The Phoenix

This blog has been dead. For a while.

A lot has happened. A lot hasn't. In the meanwhile, I've learnt many new things, forgotten old ones, wasted a lot of time, had many baths and have generally come out with the feeling I'm a better person after all. The baths helped of course.

Hopefully I'll be able to revive this one from its ashes.

Hopefully.

Degrees of Happiness

It's 24 degrees Celsius outside and I'm totally enjoying it.
No heavy jackets, wool caps, heavy snow boots! Heck, not even that stupid sweater!
Time for cricket, walks, jogs, barbecues and shorts.


Yipee!

Necessary But Not Sufficient

If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

~Ashleigh Brilliant

Courage is the price life exacts for peace.

~Amelia Earhart




Sometime back, (come to think of it, a long time back.... but then, as DA said, time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so)I was chatting with Aai & Baba (over cups of piping hot tea) about how all things general. One of my close acquaintances recently had a great new job opportunity - and was now able to do something she wanted to do for all her life. It was great to hear about that. She was now in the U.S. for about 5 years and things were looking good. My dad remarked about how it had been a very difficult decision for her to leave the well settled life and leave to pursue her idea of success. It was a uncertain future for her back then. But it had paid off.

What is the most essential ingredient to 'success'? What is that one thing which differentiates the successful* from the ordinary? What do you mean by success anyway?

After little pottering around with those thoughts (and obviously with nothing better to do - what with the depressing snow et al.) I've an observation and a conclusion:

The basic fact of life is that we all prefer to stay right in our comfort zones. And that's where it all goes wrong.

All of us face problems. Different ones at different times, but we all face them. They may be palpable ones - ones that have been defined for us - or ones which we seek or need to define ourselves.

Quite often in life we prefer not to deal with our problems/hurdles, simply because we are afraid of failure. We are scared that we may fail, thereby not to achieving what we set out to do. Many of us, I'm afraid, wonder "what people would think". We seem to almost lie in waiting, waiting for that moment when the problem would pass away; after all it would be so much easier.

But somehow we don't seem to realize, that it is by denying action on those problems that we actually end up failing.

Ironically then, we fail because we are afraid of failure.

I'm sure that there comes a time in everybody's life, a moment of realization,when you can see that if you don't act you will definitely fail. This is usually a breaking point. It is a point where the person is stretched to his/her limits. It is then the character of the person which decides how he or she will react. Some will break down and accept failure. Others will fight all odds/act on it. Remember though, in all cases success comes only to those who get out of that comfort zone.

That said however, getting out of the comfort zone is a necessary but not sufficient condition for 'success'.
_______________________________________________________
* I won't waste my time defining success here. Take it as whatever you think it is. It _is_ basically what you think it is ;-). But there's definitely more to say. It deserves another post though.
**Don't you scoff at that. If you don't believe me, try searching for 'success' in wikipedia. You'll be redirected to an article on (surprise, surprise) social status. Now that says a lot doesn't it?

Goldman Sachs - BRICs

Although I'm sure most of you must have read about the BRICs phenomenon, I thought this presentation, made by Jim O'Neill at Goldman Sachs, the man who invented the concept of BRICs, was quite interesting.

Have a look at:
GS - BRICs

Bhurjee Pav

It was a wet July midnight. Me, Adeesh, Shailesh, Mayuresh and Harshad had just finished watching the Italy v/s Germany semifinal. Man it was a awesome match. Well not the entire match, but the last few minutes were breathtaking - and painful.
With the excitement of the match not waning away, none of us (except Adeesh probably) were willing to sleep. We chatted on and on about the match and everything under the sun... when all of a sudden we realised how hungry we were.

The solution? A short drive to Shivajinagar railway station for a plate of hot bhurjee pav and a cutting chai!!!

Man just those memories drive me crazy!

I miss all that. I miss Pune. I miss India!

Thats life!

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome K. Jerome


This was one of the 'quotes for the day' on my google homepage. I couldn't agree more with it. It's happened more often than not that I've yearned for a hot cup of tea, while lazing on the 'zhopala' in my verandah with a nice novel in hand when I'm preparing for exams. And I stop yearning for anything like that the moment they are done!

Heh heh heh...

Observation

A completely random and probably useless obeservation :

I was jumping the steps, two at a time, in this huge hurry to reach my class on time (having, as usual, gotten up late). All of a sudden I notice I'm the only one who's going the "wrong way". I'd instinctively started running up the LEFT side and soon realised that the entire public going DOWN was coming that way.

Never faced this situation in UK, but I keep facing similar situations here all the time.

An equally useless (but not so random anymore)conclusion:

Guess what, I believe people walk down/up a flight of stairs or a footpath on the same side as they drive the car. So you'll probably end up on the "wrong side" just as I did if you normally drive on left side of the road in your home country and people happen to use the right side here.

Rum ain't it?

The Glideslope

Five planes on the glideslope of the landing runway at the London Heathrow Airport. London Heathrow is one of the busiest airport in the world. Planes must taxi off the runway immediately after landing, using the high speed taxiways available to them. Additionally, I noticed that the ATC's adjusted the distance between successive planes on the glide slope, depending on the size (and in turn the distance - and time - spent on the runway). That, I thought, was impressive efficiency (although I've heard that the rest of the air traffic control in the UK skies, or indeed throughout europe, is extremely cluttered and inefficient)

Declaration Revisited

Okay, there's been quite a controversy created due to the nature of my writing. Although I didn't mean it, I realise it's come out in a way that may seem derogatory and/or offensive to some people.

