A stone's throw

The missiles were landing continuously. One even hit the window hard. Everyone looked up startled - we thought these were times of peace - where were these coming from? The shopkeepers stepped out, and spent a silent moment pondering who will muster the courage to stop this attack.

All eyes were fixated on a six year old boy with mischief writ large on his black eyes, and a large pebble in each hand. As he aimed and threw a larger stone this time, he gleamed with pleasure and looked around for accolades. There were none forthcoming, and the poor boy, in his mistaken stake at fame continued with renewed vigour. The saloon owner stepped forward and "Ahoy"-ed the boy, and said:

"Can you stop doing that please? Thank you!"

The boy said "Sure", and simply changed the direction of his stone-rain.

I could not help thinking of the same situation in India. Fat chance the boy would have got a "Please" and a "Thank you" in the same sentence for his deed! He would most probably have had an assortment of expletives muttered before being asked to cut it out! But, the point is this: the boy listened, and the fact still remains that an adult did manage to stop a boy from pelting stones at his shop window.

Just the vast difference in the manner it was handled was interesting to note.

Pluto loses its name from the planet list..

What !?!?! Pluto gone from the planet list ?Oh man!!!No more "Navagraham" ?
How do we call it.. "ashtagraham"..? If I tell that to my paati (Grandma) she would say "kashtakaalam"!
What do we do with the "pluto" God in the navagraha dieties ? Did he/she lost his/her power too ?
Btw, do you know, which God in tamil diety is for "pluto" ? I dont remember.. Hmm...

What to do with the geography books now, which has "9 planets of the universe.."
If theres a multiple choice, with how many planets on the universe, with both "8 and 9",what should we select ?
Well, I may not need to.. Poor kids.

If you feel its sad, that pluto is gone from the list, (Or feel a void) maybe we can start..
"Pluto - grahathai aadharippor sangam" (Group who support pluto as a planet).
Let me know, if you are interested. We can chat about, who is the best "Trisha" or "Asin" in the group meetings. (dont ask me what this has to do with Pluto..)

Maybe later in "Who wants to be a millionaire".. there could be a question,
"what was the planet, that was thrown away from the planets list of universe.."
"(A)Earth (B)Pluto (C)Mercury (D) Moon (!?!?)"(If I do happen to attend.. and if they do ask me that question and if I dont remember, you will be my friend to call choice..Do, remember this answer.. Ok ?

Btw, what are the other planets of the universe..
Actually, let me try.. Mercury venus earth mars pluto (Oops) what are the other four..?
Google.. Help me!
Well on the bright side.. one less planet to remember..or Im getting old.. or have alzeimers or have selective amnesia..

Is it really necessary to spend money on finding these things.. ?
I saw a movie last week, "Eight below".
The plot goes like this
"A scientist, travels to Antarctica, to get a stone fallen from the planet mercury (I think)For that he gets the help from a guide and eight dogs.. (Sledge dogs.. to transport them)Apparently, they can't fly (cannot land the plane) and cant drive there.And its the start of winter. During the journey, the dog saves the scientist twice. Due to the sudden storm, they had to evacuate. Since theres no space in the flight, they have to leave the dogs there, for the next trip.Obviously, due to storm there's no next trip. And the dogs are left on their own for 150+ daysin the winter, without any food. While the scientist, gets his applause for finding the stone.. blah blah blah.. The hero tries so hard to get back.. but couldn't. Eventually the scientist comes to his senses and helps the hero to save the dogs (already 2 dogs dead)". They show how the dogs struggle for food and to stay alive. But, people are spending millions to find one stone. I initially thought, that they would come to rescue, after a week or so.. But.. 150+ days.. Hmm.. poor things (I think, its based on a true story.. Im not sure though!)I

s it really necessary to spend money on finding these things.. ?
Well, then you can say "nothing is necessary in the world, except food and reproducing.. isnt it ?"
(Thats a totally different blog)

let me stop my rant & rave..
Peace everyone!

