66 WPM

As his fingers hit the keys, he felt my heartbeat increase.
"Typing takes much time, writing is better."
"Once you learn to type with all your fingers, writing would feel a sluggish activity."
And as he recalled that conversation with his computer teacher, he pressed "Enter", and saw "Speed: 66 WPM" flashing on his screen.

Natural Solace

To escape the cacophony and non-sensible blabbering going on in my room, I went for a stroll. The cool evening breeze provided some comfort. My eyes fell on a tree with yellow flowers and another one beside it with red flowers. I then found few dragonflies flying playfully. I felt peace within.

Its my room

I felt sense of relief as well as nostalgia when I saw my friend packing his stuff. Another of my friend asked me, "Can I move in after he leaves?"
Although he was in dire need of an abode, a flat NO was my reply.

Phone Call

He walked the corridors of his college, his leg feeling a pseudo vibration of his mobile phone in anticipation of her call. He walked through the dark alley of her neighborhood, longing to be with her. As soon as he knocked at her door, he got a call with her name flashing.

Online Chat

On gtalk, Mohit says to Abhishek, "She's definitely a guy, Atul maybe". Abhishek, who was chatting with cutiepie@gmail.com, realizes it could be true and types, "Hey I know its you Atul, stop pretending," and as he sends this message, Atul pats his back, and "_|_" flashes on the laptop screen.

The View Point

The view down below from a certain height looks so overwhelmingly magnificent that I once wondered why, and thought of three possible reasons.
First is that everything looks so small, which usually doesn't look small and isn't so small.
Second is that so many things can be seen at the same time that the large area suddenly becomes smaller.
Third is that it may make some interesting patterns, especially when seen as bird's eye view which is generally possible while sitting in an airplane.
Does seeing things which are usually bigger than us, as smaller make us unknowingly feel superior, or is it that such a view is not seen by us very often?

Zodiac Signs

Today I tried an application in facebook regarding All about Zodiac Personalities and Characteristics and I got the following results:

Dear Abhishek Sainani, below are All About Zodiac Characteristics and Personality for Zodiac Sign Gemini:

Gemini Characteristics and Profile
Gemini go everywhere together, hand-in-hand, symbolizing your dual nature. Our world comes in pairs: good and evil, male and female, in and out, yin and yang -- and you Geminis are living proof. Some might say Gemini are an entanglement of paradoxes, but the truth is that Gemini have an easy acceptance of opposites.

Element: Air
With active minds and a good command of language, the air signs are the natural born communicators. They can be light and breezy as the breath of spring, but their words can also carry the power of a gale force wind.

Third House: Communication
The Third House symbolizes all aspects of communication -- and most communication happens within our immediate environment. Therefore this is also the house of our surrounding.

Key Planet: Mercury
As the key planet of Gemini, Mercury is restless and changeable. It drives us to talk and to listen, but not necessarily to action.

Gemini Greatest Strength:
Your curiosity about a variety of interests

Gemini Possible Weakness:
Distracting yourself from what is most important

Interestingly enough, everything written in this is true for me, or is it that I'm just thinking that its true because its about my Zodiac Sign, Gemini?!
Well, certainly there's more to me and this is about all the Geminis in general. But if a group of people sharing same zodiac sign exhibit some common traits, what about inheritance and information coded in genes? A libran mother and a scorpion father give birth to a gemini son, then would he have qualities of a libran, a scorpion because of inheritance and a gemini due to his birthdate?!
Genetics has been well studied, so no dispute on that but seriously, does the date of one's birth really affect one's personality? Or is it also the mating date of the parents that also counts?
I see astrology and related studies as science which can be worked out to give accurate results, the only problem currently being that, I think, we don't take into consideration all the parameters. Once the time comes when we learn about all the required parameters, then only birth date and birth place would be enough to predict someone's future... something that always fascinates me...

Being Online

I might have used internet only few times before joining IIIT-H. Now I use internet for almost as much time as I am awake! Quite addictive it is. Even if internet doesn't serve any purpose for me at the moment, I make a purpose, by say reading some articles online or, just looking at people's updates in facebook and orkut!
My favorite passtime has become watching my gtalk list, to see who's online at present so that there's someone I could chat with !! :P
Recently I had a revelation that being online is like being in a city, lets call it onliner city, and facebook, gtalk (and now Twitter) etc. applications are the outlets like CCD or McD. Often we come across people saying, "If you come online, do tell me." Being online is like being on a common platform, a different dimension of communication. Now you can't chat with more than a person on phone, but you can do so by being online. :D
Sometimes people showed concern on my being online almost the whole day. They say, "hey don't you have anything else to do than be online whole day?", "what do you do online anyways?", "get a life! :P "
Last half month I wasn't online and was pleasantly surprised to find some messages later, saying, "where are you?", "why are you not online?" :D
Being online is rather convenient, it costs much less than phone bills and with google voice-chat, one can talk like on phone. Internet is available almost everywhere and text, images, videos can be easily shared, accessed... and blah blah blah... articles/stories/opinions can be easily published and one do gets many readers online and blah blah blah...
Finally, internet is a revolution that has not only helped me get in touch with my old lost friends, but also gives me a lot of information and a platform to post this post.
Being online Rocks !!!

