iamneo

#1 thought
Back home we all celebrated India’s 59th independence day. There are tons of articles on how the doomsday prediction for the then fledgling nation never happened and on how today India is poised to become a leading global player. Amidst all the kudos and self congratulatory speeches about the progress we as a country has made since our independence from the British Raj, we should not forget that our country is full of huge disparities and we skew almost all statistics related to demographics. But surely things are much better for most of us now and things can only get better.

#2 thought
We might be living in a free society but I cannot stop myself from asking the questions are we really free? And what we think is freedom? Well this post is not about the movie – Matrix. My supervisor put these questions in a nice perspective – we are like the gold fish swimming in bowl. To expand on the analogy I think the glass bowl is what we hold central to our lives. It could religion, parents, girl/boy friend, wife/husband, friends, children, career, academics, recreational activities, money so on and so forth. If this is the case then what happens when these things change?

Coming back to the question – are we really free? We are ‘really free’ in the glass bowl made up of apparent restrictions when we should be really free in the ocean!

Let me know what your thoughts are.

Finally I moved out to a new apartment. Here is the current state of my apartment. Details about the new place in future blog enteries.

My weekend assignement is to arrange and put some order to the mess and make the place a little more habitable.

I got this bright idea after reading freegeek’s post about Random Observations. So here is my attempt on some good random observations for the week.

Let me know what you think so these…

• “There are three types of baseball players – those who make it happen, those who watch it happen and those who wonder what happened.” – Tommy Lasorda, Baseball Manager
• “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” – Albert Einstein, Scientist
• “Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way . . . You become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.” – Aristotle, Philosopher
• “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood . . . Make big plans, aim high in hope and work.” – Daniel Burnham, Architect
• “Character – the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life – is the source from which self-respect springs.” – Joan Didion, Journalist

Today it will three whole years since I came to the US. It has been an exciting journey for me full of thrilling adventures, awesome sights and sounds and wonderful people.

Continuing with my space fever, I will sum up my feeling by using the opening quote from Star Trek – The Next Generation.

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

Reading the recent post from weltanschauungs about his journey to US, I want to share a similar email that I wrote to my friends and folks back home.

( Archived Email )

Life is a roller coaster and having recently experienced some roller coaster rides I cannot agree to this more. Currently the song – Life is a rollercoaster by Ronan Keating is my theme song.

Its only Thursday of this week but so far things have changed so much and so dramatically. All of the changes in a short span of 48 hrs. The changes have affected very aspect of my life.

In all this chaos two quotes come to my mind –

First an ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times! Now depending on your view towards changes in life this could be a curse or it could be a blessing.

Second is the slogan on a T-shirt from NASA. I think it is the slogan for the space shuttle group: Excellence Can be achieved if you….risk more than others think is safe, love more than other think is wise, dream more than others think is practical, and expect more than others think is possible. For space fan like me this is something to live by!

Here is the link to the lyrics for the song – life is a roller coaster.

There are so many uses of a non stick frying pan. From the obvious – cooking those perfect omelets and dosas; to the extreme – weapon of choice of a irate wife

But my roommate beats all those uses of the frying pan with the uniqueness of his use – window stopper!

Enjoy!!!