a true 'story'

There was a guy and then there was a girl and . . .

Happy Valentine's day to one and all.

the number 23..

The number 23 - the upcoming movie of one of my favorite actors, Jim Carrey. The plot, just like his earlier movie, seems promising. Finding that a particular book's plot has parallels with your own life is, of course, thrilling.

But that's not the whole point of the title for this post. If you have already guessed the actual point, a big thank you. But for the others, the point is -

I have turned 23 years old today !!

Yes, its funny how the movie 'The number 23' is will be released just after I am turning 23. Guess there is some parallel going on with me and the movie too ;). That should be interesting.

Of course this is not the lone coincidence associated with the day. One year back, exactly when the clock struck 00.01 am on February 12th, I was on my way back to Hyderabad, from Coimbatore, just finishing our South India trip on the South Central railway train. The place was a non-descript place somewhere between Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, I do not even know, which state it was.

And exactly after one year, the same clock struck 00.01 am on February 12th and I find myself in the New York local train heading to Downtown, Manhattan. Again I dint exactly know where I was, as the train was running underground ;)

So trains first, and then being in 'unknown places'...in total, coincidences, in their best form, mark my birthday.

While its a different story that the Coimbatore to Hyderabad experience was unique in the way I cut my cake in the running train, thus waking fellow passengers, courtesy a bunch of enthusiastic and great friends, this new york travel was rather calm, only I realizing how much change a year brings in :)

From a South India trip to a New York trip, from among friends to among globe-trotters, from cutting cakes to visiting City Halls, from paddy field views to Manhattan skyscraper views, from night to day :), one year has brought me far.

Hope its not too far !!

with the paintings...

A trip to the Museum of Modern Art and I realized my position in terms of appreciating art or rather, modern art. Who wouldn't want to view the great pieces of art by the Picassos, Van Goghs and the like. So was I, all set to experience the beauty of the world famous paintings at this museum.

But something seemed wrong the moment I saw the first piece of art. It was very bright, colorful but somehow I couldn't make out what it was. I tried to read the name of the painting and made a valiant attempt to co-relate the title to the painting. Even then, nothing seemed right. Little did I realize that this was the first to come from among the tens of "modern art" paintings that would flood my day and leave me in a confused state for the next couple of days.

Painting after painting, each one was different, each one was unique in the way the title and the painting were unrelated (or may be related). One of the names said, 'A little girl' and I had to use all my stereoscopic vision only to realize that I am not qualified to find a girl in that picture. Solving fourth degree polynomial equations was lot easier :(. At least now I know I am an illiterate in the subject of "art". I should have known it when I almost failed in my drawing class, but somehow I wasn’t sure then. Now I am.

I could not just accept it and get out of the place. Instead I chose to try and understand. I stood staring for longer times at pieces of art by familiar artists. Picasso kept me standing for long, for one, he had a large number of paintings under his name and the other, because I knew his name the most.

I guess it was for people like me that some of the paintings had an explanation too, besides having a title. But that didn’t help me either. It added to more confusion. One of them said "The blue square in the middle of the painting reflects the human sub-conscious". I said to myself "What?!! how??!! and How did you know??!!!" and all this added to more confusion so I moved along.

The terms "surreal", "abstract expressionism" and "layers of creativity" were found all over on the description plates. How a particular painting was special because the artist spilled over ink on a flat canvas 'uniformly' so that spilled ink created a sense of beauty. ??!!??? Everything pointed to the same words - "Art is not for you" and I had to accept it. :)

But one thing was fascinating. How different objects intercepted each other in some paintings, yet could be clearly distinguished. Even I could appreciate some, I thought ! May be if I tried.

So I kept moving until I came across two kids around four years old looking at one of these paintings and trying to draw them in their own drawing book, with their teacher beside them, guiding. I could not believe my eyes. At that age I would rather be happy trying to draw a frog and ending up drawing a lizard, leave alone attempting to reproduce a modern-art painting. But what were they trying to draw? There were no distinguishable objects in the painting except for a surreal idea flowing between colors of different variety. Guess that's what separates me from budding-artists, I thought, and this time I realized it was time to leave.

After the trip, even chess board seems to be a wonderful painting to me :) May be the designer of the board had something creative in his mind too !!!

