Must Watch

A superb 10 minutes film on cap n trade and Climate change
http://storyofstuff.com/capandtrade

Sketch!

Well what you see above is what after 10 hrs of playing with acryllic colors i have come up with :) , i still have a long way to go before producing some convincing portrait paintings but considering the fact i haven't touched brushes after my schooling at all it deserves a pat i guess!

Btw if you guessed the left side image is MJ you can pat yourself about your ability in interpreting abstract images! if you couldn't probably it is time to check your IQ ;)

Story of a Great Nation!

Finally I  got a chance to watch Danny boyle's slumdog millionaire in complete, what a movie! if what depicted in the movie has any remote resemblance to reality,  which it is!! I have no words to explain my emotion! I have seen Mumbai and chennai slums, at one end we have this spell binding screen play and on the other end the hard reality of  mamman and salim's existence today and the poverty which created them..

Fifty years in to freedom what have we achieved! we often complain Indians don't get treated well in abroad but what is the respect we share for this slum dwellers! we often go past them as if we hardly notice them, we tend to ignore them as if they don't exist! they are our fellow citizens and many live very decent lives with content. We are what collectively we are (as India) and not just as individuals. 

India was a great nation!it is history and it was built by our fathers!!  what is it today! and what is it going to look like tomorrow!? It is time to move on and rebuild our nation. Many of us live for the day, we talk about GDP, worry about inflation and depend on the MNCs to bring our bread. I see the economy didn't changed much in last 300 years, we still depend on west and worst most youngsters don't identify with India, we first re branded our language with english  now we are re branding the country with west. look around the cities none reflect any similarity to our culture. 

Well probably we all need to become global citizen as they say! and lose our differences!! I still don't see why it can't be a Indian global citizen and why it has to be west global citizen :) point is our politicians are not going to change the poverty around here and probably they need them as it exists!and neither they are going to stop preaching the proud history and culture we once had! It is our duty to wake up and improve the quality of life of every citizen here,  As young and educated we have a finite time to make the change - resist corruption, encourage entrepreneurs , Share love to needy not mercy and let them know they belong as one of us. 

Time moves on and things improve and one day Salim and Jamal's would get chances to lead a decent life in this country!!  whether we want to be part of that change is a question we need to ask! and I believe many of us will say YES!!

 

Live!

When is the last time 

you enjoyed the vastness of Sky!

The colors in the sun set!

Or the humming in the morning!

The Birds Keep flying!

God paints the sky with wonderful colors

All thats Nature Keep going whether you watch it or not

Whether you admire it or not

All thats Good keeps vanishing before your eyes!

It will be sad if you don't witness it!

If you don't give a moment to be part of it!

The money you chase ..

The job you run for ..

All will exist even after you ceased to exist!

What is life , if you don't live it!!

Religion!

Usually the sunday sermon in our church is quite nice, it always leave you thinking! It was St.Antony's feast and during the sermon the priest was quoting St.Antony's preaching to fishes. A brief history here St.Antony was well known for his ability to deliver charismatic sermons. Thousands of people would come to hear him in the marketplace and open fields because the churches could not hold them. Despite Antony’s efforts, not everyone listened to him. Legend has it that one day, faced with deaf ears, Anthony went to the river and preached to the fishes. They held their heads up out of the water, and looked attentively at the face of Anthony as he spoke. The people, seeing the reaction of the fish, were suddenly drawn to the river to hear his sermon for themselves.

Comming back to our church sermon the priest closed the session by saying once St.Antony finished his sermon they all went back to their old lives crocodiles to their killing and men to their lies .. and with that the priest ended the sermon by saying "Oh God they all loved the sermon but they never understood the sermon" The sermon re assured my belief in what a religion is about , A religion is not about its customs but the value it carries to the people who believe in it!.

Gandhi once said there are more christians in the east then west , i think it was very rightly said and if christianity is about love then he himself was more christian than any one else i know!!

Revolution in India

Well this is an after thought writing after a interesting and rather provocative conversation with my boss, her view is India is not capable of revolution! I need to give a background to the readers from where this conversation stemmed in first place.

Well we were discussing about Indians being content with what we got and my point on this is it is driven by how our family is structured. I always felt we are more emotional and deep down value driven then materialistic and the old joint family system and respect for elders and their support all pool to gether provides the peace of mind which materialistic world can not offer!. Her view is most of this indian family system are hipocrytic in nature (more from women empowerment angle!) though I may agree with certain cases on that but what is the alternative to it!?

One of the colleague pitched in saying only close to 2 % people of our country are in the salary bracket of above 10 lakhs / yr ( I need to verify this stats!) shocked me beyond words , think about being content with that!! I may be glad that i am in that 2% but i am definitely not happy that 98% of my country men are not even able to afford the best of basics (food / cloth / house all prices shooted to sky high now and add that to medical / education bills if any!!) Then the talk moved to having Industrial revolution in this country, thats where India not capable of Revolution came to focus

Surprisingly I found many share her view of India not capable of having revolution i.e fighting / sacrificing for a larger benefit than their own kind of attitude and many think that is lacking here!! then what do we call about Our Freedom fight!? (oh we got the freedom because britain wanted our help during wwII) or All our Punjab farming brothers fore fronting Green revolution (Oh they wanted to earn more!) Mind you my boss is not the one who thinks India will not improve quite contrary I found she is very patriotic! Many in young generation look up to us and if we don't give them the confidence and direction (the need for change!) where we will head! I can't be content being a part of country where the life line comes from selling labour than products. Where others dictate what we earn or how we live our lifes , if we need more control we need more enterprenurs here, we need microfinance helping jobless to become enterprenurs , we need Venture capitalist helping young enterprenurs to think Big! and we need accountable poiliticians to support all this and above all we need to be that change!

