5 months ago, I had travelled to China.

Something that happened during that time has had a deep and significant impact on me.
Anyway, that can rest with all other impacts.

Details of my trip later.

This is a special post to thank the person who posted a comment on one of my previous posts.
The write-up that was given by that person was something that I really needed; and yes, it helped!!

Thank you!

The line that I really liked from that write-up: “I believe in one simple (as I believe it) thing in life. Do your bit in this world to make sure you don’t harm anyone intentionally.”

As Dhi used to say, not too long ago, Life rocks ladies and gentlemen. Its awesome indeed.

It’s all about well-placed and well-executed strategies that will make you rise up the proverbial corporate ladder.
In my 3 years of work-life, I have observed and analysed many strategies that are played in the workplace. These are very interesting.

I can always share this information, albeit not on this blog lest it should be held against me by some corporate legal advisor.

But there are some generic concepts that can be shared here.
First and foremost, get a comprehensive understanding of the way things work in your place. This means that you need to know what are the traits that are encouraged.
Traits like whether the organization favours longer working hours; or whether it favours you to be a part of many other forums of discussions; whether it favours you to initiate new processes; whether it prefers an employee to be silent and only do the task handed out.

There may be million such attributes that your management might tend to be biased towards. There may be many more subtler attributes as well.
The point is that you need to be aware of what attributes are encouraged and what are not.

Once you are done with the first step, your second step lies in manipulating your work-life to try and show that you have these traits within you.
The bottom line here is to “show” these traits; and not necessarily have them within you.
Visibility amidst the favoured traits is very important.
Usually, after that, if you are not really loaded with bad luck, you can fly through.

If you want to know this whole thing in a much more detailed manner, contact me in person ladies and gentlemen.

Alright, the attempt at getting some sleep failed.
Listening to Elevation by U2. This is an awesome track.

(No writing activity for 5 mins, staring at the screen)

Now I am listening to Iris by Goo Goo Dolls.
I love this song, simply love it.

And I don’t want the world to see me
Cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

Tomorrow I am going to be on an “outbound” meeting; some resort where I hope they serve some good food. Anyway, this is one more of the manager cum HR tasks to show that they too are involved in running the organization.

If you can, try and listen to The Great Beyond by REM.
It is a very pretty song, pretty is the word that describes it.

I haven’t read the newspapers since quite a while now.
The TOI continues to ruin the nation’s thinking capability. And now I heard they are going to partner with Reuters. Doesn’t augur well for the readers and definitely not for the field of journalism.

Now listening to Clocks by Coldplay.
Am I a part of the cure, or am I part of the disease

My answer: Neither, I am probably just a side effect of either the cure or the disease. That didn’t make sense to me either.

One of the theories is that during one half of his day, Brahma creates the universe and everything. This lasts for his 12 hours (for us, it lasts for 4 yugs – the satya yug, the treta yug, the dwapar yug and the kal yug)
Effectively, 1 day of Brahma is zillion human years.
For his next 12 hours, Brahma shuts shop and goes to sleep. This is when there is nothing in existence. This will happen once our yug ends.

This means that every day Brahma creates the universe during his first 12 hours and then destroys it so that nothing exists while he sleeps for his next 12 hours.

In physics, there is a theory called the rubber-band theory of the universe (not a validated theory, cos after all it just cannot be validated!). This states that the universe started with a big bang and it continues to expand. However, after a certain stage, the universe stops expanding and collapses under its own weight until it becomes minutely small and then, due to huge amount of energy locked up in this small area, the whole thing explodes and the cycle continues.

What is very interesting to note is that it perfectly fits with the Brahma theory.

Now playing A rush of blood to the head by Coldplay:
You said I’m gonna buy a gun and start a war
If you can tell me something worth fighting for

So meet me by the bridge
Meet me by the lane
When am I gonna see that pretty face again
Oh meet me on the road
Meet me where I said
Blame it all upon a rush of blood to the head

This post has turned out way too long, thanks to all those lyrics that I have posted.
Too many disjoint thoughts have been penned down, or rather keyboarded down.

Dhi only one finally feels sleepy.

There is a lot of hype about object-oriented programming (OOP).
C++ for example is a language that provides data encapsulation, abstraction and so on.

Now, if you have a class and a couple of private variables, you cannot access the private variables directly.
Instead you need to write a function for this purpose.
Basic OOP concept.

However, I can still have a separate memory manager, and can get a pointer to the object created of that class. Via this pointer, I can easily access any of the private variables.
Suddenly C++ seems just a placeholder for the OOP concept.
I understand that it can only prevent illegal access by ensuring good syntax and semantics.
Still, it suddenly makes you realize that OOP is no big deal anyway.
Not that I have mastered it, but I don’t think it deserves the attention that is given to it.

