A fair dowry

hello world

Nikita's wedding

Hello world

The line of fate

hello world

Tips for a first time manager

These apply to software product companies in Bangalore. Things may be different elsewhere.

1)Give feedback early: nothing is more important for a manager than performance management. Do not delay thinking that the problem will go away, that things will improve, or that you need an appropriate context or time for giving feedback. Start by stating what you observed, give your interpretation of it, then ask for change. Continuous feedback creates a context that will allow you to take more serious action if required without coming as a shock to the employee. Also, the longer you suppress feedback, the more angry you are going to be.

2)Do not get swayed by strong responses to feedback: Some employees are very emotional. Some may also use this as a manipulative device. Hopefully , early feedback will reduce this over-reaction.


3)Reviews/goal setting: Set performance criteria early. Don't wait till two months before the review. What is written in the review ? The common culture of doing reviews in Bangalore appears to be to give the tough feedback verbally, but put only nice things down on paper. If you do not want to follow this, let the team know beforehand.

4)Work hours: Try to set goals that are to be met in reasonable time. Do not try to control the work hours of people. Control the expected output.

5)Compensation: Expect people to discuss their raises. For small teams, different % hikes can become an issue. Do reward the high achiever more than average. But if you think you can get away by giving an average performance (meets) rating a raise lower than what you gave to the rest , you are wrong. It will be noticed.

6)Team vs Upper management: This is a fine balance, and the most likely issue that a first time manager, focused on project management and the team, can ignore. It is the team that makes you who you are, take care t listen to their asks, provided they are genuine. Yet overall company guidelines should be adhered to- too much divergence will create a problem. Be careful of your communications with upper management. Too much transparency about your team members can be used against you. Keep the intended action you want in mind, and give feedback that guides upper management to take that intended action. At the same time, the other extreme is to run a little empire where you get away with what you want,keeping management in the dark. That's typical of Bangalore, but not very professional.

7)Hiring/team building: Do not hire people just because they are like you. Hire people with different strengths. Ruthlessly search facebook, Orkut, the web- whatever resources you can find to profile the person if they make it past the phone screen. You may find useful information.

8)Perception is everything. Don't every forget that when you go in to a manager's meeting.

Rooms for rent: script for 2 min short

FADE IN:

ENTRANCE TO A HOUSE IN BTM DAY

Camera closes up on a bouquet of roses, then pans out to show a
man carrying it entering a house. A “rooms for rent” sign is
visible in the background. The man rings the doorbell, hides the
flowers in a plastic bag and waits eagerly in anticipation. A girl
opens the door and peeps out.

MURTHY
How are you doing?

GIRL1
Hello Mr. Murthy.

ROOM INSIDE HOUSE IN BTM

Murthy enters the room. It has one sofa and a TV and is sparsely
furnished. The TV is running and showing a cricket match.

MURTHY
(looking about the room)
I came to check how you are doing.
Any problems?

GIRL1
Nothing really. But the fridge does shut
Down at times.

MURTHY
You girls are alone in the city. So I
Thought I would come and check. There are many
bad characters in the city. This is why my
brother does not rent the rooms to boys.


GIRL1
(smiling) Yes, yes..you are coming everyday


Murthy takes out the flowers and placing them on the table, with a romantic look on his face

MURTHY
This is from my side.

GIRL1
(Surprised) Thank you

She is taken aback and does not know how to react.
Murthy now takes out a chocolate from his pocket and puts it on
the table

MURTHY
..And this also

APRIL
Thanks again.

Murthy now sits down on the only sofa in the room. He notices a
map of Bangalore lying on the sofa and picks it up.


2.
MURTHY
So you girls are trying to explore the city.

GIRL1
Yes, but we are still new to the place.


MURTHY
Have you been to Lal Bagh?
I can take you there some afternoon if you like.
My brother in law runs the place.

Girl1 is hesitant and looks away.

GIRL1
Yes but we are very busy right now.

The phone rings in the other room

GIRL1
Excuse me...must be from the office

Girl1 goes off to the other room. Murthy switches channels
on the TV and settles on a song. He starts daydreaming.


LAL BAGH, DAY

Murthy is running around rose bushes with hands outstretched and a
large sunflower stuck over his ear. The girl is sitting on the
lawn. The same song that was coming on TV is playing in the
background. Scene transitions to…

…INSIDE ANY COFFEE DAY, DAY

Murthy is sitting and sharing ice cream with the girl and holding
hands. Same song keeps playing.

