Santa Claus, the True Story

I got this story from KS the other day and found it wonderful... Read on and do read the follow up discussion at the end...

I remember my first Christmas party with Grandma. I was
just a kid. I remember tearing across town on my bike to
visit her on the day my big sister dropped the bomb: "There
is no Santa Claus," she jeered. "Even dummies know that!"

My grandma was not the gushy kind, never had been. I fled
to her that day because I knew she would be straight with
me. I knew Grandma always told the truth, and I knew that
the truth always went down a whole lot easier when
swallowed with one of her world-famous cinnamon buns.

Grandma was home, and the buns were still warm. Between
bites, I told her everything. She was ready for me.

"No Santa Claus!" she snorted. "Ridiculous! Don't believe it.
That rumor has been going around for years, and it makes
me mad, plain mad. Now, put on your coat, and let's go."

"Go? Go where, Grandma?" I asked. I hadn't even finished
my second cinnamon bun.

"Where" turned out to be Kerby's General Store, the one store
in town that had a little bit of just about everything. As we
walked through its doors, Grandma handed me ten dollars.
That was a bundle in those days. "Take this money and buy
something for someone who needs it. I'll wait for you in the
car." Then she turned and walked out of Kerby's.

I was only eight years old. I'd often gone shopping with my
mother, but never had I shopped for anything all by myself.
The store seemed big and crowded, full of people scrambling
to finish their Christmas shopping. For a few moments I just
stood there, confused, clutching that ten-dollar bill, wondering
what to buy, and who on earth to buy it for.

I thought of everybody I knew: my family, my friends, my
neighbors, the kids at school, the people who went to my
church. I was just about thought out, when I suddenly thought
of Bobbie Decker. He was a kid with bad breath and messy hair,
and he sat right behind me in Mrs. Pollock's grade-two class.

Bobbie Decker didn't have a coat. I knew that because he never
went out for recess during the winter. His mother always wrote
a note, telling the teacher that he had a cough, but all we kids
knew that Bobbie Decker didn't have a cough, and he didn't have
a coat. I fingered the ten-dollar bill with growing excitement. I
would buy Bobbie Decker a coat. I settled on a red corduroy one
that had a hood to it. It looked real warm, and he would like that.

"Is this a Christmas present for someone?" the lady behind the
counter asked kindly, as I laid my ten dollars down.

"Yes," I replied shyly. "It's ... For Bobbie."

The nice lady smiled at me. I didn't get any change, but she put
the coat in a bag and wished me a Merry Christmas.

That evening, Grandma helped me wrap the coat in Christmas
paper and ribbons, and write, "To Bobbie, From Santa Claus"
on it -- Grandma said that Santa always insisted on secrecy.
Then she drove me over to Bobbie Decker's house, explaining
as we went that I was now and forever officially one of Santa's
helpers.

Grandma parked down the street from Bobbie's house, and
she and I crept noiselessly and hid in the bushes by his front
walk. Then Grandma gave me a nudge. "All right, Santa Claus,"
she whispered, "get going."

I took a deep breath, dashed for his front door, threw the
present down on his step, pounded his doorbell and flew back
to the safety of the bushes and Grandma. Together we waited
breathlessly in the darkness for the front door to open. Finally
it did, and there stood Bobbie.

Forty years haven't dimmed the thrill of those moments spent
shivering, beside my grandma, in Bobbie Decker's bushes. That
night, I realized that those awful rumors about Santa Claus
were just what Grandma said they were: ridiculous.

Santa was alive and well, and we were on his team.

The story has multiple layers... Once in a while I am confused thinking about how best to bring up kids... I am not sure how ... but this was definitely one of the best ways to do so... the Granny in one go taught the kid a lots and lots of things which would definitely help him in the life ahead.....

What KS liked most about this idea was that the Granny did the teaching while keeping the innocent faith of the boy intact... In modern times, we often tend to be too factual and in the process destroy such beliefs, as that of the boy in Santa.. We should surely not be superstitious but KS thinks we should have at least some bit of faith in things beyond what meets the eye.. Such a belief has the power to give a lot of meaning to life, as it did in the case of the boy in the story.. :-)

A trip to remember

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With Dusshera holiday on Thursday, people were taking off on Friday to make the last weekend a long one. A recent vacation and an impending delivery at work precluded my further vacationing, however when AS4, AS2 & RD approached me with a plan to go biking to Jaipur I simply found it irresistible, more so because the plan was to leave Delhi Friday evening and be back on Monday for work!!

