I PUBLISH, THEREFORE I AM

...I did not. I just went with the flow, which I usually don't. I think, at times, we do what we don't really believe in, and it's just fine to switch sides for a day (and not feel terrible about it the next day). Also, when you do things you don't believe in, or may be, when you do things that you think are pointless; you come to know that it isn't really as bad as you thought. I did things that I would have never done on a "normal" day: watched a 2 hour spiritual talk, drank wine at home, downloaded deep purple discography only to listen and discover a few tracks that are classic but unexplored, saw photos in my album (from when I was born to where I am right now), went for a walk (seriously!, what a waste of time). On any other day, these things are pointless, but yesterday I enjoyed doing it. Peace! So, a wise-ass crack would be "at times, when it doesn't hurt much, listen to yourself even when you know you are wrong".  Girish Mahadev...

Looking back at the funerals I've attended, I have noticed that we try to listen-to/talk-about all that the dead guy did in his last few days . I am thinking why do we want to know that (unless it's a murder or the dead guy was too young to die). I asked this question to myself and I found that I am not interested in knowing what the dead guy did in his last few days, instead, I just want to know HOW did he die; is it due to some disease, due to accident or simply, old age?  But I think a lot of us want to know about what happened in the last few days because we want to find a pattern that people-who-are-going-to-die follow (just so that we know beforehand when our time is up).  If you are looking for a pattern, then you are not really ready for death , that's why, some of us came up with the life-after-death concept (I am not ridiculing the concept, I am just not a believer of the concept. I think, we are born and we die, that's the end, there is no certainty of a b...

Disclaimer: I've read the wiki entry  and I still want to stick to what I think about Coke float. Someone at work was saying good things about Coke-float, so, I made coke-float this afternoon and I did not like it at all. And because my coke and a single scoop of ice-cream got wasted, I had to think negative about the product (This is what humans do, they have the right to hate things and make up stories about it :)). By the way, we can't go wrong making this simple drink, coz after all it is a very simple mix and you have to be ultra stupid to go wrong. Like I said, I hated this Coke-float drink...and that got me thinking, why do people love this and why has it become a popular drink?  (after 2 minutes) Bazzinga!  I think, whenever Coke-float was invented, the sales of Coke or the vanilla ice cream were not up to the mark, or the supply of one of the two products was way above the demand. The marketing guys came up with this Coke-float drink to quick...

It took-my grandfather and my father- 12 years to complete their schooling. It took me 12 years to complete my schooling (I wanted 1 year more to complete it but I was forced to finish it in 12 years). It seems like it is going to take 12 years for my kids to complete their schooling (unless they have the same IQ as I J ). My grandfather definitely did not have all the amenities I had, relatively, I was exposed to quicker and easier ways of learning. And again, relatively, my kids will have iPads (or something better) to learn things much faster and better, why do they need 12 years of time to learn what I learned in 12 years. Why is it that it takes 12 years to gain X amount of knowledge? Just think about it, what is this 12 years theory that we follow? Why can’t I finish my schooling in 10 years or may be in 8-9 years and get to higher education after that (Don’t think about double promotions, that helps me skip courses because I can handle more; I am not taking abo...

Are you desperate? Are you afraid that people will know you are desperate? Is it good to fake it and hide your desperation, just so that you look easy-going? Apply some logic! showing desperation can actually get you immediate help. Some of us think that if we show our desperation to others, they will only pity us (of course, most of them do), but most of them immediately help too. OMG, how many times have we not shown our desperation to others because we don't want others to pity us or think we are weak/needy...that one time with that girl who could have helped me in all kinds of beautiful ways, that one time in college when I wasn't eligible for the career development workshop because I had 2% below the cut-off, that one time during the interview when they asked me why do I want this job :). I think we should always show our desperation (I am personally going to, from now on) coz I am sure that we can get things done faster if we showed people how desperate we are about wh...

