MY Experiments With MY Life

5 Strange Things About Me

2008-05-01T17:15:00.000-07:00

Since I've been tagged by the beautiful Vidhyalakshmi I got no choice but write this post.

So 5 strange things about me. It was hard for me to come up with this list because whatever I do doesn't seem to be strange for me ;). May be you guys should tell the strange things about me.

But anyway since I've been tagged I will play by the rules. So here is my list.

1. I like to tease/irritate my friends. Just for fun you now. Not seriously. And Raji is my favourite victim ;).

2. I am afraid of wall creatures like frog (toad actually), lizard, spider etc. They are small, jumpy, and you can't know what they are thinking and that freaks me out a lot. :)

3. I am superstitious about certain things for eg: about the clothes that I wear for something big, etc, at the same time the strict opposite of it, for eg: belief in god, rituals, traditions etc.

4. I have Deja Vu's almost every day.

5. Sometimes I feel like I am living in The Matrix. Quote: "Have you ever had a dream, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?".
I also sometimes think my life is being filmed by someone with a hidden camera somewhere. How weird is that :P.

So I am happily "un-tagged" now ;) and may be I will pass on the baton to Mr.Rayan, coz he hasn't written anything in his blog for a real long time.

Please leave a comment on what you think is strange about me.

Famous Phrases: bubbletop

2008-02-03T23:01:00.000-08:00

It's been more than a year, I am working on bubbletop, with the current team. Last night I was just thinking about some of the words/phrases that we often use within our team in our project. It was funny to recall them. So, I just though of listing them here.

First and foremost, the phrase that cracks our manager Virginie. It is scientifically IMPOSSIBLE. - From the one and only David Faure.
Dave is not here.
The Aggrevator - From Tom
So, where are we - From Virginie
The current way is.... - From Wencheng
Fa' real - From Ben
Search is not working.. - From Kavitha
This is EXACTLY what I am talking about - From David once again
I got the stuff..
Cooool - From me :)

bubbletop team - if you think I missed out something, please feel free to add it in the comments.

More than a year

2007-10-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

We often don’t realize how fast the time runs. We are so busy with our everyday life, that we often lose track of time. Then suddenly we stop at some point and look back and sometimes it is hard to believe that we've travelled so far. Days pass like seconds, months pass like days and years pass like months. This is also totally relative. As the famous example given by Einstein himself about relativity "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour."

I suddenly stopped today and looked back and interestingly I found that I've passed one year in much stuff. I should have celebrated one year anniversary for the following things.

1. 1 year and 6 months - Moved to California. (to Modesto)

2. 1 year and 5 months - Earned my M.S. degree. (from ULL)

3. 1 year and 3 months - Got my first Car in US. (Hyundai Elantra (Nayantra))

4. 1 year and 2 months - Moved to Bay Area. (San Mateo - Peninsula)

5. 1 year and 2 months - Started working for Orange. (France Telecom)

6. 1 year and 2 months - Started working on my current project bubbletop. (the then dimsu)

7. 1 year and 1 month - Quit eating Non-vegetarian food. (I am a Vegetarian)

8. 1 year and 1 month - Started working out at FCAC. (Foster City Athletic Club)

9. 1 year and almost a month - Started working on H1 visa. (started paying the ridiculous taxes)

Last but not the least:

10. 1 year and 4 months since I started writing this blog. :) (My Experiments With My Life)

Long Time No See

2007-10-13T23:06:00.000-07:00

Wow, its been a real long time since I wrote something on my blog. No particular reason. Have been held up with lots of work, personal problems, and the biggest reason, my LAZINESS. Earlier, I used to make sure that there is at least one post a month. But somehow I lost the interest/inspiration.

Work is taking most out of my 24 hours. After returning back from work I hit the gym. Spend some 2 hrs there. By the time I return back from there it is 10 PM. Later I just have time to have my dinner and sleep. Throughout the week I look forward for the weekends just to do nothing. I like to wake up late on the weekends as I am forced to wake up early on the weekdays. I wake up at 7:15AM (that’s early for me). For me waking up early in the morning is the most difficult thing. I can be awake the whole night, but I can’t wake up early. I want a minimum of 8 hours sleep. But I hardly get it. So weekends are the days I take my revenge. Today I woke up at 1.30PM after about 13 hrs of sleep. Also weekends are the days I get to work harder at my gym. So my usual 2 hrs at gym become 2 and half hours, sometimes even 3 hours. I like that.