This was to be my first long distance biking experience so I was obviously excited. Beside the few "glitches" the trip was very smooth and not half as painful as T had said it would be. I have a small logging of major events that happened en-route (recorded on AS4s mobile;)).

Oct 10 2008 9:51 PM - Leave Ghaziabad after fuelling up
Oct 11 2008 1:15 AM - Have Dinner
Oct 11 2008 2:53 AM - Long tea break Baniyala Mod
Oct 11 2008 5:23 AM - Bakar Break @ Shiv villas
Oct 11 2008 7:45 AM - Check in Hotel Sarfaraz
Oct 11 2008 1:25 PM - Lunch @ Bombay Mishtan Bhandar
Oct 11 2008 7:50 PM - Visit Choki Dhani
Oct 11 2008 9:15 PM - Dinner @ Choki Dhani

Choki Dhani deserves a special mention, the place is a complete mockery of indian villages, other than the fact that guys wear ethnic clothes and there are camels and bullock carts roaming around [which, by the way are used to conduct guided 3 mins rides; And.. If you are thinking it sucks :) it does {We did take the camel ride though ;)} ] there is a guy selling popcorn, there's icecream and there is HUGE HUGE HUGE queue for meals. The experience had almost turned out to be the low-point of the trip, seeing the super long Q we had almost decided to turn around and eat at some common restaurant, when we decide that now that we had spent this much time & money to be there, might as well make the most of it. And Boy, we turned it around to make it the high-point of the trip. Random jokes about Tea being served in plastic cups and the resolution to do the Train around the organized folk dance and to get more people involved to make it look like a college disco party and the meticulously ridiculous ideas on how to make sure that we are kicked out of the place not only brought our spirits back but proved a source of entertainment to all around. When we finally managed to get our dinners served, and we did our best in amusing everyone around us, the server poured in extra ghee in my plate saying that I need to be strong like Salman Khan. And in no time, we were back to our cheerful selves [though we didnt do the Train neither did we get kicked out]

Oct 12 2008 3:51 AM - Sleep after a LOTS of senti talks
Oct 12 2008 1:30 PM - Checkout from Sarfaraz Hotel
Oct 12 2008 1:40 PM - Juice & Lunch
Oct 12 2008 2:30 PM - Photo @ Very cool hill
Oct 12 2008 3:30 PM - Fined. (I was not carrying bike papers, and yeah... I didnt have a license :) [we were not fined for that though... Lucky chance.. AS2 had JUST taken over the bike from me]
Oct 12 2008 6:30 PM - Boating @ Sili Said Lake
Oct 12 2008 7:30 PM - Reached Alwar
Oct 12 2008 9:30 PM - Dinner @ Bivadi
Oct 12 2008 11:10 PM - Reach Dhaula Kuan @ Delhi
Oct 13 2008 12:09 AM - Reach AS4s home
Oct 13 2008 12:50 AM - Back @ my home.yo yo yo

And there it was, a wonderful trip....

Well, the trip would be incomplete if I did not mention the little "glitches" we had. After a night long ride we were pretty tired and sleepy. Now those who know me would know that one thing I CANNOT resist is sleep. So when we reached Jaipur, it was almost 5 in the morning, we were on a hilly road with quite a few steep turns. I was riding, RD is behind me when suddenly RD shouts at me for not being careful, I was almost ready to ram into the railing. I am quite shocked, not knowing that I was careless but knowing that I hadnt seen the railing AT ALL... I had dozed off :) [well its not something to be happy about.. But... in retrospect it really looks funny :)] we changed seats but boy I was in such a bad shape I just couldnt keep my eyes open, I drank all the water that was there, kept sprinkling myself with water but I just couldnt manage to keep sitting straight till we reached this hotel and I dozed off at the reception and was hauled to the room :)

But as they say.. Alls well that ends well... and it did for us...

True love...

They say that true love is eternal and that it is beyond life and death... There are innumerous stories on how true lovers brought back their loved ones from the very grasp of death... I experienced something like this recently....

