Thursday, March 5, 2009

25 Things You Never Knew About Me

Thanks to Ava for tagging me.

1) My favorite color is blue. (typical male)
2) I am afraid of medical needles. When young I used to get dizzy given a couple of injections. (typical male)
3) I once piloted a small aircraft for about 3 min, and threw up the rest of the hour long flight. I suppose there ended my dream of ever going into outer space.
4) I cannot handle amusement park rides either, the worst was the space simulator @ EPCOT. My daughter sailed thru' it without a hitch, I was woozy for the next 3 hours.
5) I would very much like to look like my favorite Hindi actor Dev Anand, unfortunately the closest I resemble is Shetty. On second thoughts, that may not be so bad; remember that in those days only villains could really get close to heroines (really evil HeHeHe).
6) These are some Hindi movies I could not bear to see past the interval, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, Dhoom (1 & 2), Bunty Aur Babli, Guru, KKKG, DevDas (with SRK).
7) Pt 6 for English would be Titanic, Da Vinci Code (actually slept thru it; can't believe a movie containing the Louvre, Versailles, Westminster Abbey, the English Countryside & Tom Hanks can be so bad), Matrix, Mission Impossible, Eyes Wide Shut.
8) The last movie I saw in a theater was "The Reader"; loved it; Kate Winslet deserves her Oscar. I recommend it to everyone, most certainly to book lovers.
9) I have never programmed a VCR, and probably will never do so.
10) I have yet to send a text msg (SMS) from a cell phone, although this is something I probably will do.
11) I have however programmed in FORTRAN using punched cards (IBM 370), in assembly(Intel 8085, Z-80), & paper tape (PDP-11).
12) The first email I sent must have been in the mid-1980's.
13) The first on-line blog I posted on was soc.culture.india (early 1990's, and using text editors, graphical internet browsers were not invented yet.). This blog had the 2nd highest traffic in those days (naturally the 1st was alt.sex; "more talk less action" was the theme common to both.)
14) Although I have spent the last 14+ years developing Real-Time Fixed Income & Derivative Trading Systems for Wall Street, I have yet to personally trade any security.
15) One of my favorite Wall Street trader story is on Dec 31 1999, a trader told me to take the rest of the millennium off.
16) I was in New York City on Sep 11 2001.
17) My favorite card game is Bridge, although have not played it in a long long time.
18) My favorite sports are Cricket & American Football; again have not played either in a very long time.
19) Currently, bicycling, mountain climbing, and swimming are my physical activities.
20) I have julienned vegetables, made a bouquet garni, baked a quiche and roasted whole turkeys and chickens.
21) My favorite food-wine pairing is Salmon with a Red Burgundy.
22) The less said about my artistic abilities, the better.
23) I cannot play any musical instrument.
24) Although I do not believe in palmistry (or astrology or religion); I do have "The Simian Line" on my right hand.
25) I share my birth month (April) with Adolf Hitler & Saddam Hussein. My birth year had significant military episodes in both the countries I have been a citizen off (India-China War, The Cuban Missile Crisis.) [No, this is not a plot for Omen 17 1/2]

I cannot think of anyone to tag (all I know have been tagged); hence stopping for now.