Or that they are great in bed together? While all of these can complement a great couple, none of these can make a couple true lovers. A couple are true lovers if they can just simply enjoy each other - regardless of whether you're eating a lovingly cooked meal, watching a film together, trying out new clothes, spending time with a friend in need.

So go ahead. Simply enjoy your better half. Simply. For while engaged in the littlest things in life, our greatest moments are born.

Indubitable - Miracles, Prayers, and a God who hears

Image:F5 tornado Elie Manitoba 2007, taken from Wikimedia Commons

Many things in life are indubitable. Look at the image above - it's a tornado. If you know what a tornado is, no one needs to tell you that this is a photo of a tornado. It's an established fact, and it wouldn't surprise you at all to see the photo and to hear someone say "That's a tornado". You know it's a tornado, and you would be unperturbed by learning that this is a photo of a tornado - it doesn't challenge your thinking and so does not get you all hyper and excited. This is the one thing lacking when it comes to our awesome God who listens to our every sneeze and answers our every prayer (some prayers receive a "No", but an answer nevertheless).

As believers, as people who believe in God, we seem to be amazed and stupefied at times when a miracle occurs or when a prayer is answered. Just visit any prayer meeting, and you'll know what I'm talking about. This irks me to a great extent. We get all excited when God dished out a teensy weensy miracle - it's what He does, people. Miracles and answering prayers is part of the nature of the almighty God - we need to get worked up only if what's in His nature does not occur. Nobody stands around and says "Hey, come look look... Water's flowing!" Nobody says that, because water always flows! We know it, so it's nothing new. Why then, do we treat the indubitable nature of our God differently? The only reason that I've seen is because we frail human beings find it extremely difficult to stretch our minds to comprehend the full and awesome nature of our God. There's only one thing to do - stretch. Truly dwell on how awesome and mind-blowingly huge our God is. The One who created the whole universe should find it extremely easy to provide for you, to clothe you, to put a shelter over your head and to sustain you with His own words - gifted to us through the Bible. Seriously, stretch. Your mind. Our God answers prayers and works miracles. This is indubitable.

Goodbye fat... Hello, aching muscles!

My wife and I joined the Gym in the first week of June. I don't see the need for someone who looks like my wife to go to the Gym, but she wanted to have 1 month of working out before that trekking trip to the Himalayas (which is currently on). Me, I just wanted to see if I could lose this tummy that my five-year stint at HP in Bangalore had given me. So I joined up - and made sure that I was performing exercises for reducing my tummy only - none to increase arm/chest muscles as such. The first day we went was a Saturday. It was kinda hard - I've never been to the Gym before in my life. By sheer will and determination, I pulled through the required quota of 1 hour. My body was aching in all places through Sunday (we didn't go on Sunday) and Monday. I missed the Gym on Tuesday due to Men's Fellowship at church. When I returned to the Gym on Wednesday, my body hadn't been aching at all. I spent the whole day trying to find out what happened to all that pain in my arms and shoulders. I was slightly confused. I entered the Gym and started my warm-up exercises and my mind went "Hello! Aching muscles... Good to know you're all still around!" and my aching muscles made themselves known in the only way possible - by reducing my fat and aching.

For those of you who are curious, I stopped going to the Gym when June ended. I work out with the main stomach-reducing exercises at home in the mornings now. I'm just trying to stay fit... Also, I'd like to put out a special shout-out to my wife, Smitha, for being this totally amazing friend and companion at the Gym. She's awesome and amazing.

Five years: Of Bangalore, of HP, and WWJD

So it's been five years since I came to Bangalore to work with HP. These five years have been filled with fun, laughter, eating out, getting to know people, learning bits and pieces of Kannada and Hindi, attempting to launch a proper band to sing/perform/record the songs I write, attempting to write a book or two to vent my imagination based on reality, 3 residence changes, working out of five offices, falling in love totally and madly with my wife, nurturing patience within and understanding a teensy-weensy bit of the world around me.

