Infinite thoughts

Over past few years, eating out has become very common. With the rising number of restaurants all around, Meghana and I keep on trying different places from time to time. And we are seeing some common problem across the restaurants. Lack of good service is the most recurring problem. Recently we visited Melange by Four Seasons  and had a not so good experience. The person looking after our table, was completely lax and lacking basic hospitality skills. When there's a buffet, customer asks for soup and starters, it is a common sense to serve soup first followed by starters. But no. We were served the starters first and then soup. The starters had higher quantities of salt and other spices as compared to the soup, which made the soup taste absolutely bland. As usual Meghana called up the manager. The manager and the waiter were perplexed - both of them had no clue why we were upset. After much deliberation amongst themselves, finally manager approached. We explained the proble

Couple of weeks back, one of my colleagues told me about the recent event happening in Pune on every Sunday - Happy Street . At first it looked odd to me - people flocking the venue at 7 AM for no specific agenda, that too on a Sunday morning!! But then he showed me some of the photographs he had taken there and a video clip where two youngsters were showing off their football skills. I decided to take Meghana and Mrunmay to Happy Street and witness the event myself. For initial 3-4 weeks the event was held at Aundh and from last weekend (21-Feb) it is being held at Kalyaninagar, opposite AdLabs. The concept is very simple. An area gets demarcated as "Happy Street" and gets closed for all automobiles. Only pedestrians and cyclists are allowed in that zone. Then the organizers setup some events and are then joined by some other enthusiasts to setup activities meant to engage people. When we reached there on Sunday morning, people had started dropping by. Some had borrow

Whenever  Meghana , Mrunmay and I step out somewhere, it usually is a challenge for Mrunmay to keep himself occupied. As much as we want him to converse with us, experience the surroundings, learn to appreciate good things around, he usually runs out of patience pretty soon, unless one of us starts telling him some story. Many-a-times that is not possible.  Out of sheer need to teach him pass time, I invented related words game , which Mrunmay pretty much loved. We end up playing it in long journeys or even on the dining table. This game can't be played at a noisy place or when Meghana or I want to have conversation either with each other or some other people around. This had necessitated me to keep Mrunmay engaged with various things. Things like asking him to count specific objects around - e.g. Count all the empty chairs in the hall. Once he has done that, I'd add some qualification to that - Count all the red empty chairs. And then may be count wall mounted fans etc.