When I met her four years back, I knew I had fallen in love with her on first sight.. There was no mistaking it for infatuation or a crush... It was love... in the purest form... Her voice sounded like the clearest note of a ringing bell to my ears... I remember the first time I heard her... I could not stop smiling... I must have looked so stupid then.. But thus is true love.. you are happy to look stupid...

Four years went by, in the blink of an eye... I wished time were less cruel... a little slower... but that was how it was to be... Last month as I fondly saw her rest... recharging herself for the day to come... to my horror and shock she just collapsed... over a period of a few weeks the frequency of the collapses increased... It was stupid of me... but I was scared to show her to a doctor least it turned out to be something serious... knowing that she could have been treated on a timely consultation... I resisted the doctor on some pretext or the other... Deep down I knew that she would not be able to be with me for long.. She had a heart problem...

My world was almost shattered... But as true love would have it... this Diwali I got my gift... I was at KG's place when to my utter surprise I notice that Miss MG had long killed an innocent soul and left the unused heart to rot.... it was almost like the universe conspiring to make sure my love prevails... it was a perfect match for her... most eagerly and earnestly KG donated... A heart replacement.. and my phone is now as good as new... True love prevails.....

PS: If you are wondering what the heart was... well.. it was "her" battery

Highest goal of life

Recently PG forwarded an article to me. It was as if I was reading my own thoughts about life. Everybody has a simple choice to make, being happy or being sad; this choice I strongly feel can be made independently of the events happening around us. This might sound difficult and high philosophy, but I have often found this natural and I really hope that in future we never so bogged down with the events happening that we are unable to make this choice for us.

Read on.

+Fasih

The highest spiritual path is life itself. If you know how to live daily life, it all becomes a liberating experience. But first you have to approach life properly, or it can be very confusing. To begin with, you have to realize that you really only have one choice in this life, and it's not about your career, whom you want to marry, or whether you want to seek God. People tend to burden themselves with so many choices. But, in the end, you can throw it all away and just make one basic, underlying decision: Do you want to be happy, or do you not want to be happy? It's really that simple. Once you make that choice, your path through life becomes totally clear.

Most people don't dare give themselves that choice because they think it's not under their control. Someone might say, "Well, of course I want to be happy, but my wife left me." In other words, they want to be happy, but not if their wife leaves them. But that wasn't the question. The question was, very simply, "Do you want to be happy or not?" If you keep it that simple, you will see that it really is under your control. It's just that you have a deep-seated set of preferences that gets in the way. […]

It's not a question of whether your happiness is under your control. Of course it's under your control. It's just that you don't really mean it when you say you're willing to stay happy. You want to qualify it. You want to say that as long as this doesn't happen, or as long as that does happen, then you're willing to be happy. That's why it seems like it is out of your control. Any condition you create will limit your happiness. You simply aren't going to be able to control things and keep them the way you want them.

You have to give an unconditional answer. If you decide that you're going to be happy from now on for the rest of your life, you will not only be happy, you will become enlightened. Unconditional happiness is the highest technique there is. You don't have to learn Sanskrit or read any scriptures. You don't have to renounce the world. You just have to really mean it when you say that you choose to be happy. And you have to mean it regardless of what happens. This is truly a spiritual path, and it is as direct and sure a path to Awakening as could possibly exist.

--Michael Singer from "The Untethered Soul"

The old Cherokee

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between 2 wolves.

"One is Evil. It is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.

The other is God. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Economics for dummies - Part II (Petro Bucks)

In my post some time back I had talked about how the people of Squanderville sold bonds to Thriftsville to support their squanders. However that is not the only option Squandervillians have. Below is an oversimplified version of the other option that a country can take. It is, what I call a dummies version of this story. Read along to know what we are headed for.