I have developed some interest in watching movies now. Have been watching awful lot of movies nowadays. Every Friday night I hit a theater to watch a movie. Only good ones. None of the junky, fictions, sci-fi ones (like Spiderman, superman, etc). Got an account on blockbuster's online rental and watched some very good mafia, gangster, thriller, classic movies. I like the way some of the movies are taken. Like for example yesterday I watched the movie Into the Wild. It is a real life story directed by Sean Penn. Beautiful photography, awesome songs. Wikipedia link. Today I was watching another movie, Children of Men. The movie was taken very naturally. Everything was like real life footage.

One more thing I was engaged lately was doing some research on cars. I am planning to buy a new car. So had to read a lot of stuff on internet for seeing whats best and whats not.

The project I am working on bubbletop is close to public release. So our team is putting a lot of efforts on making this product a great success. It is in closed alpha now. Let me know if you want invites for it. Will write more about my project, team and work soon on a separate post. It is interesting I am sure.

So these are my updates on what is happening in my life. Will try to update my blog more regularly. Let me know what you've upto lately.

Inspiration

2007-02-19T01:33:00.000-08:00

When you are inspired, your dormant forces, faculties, talents, become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.
-Patanjali

Patanjali is supposed to be a great philosopher who lived around the 200 BC. Patanjali has often been called the founder of Yoga, mainly because of his work "Yoga Sutras". I also came across this link which give a brief idea on "The Yoga Sutras". Click Here. I didn't have the time to go through all of them (like I had it for anything else :) ). But among the ones I read I found it pretty inspirational and he talks a lot about the physical and mental nature of human body.

Personally I feel the above quote is one hundred percent true. You might normally feel like you can't do something. But when you have the right inspiration, you can do the same thing and when you are done doing it, you will definetly feel good about yourself. Everyone might have experienced this in their day to-day life.

Finding the right inspiration is the most difficult part. To do something you obviously need the physical support from your body, for the most part of it. The thing that appeared to be impossible until then, could be done by your body. Your body has the strength to do a lot of things. It remains dormant and does not shows up very easily. It needs the right commands from your mental brain. And your brain does not gives out the commands that easily. It needs all the right reasons & justification before doing anything. When the brain is satisfied with these, it issues the commands and the physical body acts just like nothing more than a machine, that acts upon commands.

Everything you do is psychological. When you are ready to do something at a mental level, you will definetly do it in the physical level also. There is nothing that you can't do. Shortly, when you are Inspired, you will,

Knock the T off the can'T

Determination

2006-12-25T21:56:00.000-08:00

   Determination,
   Dedication,
   Commitment,
      Key to Success....

These are the words that I read almost everyday in my gym for the past 2 and 1/2 months. These words have truly affected me a lot. This might be an immodest post about me, but I feel like I should say whatever I am going to say. I’ve been working out a lot and trying to reduce my weight. I have reduced about 30 pounds over a period of 3 months. All it took was a lot of Determination. A determination to achieve something, to achieve a target.

Determination is defined as the act of coming to a decision or of fixing. I came to a decision to reduce my weight. Taking the decision is easy. But sticking on to it is difficult. By the way I made a decision almost five months ago to quit eating meat and I am still sticking on to it and I will continue doing it (for those who told it is difficult for me to stick to it).

So after making the decision you need the determination to stick to it. There might be lot of difficulties or hurdles in between. But the determination you have will carry you on. When you have the determination to achieve something there accompanies dedication automatically with it. Dedication is what that makes your determination more powerful. Dedication properly is the setting apart of anything by solemn proclamation. So when you decide to do something you have to sacrifice, and allot time and energy for attaining it. Dedicate your time and energy for it.

Commitment comes along after you have the proper determination and dedication. Commitment means to pledge to some thing or someone. We have to pledge our mind and thoughts towards the goal/target. As the commitment increases you start becoming obsessive, compulsive towards your goal. All your thoughts are focused towards it. Whatever you do, whenever you do, you always have your target/goal fixed at the back of you mind.

When you have all these three prominently, whatever you do, knowing or unknowingly goes towards your ultimate goal.

So last week I went to meet my friends in the place where I did my Masters, in Louisiana. I was meeting my friends after about 4 months. My friends always know me as fat/bulky guy. So the first time they saw me after my determination, dedication and commitment towards reducing my weight, they all went "WOOOOOOW". All my friends were amazed looking at my weight loss. The length of their "WOOOOOOW" was the height of my success. There at that moment I could see that the key to success is not something unattainable.