Dear to dream !!

I just completed my trip up the Mt. Everest, got selected into the Indian cricket team and was saying "Hello" to the President while receiving the Khel Ratna award and planning an audition for the MRF ad alongside Sachin later in the day and ....suddenly the alarm clock starts 'trinnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggg' and I wake up to face the real Mt. Everest called life standing before me repeatedly telling me how many astronomical miles I am far away from my dream.

Dreams... !!! Well, I am not talking about the dreams of the "I have a dream" kind, rather these are the "I had a dream" kind.

These spells of imagination which some of us experience daily are pretty intriguing and complex at the same time, besides being so powerful. They can make us Kings of the world in one second and can get us hunted by a hungry lion within a gap of 10 seconds. Who else is so powerful? God comes close?

And the best part with these dreams is the 'uncontrollability' factor which is mysterious and interesting.

We may not be Sigmund Freuds but some of these may co-relate to events of the past or events during the previous day. Trying to understand or interpret these dreams is some times fascinating and we can either get a whole new meaning out of your dream and get inspired or can get devastated at the incidents we see in these dreams.

And the sheer pleasure when one of these dreams actually comes true the next day, like the Mathematics question paper having the same question you saw in your dream can be rejuvenating. Well, not so much if you aren't prepared for that one but somehow it got into your dreams and in the exam paper :)

The imagination part, no bounds to it. You might have imagined a Cyclop in a hundred ways while you were reading the Trojan War but the Cyclop that you see in your dreams is way better, I mean way dreadful.

The creativity part...amazing. You could be driving a golden chariot equipped with Bridgestone tyres overtaking Michael Schumacher riding his Ferrari while listening to 92.7 FM playing in in the background. Could there be a limit to the creative canvas of the dream?

The unpredictability part. We can never be sure of anything in dreams. Your golden chariot can have a puncture the very next moment and throw you down in the Arctic ocean ( remember you were traveling between planets ;) ) and you would be frozen for 100 years to be found by a group of aliens later and the rest is...unpredictable as usual.

All in all, "dreams" is a great topic of interest having complexity, creativity, uncontrollability, unpredictability and most importantly the involvement of brain in some unknown way. I guess that is what makes dreams all the more dearer and exciting. Where else can you see the Taj Mahal daily even though you don’t stay in Agra :)

Day-dreaming is okay but dreams - aren't they dear?

the new old look

The blog is now upgraded to the new blogger account. I guess it is obvious that something has changed - with the archive links on the right, now, well-organized and the "About me" section becoming almost invisible. May be it went to its rightful place :), quoting in the lines of Salman Rushdie's, "blogs should go out and become famous, writers can stay home and write (and remain unknown)".

But I was disappointed. The first thing that came to my mind when I saw "Update to the new blogger" was that I would get a new set of templates to choose from. But to my dissatisfaction, the same old templates showed up in the new one too. May be they want the bloggers to become creative and create their own templates :). So even after the upgrade, our blog shall have the same old template.

And yeah, integration with google. I can now log-in to blogger with my google account. May be in the near future, every site we use will let us in if we have google account, like a universal log-in account, offering services ranging from mails to online-shopping to social networking to gambling :)

Don't be surprised if in future, you get a mail to your gmail account that a music album you discussed with your friend over chat the previous day is now available at a nearby store for discount and the mail gives you driving directions to the store and even lets you share the music with your friends, besides helping you post a review of the album on your blog and finally helps you place the album for sale on the internet, if you do not like it. It might be called the UISP, Universal Internet Service Provider :) Google is going there I guess, and fast!

A change is always for the better, they say, and the first thing that is better is I do not have to remember the password of my blogger account, now that I can use a google account to post on my blog.

Statistics!! The blog has 63 posts so far and this one is the 64th. And the good thing to note is that the posts have increased every year. This again, I could know straightaway, thanks to the new blogger. Otherwise I would have to count them manually.

Thanks blogger, you not only have given a blog to write but, with the new version, you have given some content to write a post while I was waiting for some topic to write!

pardes

I am back, as promised, with (and in) pardes, seven seas away from home, as they say.

