Asking the right questions

Personal development articles or books can be such a big waste of time. After finishing some of the books in that genre , i have wondered how those books sell . But i have taken a huge liking to Steve's blog and following it for quite sometime now.

Here is one of the articles based on the idea of Tony Robbins , another author i love to read.

"Strong questions are empowering. They keep you focused on solutions, on what you can control. When you focus on what you can do, you avoid falling into analysis paralysis. Ultimately the way out of any negative situation is right thinking. Wrong thinking leads you in circles. Right thinking leads to action."

More here

Cool Add-ons for Firefox

Check out this link for some cool , snappy add-ons for Firefox.

Golden gate

Few sights can be so picturesque like watching San Fransico downtown lights with Golden gate in the foreground.



An artistic engineering feat san pareil !

Grand Canyon

No matter how much you have read about or how many pictures you have seen , nothing can quite prepare you for the first sight of Grand Canyon . It just humbles you with its grandeur. The IMAX film on Grand Canyon shows a Spaniard dropping his sword and praying to God when he discovered them first during one of his expeditions. Such is the telling effect of its sight.

Though quite inanimate during the day time , Canyons come alive with vibrant colors during Sunset and Sunrise. The serenity which engulfs you when sun mellows into the horizon and the joy of watching first angelic rays of the golden sun illuminating the Canyon summits are easily some of the best experiences of your life !

Though these pictures don't do justice to the actual experience , it atleast helps me to relive those magical moments.

Pink shades....



twilight colors....



first rays of the sun.....



day break....



They say Canyon experience is much better when you trek down to the Colorado river. We had a taste of that when we started down on the Hermit's rest trail. Lack of time curtailed our trek . Am really looking forward to do that sometime in future .

this and that .....

Oh....i didnt mean to stay away for so long . Itz not that i have lost interest in keeping this journal but just that i'm too lazy to make this a habit !

I travelled to California , 2 days before diwali , missing all the celebrations at home for the third straight time . Anyways , i managed to escape the torrential Chennai rains. Thatz the bright side of it.

Haven't seen such vibrant fall colors in bay area before .... shot this at a winery in Napa.


Itz wintery now .... no more leaves on trees ! Sun disappears too quickly into the horizon. Wish it snowed here ... to enjoy that heavenly feeling of looking upto the sky , watching a thousand white flowers blossom out of thin air !

Quotes

Accidentally stumbled across my diary which I had been using as a scratch pad during my school days…..found these quotes I had collected then….

Don’t confuse mere inconveniences with real problems

I endeavor to be wise , when I can’t be merry
Easy when I can’t be glad
Content with what can’t be mended
Patient when there be no redress.

Most of the unhappiness is due to the fact that we overestimate the happiness of others

What can’t be cured ; must be endured

Things that hurt , instruct.

For all your days prepare
And meet them ever alike
When you are the anvil, bear
When you are the hammer, strike

Don’t worry over what other people are thinking about you …’coz they are busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.

Chop your own wood…it‘ll warm you twice.

Think big thoughts…but relish small pleasures.

Second thoughts are ever wiser.

Unsung song...

I first met this guy on my first day to work . We were campus recruits from reputed colleges about to work for a reputed IT firm in Chennai. He was amiable and we immediately felt at ease with each other’s company. Both of us were trying to find an accommodation in Chennai at that time. And we ended up as roomies in an apartment. Initial days were hectic with work and evenings were spent buying odds and ends for our appt. Nothing was amiss about this guy until the time we got the telephone connection to our apartment.

The telephone started ringing at unearthly hours and what I hear next would be the hushed voice of my roomie , giggles ( well guys do giggle sometimes ! ). It has to be a gal , his special one maybe I thought . It didn’t take long to get the picture…..in every conversation with him, some info trickled about the gal. She was his classmate in College….(oh..thats where it started ). From a orthodox tambram family (which explains him not taking NV….her likes over his maybe)……now in US for MS (hmmm....the late night telephone calls ).

This continued for a while. I didn’t poke my nose too much into his personal matters but nevertheless listened to him talk about her, trying to comprehend why silly things that happen between them makes him so happy or so sad. Times spent laughing with him, kidding him and consoling him made our friendship grow stronger, fonder.

Time flew….more phone calls….more rants ! It was time for her to visit her family in Chennai and as expected my roomie was very happy at that. They met up, talked a lot over coffee and mobile , roamed a bit . My friend’s cheeks would crimson with blushing, when asked about his sudden disappearances from the appt and office. I’m not a guy who jumps to conclusions …. But then the signs were clearly painting a rosy luv affair in full bloom.

Time flew faster. Our lives found its steady state in monotony. Miasma of the monochrome software profession engulfed us completely. He made occasional references about the gal , about her life in US , about her internship, about other trivialities. He would sit late nights in office to finish her assignments. She would ‘courier’ presents through her friends traveling back and he would reciprocate with Music CDs and books .All is well with them I had thought .

