From 133 to 19

A year after i started to blog i had posted 133 posts in the year. Assuming that we include this post, i would be having 11 posts for this year. Another interesting fact that i just now noticed through this post  from India Uncut whose author, by the way was my inspiration for getting into the coveted world of blogging is that he too has blogged sparingly. Am i following my inspiration or am i just lazy? 

It is too easy for us to lose interest in the things we do to relax or which just interests us. Why? A study has revealed some remarkable results. It concludes that we have a decision overload and stress factor in life is increasing so much that we aren't able to keep our eyes set at one thing. I can very well relate to this, because in the past 2 year i have had to take so many decisions not just for myself but also for the people around me. Sometimes taking a decision becomes so much of a multidimensional problem that it is best not to take the decsion ( go the congress way of policy paralysis). 

Again as an engineer i tend to ask why? Why do i have this "Decision Overload". There are two answers which come to my mind very quickly

1. Expections set by others that we want to meet : I always want everyone appauld my decision and say that was the best thing to do. Which means i have to think a million times about all the stakeholders and what they feel about it. 
2. Information overload: There is so much information available today that some factors which we just ignored in the past we now have to consider. Simple example.....Should i look at another website for a better offer on this particular ticket? 

Sometimes the more we know the more it is difficult to take a decision. Sometimes i wonder why my father seems always so relaxed is that somehow he trusts that all his decisions are governed by some higher power which he trusts is anyway beyond his control. Never for once does he regret his decision but always tries to understand what he learnt from that decision...

While one should own up for the decision....one should never regret what has been done....cause we have to remember what we maybe cribbing about today was the same stuff that we were yearning for ....

Ok...Time to stop giving Gyaan....and get to party shoes. 

 

dig it...eat it

Our ancestors always stated, 

Bacche Bhagwan ka roop hote hain. 

(Kids are the embodiment of god). 

After reading this i am sure , they did things which our science is approving only now. Hence, we could say that they really are embodiments. 

 

Picking your nose and eating it 'may be good for your health'

So kids, forget what your un-updated parents tell you & just dig it in. 

 

Ants detect quake

First we knew that German octopuses could predict the outcome of Football matches. Now we also know that German insects can detect an earthquake. The article here  states that 

...red wood ants prefer to build their colonies along active faults, fractures where the Earth ruptures,

In my house, the ants always are found in the cracks and fractures... :-).Now do i really stay in an earthquake prone zone? Oh i forgot!!...These are indian ants, like many other indian things they could be inaccurate

Mulling on night flights

I read this interesting new here 

Govt mulling night flights in J-K

Really guys....If you think by adding night flight will boost tourism...you maybe just off the mark. Why does government spend so much time on things which should be typically solved by the tourism department at the state level. A high level meeting to take a decision like this seems really funny to me. 

Maybe a high level meeting will be called soon to discuss if Sreesanth did get slapped by Bajji...Guys in power, pls do what you are supposed to do and dont spend time on trivial things at public expense. 

A quote to quote

Ratan tata has been my hero. He is one person who really believes that India is more than just a country of SW Engineers, corrupt politicians and babus. Eventhough i cannot verify that the below lines did really come from the great visionary, i appreciate the meaning and the way it has been related to the ECG. 

Thanks Mr. Tata...

By the way a quote that came from my brother worth mentioning...

If you make simple decisions in life, you life is going to be diffiicult and if you make the difficult decisions in life, life is going to be easy

thanks Karthik Shenoy

 

Advice and Opinions

A lot of bad stuff can happen to someone but then we always need to remember that things could have been worse. There are two ways of looking at things if there are roadblocks in your path. Either you break those roadblocks or you go around them. Yeah, if you cross them...then you can surely put in your email comment things like below

The only good things about stones in my path is that once i cross them....They become milestones

But nevertheless you needn't worry if you cannot do both. Yeah!! That is true and you may term me as an escapist here but if it is not working out for you on a said road, it is quite possible you are on the wrong road. If one is on the wrong road, then i am sure instead of trudging it and struggling, you can choose to go on a different route. 

A different route may also not work out for you...Because routes may just not be your thing, because you mayn't be the type who is meant to walk but to  fly. I am quite sure the Siberien crane wouldn't have made it to Ranganathittu every year, had it taken a road. It takes the sky, because it was meant to do that. 

The world sometimes mayn't realize that. In which case doing anything which the rest of them dont do, would essentially land you in the zone which is generally termed as 

 "He has an attitude problem"

Yes gentlemen and ladies...I do have an attitude problem. A big one too!!...But i ain't ashamed about it...( Jeez he starts again!!). However, one more thing is that all these are perceptions aren't they...and yeah the best thing about opinions are...

"Opinions are like assholes. Each one has one and it stinks to the other"

I feel that Paulo Cohelo is very right in saying that..."Everyone in this world seems to know how one should lead his life in a better way, except their own". 

There are two things i learnt today:

1. It is not me ONLY who is judgemental
2. Advice is like a loan without repayment....People are willing to give you one when you really dont need it. And when you try to return it, they don't need it (oh i have already created a paradox)

Maybe continued....

Swinelight...

