The year that was..2009 recap

Everyone is doing it and I won’t be the exception! 2009 has been an action packed year to me. Every year has its ups and downs..but 2009 is full of downs with few ups in the end. The amalgamation of the incidents happened through out the year just brings tears to my eyes. I never realized, I am so emotionally weak until I had to face them. I should say its been a roller coaster ride to me. I have seen everything in just one year, heartbreak, the pain in betrayal, the strength you need to face it, tears and tantrums, importance of your family. I know time moves on and sometimes we move so far that we don’t even see them as important any more. There is a whirlwind of memories flashing right in front of my eyes throwing light on those incidents. You feel like a crippled dog sometimes and a graceful flamingo at other times. In the end, its all just a matter of perception.

 

Few highlights of this year include, this year was when blogging became more than a monthly event, a kind of a hobby for me.. and i love it. I love the outlet for my writing, and i love sharing out my thoughts, personal lives (or at least a small part of it) with friends that may only get to see us every now and then. This year was when my extra curricular reading habits has improved drastically, and I can’t imagine myself without books now. My love affair with novels has brought a lot of change in the way I perceive things. Hyderabad 10K run, Never thought I would run for 21 Kms just for the heck of running. The immense amount of satisfaction you get after the run is just speechless. I loved the run. I have lost 10 kgs, Yes you heard it right. I have become fit again. Became an owner of a flat. I don’t know whether I should be proud of it or not, but its just a big milestone to me.

 

2010 looks exciting! I am not a person who believe in taking resolutions. But this time I am determined to take some resolutions and try to achieve them. So here comes the plan for the year 2010. Most of these will be on my personal front.

 

• Work out at GYM and stay fit.
• Eat natural food and stop junk food altogether.
• Be active in Blogging.
• Be calm and serene.
• Be aggressive in your job.
• Read at least 25 books.
• Visit Goa.
• Go for trekking.
• Improve your Hindi.
• Socialize with people and make new friends.
• Stay in touch with your old friends and expand your network.

 

And the most important resolution for the coming year would be to be happy, no matter what emotional ups and downs you face. I have been thinking about all that I have accomplished. It seems so little in front of all that I have to still achieve. Alright, I know its becoming yet another obligatory self centered whiney year end post. The main objective is that I have to be a better person, learn from all the mistakes I have made. I am sure it is going to be one hell of a ride! I have so many dreams to fulfill. Not sure If I have time for all of them. Year 2010 is going to be a crazy party for sure! Wish me luck.

 

I WISH A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!!!

Avatar : Movie Review

Once in a while you come out of the movie hall with such a marvelous feeling. It is not often that one gets to see such movies. I don't have much to add to the other glowing reviews out there. Although I hate to say that I didn’t watch this movie in Imax 3d, I loved this movie to the core. The story is classic, the acting is fine and may be dialogues are witty and cliché some times, but the effects, the narration and the presentation that dominates totally. It combines a special effect with great nature along with great sound effect and wonderful plot. Its kind of boring for the first 10 to 15 minutes, but later the avatar becomes the main characters in the movie. The background music is awesome, which has contributed to the Indian moods. It surely transports you to the dream world, the screenplay is captivating, the technical aspects and the visual effects are truly divine. The movie is a bit lengthy 2.45 Hrs. Pandora is a great world for a tour and the movie gives you more than satisfactory experience. Princess of Pandora falling in love with a stranger from another place is an age-old and commercially successful formula. It has great morals too. A perfect Story with humanity and lots of moral values( Preserving the nature).  I must say that the idea was brilliant and it requires lots of efforts to make them like this. I must give extra credits for the whole crew who make this happened. I'm not saying that Avatar was the greatest movie of all time. All I say is GO SEE AVATAR and let me know what you think?  If it doesn't blow you away I want to hear why.

 

Sunday Quote: Keep Running

Sunday Quote is an idea to share with you the thoughts I have heard, read or being quoted from books, movies or conversations. I am going to quote the thought and where I heard it or read it from. The thoughts could be quotes, anecdotes, excerpts and even passages from books. They will be mostly thought provoking and they would add some element to one’s understanding and thought process.

 

A lion wakes up everyday and starts running after a deer to survive. A deer wakes up everyday and starts running from a lion to survive. So the point is that it does not matter whether you are a lion or a deer. You just have to keep running.

