A Turkish Delight

I just got back from attending a lecture by 2006 Nobel prize winner for literature, Orhan Pamuk from Turkey in Seattle Arts center. I walked into work today thinking of numerous tasks that had to be completed when my Turkish team mates informed me about this lecture. I just could not believe the conincidence. Just on friday, I had read the speech given by Orhan Pamuk after receiving the award. It was very interesting and intriguing at the same time. He had spoken about things like why he writes, what drives him and things like that. So the opportunity of listening to him the very next monday was something I couldnt resist and also the fact that I have never attended a lecture by a Nobel Laureate before. I had a lot of expectations from the speech and was waiting to be blown away. It didnt turn out quite that way, but it was fascinating to hear an author talk about his passions and the process of writing his novels and how he transformed himself from a painter to a novelist. Even more fascinating was to watch this man trying to stike a balance between his political beliefs about the Armenian genocide and keeping his novels politically correct. My next stop to unravel the complex mind of this individual is the non-fiction book he had written called "The Other Colors".

My Lost Friend

The day I got my annual review, I was happy with it since it is a reflection of the work done over the course of the year and it went quite well. I was thinking how to celebrate it, should I buy a new TV, an xbox 360 or buy some golf clubs, etc etc at which point my day dreaming was cut short by my wife's phone call. I had to get the car from her to go to the scheduled car service. As I was driving, an orange object just above the audio system, shining in the very little sunlight that we get in Seattle caught my attention. It was a Ganapathi statue that my wife had got from India. As I was looking at the statue, I realized that I did not thank God for what I had received today, the invisible friend whom I had looked up to on several occasions over the years in times of need and distress and thanked whenever I received something I was happy about. I was wondering when was the last time I had thought of him... well it was a few days ago when I was contemplating if he really existed in the first place.The German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once famously proclaimed "God is Dead". Were the events of that day a stark reminder that I've actually lost him?

The Missing Tail

Today morning I was reading about the DVD format wars between HD-DVD and BluRay on news.com. They were discussing about how in a year's time there might still be no resolution to it and customer's are still weary of buying either one of the players. This is very similar to so many situations in life where we are always waiting for something better to come and we miss out on whats available right in front of us. It reminds me of an story I heard sometime back...A man fell in love with a woman and went to her Dad to get permission to marry her. The Dad said that he needs to pass a test. The test was that he has to catch the tail of a bull that comes out from behind a door in a open field. In the field there were three doors. So the guy waited for the first bull and it was too huge and so he said let me wait for the next one, it must be smaller. Then the second door opened and out came a bull that was even bigger than the first one and so the guy decided to wait for the third. When the third door opened, he was very excited to see a really weak bull just trudging along. And just when the bull was going past him, he noticed that it did not have a tail... Wonder how many such tails we have missed in life...