The pot-belly club

In my experience, among the total no. of middle age people I have met, most of them happen to be pot-bellied. They carry that extra weight with them wherever they go, like a pregnant woman carrying a baby. :P It does take toll on one's knees to carry so much weight.
Now, some people are fat, but not pot-bellied which is because their fat is well distributed in their body.
Back at home, worried that I had grown weak during my stay in college, my parents kept me on a wholesome healthy diet. Within a week, I could touch my belly and find it protruding outwards.
Whether you're rich or command a lot of respect, a frown would definitely cross a person's face or his/her mind when he looks at you carrying a pot-belly! Pot-belly doesn't look good!
Besides, a pot-belly occupies unnecessary extra space and could be an obstruction while having sex.
Although I would be one of the laziest persons alive, the idea of carrying extra weight outweighs my laziness almost everytime! Neither am I physically fit, nor cool, so the only way I can present myself well is by not having a pot-belly.
Incidentally but as expected, many of my batchmates who joined a company as full-time employees who were in good shape now carry a pot-belly. During college days, many of them never ever did any physical exercise and had triangle meals, gained weight sometimes but never had a pot-belly, barring few exceptions.
Some of my batchmates got so much to eat during internship at a company that their tummy did swell, so did their cheeks and at first I wondered, who is this guy, looks familiar but who is he. It was only when he spoke something that I finally recognized him.
So, don't compromise on your triangle or square meals but also exercise at the same time, because I'm sure you won't want to join the pot-belly club.

Caution: By this post, all I want to say is, don't be lazy, some people can't help it because their body doesn't allow them to leave the pot-belly club because of some medical or genetic reason, but many unknowingly join it owing to laziness.

P.S. - A pot-belly enters a place before the person himself/herself has a chance to do so, a pot-belly leads.
P.S. - A gun-shot at a pot-belly may not prove fatal I guess!
P.S. - Sumo wrestlers don't have pot-bellies but they are generally fat.

Images in mind

Our thoughts run as images in mind, I think. Because whenever I try to read my thoughts, all I can see are random images. These images are those constructed by my mind based on previous images I've seen in my life till now. I listen to music, and I can feel an array of images running in my mind. While listening to rock music, I see myself either holding the guitar and strumming it hard, or singing while holding the mike... sometimes I see myself standing at the rocks at sea shore, and strumming the guitar while a wave of water rises high in the air behind me.
I love saxophone music, Kenny G especially. Listening to saxophone makes me see myself in a club, dimly lit, with a date, and ballroom dancing or simply enjoying the moment.
Rock music gives me flashes of speeding on fast bikes, martial arts kick ass fighting, teleportation, sometimes looking down from a tall building, sometimes breaking a glass glass in my hands... lots of images...
While reading a novel, I see blur images of characters, places, situations, sometimes emotional expressions as well. I feel standing among them, looking at them while conveniently invisible to them. Sometimes I look at other characters through the eyes of one particular character.
Dreams are only array of images running in fast motion. All I can remember when I wake up after sleep are only few images, using which I sometimes rebuilt the possible plot of my dream.
While watching movies, however, I don't see any images in my mind, rather I store the images I see in movies and these images later, perhaps, run in my mind while doing other things, especially listening to music.
But what if, that is what my friend says, the brain has some chemical reactions, which it does, and our mind sees them as images! :D

spectrophobia

Ghosts scare. That's their job description. And some people like to feel that scare. I am not one of them. But I did watch horror TV shows and horror movies and enjoyed them. But left alone at some place, especially at night scared the hell out of me. I didn't move from where I sat and kept on wishing that someone may come so that I feel safe. Eventually someone did come and when I saw that someone (be it my parents, or the helper) coming, for a fraction of a second this thought crossed my mind that the person walking towards me was not real but a ghost in disguise, and that this ghost uses this disguise to reach near me and scare me efficiently.
Loneliness is said to scare humans the most. Ghost also attack/scare when a person is alone. Now a days I can survive alone, but sometimes those visions of ghosts seen on TV/movies in my childhood, or imagined by listening to stories or reading stories, pop in my mind during late lonely night, especially when I walk alone to the urinal. I used to feel, and once in a while still feel that some ghostly figure follows me, ready to attack/scare or even hurt. As a grown up, I can fight that feeling, ignore it, make it feel feeble in presence of other thoughts, but as a kid it scared me a lot.
Ghostbusters was an interesting concept, but do ghosts really exist? Or are those stories about Peepal tree and eerie noises at night merely one's fear due to guilt and ignorance?
Somebody I was talking to said that being scared during day when alone makes more sense because during day one can see everything around us. What do you think?!

