The I-Day celebrations

August 15 - Our Independence Day!!

My mom, sister, Gopal and I - woke up early in the morning around 5:30 AM and got ready by 8:30 AM, to go to the Manekshaw Parade Ground in Bangalore. When we reached the MG Road, we saw a long queue in front of the Parade Ground. We got ourselves attached to the queue. Luckily, we have read the newspaper this morning regarding the Parade Ground security talks. Mobile phone, hand bags, electronic gadgets, cameras are not allowed. Hence, we had gone without those specified items. It took nearly 45 minutes to reach the Parade Ground entrance. There was tight security and we had to pass through metal detectors and frisking by police. Atlast, we entered the ground around 9:30 AM.

The programme has already begun. The trade mark "March Past" was the starting event after the Flag hoisting by CM. Then, there were lot of mass dances by various school children. Around 3 such mass dances were there. I became nostalgic seeing these dances. I remembered our school mass dances in Nehru stadium (Coimbatore). Especially the final dance performance ,'Nityotsava’, was very stunning. Very well organized and the song induces patriotic feeling.

The last cultural event was the daredevilry in bikes by the Shwet Ashw, a crack unit of the Corps of Military Police. Their bike riding skills were astounding. They had displayed reverse balancing, scissor crossing, parallel crossing, one leg riding, swimming, ladder climbing, break dance, fire jump, Sudharshan Chakra , sunbath on motorbikes and Pyramid formation. The event conductor announced that they had shown 50 different stunts during performance. An amazing event!!

Then there was prize distribution for thr participants , followed by National Anthem.

Enjoyed the day very well !!!

Floral Smile! :)

Have you ever seen nature's colourful smiles? Oh yes, I did.

Sometimes we become suddenly very observant. I was in one such moment and was watching the Rose bouquet on our dining table. The day we brought the roses ( bunch of red and yellow), they were very introvert. They were so shy to open up. It took quite some time for them to feel at home.

On the second day, they became little used to our presence. They started smiling at us. And from then on, each day, their smile had broadened. Though, these floral stunners have a small life, their colourful smiles made my day colourful too. Thank God!! They are in abundance on earth. :)

Donald and Daisy!!!

Whenever we have visited Manipal hospital, Gopal and I have admired the two ducks roaming in the lawn. All of a sudden, Gopal got two ducks ( a male and a female) to our house. I was totally surprised and overjoyed. I named them Donald(male) and Daisy(female).

It was fun to watch them stroll in our balcony as couple. Their waddling is a good feast to our eyes. It is like two serious people walking in the lawn having some hi-fi business talks. The beauties have a terrible voice though! When they quacked, it wasn't very pleasant initially. But soon, I started liking their voices :)

They weren't very happy to hear the noise caused by the trucks and vehicles on the road. Whenever a big truck passes by, they scream and rush into our house. Later, they got used to the sounds. It was news to me that they eat frogs as their food. However, we have made them veggy ducks by giving them only rice and apples. :)

Now, they have been taken to my mom's place where they have a huge lawn to waddle !! We miss them already !!!

Extreme Jargon-ism ..... Gobbledygook!!!

Today morning, I was surfing the net for some random articles. In one such, I came across this word "Gobbledygook". I was very fascinated by this word. This made me go further, in getting more information on this word.

Here is the gist of what I gathered:
When two doctors talk about some illness or some medicine, it might be greek and latin for an engineer. When two engineers talk in their technical language, it might be chinese and japanese for a lawyer. Thank God!! We can always escape from such unrelated domain-talks by saying, "There are lot of jargons in their speech". If we are interested in knowing what they mean, we can always refer some related sites or dictionary.

In an extended line, when a person or a set of people wants to convey some information to another person or a group, and when they use an incomprehensible language, it can be termed as 'Gobbledygook'. Unfortunately, there is no way to comprehend what they mean, even by using a dictionary. Oh!! How can it be understood, when the core intention is just to confuse! :)

Here are few examples of Gobbledygooks:
Gobbledygook:
in this day and age
Plain English:
today (or) now

Gobbledygook:
An office manager sent this memo to his boss:
"Verbal contact with Mr Blank regarding the attached notification of promotion has elicited the attached representation intimating that he prefers to decline the assignment."
Plain English:
Mr Blank didn't want the job

More interesting examples are available on net.

