Kids and Dreams

*This post originally appeared in my other blog on January 23, 2008 I was reading this book, The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold, in the train, as I returned from my office. It’s a long journey, back to home. Almost 45 minutes. I average 40 pages per hour. So I would read 60-70 pages a day in the train. So obviously I am reading a lot these days. I don’t read a thing at home – let alone the novels. I am not going to say anything about The Lovely Bones now, in this post. By the way, if you had known about this novel, probably you would have also known that Peter Jackson’s next project is The Lovely Bones, being starred by Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz. I like Mark Wahlberg in a way, particularly in The Departed. I enjoy the scene in which he irritates De Caprio by questioning. He has got a character. When I was reading this novel, The Lovely Bones, I came across a line that triggered my thoughts. The girl named Susie Salmon who is the central character in the novel, wishes a career. She dreams of a career – A Wild Life Photographer. When we were Kids our dreams were entirely different. Our ambitions were high. Our hopes were Ideal. We thought anything is possible. But as age falls over us, we realize our potential. We define reals. We draw lines, circles and rectangles. And we stay with in those structures defined by us from that time onwards. Forever. Kids are always the same, where ever they are. Indian kids too have different career dreams. Apart from those whole lot induced dreams of becoming Doctors and Engineers, some still dream of becoming Reporter, Photographer, Gardenist, zoo keepers etc. But as the time flows by, they become software engineers.What ever they study, electricals, electronics, mechanical, civil, whatever, they become software engineers. They get inputs from the endusers for First Name and Last Name and then, they store to the databases. Of course, they write the program to retrieve those details too.

Google: Helps us and Keeps us dumb

*This post originally appeared in my other blog on March 30, 2008

When I say us, I refer to programmers.

Most of the programmers I have seen, use Google to find a quick solution.Its no doubt that Google makes the life of programmers easier. Everything is at their finger(s) tip(s). Type what you want in that small textbox and click search. That’s it. We search and find solutions in seconds. But do we remember what we have done? Do we remember that solution? Do we learn anything through this process? That’s one true hell of a question.

Whenever I go to Google to get a solution, if my boss is at my desk, he would question : why don’t you think a solution yourself. He would add: I am not asking you to keep on thinking, but there is nothing you  loose if you think for a minute before you ping Google. He has a point. But I wouldn’t listen to him. I would say myself: Oh come on, why do you want to reinvent the wheel? Its already there. Someone has found a solution, I am just going to use it. Why would I think and waste my time and of course the company’s most valuable billing time. I have a point too.


We search and find a solution for PROBLEM 1 through google. We implement it. How? Mostly cut-copy-paste of the code snippet. And then we forget it. We have another problem. PROBLEM 2. We happily go to our grandpa (Google) and he readily gives a solution. We again do the simple job of cut-copy-paste. But after some period of time, if we again face the same PROBLEM 1, we don’t remember the solution which we have implemented previously. We got no time to think, so just ask Google. And this process continues.

Google helps us to find a solution and also keeps us dumb. Machines makes us lazy most of the times. I am not saying that we have do everything on our own,  but if we find a solution through Google, we have to pay some attention and really learn what we have implemented. Just cut-copy-paste would lead us to nowhere.

Tides of Dreams

*This post originally appeared in my other blog tpkpost.wordpress.com on August 30, 2008

I do dream. I have been dreaming of doing things, all through my life. Often, my dreams disappear like tides on the sand. I forget them – once in a while. When I dream again, they are not the same. Dreams constantly change. They say: change is the only thing that does not change, well add my dreams too. I do dream now.
Like tides on the sand, my dreams reappear, again and again. Like tides they are different every time.

Luck,Buying HDB and Solar Eclipse

* Originally appeared in my other blog!

I am not a great believer in Luck.

But people say Luck knocks your door only once. If you didn’t open the door, then it is gone. Congratulations,You have missed your best deal. Paulo Coelho describes about beginners luck in his book, i forgot the name, it must be Alchemist. It is something that works in favor of you when you begin something. The same thing happened to us, when we started looking for a house to buy.

Somehow because of some misunderstandings and wrong information, we let go of a good deal and until now that missed deal comes before us dancing and mocking at us when ever we start to look for house to buy. Market has become bullish since then and we can no more afford to buy a house.

No one knows if the missed deal is good or bad. But as of now it looks good.As of now.

*
Today the world witnessed the longest solar eclipse of the century. It was seen clearly in the southern part of India. I wish I were there.

