“Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” was a best seller in the nineties by John Gray that sold over 7 million copies. It essentially sought to highlight the differences between men and women in dealing with problems and issues and how it affects relationships, etc. To segue from this to the focus of […]

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TJ on February 11th, 2012

“The young perish and the old linger …………….. no parent should have to bury their child” Theoden in “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” When my mother was terminally ill with cancer in 1964, her mother who was then in her late sixties would tell me that she (my grandmother) would like to die. […]

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What are the odds of someone being born in the 18th century having grandchildren – yes, GRANDCHILDREN – who are alive in the 21st century? Pretty infinitesimal most people would say and they would be right. But a confluence of factors resulted in just such a thing happening with none other than the tenth president […]

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TJ on January 25th, 2012

Yes, we are back in Cochin, Kerala where we spend our winters away from the frigid temperatures of Virginia. I start every trip with a sense of dread over the the long flight from the US to India – a good 17 hours of flying time – but once I am here there is almost […]

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TJ on December 27th, 2011

I have always been fascinated by the phenomenon of the “near death experience” – known by the acronym NDE. Perhaps it is my belief in an after-life – even though I am not sure what form it takes – which accounts for this interest. After all, for someone who believes in an after life the […]

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I love You Tube and its endless variety of offerings. I also cordially dislike flying – everything about it infuriates me ranging from the security hassles at the airport, the less than customer friendly airline service, the cramped seating, the full flights and just about every thing that one associates with flying nowadays. I did […]

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TJ on November 26th, 2011

Some interesting facts and trivia about US presidents: Eight presidents were born before the founding of the nation Every president was born in one of only nineteen (arguably twenty) of the fifty states: these states are Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, […]

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TJ on October 30th, 2011

I am not an Anglophile …….. in fact, I probably have something of a bias against things one associates with the English. My attitude is largely because of the time I spent in the the UK as a student in the sixties when discrimination against anyone who was not white was rife in just about […]

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TJ on September 11th, 2011

The attack on 9/11 is one of those events similar to the assassination of JFK, the Challenger explosion and other significant events ………. it is one of those occasions that one remembers exactly where one was when the event occurred. I was at home when my step-daughter, Anu, who was then staying with us called […]

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TJ on August 24th, 2011

Given the positive reaction that my posting regarding a temporary fix to a laptop’s battery not charging, I thought I would share my resolution of another problem I confronted with my laptop. I lost audio when trying to play anything on Youtube or any other site that used flash video – most people use Adobe […]

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We got back earlier tonight from a celebration of Independence Day with the usual fireworks display. The longer I have lived in the US, the more I have come to appreciate the greatness of the country and its people. Sure, we make our share of mistakes but there is no other country in the world […]

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On December 12, 1968, Pan Am Flight 217, a Boeing 707, crashed near Caracas, Venezuela and all 51 passengers on board were killed. One of the crew members – an air stewardess as they were then called – was Franciska Buyers who must have been 23 years old at the time. All this came to […]

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Senator Everett Dirksen, the highly regarded former Republican senator from Illinois, is supposed to have said during a speech arguing for restraints in spending: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money”. If Dirksen were alive today he would say the same thing but it would no longer be […]

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TJ on March 23rd, 2011

I have already posted about my affinity for dogs and how among my siblings, I am the one who is the most attached to them – a couple of my siblings react to dogs with emotions ranging from distaste to disapproval. My children have mixed feelings about them – one is quite fond of them […]

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My posting today is a total departure from the usual subjects and issues on which I comment. I have been beset with a problem on my laptop – a Dell Inspiron 1764 – which Google searches have shown to be a relatively common problem affecting laptops irrespective of the manufacturer – and therefore not confined […]

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TJ on March 20th, 2010

My mother in the early 1930s’ . Today is my mother’s death anniversary. Sarah Joseph died in 1965 at Trivandrum Medical College Hospital. She had turned 52 years of age two days prior to her death on March 18. Her death was an event that had lasting repercussions on the family in many ways. She […]