I feel jargons can be decoded easily than a gobbledygook. And, Jargons sometimes becomes necessary in a converastion whereas, gobbledygook are added deliberately to confuse the receiver. It is evident from the people who use this. Gobbledygooks are often used in public speeches ( especially by politicians) and in corporate terms and conditions.

I guess, we should cut short the usage of jargons and gobbledygooks in our speech or writing. After all, we speak/write to inform rather than impress!!!

Card covers decked up !!

I enjoy giving greeting cards to my friends on several occasions. It is a great time pass to select a suitable card for any friend. The only thing I hate to see is, the blank greeting card covers. So, I used to do some hand-work on it. Here are few cards and covers with some matching themes.

Greeting card making, adding to the colours of the card, making greeting card covers.... these are few things , which when done, makes me feel real satisfied. I have this thinking which keeps coming in my mind, that, if I have to move out of IT industry, here is where I need to enter. The Soft-skill industry!

I have write access, but no delete access!!

Many of us, especially IT buffs, would have certainly related our brain to the largest and powerful computer & network system.

I was thinking in the same line. About the extremely secured and large database with the collection of records of events, names, smells, feelings and what not. More than Oracle or DB2 can handle !!
I meet a person and try to recollect his/her name. I couldn't. Then, I say, OK leave it. But, still at a later point in time, the Query returns a value. Excellent background processing !!!
The brain gets lot of signals from every cell in our body. What a network trafiic and data congestion. How efficiently the brain handles it! Any better network in the world ?!
As I am typing this, I am thinking about brain in detail and also, hearing to some music. It seems like i am multi-taksing. Am I? No. The process syncronization is so powerful and fast that I don't even realise I do only one task at a fraction of second. It is just that, my concentration drifts from one to another so fast, that I feel I am multi-tasking. Any alternate Syncronization method available?!?!

But, that apart, there is this question bothering in me. I input data into my brian. I have write access to my system. But, when I don't like some data, I couldn't delete it. Is it access denied purposefully? Of-course, sometimes, due to not accessing some data for a long time, it might get lost or over-written. But, it never gets deleted! I am surprised why this access is not given to me!

A picture is worth thousand words !! Does mine say so?

A Picture drawn years ago! I have scanned it and uploaded here.

Crayon work on a paper! This, for me, depicts my happy mood!!

Watering the Plants

Thanks to my house owner Aunty who adores plants a lot. She has numerous plants around the house. We stay in the first floor and our balcony has around 35 plants. I have seen her watering the plants everyday. Seeing her doing it, I just volunteered to water the plants.

And, now it has become a routine for me and I look forward for every day morning to meet the plants. I am feeling a very close relationship between me and the plants.

I wake up in the morning by around 7:00 AM and open the balcony door to see the plants. From whatever I see, I feel they are still sleeping. Initially, I have thought of watering them by 7:00 AM itself. But, they looked at me like, " Please don't water us now. We are already shivering out of cold". So, I give them time to wake up and do some warm up (or rather get some warmth). It will become 7:30 AM by then. I would have finished making mild breakfast for us. Now, I come back to see the plants. They are all fresh and ready to have their breakfast.

I start watering them. There are some small plants which are kept in a matrix of 4 X 3 and quite bigger plants kept on a pod in a line. I start with the smaller kids allowing the big ones to wait for sometime. The small ones get excited so much and they look even more fresh now. Big ones take more water. Now that they are all fed well, they smile at me for a nice breakfast. And, I feel very good after this.

I feel this is such a good stress reliever and makes my day real fresh....Nature Fresh !!!