ROOM INSIDE HOUSE IN BTM
The music still plays but is quite muted. Murthy is seen dancing
around the room along with an imaginary lover. Girl1 enters the
room and looks at him with surprise.


GIRL1
(bit loudly) Mr. Murthy

Murthy comes back to his senses.

MURTHY
(with a smile) I was just exercising.

GIRL1
There is some problem at work. I have
to leave for the office

MURTHY
Ok then I shall take leave of you,
my dear. Be safe and call if you need me.

Murthy walks out and the girl shuts the door. Another girl
now emerges from the other room, shirtless, wearing a saree, half
of which is trailing on the floor. He starts taking off her saree.

MAN
Kya musibat hai yaar.. yeh aadmi har din
Bina bole aa jata hai…aur kahin saste mein room
Milta to kab nikal chuke hote.

Girl1, who too had gone into the room, now emerges as a man.


OUTSIDE THE SAME HOUSE, DAY
Camera zooms in on the sign that we saw at the beginning…

It says:
“Rooms for rent. For girls only”

The Bride

"We are happy with everything about her, the horoscopes matched, but there one thing." Keshav Chand paused, sipped his drink, and looked at Divya's parents, who shifted apprehensively in their seats in the lobby of the lavish 5 star hotel. Matches had come close to being settled before for their youngest daughter and yet fallen apart at the last minute over demands for money,so they had become pragmatic. After all, Keshav Chand's family ran a jewellery business in three cities,and his Oxford returned son Varun probably had no dearth of suitors.

Keshav Chand may have sensed their discomfort, for he smiled. "I'm not talking about money.But we have a saint that the family patronizes. He thinks
that the girl would bring more fortune to the family if her name is changed to Vibha after marriage. Do you have any problems with that ?"
Divya's parents looked at each other in relief and said that it was a small matter, of no consequence.

Keshav Chand continued,"Good. Varun might have to go live in Europe for a few years to grow our business, so she will need to apply for a passport.
Make sure she puts the new name on it."

To the relief of Divya's parents, that was all there was to the last meeting for fixing her match, the remaining time being devoted to discussing the dates.
Keshav Chand insisted that the wedding be held in his native village, far away from the city, but he also said he would undertake all expenses for it and not burden them with hosting a wedding so far away.

* * *

The rural wedding was a lavish, but low key affair. Most of Divya's city friends , except the close ones, could not make it. Even most of Varun's friends from the city had apparently cancelled at the last minute because of a conference. Varun initially promised to hold a reception for them a few weeks later, but got so busy after their return back to the city that the thought had slipped out of his mind. Divya, now 'Vibha' , was alone at home most times after the wedding, keeping busy by helping with the housework, trying to arrange the immense pile of wedding gifts, jewllery and clothing that had accumulated, calling her mother every now and then, and trying to learn how her in laws lived.

Apart from Varun, there were four people in the house. Varun's divorced sister and mother, and Keshav Chand and his blind younger brother who had suffered a stroke recently and was mostly bedridden. They did not seem to be very social people. The neighbours had not been invited to meet her. When she offered to invite them for lunch, Keshav Chand said that it was a nice gesture but not worthy of their present neighbours; they were a bad lot who envied Keshav Chand's family wealth and talked and laughed behind their backs.Varun agreed with what his father said. Vibha's mother said that when you were wealthy you would only mix with others who had class, so it was nothing to crib about.

"We are conservative people,dear ," the mother in law had said. "We like our women to grow their hair long. And please wear dresses that keep your arms covered when you step out. I will get some stiched for you this week." Vibha complied but called her mother about it. "There is no perfection in life", her mother replied,"even your sister has problems with her travelling husband. Learn to live with the situation."

So Vibha 'adjusted' over the next few weeks.While Varun would be out all day, she would spend some time on housework, then go shopping in the chauffer driven car, dressed in long sleeves and dark sunglasses (Varun said she reminded him of some movie star when she wore those glasses, so she wore them often). She would meet Varun for lunch, and then come back and do more house work in the evening. Sometimes she would meet her old friends, who would roll up the sleeves of her long dress and look at her wedding bangles with envy.

The doorbell rang one afternoon after she had returned from a shopping trip. She peered down from the first floor balcony and saw a Kashmiri Shawl seller standing below the house. " Vibha madam here ?," he enquired
"Yes, what do you want?" she replied.
"You had asked for a pashmina shawl with aari flowerwork on it madam , when my brother visited six months ago. He did not have it them and you had asked him to send it with someone next time"
"I don't think I've ordered anything. It must be a mistake. Are you sure it's the same house? "
"I think so, but if you did not order it, them I am mistaken." The shawl seller looked confused and started to cycle away, even as Vibha's mother in law , who had woken up from her afternoon siesta at the sound of the doorbell, appeared behind the balcony door.
"Must be a mistake," the mother in law said.

