Playing the inner game

Last Sunday, I got thrashed by Shin, my tennis teacher for not following the basics. He told me that I am getting carried away with my own style of Tennis, which is far away from what is called basics. When playing I started thinking about what he said, and tried to follow all that he told, but things just got worse, to the point, that I was not able to return a forehand cross court, either in my style or the correct style. I was so much out of sorts that I requested him for a break, which he was glad to offer.

That made me think about, coaching, learning, and of all doing things correctly that you already know. For example, I know how to play a forehand cross court, I have done it a thousand times flawlessy (right from the first time). It is just that in the due course I settled to a style that suits me. In doing so, it seems that I am way off target. Missing the basics. And last Sunday, when it got pointed out, it was difficult to change my comfortable style I lost something. Later I understood it was the so called "Inner game". Last Sunday, during practise sessions, hopelessly, I failed again and again ...

Now talking about Inner game, recently I had been browsing a lot, especially about software development in the 60s, 70s, 80s, ... and while doing so I came across this wonderful video, a lecture by Alan Kay. It is a 90 minutes video on user interfaces, dynabook and a lot more ...

Now the part I wanted to talk about, is an excerpt from this video. When Alan Kay talks about the teaching methods, he points to Tim Galleway, who used to be a great coach, and has written this good book called, "The inner game of Tennis". The book was very interesting that I immediately order it from Amazon Japan.

Now, talking briefly about this book, Tim differentiates any game that is played into two,
- The inner game (played in the player's mind) and
- The outer game (played by the player's body)
Interesting isn't it, he talks extensively about the inner game in his book. As far as the outer one, there are more books than the number of tennis balls ever made (that was just a joke). According to Tim, Inner game is played in the player's mind, that does not think, and when you start playing the game in your mind, you start winning. And when you start thinking (too much), you start loosing. Anyway, there are 2 videos that talk about this (they are embedded in this article at the end).

Now, talking about Inner game, and last week's session of Tennis, I thought I lost the inner game and starting thinking way too much, that it the end I just messed up "everything that I had been doing correctly". During my tennis sessions I have witnessed this many times, but mostly with others. When they were taught too much (or paid much attention), people just started playing badly. Is it because they are loosing the inner game. I think so.

The following videos is a proof to Tim's coaching success. I wish everyone I know enjoy it.

I also ordered a Japanese version of the book for Shin ;-). His birthday is on the 22nd of Feb, and I will gift to him on that day (though I am raring to give asap), and hope that he reads it through.

How to keep track of blogs ...

After I started writing blogs, I always wanted to write about 2 topics,

1. How to write a blog
2. How to keep track of a blog

These 2 topics had been in my todo-list for a long time, and today I am going to write about a few tracking tools that will make your life easy when reading a blog, or for that matter, websites that gets updated regularly.

One such useful tool I can think of is google reader. Please see the following link

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2009/01/google-reader-for-beginners.html

Also take a look at the following videos,



Have fun tracking blogs ...

Somebody just read my blog ...

Recently some of my friends, including Harsha, Nanda, and Jeff, told me they were reading (following) my blog. So I got curious and installed a hit counter yesterday. The fun started after installing it,

I set the hit counter's initial value to its default, so that would mean a fresh start. I could have given some (random) value like 200 or something, or could have even taken a wild guess at the initial hit count. But I just wanted to start fresh. And so I reset it to ZERO, the default value. After setting up the counter, I went to my webpage (immediately) and checked the count. It was showing '1' (obviously my visit). And then after about a couple of hours, I went and checked again, it was showing '2' (obviously my second visit), now I was worried. NO-BODY bothered to check my website in about 2 hours. I felt like a shopkeeper who kept his store open, and no customers visited it. Off course, the things inside are free, and all that the customer needs is time. And then I checked the website in disbelief again and again till the count reached 7. And everytime I check, the count increases by 1. And it was always ME.

So yesterday I left the counter at '7', and said to my myself that I will have to just try harder and harder, and success does not come overnight. So today, that is about 18 hours since I installed a counter, I checked my page again. And wow! to my surprise, someone had just opened it. The hit count was '9' ... It was a really nice feeling ;-)

I just wish I can write more quality blogs ;-) which will be useful to the humanity.

Great expectations ... American style

Its a couple of days since I wrote my last blog. I was busy with work.