Twitter had become an enormous power in the internet world. Now Google is including the Twitter messages for the search key word you have given. Just type Solar Eclipse; you’ll see flood of Twitter updates pouring in from all corners of the world. Loads of updates.

Out of all messages I liked the following tweet:
“Your face is like solar eclipse; who ever sees it goes blind“
People, these days, have lot of time and got really nothing to do. Believe me!

Anyway I didn’t see the solar eclipse!
*

Book-Kraken

For the past two days, I had lots of free time, enough to finish up a 375 paged Man Booker prize nominated book. And then I started another one of same kind. I didn’t know how this booker thing got in to my mind. I have read some –a lot really! - Yester year’s nominees. Let me revisit my brain like Dumbledore visits his pensieve. First I got hold of The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson, then The Perfect Man (didn’t care to finish!) and Seven Lies (finished it, but not sure of the story line!). Then I stopped. I really felt like had enough of war and people of Scotland or British villages. As a coherence all of the novels had something to do with War and it’s after effects. One thing for sure is, every one wants to have a go about war and they all have got something – or same thing - to say.

I jumped to Harry Potter and The Order of Phoenix and finished it in one week. I really love it –needless to say. I love the creativity and the imagination. But what amazed me is how the imagination fits in for all the age groups? How she writes for all of us? Kids, Pre-Teens, Teens, Adults and even for grand-pa and grand-ma. I have a –stupid- habit of reading everywhere- not to mention trains, I have a story, which I will share later. Guess all the bloggers share this habit. Yes. As a matter of fact all are bookworms. Else they wouldn’t be blogging in first place. What on earth will they have to write –if they are not reading- daily? I have already told in my Tamil blog that bookworms are not supposed to be called like that! I hate that word, worm. Apart from the fact that worm slowly –rather patiently- eats up a book (or for that matter a leaf), that word doesn’t make any sense at all. I have seen book-anacondas. I have seen them gulping Shantharam in a week. I know a girl who reads 4 books per month- no matter what-so-ever business she has got. I would call her, the Book-Kraken!

I started somewhere and ended up at another place, like a kid learning to write in an un-ruled exercise notebook. So is this entry.

Casafina

Last Saturday my boss gave us a lunch party, at her new house. As usual I was asleep until 11 am and was woke up by her phone call. She was really startled to hear me say: just now woke up, mam! Never mind, I am still a bachelor.

But on the contrary I was the first one to be there, for which she gave a sharp surprise by commenting : wow. you are very much punctual man. For which I promptly gave a reply: Yeah. At least here.

I started my lunch with mysorepak (a south Indian sweet, if not prepared carefully, would make you build your tooth again -may be one or two). Cautiously I gave it a try, but not bad. She packed some for my friends.
And then we went on for an in-house tour. Ah, what a tour it was? and what a beautifully, enchantingly decorated house it is! All the rooms are well maintained with all possibilities of decorations, simple but superb. Particularly I liked two rooms. The office room (that includes a piano, a computer and a laptop) which has a false ceiling made up of glass and brought in non-irritating soothing sunlight. And then the bed room with hight ceiling, so that you can hear the rainfall clearly. Hearing the rainfall is more enchanting than Yesudas's "Om" chanting, I believe.
Lots of showcase dolls caught our attention as a whole. She must have collected through out her life. Budha's different faces was soo good and so is dasavatharam dolls.

That casafina apartments as a whole is beautifull and had an enjoyable greenish surroundings. I would like to live in this kind of environment, but then who else wont?

IceCream Melts

Feeling very much tired today, particularly, because of this stupid cough. I don’t know some how I have developed a character to whole-heartedly accept others diseases. I got this cough from one of my roommates. And that too virus stays with me for a long time. Its almost a week, this stupid cough haunts me. Since I didn’t have good sleep for 3 days, I feel sleepy now. And as a solution I have bought Pankajakasthuri syrup, that says, breathe easily. Don’t know really if it works. It was recommended by my boss. Lets see how it works.

And one of my colleague celebrated his birthday today and as a result I got a cake. Cheese cake with 2 layers of ice-cream. One other colleague, reminded me to eat it straight away since ice-cream would melt soon, a theory I have learnt before ages. With out a second thought I stuffed my mouth with major part of the cake, with loads of ice-cream, too cold to handle.

And through the whole process of stuffing and grinding the ice-cream and cake, I didn’t remember that I got cold. Grr.