Manduka

The Final Lapse

2010-02-08T22:43:00.000-08:00

Just because I like circles, here's a link to my first post.

First off, Thank you all who read my posts. I know of atleast two people on this planet who have done so, come rain or shine (thank you folks!) and my gratefulness extends to all those who subscribed to the rss feeds

I don't see any more point of me writing on this domain. I don't have any anonymity that was offered when I started (My dad reads my posts these days!). I don't have any new ideas to post but rather a bunch of links and I have many other reasons to append which finally boil down to the same result of rapping the door behind me.

Finally,I might have a penchant for writing again but it will be on a different domain as times would have changed and I like to start with a clean slate (if I were to do it again!). This marks the end of a phase!

May be if we are lucky, we'll meet again in the cyber-crossroads. If not, Have a Good Life.

I will definitely miss some of the folks I have interacted via this medium. To miss some people in your future is bad enough but to miss people in your past smacks of misfortune to me.

So Long and Thanks for all the fish.

Go Saints!

2010-02-08T00:16:00.000-08:00

Wahoo! The team I support has won the Super Bowl. Its a fantastic outcome for me. It was on the shores of New Orleans that I dropped my anchor in the Fall of 1999. Superdome was an engineering marvel outside which PIGS (Poor Indian Graduate Students) sold beer. I can still recollect the scent of the city streets. Beignet with Coffee at Cafe Du Monde replaced my chai with samosas at Galaxy Cafe. Midnight pool and beer. Weekends spent at Razoos on Bourbon. They slowly waft out of the mists of my memory.

More importantly, I was introduced to the NFL there. Our then quarterback was Ricky Williams and I took the game instantly. Slowly, I realized the Saints were like West Indies cricket team where no amount of lead in a game is insurance against loss. Slowly they lost match after match and even the playoffs were a big deal for us.

I supported various other teams in the meanwhile. I moved to DC, so supported the RedSkins there who lost to the Cowboys when I cheered them. Moving to California, I tried to pick between Raiders and 49ers but no avail. I still went back to the saints who couldnt even make the playoffs.

Today, however, I feel great about the team making its debut superbowl into a triumphant success. Psychologically, I think we associate ourselves with the team and this its winning associatively translates into our winning. Deep down, there is a gratification in things that we can wait 10 years and still dreams will come true..

BTW for all this great ads during this superbowl, I loved Google's the best because it was simple,subtle and effective to its purpose.

Go Saints Go! You've all been canonized in the field just ahead of the Lent Season (so you could participate nicely for the Fat Tuesday and have an equally somber Ash Wednesday)

Word of the Day: Neoteny

2010-02-03T00:14:00.001-08:00

Defined as The retention of juvenile characteristics in the adult.

Going through the Rye without being Phony

2010-01-28T19:45:00.000-08:00

You guys must have heard the news. Too sad. He wrote a book that never made me want to grow up. One of the few books where a few lined haunted me in my past corporate crisis.Those lines were

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause while the mark of the mature man is that wants to live humbly for one

More than a few folks got influenced by the book so will leave that alone for a while and give some snapshots as a homage

I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it?'' he reasons. "The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question.

You ought to go to a boy's school sometimes. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the basketball team stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together.

And finally I hope he rests in peace at a world like the following

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.

NeuroLingusitic Programming

2010-01-25T21:42:00.000-08:00

One of the most basic desires of a human is to communicate. When you communicate something, there'll be a difference of opinion. Almost Always the difference happens to be because of the fact that people involved in the communication have different definitions. The so-called "being on the same page" involved the fact that all of them need to be defining the the same things in the same way.

So, one of the effects of how civilized you are is in the nature of how you handle the disagreements. Somebody disagrees with you fine. Start by asking what they think is the definition of the problem, the key issues, etc. You'll see its an easy way to bridge the definitions to resolve an issue than a forceful opinion of one side.

May be thats all just baloney but thats what I think today. Its a matter of not only programming code, its also of making sure your natural language is as clean as a 'C' code for example. it also means that as a byproduct by playing with the linguistic constructs you can make feel people they way you want to (or dont want to)..That explains why so many english language majors become lawyers because they know how to use language as a weapon of maneuvering.

