Irony

Totally my favourite word...

It pretty much sums up life in all it's mystery.

Life isn't fair so get used to it....the motto I swear by.

As long as it's unfair in my favour...I'm not complaining :-)

I'm listening to Castles Made of Sand by Jimi Hendrix.

Trying to figure out as to whether destiny truly exists.

Why we rarely have a clue as to how our lives are gonna turn out...

and how we look back,wondering  "How would things have been if I'd done that ? ".

Truth is....you'll never know...not by the wisdom you have today not by what you had back then.

The best you can truly do....is give it you best shot and keep fingers crossed.

Have the right intentions...make your move and leave things to take on a life of their own.

I think about the people who I am drawn to at every step and people that I think are bad for me.

How we find friends in most unexpected of souls....

and ironically find the most significance in the ones we loathe.

The ones who teach us.....the ones who shape us without even knowing it.

The ones we chose to let go and the ones we never give up on.

Irony by definition is a sum of opposites...rhetoric,hypocrisy,deception...call it whatever you want.

It's what complements and completes.

So I've decided to accept life as Irony and keep pushing at all costs....

To keep going in the direction I choose regardless of the outcome..

and if I'm lucky to be able to recognise and make the most of Irony.

Rise and Shine

Proud to say I have Coorgi blood flowing in my veins.
We are an annoyingly stubborn,proud,
coffee loving community that the English could never conquer,
through battle or by any other means...
I guess that explains why it has produced some of India's finest military generals.....
......and it also explains my blown up ego and dangerous coffee addiction !

Consuming gallons of coffee on virtually any occasion....
had gotten me staying awake way too long.....
It sent my body clock on a similar schedule as my OU exams.
An hour of sleep here........36 hours of work there.
My head buzzing.....hands shaking....Songs playing in my head.
Stubborn as I am,I just kept going on and on......
before I realized I was getting way too addicted to work.
I knew I needed help and this time....Miles Davis' music was'nt going to do it.

Enter Mommy....
Ma's been an AOL volunteer for years 

and has always wanted me to be a little more spiritually inclined :-)
Not that that I disregarded spirituality......or any of our Yogic and Spiritual Gurus.
Just that I've always felt that if I was going to go in that direction,
 it should be wholeheartedly and not cause I had to be pushed towards it.
Anyways......watching me do the crazy robot .....pushed my Mom's panic button.
I am pretty sure she said to herself in a most Matrix like fashion......"It is time."....

Give your son a blasting of his life,
tell him he is a total moron.....

and tell him he totally takes after his Dad ! :-)
Then cool down....and explain to him that he needs to get a life..

.......one that he is in control of...
And then do the unthinkable.......enroll him into a Yoga class !

Mommy Dearest...

All my life,you have embarrassed me more than a few times ...
but this is more than I can take....or so I thought to myself.
Watching yoga on TV is fun (sometimes) but I never thought
I would actually be the one stretching my insides 

and taking on the most awkward of poses.

To top it all up...I had to rise early.
'Early'.....ah ! .......I now remember that word.....

So I began on a Monday....

Woke up at 5 and got to the hall by 6.
I was the youngest person there.

Told myself,"Keep your eyes closed and you'll be fine".

Began with some light breathing exercises, chanted the 'OM'.
and we started off with some stretches I had never imagined possible.
 

It had only been an hour.......
and I had already become a cat,a monkey,a baby,a dog.
I had ridden an imaginary bicycle,rowed an imaginary boat,

pushed against walls,churned butter and played SuperMan.

( if you could visualize what that Asana might be like.....you could feel my pain. )
God....How much longer ? .....How much more pain?
Talk yourself through it.....All in your head !.....All in your Head !

It was then that I felt the transformation......an overwhelming force
and yet a comfortable feeling that my system was beginning to heal itself.
I lost hold of all the thoughts that were going through my head.
My mind went blank and I just did'nt care about what I could or could'nt do.

I did'nt 'think' of doing,
I did'nt 'try' to do,
.........I just 'did'..........
There was no thought...just action.

There was neither my work...nor my concerns.....nor my ego......nor me.
Just the voice and the feel.....
A flow that was new to me and yet....not a stranger .

Yoga is derived from the ancient word 'Yuj'.
Means "Union with the Divine".
The approach of Yoga is to balance the flow of energy through the mind and body...

By unblocking our energy channels,
it unlocks any clogs in our system
and regulates the flow of "Prana"-meaning the life force.

I left the hall with something I came without.
A new found awareness, an energy unlocked.
At the end of each hour I find myself........relaxed and refreshed.

To be introduced to something that someone in my place would generally consider uncool,
and to experience first hand....something that empowers and yet grounds....is a first for me.
Would I recommend it to my peers ?..yes I would...
Would I expect them to take to it.......No I would'nt.
At our age,we are way too exposed and conditioned by the Tube and the Puppet Masters,
to understand and regard the value of this ancient yet timeless knowledge.

By some unusual twist of  circumstances,

I find myself lucky to have experienced what I did.
Feeling silly and yet a lot wiser .