"When you know how to use a key you can easily open the door".

P.S. I might have been pompous (which I guess I am not) in talking about myself, but I owe myself this self appreciation.

The Procrastinator

2006-10-15T17:32:00.000-07:00

I can call myself as “The Procrastinator” as in “The Terminator” starred by our very “The Governator” ;). It’s surely not something to feel proud about. But procrastination is a part of my life.

The dictionary defines procrastination as "to defer action; delay: to procrastinate until an opportunity is lost". The verb procrastinate is termed as "To put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness." That is exactly what I am talking about, my laziness. I procrastinate almost everything in my day-today life. Starting from getting up from the bed to going back to sleep in the night I postpone everything.

One little note about the word "Postpone". I am not a great English orator or very good with words, but I get furious when someone uses the word "Prepone". As far as I know and the research I have done prepone is not an antonym of postpone. It’s not even a word!!! (F.R.I.E.N.D.S. fantics: read that in Monica style ;) ). Prepone is not the opposite of postpone. “Post” in “postponed” is not a prefix as in Post-Graduation. If post in post-pone is a prefix then is "pone" a verb???? What does that mean then? Once I was talking with one of my aunt who is an English teacher and she used the word preponed. I got mad and I asked the same question to her. She accepted that prepone is not a word in the "actual" English language. But people thought it is a word and now it exists in colloquial English. There exists a lot of ambiguity and arguments among English scholars in considering prepone as a word.

Ok, enough of lectures and back to my problem now. For the past one or two months I have been in the peak of procrastination. When I moved to the new place in San Mateo from Modesto, I didn’t change my address with the DMV and just before shifting I applied for California's driving license and registered my car. So the documents went to my old address and I asked my old house owner to forward it to my new address. But it got lost in the middle and now I have to apply for a duplicate of all my documents :( This is just one example of my loses because of my procrastination.

I got fed up with being a Procrastinator and did a small research about procrastination on the internet. I took some Procrastinator's quizzes and found that I am a D-Profile Procrastinator (that’s right, there are varieties in this also!!!) I am what they categorize as "The Awakening Procrastinator" and they say that I am not procrastinating as badly as I have thought. What??!!! How worse can it get. I mean, I have been postponing posting this blog for almost a week now…

Anyway, now I have decided to be organized and note down the list of the things I have to do in a day and check if I have done all of them at the end of the day. I hope I don’t procrastinate in implementing this. :)

Self Motivation

2006-09-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

I haven’t been blogging for the past one month. Blogging is one of the activities I liked to do. My friends and my family kept appreciating my blogs and that was of a great encouragement for me. But lately I dint blog anything. When many of my friends asked me about it, I would just give some lame excuses like, I am busy with work or there is no Motivation.

I want to say some things about this motivation thing. In psychology, motivation is termed as the initiation, direction, intensity and persistence of behavior. Deployment of energy is often considered as an evidence of motivation. I have always used this motivation as an excuse for a lot of things that I don’t do. If I don’t want to read for an exam I just blame it on motivation. One of my friends always tells me that self-motivation is the best motivation and nothing can motivate you better than yourself. It is absolutely true and I have experienced that.

Yesterday I was at work not doing work but doing Outlook Express Chat (chatting by sending mails through official id). Then my chatters left as they work from Eastern Time and I am in Pacific Time (3 hrs back). Sometimes I wish I am in Pacific timings in the morning so that I will get up late and be in the Eastern timings in the evening so that I can go home early and sleep early. One of my stupid thoughts. Later I opened my yahoo mail and I was cleaning up my inbox (deleting unwanted mails). I use to savor the mails that are sent to me by my “Special Persons” in my life. I was reading the mails I use to exchange with my friends in my college days. That brought me up with lots of memories. Uncontrollable smile, even blushes :">

It was nice reading all that. I could see how immature I had been in college days, pulling up the stupidest fights with my friends. Though I was being stupid my friends were trying to convince me and still they are there for me. Thanks to all of them for sticking with me. And towards the end of the college days discussing about future and stuffs, trying to become mature. Exchanging autographs - the place where everyone becomes emotional and sentimental, looking back at the time they have spent together.

Just reading those made me happy and I realized that they were like time logs which can be looked back to recollect those sweet memories, cherish those moments and turn happy no matter how hard the day had been. And so are these blogs.

