Sunday, January 10, 2010

Impressing ourself...

Have you realized most of the time you are trying hard to impress no one but yourself. That is this part which takes the most effort. Because the mind of our own, set a difficult benchmark for yourself most of the time. This may sound as crazy as it sounds. But let me tell you one thing, haven't you heard an inner voice which keep saying (in my case) I should have behaved better, I was wrong, I need to improve etc etc. You may try to reflect this voice and fail that's when (in Green day's opinion) your mind breaks the spirit of our soul. Yes this is a very voluntary activity. But i happen to participate this breaking part most of the time.

This is a nice song; thought i would share it... it reflects my mind right now (please don't mistake it with love, but yes its about expectations in my case)

21 Guns by Green Day

Do you know what's worth fighting for?
When it's not worth dying for?
Does it take your breath away
And you feel yourself suffocating?

Does the pain weigh out the pride?
And you look for a place to hide?
Did someone break your heart inside?
You're in ruins

One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms, give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky, you and I

When you're at the end of the road
And you lost all sense of control
And your thoughts have taken their toll
When your mind breaks the spirit of your soul

Your faith walks on broken glass
And the hangover doesn't pass
Nothing's ever built to last
You're in ruins

One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms, give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky, you and I

Did you try to live on your own
When you burned down the house and home?
Did you stand too close to the fire
Like a liar looking for forgiveness from a stone?

When it's time to live and let die
And you can't get another try
Something inside this heart has died
You're in ruins

One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms, give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky

One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms, give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky, you and I

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Ring out the old, Ring in the new - Happy New Year 2010

"Glory to God in highest heaven,
Who unto man His Son hath given;
While angels sing with tender mirth,
A glad new year to all the earth. "
-Martin Luther



Cheers to a New Year and another chance for us to get it right.

Monday, December 7, 2009

A part of history ...

Its been a while long I wrote something here. I have been listening to some old rock songs and reading some history. I got interested in Deep Purple, Def Leppard and AC/DC songs these days. I have been reading and watching movies about world war two also.
The things which were happening there in Europe were of humongous magnitude, of extreme power. I know the things happened were sickening too (about 6 million Jews were killed in holocaust - apart from the war causalities). But I was thrilled by the display of power. One mad man decided to take control of the whole world with his political propaganda and he almost achieved it. But his plans were failed when the USA (the world's largest financial and industrial power), the Great Britain (the largest colonial power) and Russia (the largest army in the world) joined against Germany. Were you aware that Subhash Chandra Bose tried to ally with Japan against Britain. I saw this picture Valkyrie starring Tom Cruise, its about a German army officer Stauffenberg who wanted to kill Hitler to stop the war. Inglorious Bastards starring Brad Pitt was kind off funny, in the movie they show Hitler to be murdered. When you read about more characters other than Hitler who were behind the holocaust it becomes more interesting and at the same time sickening. Like Heinrich Himmler the second in command and the head of SS and the architect of the Holocaust. Himmler coordinated the killing of some six million Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Roma, many prisoners of war, and possibly another three to four million Poles, communists, or other groups whom the Nazis deemed unworthy to live or simply "in the way", including homosexuals, people with physical and mental disabilities, and members of the Confessing Church.Another one is Joseph Mengele the angel of death who conducted research on the victims in concentration camps. He is famous for his researches on identical twins. He died in Brazil and was never captured. He used to do surgeries without anesthetic and even tried to stitch two twins together. According to a website, "Once Mengele's assistant rounded up 14 pairs of Roma twins during the night. Mengele placed them on his polished marble dissection table and put them to sleep. He then injected chloroform into their hearts, killing them instantly. Mengele then began dissecting and meticulously noting each and every piece of the twins' bodies." I have visited the National Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, and its again sickening. They have collection of the slippers, personal items from the concentration camps. They have videos from concentration camps. The museum itself is done in a dark theme and by the end of it you will really feel happy for not being a part of the dark chapter of history.
Adolf Hitler was treated like a God in Gemany and by Germans - He was indeed godlike, all the power was concentrated on one man and his associates. If some one could kill him, him alone the WW2 could have been stopped. Just what Stauffenberg tried and failed.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Can you take me higher...