Today I want to write about the effect of expectations on human beings. I was seeing CNN, as it was flashing the preparation to the US President (elect) Barack Obama's swearing in ceremony, it was about 5 hours to the occasion, but there was a sports count down timer, and lots and lots of camera's from various angles, and of all lots of people with enthusiasm and expectation were waiting to hear the words that the president will speak. I asked myself this question, why would so many people flood to see an inaugural ceremony? Is it because the US citizens love their president, or is it patriotism, or Obama’s charm, or is it the hatred towards Bush. I guess it’s probably all of the above with a tilt towards the last couple.

Now, as the economy is tumbling like a catamaran on a windy sea, and with industry’s and people’s confidence in batters, everybody needs confidence. Confidence to search for a job, spend, invest, live, … , for everything. Like everybody my confidence too has been at a historic low.

(Insurance) Companies going bankrupt, high profile frauds, stock market at a historic low. At a glance, it seems that I am not affected at all. I have never invested in stocks. But it seems that there is a lot of indirect effect on us, like for example our pension funds, less interest on fixed deposits, more interest on housing loans, etc. I am not an economist, but all these have had a blow on people’s confidence.

And whenever we are troubled beyond what we can tolerate, we try to seek help from a powerful source (for example, god), now Obama is probably god (like) to many Americans, especially blacks. For some reason, they take pride in him.

Personally, I like his oratory. I wish him all the best.

Most of times, high expectations leads to problems, and I only wish that the new US president will prove to the whole world that, cowboys no more occupy the Whitehouse.

Air conditioner Kanji

Today one of my Indian friends called me to setup their air conditioner in warm mode. I have seen many foreigners having problems setting up their air-conditioner, washing machine, microwave oven, etc. The funny part is, they end up never using some of its functionality. I would like to recall an incident that happened last year,

One of my friends who was living alone in a 1DK apartment invited me and one more colleague of mine for lunch. We went to his room and found that the room was too cold. He apologized to us and told us to bear with it. The reason was, he thought the air-conditioner in his room was malfunctioning. When I looked at the air-con remote I found that it was in cooler mode and changed it warm mode. To my friends surprise the air-con started working in warm mode. He told me, that he had lived in the same room for 2 years without using the air-conditioner in warm mode. I thought it was just because, he could not set it in warm mode.

So today I am writing this table for those people who want to set their air conditioners …

Kanji [漢字]	Japanese reading	Meaning
Air conditioner
イアコン	iakon	Air conditioner
運転	unten	ON
入	Iri
停止	teishi	OFF
切	kiri
運転切替	unten-kirikae	Change operating mode
運転切換
Operating modes
暖房	danbo	Warm (heater) mode
冷房	reibo	Cooler mode
除湿	joshitu	De-humidify
ドライ	dorai
送風	Sofu	(Fan) blower mode
風向	fuko	Direction of air flow
自動	jido	Automatic
風量	furyo	Fan speed
スイング	suingu	Swing
温度	ondo	Temperature
空気清浄	kukiseijo	Clean air in room
空清	kusei
換気	kanki	Ventilation mode
気流	kiryu	Bring in external air
タイマー	taima	Timer
予約	yoyaku	Reserve
取り消し	torikeshi	Cancel
取消

I will add the list for washing machine, microwave oven, ricecooker, in the order one by one …

Four seasons (shiki) and letter writing ...

Today, I received a letter from Dell (in Japanese), it had "greeting words specific to the current winter season", more specifically to the month of January,

It seems that usually a (polite) letter in January starts something like, 「拝啓、極寒の候…」 which literally means, "Dear ones , in this extreme cold climate ..."

I happened to discuss this with my Japanese teacher, and found out the following ...

Shiki - Four seasons,
The Japanese have four distinct seasons, they call it shiki (四季), shi (四)- four, ki (季) - season. Japanese are proud of every season and celebrate them. Their food and dress changes for obvious reasons, but so does their mood. But today I had a feeling, that they are (mildly) proud of these seasons. They need to, because, if the global warming continues, then Japan will have to forego a few seasons (like it or not) ...

Now, I did some more research in the internet, and found the following words for each month ..