So here goes.

By the post titled 'Declaration' I do not mean to be derogatory. If one person does not understand the other, it does not automatically mean that somebody is very difficult/impossible/incapable of thinking logically. By saying what I said, all that I wanted to tell was that I do not understand certain facts, which I consider important, and that distresses me.

I would like to say explicitly (something which, quite unfortunately, I did not include in my last post) that I do not understand certain things about women.

The post was only meant to be a humourous take at something that distresses me.

Additionally, by saying things I said in the post, I do not wish to absolve myself of anything.

So, as a summary, I don't consider anybody incapable of doing anything. Everybody is equally capable no doubt. The fact that I don't understand some things about women does not make them incapable of thinking logically, nor does it make me incapable of being an understanding human being. It does not make women lesser persons, nor does it make me a person who does not want to understand them.

Finally, I'm not saying this because of any compulsions. I'm saying this because I firmly believe in all the ideas I have written, and also because I realised that I'd written in a way which could easily be misinterpreted (and I wouldn't blame anyone for that).I'm saying this because I do not want to be misinterpreted and/or misunderstood, and hence thought that a clarification was in order.

Declaration

To Whomsoever It May Concern



This is an official declaration to state that I fail to understand women anymore. I cannot understand what they want, what they need, what they do not want and how to deal with them.

I fail to understand my sister, my mom and all other girls I know.

I would have liked to say I didn't care, but I do.

I'd like to say I can do something about it, but I can't. (For a variety of reasons)

Since I have declared that much, I might as well go on to say this to all women who care to read the following:

If what I say or do hurts you, I didn't mean it.

If it helped you, that is always my intention.

Any inconvenience caused is deeply regretted!
(more than you'd imagine - again for a variety of reasons).

Yours Faithfully,

Kunal Sadanand Yadwadkar

Opinions......

Ah! This one's after a long long time!

Over some time I've noticed that people always have opinons.

And what is more, I've noticed people are more eager to tell you their opinions when they feel something's wrong about you. Some almost seem to enjoy telling you that. " Oh.. what? That's dumb man! That's like the most stupid thing anyone's ever done! Blah blah blah.... " And here's the clincher: It's almost always unsolicited!!!

Oh, but you'll hardly ever find anyone telling you about how in their opinion you were right in doing something. Especially when things aren't going your way.

Forgive my rant though. I don't mean to complain. That's just how people are. Can't change that. Guess what I can change is myself. I need to decide how much importance I need to attach to self appointed judges....... But now, now, it's not that easy to change is it??

Nip, tuck, and on a roll

NOTICE:For ardent cricket lovers only!!!

Read this article on Cricinfo.com, written by Jamie Alter, editorial assistant of Cricinfo.

Very well written I must say! What do you think?

Colours of the sky

I had recently been to my farmhouse near Agalambe village, Pune. These are some shots of the evening sky as seen from my house - at different times of course - through my lens.

1+1=24

Yeah well I had a dream last night which was just as illogical as the title of this post... if dreams are ever logical..'cos I don't remember a single one which made sense.

Anyhow this one probably went a bit too far, and I couldn't help but laugh at the stupidity of my dreams (yes... now even my dreams are stupid! sigh! ).

I dreamt I was invited to dinner at a certain Mr. X's house. Well apart from the fact that I went to this Mr. X's house bang in the middle of the day (for a dinner, and yes he was expecting me..), this was not really the guy who'd invited me. Of course I didn't care (yes a ounce of logic here... as long as the food's there, who cares where you've landed up?).

Apparently Mr. X had also invited Mr. Y to dinner (and yes he too was amazingly dumb and came in the afternoon... looks like this was an epidemic), and yes (surprise, surprise!) Mr. Y's face and name didn't corroborate.
The food was great (yes...even in my dreams...food is something I can't compromise on :-) ).


Next, Mr. Y is seen talking to Mr. X, saying "You know the kind of work you do is of the type of systems which are characterised by the equation sum(Az^n) = 0; which is why I think Kunal is ideal for your kind of work"

huh??? what was that? I was upset, distressed..no.. appalled at that kind of a dream. I mean people my age normally dream of half naked girls on a beach, but even allowing for me having spent a large part of my life in India (and a fractional part in VIT), this was appalling to say the least!

Obviously something is wrong. I guess I should take these Pune roads (well...... that's what they call them anyway.) less seriously. What say?

Any Freuds in there??

At the waterfall

A photo essay

Following are the pictures of my trip to Fort William in Scotland.

Hope you like them, although err um I was pretty stupid and couldn't figure out a way to club these pics as a single post...well... whatever!

Oh yes, just to compensate for my extra bit of stupidity, do view these pictures from bottom to top. That way the captions would make more sense :-) (sheepish smile)

Just before we left the lodge 

My dad at the shore of yet another loch 

Self explanatory 

Some lucky people had this view in their dining room window!