Wars

Think about all the wars human beings are fighting across the countries. There are more than 2000 battles fought for Jerusalem alone historically and even today, as per one of the theories America needs to be engaged in a war all the time to support their economy.

Each country has fought its own battle for freedom, or to defend their territories. If only there was no war or battle or fights, where would have we invested all those resources into.

Yes, quite unrealistic, that we will ever be in a situation that requires no war ever. The people lost in both the world wars are quite enough for one to think over his whole life . In my mind, i think if the whole world had been like the typical Bangalorean - mind your own business attitude, we would have invested quite a bit of our war budget into some research, which might have improved our standards of living more than inventing the new and more advanced missiles.
Probably in bridging the gap between poor and rich, not sure or we would have already been to mars by now. You can never know .

Nevertheless its just a thought!!!!

can you believe this????

Check it out Bloom Box

Hard Luck?

Just yesterday, the petrol prices went up by another five rupees make it a good seventy one rupees now for a liter.

When I pick some of the situations in my life, I feel is this hard luck ?"why me God !!!!!" .
Right when I started working in electronic city, we shifted our house to the other end of the city. So I started travelling all the way about 35 kms for work. But this was fine, because it was our home, sweet and calm with least pollution and noise. Then they started building the silk board fly over and being the first generation fly overs and with worst planning, I was sitting in a bus for close to 3 hours sometimes in traffic jams.
Fine.....
Then I moved on to Whitefield , the other major IT hub, now this time everything looked good. Nice comfortable cabs, 2.5 hours reduced to 1hr commute.
Voila!!!They started a series of underpasses, metro rail road and fly over constructions all through my way to office on the ORR. Now it is back to 1.5 hours :( .Can you say hard luck?

Not yet
Then I decided to buy a car. when I decided and bought it, Petrol was 50 rupees and Diesel was 42 Rupees, not too much of the difference. Since I did not plan to commute by car to office and it was to be used for travel with family and to places there is no bus or train facility, I decided to go for a petrol car. Its going to be 11 months now since I bought, petrol prices have risen 4 times and now the price is 71 rupees while diesel remains at 45.
Hard Luck.... Well may be one can choose to think that way.

But it will be lot more easier and happier if I think, all the fly over constructions are indications of how important infrastructure improvements have become. By the way the best part is that during those traffic jams, me and my friend used to spend so much time together, I got one of my best friends for life :-).
Well talking of petrol, its deemed to increase sooner or later, in another ten years, we will have to think of a electric car or a hybrid car. As long as I can afford it I will use it, once it becomes ridiculous to travel by a petrol car, I will start thinking what to do... ofcourse it isn't easy to sell things you love :-)

Hues of Nature

Its the beautiful Spring time again. I have slightly changed my habits and added some good ones and one of them is to take a walk in the morning.
The agricultural university - GKVK - is right in the vicinity and its more than a park, its a mini forest.

Bangalore is still livable and has traces of the old one due to these small patches of lush greenery in and around the city.The people rushing to these parks /mini forests in Lal Bagh, IISC, sankey Park, BEL, military zones are examples of how necessary it is for human's to be part of nature rather than exploit it.Its moving on from the old independent houses with a small garden to a more compacted houses without no sign of greenery around to a concrete jungle with hardly any trace of natural colors. All good thoughts, religions claim life comes full circle. I think we are on the hump of the semi-circle right now, with city being over crowded and reducing ground water to traffic and pollution. Am already thinking of where I should reside probably ten years down the line .

Meanwhile, I could not resist the beautiful colors around in GKVK and wanted to capture them permanently in memory and digitally. Here is a small sample. If you are interested in watching all the photos , please follow me into - A walk on a bright Sunday morning

Black Swan

Last night I watched Black Swan and for the life of me , I have not been able to stop thinking about it. I went and re-read the summary and interpretations on various sites. I read through Natalie Portman , although while watching the movie , I felt the face similar but could not trace back to another movie.After realizing that she was in Closer, I was to some extent surprised and impressed with her perfect acting in this movie.

She definitely deserves the accolades she received and the director has done no less than a fantastic job.

Its amazing and mind blowing to watch movies like this which are perfections and an art in deed. In terms of the story , I just relived my post-watch experience of "Hide and Seek" and "The Hour". Whenever I watch such movies , which are open ended and food for thoughts and some serious things within and with human nature, a kind of discussion with somebody else who really understands it is something I cherish and often don't get.

To get this off my mind and to be able to sleep, I had to start watching "Gulliver Travels" :D

Happy movies

Book Review - The Design of EveryDay Things by Donald Norman

I recently finished reading this book. It is a worthwhile read. Although not all of the aspirations of the author are realistic(atleast for the area of software), its good to aspire for what is ideal.

After reading this book, one important thing is that you will start appreciating the beauty of design even in the simplest thing like a safety pin or needle. You will also realize that not all newer versions are improved designs since there are so many factors contributing in production of a new product, its not always true that the latest is the greatest.

One needs to go by the old thumb rule that you are best Judge when you have the knowledge, so get the knowledge and decide for yourself.

The beauty of the book is in the way author communicates his ideas with the simplest things around us and with the excellent examples like door bars, water faucets, motor panel design, the mapping of vertical movement with the circular steering wheel.

There is one part of the book, which talks about how digital clock is better than analog. Whoever invented the concept of having 2 needles for the clock and why it is hard to teach a child to read a clock. Interesting things which typically we would not notice or care to observe.

Assuming that the author wrote this book in early 90s, his expectation about computer design to evolve to solve the actual problem rather than becoming a part of the problem is to some extent true if you see in today's progressed computer world. But we are still long way from becoming as advanced and perfect as a motor industry and this will take its time. The ideal day would be when using a computer becomes like using electric current, to solve the problem - lighting the bulbs and lamps, cooling for refrigerator, heating for iron . But the computer world is a lot different from the other worlds so coming times will tell us how best they evolve into.

I like reads like this , since they enhance your view or improve your perspective about what is around you, they make you more cognizant human being ultimately.

Vacation

I took off a long vacation of complete 15 days from office. This was after a long time, so much so that i made a list of things i need to do during vacation.
Well I could cover atleast 80% of it. But most importantly it just provided me this time to just come out of office and just be somebody who I would be if I am stripped of my job.

I enjoyed it in my own way, not that I spent all the time laughing and going around the world. But I did do some thinking, some reading, some shopping and watched quite a few movies - in a sense I did a few of everything. I watched interesting movies - Hachiko, The Gods must be crazy, Memento(third time and still can watch again), The social network, Falling in love , The Lovely bones and a few more.

It amazes me how time passes by and how people are always , in their own ways, trying to make meaning out of their lives. Almost everybody understands that time is precious, but nobody is really sure if they are really using it to the fullest.

I accidentally came across Nikola Tesla's feature and about how although he was so intriguingly knowledgeable, but still did not have so much of luck with the world. Well Well well, for one thing , I realized, its not important whether the world thinks if you are good, that's a question you ought to answer yourself. You might not be famous or somebody who gets a huge salary or somebody with a lot of political influence, but it does matter how your family treats you and how you respond back . This is what probably makes one feel good , and spice it up with achievements in your work life, one would feel a life worth lived. Do check out this link about Tesla.