It would seem that I am listing down Shah Rukh's movies as the titles for my posts. Swades earlier, now pardes. But let me clarify, that's not the case. Its just coincidence. And please do not expect a 'Dilwale Dulhaniye lejayenge' in the future, although I cannot guarantee ;-)

New York. In one line, New York is all sky scrapers, huge LCD screens showing baseball games, organized streets, fast walking people, coffee, low calorie food, "good morning" wishes, limousines, high end cars and much more besides being the business capital.

Someone already said that this place is a world in itself and I am already seeing it. You can see people, culture, cuisines from all over the world in this city.

And one thing's for sure. You can't believe what you see here. You see out of your window, its a bright sunny day and you come out only to see that its freezing cold outside. I started to believe weather.com more than my eyes these last few days. :-)

Of course, there are some usual things too here.

You see the voice message LED blinking on your office phone early in the morning and you are all excited to get the first voice message in alien town and what you hear is a message in a language you don't understand, about a product you can't catch even after listening to the whole message. :-( [The language was definitely not English]. Sounded like the "Want a credit card?" calls I used to get back home.

And yeah, the alu doesn't turn golden brown in color even here :-( I never understand how the chefs get that right. Or is it just a myth?

All in all, I am not yet 'lost in NY'. :-)

From circles to squares, [yeah from Punjagutta circle to Times Square ;-)], the journey has been quick and easy. Lets hope the rest of the stay also will be memorable.

Before I start singing "Deewane ne, mujh ko bhi, kar daala deewana" like SRK singing while driving a convertible in the movie, I think I will have to see more of NY. The Statue of Liberty is still waiting.

There's one more song from the same movie Pardes, which I guess I should be singing when I go back :-)

And here's the second display of my photographic skill. The first one was a scene all natural and this one depicting human-made-architecture.


Place : Opp. Times Square, NY. Date : Today. Time : Shown in the clock in the picture.
Title : Untitled(so far).

what do u want to be?

"I want to be a police officer", says the kid when his uncle asks him "Beta, what do you want to be when you grow up?". And "why beta" would get an answer something like "I like the dress and the gun". Typical child answers. We all have seen kids crying for a police dress. Minor things like the dress and the gun are what appeal to the young kid at that age. Nothing else matters to him.

Few years later, ask the grown-up kid the same question and he says "I want to be an IAS officer". Ask him why and he has reasons for it too "because he has more power than a police officer and is paid better". This is the stage where one gets to learn what actually rules the world - power and money. Naturally, he wants them both :)

While in the pursuit of his "What do I want to be", the kid now in his teens toils hard to realize his "power and money" dream until one fine morning he happens to see a real beauty. Suddenly he forgets all his earlier answers to the question. Ask him the same question and his answer from that moment would be "I want to own the beauty". Well, he really can't state a reason for this one, because some things can't be explained. But the reasons range from beauty, attraction, sense of happiness, etc. That beauty becomes the passion of the kid from that moment and all his energies are spent trying to realize his dream from then on.

Like most of the people in pursuit of their passions end up becoming Software Engineers, the kid finally becomes a s/w engineer and within no time becomes the "owner" of his favorite. Now that he has "become" something, ask him the question - "What have you become", he would rather say "I have become the owner of favorite-item" rather than "I am a software engineer". Here, there are multiple reasons. Firstly because most uncles do not understand what a s/w engineer does and why they are paid so much for sitting in an AC room for 8 hours and it is real trouble trying to explain the concepts of outsourcing, internet etc, and secondly because passion is more important than profession, because profession was a means, not an end.

From what is "eye-catching" to what is "ideal" to what is "important to us", I guess, our interests change as we grow. Or do they actually evolve? From things of no significance to anybody to things of importance to others to, finally, things of significance to one's self? Self or “I” being utmost important.

A Long and heavy post to start the year with. Happy New Year 2007 to all :). Hope this year brings in more posts, comments and most importantly readers too!!

Coming soon is the other side of ‘swades’ because the kid has just answered "I am going to be a guest of New York". ‘parades’ follows !! :)

thanks....

Its been more than a fortnight since the official Thanksgiving day but does it matter? Saying thanks is important. Isn't it? Or is the date too important?