正　月　新春の候／初春の候／迎春の候／謹賀新年／恭賀新年／明けましてお

めでとうございます／謹んで新年のお喜びを申し上げます

１　月　厳寒の候／中冬の候／大寒の候／極寒の候／寒さ厳しい折より／いよ

睦　月　いよ年も明けまして／霜柱をふんで／貴地もさぞかしお寒いことと存

じますが

２　月　晩冬の候／余寒の候／残冬の候／立春の候／残雪の候／余寒厳しき折

如　月　から／春寒の候／残寒なお厳しく／立春とは名ばかりで／梅のつぼみ

もまだ堅いようですが

３　月　早春の候／軽暖の候／仰海の候／浅春の候／ようやく春めいて／一雨

弥　生　ごとに少しづつ暖かく／桜のつぼみもふくらんできました／春の足音

も聞こえるような

４　月　陽春の候／春暖の候／春粧の候／温暖の候／仲春の候／春の装いも美

卯　月　しく／若草萌える好季節／桜花の節／春たけなわ／陽ざしもやわらか

い春日和／春風駘蕩として

５　月　新緑の候／若葉の候／晩春の候／初夏の候／向暑の候／惜春の候／新

皐　月　緑が目にしみる季節となりましたが／初鰹の季節／風薫る五月となり

ましたが／青葉若葉の季節

６　月　立夏の候／薄暑の候／梅雨の候／入梅の候／長雨の候／向暑の候／若

水無月　あゆ躍るところ／山々の緑も濃くなり／うっとうしい梅雨の季節とな

りましたが

７　月　盛夏の候／酷暑の候／炎暑の候／猛暑の候／三伏の候／梅雨明けの暑

文　月　さ／暑さ厳しき折／夏祭のにぎわいもうれしく／夜空の天の川が美し

く

８　月　残暑の候／暮夏の候／晩署の候／秋署厳しき候／残暑厳しき折から／

葉　月　秋立つとは声ばかりで／朝夕は幾分しのぎやすくなりましたが／暦の

うえでは秋ですが

９　月　新秋の候／初秋の候／新涼の候／秋冷の候／秋分の候／燈火親しむの

長　月　候／秋気ようやく深きを覚える候／二百十日も穏やかに過ぎ／一雨ご

とに秋らしくなり／虫の音も聞かれるこのごろ／秋色も次第に濃くな

って

１０月　秋晴の候／秋涼の候／中秋の候／凍秋の候／秋冷の候／行楽の秋／実

神無月　りの秋／秋たけなわ／天高く馬肥ゆる秋とか／すっかり日が短くなっ

て／夜気冷やかに／山の紅葉もあざやかに

１１月　晩秋の候／深冷の候／霜寒の候／暮秋の候／向寒の候／菊薫るころ／

霜　月　取り入れの秋／肌寒い日が続きますが／感傷の秋とも申します／紅葉

も色あせて／落ち葉が風に舞うころ／落葉たく煙に秋は深まり

１２月　初冬の候／寒冷の候／歳末寒冷の候／霜枯れの季節／寒気厳しき折か

師　走　ら／木枯らし吹きすさぶ季節／年末ご多忙の折／年の瀬もいよいよ押

しつまって／心せわしい年の暮れを迎え／師走の寒さはひとしおです

I will translate all these someday (when I am free ...)

Nikkor 50mm Vs 50mm ...

Recently I am searching for a high speed lens for my Nikon D200 camera, and had looked at options like the Tamron 17-50 mm F2.8, Nikon 50mm F1.4, Sigma 30mm F1.4, etc. And recently when I visited Nikon's website, I found a new variant of Nikon 50 mm F1.4, which is costing atleast twice as much as its older counter part.

I will have to look into the details, .... As for now, I am zeroing in on the Tamron 17-50mm F2.8. Recently one of my friend wrote the following about the lens

"I have been using Tamron 17-50mm for almost two years now and it is one damn good general purpose lens other than my nikon 50mm f1.8.

As far as image quality goes, It is a fantastic lens... may be pretty close to Nikon 17-55 at one third of the price. You will not regret spending on this lens.

But, the built quality is not something to boost about, i do take extra care about my equipments - but two years of travel and use (not very extensive -no time for that!!) clearly shows up on the lens. There are no marks or dings on the body, but you can hear & feel the front element and lens barrels shaking. But, i guess we can ignore it for what it gives in terms of flexibility and the quality of images!! And it comes with 5 years warranty (in US), that i think a reasonable deal.

AF is bit slow if you compare to nikon AF-S lenses, but pretty acceptable since the zoom range is small."

You can see some of his wonderful photos in flickr and picasa.

Ofuro 「お風呂」, Hamam and bathing ...