On Dirac

2010-01-19T21:06:00.000-08:00

"His great discoveries were like exquisitely carved marble statues falling from out of the sky, one after another. He seemed to be able to conjure laws of nature from pure thought -- it was this purity that made him unique."

-Dyson on Dirac as quoted in The Strangest Man

Some Civilizational Thoughts

2010-01-15T16:15:00.000-08:00

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them

- Whitehead, AN

Well, sometimes we do need to think when there is a collapse.As like every year Bruce Sterling comes up with very thought provoking and interesting thoughts on 2010 and society in general

Some excerpts

*"Where I'll end up living." You're a Canadian always in California who's married to a Briton who's always in Japan.  Obviously you're not gonna "end up" anywhere. Forget about that.  What are you worried about, your IKEA furniture?  There is no "end up."  Someday they're gonna bury you someplace -- that's likely relatively permanent -- or

they might lock you in a prison or a clinic where they won't let you out.  Other than that, you have made your mobile bed and you oughta lie in it.

Basically we've got an emergent, market-driven global financial systemthat was all about a faith-based market fundamentalism.  It was deprived of oversight for three good reasons (a) it rapidly brought prosperity to billions (b) under globalization, money is inherently global while governance is inherently local (c) complete regulatory

capture of the system -- nobody but bankers understands how to bank.There's no caste of regulators left anywhere who have the clout or even the knowledge to do anything usefully stabilizing. No, not even if you give them guns, lawyers, money and back issues of DAS KAPITAL.

*India's better.  Fantastically better.  India used to be in more or less the same cramped livestock-stall as Sri Lanka, Myanmar (okay,"Ceylon" and "Burma" -- this need to rename cities and nations is a sign of mental illness) Pakistan, East Pakistan "Bangladesh" --nowadays the Indians get all kinds of juice and respect from the "international community," and better yet, all their local rivals are

in the charity ward without the Indians even firing a shot.

*It's hard for anyone from Texas to find the chutzpah to complain about California's state politics.  For instance, Enron, a Texas company,basically decapitated California by illegally gaming the natural gas pipelines, and then getting a surprised and hapless Gray Davis run out

of office.  Ever since then, they've been stuck with Schwarzenegger,who's a cartoon figure.  California's never done anything half that wicked to Texas.

You look at all the statistics that technocrats use to determine where people are doing just great, where society is thriving,and Sweden's been in the top five percentile for decades. Sweden does everything perfectly from a technocratic policy perspective, Sweden's like Oz, apparently.

And then you ask Swedes about their future and so forth, and they're like: "Bring the razor and the bathtub!  When can I die?"  There are penniless, vitamin-deprived guys in the Dharavi slums of Mumbai who are upbeat and perky compared to Swedes.

You get stretched by the experience and you grow.The good life is like that.

On Supporting Sports Teams

2010-01-11T00:16:00.001-08:00

“All things being equal, you root for your own sex, your own culture, your own locality…and what you want to prove is that you are better than the other person. Whomever you root for represents you; and when he wins, you win.”

-Isaac Asimov

The Second Coming

2010-01-10T23:08:00.000-08:00

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

- W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming

I thought that poem somehow foretold the cognitive bias called these days as the Dunning-Kruger Effect

Hemmingway to the Rescue

2010-01-09T13:17:00.000-08:00

I always have trouble verbalising some of my deepest held thoughts and I get excited when I find references to the same pattern much eloquently expressed by somebody else and I go like "Yeah! This is it"
Anyways here is the quote where I used to say you should stop at n-1 when you know the next stop is n because there is no fun when you know whats going to happen next. In fact thats the secret for long lasting relationships

"The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start."

- Ernest H

Word of the Day

2010-01-08T10:46:00.001-08:00

Enantiodromia

On the Telengana Issue

2010-01-05T20:31:00.000-08:00

Some one had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:

-The Charge of the Light Brigade

The Inheritance of Loss

2009-12-30T19:53:00.000-08:00

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

If you want to hear something then click on this

QOTD

2009-11-24T23:28:00.000-08:00

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.”