We have William Shakespeare to help us :) Altering and quoting Juliet, Juliet of the "Romeo and Juliet" fame, I say "What's in a date? That thanks when said on any other day would mean no less gratitude". Yeah, I have been doing a lot of alter-and-quote lately. should reduce it :(

So, here I am, trying to thank all those who have been readers of the blog. This should be done some or the other day.

Let's go by the group.

First of all, thanks to the person who has been reading this blog from the very beginning days till today, regularly, almost every day, suffering through all the bad posts, enjoying the good ones and reading both the good and bad ones with equal interest and always waiting for new posts. Now most of you might actually guess I am thanking myself here. :)

Thanks to the irregularly regular readers, reading posts now and then, commenting on some, criticizing some others and helping me gain some readership.

Thanks to the forced-visitors, who when given the link to my blog, click on it and read the first post, click on random posts, read them and then forget about the blog and then visit the blog only when the link is sent again.

Thanks to the readers, who "do not" click when the link to the blog is sent fearing it might be a link to some unknown virus on the internet which would erase their hard disk. Thanks for being so careful, yes there are such viruses. Thanks for being careful, again :)

Thanks to the kind of readers who accidentally tumble upon my blog searching for -
1. "Swades mp3 download" - guys, u forgot the "free" word in your search box, otherwise you could have found the correct sites.

2. "Intermediate QUESTIONS and ANSWERS Andhra Pradesh" - Are the S.Chand and Vignan guides out of date that Intermediate students are searching for questions AND answers on the Internet. I pity them for being pointed to my blog, adding to their already existing list of confusions.

3. "Guide to the Spelling bee" - sorry guys, I am not so much into spelling bees, but thanks for visiting my blog on the path to your bigger quest.

4. "chalkpieces" - are chalkpieces so hi-tech now that one has to order them on amazon or something? Aren't they available at the nearby grocery store? Sorry guys, am not much into selling chalkpieces, though I was once busy stealing some. Anyway thanks to you too for visiting the blog.

Thanks to one and all.

Illusions...

The Taj Mahal.

Everybody would have heard about this masterpiece, the eternal symbol of love, the glorious beauty.

There I was, standing right before Taj Mahal, in awe, wondering at the no-words-to-describe monument. Everything else seemed so minute. I have seen nothing ever-so beautiful and might never see one until some romantic has a better way of expressing his love, which, might not be possible considering the resources needed. :) There is not one thing that is okay-ish about the mahal. Everything is just more than perfect. The sheer size of the monument, the grandeur of the four minarets, the as-white-as-snow marble and not to forget the intricate design on the walls, are all exceptional. One has to see it to believe it. I can't say more. So, I was standing before this Taj Mahal, admiring and cherishing that very moment feeling as small as a drop before the giant beauty.

Suddenly, the phone beside me rang, and the Taj Mahal disappeared into thin air without the slightest trace of the beauty I was seeing all that time. I realized I am now in Hyderabad, not in Agra, and it had been almost a week since my Agra trip and yet the illusions cease to stop. Every time I gaze into nothing, I see the Taj mahal forming from nowhere and this illusion of mine keeps recurring.

While Einstein was right about saying reality is just a persistent illusion, there should be some explanation as to why certain illusions out of these are more persistent than the others. May be the persistence is again linked to the forgetting-theory related to the brain. :) Much more complex than we can comprehend.

Coincidences never cease to exist with me. It was coincidental that besides these frequenting illusions, there is one more 'illusions' that I was part of in the recent days and that being Richard Bach's book - Illusions. Many of them have already said and keep saying the world's an illusion after all. I am not sure how true that is.
But one quote from Richard Bach might help explain my illusions about the Taj and the quote modified to suit the context is -

"If you want to be with the Taj, aren't you already there?"

May be I want to.

I write...

Two posts wouldn't do justice to such an intricate topic like "forgetting". There is much more to write about it, I feel. Like in the past two posts, the advantages of forgetting are not even touched upon, like - how forgetting certain things is good to us. :), The times when your teacher slapped you in front of the class, the first time you fell off your bicycle trying to pull a feat etc, etc. Forgetting is good, at least some times.

A third post on the same topic would be monotonous and boring. So let me 'write' something else.