I wasn't so worried about *age* before (I still am not coz I believe age is a freaking number and I am kinda young to worry about it), but now-a-days I see so many guys coming up with their blockbusters, and by change I happen to see the age of *that* singer/author/artist/sportsman/friend, and I am like " damn! he is a year younger than I am, and he already has this freaking bad-ass-talent ". This got me thinking; when will I come up with my blockbuster? when?...and then I realized that I am not even working towards a blockbuster (How can I expect to come up with a blockbuster all of a sudden); so, it's not like I am not able to produce a blockbuster, it's simply that I have not even thought about it yet...not blaming anyone, not crediting anyone, just saying that most of us (sorry, I always include you :)) are not even working towards a blockbuster.  The next time you come across Adele soul singing, Nadal/Djokovic playing superb tennis, your awesome Harvard-MBA...

…that what I got is exactly what I wanted, but what I thought about what I want isn’t so right. We all go through this at some point or the other, don’t we? It’s so true that we assume things, blindly go with the advise we get, simply follow what’s historically been done as correct, and then, when we get what we want and see what’s it all about, we get sad about it not being even close to our expectations. The fucking reality is in front of us, why don’t we just verify it ourselves . Let me give you some examples, verifying what it actually feels like being in Dubai will help you understand what Dubai actually isn’t …verifying what writers actually do might help you understand how many un-cool things are associated with writing …verifying exactly what that smart phone does will help you understand that you don’t need most of the features in that phone . So, don’t be sad…. it’s you who got you ther...

If you can’t follow all your subscribers (online), what do you do? You generally tend to go back to see all that you missed, and then you consider that as a backlog that needs to be cleared soon. If you read a superb article online, you would want to just read it and enjoy it…although, you might have 500 other articles in your Google reader that might be as good as that article (this happens with me all the time). A lot of us feel that we’ve got to read all the other articles at any cost and we treat those articles as a backlog (that’s how much we like our subscribers), and we make sure that we put extra hours the next day to catch up with all that we missed. What I think we should do is: see what we have time for (opportunity cost) and then decide on a few things to do for the time we have. If you think that you are going to miss out on good things if you don’t check every update, then you won’t be able to enjoy the one article that you are reading…but if you just consider tha...

With so many online interactions, the more you seek an answer to a question, the more opinions you get and the opinion that you think is best is the one you choose as an answer to that question. All in all, what just happened? you asked *internet* a question and you got influenced by the opinions that the internet provided, and then you (yourself) choose an answer to that question. Just think that thru. Is that how you used to get an answer to a question before. Hell no! right?  It is becoming really hard to find if what we just got is an opinion or an answer. The world around us seems to be driven by the opinions and the point is that (slowly) we are going to stop caring about getting an answer, all we would want is an opinion. Now, if you think more (actually, think deep) you will know that sometimes even facts don't matter no more, it's the opinion that matters. Just think about an instance where the factual data was pointing you in one direction, but you still went in som...

Oh! even you! I know, this happens with everyone; I too lost touch with a lot of good things and now I gotta catch up with them (it baffles me all the time, but I don't know why we stop doing the good things we enjoy doing). I also realized that for the past couple of weeks I've been thinking of losing some of my bad habits, but now, I think I shouldn't be focusing on what all bad things I should stop doing , instead I should be focusing on what all good things I should start or continue doing . I heard from an Indian  guru that one cannot quit any bad thing in life, one can only replace it with a good thing. For instance, if you want to quit smoking, you can't just quit it all of a sudden, instead you need to take up exercising and other healthy habits to be able to let go of smoking. Similarly, if you loved a women and she left you, you can't forget her all of a sudden, you can only occupy your mind with other good things (may be, some other women :)) that can he...

I generally go by the law *do only what is required*, don't be that guy who solves all the 25 questions is the question-paper when only 20 questions are required to be answered. In general, people are happy receiving what they want and if you give them something extra they might still like it but that's not the point. But anyhow, thumb rule at work is, do what you are asked to do and work the bonus hour to impress the boss (makes sense to me). That said, think of a situation where you are doing something that your boss is not so expert at, it happens all the time; the evaluator/boss might have a good judgement but need not necessarily know everything about the subject (and sometimes the evaluator knows nothing about the subject) that he is evaluating. In this scenario, what do you do? if you think wisely, whatever you explain with your understanding will be considered good-enough. But if your boss has others explaining him the same thing, to stand-out and be better, you need ...