Details...

I have often found that, getting into the final details in solving a problem makes most of its related problems simple enough. Especially, in a professional environment, people usually skip the details and try to focus on a given problem at hand. The issue with that approach is that, though it solves a short term problem, each new problem that arises thereafter looks like a different one to solve.

I feel, engineers need to think through issues and get to the root. For example, when I was at school, I remember the time when we wrote a program to simulate a clock. When the problem was posed, the straightforward answer was to draw a circle. Divide 360 degrees by 60 and draw a line that connected the center of the circle to the edge of the circle that is at position 0 degrees. For every 60 seconds, erase the current line and draw a new line at a position which is advanced by 6 degrees and so on. This was the minute line. The hour line will advance based on the minute line advance. Remember, you should remember to redraw the hour-line when it gets crossed over by the minute line. Things look simple so far. If you want to get fancy, you could add a seconds line which will progress every 1/60 of the second. This is as much as I got when I was at school.

When I got to college, I learnt that the computer has a clock on its own. You dont really have to compute time, but rather use the clock fields from the processor and just display it in a fashion that was described before. Later, I realised that it takes some time to draw the picture. So, there is a time between when I sample the time to the time I display it. Usually, it is of the order of sub-milli/micro seconds and may not matter to the human eye. Since we do sample the time from the common clock-source every time, we will be off almost consistently assuming the delay to draw the picture is almost the same everytime. In the program written at school, these sub-microseconds could have built up over time to form a second in which case, the clock will be off by a second. It only takes few days for this ambiguity to build up. That is not good.

As we think about it more, we could now question why we think that the cpu-clock is a reliable one. How does it operate? What are the ambiguities that are built into that? CPU clocks operate based on crystal oscillators. A crystal oscillator is a device which is based on the oscillation of quartz crytals which takes a voltage and generates precise frequencies which in turn could be divided to get the frequency corresponding to seconds/minutes. But, if there are variations in voltage or temperature, it will have corresponding impact in the clock generation. However, if the original frequency, which is of the order of Mega Hertz gets converted to seconds, the real percentage error becomes very unnoticeable. With the best crystal oscillators, the errors have been recorded to be 10^-9 seconds per day. What do we do now if we want to do better ?

Atomic oscillators come to the rescue. Cold atoms transition between different energy levels and their radiation level is used to generate clocks. The international standards definition being, a second is equal to 9,192,631,770 cycles of radiation of a Caesium atom, which by the way has an error of 10^-10 seconds per day. The NIST predicts that as technology improves, the best we could get is 0.01 nano-second error (10^-11 seconds per day) by 2010. For all practical purposes, one could argue that, if a given clock is only going to be used for, say 10 years, it can accomodate .2 millisecond variation a day and still not show a false time because rounding up of 1 second will happen only in 10*365.25 days. So, an engineering decision could be different based on requirements. It is also interesting to note that there is no perfect clock. It can also be inferred how much time has been discounted due to error so far in the evolution of earth. Retrospectively, at a very high level, we might just consider the clock as something that counts seconds and hours, while, in reality, it has much more to it. Just knowing the details, can give great insights onto novel solutions. Solving problems quickly is good. But, sometimes, stepping back and looking at the big picture in its entirety changes perspective and enables one to not only be innovative, but also to be highly productive.

Till another Renaissance

I.D.Iot was a distinguished man. His single contribution to the world of Science was purely unimaginable. He had a series of startling discoveries to his credit, and his genius mind had put every single grain of truth to use to change the world in the most remarkable way. I.D.Iot prided himself on his thoroughness and had painfully documented every startling discovery in his vaporizing sheets. The idea behind these vaporizing sheets was simple. He help the passkey phrase, and on whispering the passkey phrase to soap bubbles, the sheets would appear - a ton of information regarding atoms, elements, wormholes, time warps and what-have-you.