- Arthur Schopenhauer

A Very Good Rant

2009-11-24T01:55:00.000-08:00

I believe the App Store will be history in the future and throw my support strongly in this blogger's argument

Living Dangerously

2009-11-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

I am right now in a very interesting world of intersecting secrecies where I have a cockpit view of things where the vistas are beautiful, the valleys curving low ,the hills rolling by and mountains rising high. And, whatever I decide now will change the course of things for a small sliver of companies :-)

On Truth

2009-11-14T19:12:00.000-08:00

Truly a classic that I got my head around this weekend by my fave childhood author RLS

---------
AMONG sayings that have a currency in spite of being wholly false upon the face of them for the sake of a half-truth upon another subject which is accidentally combined with the error, one of the grossest and broadest conveys the monstrous proposition that it is easy to tell the truth and hard to tell a lie. I wish heartily it were. But the truth is one; it has first to be discovered, then justly and exactly uttered. Even with instruments specially contrived for such a purpose - with a foot rule, a level, or a theodolite - it is not easy to be exact; it is easier, alas! to be inexact. From those who mark the divisions on a scale to those who measure the boundaries of empires or the distance of the heavenly stars, it is by careful method and minute, unwearying attention that men rise even to material exactness or to sure knowledge even of external and constant things. But it is easier to draw the outline of a mountain than the changing appearance of a face; and truth in human relations is of this more intangible and dubious order: hard to seize, harder to communicate. Veracity to facts in a loose, colloquial sense -not to say that I have been in Malabar when as a matter of fact I was never out of England, not to say that I have read Cervantes in the original when as a matter of fact I know not one syllable of Spanish - this, indeed, is easy and to the same degree unimportant in itself. Lies of this sort, according to circumstances, may or may not be important; in a certain sense even they may or may not be false. The habitual liar may be a very honest fellow, and live truly with his wife and friends; while another man who never told a formal falsehood in his life may yet be himself one lie - heart and face, from top to bottom. This is the kind of lie which poisons intimacy. And, VICE VERSA, veracity to sentiment, truth in a relation, truth to your own heart and your friends, never to feign or falsify emotion - that is the truth whichmakes love possible and mankind happy.

L'ART DE BIEN DIRE is but a drawing-room accomplishment unless it be pressed into the service of the truth. The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish. This is commonly understood in the case of books or set orations; even in making your will, or writing an explicit letter, some difficulty is admitted by the world. But one thing you can never make Philistine natures understand; one thing, which yet lies on the surface, remains as unseizable to their wits as a high flight of metaphysics - namely, that the business of life is mainly carried on by means of this difficult art of literature, and according to a man's proficiency in that art shall be the freedom and the fulness of his intercourse with other men. Anybody, it is supposed, can say what he means; and, in spite of their notorious experience to the contrary, people so continue to suppose. Now, I simply open the last book I have been reading - Mr. Leland's captivating ENGLISH GIPSIES. "It is said," I find on p. 7, "that those who can converse with Irish peasants in their own native tongue form far higher opinions of their appreciation of the beautiful, and of THE ELEMENTS OF HUMOUR AND PATHOS IN THEIR HEARTS, than do those who know their thoughts only through the medium of English. I know from my own observations that this is quite the case with the Indians of North America, and it is unquestionably so with the gipsy." In short, where a man has not a full possession of the language, the most important, because the most amiable, qualities of his nature have to lie buried and fallow; for the pleasure of comradeship, and the intellectual part of love, rest upon these very "elements of humour and pathos." Here is a man opulent in both, and for lack of a medium he can put none of it out to interest in the market of affection! But what is thus made plain to our apprehensions in the case of a foreign language is partially true even with the tongue we learned in childhood. Indeed, we all speak different dialects; one shall be copious and exact, another loose and meagre; but the speech of the ideal talker shall correspond and fit upon the truth of fact - not clumsily, obscuring lineaments, like a mantle, but cleanly adhering, like an athlete's skin. And what is the result? That the one can open himself more clearly to his friends, and can enjoy more of what makes life truly valuable - intimacy with those he loves. An orator makes a false step; he employs some trivial, some absurd, some vulgar phrase; in the turn of a sentence he insults, by a side wind, those whom he is labouring to charm; in speaking to one sentiment he unconsciously ruffles another in parenthesis; and you are not surprised, for you know his task to be delicate and filled with perils. "O frivolous mind of man, light ignorance!" As if yourself, when you seek to explain some misunderstanding or excuse some apparent fault, speaking swiftly and addressing a mind still recently incensed, were not harnessing for a more perilous adventure; as if yourself required less tact and eloquence; as if an angry friend or a suspicious lover were not more easy to offend than a meeting of indifferent politicians! Nay, and the orator treads in a beaten round; the matters he discusses have been discussed a thousand times before; language is ready-shaped to his purpose; he speaks out of a cut and dry vocabulary. But you - may it not be that your defence reposes on some subtlety of feeling, not so much as touched upon in Shakespeare, to express which, like a pioneer, you must venture forth into zones of thought still unsurveyed, and become yourself a literary innovator? For even in love there are unlovely humours; ambiguous acts, unpardonable words, may yet have sprung from a kind sentiment. If the injured one could read your heart, you may be sure that he would understand and pardon; but, alas! the heart cannot be shown - it has to be demonstrated in words. Do you think it is a hard thing to write poetry? Why, that is to write poetry, and of a high, if not the highest, order.

