...to the day I left
India!--feels so long

I was pleasantly surprised to find a family tree for my family (even more so one with me in
it!! with 2000+ people in total). Anyway nice :-))

* * *
On an unrelated note, Happy Paddy's Day!!

I like Microsoft Outlook and have been using it for about 10 years now.
Still discovering new things with it (I had the misfortune to work with
Lotus notes a couple of years back !)

1. Sorting by conversation:similar to Gmail you can club multiple
emails which have the same subject line using View Option from the Menu -->
Arrange by --> Conversation. If there's more than 1 email with the same
subject line it will show you the most recent email. If there are multiple
emails and you have unread emails or emails marked for follow-up (from the
same conversation), it will show you only those emails that are either
unread and the ones that have beem marked for follow-up. There's a small
arrow button which appears at the left hand side which you can click on to
expand to show all the emails for that particular conversation.

2. using categories: Although I have been aware of categories, I only
started using them actively only in the past 6 months. It's very similar to
the "labels" feature in Gmail. Right now I prefer using "Categories" to
classify my emails rather than using directories/folders to store them. The
main advantage of Categories is that for a given email you can assign
multiple categories whereas if you were to just use folders to store this
you would have to store it only in one folder and it can be difficult to
find it for later use. E.g. an email could deal with and
and ..using Categories I can assign all 3 "categories"
or "labels" to this. Surprisingly Categories are stored in the registry so
if you have to move your outlook PST files etc to another PC, you will need
to back up the registry key and import it on the new machine!

never be late for a (free) lunch meeting! :-)

Looks like Dharavi is fast becoming the most touristy place in India. In the
past week I've seen 2 documentaries on Channel 4 where some well known Brits
were visiting the slums, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. on the
non-celebrity side, our very own desi blogger dost Satish Vijaykumar has also done a day trip
to Dharavi and blogs on his experience.

After 2 weeks of sub-zero temperatures and unusual snowfall lasting a couple
of days, today walking outside (temp at 5 deg C) it felt as if I was out on
a summer day :-) !! Everything in this world is relative!!

******
I managed to read a novel after nearly a year...Just finished reading Khaled
Hosseini's A thousand splendid suns . I haven't read his first novel
--The Kite Runner, but had seen the film which I thought was
excellent. This novel does not match up to that..Nevertheless a good read,
at least for the larger part.

Only a desi guy can ask you your salary the first time he meets you!! (and
not in a job interview by the way!!)

I've been reading the fiasco that has been CAT 2009..Given that Prometric
were conducting this test I'm a bit surprised reading about all this. This
whole sham of a "virus" screwing up test results etc etc shows how
inadequate the whole setup has been
Some key points which I would have hoped with computer based testing:
1. results should be given immediately.
2. probably make it computer adaptive (like the GMAT)

Life's way to busy these days..Not much time for LJ (or facebook or orkut
for that matter!!). I've even stopped reading my Bloglines feed for a good
while now. Autumn has turned to winter and it has been an awfully bad time
weather-wise here. Nearly every day we have rain (not to mention the wind
which is always howling!). Work is busy (which is not a bad thing these
days!), but looks to be winding down slowly for the Christmas break (looking
forward to that though we'll be just staying in!)

Ireland voted yesterday again on a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty--they had rejected the treated treaty the last time around. Posters from both the pro and anti Lisbon treaty votes are all over the streets. No results are out yet but this time it would seem that the Yes vote might just make it! A No vote would probably mean even less EU support for a country reeling under the economic recession and less investment by multinationals.