Yesterday (11th Jan, 2009) was Sunday, the mercury was hovering over the single digits. And by 6PM, when I usually start playing tennis, it was as low as 2゜C. Playing tennis after a month long vacation owing to year-end-year-start holidays, I was exhausted. My tennis teacher and friend, Shin, told me to "enter the ofuro". Literally, It means, "enter the bath tub" or "use a bath tub". After reaching home, I was disappointed only to find that the bathroom was used for drying clothes (thanks to the super cold weather outside). So, after dinner I went to sleep.

In the morning, with the body pain persisting, I remembered Shin's advice. I decided to "enter the ofuro", I have never tried it before. After getting up at 10:00 AM owing to a National holiday, I filled the ofuro (bath-tub), with water at 42゜C to chest level (when I was sitting in it), and then heated up the bathroom using the bathroom heater, and then entered the ofuro. I was sitting inside it for 25 minutes (5 minutes more than Shin had adviced), and felt it was very refreshing. Not only the body pain was gone, a relaxed feeling engulfed me. Thanks Shin.

After getting out of the Ofuro, I was not very happy to just waste so much (still hot) water. So, I decided to use it for taking a shower, and used a bath mug to pour it over me. I continued, continued, and continued ... but after a while I was tired (just taking the water using a mug and pouring it over me). I thought, on a normal day, I could have taken a fulfilling bath 3 -4 times using the same amount of water.

Having wasted such a lot of water, and the guilty feeling still remaining. I thought the water could have been re-used, either by someone or for something else. So I browsed the internet, And found out that normally the entire Japanese family (re-)uses the same water. I thought that was (very) good.

Indians normally take bath in the morning (from very olden days). So when I first learnt that the Japanese take bath after work in the night, I was a bit confused. Now after experiencing both the ofuro and shower, I think, shower is best suited for taking bath in the morning, because it is mostly for cleaning purpose. And an ofuro, is more for relaxing, and off course cleaning. So it is best suited before going to bed.

Now, when searching about bathing, I came across the word "Hamam". It caught my eye, because it is the name of a popular brand of soap in India. Actually the word could have had its roots in a turkish bathhouses. It was an interesting information for me and hence I just mentioned here.

Now, do you take a shower, or enter an ofuro? Which one do you think is better?

Macro droplets

I love Macro photos, and last year, I bought the Nikon 105mm F2.8 VR, Micro lens. Whenever it rains I always try to shoot the hanging droplets. Today, early in the morning it seems that there was a slight drizzle, I happened to venture out and take some snaps. Here are they ...

The above photo of a grass with some water droplets was snapped without a tripod. This photo of the droplet has the camera reflection (it was shot by my friend Nanda) From droplets The above photo does not have any droplets, but I like the color combination, so I posted it ... enjoy !!!

Anto started dancing ...

Solomon started watching the Kids program 2 months back, but still was not dancing at all. I was not very impressed, because he was just concentrating but not even shaking his hands. Today after a long time, I thought I would make a film of him concentrating on the kids program, but to my surprise he started dancing today ... so enjoy the videos.
PS: They were filmed using my shaky hands and thus it is shaky ... (accept my apologies)

First I tried to upload the HD video for 6 minutes in its actual size. The upload continued overnight and did not yet get over. So, I converted it into 320x240 size WMA file and uploaded it again ...

Now Part-II of dancing ... (enjoy this one too ...)

Selecting a Japanese book ...

I have been studying Japanese for 2 years now, but, my spoken Japanese is still, not humble enough. Since I am planning to use it mostly for business conversation with customers, I wanted to polish it. With this idea I visited the Kinokuniya superstore, and somehow walked around to the Japanese section, and to my surprise there were hundreds of book on business Japanese, and I spent roughly 3 hours and could not arrive at a book that matches my level (because it is just above beginner's level) .. But after sometime I bought this book "Japanese power for living"　「生きる為の日本語力」 . I read a few pages on the way back.

The book is all about "Humble expressions in Japanese". Speaking of these humble expressions, there are two of them,
- Sonkeigo 「尊敬語」
- kenjouｇo　「謙譲語」
Sonkeigo is used to praise seniors (add extra ++)
Kenjogo is used to humble oneself (reduce your own level --)

It seems that many Japanese are starting to make mistakes here. It seems that they are starting to face the same problem as "Japanese learning foreigners", and the Japanese (elders) are trying hard to re-introduce it.

Let us take an example, If you want to inform someone over telephone to, "wait for a few minutes" The word few can be expressed as chotto→shosho→sukoshi→shibaraku (respect increases in the ascending order).