I.D.Iot was around for generations. He had mastered the art of travelling to the planet near a black hole where time barely passed, and consequently aged slower than most mortals. He was an amiable man with a humble demeanour, and his intentions were always noble. He had in him, as much knowledge to destroy as to create. He never once thought of destruction. He was considered God by virtue of all the above.

Now he lay dying. His time was up. He was tired and could not muster the energy to take up the time travel to rejuvenate himself. He had wanted to pass on to his most trusted follower access to all his learnings. His memory was failing him - but he knew the key to the vaporizing sheets had to do with the theme that "Everything was made up of atoms", and that's what he muttered when he died.

His disciples tried hard to get the sheets, but failed. Instead of using the knowledge they had from I.D.Iot, they spent time trying to retrieve his work. Time passed and only the mantra got passed down from generation to generation: none of the knowledge.

The idiot mantra was unquestionable.

The querulent few who did question what atoms were made of were quickly rebuked as mavericks and the world settled into a state of knowledge inertia. What we don't know can't hurt us. IDIOT was there to protect the world.

And so it goes, till another Renaissance was born.

ALERT !

Was reading an article @ SmirkChimp about homeland security which induced me to land @ www.dhs.gov , the homeland security webpage.

Latest News:
August 13, 2006 – Effective immediately, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced an adjustment in the aviation threat level from RED to ORANGE for flights from the United Kingdom to the United States.

Hooray ! the threat level has been reduced from RED to ORANGE. "Man ! I was really tensed for the past few days with the RED threat level".Seriously, how many of us even bothers to know the threat level when we start our day . The color code is a brilliant scheme,I guess. Wonder what people with color blindness will do or people who cannot differntiate between orange and red....(kadi)

On a serious note, who is really getting benefitted. Hmm...I think it is the terrorists. Heard it through the grapevine that the day they were ready to blow up planes in UK, we were on YELLOW alert. What does YELLOW mean? -Elevated Risk but nothing too serious. The terrorists know we are not in high risk, and so will not be checked thoroughly and BHAM! . The terrorists can come up with their own definitions of the terror alerts.

GREEN(low risk) - You might pass through even with an AK47
BLUE(Gaurded Risk) - Be on your guard,dont carry the gels in the shoes, the guard at the gate can ask you to remove your shoes.
YELLOW(Elevated Risk) - Check out the airport, report the scenario to superiors before proceeding.
ORANGE(High Risk) - Going to the airport may not be a good idea.Those guys are in full alert.
RED(Severe Risk) - FORGET IT !!! Stay tuned till the color changes.

Keep A(m)way !!

One of the prime activities of modern life is to accumulate money. Reminds me of what one of my friend used to say about lifetime goal. If your lifetime goal is to make the most money, it will keep you active throughout your life without having to think about the objective of life and other philosophical but yet answerless questions. I agree with that. But, the real question is, how to make money? We all know that there are numerous ways to make money. When it comes to making money, the prime question is, if it is worth the time and effort, considering the payout... There is some amount of self-dignity and principles that come into play while making these decisions as well. As usual, there is always a trade-off. But, is Amwaying/Quixstaring worth enough ?

When I started typing this blog, I was going to write about how Amway/Quixtar (AQ from now) folks make me frustrated. Then, I started thinking why these people do what they do. There has to be something that has attracted all these people. I tried to study the idea a little bit. Fundamentally, AQ is a distributed marketing procedure to sell products. The idea is that, if people sell products directly and serve as a channel for wholesalers, the middle man (in the form of department store) is avoided. The middleman is paid a commission to do this job. To spicen it up, AQ folks not only get a commission for the products they sell but also get a part of commission from people whom they brought into the network. So, if you have 100 people who joined through you, you not only get a commission when those hundred people buy stuff but also the people they refer to. One would hope that, if you have hundred people under your name and each of them have another 100 people each under their name, you will end up getting a lot of commission. Remember, the commission structure (bonus structure) does not go up linearly. There is no bonus till you accumulate a certain number of points and so on. The scam is just beginning.