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TJ on March 15th, 2010

Someone once said: “Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible” Dealing with the bureaucracy in most countries is frustrating but the bureaucracy in India is ubiquitous and time consuming with no assurance of a positive outcome. Since purchasing our flat in Cochin, we have had to deal with varying levels of bureaucracy on […]

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TJ on February 16th, 2010

My cousin, Bobby Abraham, recently sent me a very interesting article called “Coming of Age in the Milky Way”. It made for fascinating reading because it was both educational and also offered some context as to where the earth and life on earth fits into the scheme of things. In 1967, two scientists Arno Penzias […]

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TJ on February 10th, 2010

Christianity is believed to have come to Kerala in the first century AD when the Apostle Thomas, like other disciples, ventured near and far to spread the gospel in accordance with Christ’s command. There has been some speculation that the reason why St Thomas came to Kerala had less to do with converting the “locals” […]

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TJ on January 26th, 2010

We are back in Cochin and pretty much settled in our condo/flat here. It is nice to be experiencing the warm – and, as yet, not too hot – weather of Kerala and away from the colder than normal winter we left in Virginia. More about Cochin, Kerala and India in future posts because a […]

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TJ on December 31st, 2009

My final entry for this year as 2009 draws to an end – and what a year it has been. These are some random thoughts – mostly personal – about the year that will pass into history in just over a couple of hours. We saw the inauguration of the first African American president of […]

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TJ on December 24th, 2009

I recently posted that Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday of the year. We are now into the Christmas holiday season and I would have to say it ranks low on my list of favored holidays. This is all the more surprising because when I was growing up in Kenya, Christmas was a holiday that I […]

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TJ on November 29th, 2009

We are off on a 12 night Caribbean cruise starting tomorrow so this will likely be the last entry on this blog until our return. We both love cruises and now that we are retired we have the flexibility, within reason, to go for one as and when we please. This flexibility gives us the […]

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TJ on November 26th, 2009

Thanksgiving is, without a doubt, my favorite holiday of the year. It has all of the elements that I find most desirable – a time to gather with family and extended family, lots of good food and fun. Most importantly from my standpoint, it has not been commercialized the way Christmas has in much of […]

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TJ on November 6th, 2009

Indians and most Asians, have had a love-affair with gold for centuries. Perhaps, it is because gold has always been viewed as the ultimate refuge in times of economic and political instability. In most of Asia where there is no safety net whether in the way of state pensions or government provided healthcare, having a […]

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I watched the “balloon boy” live and was glued to the TV, like many others, while the balloon that the world thought was carrying an endangered six year old drifted several thousand feet in the air. The balloon floated around Colorado, at a height of up to 7000 feet, for over two hours and finally […]

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TJ on October 19th, 2009

One of the most effective ways to deal with an adversary or to make a point, is with a quick-witted response or come-back. Some people are exceptionally talented when it comes to such rejoinders or retorts. The best of these involve brevity and pointedness and it is this combination that makes for their effectiveness. Here […]

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TJ on October 16th, 2009

I was talking to a couple of people this week and the subject came up about aging and how the topics of our conversation changes as we get older. We seem to emphasize certain areas that were never a subject for discussion in years gone by. One conversation was with my sister, Fifi, who lives […]

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TJ on October 12th, 2009

Move over techies – there is a new area in which India is achieving prominence in the area of outsourcing! Now this is not a field of outsourcing that we, as diasporan Indians living in our adopted homelands or those who live in India, would feel that we would want to brag about! But it […]

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TJ on October 5th, 2009

I first heard of “The Big Texan” when I first arrived in the US and was working for Blue Cross/ Blue Shield in Chicago. I was 25 years old and one of the “old-timers” told me of a restaurant in Texas which served a humongous steak – and the best part of it was that […]

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