USB 3.0 highlight

It all started in 1999, when I started working on the USB mass storage class drivers for Windows 98 SE, the next version of windows, "the Windows 2000" had inbuilt USB mass storage class support. I worked extensively on USB and Mass storage class, eventually I fell in love. And had been following the developments in USB world till USB2.0 was frozen. When USB2.0 was released and adopted, I thought it is the end of the world for 1394 (firewire) and any further USB developments. Because USB 2.0 was 40 times faster than USB 1.1. When the wireless USB came into picture, I did not care much, because I thought there really isn`t any market for it, just because bluetooth and WLAN is so well established. I recently came across USB3.0, Tektronix has already released analyzers for it.

The first thing that caught my attention was its speed, believe it or not, it is 5.0 Gbps (Giga Bits Per Second), same as a PCI Express 2.0 (which is an internal bus interconnect protocol). I have not seen any USB2.0 application that is using its full speed. There are some arguments that network over USB2.0 might use its 60 MBPS bandwidth. Practically, nobody would like to connect their Network protocol stack over USB protocol in normal conditions.

What will be the typical application. If this protocol succeeds, then, we can live away with all the PCI bus inside the PC, and all your extensions cards, and even your RAM can be well, connected over USB 3.0. The designers will have a challenging time designing for this highspeed signal.

Kudos USB3.0 but ...

Hey USB3.0 developers, "Why do we want to run, so very fast?"

Satyam's revelation

Indians for a long time equated non-governmental organization to instability. Inline with this, the top graduates from Engineering schools would always strive for a government job. It was and is highly competitive, except for the salary part. It was really surprising for me to see people just wanting to get a government job, due to the paybacks they can receive. The best part for these so called "government employees" is that they good girls (thanks to the arranged marriage system in India). Girls parents think that government jobs are the safest, bla bla ...

The confidence in private companies, like TATA, Infosys, Reliance, grew recently. To the point that banks started giving loans easily to employees of these private companies. But now ... with companies just going down ... now what?

People's confidence on wallstreet took a series of blows, we only wish Madoff's problem is the last. Recently I watched a speech by Vinodh Khosla and he mentioned the worst is not yet over, he thinks the "credit card debt" will also strike. No matter what, I do not understand the intricacies of this problem, but only know that the effect is not trivial.


I wonder how come countries go bankrupt, take iceland for example. In Japan, they showed a graphical representation of the global financial crisis created by the US. My feeling (though might not be correct) is that, the US people had a ball of a time with others money. Now check the image below, you can clearly see that the American government gets back all the money they pay to us for our services. Now isn't this great ...

Now when the world was sensing something fishy in Satyam computer, its chairman, Ramalinga Raju revealed the financial irregularities. Many of my good friends work for that company, it was and is a great company. It was one of the first Indian IT companies to extensively explore the Japanese market and has a huge Japan operations. Now, I thought of asking myself this question.

"Why would such (not so bad people) a person like Ramalinga Raju, Madoff and all. inflate things?"

These people are highly educated, they probably can visualize the consequences. I cannot imagine that they did this fraud (irregularities as it is called) to benefit themselves. Is it the investors, who create this quarterly results pressure. I guess something is not correct with the way the investors confidence has an effect on the company's stock and eventually the company.

This seems to be a time of reconciliation where the foundation of many companies seems to be weak or in the worst case non-existent. The world is now shaken, and it is time for those fundamentally strong companies to withstand this shakeup.

I always like the following lines from , King Arthur's Farewell
"Future seems dark and dreary ..."
But then he adds a bit of optimism by saying
"More things are wrought by prayer than what this world thinks of ..."

In these days let us be optimistic.

New Year Resolutions

Nearly a week after New Year, I have decided to do the following,

- Continue to write blogs (till I complete writing the book that I always wanted to write)
- Divide the blog into two
- A blog for personal posts
- Another one for technical posts
- Manage both on a regular basis (regular = daily)
Everyday I spend more than a couple of hours travelling to work,

I plan to use the travel hours effectively to write down my thoughts ...

Anto's cleaning ... Part II

The earlier post on Anto cleaning our living with the tennis racket was funny ... I shot a couple of videos, but posted only one. Now I am posting the second one.

During these crisis times, people working in places like US and Japan are to gain a lot,
Due to the fact the JPY has risen like a bull against the INR. I think it is the same case with USD against INR.

