Microstory 151 – Equalizers in Life
It was March 7th and our internet was on and off for a couple of hours. I noticed that we all were running after a few bytes. There was a video prepared by my friend and while we were seeing the video, it started buffering. We were soaking in the messages of all the participants in the video. It had video messages from my elder daughter and my wife. We all had only one question that day, ” Is the net working?” The black box was switched on and off quite a few times. After a long time, we found the out-of-the-box experience was driving us crazy as buffering images kept occupying our screens. My wife told me that in the apartment WhatsApp group also the discussion was around the net not working. My younger daughter had her exams going on and somehow she was able to get all the MCQ done and was waiting for the time to click submit. That is when she came running to my room and screamed, “Can someone give me some internet?!” I learned that day the thing that matters the most in life:

Microstory 152 – Rounding off
A couple of months back, on one of my trips, while I was having breakfast, the main chef made eye contact and took permission for a small conversation. Initially, I was keen on ending the conversation as it started. I had my plate full and was about to fork in my egg white masala, which was made well done. The conversation veered around the initial niceties about my food interests and then it circled around feedback. I cannot for the life of me understand why I cannot accept anybody asking for feedback. But that was not to be with this chef. I enjoyed the conversation and finally, he asked me for a public rating. He asked me, On a scale of 0 to 10 how many would you rate for the F&B department? Without blinking my eyes I said, ” 9″. He immediately said, ” Thank you” and went on to explain that if I would have said “8”, the system would have rounded it off to Zero and we would be asked for an explanation. Anything less than 9 is a Zero. That was a lightning rod moment and I thought that post covid it seems that they have raised the bar. I was very happy that time to give a good rating for that stay in the hotel, after all…

Microstory 153 – Misspelled
What have words Facade, Faux pax, Macabre, Aficionado and Ensemble have in common?
All these words I have been mispronouncing for years. I had a lot of that awkward moments. Moments when you realize you have been mispronouncing a word your entire life. Now that I have figured out how to say these words correctly, thanks to my wife, I had the opportunity to use the word Faux Paux when I did one. When that word rolled out of my mouth correctly I was embarrassed to hear the voice from the other side asking me, ” Pardon me can you repeat that again?”

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