-Anonymous

IIT Kanpur : 80% Attendance

This video is fucking awesome. As an alumni of IIT Kanpur, I personally know the pain of attending the class at 8 Am after staying late in the nights. Simply hilarious, and kudos to the guy who wrote the subtitles! Fantastic work. This is awesome video guys, Really missing iitk...no more of iitk.fun...  Anyways if this 80% attendance has been implemented, its going to be pathetic....

 

Kasab retracts his confession.

Mumbai bombing suspect Kasab claims he met David Headley, the alleged CIA agent. How convenient this could be. He also claims that he was not involved in the terror attacks at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station in Mumbai on 26 November 2008 and also denies that he entered India through the sea route in a dingy along with nine other terrorists.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/i-came-to-work-in-films-was-framed-kasab/107343-3.html?from=tn

Kasab on Friday retracted his confession before a special Mumbai court and alleged that he came to Mumbai on a visa 20 days before the attacks on November 26 last year. He claimed he came to Mumbai to work in the film industry but was arrested on the night of November 25 and was implicated in the 26/11 case. Kasab's surprise retraction of his own confession made on February 20 this year before a magistrate came while his statement was being recorded at the start of the second phase of the terror attacks trial before Special Judge M L Tahilyani..

This is total mockery of Indian justice system. Even an illiterate terrorist can play tricks to delay the judiciary system. I was disgusted by the way Kasab is playing with Indian Justice system. Some times I wonder  Why Kasab needs a defending lawyer? This trail shouldn’t have taken more than 30 days. Is this  all spending crores & crores of rupees for his protection just to prove a neighboring country guilty. This also raises questions on capability of Indian Judges. One of the reasons trail in India takes a lot to time is because the system wants to let go 1000 criminals unpunished to avoid one innocent  person.

Kasab  told the court that he was in India prior to the Mumbai attacks. He said the police picked him up as he was walking around the city. Kasab says that he closely resembles one of the terrorists killed in the 26/11 attacks and therefore was forced by police to take his place. Kasab further claimed that "The police have killed the main accused who resembles me and they told me that his name was Abu Ali.". "I am his look alike. His height and face resembles mine," Kasab said. This reminds me one of the old joke on Indian police, knowing the capability of the Indian police. http://www.desiboyzmasala.com/article.asp?id=2529&at=1 Though the Kasab U turn is filmy,.I expect this doesn’t  become a parody element. There are people who have lost life and all shall be sensitive to it.

Emotional stability in work..

Once in a blue moon, you have a revelation. Something which makes you kick yourself and ask: "I can't believe I've been so blind! How could I have missed this?". It could be a simple bug, or a minor semicolon which you missed in your code which could have saved the entire world from extinction. There are days when you are high on one side, writing hundreds of lines of code and come out with a laughter, a giggle with a sense of satisfaction. There are days when you feel bad and sad, debugging a little tricky issue, mostly some one else code and then you come into a solemn seclusion with a heavy laden heart. Being close to 4 years in this profession the thrill of coding, the challenge in debugging, the fun in the work environment is coming down day by day and the frustration at being the same every day. And then you have this loan on your head which makes you feel every day that you are deep in this shit. And you wonder everyday thinking, Do I after all love what I do? and you end up having no answer for it. Each day you end up thinking, "The idea of spending the rest of your life in this profession" scares the hell out of you. And to end, with no exceptional clarity in your life, It is your duty to tune your mind to depict the emotion that you need to show to this profession with more hard work & discipline, and less inspiration & creativity. Till you get that clarity in your life, Let your thoughts vibrate with a stable emotional mind and continue to be just another brick in the wall.

Google Toilet

Now this is hilarious. Wait a second, Was it really funny. This would have been funny , if it was not a truth.. Although it is a  very funny animated clip about Google and how it is controlling our life now, I agree with it completely. I love google's applications, but I disapprove spying on average people personal life..

Telangana : A new State

Last night, P Chidambaram, Home Minister of India, has announced that the Central government will take steps towards creation of a new state called Telangana. It is subject to the resolution passing in AP assembly and parliament. But it looks like they’ll somehow pass it. KCR does 10 days fast in AC rooms under expert doctors observation to divide a state while our shameless central GOVT agrees.  Even then, it will take another 18 months for the new state to form.

At one time this was a nation of many small kingdoms, constantly warring with each other. The British knew how the situation could be exploited, and they used it to their advantage. It’s such a sorry state of affairs that one man with a few thousand supporters can hold a country to blackmail and get his own, when it was very clear from the last few elections that the Telangana people themselves don’t see any need for a separate state. Today’s the day I started feeling like an outsider in the city I’ve called it my own,  leaving loved ones and a job in bangalore.