If you were among the first people in the business, the AQ concept scales well. But, as there are more and more members, the income at the leaf level becomes significantly smaller. As in any business, there is a cost associated as well. AQ is supposed to have these sales tools called "systems" which you can use. They charge you around $3000 per year to use "systems" (typical amount quoted from web). In addition, studies have shown that, the price from AQ stores have around 20-30% markup on an average than similar products, given the collection of products that you will end up buying. Being an Amway member, you will be sucked into buying other stuff from AQ dealers. If you spend $200 on an average per month in a store, your markup premium will be around $1000 per annum. On top of this, the network sells "motivational tapes/CDs" which they promote and stuff it in to members (costs $10-$20 per tape). On top of all of this, one would spend atleast 10 hrs/week, which comes to around 500 hrs a year resulting in that much equivalent of oppurtunity cost (considering $8 per hr minimum wage, it is $4000 per year). Overall, a lot of these folks spend around $9000 per year just to be in the network. This would mean that they should earn an amount greater than that to break-even. To give a quick summary, $250 worth of buying will equal 100 points. In order to get bonuses/commissions (basic level), you will have to sell goods worth of 2000 points. Remember, the DDs (direct distributors) who are categorized under diamond and emerald categories are the ones who get the most bonuses and they form around 1.5% of all "business" folks in AQ. It is supposed to take atleast 10 years on an average to get to those levels and they earn around $25000 per year out of AQ bonuses.

Overall, you spend around $10000 out of your pocket every year. Buy stuff at a premium. Convince people, inspite of getting their yelling and rejections and sellling a lot of stuff to eventually get a meagre return. I really feel pity for these people. I understand that money can drive people to madness. But, these people, inspite of their education, backgrounds and capabilities, choose paths which statistically serves as a money "black hole" than an income source. At a superficial level, a lot of people get interested with the concept and are falsely led to believe that they can make a lot of money without any capital. But, only a very few get to break-even. I am obviously biased against Amway/Quixtar. To my defence, I went through published statistics from various websites into knowing that, it is indeed a negative-sum game and only a very very few (of the order of 1-2%) make anything, if at all, out of it. I now have a convincing answer why I want to keep Away from Amway.

And yet, Life goes on....

I walked into curves with the bladder cancer pamphlets firmly tucked in my arms.Bladder cancer is the third most recurring cancer in the US and is rarely known to people, especially women , who tend to ignore the basic symptoms. Feeling good that I am trying to spread awareness and having already obtained permission from the manager, I promptly handed the pamphlets to one of the coordinators.One of the other workers, who had no clue about this, asked me about the pamphlets. On hearing it was about cancer,she said,"Oh! cancer is so depressing. Why do you want to put up such pamphlets. Nowadays, you hear about cancer everywhere".On a further note, finding it was about bladder cancer,she said,"What is bladder cancer, girl?. No..I dont want to hear about it. I am sure it will be something depressing".I came home , quite upset, my mood being set by the above statements, wondering when people would change. Some friends visited us that night .We were discussing about the movie Kandahar, a reality movie,which shows people struggling in Afghanisthan for things that we take for granted. We decided to watch some other movie as Kandahar is too depressing to watch and will not lighten up the mood. I was wondering how the lady , who is shown suffering in that movie ,would feel listening to us call the movie depressing.I woke up the next morning, everything forgotten, opened google news only to find out about the raging war in Lebanon. "Oh no ! one more war. Man..these wars are too depressing."....

Leave me alone..!

