Doing nothing !

to do nothing is the most difficult thing to do. Ask any person to stop doing whatever he/she is doing and not do anything for sometime. Its difficult. Some minds would still be engaged in the thoughts of the work they were doing earlier, some minds would be thinking of what all they could do if not asked to sit idly at one place, and kids especially find it difficult to sit in one place, but of course when sternly scolded they'd sit anywhere told. :P
The point is, doing nothing in this post implies leaving everything and sitting at one place, and just observing, within and around. It is like suddenly stopping when in a race and looking around at the other runners and the audience, and also at and within oneself.
To do nothing is closely related to meditation and also to various relaxation techniques. Since I have been practicing doing nothing for last 21 years of my life, meditation and relaxation comes easy to me, sometimes so easy that I doze off while relaxing myself during shavasan (in Yoga).
People want to be busy all the time, doing this or that. Sometimes we don't even know why we're doing most of the things we do. One person's lifestyle/opinion etc. influences other's lifestyle/opinions, and so on... everybody wants to achieve something and lead a comfortable life... running, jostling, sparring sometimes... and finally at the age of 60 when a person retires and looks at his past 60 years of his, especially the youth part, he wonders on why he took some decisions...
We all live in a system and follow its rules. When few people decide to break the rules, others are affected. Be it more people training for a skillset less required or some people getting more salary than deserved, an imbalance always has a profiting and a losing set of people. Do nothing for a while and look within yourself, at least know yourself. If everybody did this and made decisions based on oneself, I think the balance would remain.
Doing nothing once in a while helps a person see his/her position in life. Since the race is never ending one, a person can join in anytime and leave anytime, while others keep on running the same circle over and over again, perhaps a few shifting to wider circles once in a while.
The race is always there as an opportunity, someone in the audience is always there to cheer if you perform well, but catching one's breath occasionally is upto the person... I've been catching up my breath for last four years, finally time to get back into the race, and I hope the reader would cheer me up. :D

P.S. - I think the recession, especially in US, forced people to "do nothing" and look into their lives.
P.S. - Would such a situation arise that doing nothing would be an important skill?
P.S. - If you feel bored while not doing anything, then you're not doing the "doing nothing" correctly!

Why should I work!

Lately I have not been working, at all. I am not so lazy as not to work at all but I feel more of unsure as to why I should work! I don't feel convinced that I should work. And if I work, which is studying in my case, I don't seem to be going anywhere with it, maybe because of my unwillingness.
Today while walking towards the lab (at 11 am), I looked around me, and saw people busy with their work, students walking with their bag/books, the gardeners mowing the lawn or picking up dry leaves and grass, the canteen owner/juice vendor taking orders and preparing them etc. Even people chatting in a group or a person standing under shade of a tree and waiting for someone seemed to be doing something and I found myself totally purposeless. So while walking towards lab, I started pondering over the consequence of my not working but just consuming (food, juices, electricity, water etc.) and the answer convinced me to study. :)
Its simple. I should get resources proportional to the services I give. Till now my parents took care of me but not anymore, it doesn't seem right as I'm 21 now. But I still am not working and consuming, which means someone (or many) in this world would be suffering and getting less than he/she deserves because I'm consuming what I don't deserve.
A balance must be made, but human emotions always disrupt this balance, but the system survives, and has been surviving till now. My emotions ask me to watch movies and read stories/write blogs but not to do coding or read research papers, which disrupts this balance... I want to code and read papers but my emotions don't allow me to... well lets see how far this tussle lasts and who wins... :)

Inter-caste marriage

An interesting chat with one of my batchmates last night made me think on these lines, why conservative people are against inter-caste marriages? Foolish question, eh?
As early men, i.e., during the evolutionary transition of humans from monkeys, they lived in tribes. Many a times, the girl was married to another tribe's boy and most of the times the boy's tribe was a traveling one and had a slim chance to meet the girl's tribe again, which might have started all the "crying" thing while giving the girl away. But anyways, if inter-tribe marriages took place, why not inter-caste (I do know inter-caste marriages do take place now a days!)
It is a known fact that a person doesn't marry in family but in other families so that better species is produced. Same was the case with marrying in other tribes. So can't this be applied to inter-caste marriages?
Inter-caste marriages should produce more vibrant (rather diverse kind of) progenies, but I don't have any way to verify my hypothesis! :(

Hacking

Yesterday late night I didn't know what to do, so I started reading about "Social Engineering", quite an interesting topic it is. I learnt that not just computer systems but also any other system or for that matter every system is hackable. The best and most intriguing part of Social Engineering is that the victims themselves give away supposedly innocuous, non-vital information to a Social Engineer (disguised as someone else) and are happy to do so! (Ref book: The Art of Deception, Controlling Human Element of Security)
Today morning I read about pain being a moral good (http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/is-pain-a-moral-good). Here it is argued that pain is an important part of life, so natural pain should not be inhibited, but we humans have successfully hacked into secrets of our body and devised a drug (anaesthesia) to nullify sensation of pain!
We humans have been hacking a lot into nature and its secrets, but in the process disturbing its balance and defacing it... we are good at hacking into but not so proper at coming out without inflicting any damage.
Can we say that when a person falls in love, the person whom a person falls for has unknowingly hacked into this person's system. Sounds stupid, isn't it?