One of the main reasons I was refraining from updating my blog was that I always want to be perfect in whatever I do. I don’t do many things as such, but if I do something I want to do it at my best. So I had the idea that whatever I write should be really good and it must be appreciated by everyone. Now I don’t want to care about all that. I've decided to update my blog, no matter it is appreciated or not. I just want to keep a log of important things that happens in my life, and look back at it whenever I want.

So the motivation I needed here, was obviously was with me. Self motivation is possibly the best motivation. It is the ability to satisfy a desire, expectation, or goal without being influenced to do so by another person. It is the one's own free will. No one came and motivated me now. I found something on my own that motivated me to write this post. That’s what I call as Self-motivation.

Okay, now I have to find something else that would motivate me to work and not do this in the middle of my office hours :)

I am a Vegetarian

2006-08-10T17:15:00.000-07:00

I never thought I would say this sentence ever in my life. Here it is: "I am a Vegetarian".

Yes!! I have decided to become a vegetarian starting from today. For the people who know me well, it might be surprising or shocking as to why I've made this decision. But I’ve thought about it thoroughly and this was the outcome of my 2 day long thinking and discussions (with my mind).

Did I go crazy to take this decision? Am I out of mind?
No, I am perfectly normal and believe me I've thought this through.

So, why suddenly? After so many years of my life why did I come to this decision now?

I was reading a blog which I landed upon through orkut. The posting was talking about how animals are being killed for fur. It had a link to a video which was showing some scenes of how animals are killed and their fur is extracted. It was really brutal and the video affected me a lot. Live animals were beaten on the ground to death or unconscious state and they were hanged down and their limbs were cut and their skin was removed from their body like removing some wrapper over a chocolate. I wasn’t affected that much till I watched half way through the video. Then the video showed the fur being removed from a half conscious animal. The animal was struggling to escape but it couldn’t and the guy was still doing what he was doing. I was thinking, at least he can kill the animal and then remove it, so that it wont be so horrible. But NO. The guy removed the skin when the animal was still alive. Even after removing the skin the animal had life and the camera-man showed the eyes of it and I felt like the animal was trying to say "why have you done this to me??" The animal tried to turn around and heal itself, but it dint have enough energy left with it. Finally it fell dead. Here is the link to the video: Click Here. I couldn’t watch the video past this. I want to acknowledge the blog that I am talking about. Here is the link to the blog: Click Here

Usually I don’t watch such videos because I know that it would affect me. But I gave an exception for this and it had changed my lifestyle now. From my childhood whenever I see such kind of videos I think I should also not eat meat. There was a program on Doordharshan hosted by Menaka Gandhi where she use to show videos of animal being killed for their meat. I have thought I should stop eating meat that time also. But I didn't implement the thought. But this time my thought has gone to the next level.

I basically belong to a vegetarian family. My parents and my brother don’t eat meat. Only I do. But they never restricted me from doing it. My dad use to tell me always to quit eating it. But he doesn’t force me to do so. My mom used to say that eating it is bad, and you should realize it by yourself, and when you realize you will stop it on your own. Well, this is the moment I have realized it.

It is not because of any spiritual or religious reasons I am taking this decision. People who know me, know that I don’t believe in GOD. It is not even the idea of killing another living being. I am the person who would like to debate that plants are also living beings. By eating it we are killing some form of life. Whether it is a single cell or multi-cell organism, it is a form of living. Consider a plant. You kill it and you are affecting its usual process. If you hadn’t killed it, it would have continued doing its cell division process, and go through its biological routine. So I would say plants are the same as animal. Killing a plant is the same as killing an animal.

The difference comes in only in the way the killing affects the organism. Seeing an animal killed definitely will affect me more than seeing a plant killed. So does it mean that since plants cannot struggle or defend itself we can kill it? No, just because its biological nature is not as complex as other organisms in the higher level in the Biological tree, we cannot kill it. And also we human beings cannot live without food. The ecosystem is in such a way that higher level organisms feed on lower level organisms. That is why we feed on animals also. So the situation that is put in front of us is like this. I am killing organisms every day, whether it is directly or indirectly. It doesn’t matter. I am basically a killer. But it doesn’t mean that since I am a killer already I can kill whatever I want. Humans have the social awareness. That is why just because we are killers we don’t go and kill other human being. Since we are humans we are aware of the hurt we are causing to an animal physically. I have argued with vegetarians many times, that by killing plant also we are hurting it, but it could not express the hurt in a more obvious way. I am saying the same now also. I am hurting a plant by killing it. But I cannot live without eating anything at all. It comes down the "Survival of the Fittest" scenario. So now its like this, hurting a plant is less intensive and the hurt is less obvious than when it is done to an animal. So when I have an option of hurting an organism which shows its hurt/struggle more obviously and hurting an organism which cannot show its hurt in a more obvious way, I choose to hurt the later one.