Like they say......Mom knows best.
Mom...I guess you do.....
And the next time you plan to embarrass your Silly Son !
....There'll be a 'Thank You' card waiting :-)

Etc Etc.

Not that I'd love the ones that I do,any less on any other day.
But V-Day seems  to have officially earmarked all the cliches of affection.
Pink,Pink,Pink.....wait a sec....Pink :-)
Coffee Shop Managers,Street Side Florists and the Shiv Sena
are gonna have a better day than most of the Love Birds out there.

Alas, that's not the case with the us students of the MCA dept.
Our exams begin tomorrow and even the most affectionate Valentine's Greeting,
would feel like a cruel joke.

It's been been a pretty hectic fortnight and it hasn't gotten any better.
My project's gotten fast tracked and while it's pretty glamorous to work with the world's most popular networking site....one has to remember that it's still work and it has to be done.
Like I've posted before,I always get more work piled up when my hands are already full,
and it's happened yet again.

Our college hosted it's BasketBall tournament last week and had 16 teams in the pool.
Our PD has been at me for two years to join the basketball team but I managed to dodge it everytime.
Not that I'm lazy or can't perform for the team....but I've got to focus on a lot of stuff in life and sports in our college doesn't get the perks it deserves.
In spite of that, I've nothing but respect for our PD for putting his heart and soul into building a sports platform for our college.
So he tells me that he want's me manning the Score table during the tournament.
Since I've been avoiding the team for two years,I figured it's the least I could do.
It wasn't until two days before the tournament that that I was told that the table had to be manned by a third party official and that I had to shift my duties to coach the B Team.


The B team was made up mostly of first years who had barely learnt to shoot and dribble.
They had never played a tournament in their life.
Bad news.....they had just two days to practice.
...worse news....they now had me as their coach...
Practice at what ?....I had no clue...
The best I could do was build up an offensive strategy and show them a few defensive formations.
Apart from that I told to play the game at their own pace while trusting each other and they would be fine.

I knew there wasn't much that the team could do with such little practice and not having played a tournament before....But I also knew they would give it their best shot and would learn something.
We lost all the matches we played but against veteran teams that had some of the best players in the university.
The last match we played was against Bhavan's that had African imports on the team.I was pretty amazed and happy to see our team take lead till half time,we lost be a large margin but showed consistent form throughtout out the game.
By the time our team was eliminated there was no sense of loss or disappointment but rather a sense of confidence and joy that the performed pretty well for their first tournament.With each match I could see their confidence grow and their game evolve.
I got appreciated by PD and the team for whatever little I could do salvage their efforts.Considering that many from this team will be in next year's A team makes me feel happy that I will always have the privilege of being their first coach (he he !) no matter how short a period of time.

Coming back to V-Day, I have always been aware that it's a day for celebrating love and not just lovers.
Friends and family and the special someones...all deserve to be under the pink umbrella.
Thinking about love and and what it means to me....
I've realized that I can love the ones that I do no matter what.
I would go out on a limb to look out for the ones that I care about without expecting something in return.

Hey Sneha...Hope you doing good :-)
It's been quite a while since I got to hear bout you or read anything you've written.
Nonetheless it doesn't change the way I feel bout you.
If I'm lucky...maybe someday you will know how much you mean to me.
And If I'm luckier....it will mean something to you.
Have fun.

Got to get back to my books for now.
I hope my exams go well, fingers crossed.

:-)

Fear China(or Fear Google(or Fear Both))

There is an certain image that goes by the name of 'TankMan'.
A Google Image search returns results showing a row of tanks being halted by a single Chinese student.
You Tube videos show him getting in their way with no chance of letting them pass.
While they are pretty hilarious to watch they showcase the stronger and finer side to human nature.

Not unlike a lot of stuff that shows up on the internet....
But why TankMan is so significant is that a month ago it would not return any results in China.
TankMan is a symbolic threat to the it's communist regime,
and has been censored for decades from the Chinese public.
Any search on google.cn is highly monitored,
and you could get into serious trouble 
if you were found digging up the wrong stuff 
at home or a cybercafe.

Nonetheless,China has risen from being a famine scarred,genocidal maniac
to a mighty Communist Giant reaping the sweet fruits of controlled capitalism.
The GDP(average income) of a citizen of Beijing is a close equivalent 10,000 USD.
China is the single largest investor in clean energy...
way ahead of any nation in the Americas or Europe.
They have the 4G spectrum ready for implementation while here in India,3G is yet to set foot.
The Chinese development model focuses on shifting industry to lesser developed areas of the country ,
once it becomes too expensive to continue in a particular province.
Roadways,Dams,Bridges,Ports,Nuke plants and still a long way to go before it we see it reach its summit.
Superpower of the 21st century and a monster to beware of...here's why.