Recently, my pregnant wife was diagnosed with pregnancy
related diabetes (thanks to those overworking pregnancy related hormones!)
Started dieting (with her) to find out food which wouldn't shoot
up the blood sugar level. I know most of the Indian food were rich
in carb. But damn it, all the food we were eating so far, had Carb.
That too, "unga veetu Carb, enga veetu Carb ellai.." totally Carb. Everywhere
Carb. Carb.. carb.. carb.. everyday. Even one slice of whole wheat bread,
will shoot up the blood sugar level. (She had to test after breakfast, lunch and dinner)
No milk.. No curd or yoghurt. No cereals. No corn. No idli or dosa..
Anything which is white or similar color. No no.
Anything, which is green "Yes, yes".
Chappathi is ok. But, not too many (that too has carb). So, maybe one is ok.
Shes allowed to eat fatty foods though (Egg, butter etc stuff
ok). Its really difficult for a person, who dont eat meat.
Now, I feel bad for those people, who have high-cholestrol with diabetes
problem.
Unfortunately, my better-half hates vegetables and needles. But now, no other choice.
Although, she had a really difficult time at first.. now she has started
enjoying (really veggie food). Found out variety of stuff with vegetables, that she can enjoy.
Btw ladies, I kneel down before you, for all the sacrifices you make, to bring a life to this mother earth.
Our dietician said "Just because, you dont eat meat doesn't mean, you are a vegetarian. You need to eat vegetables, for it". I can say "Well said..", since it was directed toward us.. with embarassment, we said "Yeah.. hee.. hee....thats right".
Recently, was reading some article, which says "Dont drink cold water, after the meal. The coldness in the water kinda slows down the digestion, because it solidifies the oily content in our food.. which can cause you....." Stop it. Leave me alone.
Im not going to read any more diet related articles.
Knowledge is power. But, too much knowledge ? Hmm. mmm. Nah!

Trying to contact...

We are trying to contact Karthik. Any South Indian knows the futility of this statement before they hit the full-stop. I am a bit fuzzy on the statistics, but it surely figures in the top 10 list of most frequent names. You see my parents-in-law and his parents became friends when they last visited here. Time passed...Karthik changed apartments and moved on. Now I want to contact them without their contact information.

I have a friend who works in the same company Karthik works for, and I shot him an email asking for Karthik's contact information. So, he must've dutifully contacted the Karthik and within the hour, I had all his phone numbers.

My husband (H) called him and this is how the conversation must have looked:
H: Hello.....May I talk to Karthik?
K: Yes.....that's me
H: Eh......how are you? So, did you guys move?
K: No.....why, and who is this?
H: Introduces himself - ** Still not sure because he doesn't sound anything like Karthik**How is Chitra doing?
K: Who Chitra? My wife's name is Lakshmi.
H now feels that the conversation is not going as well as it should. So, he volunteers more irrelevant information
H: Oh, doesn't Chitra work at Google?
K: Chitra may be working at Google, but I am married to Lakshmi.

At which point, H would have found it prudent to end the conv. BTW, the above piece of conversation is purely fictional. Point is: We got a different Karthik.

So, I shot off another email to aforesaid friend, and qualified it saying: He speaks the Coimbatore dialect of Tamil.

So, now what would my friend do with this useless piece of information? Stick a mike to another Karthik and ask him to say a few words in Tamil to validate?

I can't stop myself from giggling while imagining the following:
1) The quizzical look on Karthik's face when my friend approached him for contact information. He must have thought that his parents sphere of influence extends far & wide, and given him the numbers anyway.
2) The increasingly embarrassing conversation between the husband and the above Karthik.
3) Friend sticking a mike to all the Karthiks in the company and asking them to say a few words in Tamil (Thankfully, there was only 1 person by this name, and we had already established that he is not the person we were looking for)

30 days

During my usual nocturnal prowl I found a very interesting TV program called 30 days.

(This is taken by the same guy who took "Super Size me" documentary. For those who have not seen that, for 30 days he ate nothing but from Mc Donalds.And in that process he documented his health etc. McDonald stopped serving SuperSize a month after this documentary was released and they claim it has nothing to do with that.)

Now he has this program where he makes people try different things for 30 days. It is a documentary and has some elements of a reality show.

In this episode, an American software programmer, Chris, looses his job to outsourcing. (TCS) And he follows his job to India. He lands in an sponsor's family who work in Call center in Bangalore and lives with them for 30 days.