So the basis of my decision is based upon the intensity of the hurt I am causing to it by killing it. And also the whole idea of Vegetarianism is totally subjective. Some people consider Egg is also a non-vegetarian food and some people say it is an exception based upon their reason for vegetarianism. Based upon my reason I feel that egg can be given an exception. But I am gonna try avoiding that also. Again it is totally subjective.

When I look back and see, I wanted to have a list of non-vegetarian food I've eaten. I am not proud in listing it but I feel proud that I am not going to kill them anymore. I am proud that I am making my family happy. Here they are: Beef, Mutton (Lamb), Pork, Rabbit, Fish, Prawn, Shrimp, Crab, Chicken, Turkey, Duck, I don’t know the English word for "Kaadai" but that is a kind of bird.

So that’s it. "I am a Vegetarian" :)

Charity Begins At Home

2006-07-02T19:51:00.000-07:00

I dont know if I have any strange connections with mute people. This one is also related to a mute man. So it was a usual day at work. I was doing the usual Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V work (as most of the programmers do). I personally think all the programmers in the world owe a lot to the person who found this Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V. If this was not there programming would have been a nightmare. One more thing, the programmers owe a lot to- Google. Any code, any logic just do a “Googling” and you have the code already in front of you, and this is where Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V comes into action. Anyway, after doing an intensive such kind of work we all (me and my colleagues) went for lunch to a Chinese fast food kind of a place. When we were eating, a lean kallu (black man) came at our desk and placed a paper. I started reading and it said "Hi brother, I am.....”. Even before I could finish reading the first sentence, one of my co-worker grabbed the paper and gave it back to him and he searched his pocket for something and he actioned him that he had nothing. Then I understood that he was mute man and he was asking us some money. As my co-worker told he had no money I reached over to my wallet and took a dollar bill and gave it to him. The guy took it happily and thanked me and I think he was trying to say "God bless you".

Now I felt happy for myself having done some good charity work. My mom always says that helping others is good deed and it will bring good for us. She lived to the words:

"Do All The Good You Can,

To All The People You Can,

At All The Times You Can,

As Long As Ever You Can."

So I was happy that I did a good deed and continued to have my lunch. Then my co-worker started saying that this guy often comes to our office asking for money. He has been doing this for almost a year. He would just walk into the office and ask them for money. They call it as "bumming", meaning that it bums them out when someone comes to them asking for money.

Then I started to have some confusing thoughts. By donating some money I did a good deed. A charity work. That certainly ought to be good for me. But on the other side this man has been doing this like forever. He is living his life in this way. He is not doing any work or whatsoever. He manages to get the money for his food by getting it from others. Directly or indirectly I am encouraging him to not to do any work and lead a life like this. So am I doing a good deed now? I wonder. I presume that making someone lazy, or not to do work is not a good deed.

So what charity actually means. It does not simply mean to give away money that you have. One of my friends was telling me "Money can be given by anyone who has it. But charity is more than that. It is about helping the real needy. Giving a life back in whatever way you can to a 10 year old boy who lost his whole family in a moment to the ferocious hands of tsunami is charity. Giving any amount of money to the boy would be nothing more than being at the place for him and hugging him and soothing him. That is charity."

So what I am trying to say here is, just giving away money or giving a huge tip to a waiter/waitress at a hotel alone would not be considered as charity(as many might think). Helping the needy, whoever it may be, friends or family, in the way they would want us is the real charity. After all "Charity Begins At Home".

P.S. - The friend I was talking about is Viji (for those who know her)

Mind Reading: A Forbidden Art

2006-06-16T22:01:00.000-07:00

After writing my previous post I received a lot of appreciation from my friends. First of all thanks for that. Now I feel more responsible to write an even more good blog. But I am not sure if I will be able to re-produce something like that again. That is one of the reasons to write this after a long gap. A sudden thought. What if I hadn’t told all these now and everyone could read my mind. I don’t even have to write what I feel. Wouldn’t that be cool? If everyone has the capability of reading others mind then I guess there won’t be a lot of problems. There won’t be any difficulties in expressing love or affection for others in words. There wouldn’t be any necessity for words or language. People throughout the world can communicate using this single media. There wouldn’t be any of the so called "Communication Gaps".