I should even more admire "the lifelong and heroic literary labours" of my fellow-men, patiently clearing up in words their loves and their contentions, and speaking their autobiography daily to their wives, were it not for a circumstance which lessens their difficulty and my admiration by equal parts. For life, though largely, is not entirely carried on by literature. We are subject to physical passions and contortions; the voice breaks and changes, and speaks by unconscious and winning inflections; we have legible countenances, like an open book; things that cannot be said look eloquently through the eyes; and the soul, not locked into the body as a dungeon, dwells ever on the threshold with appealing signals. Groans and tears, looks and gestures, a flush or a paleness, are often the most clear reporters of the heart, and speak more directly to the hearts of others. The message flies by these interpreters in the least space of time, and the misunderstanding is averted in the moment of its birth. To explain in words takes time and a just and patient hearing; and in the critical epochs of a close relation, patience and justice are not qualities on which we can rely. But the look or the gesture explains things in a breath; they tell their message without ambiguity; unlike speech, they cannot stumble, by the way, on a reproach or an allusion that should steel your friend against the truth; and then they have a higher authority, for they are the direct expression of the heart, not yet transmitted through the unfaithful and sophisticating brain. Not long ago I wrote a letter to a friend which came near involving us in quarrel; but we met, and in personal talk I repeated the worst of what I had written, and added worse to that; and with the commentary of the body it seemed not unfriendly either to hear or say.Indeed, letters are in vain for the purposes of intimacy; an absence is a dead break in the relation; yet two who know each other fully and are bent on perpetuity in love, may so preserve the attitude of their affections that they may meet on the same terms as they had parted.

Pitiful is the case of the blind, who cannot read the face; pitiful that of the deaf, who cannot follow the changes of the voice. And there are others also to be pitied; for there are some of an inert, uneloquent nature, who have been denied all the symbols of communication, who have neither a lively play of facial expression, nor speaking gestures, nor a responsive voice, nor yet the gift of frank, explanatory speech: people truly made of clay, people tied for life into a bag which no one can undo. They are poorer than the gipsy, for their heart can speak no language under heaven. Such people we must learn slowly by the tenor of their acts, or through yea and nay communications; or we take them on trust on the strength of a general air, and now and again, when we see the spirit breaking through in a flash, correct or change our estimate. But these will be uphill intimacies, without charm or freedom, to the end; and freedom is the chief ingredient in confidence. Some minds, romantically dull, despise physical endowments. That is a doctrine for a misanthrope; to those who like their fellow-creatures it must always be meaningless; and, for my part, I can see few things more desirable, after the possession of such radical qualities as honour and humour and pathos, than to have a lively and not a stolid countenance; to have looks to correspond with every feeling; to be elegant and delightful in person, so that we shall please even in the intervals of active pleasing, and may never discredit speech with uncouth manners or become unconsciously our own burlesques. But of all unfortunates there is one creature (for I will not call him man) conspicuous in misfortune. This is he who has forfeited his birthright of expression, who has cultivated artful intonations, who has taught his face tricks, like a pet monkey, and on every side perverted or cut off his means of communication with his fellow-men. The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us. But this fellow has filled his windows with opaque glass, elegantly coloured. His house may be admired for its design, the crowd may pause before the stained windows, but meanwhile the poor proprietor must lie languishing within, uncomforted, unchangeably alone.