Any sane civilization with some self-respect and dignity eventually goes to war, killing its own people and leaving the survivors in suffering. It was in those times that the United States of Warriors realized that they can make some money. Warriors supplied arms and ammunitions to its allies for gold, by the time the war was over, Warriors had amassed enough gold that their currency was seen as more stable than Gold. Oil, which everybody needs began to be traded in WarBucks (Currency of Warriors) just because the currency was percieved stable. The demand for WarBucks, therefore started rising, Warriors made use of the oppurtunity and started printing WarBucks and bought stuff with them. In effect they bought stuff for free! (If you are wondering why cant everyone do this, well, read Part I. In short, if I start printing currency and start buying stuff with it, the people who have got my currency will come back to me and want to buy some other stuff with it, if I print too much of my currency there will be too much money chasing the limited amount of stuff I have and will result in things getting more expensive - Inflation. WarBucks however, were used by others to buy not stuff at home but oil elsewhere thus no inflation)

Soon everyone has loads of WarBucks that they use to buy Oil. Now the United Emirates of Oilers decide to stop trading in WarBucks and use NewBucks, suddenly the world realises that they cannot do anything with WarBucks and they want to sell the WarBucks. WarBucks fall steeply against NewBucks, Warriors do not have enough stuff to sell if the countries decide to sell WarBucks for WarStuff. Essentially Warriors can go bankrupt. What are the options they have:
1. Start producing stuff, and do that more economically than others to make it economically viable for others to buy. Which also means that the cost of labour has to go down drastically (They obviously had been squandering all along with free stuff they had been buying with WarBucks)
2. Do what they are best at doing: Go to war, thereby forcing all its allies to use WarBucks again.

Option 2 obviously sounds much more sensible, doesnt it?

Movies: Life Is Beautiful

When:

This was a movie I saw with APS @ his hostel in IIT D. I saw this movie back to back with Schindler's List and Rise of the Evil both of which are also in my favorite list. Apart from the movie being just wonderful and possibly my #1 the watching of the movie itself was just wonderful and memorable.

Why:

I liked the movie because of its EXTREME simplicity. Of late I have realized that I see beauty in simplicity, the most beautiful to my mind are not the most exquisite and elaborate but the simplest. The wonderful music that plays in the background is also one of the highpoints of the movie.

What:

The movie revolves around a guy who believes that life is beautiful, through pain and despair he keeps smiling and brings hope to his loved ones and people all around him. It shows the power love has, it is love which gives him his ability to smile.

Wonderful movie... And I believe it too.. that life is beautiful... Just because there is always hope.... And love...

Kudos to open source world

I have never been a windoze fan, infact I have never really left an option to sabotage the name of M$. Having said that, I use windoze on my laptop, and though I work on a remote fedora core box, I still use windoze to check my mails, to keep my appointments, to write my documents, heck I spend 90% of my computer time on windoze. Last month I decided to change all that.

Last month AT suggested Ubuntu, and boy it works, just wonderful. OpenOffice takes care of the docs, Thunderbird totally replaces outlook, it can even setup meeting requests. Firefox & VLC obviously work just as fine on Ubuntu. Gaim/Pidgin is awesome and so is liferea & Amarok. Tomboy Notes is just the right application for me. The best part of Ubuntu is the ease with which you can install stuff, windoze should really do something about it (read cheat it and name Unified Microsoft Installer or something) to install amarok all you have to do is yum install amarok. It downloads/installs/configures the app for you, awesome, isnt it?

I tried quite a few flavours before/after Ubuntu, Fedora is difficult to configure otherwise I kind of like Fedora core. Ubuntu supports all my hardware, I was impressed with the way my wireless was automatically detected & configured. Even windows takes longer to configure!!

All in all its almost a month and the only reason I log in to Windoze is to play online pool with MS as pidgin does not support Y! Games. Kudos Open Source world. Hats off to you guys.

On lending a helping hand

Every now and then there are mails floating around asking the receiver to forward the mail to others as that would lead to the service provider paying up anywhere between 1 paise to 1 cent for every forward. This money in turn would help some poor soul to afford a terrible sickness. Today I got one such mail:

IIT Bombay student Anupam Biswas 5th sem. Mechanical Engg is suffering from Colukabki (caused due to excessive nabad and depression) a disease very rarely found (3 in a billion). His condition is very pathetic and the treatment is very expensive, obviously his parents are not able to afford his treatment. Orkut has agreed to pay 1 paisa after each time this message is forward. So please pass to all ur friends. please i request you to pass it to as many people as u can and lets try to save someone's life. I request please do not ignore this. It will take......

It made me wonder about a few things:
1. How naive can a person get!!! Colukabki ?????? nabad??????? Unimaginably random names.. Google is just a click away, it will take a second to know that there is NO ailment by that name.
2. What kind of people can start such sick chains! There will be many who would be forced to mistrust even a genuine mail.