Here are some of the excerpts from the show,

- Chris goes and gets a job with a call center in Bangalore and takes the "American accent" training And he notes how serious the people are about taking up the jobs which are looked down upon in US

- The host family is typical middle class joint family. The guy expects his wife (arranged marriage) to take care of his family first. And his wife is stuck between taking care of family and trying to pursue her dreams of becoming an "independent woman". Chris comments that Indian women are like 50-60s American women (going through liberation movement)

- Some Indians mentions that they are getting the jobs because either Americans are not talented or not enough Americans are there to fill the jobs. One dude points out that it never crossed his mind that he is stealing/taking some Americans job. They think of as new job opportunities. At one point he mentions, you are an American! How can you not have a job?

- Chris wants to find out the quality of life of facilities people in Call center (non English speakers). He comments, "these guys lives in what looks like a modern day cave and they put up a smile when they come to work. And I crib about moving to an apartment".

- He lives through the panicky time of Rajkumar's death in Bangalore. He observes that poor people are discontent with the new found money around them and that could explain the way they react.

- Small domestic fight/issue breaks out between Ravi (Chris's host) and his wife Sonny, over her ambition. Ravi wonders whether Sonny will have time to "press his clothes" etc. She says that she will find time for him on Saturdays and Sundays :)

- Chris, who has a 3 month old baby, was upset over the state of small children in slums.
( When I see those kids through his eyes, I felt sad! )

- Overall he comes home after living in the other side (literally)

It is a honest and unbiased (as much as possible) look at the issue. Since we lived in both sides, it is very interesting for us.

Try catching this program in FX. I already got it second time today. (re-runs)

Power of Human emotions

"Will you cry when your mom leaves this afternoon"? Saumya asked me late this morning. My mother gazed at me for an answer and I said "I don't think so-- guess I am past all that" . Now, that having been said we moved on to other important topics including Keena's day care, work and the likes.

Our planned trip to the airport was fairly routine with packed suitcases filling in most of the automobile that was to ferry us to the "hawaai jahaaju" docking station aka airport. The 40 odd miles went by in a jiffy with constant rear view checks and changing lanes to avoid being tailgated!

Checking in was a breeze. All bags were within the recomended weight allowances. I could see my dad's external temperature come down to the normal temperature of 98.4 F once the bags were found hanging onto dear life on the airline's rather huge weighing machines.

We munched on some mundane fries and roti prata while we waited for them to check in. Time now was 3.30 PM. We walked them over until the security check. We went over a routine ticket/passport check and they were set.

Hugs were exchanged. When it came to my mom and I, I noticed a small change of expression on her otherwise sublime calm face and I felt a lump. Little did I realise that tears were stinging my cheeks until I was almost blinded by it. We managed to break the embrace and off she strided inside. However I could see her smiling again before she had even reached the start of the x-ray belt.

I thought I wouldn't shed pearls and probably so did my mom, but then all it took was a routine parting which has taken place over and over in the past.... but still

A look and a tear had done it all.

Err... so what was the question again Saumya??

Indru oru Thagaval

All of you must write a one page summary of the program "Indru oru thagaval", announced our tamizh teacher. Not any Tamizh teacher, but it was dhothi-wearing one with Bharati-moustache who will scare even the toughest son-of-gun in the class. I, being the meeker one, was already putting sidelines and getting ready with the notebook.

One small hurdle to be crossed. It was program timing. It was at 5.55-6AM everyday! After all these years, it is obvious now what our teacher's intention was. But for a boy who care a lot about morning sleep and less about "learning", it was a tough to solve problem.

My dad was assigned with the role of human alarm. He being the early riser and my strict dad, did not help my cause. "Wake up" the sound woke me like a jolt. Radium on the clock showed 4.30AM. Appa, I cried. It is at 5.55AM and not 4.55AM. "I know" my dad replied, but you could use this peaceful time to study. Huh??? To add insult to injury, I was ordered not to read aloud!