Coming to writing, I think its a lot tough than blogging. As for blogging, you don't even have to think much to make a new post. In the worst case, when you can't think of anything else to write, just pick a random picture( most often your own ) and post it with some tagline/title and lo, you become a blogger. Not the same case with writing. You have to pick a pen, start thinking, which itself is a tough job, and then start building words and make meaningful structures out of them. Overall, its tough to be a writer. But I chose to do so, for this post.

So, here I am, 'writing' a sample post as the first written piece.


And yeah, lot of thinking has gone into writing this one. ;)

meeku telugu vachaa ?

Forgetting... I feel it is much more complex than I actually thought or expected or, in fact, wrote about in the previous post.

Just yesterday, I had witnessed a scene which brought back memories of a very very small discussion I had with one of my friends seven years ago. I didn't even realize I had actually remembered that discussion until I saw this scene.

A foreigner was sitting on the stairs of a big shopping mall. While she was waiting for somebody, she opened her HINDI book and started reading it in that short time she had.

Immediately the topic of foreign language vs. native language struck me and my mind went back seven years. That was the time when the Andhra Pradesh government was planning to change all the boards on local buses to Telugu. The names of the 'To' and 'From' on all buses would be written in Telugu and I guess even the registration numbers. Now this friend of mine was strongly criticizing this idea of the government. He didn't want the boards to be written in Telugu as he could not read or write in Telugu though he could speak :(. To his benefit and to many others' like him, the government did not go ahead and implement that idea. Otherwise the publisher of "Read Telugu in 5 days" would be competing with Ambanis in wealth.

While the idea of learning the language just to be able to read a bus board is slightly nonsensical, but how many of you think one has to be a literate in his native language. Unable to read your mother-tongue - Wouldn't it be pitiful?
Globalization - that's the term we use most often to explain this. People prefer learning English, French, German etc, leaving the very own native language, to be part of the broader world. How good is it !

Then, there would be no difference between the foreigner who has just landed and the person who has been a native staying here for all his life. Both equally strangers to the language and seeking the help of others trying to figure out the name of a recently released movie.:)

Which one are you or which one would you rather be?

to forget or not to !

How many of you remember the year the first battle of Panipat was fought?

If you are finding problems recalling the date, dont worry, you are sailing on the same boat as me. And for the others who know the answer, my guess is that you were a big fan of the "panipuri"-walla beside your school and thats how you remember the "Pani"-pat well. Yeah, history students and teachers are exempted from this question :)


How many of you have trouble recalling a childhood friend?

Now, this is real trouble. One fine day you get a message/mail from a childhood friend who claims to be your partner in stealing chalkpieces(the colored ones and the white ones too) from the classroom cupboard. You remember the class room - Class III B, you remember how fast you ran after finding that someone was following you, but you dont remember the guy who was your partner in that petty incident. Pretty bad isn't it?

Not that you wanted to forget and not that you didn't care to remember him. It just happens. And once you get to see him in person or in a picture, all memories of him flash in your mind. You suddenly remember all the childhood stories and you may even tell some more which he, now, doesn't remember. :)

Happens!! This is what wikipedia says too about remembering - We recognise things better than we can recall. And that is why the percentage of scoring in Multiple choice Questions is more, it seems - because we can recognise a correct answer easily than trying to recall it from the 'memory database'. I never realized this :) Now all scores make sense to me !!


Now the million dollar question. How many of you forget to wish friends on their birthdays?

I know, most of us (should I dare to say 50% or is it even more ?) do this. And what would the reason for this be? Simple. Its not about forgetting your friend's birthday. Just that you forgot what today's date was ;) I know, not many would buy that answer. But sometimes its true.

This seems like a reverse of the case mentioned above. You can recall a birthday easily but you fail to recognise when it comes. :(

On the whole, forgetting seems to be a complex phenomenon involving the brain, which in itself is a complex structure of millions of neurons, and also involving theories like these - recognition/recall/inaccessability of data etc.


Now, if you want to forget forgetting, its like fighting the brain with itself. Handling such massive biochemical reactions would be too hard I guess. Like the first battle of Panipat where Babur's 12000 men had to face One lakh soldiers of Ibrahim Lodhi. Who would win? Yes I do remember who won that battle of Panipat.