3. There is a VERY small part, almost an appendix in us which wants us to help other human beings, someone in need, but there is a bigger larger sense that prevails and wants most of us to chill and relax and do our work, sit in our tight loop of what we call our lives. Unless it involves sending a mail [without even thinking twice of its implications] or writing a blog about the poor, most of us just pass. And though there is a struggle inside which really wants us to do something make some change somewhere, ultimately our better sense prevails... And we pass... and that.. sadly is what I have been doing....

I am reminded of MG... [http://www.noragging.com/], amazing to see someone doing his bit to bring about a change that can effect somebody's life in his busy schedule of work... hats off to you MG....

An eventful weekend.....

Lately my weekends have become very satisfying, even if it translates to staying at home and doing some household chores, reading up tech stuff or novels or chatting with friends or playing pool [online >:)] I really enjoy my weekends.... However, this, was a really nice weekend... Saturday was A's Bday.. When I reached home there were people ready to kick his ass [quite literally >:)] and by then I was already in a very jolly mood. Mostly because I nailed a work bug and a friend's bug remotely[TeamViewer rocks] >:) and also talked on phone for almost 1.5 hrs, now that's what I call productivity >:).

So A gets his ass kicked, cuts his cake with a spoon coz we have misplaced our knife since past couple of days now!! The next day we head for the lunch budday party..., nice lonngggg lunch at Pind Baluchi... followed by bowling at Shopprix... i finally managed to not only get but also give a few fundae too [which as claimed by the receiver, were useful!!!], by the time we were done with Bowling, it was already late in the evening but we nevertheless decided to go to India Gate, just to make the day complete.

Weather in Delhi is horrible, very very hot & humid so when I noticed that the wind was rather cool, the car was rather fast, the environment was rather jolly and I was rather tooo happy due to a mix of various of these factors, I could not refrain from getting out of the car to feel the wind from closer quarters; This translates to sitting out of the moving car's window. It was fun, I took a small video of myself doing the cheap trick ;). So far so good till we reach a red-light and an angry looking guy comes to the car door and order it to be opened. I look cautiously, no sooner had I opened the door than this guy grabs my collar and pulls me out of the car to all our surprise. Another well dressed gentleman grabs my arm and twists it behind me, all in the middle of the road!! And then it dawns on me, he is a police guy coming out of an Ambassador with a red light on it. "I have been watching you since past 15 mins, what was that you were doing, you guys risk such stunts and we get a bad name.. Take him to the lockup" says the better dressed man in English... I am all shocked, suddenly down from my cloud number 9.... They pull me aside as by then the light had gone green and the traffic was all held up because of us... He twists my arms harder, "I am sorry" is all I can say... "Sir its this guy's birthday, so we were generally happy... Sir I am really sorry"... he asks me what I do... And I... quite fluently and without hesitation say.. "Sir.. we are students"... "Where?".. "IIT"... "Branch".... "Electrical IV yr" his hand loosened.. "Where are you from?".. ."Sir Calcutta..." ... "Name"... "Fasihullah... Sir I am really sorry... "... " Ok... dont ever such things again...." The other guy whispers in my friend's ears.... "IIT ka hai... isliye chod diya..." my my... we get inside the car.. start moving... AgAg says "Chill... dont get tensed..." I am like... "Ok... Antakshiri.....".... And we were laughing again....

India Gate was a good idea... we played volleyball with a balloon [ooops... Balloon nahiiin AgAg ka dil...], walked in the very dirty pond, A danced to "Inhin logon ne..." It was fun... The day finally ended with a perfect dinner of quality icecream & Paranthas at EXL dhaba....
Songs.... Fight sequences [one way >:)]... Romance [Dil ke saath khelna >:)], food, leg pulling, senti, embarrasment, anger, maafeds and lots and lots of meaningless jokes at which we all laughed our hearts out.... A perfect weekend is what I would call it... Thanks everyone and happy birthday A again.....

Honeymoon in Singapore

I was in Singapore this weekend. As KU said, it was a weekend honeymoon that I had been to :). The trip started off with a 2:45 mins travel time to the airport (as opposed to the normal 45 mins. Thanx to the Olympic torch going through Delhi) leaving me just in time to check in (the flight eventually had to be delayed because a majority of the passengers, turns out, got delayed for the same reason).