Fakka (F grade)

Two grades that hold a special position in the grading system: 'A' and 'F', the two extremes... sadly I tasted both in my btech days!
Being in IIIT-H, one gets used to study a few days before exam, not attend classes when attendance is not compulsory and still sail through the exams... everything that I got used to bounced back at me like a sucker punch the day I got the call from Mohit, telling me that I had got F in a course. I felt numb but the uneasiness within felt bitter, painful like a snakebite. I was in Srisailam at that time with my father and visited the temple next day, but the uneasiness remained.
On returning to college a couple of days later I learned about the efforts other students in similar situation had taken but the F was to remain, no change possible.
But it doesn't matter now... one F shook me from within, I felt colder than in those winter nights, the As and A-s felt so insignificant before that F, F felt bigger in size... sigh!
The issue is no longer about CGPA, or doing a course again, but the presence of that F, the message it carries makes it a curse symbol on one's grade sheet... can't blame F, it is being used by us humans for such purpose...
I can now understand how a person must feel after getting a F, I now understand why students who once get a F lose interest in academics because I am one of them now. I'm not ashamed or sad, but rather now I feel I have gained another experience, another feather in my hat.
I haven't told my parents, nor do I intend to because its not a pleasant thing to tell and I now don't have enough courage to face the disappointment in their voice over the phone...

P.S. : Why not remove courses with F, W grades from list of courses taken by the student, how does it matter? The student hasn't passed it, it doesn't matter... he is not related to the course, it holds no significance in his life... why torture him by reminding him that he couldn't go through the whole course! :)

Browsing History

One must be careful not to leave traces of undesirable things done in the past ! :D
Have you ever wondered how precarious our browsing history makes us?!
During holidays before going home, I find people doing two things on laptop, first is downloading movies/songs/other things from DC++/ftps. Second is cleaning their browsing history and "recent document" and removing some things from their laptops lest it would be less desirable for others to use, if at all!
Today I was wondering or rather finally realizing how much a person's browsing history can tell about him/her. So, if its good to keep one's history in one's system clean, as one cleans and tidies one's home before arrival of a guest. Imagine how embarrassing it would be if someone uses your PC, then types something in google search, and in form of suggestions, your previous query comes and some of them are not what you want others to know!
Once, to save myself embarrassment I deleted the history in my friend's laptop after using his laptop, instead of choosing my browsed sites for deletion! Later he had a tough time typing the whole URL of the sites in place of the title which was enough earlier!

A gtalk chat!

In one chat in google talk:

me: ?
friend: ??
me: ???
friend: ????
me: ?????
friend: ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
me: alright, I give up... so many "?" make me feel dizzy!
friend: ?!!

Balance of Nature I

Nature has its own way of maintaining equilibrium within itself! or should I say, amusing itself? :D
Some people, for some reason decide to pollute the nature, releasing toxic waste and disturbing the wildlife, greenery and ecological niche! Now some people see this, feel that its their responsibility to save the nature and set out to do so, fighting against those who polluted the nature. Some might even feel guilt that poor innocent wildlife and humans have to suffer because of few people's activities. Now there's another group of people who don't bother about nature and live their own lives (I belong to this group!), polluting very less and also not planting very much.
Same analogy can be applied to helping homeless, poor, unemployed and saving civilizations! Some destroy, knowingly and unknowingly, and some try to save, knowingly!
Could it be that when our world is about to reach a perfect state of equilibrium, the nature itself triggers something in someone's brain that makes him/her do something to disturb that equilibrium. Some then join this person in disruption and some fight against it... nature lets these two groups sort it out and when fun is over and equilibrium reached again, nature plots something else... nature has its own way of having fun I guess! :D

IPL 2009

IPL did it again, the underdogs won yet again, and a thrilling, and more than that deserving finale. The celebrations sucked, especially Kat's performance... I hate the new avatar of Jai Ho! The fireworks were fine, Akon's was disappointing! Why the hell a beauty contest? :O
Anyways, the finale was great. Stopping the opponent from chasing a marginal total! Lovely! I rarely watch cricket but being at home I watched the finale. The look of frozen anxiety on Vijay Mallya's face was hilarious!
To be honest, Royal Challengers could have won, but I guess they just lost too many wickets! But Deccan Chargers deserved it. May the best team win always!

P.S. Sorry for a late post on IPL but I had to write one on it.