Music to satisfy hunger

Time for a crazy idea. Would you be able to digest it?
Tonight, I didn't call my friend (who is temporarily staying with me) for dinner in Yuktahaar, went straight from lab to have dinner, without him. When I returned to hostel, he hadn't had dinner, so I urged him to go have dinner, lest he might be late. He was drowsy while watching a movie. He then stopped the movie, went out and got a BIG packet of chips... I mean, WT_ ?!
Anyways, I took out my synthesizer and started playing it. He saw what I was doing and played Titanic theme song on his laptop. I felt like playing it on the synthesizer, so I started pushing keys in random order, hoping to recreate the Titanic music. After a few minutes, it did!
After he was done eating the BIG packet of chips, I asked him, dude what about food? Is that BIG packet of chips your food?
He responded impulsively, naturally, "no, this music is."
and BAM, I got this idea...
What if the music we hear, the movies we watch, something that do that's different from our daily life activities, something that overwhelms us, generates extreme emotions in us, can we channelize the rapid motions seen in the movie, the fast tempo, high pitch music heard in rock, metal to satisfy our hunger, to give us energy, to generate fat, nutrients... more than that, can we use emotions generated by our experiences to, in turn, satisfy our hunger. For example, anger generated can be used to fill our stomach. :D
P.S. - A parallel notion... if experience, emotions could be traded for health and energy, then perhaps a person would age at a slower rate, but would have lesser knowledge/wisdom... would you make such a trade?

Childhood Dreams

Do you still remember your childhood dreams, or have you been too occupied in your efforts to gain success in the real world?
I hardly bother about what happens in the real world, maybe that's why I still vaguely remember those days when I did want to become a lot of things, and amuse myself over it.
Randy Pausch talked about his Childhood Dreams and how he got to fulfill them, in his Last Lecture.
I think the first thing I wanted to be, was an astronaut. This might have been the direct consequence of watching TV and TV shows like I Dream of Jeannie.
Next I wanted to be a detective... Sherlock Holmes I guess influenced me!
Next was to be a scientist, not knowing how "mind blowing" subject science is.
Once I also had this urge to try voice-over for a character in an animated motion picture, especially after watching Mrs. Doubtfire in which Robin Williams's job is giving voice to a cartoon character. I actually started mimicking voices, and making faces and weird noises, but its only a pass-time now, couldn't materialize.
But, something that I always had at the back of my mind was to write stories, beautiful stories, loved by everyone, simple yet subtle and strong at theme, stories about possible and impossible things that may happen in life.
I wrote few pages for a "novel" in 6th class, found it silly when I read it in 8th class and threw it.
I extended a story in 9th class, which was an exercise at the back of the book but wasn't discussed in class, but I think I wrote it well...
Now a days I do try to write stories, but many times I fail to bring out the effect which leaves me unsatisfied and the story incomplete!
I've been trained to be an engineer, something I never thought I'd ever be, but I am. I am not sad about it, just amused and happy for some reasons.
But more than anything else, I'd like to write some beautiful stories... because beautiful things last forever!
P.S. - Recently too I had change of plans, I wanted to be a diagnosis specialist after watching House M.D., wanted to be a mentalist after watching Mentalist and later wanted to be a lawyer after watching Boston Legal.

Small

Have you ever realized that everything in this world is shrinking, getting smaller?!
Well, almost everything.
From the ICs to the dresses, everything has shrunk.
Even duration of our relationships have shrunk, a kind of algorithm is run and, either the current person can be preferred over others, be it because of being certain years old, or because it is the right person... many hit-and-try attempts and finally the algorithm returns the right person... for some person, it runs in infinite loop or exits prematurely.
Blogging, micro-blogging, status messages... will good old novels loose their sheen? I guess not and I certainly hope not.
SMS/online chat lingo in particular amuses me. Words are redesigned by minor modifications like removing the vowels, or the alphabet repeating consecutively. The word can still be understood, though. :D The shortest message and the most frequent message which I receive online, "thr?" !! :)
Average height of man has reduced. :D I am a living example of that! :P
The distances have certainly shrunk, road, rail, ships, and now airplanes... would like to have the teleportation experience before my expiry date.
Shampoo Sachets, Crash Courses... you name a thing and a smaller version is
available!
People's career span has also seems to have reduced... switching jobs often, having more than one career at the same time sometimes.
Scientific research at atomic, nano level... genetic engineering... etc.
More and more compact and smaller systems are being designed each day. Knowledge is increasing and things are getting smaller... perhaps we'd reach the limit of smallness and that would open up a secret of how nature designed this whole cosmos.