One fine day, he told me that she is getting married. I was shocked with the usage of ‘she’ in the sentence. The nonchalance with which he told the news was all the more shocking. He continued that it was a luv marriage and the groom, her MS classmate. The things had changed too fast for me to comprehend. Maybe I had completely misread the bonding between the two. Instinctively my mind began to pick incidents , which made me to jump to that conclusion. All that can’t be false. Or can they ?!?! The confusion lasted for a couple of days and died a natural death.

Two years have passed since then. Thoughts and talks about his so-called-affair had faded into oblivion. We were on our way to Bangalore to spend that weekend. Opposite to our seats , sat a beautiful pair , with love shining in their eyes , sharing a dream between them , talking a wordless language. I heard my friend sigh,"Wish I had been bolder and proposed her!"

started Jogging in the mornings

After some futile attempts to get early morning time slot in the Tennis club , i discontinued it and took to Jogging @ Loyola campus instead. Never expected that i would enjoy this activity so much. The serenity of early morning , chirping of birds , rustling of dry leaves under ur feet as u trot along, slight chill in the wind hitting sweat streaked face makes me feel excited about the whole exercise.


by Anthony Dunn

Morning weather is holding good in Chennai for the past 2 months. And the path is flanked with trees. So the activity is not energy sapping. After having tested my endurance level to the hilt and hit one of the park benches , the sense of numbness which descends on body and soul is deeply satisfying ! Like many things i do these days , i jog alone. Unlike many such things , i enjoy this a lot !!

Having thoughts alone for company......

Taken in twilight at Montrey Bay,California.

Duno whether itz just my state of mind ...but suddenly this pic appeals to me much more than it used to ..........

Book Tagging !

For Carnivas , who made me do this :

Total Number of Books I Own : Hmm...must be around 100 i guess. This includes all the techie books which helps me to run the rat race conducted by Microsoft , some impulsive buys which i never got a chance to read and some gud ones which i bought after i had already read them elsewhere.

Last book i bought : 51 Stock Trading Tips. Bought when i had been to Landmark @ Forum.

Last book i read : R K Narayan's 'Bachelor of Arts' . Wow ...such a good read. Elegant story telling . Was pleasantly surprised when the book echoed some of my beliefs on Friendship and Love.

Five Books that mean a lot to me :

Who moved my Cheese - Spencer Johnson: I think i must have read this book atleast 10 times now. But the Value Add never diminshes. A must have in any book shelf.

Rich Dad,Poor Dad - Robert Kiyolashki: I felt a lot wiser about Money after reading this book. Presents some radically new thoughts on Money making.

Man's search for Meaning - Viktor Frankyl : Psychiatric literature is not my cup of tea , but went head and bought this book and never once regretted my decision. The book presents such an Inspiring story of Viktor's experiences in Concentration camp . His observations give a good insight into Human thought processes.

FountainHead - Ayn rand : One of the most influential works of Literature. No fictitious character has ever haunted me like Howard Roark . Got carried away by the Story when i read it for the first time , so planning to re-read it for the philosophical angle.

I 'm right, U r wrong - Bono : Human Thinking process explained in Black n White. Bono covers entire gamut of his research on Lateral Thinking in one book .

Now lemme pass the meme to Uday ..... i 'm thinking hard to find if i have any other blogging friends........

Iruvar - Andrum , Indrum

1997 :

Was studying 12th standard then. Our gang had the habit of going to a movie on the last day of every exam. That day we had finished our Third Revision exams. The moment we came out of the exam hall , we started making plans for the movie. As all us were die-hard fans of Manirathnam and ARR , the choice was natural....Iruvar. To our utter disappointment , we found the movie to be dull ,dreary and boring ! When Aish died for the second time in the movie , all of us impulsively walked out of the theatre hall.

2005:

On a languid saturday morning , when sun was breathing down fire on the hapless Chennai residents, i chanced upon the Iruvar DVD. Thought i will watch it with no expectations whatsoever. It turned out to be such a beautiful experience. The movie was simply awesome. Excellent Screenplay , Superb Dialogues ( surprised that those were penned by Suhashini ) peppered abundantly with Vairamuthu's kavithaigal , mind boggling cinematography ( Aayirathil nan oruvan and Vennila vennila songs - a must repeatu ) , ARR's wonderful backgnd score ( ever heard that titillating kutty song when Mohanlal falls for Aish II ( JJ) after she jumps from the Jeep ??!! ) and Manirathnam's authoritarian direction.....all make this film a delightful classic.