On a side note, I still couldn't comprehend the reason why history students are asked to remember all the historical dates and years !!

Now one more question - when was the Bastille prison in Paris stormed. I remember this one somehow :)

expectation and reality

After a long break, I am back with a post in line with the 'Questions without answers' theme.

Why is an expected result, observed just once, believed to be more probable than an unexpected one occurring multiple times?

I have never seen a teller at a bank recheck the number of currency notes if the counting machine shows 100. But if it shows a 98, the teller rechecks until the machine shows 100.

Isn't the probability of a 98 note bundle becoming 100 same as the probability of 100 note one becoming 98?

Guess the world is just "optimistic".

How close is reality to expectations?

coincidence(s)

Tried finding some reasons, if not good reasons, but none of them impressed me. Seems like I have already made a valiant attempt to answer the question "why do I blog", in one of the posts in the past, but the reasons mentioned there now seem unimpressive. Change of perception, again, I guess. Reminds me of a proverb - source unknown, which goes like "The philosophy of one generation is common sense to the next generation". That explains why complex things in the past now seem simple and sometimes stupid. Anyway, I am back to random writing, leaving the reasons thing un-attempted.

Coincidences amuse me a lot. Come September 5th, I am reminded of all the coincidences that happened on this particular day a few years back. It was teachers day as usual. And it was Ganesh Chathurthi too. A coincidence in itself, that the teachers day fell on the birthday of the God considered a maestro/guru of education. Another coincidence being that Mother Teresa passed away that very day. So, in total, this day brings memories of all these incidents, good and bad, all happening on the same day making the day important in more than one ways.

Coincidence of ideas is what brought me to write about coincidences. Sometimes when I see a new software product or a new portal, I feel I have thought about this idea sometime in the past and how the idea of the product coincided with mine. I know, most of us programmers feel the same. But what separates us and them is initiative, and most importantly, vision, I guess.

One more coincidence is that I have already written a post about coincidence in the past :).

And yeah, in the meanwhile we had Blogger's day, the 31st of August*. Happy blogging to all bloggers. I am sure this one is not popularized by the greeting card companies. Whoever did it, it comes as a boon for people like me waiting for a topic to fill in some text and post it on my blog so that my reader(s) don't see the same post when they visit the blog.

* - For the unaware, 31st of August when written in DDMM format - 3108 looks like BLOG, hence it is considered Bloggers day.

stuck in second gear

Trying to find 5 good reasons why I should blog. Hope I find them as soon as possible, because until then this blog will be devoid of posts.

Feel free to help me. :)

On a side note, I never thought planets would be removed from the list. Would have reduced a lot of memory-work if done some 15 years back. And I guess the importance of the number 9 has reduced, now that the first example anyone would give to show how important 9 is doesn't hold anymore.

Bye Bye, Pluto. There will be lesser people in the coming generations who would know the name. If you are thinking for a choice of name for your grandson, you now have a choice, don't you. I just sincerely hope that someday the scientists won't come up with a revolutionary theory saying "There is nothing called a Solar System, Earth is the centre of the Universe", going back to Ptolemy's theory, and leaving us at Square One after centuries of research.

aazaadi

A long vacation it was..away from my blog for so long. Contrary to what some of you might have guessed, no, it was not the mobile that kept me busy and away from the blog. There were things less mundane ;).

Independence day. This time commemorating the 60th year of liberty, freedom, democracy. (Are they different?). The day is always beautiful, with the all-colorful flags being hoisted, people wearing small flags - symbol of patriotism. And the day becomes more vibrant if you are traveling. Every village, town and city has this central market-place where the flag is hoisted and colorful ribbons hanging around. Truly picturesque - the saffron, white and green. :)

This time I couldn't stop but observe some minute things.
1. One of the TV news channels was asking for an SMS poll on "Did India do the right thing by opting for Democracy?". [Ya, they do charge you for expressing your opinion]
2. The three main problems our country is facing now, as evident from the PM's speech were not poverty, unemployment, population explosion, but were terrorism, terrorism, and again the same word.
3. Even this time politicians were asked General-Knowledge questions about Independence like who ruled us before 1947, who is Gandhi etc. but a more appropriate question would have been to ask them to spell the word Independence, not that they do not know or not that I am still obsessed with the spelling-bee..just for fun, you know ;).
4. One surprising news I read somewhere was that Gandhi went starving for one whole day after we were declared independent. Hunger-strike for want of independence and celebrating independence by starving..Strange..Same situation, one for the want of independence and the other because we got it.