When dreaming I'm guided through another world
Time and time again
At sunrise I fight to stay asleep
'Cause I don't want to leave the comfort of this place
'Cause there's a hunger, a longing to escape
From the life I live when I'm awake
So let's go there
Let's make our escape
Come on, let's go there
Let's ask can we stay?
Can you take me higher?
To the place where blind men see
Can you take me higher?
To the place with golden streets
Although I would like our world to change
It helps me to appreciate
Those nights and those dreams
But, my friend, I'd sacrifice all those nights
If I could make the Earth and my dreams the same
The only difference is
To let love replace all our hate
So let's go there
Let's make our escape
Come on, let's go there
Let's ask can we stay?
Up high I feel like I'm alive for the very first time
Up high I'm strong enough to take these dreams
And make them mine
---- Higher by Creed

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Some interesting quotes....

I came across some interesting quotes from Albert Eintein.. Thought of sharing it...
Collected Quotes from Albert Einstein
1 Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
2 Imagination is more important than knowledge.
3 Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
4 I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details.
5 The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
6 Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
7 The only real valuable thing is intuition.
8 A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.
9 I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.
10 God is subtle but he is not malicious.
11 Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
12 I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
13 The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
14 Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
15 Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
16 Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
17 Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.
18 Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
19 Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
20 Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
21 The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
22 The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
23 God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
24 The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
25 Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
26 Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
27 The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
28 We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
29 Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
30 The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
31 Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
32 Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.
33 If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
34 Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.
35 As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
36 Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
37 I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
38 In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
39 The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
40 Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
41 Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!
42 No, this trick won't work...How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?
43 My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
44 Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.
45 The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
46 Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
47 The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
48 A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
49 The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
50 Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
51 You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
52 One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.
53 ...one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.
54 He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
55 A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
56 Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Sometimes you just need to ask...

I was having this regular periodic down times today. I don't know what made me to be like that, but I guess it because of the lack of work I am experiencing for the couple of days. I have been checking so many websites where people have been so passionate about stuff they do. Their success and my inferiority and the unwillingness to pursue my dreams could have made me to be like that.


I was just thinking about why I am like that. Me and my friend did a brainstorming about my laziness(?). My arguments were these - being a single child I never had to ask for anything, never had to fight for things. I never had to learn the art of persuasion. She was asking me that (she is also a single child) how come she is not like that. Anyhow in my case the argument was valid, my personality and character was built around our small family. I never bend my knees for favours or even ask for things someone taking away from me. I know I can not survive this world like that. Even to ask for release from the project or asking another challenging position has not been an option to me. I was always been reluctant in participating in something which would fail me. I have a fear of rejection. I have to get rid of that...


I recently read the "Last Lecture" book as I have wrote in the previous blog. In that, one of the chapter was about this - 'some times you just need to ask'. Isn't that true, many of us especially me are reluctant to ask for things. I'd experienced the first thing in the hard way in my love life too. Some times some one would be just waiting for you to ask for something, some times you would be surprised by the things some one asks you but still you would love to say YES. It could be asking for directions, asking for a seat, asking for release from project, asking for a snap, asking for an opportunity, asking for even a lift. In 80% (citation needed :) ) the reply you get is going to be YES. Then why not ask.


I have taken a decision to try my luck with asking for things.. and you?

Monday, October 5, 2009

My Fossil Watch...

Its been 5 months since I had given my Fossil watch to Zimsons watches to get a new strap. I am really upset about they not getting the correct strap. Yet I am so desperate to get the watch fixed, as the watch has so much sentimental value to me. Its a beautiful chronograph watch every one liked. Black dial, black rubber strap. The strap got worn off and I couldnt find the same strap any where in Chennai. These people said they will get the stock from Hongkong. Okie. I will wait. If I get it, it worth the wait. If not they are going to piss me off really bad.