Perhaps the best scene of the movie is when PrakashRaj shows the crowd gathered around his house to catch a glimpse of Mohanlal. PR slowly grabs the hand of the hesitant ML , prods him to wave to the crowd. ML finishes the scene with a flourish , by waving both his hands and throwing his neck towel to the crowd. Wow !! it left me totally mesmerised. Slowly but steadily , subtly but surely , the way Aish II seduces Mohanlal was another memorable sequence.

Revisiting certain things in Life after a brief span of time , will tell you how you have grown in the interim period. This film certainly told me how blind i was to the art of film making in my school days.

Thinking Straight !

Cognitive therapy seeks first to identify dysfunctional thought processes, and next to correct them. Important dysfunctional ways of thinking include cognitive distortions, repeated intrusive thoughts, unrealistic assumptions, and others.

More here .

A good article on Dysfunctional thought processes , explained in a very lucid manner. Achtung !! As with any other articles on Psychology , this too will make you feel as if you have all the disorders !

Digression : Why did Hindu stop publishing those wonderful supplements ? I collected all those Folio magazines. Articles and Photographs used to be too good in them.

Daily travails of a s/w engineer

9.30 AM : Swipe in.I show my access card to the proximty reader and get inside. I slump into my chair cursing the Chennai traffic and the unforgiving sun. Unlocking the idiot box , i check Outlook. Good....no new bugs, no escalations, no input from onsite abt the feature i am coding. So it is gonna be yet another No Action day. Next , i go on a mail checking spree in all my Web accounts.

9.50 AM : I seem to receive less emails than i used to. Folks , write to me. Itz time to engage my two best buddies. Yahoo and MSN messnger. Next 30 minutes just melts away exchanging sweet nothings with all my friends around the globe.

10.20 AM : Time for blogs.....i fire up Firefox and hit bloglines. I subscribe to around 50 feeds and today there are about 100 posts to be read. Anybody who is somebody in the business world seems to have taken up blogging. Good.

11.00 AM : Tea time. I go to my friend's cubicle to collect him for tea. He as usual complains abt some pending check-ins. Some ppl always manage to stay busy ! God help them !

11.30 AM : Tea wakesup my grey cells . I vow not to waste time in office again for the God-knows-how-much th time. I google for some tutorials in .net and start reading a promising article. Attention span is less with web pages..... i click a series of hyperlinks and suddenly i dunno what i started reading in the first place !!

12.30 PM : Time to decide abt the restuarant for Lunch. After many missed calls , IMs later we settle to the usual Sangeetha in Greams road.

1.15 PM : After a sumptuous lunch, here we r in the cool confines of the Fruit shop . We know the menu by heart now. After ordering , we settle into a thought provoking conversion abt office politics !

2.00 PM : Ah..another one of those lean , languorous time in the office . I seem to be brain dead. Cat napping to the sweet lullaby of Illayaraja's songs.

3.00 PM: Status Review meeting. I begin to suspect that the whole team is cooking up something to show that they r busy all the week ! My entry is simple .... Bug fixing 8 hrs per day for 5 days. Nobody raises an eyebrow on that .

4.00 PM: Coffee break. Oh....anything for the sweet aroma of coffee to lift me out of slumber. Caffeine takes hold and i am intelligent again.

4.30 PM: Again more vows on Time management .Begin to wonder whether i wud get anywhere in life if i continue like this , whether doing an MBA wud brighten things , whether quitting wud help . Thousand questions but no answer .

5.30 PM : Time to say gud bye to my idiot box. I take a couple of print outs , just in the remote case i decide to read in home. Swipe out.

Phew...... what a tiresome day !

a weekend in Bangy

It is almost an year since i visited Bangy last . So thought of making a trip to meet up with friends. Mysore Express dropped me in Contonment at 4 AM. Riding in an auto at that unearthly hour along unlit roads with many barricades and armed police around was not quite the welcome i expected.

Bangalore hasn't changed much since my last visit there . Heavy traffic , alarming levels of pollution , erratic drivers honking away to glory, unfinished Fly-overs , long serpentine queues in almost all the restaurants.......hmmm...only things have gone from bad to worse ! Has FoodWorld in Bangalore forayed into Liquor business as well ?!?! Surprised to see Gins,Vodkas there. Though a teetotaler myself , i always like to see my friends carefully choosing drinks for the thanni party.

My bangalore trip is never complete without a stroll in MG Road and a cup of Coffee in that quaint Indian Coffee Board. Honestly , i never liked the coffee served there but somehow like to sit in their antiquated furniture ,sip the hot liquid and watch the colorful crowd in the sidewalk.

Overall, it was a gud weekend. Met many of my friends , hanged out in the hang outs and travelled around a lot ! Itz back to the grind here in Chennai ! Thanks bangy folks for the gr8 time !

Memories from a distant Past

Was listening to the song Bahon ki dharmiyan from Khamoshi, when I was suddenly bitten by the nostalgia bug. Was instantly teleported to the gud ol’ school days , when life was simple and sweet.