Reminds me of a similar situation, of course less important. Once, in a bus, I had two choices. One - to sit shrunk beside a huge person because he was getting down in the next stop so that I get the window seat after he leaves, and the other a normal non-window seat for the rest of the journey. Obviously, the greedy me chose to sit beside the huge dude waiting for the window seat. The person left and I got the window seat after some 15 minutes. Happy. But 5 mins at the window seat, a beautiful girl comes up, smiles a big smile and asks for an exchange of seats. The generous me immediately accepts and leaves to the new place only to find one more huge dude sitting happily...and the rest of the journey, you can imagine.

Bad seat and a smile, like Gandhi's starving and independence. ;) Same situation before and after. One for the want of a better seat and the other because I got it.

All the above mentioned things apart, I think India has evolved and is evolving into a developed nation at a good pace. And these 60 years have seen India-Emerging.
Hope this continues and we become the next super power. Hope peace prevails and we do not have to stay terrified.

Jai Hind!

PS : Do you think the beautiful girl story was fiction? A) Yes. B)No. C)Can't say. Do not SMS your answers. :)

call, shoot and play.

After a serious post about EQs IQs and Qs, lets come back to things more mundane, more selfish and more earthly.

Presenting to the world, my latest possession, my new mobile the Nokia N72.

Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all. Isn't it?

Heiligenschein

We shall come back to the title later.

A small story follows -

Place : XYZ school, First standard classroom.

Teacher to Ram - "Ram, how do you spell Bee?"

Ram - "B".

Teacher - "No, I am not asking about the alphabet B, I am asking about the insect?"

Ram - "It is B, teacher".

Teacher - "That’s wrong. Shyam, can you give me the correct spelling?"

Shyam - "It is B-E-E teacher."

Teacher - "Ram, see that’s the correct spelling. B-E-E. Not just B".

And 5 years later, Shyam won the National Spelling Bee[1] contest and 20 years later, Ram became the creator of the ultra cool "Internet Chat Slang version 2.0", which was a huge hit. People were using it more than the usual English words. SMSes, IMs, Mails they all used the ICSv2.0.

Well, this is the story that happens in every classroom. Poor students like Ram don't really understand why the spellings of words had to be so complex, without much relation between the arrangement of the alphabets and the way they sound :(. Why do we need the extra two 'e's when a single B would do. And his teacher had no answer either.

Neither do I.

It seems so weird to me, leave the formation/creation of spellings, but contests like the National Spelling Bees. Kids of the age 8 start participating in the contest and continue participating for a good five years, before they win. And at the age of eight, the kid is supposed to know the spellings of the zillions of words present in the English dictionaries, their meanings, their language of origin etc, etc. How can it be? What do these guys do? Start memorizing the dictionary at the age of five? What would YOU prefer doing at the age of five, running your toy-train and making faces at the neighbor kid whose train runs faster or try by-hearting the spellings of words similar to the title - yeah, I know you read the word twice to actually pronounce it. ( If you didn't, you should have participated in the Spelling Bee ;) ).

And I thought the winners of these competitions will eventually idolize Shakespeare and be some kind of a linguist or writer or a judge at the Spelling Bee competition :). But this dude, who was into the final rounds of the contest I have seen, wanted to become a physician. Imagine a physician taking time to spell each medicine in the prescription correctly. Did you ever see that? We all know how well a prescription is written, only to be understood by the pharmacist. :)

The point is, what is the point in Spelling Bees, or what is the point in spelling 'scissors' that way? Wouldn't sizars be easier?

Then, I came across this article. See, I am not alone in thinking so. :)

For the readers who have waited so long to know what the title actually meant, it means 'holy light' . :) This was one of the words asked in the final rounds of this year's Spelling Bee competition in the United States.

National Spelling Bee : It is a contest where contestants, usually children, are asked to spell English words after listening to the pronunciation of the word.

one and one make two..