On the brighter side it appears to be simple and cool. But it has a big darker side. We have to admit that no human being is 100% perfect. Everyone has negative/ill thoughts about everything and everyone. For example, when you talk with your boss he/she might say some work suggestion which may appear to be total 'crap' for you. But you still would listen to that and even appreciate that. Imagine a situation where your boss was a mind reader and he could clearly read what you are thinking truly. That would be a disaster. Not to be precise to a work environment. Even in our day-today life. Even to our friends or lovers/partners or even parents. Do we actually say only what we think? We might actually dislike what they speak or what they do. But still we don’t express that. Our mind thinks something, but we say something else about the same thing. This is because we think that some things are better to remain unsaid.

In such a case wouldn’t mind reading be dangerous? Yes, definitely it will be. If the person you speak with can read your mind, you will have to be careful about what you think. It ultimately leads to the confinement that we cannot think whatever we like. This will lead to a situation where we will not be free to think anything. Before thinking about anything, we would first have to decide if what we are going to think will have any adverse effects. Ultimately it restricts the capabilities of a brain to think.

Can we confine our mind into a small circle? Can we put a barrier for our thoughts? We can only filter those thoughts and say or express out only those which are appropriate. Our mind has the free will to think whatever it likes to think. It is not like we can define a set of rules, and pertaining only to these rule a brain will think. If that happens, our brain will be nothing more than a machine. A machine that works based on an equation. Is this is what a human brain is capable of. No, the capabilities of our mind are beyond our understandings.

This is the reason I personally think that Mind Reading has been and has to be a forbidden art. A practice no one can ever master in it. No one can read others mind accurately. There are people who demonstrate mind reading to the public. But however scientific scrutiny has proved that they are nothing more than Mentalism - a form of stage magic in which the practitioner creates the appearance of possessing a paranormal ability. And also mind reading as such could not withstand scientific scrutiny. Even though some Mind Readers have produced some positive results, they have been demonstrated to be the result of flawed methodology, statistically erroneous conclusions, or could simply not be replicated by independent mind readers.

But now I can read your mind. I have simply bored you :)

A Dumb Man's Language

2006-06-11T22:33:00.000-07:00

We always take a lot of care in the way we speak with others. Speaking a language is the way of expressing our feelings and thoughts on whatever it is. We crave for developing our verbal skills because that’s what takes a major part in the way we are received in a society. The more we speak with a good vocabulary the more we are respected.

Have you ever wondered how a mute (speech disorder) person expresses his feelings or thoughts? So how is a mute person respected in a society if the people in a society are not aware of their language? I haven’t wondered about these questions either. Until this happened:

I was traveling back home from Mall after doing some good purchases that made my wallet smaller, but made my heart happier. I bought some books and some clothes. On the bus as usual I was thinking about something unwanted for my life and saw a really fat lady (fatter than me) board the bus along with her son. I have this unhealthy feeling of self compromisation when I see someone fatter than me (which obviously is not going to help me in any way). Then few minutes later a mute man boarded the bus. I found out that he was mute by seeing him expressing himself to someone in Sign Language before boarding the bus. But there may be the chance that the other person was mute. But I confirmed that this guy was the mute guy when he expressed himself in Sign Language to the driver. I guess the drivers here are trained to understand and reciprocate in sign language at least to some extent for the benefit of mute people.

In front of the stopping from where this guy boarded the bus, there had occurred a serious road accident and the police where clearing the traffic. Then suddenly this fat lady started doing some signs to this man, and this guy was replying her doing some other signs. His language was (Sign Language) so expressive that I found out that the lady was asking him about the accident and he was explaining what had happened and I understood to some extent that a car ran over a bike-guy and blood was flowing from his head. Now I thought that this lady is too fat, and on top of that she is also mute. But then she talked to her son and explained him what this mute guy was expressing to her.

So this woman had learned Sign Language - a language for the mute, even though she wasn’t a mute. What would necessarily be the reason for a person to learn the sign language if the person is not mute? Have you ever wondered how a mute person can share jokes, laughs, views on the world, politics, ever increasing gas prices etc? We can always do all these with anyone we want. We can do all these even with an unknown person who travels with you. But a mute person can do this only with people who knows their language. Luckily this guy has found this woman on this bus to do all this.

