Friday, April 29, 2005

Thunder Over Louisville

April 23rd was Thunder Over Louisville, I remember the last year when I was there with Chhavi. Had some amazing time over that weekend (thanks to Debbie, btw talked to her couple of days back, was a nice feeling). Just went down memory lane today thinking about the event and that weekend...
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Sixth Sense

Recently watched the TV show "The Mysterious world of Alain Nu", Alain Nu (www.alainnu.com) is a mentalist with very strong ESP. Some of the things that he performed on the show were: (a) He hands out a deck of cards to a volunteer, who shuffles and re-shuffles and re-shuffles, Alain takes 15 seconds to "read" the ordering of the cards by looking at them and then tells the cards in exactly the same order as they were stacked first from top to bottom and then from bottom to top! Atleast I can't memorize 52 cards' order in 15 seconds. (b) He hands over a deck of cards to a volunteer and him to call any two digit number (volunteer calls 22), asks another volunteer to calls any card (the volunteer calls 9 of clubs) and voila the 22nd card turns out to be indeed 8 of clubs (he doesn't touch the cards after the volunteers have made their choices). (d) He bends metal spoons w.o. even touching them by just moving his hands around the palms of the volunteer who has the spoon within them (c) Another one: He has 2 clean slates and a piece of chalk, he sandwiches the piece of chalk between the two slates and asks a volunteer to think of the name of a person and behold the name was written by an invisible hand even though the volunteer never said it aloud! There were quite a lotsa feats which were quite unexplainable by using "normal" logic and laws of physics. Almost all the feats that Nu performed were mentioned in Brunton's book "A Search In Secret India".
I know the first thing that comes to the mind after watching such "magic" feats is that it's just a magician's trick or an illusion. Is it really an illusion or the fact that since childhood we've been taught to use only 5 senses and anything which cannot be felt by one of these sense makes us call it as an illusion, just because we can't feel these things doesn't mean that they don't exist. Why do we have at times such a strong sense of deja vu? Why do we at times feel positive vibes when we meet someone for the first time and sometimes vice-versa? I think at times it's good to put aside the laws of physics and "normal" logic to understand certain things and events that happen in our lives, remember that all laws of physics are based on assumptions!

Thursday, April 14, 2005

One year with Blogger.com

It's been one year since I've been blogging at blogger (seems to be a long time!) and am more or less pleased with the service that they provide..yeah it's a little lame when compared to other blogging site like weblogs but blogger.com is actually meant for not so tech-savvy bloggers. Few things sure need revamp: features like category support, a calendar with links to the dates you've blogged (I really like this thing in MovableTypes/weblogs), better commenting system etc. apart from that the interface is pretty decent and you can change the look n feel of your blogs with skins and has now pretty nice support for posting your pictures using Picasa. Life has changed a lot over the past one year since I started blogging which I think is reflected in my blogs over the time; they have been less tech-centric and more focused around my personal life not that nothing is happening in my professional life it's just that it doesn't matter to me any longer.
Started reading An Ordinary Person's Guide To The Empire by Arundhati Roy, hits you right between the eyes kinda book, should be able to finish tonight.

Monday, April 11, 2005

Good decisions, bad decisions

Off-late something has got me thinking: what is classified as a bad decision and what is classified as a right decision? Is it that if the outcome is good then it is a good decision and if it is not then a bad decision? or is it that if you do what others would have done then it is a right decision else if you decide to back your own instincts and do what you feel is correct then it is a bad decision? Well, according to me no decision is right or wrong at its face value, we generally tag a decision as bad or good based on the results, since results are the future events while you are about to make a decision how can you know the result? so I feel that no decision is right or wrong, yes you can perhaps make more "sensible" decision by following what "others" who were already in the same situation did. I've a problem with following "others" too, everyone has a different set of priorities in life, everyone has different endurance levels and everyone has his own unique circumstances to deal with...to me a good decision is a decision which is made by the person keeping in mind his circumstances, endurance levels and above all his priorities or things that matter to him & things that don't, irrespective of the outcome.
I took a decision some time back to move to US which some feel (no prizes for guessing) is not the most correct decision. They feel that it's gonna "screw up" my life, well according to me you can't screw up a life which is already screwed up! worst come worst I might have to write off the year(s) that I would be in the US but hey what if things work out? Doesn't it then seem to be a sensible decision? I know a lotsa people would have given up hope at this stage but as I said everyone has his own endurance level and everyone's got his own priorities and to me this is the thing that really matters something for which I don't even mind writing off my entire life forget about few years. So just keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that one day things would be back on track just like they used to be nearly an year ago (seems to be long time!).
By the way read a book called The Monk who sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma, how is it? who knows, who cares.

Friday, April 08, 2005

a new old friend..

It's been long since I blogged had too many things to take care of, I quit my job in Hyderabad and joined a company which got me shipped to New Jersey, anyone who knows what's been happening in my life would know why I joined them. Many people asked me to re-think about my decision but I knew what I was doing and why. I have no liking for my current place or the work apart from the fact that they are pretty decent folks, I joined them for totally other reasons which cannot be termed as professional. I joined them because I wanted to be close to Chhavi, we were (were? I for sure am still just as much in love with her and I hope it's same with her too) madly in love with each other and the best thing was that we were not just blindly in love but would see fault in each other too and try to learn from one another. I have never in my life felt the same sort of comfort while talking to anyone else even the ones who were very close to me. we would talk for hours everyday and still feel like talking more...we would be with each other over the weekends (every weekend except 2 out of the 12 weeks that I stayed there) when I was in Louisville and still feel like being with each other every day. I have never met a person who was so much giving, so caring & still being so receptive to new thoughts/ideas (I know these qualities are pretty much still in her) as her, circumstances or twist of fate or whatever else it was (I don't blame her for anything) we stopped talking and according to her she moved on with her life and that's what she told me even after 10 months since the date we stopped talking. So why am I still trying when it's been more than 10 months? why am I still hoping that we would be together back to same old days when perhaps everyone else would have written us off? am I being impractical? or am I being overly hopeful? I don't know yet what is the right thing to do but I would do just anything to have her back in my life. I don't want her to come back just for my sake but because she also hopefully feels the same way. ..
I am,
You are.
& nothing else matters
in our private universe!
I am waiting for the day and I would see her smiling at me again & waiting with open arms..is it too much to ask for?
I will end this blog with my favorite lines from Ghalib (chubby also loves it): -
hazaron khwaishen aisi,
ki har khwaish pe dum nikle.
bahut nikle mere armaan,
lekin fir bhi kam nikle.