Pigs seems to be in the limelight. On one end there is the new game from Rovio called the "Bad Piggies", whereas on the other hand there is a lot happening on the Bio-Engineering side, where in people are developing Footballs using pig cells. The idea seems a bit wierd to me that we are using pig cells to make soccer balls, when really we have so many other options, however, who doesn't want to do research, then be it anything. 

Talking of Pigs, we already know that the "Swine" has spread more than just flu, and they are available in 2 legged versions too. However, the 2 legged versions might cause severe stomach problems, should they be consumed like their four legged counterparts. I trust, this has to do with the way they keep their hearts and brains. The 2 legged swines often found amoung the human species are dirty in their brains and hearts although from their exterior form they are extremly deceptive and detecting of dirty and poisonous heart or brain is almost impossible to detect with just the exterior appearance. 

You agree???

A video for thought

Here is a very interesting video. Though it really doesn't pose any great mathematical question, and is quite simple to explain using simple co-ordinate geometry, it did teach me something else ...a different lesson about life.



Often times, our lives are like the 1st short, with the different shapes being tasks that we do taking up all our time and energy. We do crib and complain about not having time to anything. Perhaps all that we need to do is then take a step back and rearrange the things in our life, change some priorities, maybe take a look at how things are and what the should look like...Maybe in the end, we did have the time and space but we just put things in the wrong order to just eat up every bit of time and energy we had...

Food for thought...ain't it?

Intelligent person in the room

Not much to be said here ...all that is to be said has been said in the quote below

"If you’re the most intelligent person in the room, you’re in the wrong room”James Watson

 That reminds me of another good one by Jim Carey ( i guess) 

"The only time everything in life is coming your way, is when you are on the wrong side of the freeway"

Life has ways of putting you down when you least expect it and pulling you out of miraculous mess when you  have almost lost hope. So, bottomline 
Life ain't fair and I ain't the intelligent person in the room  

India - Sooper Power with a Power cut?

Sometimes only when things do not go your way do you realize that things can be done maybe differently. I think soon some "India" as a nation will realize this. India although being always termed as the "IT super power" has no product of its own to speak of. Yes, we as a country have done a lot when it comes to IT processes and have been able to meet the customer expectations with respect to the coveted time, quality & cost paradigm. If we take a step back and look, most of the work that we get is from the western countries who are really making products be it in the field of IT or otherwise. India has always been looked upon more like a LCC or when expanded "Low Cost Country", rather than someone who has the technical expertise to do something in the best way. In fact many of the more popular software development methodologies which IT engineers swear by like the SCRUM or the Agile should have been invented by India, if all the talk about the superpower were to be true. 

As I dig deeper, it gets dirtier. With a ranking of 46 based on study conducted by Business Software alliance in terms of competitiveness, we are clearly off margin by a fair amount. One shouldn't feel undermined if someone says that one engineer from country X is equal to how many engineers in India. Quite naturally, the term "Full Time Equivalent" is coined because the number of Indian engineers to equate to that from country X is greater than 1. 

While i do not discount the fact that in many cases Indian engineers are far more capable than their western counterparts, but when we look at it statistically the numbers might not be really pleasing. If i just look outside my domain of engineering and concentrate on other aspects like business things take a turn for worse. We have some of the richest people in the world, take Mr. Ambani for example, but we have some of the worst run businesses too. Corruption and business are almost synonymous. The word "Honest businessman" or "Honest politician" are used often as oxymoron in the Indian context. 

I have more to say...but then i have less of what we call "Free time"...so the rest has to wait for the next post...

 

Germany - Here i come

I think it doesn't take a wizard to guess that i have reached new heights of procrastination after seeing my blog timeline. In this year (2013), this would be my first blog; thanks to the fact that i am in Germany and on a 2 week official trip. Here in Germany, since i have most of the evening for myself and if i don't plan to put my culinary skills to test, i usually have the time to do other things like blog.

It is also true that since i don't have anyone with whom i can converse for long, without having to either put my patience or my German speaking skills to test, i find blogging simpler and quicker. This time a few things are for the "first time" for me in Germany although if i do my math right i would have traveled to Germany six times so far.

For starters, i traveled in a plane that really looked like one. I have always traveled by "Air France" so far and that looked typically liked a B-grade bus. Lufthansa on the other hand had large screen TFT displays, provided wonderful in-flight service and best of all the breakfast served was really something to write home about. Second was the Frankfurt airport. The magnanimity of this airport can undermine any international traveler. In-fact the airport is so huge that you have horizontal tracks to carry people from one point to another. Trust me i would have easily covered about two kilometers within the airport just to reach from terminal "A" to terminal "B". This might sound funny, but if you were to carry a load of about 8 Kgs on your back, i am sure you would have a different opinion.

Last but not least, i traveled on a weekday. Needless to say, the plane was packed with non-official travelers (i.e. who were paying from their own pocket). It is also very funny and strange to see that we indians some how have this funny notion that only the US of A is the place to be and if they find a traveller who is not going to this sacred land, he is somehow seen as a second grade. One dude asks "Are you traveling to Dallas?"..I say "no". He says..."Really? i thought all indians in this place will take the connecting to Dallas. Why would you go else where? " I say " I am going to Germany.".  "Ok" says he and walks off as if i would ask him to lend me his Iphone.

The world is funny....and everytime i travel i find it had a new experience to present....My advice...if you got money and time...travel, best way to discover yourself.