Look at the sunrise, look at the sunset, listen to the chirping of birds early in the morning, they are all beautiful. Periodicity, the feature that is common to them all, is the reason for that beauty. And periodicity it is, that should make this post beautiful. Its been one year since I have written a similar post, marking my first year at the firm and with this post, I enter into the third year, completing two years at my work place. Yay!

I was going over that post and I found interesting things - changes in perception in this past one year.

Well, for a starter, I am no more flattered to be a tax-payer. At least, after seeing how well my tax amount is spent in putting up huge hoardings of the so called "politicians". No. Not anymore flattered.

And I have lost track of stocks, sensex and other such stuff. They are no more beautiful, I mean no more "periodic". The sensex touches the peak one day and falls into an abyss the next day. Unreliable, aperiodic and so not-so-beautiful :)

One thing though remains same. I still miss the golden college days of care-free attitude and aimless life, though a bit less than what I did the last time. Past is past.

Coming to the changes,

As anyone would expect, I have grown. While the growth is in my weight which is an altogether different story, but the important point is I've Grown.
By the way, would growth in weight mean growth of the brain i.e., more brain cells, more thinking capability, more intelligence? I guess this is not one of the Questions without answers thing, because if that were true, sumo wrestlers would be scientists, right? So leaving it there.

I have read enough books(titles at the very least) and known enough authors the past year that I can successfully pass off as a "well-read" guy. Sidney Sheldon is a man, Ayn Rand is a woman, Monks sell Ferraris, Kaavya Vishwanathan copied stuff over, Harry Potter is a magic-kid. See, I have proved it.

Sadly, my wisdom hasn't yet taken me to a point where I have opinions about everything. If only that was there, I would have written hundreds of posts this year.
To name a few -
"What do you think about the reservation issue?" - I don't know.
"Is Sania Mirza the Indian youth Icon?" - Can't say.
"Do you agree with the ban on Da Vinci Code?" - Should I?
"Was Zidane's farewell pathetic?" - Not sure.

Looking forward to more changes and more challenges in the coming year.

And why did I cross the line of "posting ONLY about Questions, answers and such stuff"? Simple. The url of my blog was complaining that I was making justice to the title of the blog but not to the URL, so I had to write something about 'gklelsani', which is me, to be unbiased, balanced, thus periodic and again....yeah...beautiful :).

the double r.

Krrish, the movie with an extra r. And this extra r, rooted from the numerology factor(or whatever factor), must have been one of the reasons for the movie's success.Released as a sequel to the movie Koi Mil Gaya, which itself was a big mix of all the E.T. related movies, this one has gone to the next level. The protagonist is a gifted dude having all the powers of Batman, Superman, Spiderman and our very own Shaktimaan too ;), not to forget the Indian dance factor, he excels at this too. But the picturesque landscapes and the action sequences are no less than the best. The movie gets a big thumbs-up for these. And Hrithik is, without any doubt, the unanimous pick for the role.

I am no big movie reviewer and I am not suggesting you guys to go and watch this one. The point is something else. This movie was the first movie to be screened directly from a satellite, getting away with the reels and boxes, which have shown us movies since ages. Well the satellite thing may not be new to many of you, but it was, for me.And the place where I saw the movie was no big technology hub of South India. It was just an average town where people have hard time trying to figure out what a call center is. That's the reason for my surprise.

I was just astonished with the ease with which these boxes, from which the term 'box office' was derived (I guess), were so easily given up for good and replaced with a signal receiver uprooting the livelihood of so many "behind-the-projector" employees. I believe this is a straight hit on their pockets, for soon, more theatres will adopt to this new technology and more of these people will be jobless. Finding a replacement job would be tougher, since their skill-set is now totally a waste. The arms behind the rotating projector will be denied the work they are best at doing.

Its not just this one case, the rise of technology has resulted in the regression of so many such jobs. And this is the 'double r' I started off with. "Rise and Regression". Rise of technology and regression of unsophisticated manual jobs. And the world needs skilled labour able to operate this new technological innovations and not the plain old manual operators. What about them? Does this mean that a person who knows nothing but digging wells with a crowbar for his living, will now have to learn operating a bull-dozer?

Is this possible?