Revolution not necessarily correlates to violence, it can be like a silent prayer , a transparent change with wide impact. I see the change happening with many youngsters (refusing to vote during election!! actively discussing issues in media) all we need to do is channelize this energy and as educated I believe it is our duty to consistently advocate on need for change and direction for change and avoid negate statements .... What you think?

Update: just saw this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0XTPSYdP08

01:47 What is the value of 500 Rs for different people ...

Bangalore Experience!

Bangalore is a fun place to live you know! take this for a sample each day my driving skills are put to new test, manuevering through the scores of bikes all parked at its own right angle and cars through my narrow lane takes extreme patience and stable mind! each day as i finish this ordeal i.e driving through our bengaluru traffic i pat myself on the back!

The best part always wait near the finishing line i.e near to my house , in the end of my lane which is also my entry point comming from office to home there are bunch of cattles catered by this milk seller who lives near by , all these cattles are fed and sheltered on the road. you need to be doubly careful not to hit them when you cross by (i.e if you don't want to be chased by angry mob for hitting innocent cow!)and mostly they don't give a damn to my car horns! i have to use all my priliminary cattle chasing techniques (creating strange noises and slightly tapping them on the tail etc) to shoo away them , i suspect now a days there is a larger crowd than usual to see my daily stunts in the evening :)

When I had a chance to chose bengaluru (bangalore then!) and chennai for my transfer couple of years back i chose bengaluru with out hesitance. I remembered my job searching days here .. it used to be one of the cheapest city that time. I stayed in basavangudi in a pg for 2.5 k (with food mind it huh!) and i always found the natives are very helpful and friendly. back then i used to commute mostly in bus and it used to be reliable. the best part is the auto guys never argued with me to pay more than what is on the meter ( I know you won't believe me) more than all these there is one more important reason i decided to stay here i.e Infant Jesus church in vivek nagar, this is our favourite shrine for more than 20 yrs in fmly and i used to frequent every week and have my private conversation with God :) It always gave me great amount of peace and focus in life. I also remember having butter dosa and aloo in basavangudi eateries it used to be one of the best tasting dosas! hmm there are few more favourites of mine here
* the old coffee shop in MG Road(now moved)
* Morning ride in golf course road near kumarapark , all those trees and fine weather !!

I hope all this will come back one day with new infrastructures in place and companies scaling out in the city , Hmm let me keep my hopes up!

Is Board Exams necessary?

Our education system sucks! no doubt. I never liked the way it is designed and I am pretty sure many of us share my view. I think it is designed to produce a technical labour than Free thinking enterpreanurs or for that matter any mature thinking professionals.Just take this sample We have been taught all long our History!
which has no practical purpose today and there is little focus on civics.
It is a shame to see a Masters holder don't have the basic understanding of his fundamental rights and can't use his knowledge to exercise his rights. No wonder why we turned out to be so tolerant of the ineffective governance in this country and
accept poor civic amenities we are subjected to endure. I can see politicians vested interest in keeping this system this way!

The Board exams are another useless measure which lost its relevance decade ago all it does is basically to disable a kid and categorise him as either a doc / eng /xyz ..when we will have a freedom to do what we want to do irrespective of age. Today the system expects a school kid to be mature enough to decide his career when he is 15!


With 1 bn population we can do wonders in this world, we have a great man power which is the most essential component for all the advancements that are available today yet we get treated as third world country people in every part of the globe! Why can't we have a Industrial revolution in this country which pushed US to its number one position few dacades ago! Don't we have resources! or Manpower or Will! What we lack is Visionories! and I lost my hope long time back that the current education system is capable of producing them! What can help?

1) Get rid of Board exams - this will remove the pressure from the kids to prove themselves before the system and they will start thinking what they really want to do!
2) Keep all the subjects which has no practical relevance as optional and put more focus on subjects which are essential for a person to survive
3) Teach the subjects in intuitive way - Let them learn by exploring it rather than mugging it
4) REMOVE QUOTA - It is a crime against nation - I will vote for educational subsidies, financial assistance, anything but NO QUOTA
5) Remove all age boundaries for Higher and professional education , as long as a person is able to clear an entrance exam he should be allowed to purse the career

My Xbox experience so far!

During my every visit overseas i have this habit of buying new gadgets , last week i was in sfo and went and bought this nice little xbox.The store sales guy assured me the warranty is international and microsoft provides 3 yr coverage for its infamous ring of death issue.

Since it was my last day of leaving i didn't had a chance to check the console.once back home i realize it doesn't take 240v grrr! I went n bought a ac/ac step down converter and plugged in but all that console did was blinking 3 lights dumbly. Now i didn't want to play around the console i called up ms support they duely informed me warranty is region specific and the best part is yet to come "they don't sell power adapter separately!!" perfect i thought i just bought a $200+ brick! the support guy told me he will explore available options and get back i am hoping a positive reply!

I agree ms can not be responsible for what the store guy told me but how much effort it takes to put a bold label saying this appliance works only in US and warranty is region specific

How much effort it takes to provide a power adapter that works in every region! Even a 20$ shaving kit has that option , i think it is pretty dumb


----latest update - MS Replaced the Power adapter with Indian version Free of Cost! Man I love them :) I have n't got much chance to play with xbox due to work but my initial feeling is pretty impressive