I reach Singapore, go to office via the Metro (Our Delhi metro really compares well with theirs) take a cab to the office (Cabs are very affordable, unlike US). By the way, I was utterly surprised to see announcements made in Tamil in the Metro. Turns out that there are so many Indians (Tamilians to be more precise) that Tamil is one of the four official languages!!. After work (by which time I am totally sleepy even after a Coke and 2 coffees), LK & AP take me out for a dinner to Boatquay, a line of eateries with all kind of food (Mostly sea-food), alongside the Singapore river. This was a totally enjoyable and unique experience and would have been much better had the weather been a little more pleasant. I ended up ordering some shrimp whose eyes were staring at me and some huge fish which I could not bring myself to eat [If it were not for the rich source of protein that fish is, I think I can stick to pure vegetarian food which tastier and more guiltfree >:)]. While we were talking I happened to mention the most disgusting food I have had, which was Sushi for breakfast (at 6 in the morning) when I was in Japan, this totally caught the attention of LK who took it as his responsibility as a Singaporean to prove that anything Japan can do, Singapore can do better. With this motive I was ordered a dessert, Durian with sticky rice. Now, Durian is a fruit which stinks so bad that it is an offense to carry it around in public!! (Which brings me to the most interesting thing about Singapore. The place, as NB puts it, is a BIG Hogward, very heavily regulated, it is an offense to chew gum in public!!!! I am sure you cant beat that!!) So I decide to eat the "fruit" (on the positive side, it is claimed to be a very nutritious food), AP warned me that the first time he ate it, he had to run to find a place to puke, so I better be ready >:). And prepared as I was (I sat right next to the river so that I could puke in that), I guess it was mainly because of the sticky rice that I didnt throw up and managed to eat it all :).


Sunday morning was at Sentosa Island, a nice place to hang around and the evening was at the airport back to India. There was a wonderful cable-car journey to the Island, Dolphin show, Underwater world where you walk through a tunnel and all kinds of fish HUGE & tiny swim by you..

It would be a gross injustice to the blog if I did not mention that I misread my flight departure time as 2:30 in the day (actually 2:30 AM) and missed it and very luckily got an evening flight at a very nominal charge. I guess my trips are never fun without at least one goofup to make it look fuzzy enough..

Of Maatra Bhuumi, Motherland

This weekend I saw Munich, I was really touched to see these people fighting for land, a never ending futile war. Below is a particular dialog that really made me stop and think, it is between Avner, an Israeli-born Mossad agent of German descent and Ali, an Arab who is fighting to get back Gaza from Israel, which he thinks of as his mother

Avner: You'll never get the land back.

Ali: You'll all die old men in refugee camps waiting for Palestine. We have a lot of children. They'll have children. So we can wait forever. And if we need to, we can make the whole planet unsafe for Jews.

Avner: You kill Jews and the world feels bad for them... and thinks you are animals.

Ali: But then the world will see how they've made us into animals. They'll start to ask questions about the conditions in our cages.

Avner: You are Arabs. There are lots of places for Arabs. Tell me something, Ali. Do you really miss your father's olive trees? Do you honestly think you have to get back all that...that nothing? That chalky soil and stone huts. Is that what you really want for your children?

Ali: It absolutely is. It will take a hundred years, but we'll win. We want to be nations. Home is everything.



I really found it weird, it is not a melodramatic speech, people all over fight for land, closer home, Kashmiris want to get away from India, there are fights from completely barren useless piece of land all because it is what they call "home". The way we are born and brought up, we really look at this piece of land as ours, and I am sure if there is a need tomorrow most of us would be ready to kill or die for this. Weird, but true. And while I was thinking about this, I see this video, believe me, I could actually feel the emotions within, goosebumps is too mild to express. Watch it, its a 2 min clip really worth watching if you are an Indian.

My First recording

To strive to seek and not to yield....

Some things we do might not be very valuable from most of the point of views, in fact it might be totally worthless or sometimes plain simple wastage of time, yet there are things which makes me happy. It keeps re-inforcing the adage that my Maths teacher once said... "A Man can do what a man has done... ".. Running a marathon or learning guitar (without enrolling for a guitar class >:))

Anyways, so this is my first recording, definitely not very good and dumb windoze would not allow me to record more than 60 secs worth of data (on the brighter side, you can claim to have sat through my entire performance without getting very bored >:)).