As the bus rolled on its way these two people involved themselves in very active conversation by exchanging series of signs, while I was simply watching them. I was practically eavesdropping on them. It made me furious that I could not understand most of their signs. This guy showed something from his wallet and this woman was doing some actions in response to it and I was like "What the hell is going on?” As their conversation builded they shared jokes. Both were laughing, and they were sharing jokes. The lady was pointing her son and she was expressing something to the man. And the man was like "Oh, I see". Now the son was feeling embarrassed as they were talking about him and he had no clue what they were talking. The lady was again pointing her son and expressing something and the man started laughing and the man replied something and the lady started laughing out loud. The boy was a bit annoyed that they were passing comments on him, which he had no clue what was about and the boy was like "come on mom, cut it out".

Now we reached the terminus and these two people where exchanging their wishes and went their part. This guy would have been feeling a lot happier for finding this woman on this journey. And this lady made a mute man happy simply because she knew their language. It’s the same for us also. When we find someone who knows our mother tongue no matter who the person is we feel a lot comfortable speaking with that person in our mother tongue. Well this man's mother tongue was the Sign Language.

I always have found an interest in myself in learning other languages. I can be immodest in saying that I know 5 languages (Tamil, English, Hindi, Japanese, little bit of Telugu). I always wanted to learn French or German; I guess I will learn a little bit of Mexican living in this place. But not once I had the thought about the Sign Language. So I thought one day I should also learn this Sign Language. I came back home and "google"d and "wiki"ed about the sign language. I found this picture somewhere and I could see that there were different signs for each alphabet in English. I also found this site where we can get a free package using which you can learn the language. Click Here.

So I told myself, some day I will also learn the "Dumb Man's Language" and make some one else happy.

My First Book

2006-06-09T22:16:00.000-07:00

It is not about the first book I wrote. It’s about the first one I have ever read. I wasn't a great fan of reading books. From my childhood I had a big dislike for reading. My father used to have like a million books in our home. There were various books on various categories like Spiritual, Literature, Self help, Personal development etc etc in my home. I have never read a single one of them. One fine day my brother was telling about "The Da Vinci Code" and how interesting book it was and he also told me about another interesting book he had read. It was titled "God's Debris".

It was a small book about 140 pages and my brother gave me an e-copy of the book. I started reading the introduction of the book and surprisingly I found it interesting. I read like 5 pages that night and went to sleep. The next day I got up and the first thing I did was to read the book. I started reading the book and I finished reading it at one stretch. Six hours. I was amazed that I did that.

I found the book really interesting. Because it was a topic on one of my greatest interest. The "GOD" and his/her existence. The author of the book Scott Adams (author of the Dilbert series) had proposed a very interesting and different theory about the GOD. As he says, his theory was unconventional. But he had substantiated his theory scientifically. It required a great amount of concentration and involvement to understand his theory. His theory might as well be true. No one can give a proof about the existence of god. So I thought his theory at least had a substantial amount of scientific credibility. He claims that a human brain is nothing more than a "delusion generator".

After writing my previous topic my friends were commenting that "a million people believe in GOD and why won’t you do that"... "We will do what all the people believe and not believe what you think is the right way"... "If there are 1,00,000 people 99,999 will believe in the existence of GOD". I would like to quote to them what I read in this book and what I feel is absolutely true. Here I quote.

“Four billion people say they believe in God, but few genuinely believe. If people believed in God, they would live every minute of their lives in support of that belief. Rich people would give their wealth to the needy. Everyone would be frantic to determine which religion was the true one"...."People would dedicate their lives to converting others to their religions."
“A belief in God would demand one hundred percent obsessive devotion, influencing every waking moment of this brief life on earth. But your four billion so-called believers do not live their lives in that fashion, except for a few. The majority believes in the usefulness of their beliefs—an earthly and practical utility—but they do not believe in the underlying reality.”
“If you asked them, they’d say they believe.”
“They say that they believe because pretending to believe is necessary to get the benefits of religion. They tell other people that they believe and they do believer-like things, like praying and reading holy books. But they don’t do the things that a true believer would do, the things a true believer would have to do".
“If you believe a truck is coming toward you, you will jump out of the way. That is belief in the reality of the truck. If you tell people you fear the truck but do nothing to get out of the way that is not belief in the truck. Likewise, it is not belief to say God exists and then continue sinning and hoarding your wealth while innocent people die of starvation. When belief does not control your most important decisions, it is not belief in the underlying reality; it is belief in the usefulness of believing.”
“...people claim to believe in God, but most don’t literally believe. They only act as though they believe because there are earthly benefits in doing so. They create a delusion for themselves because it makes them happy.”