Anyway, I have started liking the concept of embedded system programming.
Its very challenging and it gives you an account of the whereabouts of every bit.
I am actually quite glad of having created a product right out of scratch and it is currently running in some leading market areas.
It takes a lot of effort to get something this complex going.

I am not getting any sleep right now, hence this post.

The Mahabharat is, as I have mentioned many times in this blog, beautiful.
I am totally in awe of it; in awe of the person who thought of this entire plot; in awe of every character in it (majority of the characters have a negative trait within them).
I wept for Ekalavya.

I finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. It’s an okay book to read. The initial concepts all seem interesting, however the book drags a bit too long in the middle and towards the end.

Goodnight once again ladies and gentlemen, I am now going back to make another attempt at getting some sleep.

Today was quite irritating and pathetic.

Attended a typical presentation by a typical manager.
So, a typical presentation by a typical manager is always like this:

…blah blah blah…productivity…blah blah blah…verticals…blah blah blah…growth…blah blah blah…24/7 support…blah blah blah…asset management…blah blah blah…bandwidth…blah blah blah…domain knowledge…blah blah blah…organic growth…blah blah blah…hehehehe…blah blah blah…pillars of success…blah blah blah…customer delight…blah blah blah…good question…blah blah blah…globalization…blah blah blah…Thank you

Enlightening.

Then there are these irritating girls who apparently find everything in the world so funny. There is this one such person who I had the ill-fortune of meeting at the lunch queue.
So, there she goes: “You know, hahahaha, the other day, my friend, hahahaha, she ended up spilling rasam on another colleague’s clothes, hahahaha (giggling uncontrollably now). Isn’t that so funny?”
Dhi says, “Er, hum, yeah” and tries a smile.

So the girl continues, “You won’t believe this, hahahaha, my boss is doing some major process revamp, oh my god he is so tied up now, hahahaha, we tease him all day and call him Process Dude. Hahahahah, we all have a great laugh”.
Dhi says, “Er, hum, yeah” and tries a smile.

I am unhappy. I just am unhappy. The above has nothing to do with it.
Good night.

Of what use is intelligence if you cannot use it to bring about peace in your life and in the lives of the people close to you?

The weekend has just gone by in a jiffy.

On the threshold of Friday, it looked like a long weekend that was going to be my platform to complete many long-pending tasks.
Anyway, the weekend didn’t come even remotely close to the above description.

I didn’t achieve anything concrete; come to think of it, I didn’t get enough sleep either.

Saturday morning started off with a couple of games of squash.
Saturday afternoon belonged to a headache that didn’t go even after a few hours of sleep. Sinarest is an amazing tablet that I can always rely on when I have a severe bout of sinusitis.

Saturday evening was at Pinxx (I think this place has an excess of bean bags), followed by dinner at Karavalli.
The food at Karavalli doesn’t do justice to its price-list.
My suggestion: It is way too expensive a place and the food is ordinary. Coconut Grove is a better alternative for similar kind of cuisine.

Sunday lunch was at Pizza Hut; and the late evening was spent sitting around in an idle manner and chatting up with the guys.

Sunday night and I am not all that excited about Monday.
In fact I really don’t want time to move this fast.
Everything around me seems to be running away, looking back at me with a look saying “Are you ever gonna catch up with us?”.

I am losing my stamina and the will to keep pace with time.
Probably I just wasn’t made for this sort of thing.
Probably my constitution demands something else.
Probably these are not good enough excuses for my lack of whatever.

Dhi only one requests a timeout, ladies and gentlemen.

I just learnt that Vishnu’s twin incarnations were Nara and Narayana.

Nara was Arjun and Narayana was Krishna.

Interesting. If this was true, then it really doesn’t explain the whole Bhagwad Gita.
I mean, if Arjun and Narayana are incarnations of the same God, why would Krishna have to give his discourse to Arjun?
Maybe I am missing something.

I’m the darkness in the light
I’m the leftness in the right
I’m the rightness in the wrong
I’m the shortness in the long
I’m the goodness in the bad
I’m the saneness in the mad
I’m the sadness in the joy
I’m the gin in the gin-soaked boy

Courtesy: Gin Soaked Boy by Divine Comedy.

One of the lines in the last stanza of this song:
I’m the catcher in the rye

That line is awesome. Just the phrase “Catcher In the Rye” gets me this un-explainable feeling of enlightenment.

I am in the process of creating a rigorous time-table for myself.
This is not something very new to my life; I must have created around 45239633434 time-tables so far.
But I have adhered to none.

However, this time around I plan to make it effective.

My time-table would have to include time for my study preparation, my work, my work again, my reading time, my jogging time.

Watch this space for more details.