The daily routine was interrupted a few days later because Keshav Chand's brother fell ill again. Varun took him to the hospital for a day of checkups and he lay bedridden downstairs with frequent visits from the family doctor. Vibha offered to help out but Varun said it was not necessary, she could stay upstairs and not bother herself with the gloomy hospital like situation downstairs. When Varun was out, her mother in law attended to the patient. But one day she heard someone calling out for some warm water, and since her mother in law did not appear to be around she quickly hurried down to help. The old family doctor was asking for the water. Vibha had seen the warm benign gentleman a few times from the balcony upstairs but they had never spoken.

"You must be Vibha ! " He smiled at her. "How far are you with your surgery course ? Have you taken the exams yet ?"
She was quite startled and wondered if Varun or his family had boasted about her qualifications and turned her into a doctor when she was in reality a simple biology teacher. But before she could say more her mother in law appeared outside the door and made a strange gesture indicating she should exit the room immediately.
There was something not very nice about that expression and Vibha terminated the conversation abruptly and walked out of the room.
At night she called her mother. "These people like to boast and show off I think. They've told people I'm a medical student when they know I'm just a biology teacher." Her mother reminded her not to get into a habbit of finding fault with people. "Everybody has some weakness. Let it be," she said.


Varun had to go out of town for a week, and the shopping trips stopped for a while. Vibha joined a gym at an upscale hotel nearby. It was ten days into this routine, and she was waiting at the gym entrance for the driver to pick her up when a bearded man sitting in a run down Maruti approached her. "Madam,I don't have time to explain. But I'm a private detective and your family sent me to see if you are all right. They are worried. Call me if you ever need help. I must leave now." He handed her a card and walked away before her driver arrived at the entrance and parked.

She looked at the card. It was a detective agency of some kind that specialized in marriage frauds and surveillance. She was puzzled. Was Varun spying on her activities? Or were her parents, worried about her small but frequent concerns, trying to see if she was happy ? But she had talked to her father the day before and there had been no such talk. She called her parents again as soon as she got home. "Mother, did you send a marriage detective to look after me ?"

Her mother had no idea of what she was saying. "But this guy did not explicitly use your name, did he ? So he could have been totally waiting for someone else. Or perhaps Varun hired him to watch after you. Have you seen how many people are kidnapped for ransom these days ? Why don't you call Varun to find out ? "

Vibha called Varun. He was equally surprised and concerned and said he would have always told her before doing any such thing. "Please don't go out without some security from now on. Avoid talking to that person if you see him again. Like your mother says, this could be a plot to kidnap you for ransom. " When Varun came back from his trip he asked for the card that the so called detective had given. But something made Vibha write down the number in her diary before giving it. "Just in case it becomes important" she told herself.

The broken Maruti would occasionally appear in the lane where they lived, parked at a reasonable distance from the house during the afternoons.

The summer months arrived, and the rose bushes in the garden behind the house dried up. Vibha decided to try growing vegetables there in the summer. It had to be something seasonal, as they would be travelling to Europe in the Fall, for Varun's much delayed EU residence permit would be ready by then. She embarked on the project one morning after Varun had left for work, and managed to dig up and level half of the soil with a spade she had found in the garage. But halfway through, the spade hit some hard wooden surface in the ground, flew away from her hand and made her lose her balance and fall. She stopped to rest and had some juice.

On resuming work, she found that she had hit a small wooden case, about eight inches long that was buried in the ground. It was a small jewellery box , full of wedding bangles, a make up kit and a small purse . Curious, she hurriedly pulled it out and took it to her room upstairs for a closer look. The bangles looked just like the one's she wore. Some of them were broken. The small purse was empty, except for a Laundry bill from a dry cleaners folded up in a corner like a piece of scrap paper. It was dated almost eight months ago.

Vibha covered up the ground she had been digging. She called out the driver and said that she had some laundry that needed to be collected. She directed him to the address on the bill. At the store, she presented the bill and enquired about the person who had deposited it. The store attendant was angry. Some Vibha Chand had deposited it eight months ago and forgotten to collect it. The store policy was to charge and extra 10% for every month for goods not collected within 3 months. He brought out an expensive wedding saree and a coat. The address of the depositor turned out to be her current residence.