Here is the link where you can download an e-copy of it. God's Debris by Scott Adams. I am in no way trying to convince you that my belief is right and yours is wrong. I am saying that my belief might as well be true as you think about your belief.

Getting back to this topic, I somehow then developed some affinity to books and the same weekend I bought couple of books and now I am reading "The Da Vinci Code". What surprises me is how Dan Brown has managed to make the readers so captivated into the story. He puts forth a mystery at the end of every chapter and makes us feel "let me read this one chapter and then sleep".

I now realize that reading books is a good pass-time than watching TV. or just browsing over the internet. Book reading increases our concentration and not to mention the verbal skills you can develop out of it.

The existence of God: My life's biggest question

2006-06-06T22:29:00.000-07:00

Does GOD really exist??? Is there someone named GOD??? One of my life's favourite question. Has anyone seen GOD??? Is there any proof that GOD exists??? The answers to all my questions is NO.

Do you really think that someone is up there in Heaven and listens to your prayers and makes things as we pray for??? I would say no. We make the things work the way we think it works. There is no external or supernatural power that decides how we lead our life. I dont have belief in the so called Super Natural Power of GOD. Humans have those powers. But no one realises it. Ofcourse I havent realised it yet. But trying to do it. GOD is just the name and shape we give to our beliefs. If you have belief in you, you need not have to think that GOD will save us or protect us. You can do that by yourself. Right?

I wasnt a great a believer of GOD in the childhood. But then, my mother was a firm believer of GOD and as the environment around me was, I was also kind of forwarded towards those beliefs. But ultimately I realised the underlying meaning of the concept of GOD and that formed the base of my beliefs now. I also realised that each and every rituals we follow had an underlying and valid scientific reason behind that.

The whole concept of GOD was created to streamline the beliefs of man. It all comes down to our "Beliefs" in a round about way. If someone asked you to believe that you can do anything, you wouldnt believe that. Would you? That is the reason why our ancestors created GOD. They created GOD and told that he/she has all the great powers which you already had with you. So we started believing that if we pray or if we please the GOD he/she will use his powers to make good things happen for us. By praying you basically believe that GOD will take care of you. It is that belief that you keep on an external body which ultimately makes good things to happen to you. I say why do you have to have that belief on something external. Cant you do that on yourself. Are we not sophisticated enough to do that. I believe I am.

My first Blog: A Blog about my blogs

2006-06-04T10:02:00.000-07:00

I was always under the notion that 'Blogs' can only be written by people who are talented and has amazing writing skills. One who is capable of using the words I read for GRE.

But then what changed now??? Have I developed amazing writing skills or became capable of using those big words? No, nothing changed. It was my notion that changed. I was browsing through the internet one fine day and I landed up reading one of the blogs written by someone. Her (yeah, it was written by a girl), blog was no more than her personal diary. She had written what she eats, what she does, etc etc in a mediocre language. There were lot of sentences expressed in her mother tongue(tamil) and that too in her own family accent. It was then I thought, "I can write something definitely better than this. I have better ideas and thoughts that I can express better than this." So thats how I ended up writing this.

I am not saying that mere comparison brought me the thought of writing a blog. I have always been thinking of expressing my personal ideas and thoughts about life. Let this blog serve as an oppurtuniy to do that. So yesterday night, I decided to write a blog. Good for me. Then I woke up this morning and nothing more than the thoughts about my blog that I am going to write was running in my mind. Now, I have to pick a title for the blog. I have read blogs that had fantastic and eye catching words as the title. But what I wanted to write in my blog was about my life and my day-today encounters. So that is why this is my title "MY Experiments With MY Life".

Then a series of topics was flowing in my mind that I could discuss here. Most of them are my personal thoughts and views about human life. I have to say, most of my thoughts are pretty unconventional. So after reading my views do not argue with me that my views are wrong. I am just expressing my views. It may be wrong according to you. But according to me your views might be wrong. But you can always let me know your views.

So this brings me to the end of this topic. There is more to come....