Latte with Phoenix

                 Visitors to my house, if they are observant enough, would find several wall clocks and time pieces in the place. Wall clocks being useful; have been put up in every room just to use them. One can just glance up to see the time without the trouble of turning your head or getting up. I find them useful. Some have been put up in the bathrooms, where you can time your singing skills. The table time pieces were in use on the children’s study table, but with their going away there is only my desk top table to put up a time piece. The others are therefore in storage. A valid question can be asked here as to why so many wall clocks etc have come into this house ? Well the answer is simple enough. With birthdays and anniversary, relatives and friends gifted us these items. Wall clocks are economical, make a large packet when gift wrapped and are useful too – so the gift giver thinks. This thinking is one of the reasons of i...

               I wrote a blog on this topic on 7 th May 2019 in this blogger, and feel that the topic has to be revisited by all. The blog post of that date can be viewed here … https://lattewithphoenix.blogspot.com/2019/05/why-voting-percentage-is-less.html   Elections to five states are in progress nowadays, with counting and results on 10 th March 2022. It would be worthwhile to have a look on the voting.   As in every election, there is an appeal by the government, Election Commission to check your name in the voters list. First time eligible youth are urged, mobilized to get their name in the voters list. Camps are held all around to facilitate this. Polling days come nearer and everybody from the government, Election Commission, Schools & Colleges, Corporate ads et-all urges everyone to be a good citizen and Vote on your polling date. Polling Day arrives. All offices, Schools, Colleges, Universities etc are...

                 Lights, fan, AC etc., left on in an unoccupied room is sheer wastage of electricity, for which you are paying. It is not free. Lights are kept on in passages, courtyards or outdoors, but those are for safety purpose. It does not take any prolonged effort to put off a light; just a flick of the switch does the trick, compared to the effort of lighting a kerosene lamp or a candle just a few decades ago. Even the government exhorts everyone not to waste electricity, as whatever saved can light up another’s home. But some people, when on tour or holidaying, and staying in a hotel, “forget” to switch off the lights, fan etc when going out. Whatever their thinking, the hotel was the sufferer, so hotels started to install a master switch outside every room which would cut-off electricity to that room. The hotel staff had to go to each floor to do this. Personnel were involved, and some rooms could be left out. Very soon, ma...

                 Requirement of air flow changes with seasons; more being required in peak summer, less required in milder or rainy weather. Regulators which are used for adjusting the speed of ceiling fans, used to be provided free with the fans in the good old days, but you have to pay extra for them now. These regulators in the good old days were solidly built and are still working in old houses, bungalows etc. The smaller electronic ones are in trend nowadays. They are fitted in line with the switches on the board, and mostly behave erratically. With time the manufacturers have used ‘new technology, cost reduction, etc’ in these regulators, and therein lies the problem. Mostly they run the fan at either full or some lesser speed, no matter which setting you switch them to.                                       The older resistance var...

  Let us consider a couple of scenarios, which all of us have encountered sometime. ========== Me : “ You see, the situation is like …” The Other person : “Wait, I shall tell you what it’s like. The thing is …”. And he goes on to explain the same thing as I had started to tell. The message immediately implies that what I was going to say was incomplete info, and what the “Other Person” has said is clearer. ========== I post some interesting thing in a social media group. The Other Person , a group member, immediately posts several links about it from Google, Wikipedia; plus copy paste from some news site or News article, which tells exactly the same thing as I said. Here also the message immediately implies that what I posted was incomplete info, and what they posted is making it clearer. Courtesy pexels.com ========== There can be several other examples, but you get the drift.           What is meant here by लपक ल...

All of us have among our acquaintances and relatives, or have come across a person whose behaviour is unusual at times. These persons who certainly are of an advanced age look normal and mature, till they open their mouth.   They become very exuberant on very minor and trivial matters of someone or someone’s actions that it seems odd to everyone. Whether it in liking or disliking someone or something; their adjectives used in this regard are excessive and look too sugary or brutal as the case maybe. The reaction of people is to smile and ignore the actions of such persons as they are senior in age. Mostly such actions are attributed to the geriatric condition of these persons. In short people conclude that the person is “gaga” We encounter the phrase “ going gaga ” or “ gone gaga ” etc, and understand it and its meaning only in one way. By going deeper into it, interesting interpretations are opened up. The word ‘ gaga ’ is an adjective, which means that it is used to des...