12/29/2004

From Vacation

viva southwest, i finally found a post card of La Jolla Cove. FYI, LJC is a very beautiful strip on the SD coast. Nix and JK have a tendency to give me a tour of this scenic location whenever i visit them. So neat to have a postcard to remember it.

Ofcourse doubled my champagne corks by adding Nix and Dev's second marriage toast to it. Added another car to my lego collection. Met a driver who drives as wild as me. and met another beautiful personality aka mrs nkm.

12/11/2004

icebreaker

Mr. Toastmaster, Fellow Chipmasters and Guests.

History repeats itself. 25 years ago there were 10 pairs of eyes staring back at me. That was the time when i took my first steps on these same two legs, and today is one more step in my journey.

So coming back to the title of my speech. i.e. Pinball. This game as many of you will know can be reached by Going to START->Programs->Games->Pinball. I shall explain some concepts of this wonderful game for the audience. The aim of this game is to maximise your points with the available chances that are given to you. So the game starts with the ball being assigned. You pull the plunger and shoot the ball through the runway into the play area. Then you use the FLIPPERS to direct the ball along various paths. Each path leads to missions, and you get bonus points for completing these missions. With the completion of each mission you advance to higher levels of competency. And I must add one more point; you are always collecting points even if you diverge away from the mission. The person who collects the maximum points wins the game.

This game is really very simple, and actually very similar to our lives. The missions that we have in our lives define the competencies that we gain in this world. Greater the number of missions completed higher will be the respect that you gain. And mostly, this respect is just at the personal level. I, myself, have been through the normal 12+4+2 years of education, and have excelled in them wherever I could. I was an honor student for most of the time and though that matters a lot to the external world, I highly rate my other achievements. I was active in the sports field and have represented my university in field hockey. I was in the choir once in the fourth grade, and my school still regrets that day. After that they have only given me other opportunities such as Lego leagues, trivia contests and pencil art. My teachers were right because now I have a closet with all these medals and trophies.

I grew up in times when the Berlin wall was broken down and at the same time Yoguslavia was being split up. In this world of ours, it was difficult to look forward towards any particular living hero. The heroes, I felt, were like the flippers in pinball. They gave us direction in life. However I was wrong, and I, instead, recommend that the values inside each one of us are the real flippers.

Blah blah blah – so I value Peace ad Anti Occupation
Simplicity and honesty.

Moving along to another part of pinball is the OUT lane. When the ball enters this lane, you cannot do anything about it. It is something like love at first sight. There is no coming back from it. It has not happened to me as yet, so I shall not speak about it either.

Lastly, there is a particular reason for choosing pinball above other games such as solitaire, or doom3. As I have mentioned earlier I was an honor student for most of the time. One of the times, when I was not, was because of pinball. In that semester I was playing pinball to the hilt (10000000+ points). I did get grounded when my parents heard of this but these memories are worth their bit.

Mr Toastmaster.