Life at HP has had its ups and downs. Looking back over the past five years, I can only say that God's providence and grace has been with me throughout, and brought me to where I am right now in this mega-mega-company. Everything in these past five years has not been "rosy", but I personally have no regrets. I am very glad with what I am doing right now, and am happy to be where I am.

If you are anything like me, you'd be wondering "All this is fine and dandy, but what in the world is that WWJD band doing here?" To explain, a bit of history. I like being a Jesus freak, and I love most things that are attached with such concepts. "What Would Jesus Do?" is a worldwide movement/phenomenon/concept which technically should serve as a reminder to Christian believers to make the right choices while struggling with the tough decisions that life calls us to make. My Dad got this for me back in 2005 November, and I've not removed this since that time. It just needed adjusting now and then, as my puny hand decided to gain weight. I have decided to take this off right now for various reasons - the biggest and the most important being that this has stopped serving the purpose quite a while ago. God uses several other means and methods to help me understand and choose the right decision. The WWJD band has faded into oblivion in my life, and serves as nothing more than a mere piece of dirty green and white on my hand. I love Jesus, but see no further point being achieved by the band on my hand.

What's all this got to do with my five years in HP and Bangalore? I don't quite know. However, in a manner of speaking, I think I'm trying to say - a segment of my life is done. Volume I in my post-college era is over, and I'm moving on. Volume II looms ahead, with uncertain paths and unconquered territories. I'm pushing on. My heart hasn't caved in, so I'm still singing His name.

I Hate Goodbyes

I'm totally and completely bummed. And for reasons that I never ever dreamed could make me feel this way. I have been following this tech blog called Engadget for almost 3 years now, quite avidly. I devour every post with a feverish desire for more.

A year or so after I started reading Engadget, I started noticing the names of the authors. Some styles stood out, and you could easily make out who wrote those articles. The first name that really stood out for me, was Joshua Topolsky. This dude is amazing. He comes up with the best quips, puns and writes articles in a lavish way that makes you wonder - is he an actually existing human being? He also lead the team at Engadget for the past four years or so, as their Editor-in-Chief. He announced in a post a few days ago that he's leaving Engadget on 31st March, in a sorrow-evoking post titled Hello, I Must Be Going.

That wasn't how the barrage of bad news out of Engadget started, though. It all started with one of my fav-est editors on the Engadget team - Paul Miller. February 18th saw a post on Paul's personal website title Leaving AOL. For the uninformed, Engadget's parent company is AOL. In it, Paul stated that the AOL way of doing things was one of the reasons for leaving, as AOL seemed to increasingly see Engadget (or content) as a medium to display Ads with. I can personally understand the sort of greed that drives this - I see this in so many tech/sites in India even. (It is also one reason why we've kept The Indian Geek non-revenue-based, till now) I've been a Paul Miller fan ever since I learned of his enthusiasm for Pixel Density. Being an enthusiast of Pixel Density myself, I liked him instantly. And then I learnt of his love for Jesus. And, he wrote really decent, well-thought out articles. What more could you ask for in a guy you've never met? I was hooked.

The news of Paul Miller leaving Engadget was almost instantly followed by the news of Ross Miller leaving Engadget. I wasn't personally too taken up with Ross Miller, but he was part of my favourite tech blog - Engadget, and that was enough for me to feel really sad. He announced it in a post on his personal blog titled (very simply) Goodbye, Engadget. The fact that two fine Engadget editors were leaving right about the same time was sad, sad news for me. I was pretty down.

That was nothing till I learned of Joshua Topolsky leaving. A fellow-geek at The Indian Geek asked me "Why are you bummed about this?" I have no idea. I guess I just love Engadget and all things Engadget way too much for me to be able to stomach the fact that a man I really admire and who's been steering Engadget faithfully these past few years, is actually leaving. There might have been a tear or two, but let's not go into that now. Let's get to the next part - Nilay Patel, Associate Editor at Engadget has left Engadget on 4th March, and quite silently too. He announced that he had left, after news of him leaving leaked out yesterday - in a personal post titled It's Tomorrow. My liking for Nilay Patel started after his post on rooting and hacking his Motorola Droid X. I've since heard him on the podcasts, seen him on the shows, and just like his nature and his attitude. Basically, Josh, Paul and Nilay were the top-team at Engadget. And they've been pretty awesome. Seeing them all leave within the space of a month or so (alongwith Ross Miller's departure) is pretty depressing.