Truth of intercourse is something more difficult than to refrain from open lies. It is possible to avoid falsehood and yet not tell the truth. It is not enough to answer formal questions. To reach the truth by yea and nay communications implies a questioner with a share of inspiration, such as is often found in mutual love. YEA and NAY mean nothing; the meaning must have been related in the question. Many words are often necessary to convey a very simple statement; for in this sort of exercise we never hit the gold; the most that we can hope is by many arrows, more or less far off on different sides, to indicate, in the course of time, for what target we are aiming, and after an hour's talk, back and forward, to convey the purport of a single principle or a single thought. And yet while the curt, pithy speaker misses the point entirely, a wordy, prolegomenous babbler will often add three new offences in the process of excusing one. It is really a most delicate affair. The world was made before the English language, and seemingly upon a different design. Suppose we held our converse not in words, but in music; those who have a bad ear would find themselves cut off from all near commerce, and no better than foreigners in this big world. But we do not consider how many have "a bad ear" for words, nor how often the most eloquent find nothing to reply. I hate questioners and questions; there are so few that can be spoken to without a lie. "DO YOU FORGIVE ME?" Madam and sweetheart, so far as I have gone in life I have never yet been able to discover what forgiveness means. "IS IT STILL THE SAME BETWEEN US?" Why, how can it be? It is eternally different;
and yet you are still the friend of my heart. "DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?" God knows; I should think it highly improbable.

The cruellest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue? And, again, a lie may be told by a truth, or a truth conveyed through a lie. Truth to facts is not always truth to sentiment; and part of the truth, as often happens in answer to a question, may be the foulest calumny. A fact may be an exception; but the feeling is the law, and it is that which you must neither garble nor belie. The whole tenor of a conversation is a part of the meaning of each separate statement; the beginning and the end define and travesty the intermediate conversation. You never speak to God; you address a fellow-man, full of his own tempers; and to tell truth, rightly understood, is not to state the true facts, but to convey a true impression; truth in spirit, not truth to letter, is the true veracity. To reconcile averted friends a Jesuitical discretion is often needful, not so much to gain a kind hearing as to communicate sober truth. Women have an ill name in this connection; yet they live in as true relations; the lie of a good woman is the true index of her heart.

"It takes," says Thoreau, in the noblest and most useful passage I remember to have read in any modern author, "two to speak truth - one to speak and another to hear." He must be very little experienced, or have no great zeal for truth, who does not recognise the fact. A grain of anger or a grain of suspicion produces strange acoustical effects, and makes the ear greedy to remark offence. Hence we find those who have once quarrelled carry themselves distantly, and are ever ready to break the truce. To speak truth there must be moral
equality or else no respect; and hence between parent and child intercourse is apt to degenerate into a verbal fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become ingrained. And there is another side to this, for the parent begins with an imperfect notion of the child's character, formed in early years or during the equinoctial gales of youth; to this he adheres, noting only the facts which suit with his preconception; and wherever a person fancies himself unjustly judged, he at once and finally gives up the effort to speak truth. With our chosen friends, on the other hand, and still more between lovers (for mutual understanding is love's essence), the truth is easily indicated by the one and aptly comprehended by the other. A hint taken, a look understood, conveys the gist of long and delicate explanations; and where the life is known even YEA and NAY become luminous. In the closest of all relations - that of a love well founded and equally shared - speech is half discarded, like a roundabout, infantile process or a ceremony of formal etiquette; and the two communicate idrectly by their presences, and with few looks and fewer words contrive to share their good and evil and uphold each other's hearts in joy. For love rests upon a physical basis; it is a familiarity of nature's making and apart from voluntary choice. Understanding has in some sort outrun knowledge, for the affection perhaps began with the acquaintance; and as it was not made like other relations, so it is not, like them, to be perturbed or clouded. Each knows more than can be uttered; each lives by faith, and believes by a natural compulsion; and between man and wife the language of the body is largely developed and grown strangely eloquent. The thought that prompted and was conveyed in a caress would only lose to be set down in words - ay, although Shakespeare himself should be the scribe.