China keeps it's currency value artificially low so that jobs from Ohio and elsewhere can keep coming their way.
They tend not to care about global opinion and could well be on their way to pushing other communist regimes(N.Korea and Russia) to call shots.
China as we know, is an iron clad communist that has ruthlessly suppressed any action or demonstration that speaks against it's principles.
It would not matter if the demonstration was peaceful or other wise.
It is a little known fact that Mr.TankMan was later arrested and shot(we only get to see a clipping of the video).
Thousands of democratic supporters were shot,arrested and doomed to disappear into the gulags.
Mr.Xiaobo was sentenced to 11yrs on Christmas Day inspite of gobal protests and the US lobbying for his release.
The Chinese govt is a tacit supporter of North Korea's Missile programme and is conveniently trying to grab Indian footing in the North East.
COP15 was a failure of global proportions with things going pretty much the China way.
The introduction of English into the Chinese curriculum as a compulsary subject is going to blunt the one edge that India had over China.
As Bill Gates said "In China,if you're a one in a million,there are 1300 just like you".
China has no shortage of people to run it.

So coming to the Google situation...why can we now  see TankMan on Google China ?
Here's the deal.....
China and Google have had  a long standing agreement that if Google was to be allowed in China it would have to censor it's search results.
It worked fine for both monsters until two weeks ago when Google's servers were broken into by a supposedly Chinese source.
GMail accounts were hacked and 'certain data' from secure servers was stolen.
Google was....well....'not happy' and broke the censorship agreement threatening to pull out of China if it's security could not be guarunteed.
To look further like the boss of the situation,it threatened that they would also pull out if censorship was forced on it's search results.
Sounds alright at face value ,
But it's a little odd that Google would threaten to pull out of the world's economic goldmine over a few stolen emails.

But here's the real deal.....
There's a a system called Cloud Computing that is well.....Google's Baby.
It is a Google N-Bomb that it plans to drop over Microsoft to break their monopoly in the Office applications industry.
Everything would be run over the internet and you would never need to install anything on your computer ever again much less pay for it.
And guess who would be running these services....well Google.
Now if Google is to win and secure the trust of all it's clients for Cloud Computing who are worth millions of billions...it has to prove that it's services are secure.
You would'nt want your personal videos or projects to be hosted on a server that could be stolen and viewed by a guy name 'Hu'.
That's exactly why the threat is very real...very much worth pulling out of China.

Google is a monster that feeds on information.
Storing all of your documents (personal or professional) on a cloud server would only give Google what it's hungry for.
Google's supercomputers run complex algorithms on user data to derive any kind of  results they need.
And I mean any kind. 

Think of a situation....
Where a certain computer could pull information on you from your You Tube, Gmail and Blogger account and be able to predict whether you would instinctively turn right or left to run if cornered....shocking but true.
Google has already acquired a controlling stake in two energy companies...why?....to power it's own Cloud Servers.

It's a little ironic but I'm posting this on a Google partner site.

So here's  the deal....we got two monsters...which one keeps you awake at night is your choice...or is it ?

Back (on) Track

A compromise of sorts.

"Continue with the agitation...but take a break for your exams",says OU.

Fair Enough.....I can live with a delay in my exams...beats having to lose a year.

The only irritating  part is that I'll have to take time off an awesome project to open my books again.

Kurnool plans went bust......no thanks to the agitation...
Will have to set eyes on something else...Lavasa Maybe.

Won't be playing basketball for a while...hurt my nose pretty bad in the last game.

It's swollen to twice it's size and is a glowing shade of bright pink.

I could use my nose as an indicator while making turns....

Better yet...could hang last year's Christmas decor on it for Extra Bling.

I've become a laughing stock everywhere I go...good reason to take time off from the project...besides the exams of course.

Let see how it all turns out.

Make or Break

Well...Here we are again...that time of the year...

Looking back and wondering...was that crazy or what???!

Looking forward with lessons learnt...plans and promises made.

....mostly to ourselves....but made nonetheless.

2009 has been a rollercoaster ride and I'm all charged up for another one.

There's an Optimist inside me thats smiling at the Sceptic.

Strange as it seems......I plan to play safe and take risks at the same time.

To keep pushing myself while making sure that I stay focused in the right direction.

With my cynical illusions fading to give way to positive possibilities.

Realizing the difference between knowledge and it's illusions.

That thinking that we "know" something is a greater ignorance than not knowing something.

That Respect goes a long way in getting things done.

That letting go...is sometimes the best way to to hold on to something.

That hard work and sincerity are a combination that seldom fails......

..........whether or not you are a genius.

I realized that I can love someone without expecting something in return.

I learnt that my perspective can affect peoples' lives.....not just my own.

I learnt that pushing yourself to excel......adds more value and endurance than success itself.....

Funny I should feel this way..but I've learnt quite a lot by watching our film and TV Stars and their amusing antics......2009 has had quite a few of them.

Resolutions made....Resolutions broken.....all said and done.....and a year well spent...  :-).

As we walk through towards a New Year and a New Decade...I pray that we put our lessons learnt to good use and work not just for ourselves but for all that is sustained and is a consequence of our actions and inactions.

Hi Sneha.. :-)

I pray for you and  hope you get all that You wish for......in this year and the years to come.

You mean more to me with each passing day.....You are the strongest reason for me to be.

Bless You....Have a Rocking Year !

Love,

Arthur :-)

Wishful Thinking....

Merry Christmas to one and all !

May the festive season Ring in Joy,Celebration and Peace :-)