She dropped the packages in the car and asked the driver to rush back home. She called her mother on the way. "Mother, something fishy is going on..." Then she found the driver staring at her in the read view mirror and she said "Nothing...I'll talk to you later."

She rushed upstairs on reaching home and called her mother again. "Mother, somethings up here. There was a Vibha Chand living in this house before me. Please try finding out what's going on." For once, her mother seemed to believe her and said she would ask around. After hanging up from the call, Vibha went back to looking at the contents of the box in greater detail. She took out more pieces of broken bangles from the box and tried to arrange them on the table.

It was then that she noticed the specks of blood on one of the broken pieces.

Whose blood ? Her diary was out in a flash, dialling the number of that bearded detective who had met her at the gym. She got his voicemail.
She left a message. "Hello this is Vibha, there is something going on in this house that I don't understand, someone with the same name as mine was living here before. Please call me as soon as you can."

A few minutes after she hung up there was a noise of the front door closing below. Varun has returned from work early. She could hear him hurry up the stairs.
She pushed the box under the bed.

Varun was carrying the dry cleaning packages that she had left in the car. "What's going on ? The driver said you left these in the car. How did you find these things ? " His voice was loud and agitated. One could hear the mother in laws footsteps now on the stairs. From below Keshav Chand's blind brother shouted in a shaky voice "don't tell me you guys are fighting with Vibha again.."

The mother in law entered her room. She had a fork in her hand. "There are some rules in this house that are not meant to be broken. Too much curiousity is a bad thing. We need you to understand that."

"Mother,she knows too much already," Varun said as he showed her the packages from the cleaners. The mother in law lashed out at her face with the fork, leaving lines of blood. Vibha screamed.
She could hear Varun say "It's just too bad, but she will meet the same fate as .." The doorbell rang below, interrupting him.
"Open up, this is the police," a loud voice came from outside. It sounded like the private investigator's voice. The mother in law dropped the fork and looked towards the stairs.

Within minutes the bearded man and a whole bunch of policemen were upstairs, putting handcuffs on Varun and the mother in law, and looking at the wooden box.

"It was a close call," the bearded man said, looking at her. " Now we know for certain we had already lost the Vibha that I was told to look out for. But at least you got lucky."

Connaught Place

oil painting

The life that I had

Curfewed Night

"We, of all nations of the world, have never been a conquering race,and that blessing is on our head.." - Swami Vivekananda

"...Gawakadal bridge in Srinagar, Kashmir, where, on January 20, 1990, the Indian paramilitary troops of the Central Reserve Police Force opened fire on a group of unarmed Kashmiri protesters, including women and children. At least 50 people were killed..." - Wikipedia

Curfewed night is one of the most disturbing work of non fiction I have read. Peer's writing shows Pankaj Mishra's influence and is part memoir and part a "Butter chicken in Kashmir at Wartime". You can hear the gunfire on every page, only to be broken by the silence of the "martyr graveyards" that are filled with the war dead, and the despair of the families whose lives have been destroyed during the conflict.
A good example of the life this book talks about can be seen here
Must read !

Eric Fromm: The art of loving (summary)

Sometimes people write very elaborate books when they could say the same thing simply. This is an attempt to save time for anyone who wants to read this book. I hope to condense the ideas of such books, like I did before with the 'decision making' book.

1. Love is care , responsibility, respect,and knowledge. You cannot love something you do not care about, and you cannot love someone without knowing who they are.

2. Children growing up experience motherly love (unconditional) and fatherly love (conditional). Gradually, they synthesize these two contradictory aspects in themselves, this is the beginning of maturity. Lack of either leads to becoming either too harsh a person, or too helpless or dependent.

3. Most people experience separateness as physical separateness, and so physical union means overcoming separateness. With passing time, this sense of closeness gets reduced, and one may tend to seek out a new stranger, with the illusion that this love will be different.

Two views: On one hand erotic love could be viewed as an act of will- since everyone is essentially similar, one could choose to love anybody. Yet contemporary western society views love as an outcome of a spontaneous emotional reaction, unique to two people. Both views have failings ( if the emotional excitement disappears , should the marriage end ? If there is little in common, should the marriage never be dissolved ?)

4. Love in an industrialized society

Modern capitalism needs :
a) men who cooperate , who feel free but can be guided without force.
b) who consume more and more
c) whose tastes are standardized , predictable, and easily influenced.