What exactly will cutting up a state and spending crores making new admin setup, will bring to the people in AP. Central Government has to allocate separate funds to these states to establish all the new infrastructure needed to run the new system.  Ultimately we, the tax payer money goes in the process. I have not seen any state/people of the state make any progress after creation. Live example is state of Jharkand, Chattisgarh, and Uttaranchal. I guess in the name of development, political parties want to create 2 CM posts, 2 Ministerial posts in each dep…instead of one in united Andhra. Unnecessary waste of public money and more corruption. What public can gain, need to be seen?. I would stand anywhere and say that its going to make least difference to the actual people, prices are not going to come down, nothing is going to change.“

I don't see any reason, what made Telangana look like a backward place. I don't see any discrimination while awarding ranks in EAMCET, ICET etc..I don't think Wipro, Infosys will discriminate between telangana and andhra while recruiting.  Major industrial development has been concentrated around telangana state. Education wise, Telangana have OU, JNTU,NIT,Kakateeya, ISB. IIT is coming to Telangana. What about HCU, IIIT. Rest of the AP has only AU and SVU. All this development has been done without any regional feeling. NTR developed hyd more than Vijaywads, Chandrababu Naidu developed Hyderabad than chittoor. There are around 1,50,000 IT jobs in Hyderabad.

May be only Irrigation is neglected in Telangana, not sure why this has been done. Though krishna and Godavari flows through Telangana they are diverted to Andhra through dams. There are quiet a few reasons why Andhra got better irrigation than Telengana.

1) Andhra is at a place where rivers merge into sea.  At such places rivers split into multiple sub-rivers (payalu antaru telugulo) then they merge into sea.  Krishna and Godavari split into multiple branches and they flow through many parts of Andhra ending those areas as most fertile lands.  This makes them best suited for cultivation.

2) Telengana is mainly Deccan Plateau.   A region well above sea level; for this reason river water cannot be easily diverted into telengana region as for irrigating these lands only method is "lift irrigation" which is very costly.   Water can flow naturally into Andhra region and also there are fertile lands which gives added benefits for cultivation of Paddy.    Even lands in Telengana are not as well suited for cultivation as in Andhra (naturally fertile land).  This cannot form a major reason for ignoring irrigation in Telengana but a logical reason for a developing country.

3) Telengana is mainly suited for low water cropping but that is also not taken care well by government.  Processes like drip irrigation should have been encouraged.

I felt lot of area in Telegana which should have been used for better development of State and of Telengana.  For this people need leaders with vision; not separate state. 

When I was kid India had some 24+ states when I will have kids it might be 100+. New states are rarely formed for administrative convenience but more for satisfying personal egos of leaders who want to make it big and fill their pockets. We will end up more crooked idiots ruling the state for their own benefits. My stand is always "Telangana development in Combined Andhra Pradesh".

 

Value relationships

I came across this mail forward, not all of them I post it here. But this one gets the cake. This is a 30 second speech by Bryan Dyson( CEO of Coca cola ). The same thought has been lingering in my mind for quite some time, not an unsurprising one though. How often do we forget the value of Health, Family and Friends and become so much materialistic. How often do we forget the value of relationships and make them as a matter of convenience and then again forget after that. I am not advertising that materialism is necessarily bad, but when it comes at the expense of concrete values and relationships it just doesn't seem worth it. How often do we think that success is measured by money and bank balances. What is the point in having huge bank balances, when you don't have your loved ones to enjoy your very own success. We only think of following the society and attach ourselves with materialism and detach ourselves from our values and obligations as human beings who are part of our family and society. I know its easier to say than doing it, before I bore you too much with my gyan, just read the the following speech. Definitely worth a read. The CEO is exceptional in putting the crux of the matter precisely in few words.

"Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them - Work, Family, Health, Friends and Spirit and you're keeping all of these in the Air.

You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back.

But the other four Balls - Family, Health, Friends and Spirit - are made of glass. If you drop one of these; they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for it."

WORK EFFICIENTLY DURING OFFICE HOURS AND LEAVE ON TIME. GIVE THE REQUIRED TIME TO YOUR FAMILY, FRIENDS & HAVE PROPER REST. "

Spread Love, Not AIDS

Its World's AIDS day today...Spread the Love, Not AIDS. Spread the Awareness, Not the disease. AIDS is preventable & treatable. Yet 33 million people in the world are infected with this disease. I really hope one day people would find medicine against AIDS. I really wish. Please support this vital and life changing, illness. So let's help save lives today. Spread the word.