Yet it is in these dear intimacies, beyond all others, that we must strive and do battle for the truth. Let but a doubt arise, and alas! all the previous intimacy and confidence is but another charge against the person doubted. "WHAT A MONSTROUS DISHONESTY IS THIS IF I HAVE BEEN DECEIVED SO LONG AND SO COMPLETELY!" Let but that thought gain entrance, and you plead before a deaf tribunal. Appeal to the past; why, that is your crime! Make all clear, convince the reason; alas! speciousness is but a proof against you. "IF YOU CAN ABUSE ME NOW, THE MORE LIKELY THAT YOU HAVE ABUSED ME FROM THE FIRST."

For a strong affection such moments are worth supporting, and they will end well; for your advocate is in your lover's heart and speaks her own language; it is not you but she herself who can defend and clear you of the charge. But in slighter intimacies, and for a less stringent union? Indeed, is it worth while? We are all INCOMPRIS, only more or less concerned for the mischance; all trying wrongly to do right; all fawning at each other's feet like dumb, neglected lap-dogs. Sometimes we catch an eye - this is our opportunity in the ages - and we wag our tail with a poor smile. "IS THAT ALL?" All? If you only knew! But how can they know? They do not love us; the more fools we to squander life on the indifferent.

But the morality of the thing, you will be glad to hear, is excellent; for it is only by trying to understand others that we can get our own hearts understood; and in matters of human feeling the clement judge is the most successful pleader.

Insights of the Week

2009-11-08T23:32:00.000-08:00

(a) Logic is a detriment to leadership
(b) Duration is an attribute of consciousness

Old Raymond's Print Ad- On Children

2009-11-05T10:58:00.001-08:00

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
And it is your awesome responsibility to pass on the torch of civilisation to them.
Teach them to think.
To wonder. To dream.
To meet triumph and disaster,equally.
Teach them the difference between
flattery and praise.
Teach them the joy of a sunset.
The joy of sharing.
The joy of discovering the unknown.
More than anything else,
teach them to walk tall

QOTD

2009-11-03T17:13:00.000-08:00

"Most of us enter the investment business for the same sanity-destroying reasons a woman becomes a prostitute: It avoids the menace of hard work, is a group activity that requires little in the way of intellect, and is a practical means of making money for those with no special talent for anything else."

--Richard Ney, 'The Wall Street Jungle'

Old Raymonds Print Ad - On-Marriage

2009-10-23T22:41:00.000-07:00

Understanding.
And fairness and courtesy.
Responsibility and loyalty
and honesty.
Strong arms,
and a gentle touch.
An attentive ear,
and an open mind.
A sharing of sorrow,
and a respect for privacy.
To grow and let grow.
To have and to hold.
For richer,for poorer.
In sickness, and in health.
To love and to cherish.
Till death do you part.

Old Raymonds Print Ad On Friendship

2009-10-21T22:33:00.000-07:00

If
he can speak his mind
And know when to
shut up
If he can pat your back.
And kick your butt.
If he can share
a hearty meal;
A good joke;
A sunset
If he acts neither big.
Nor small.
But just medium.
And lets you be you.
The he is the answer to your needs.

Old Raymond's Print Ad - On Nature

2009-10-20T08:03:00.000-07:00

The smell of wet earth

Clouds chasing each other

The flash of a diving kingfisher

A drink from burbling brook

A fruit from a branch above

A mouthful of mountain mist

Trees to climb

Tigers to fear

And whales to wonder at

Oh! to be a child

and inherit all this

Yuppie Definitions

2009-10-19T20:31:00.001-07:00

We all know Yuppie meant Young Urban Professional Person but here're other related terms typically used to refer to persons with potential of 'upward mobility'

Dinky - Double Income, No Kids

Glam - Greying,Leisured, Affluent and Married

Guppie - Green Yuppie

Juppie - Japanese Yuppie

Lombard - Lots of Money but a right wally

Pippie - Person Inheriting Parents' Property

Woopie - Well Off Older Person

Yupsky - Eastern European Yuppie

Funny

2009-10-15T23:09:00.001-07:00