The outcome is that man has been alienated from himself and nature,transformed into a commodity. He experiences life forces as an investment that must bring maximum profit under the existing conditions. He counters loneliness with a busy work schedule, or though passive consumption of entertainment on TV and media, or by shopping for new things. Everything, spiritual (Deepak Chopra !) or material (Pepsi) , has become an object of exchange. Even the concept of God and religion in today's culture of 'getting ahead', is that of a psychological tool to improve one's personality and succeed.

A happy marriage now is viewed like a smoothly functioning team. The main emphasis is on seeking a refuge from a sense of aloneness.

5. The practice of Love
Fromm says that concentration and patience are essential to love- and this must be in all spheres of our lives. This discipline that we exercise in all spheres, must be a willful expression, not an authoritative plan. The activity at the moment must be the only one that matters. Apart from this, Sensitivity to our thoughts, having a realistic, objective view of the world based in humility, rather than a self centered one, is also important. The process of loving involves replacing the self centered view of the world (based on our own desires and fears),with an objective one.

To love may require to emerge from one's clan and grow and connect with the world, and this needs faith, which in turn needs courage and risk taking. Finally, developing these traits in the personal realm is not enough, these must be practiced in the social realm with everybody.

Fromm believes that the principals of capitalistic society, where speed is everything and uniqueness is discouraged, clashes with the principles of love. However he is optimistic that modern life offers enough non conformity to allow love to exist.

The Bhadra Reservoir

Though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.
- W.B. Yeats

It was built between 1952 to 1964. Over 20 villages went underwater (36 probably), and the original forest area was split up into two by the reservoir. The remains of some of the trees that are underwater are still visible today.

Bharda Reservoir trip

More pictures are here

Books I read in 2007

1.Brick Lane
2.Every second Counts
3.Girlhood
4.Parting Song
5.Ruby on Rails
6.Angelas Ashes
7.Waiting for Godot
8.The one Minute Manager

Arranged marriage in Indian society

"The man lives with his parents. Then he goes into his family business; he can't do what he really wants to do. Then he has to get married to the girl his parents choose. There is no feeling. When he wants sex, he has relations with the same mood with his wife- as a bodily need. He discharges.When he finds a new girl, he has relations the same way. He might want to do something else, but he does not know how. The wife also, breeding children, cooking at home, does not know what life is outside."

"..there seems to be so much sexual unhappiness in the city. If all the other areas of a person's life are circumscribed, if the pattern has been established before they even have been born,then when it comes to sex it will be similarly conditioned,its positions and its techniques preordained or hastily improvised in the darkness."
-Suketu Mehta, Maximum city

When rendering images for computer graphics, we try very hard to create randomness. The more diverse the set of random numbers we generate, the more accurate is the final image. Life is about being open to randomness, and making the best of it. Arranged marriages are not about relishing the randomness of a relationship. They are about eliminating randomness.

The so called 'success' of arranged marriages is because marriage does not need love to 'succeed' ! Marriage could also be about security, a sense of a life goal achieved, without any love present-like Indian IT companies with their various ISO 9000 quality certifications which do not imply technical innovation.

In Tagore's 'Parting Song', the protagonist Amit Roy compares marriage to having a well in your house from which you could drink water at any time. Love on the other hand, he says, is like a vast ocean (but perhaps not so predictable, or controllable!)

In a few years this will become a non issue, this system will die out. But for my generation in their thirties, who faced two roads forking in the wood (with one path a bare trail with no map or precedent, unlike the omniscient teens or 20 somethings of today,for whom everything came so easily) it is a fight for one's individuality.

An old talk by Verner Vogels on Distributed Systems

Long ago, Amazon Bangalore held an event where Verner Vogels had been invited to speak on designing distributed systems on a planetary scale. I had taken notes which surfaced when cleaning up the house. I decided to put them up online:

1. Use scalable primitives (RPC breakable easily)
2. Cache near the edges
3. Hierarchies and functional partitioning
4. Use aggregation, data fusion
5. Do not conceal Heterogenity
6. Be strict in what you emit, liberal in what you accept.
7. Avoid strong consistency properties
-Never expect your system to be stable
-Assume that nodes are leaving, joining, failing
Control:
For control to work, the system needs to be deterministic (hard)
-Apply a top down approach to controlling
-Cannot use force to put them into a model.
-"Real life in essence is probabilistic". Let go of Control