What could I do? Nothing. I don't know a single person in my friends' circle who cares. There are a few who actually read Engadget now and then. But none that I know of, who feel so personally about the Engadget editors. I just hope that Chris Ziegler, Laura June, Joanna Stern, Darren Murph, Vlad Savov, Richard Lai, Myriam Joire and Tim Stevens stay on. I really like them and their writing.

To close this post, I'd like to say that I'm amazed that a few dudes leaving a tech website at the other end of the globe could actually make me feel so low. I don't think I've felt this "low" since I heard of Petra's shutdown. Petra, is my favourite band of all time. The. Greatest. Band. Ever. They played Christian Rock, and they announced their intention of shutting down in 2005. I was devastated. I'm not devastated now, but I'm pretty down and sad. Guess the world keeps moving on, doesn't it?

My first mobile blog post

So, I guess the title says it all. I've an Android phone and I love using it for lots of online activities. Here's a new one - mobile blogging. As is evident from the state of my blog, I'm not regular. But now, those irregular blog posts can cone from my phone! Yaiy for technology.

Of blogs, geeks and Indians

For those of you (the two or three individuals out there) who are waiting for an update about my life, this isn't it. This post is fully and completely dedicated to detailing the unofficial story behind The Indian Geek.

Long, long ago I started a side-blog titled "Dan's Desirables" to write about gadgets I love and desire. The blog turned out to be posts about mostly Apple products. (No surprises there, eh?!) Nearly two years ago, the blog was moulded into Gadget Desirables adding Josh Rajasingh as a co-author. We didn't write much about anything after that, apart from writing about the gadgets/technology that we owned. Add to this the fact that I was a keen follower of all Apple-related news and rumours (via Macrumors.com) and other tech-related news (via WinSuperSite.com and Engadget.com) and you have a dude with a wealth of geeky knowledge.

When reading articles on Indian tech sites and blogs, I was appalled by two things - one, the lack of functional English. I'm not expecting Shakespeare to stand up and applaud for these articles/posts, but I do expect a certain level of English grammar when reading something from reputed Indian tech sites and blogs. Two - these sites generally never seem to "get" what exactly they're talking about. Leave it to them to talk about 320x480 QVGA displays and 800x400 WVGA displays on smartphones... Sheesh.

In September 2010, when chatting with the afore-mentioned Joshua Rajasingh (he's in the US) it suddenly struck me that we should take Gadget Desirables and make it an Indian tech blog. We can write decent-enough English, and we know a thing or two about technology. Why not put this information out there for everyone to see and read? With this sort-of-thinking, The Indian Geek website was born. We added the geekiest guy I know, Digital Ajay (Ajay John Paul) to the mix, and we were good to go. We currently write articles about technology, trying to demystify technology for every Indian consumer out there. If we had a rupee for everytime a sales chap at a tech-related store (The Mobile Store, TATA Croma, etc.) made a blunder about a feature of a mobile phone - we'd be rich people. To help our Indian consumers make easy and informed decisions, we birthed the site. We've since written a host of articles, and crossed a few significant (atleast, to us) milestones.

Where does God plan to take all this? I don't know. All I want to do is - get the info from our heads to the people out there. It's pretty simple really - let's say you want to buy a mobile phone. Walk into a store, and the sales guy would be like "This handset is moving well now, sir/madam" Who the heck cares? A thousand people may buy a specific handset - but there's only one out there that's the perfect fit for you and your budget. Android may be well and good for many people, but your needs may require a Blackberry. You may be a stylish executive with a need to impress your clients, which may influence your decision to get yourself an iPhone 4. Whatever you do, you need to look at the options out there and decide what you want to buy, with the money that you possess. And that's why The Indian Geek exists. To geekify every Indian. :)