Enjoy...
Please feel free to comment :)

[Special thanks to my roommates PK & G for bearing up with me as I did my nightly riyaaz] >:)

And yes.. .my voice sucks >:)

Open your eyes

My boss recently forwarded this video to me. It really is an eye-opener, though it applies to US mainly, whose monetary policies, things that really effect US, the way they live, the food they eat is all governed not by the govt. people elect but by some unelected un-accountable body that can make its decissions autonomously.

Though talking about US, I was forced to think how much are we aware of our financial system, its accountability to us, the people of India. Its time we open our eyes to the facts and stand up for our own good.

Top 5 things that has changed the world in the past 50 years

Besides the obvious food for the body, lunch time for me is the time the mind gets food too. Almost everyday we find a new topic to talk about sometimes philosophical, sometimes technical and sometimes purely random. Yesterday MG generally asks as to what would be the top 5 things in the past 50 years that have changed the way we live. The obvious answers were:
1. ICs [Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed a patent for a "Solid Circuit" made of germanium on February 6, 1959.]
2. Internet
3. Mobile phones


Well... Since we couldnt think of anything else that was as dramatic, I put the question forth for you to answer. :)

The ethics and the Sutta

The other day over the lunch Mallaya bidding for IPL players came up; and with Mallaya came his wealth, the way he made money, MG said was unethical, the reason being he was selling alchohol. This basically set the mood for the day's afternoon debate :) which I found entertaining enough to blog about. The topic then formally was, "Should the goverment interfere in the operations of cigerattes/daru companies?". Interestingly I was against the topic... [Interesting because I am a non-smoking tee-totaller :) Infact the only selfish reason I have to be against the motion is that I own ITC(Indian Tobacco Company) stocks ;)]

Anyways, in brief the best points for/against the motion were:
Against :- It hampers the freewill of an individual, we are born with the right to choose for ourselves
For :- If all were to have their freewill then there should be no legal system, let people steal/rape/kill
Against :- Stealing/Rape/Murder affects somebody else's freedom Govt is doing right in protecting it. Drunk driving should be banned because it can cause an accident leading to somebody's death. We accept that drinking is bad because the chances that a drunk person would do something he would regret or cause others harm is much higher then when he is sober but so is a person in anger. The point we are trying to make is, what the Govt CAN do and SHOULD do is to educate people about the ill-effects of Alcohol and Cigerettes instead of trying to stop them from doing it.
For :- Society as a whole takes a course over time, the Govt's role is to shape the course, if alcohol is not available much lesser number of people will drink and consequently they will contribute positively in the society's direction ahead.
Against :- People who dont know what is good or bad for them or who cant control their actions knowing something is not good for them are not the kinds who will take the society anywhere.
For :- [By far the best argument :)] The govt has social responsibilities towards people. It has to ensure that everybody gets proper health treatment/facilities, now drinkers/smokers being worse off than non-smokers and non-drinkers take more money to mantain [>:)] hence economically, for the good of the larger population, the govt should stop the people from being high-mantainence [Credit goes to BS for the wonderful argument]

As you might have noticed that since I was arguing against the motion, the post is biased towards my viewpoint :)

Thoughts?

My birthday

Birthdays are so very weird.... It seems so childish to celebrate one. Though I never have a lot of expectations that I would get a whole lot of wishes but still, somehow it brings joy when someone calls to wish a genuine wish... This time around there were only a few wishes but almost everyone of those was a genuine wish...

I had my first birthday cake.... [With my name on it] Got FLOWERS !!! [From an Aunt!!!!].... A replacement gift [Definition: A gift given with the intention of replacing an older gift which may have been tattered due to continuous use :)].. Books [My... I do give out the ghissu vibes!!]... And friends calling at 12 their local time [Globalization!!!]

All in all it was a nice day and I felt great to have friends caring for me. Little drops of water make a mighty ocean... Little gestures... make us so happy... A few years down the line... when we look back... what we remember are those small moments of joys that someone brought to us... And the moments of joy that we could bring to someone.... And as MS would say, people come and people go... What remains is the footprint they leave in our lives.....