Self organizing systems:
-Positive feedback, or negative feedback

Robustness in Biologicial systems
---------------------------------

-Redendancy
-Feedback
-Modularity
-Loose coupling
-purging
-Apoptosis (programmed cell death. 50-70 billion cells commit suicide)
-Spatial compartmentalization
-Extended Phenotype
Scaling the organization
------------------------
-Organization needs to be bottom up.
-Functional units need to behave like organisms, can take care of themselves.
-Nodes recycle all the time
-Reboot becomes a tool
-Stability of organism is key, even if cell des

Continuous introspection:
Nodes responsible for themselves, not outside monitoring

The power of Epidemics
----------------------
Probabilistic model: eventual consistency
A synchronous communication pattern
Autonomous and decentralized actions
Robust with respect to message loss/node failure
Rigorous mathematical underpinnings

Epidemic algorithms and protocols:

Choose a random subset of operations
2 phases:
Phase I:
1-> N/2
Initial rate of growth factor of 2
Half way factor of 1.4
Near end factor of 1
Phase II:
nearly all nodes infected
O(logn) # rounds needed to infect entire population

Failure detection Service:
Local for a last update to a node's site
If timestamp is not update, you know of disconnection
Probabilistic, reliable
-buffer received messages
-garbage collection suffers from scalability problem

Distributed State Maintenance:
-------------------------------
State Engine: a distributed database table
Leaves are like rows
-lives on net
Randomized Rumour spreading
use:
-autonomous , asynchronous behaviour
-Let go of control, deterministic techniques

Randy Pausch and Ratatouille

I happened to come across Randy Pausch and Ratatouille at the same time. I find a connection between the two- Randy talks of achieving your childhood dreams, and Ratatouille is about the rat who goes on to live his dream of becoming a chef. Randy talks about brick walls that were meant to keep the "other" people out who did not want something badly enough, and in Ratatouille, the chef Gusteau reminds Remy not to dwell on the past but to go up and look around.

Ratatouille is an amazing engineering achievement. Full global illumination! I got inspired enough to order Matt Phar's Rhysically based Rendering - I've been eyeing the book for over a year, but with the dollar falling, it no longer seems expensive. Lets see if I can render skin the way it looks in the film.

Salsa:Corrective Dancing tips

Corrective Dancing tips from Eddie the Salsa freak:

These were tips given out by Eddie at the Congresss this weekend, to correct mistakes.

1) Mens Posture: Put both hands over your head. They form a frame. Bring the hands down, in front, keeping that same frame intact. Your elbows should be 6 -7 inches forward (if measured from your back ). Imagine having two oranges under your armpits, so that your arms extend away from your body rather than stay close.

2)Ladies right spin: Imagine a pizza around the ladies head, men should not invade the space inside when turning. Beats 1,2,3 is for preparing the lady for a turn. If you are doing 3,4 turns, then you prepare for a turn on beat 2. During beats 5,6,7 , men should NOT step back as then you will have your hands over the ladies head. step sideways or just behind your left shoe, at an angle.
3)Spinning Fingers: Use multiple fingers rather than one for spinning.

4)Turns wil have better momentum when you use your hands to generate momentum. Keep them near your centre of gravity , which is just below chest for men and lower down for women.

4)Loose arms will make it hard for a lady to be led. Moving the arm will not move the body and so the lead cannot be followed.

Tips from other instructors:

5)Cross Body lead : Normally you open up on beat 3. However, if you start to turn your body leftward on 2, the lady has a much better idea that a cross body lead is coming, and so the men have more time on beat three to think about the next move rather than having to push the lady to turn.

6) The direction of feet can indicate the next coming move , so do not always assume you have to end a move with both feet together. The left feet in front pointed to the right indicates the man will do a left turn soon.

At the memorial

Stay behind until dark-
It is peaceful and beautiful here at night,
and lying down on this field,
you can count the stars and
feel the wind across the Potomac
on your face.
Not interested ?
My fault perhaps,for when you're 21
small things seems miraculous and magical,
and youth expendable, on such poetic indulgences.
But you who stand beside me now,
middle aged,mediocre,but survivor anyhow,
peering at crosses that stretch across the plain
reading rank,medals and name-
you were always wiser,to not have enlisted.
For I'm 21, six feet under, and dead.

The Lonely wife

I confess...
I've never tried the internet before..
I am a little nervous, but curious even more.
woman in mid thirties,accomplished, successful,
Wants time out with someone playful,
I am married, feel supported, quite respected,
but at times ignored,somewhat neglected.
My fingers tremble, type type type..
But I've heard the voices inside
need a little fun on the side.