Innumerable as the stars of night,
Or stars of morning,
dewdrops which the sun
Impearls on every leaf and every flower

Bring out the Kid in your heart

I observe, most of the times people want to show they are very matured in their thoughts, action and speech. But , at times I like the Kid's heart or mind which is sitting inside each of us, trying to get out. It so happens, people bring out that kid's heart only in rare occasions.

Just a recap of such an incident:
I was traveling in the intercity express from Coimbatore to Bangalore on an afternoon. In the train, I saw an old gentleman carrying his grand-daughter (who is a tiny tot ...might be 9 months or an year old), trying to pacify her as she was crying due to the sultry weather.

Since that was an afternoon train, all the coaches were seaters and had fans over head. Some of the fans were working and some weren't. He switched on the fan just above his seat. As expected, the fan did not work. And, he was very frustrated. Meanwhile, I just told him to try rotating the wings of the fan with a pen ( courtesy: Anniyan Movie). He gave me a look of disbelief and still did it. The fan started working ! :) Now, he gave a broad grin.

This thing fascinated him a lot. He carried his grand-daughter and went to the fans which weren't working in that compartment and used this technique to make it work. I was seeing the happiness in his face. He was thoroughly enjoying it.

I just saw a kid in the old man who was having an innocent fun!

Daily Battle Between Two Warriors

There is this daily battle between the two important warriors - Positive Thoughts and Negative Thoughts, and the battle field is mind. ( hereafter referred as PT and NT )

It so happens, every morning we wake up, one of the warrior will be dominant. Thankfully, for me most of the days PT will be the dominant person. And, I feed my PT with good healthy stuff which I get from lot of books and my own experience. This has helped my PT to grow very strong and beat NT most of the times!

Still, some days this weak little NT will overcome my PT by some cunning way. And, the poor PT will not be able to get up only. Since the battlefield itself is kind of stumbled, it takes some time to make PT overcome NT.

Then, I sat and thought over, what is causing this NT to become so powerful sometimes. It so happened that, NT gets help from lot of external factors like how others words/action affects us, what others think of us, expectations from others, comparison with others etc. Hmm....now that I know from where this NT is getting help, I am trying to shut all those doors and help my PT!

It's Ok I am being partial to PT and not helping NT. This is just a small help I am doing to encourage my PT, who in turn is going to make me more happy!!

Thanks to my PT!! :)

Left-Handed writing

This has been one of my passion since childhood. I have practised writing using left-hand whenever i am bored. I have read in one article that when we are ambidextrous, our brain works more efficiently and our life-span increases.

Apart from the facts and fiction, I really enjoy this way of writing. When we were kids, our mom or dad or the teacher would have guided us in writing. I have been given practise to write using my right hand. That's the way I am now. But, when I try writing using my left hand, I feel i am training myself with my own writing skills. It is as though my left brain is teaching my right brain to do this task! This is kind of very peculiar and I like it! :)

Some pondering thoughts .....
When we use right hand for writing, we start from left side of the page and end in right. But, I have seen left-handed people who write from right side of the page and end in left. But, I wonder the notebooks are all designed specifically for right-handed users. I guess the writing speed for left-handed writers will be hindered because of this. I also wonder, in their case, will the meaning of forward (/) and backward (\) slash be interchanged ?!?!?!

I think I need to do more research on this.

After my short research, I am updating this post with the following link
http://www.anythingleft-handed.co.uk/faq.html

Madagascar - Worth a watch!

A very good movie ! The characters Alex, Gloria, Martin and Melman , and not to forget, the Penguins , have performed very well. Alex, the Lion is the Hero and the Villain of the movie! He fighting between his killer instinct and the friendship he has with Martin - the Zebra is well crafted and presented.

All these animals are in a Zoo and have never been outside. Alex and Martin are close friends. The Penguins feel they do not belong here. They will be always planning to escape and finally they do. In due course, the day-dreaming Martin also wants to enjoy life out of the Zoo. They all finally manage to get out of the zoo and were transported to a sea-shore forest - Madagascar. Alex realises his potential as a Lion. Alas...His friends will be seen as his food. How he manages to get his self back is what the story about!

A small movie with a big message!
Madagascar