(Image was flicked from Yahoo)

The graph shows the inverse, INR used be around 2.8 JPY, but now it is 1.9 JPY.
So the Rupee equivalent salary has risen by 32% (which is really huuuuuuge)

Anto's o-toshi-dama 「お年玉」...

Otoshidama means, gifts given to kids on New year's day ...

On the 31st of Dec, 2008, Me, Shanthi, and Anto went to Kakogawa 「加古川」. Usually it's a 2 hour journey, which we covered in around 3 hours.

At first, we boarded a "local train" train from Nishioji to Takatsuki, on alighting at the station we realized it was freezing cold, the strong breeze made things difficult. Shanthi wanted something hot for Anto. The next train was 9 minutes away, and so I went to find some vending machine, there was none in the Platform, so I went to the second floor where the ticketing gates and few shops were located. I went to the toilet for pissing and came back and bought a couple of Yuzu tea, and came back to the Platform to find that the train that I was about to board had already left ... sigh ...

Then we waited for the next train (14 minutes to be exact) and boarded the next train and got down at Shin-Osaka and boarded the "Special Rapid Service" bound for "Banshu Aboshi".

Otoshidama-I,

In the train an elderly man, might be in his late 60's sat besides me. As most of the Japanese he started praising Anto, and praised that Anto was cute. I was not surprised till he took out his wallet and gave Anto a JPY 1000 bill... I was SHOCKED, I thought it was not a nice guesture. And told that guy (in a rather rude voice) to take his money back, but he would not. He was probably drunk, or atleast I though so. He repeated the same phrase, "Everyone in the world are friends" 「世界の皆が友達ですね」. I liked the phrase, but did not like the 1000 Yen guesture ... He talked to me about India, his visit to Srilanka, his unmarried daughter who was crossing 30 already, his liking for Indian curry and spicy food, how longing for a long nose, etc.

Atlast he got down at Akashi, I was relieved, but some part of me wanted to talk to him more. Probably would have even liked to invite him home someday, but the 1000 Yen shock overtook all the gestures and I had to just wave him bye ...

Celebration in Kakogawa,

During golden week, A japanese friend of mine, took me to Arima onsen. I met Subahar and Deepika (an active Tamil couple), he lives in Kakokawa. He had invited us to celebrate New Year with all his co-working Indian friends. I was excited to meet people who are living here for long, especially I was curious to meet their kids.

So me and Shanthi embarked on a journey that will be our first stay in a guest's place Japan. Though it is very normal in India, travelling with Anto was was challenging ...

The Subahar's, were a real "Tamil family", and their good humour, and hospitality took our tiredness away. It was one of the most pleasent trip we had ever made.

I shot some snaps of "the New year function" which can be seen here ...

From NewYear

Otoshidama-II,

On the 1st of Jan, 2009, we came back to Nishoji (my present home town ;-)) at around 2 PM. Shin and Rieko were leaving for a tript to Vietnam and Cambodia on the 2nd. Earlier our plan was to meet them for Lunch on the 1st, but since the comfortable stay in Kakokawa only made sure we do not leave after eating those hot idlies with 3 type of chutnies and a lengthy chat.

Now I had to give them their New years gift and my wishes for the trip before they leave for Shin-san's parents home. So I rushed to meet them at the hanapot at around 4PM. I gave each one of them a shirt, and conveyed Shanthi and Anto's wishes too ...

At this, Shin and Rieko gave otoshidama-II for Anto ... 1000 Yen ++
I happily accepted the otoshidama cover, ... though I expected a bigger amount ... ;-)

Otoshidama-III,

At around 7 PM, we went to Hanapot for the formal New Year's dinner, during this time, Oto-san and Oka-san of Hanapot, gave Anto his 3rd and final Otoshidama for this Newyear.

He had 3ooo JPY in the form of Otoshidama's ...

Back in olden days, when I was a kid, we used to go to our relatives house and get some gift money, usually 5 INR (10 JPY). We used to feel very happy when someone gives 10 INR, and very sad when unexpectedy someone hands out 2 INR ...

But now, living far away from all those relatives, I neither have an oppurtunity to give, nor receive ... but am happy to write about this Otoshidama's ..

Anto's cleaning ...

I wanted to write a lot of things over the New Year ... The procrastination inside me is taking over most of the times.

I have a vague feeling that Antony will become a nice Tennis player, just because I always wanted to be one. And I thought and wish that it is probably in his genes already ...

It was humorous, but it made me sad to see him using my Tennis racket for mopping the floor. I guess those Tennis genes are still dormant and somewhere inside him ;-)