We used to look forward to the class trip every year. The moment we get green signal from our HM , we start our meticulous planning. 'Macho' guys of the class take care of deciding places to visit , arranging for transport , acco and other logistics. I can vividly remember the feverish activities during the excursion eve….pressing and packing the clothes, choosing which music cassettes to carry , shopping for odds and ends, packing all these stuff while the music system blares out the latest ARR album in the backgnd.

Fun part of trip is the bus travel….……guys dance ,gals shout something which they call antakshari , everyone trying desperately to catch attention of everyone else . This is where someone , who would generally keep to himself , will reveal all the crushes he had had that year ………this is where a naïve pazham guy wud get courage to say a hi to the girl he targets…..this is where ‘rowdy’ gal will take the ‘pavam’ guy for a ride…….this is where someone attempts his first dhum …..this is where u will get to hear the latest gossips about all pairs in the school…..this is where some affairs start and this is where some affairs end !! Getting back to school with sore throats and high spirits , the excursion hangover will last till u get tired of laughing over all the pranks and seeing photo album for the umpteenth time !!

Memories,memories, memories…..…..oh, anything to get back to those colorful, carefree school days !!

Can u believe it ?

Can u believe it ?
Originally uploaded by Cognitive Distortions.

Hey.....Whatz this ?!?! Chennai's forecast never looked so good in April. Atlast some respite from the scorching Sun !

RSS...Really Super Stuff !!

To say RSS has re-defined the way one looks at Internet would be an under statement ! It has simply revolutionized the way Internet works sounds more appropriate !! If you are to choose between visiting a site daily to check for updates and letting that site's updates comes to you in real time , what would you choose ? The latter ofcourse . So Welcome RSS ..if you haven't done so already !!

There is more to RSS....it lets aggregators to watch a number of sites.It lets people to have relationships with sites on their own terms. No more giving your email addresses to Sites and having your inboxes spammed as a fallout. Last but the best ..... it keeps you in sync with the happenings around Blogosphere.

These days whenever i hit upon a good site , i immediately try to subscribe to its feeds. No RSS ?? Disgusting !! Another Interesting thing with the ascendancy of RSS is that the Site owners are forced to give importance to the Content than on the Jazzy design . 'Coz they would never know whether their client is a Browser or an Aggregator.

Go ahead....Choose your feeds , cut the cacophony out and listen what you wanna listen !!

Blogs a different genre from Personal Websites ?

Rex Hammock's take...

I think a personal website is a static presence on the Internet that can be comprised of many components, a weblog being one of those components. (Or, you can make your blog the only component if you want.)

A blog is merely an online journal that can be updated as often as someone wants to update it. It's called a web "log" because the geeks who first started doing them were trekies. (Okay. That's merely a theory, but it's one that amuses me.)

A blog can be private so that just a few people see what you post -- say, a family blog or a hobby blog, or a sunday school class blog

It can be private so that a few people working on a project can see it

It can be public and be done for fun

It can be public and serve as a means for someone to market their expertise

It can be public and allow someone to have the opportunity to be heard free from editorial control or approval by da man.

It can be public and be owned by da man.

When I started my blog, one of the reasons was to replace all of the e-mail I was sending to multiple addresses; you know, the "have you seen this article" type of e-mail.

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Personally i feel blogs can be a gr8 networking tool. Never-seen-the-person-but-know-him-so-well kind of 'blogships' can blossom. Last but not least ...... it helps to kill time ( if u r a s/w guy , then u wud know wht i mean ;) ) !!

After visiting Seoul Tower , we were heading back to the Sub-way station when we accidently chanced upon this breathtaking view. With a parkbench serving as a tripod and setting a self timer in the camera to prevent shake caused by the click press , shot this without even properly focussing. Didn't expect this to come out so well !  

Singara Chennai !!

When i came to Chennai four years ago, my hate for this place was intense and complete. Singara Chennai was the perfect misnomer in the world i argued. Having lived my first 21 years in Coimbatore , i felt Chennai was dirty, sultry , populated , polluted and what not ! I cudn't fathom how ppl cud even bathe in the murky metro water much less drink it.Wondered how ppl can be so rude. The intense heat , heavy traffic , inadequate water supply hmmm...my hate-list was lengthy.

Lately though i am begining to enjoy this place like never before. Yeah ....still there are probelms with chennai...but somehow learnt to adapt to them and learnt to enjoy myself. Window-shopping in Spencers, lazing away in the beach ,evening movie at Satyam , dinner at some exotic restaurant, jogging @ loyola, landmark in Nungambakkam,Baristas, Fruit shops have become much more endearing to me than just feel-gud factors. Am really trying to understand what caused this paradigm shift...maybe is this what they call Stockholm syndrome ! I dont know and i dont wanna know !