After what felt like eons, the program actually started. Even with all those frustrations I thought what was told in that program made perfect sense even for my groggy head.

Now all is left was to summarize the content. But that is easier said than done. First I summarized it in 2 sentences. That is not enough is it? I tried dragging the sentence and leaving enough space between the words and lines (that could have fit fresh essay in them). Finally I managed to write up an entire page.

Our teacher want us to do everyday for that entire year. Not sure what I did. But I vaguely remember this, though I cribbed on the days I get to listen/write and did co-ordinate copies (I would like to think of sharing the load..or team work) on the days I could not manage.

I certainly loved the content which cranked the thinking part of my brain which till that point I did not realise that it existed.

Convenience Factor

Everyone must have heard of the saying, "Dont let the mind play games with you". I think it is very much true. In almost every task that we do, when we try to extend our capabilities, there is a portion of mind which keeps telling you to relax yourself. Most of us are victim to this portion of mind. Whenever I go to a restaurant with a grand intention of eating something very light and healthy, there is this portion of my mind which keeps asking me, "Why today? You always eat a fairly healthy diet. This is just one day. Its not going to do anything...". And, I listen...:)

Its not just with the restaurants. In workplace, I often start with something with an intention of completing it by the end of the day. As the day progresses, multitude of these convenience factors advice me to not be so ambitious. Most of the times, the arguments are so convincing and logical that I will have to abide by it. I am a very reasonable person who listen to what others have to say...I am sure, a lot of us must have made use of the convenience factors to our favor one time or the other. Atleast, I hope so. Infact, if everyone uses convenience factors, there is no wrong in using those convenience factors for ourselves, isnt it..;)

I think, one way to get away from being manipulated by our mind is to use constraint driven optimisation. For example, some people dont buy TV to optimise the time spent on other activities. If there is not TV, obviously, no time is going to be spent on it. Some folks try to commit to very tough goals for themselves. Once there is a tough goal, there is less room for leniency. I have seen some people who adamantly go against the mind, no matter what. All that said, I am not a huge fan of leading a strict constraint driven life. Life is like a delicious dish. It needs to be savored with every passing moment. Dont u agree?

Anyway, though there is some humanness in using up these convenience factors, it is also the major factor that hinders growth. If I am not doing something today, I am not going to do it tomorrow. Before I know it, I wudnt have done it for a month. And soon, months become years. If you notice, if you force yourself into doing something for a week, that one week will be noticed. But, after the first week or two, it becomes a habit. Well, I have decided. I am going to cultivate the habit of making less use of convenience factors starting today. Hmm...its already 9:00PM... What good does it serve to start making any vows at 9 in the night. I am going to be hardly awake for another couple of hours. I have an entire life at hand. Tomorrow is the best day to start....Yes, tomorrow it is....

Blogger's Dilemma...

Having blogged for almost a year now, I started wondering why I've been blogging all these days. I know, its very late to be asking this question. But, better late than never. Reminds me of the time when I run into my old friends just to realise that I forgot their name. Sometimes, I do escape after a long conversation without having to call them by their name. Sometimes, they do figure it out and I end up giving an embarassing smile before they reveal their name. Anyway, coming back to my original question, why should people blog and what should they be blogging about...

There are several answers that I could think of. Is it to share your thoughts with friends and people that you know or to register your thought process to a group to get feedbacks on what people thought about a given issue or a problem? Is it that one has too much time at their disposal to write whatever one thought would be interesting irrespective of how other folks perceive it ? Is it a way to collect all the favourable responses to the recent happenings in your life just to charge yourself with positiveness ? Is it to display a group of people how smart or talented you are ? Is it a way to offload your frustrations about a given issue in your life or a global issue that affects everyone's life ? Is it a way to get a little recognition and visibility among a group of people so as to be able to extrapolate it on how the world perceives about you ? I dont know about others. But, I will have to admit that, to me, it has been a confluence of all of the above reasons. Now, how would this blog be categorized in one of the above reasonings? I dont know...