The first step made towards the honours I longed for long :)

Well, it's exciting!!! Though I cannot share much here due to the sensitivity, but I've got a head-start towards the "world honours" I cherish the most :) It's more than money, and I believe people like me care most about these in the world :)

Hope to drive this forward and get more of these in years to come :)

P.S. If you're interested in more details, pls contact me :)

There are just two type of people in the world

1. Those who want to make a better today, even if it's at the cost of tomorrow

2. Those who want to make a better tomorrow, even if it demands sacrifices today

A deeper thought reveals that both these approaches are wrong, and more importantly, dangerous to the world. So, what should be the "right" type of person?

Anyways, what type of person are you?

How do you invest your money

Hmm...So here comes money. We'll want to get rich, don't we? One of the ways that we take is through investment of whatever we can save after our essential expenses. So, have you ever thought into the way you invest, and how do they compare with others?

I'm quite interested into knowing this. Not only about my way of investing, but also about how others do it. So I decided to come up with a small survey. It's all about how one invests, where does he put his money, what's most important and so on.

So if you're curious, please go ahead and take this survey. It's just 5 minutes and no more. And do leave your contact details there, so that I can share the results with you, so that you too can learn about others' ways of investing, in case you're interested too like me :)

Here's the link:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dFZUZFlyTlYwSzNlX1dWa052Wm9Ya1E6MA

Microblogging on my Blog?

You must be wondering what's this one liners doing on a full fledged blog. I wish I could write much more here, but it's sad I can't afford to take more time these days :(

Thanks to Ping.fm I'm able to post my "quick thoughts" here...it's all about an email...

I hope I'll soon come back with my drafts completed into full posts here :)

Update: I thought I'd delete the microblogs from here, or else my readers may be distracted...I'll come back with some nice posts soon...

Science & Time - Part I

So here it is. My first post on this blog on Science. Yes, it's about the ultimate problem that science and religion (and for that matters, human beings) want to solve - How was the world when we did not exist? What made the universe, how will the future be. Time has always been a mystery to the man. Religion described it in its own ways, by describing God as the supreme power, and science assumes it as an implicit part of everything that happens in this world, in a complex quantity as space-time.

Let's look at an argument that came up few months ago in a Cab discussion. The assumption here is that calculus and mathematics are correct, and that they do not break down in front of time itself.

We believe in present time, by which I mean that we have an ability to express the world around us at the current time. Now, this means that everything in this world can be expressed at the current time in a mathematical form. Moreover, any real phenomena has to take a non-zero time to change it's state. For, if it took exactly zero time, it would have two different values at a single point of time. This proves that the functional representation of any real world phenomenon is continuous and differentiable in time. While saying this, I would like to mention the following:-

1. I'm not assuming the knowledge of the function itself, only that it exists and it is differentiable in time.

2. The function need not be time-invariant. It only complicates the situation, but still, at any point of time, the function will have a value...

Let me elaborate the second point above. It's clear that whatever the function be, it'll have a value at every instant of time. Now, the question remains is that are these values predetermined in time? Knowing the values is not important here, though.

Let us try to disprove that the value is predetermined. Let us assume that there is at least one such function whose value at at least one instant in time is not predetermined. This can happen only when:-

1. No other function depends on this value, or the dependent function will also possess this property, and this extension can continue indefinitely. This would eventually mean that even the functions are not predetermined, which breaks the definition of a function. This is not allowed since we believe in mathematics.

If no other function depends on this value, the value and the associated phenomenon will be isolated from this world. This is the concept of "parallel untangled universes", and since they're untangled, there's no sense of knowing the time in other world, as it would not affect our world. In simple terms this value (and therefore the associated function) and the phenomenon gets excluded from our analysis

2. The value is a singularity, such as infinity. In that case, the value cannot be expressed, and therefore it is not predetermined. Moreover, this assumption does not break the association of this value with other functions, as there can be a function that transforms an infinity into a finite value.

So, from above, it seems clear that "except at singularities" every function and it's values are predetermined. This means that every finite thing in this world is predetermined, by some unknown mechanism. Interestingly, it means that if you know the current space-time position of an object, and you can avoid singularities, you can attempt to know the space-time at any other time, since it's predetermined.

This brings us to our first milestone: That efforts of astrology and science in trying to determine past / future values of a phenomenon are not futile. In the next article of this supposedly long (still unknown how long, but you see, it's predetermined) series, I'll talk about validity of our assumption and the corner case of singularity that has surfaced.

Wanna go back to school...but...

Here's a dilemma I'm in these days. I wanna take up some courses that've interested me for long, but neither can I afford to leave my job (even temporarily, there's so much work), nor do I want to, as I love the work I'm doing. Now I wish if I can continue education while at work, in some way...

Let me talk about what I want to study. The first one on the list is Finance & Economics. Investments, macro-economics and especially stock markets have fascinated me so much in the past couple of years. I'd say maybe recession is attributed for this taste to have developed. I don't mean to say that I wanna quit as an engineer and go learn fund management in a B-school, but I'd love to read more about this field - managing investments, what economics means, what's all about central banks controlling rates n all...wow, it's all so cool, definitely better than circuits (Yeah, I would have laughed at hearing myself saying this a few years back, but yes, it's no joke today).

Next comes History & Religion. Yeah, I've always loved this subject and discussions, they're my all time favorite. I remember while in 9th standard at school, I had a debate with almost my whole class over existence of God, and me and my friend Shreyashi were confronting the rest of the class. I want to delve deeper into the logical reasoning behind the upcoming of various religious beliefs and traditions. I wanna know what was the society before the religion, whom did the childhood friends of Lord Rama / Krishna pray? How did Christainity evolve? Of course my current knowledge about world religions is quite limited, and I'm very keen to expand that. I seriously wanna take up this study, but I feel it's gonna be a full fledged course in itself...

Finally, surprisingly, comes Modern Physics. Yes, of late I've being going away from pure sciences, into stuff such as society, economy, religion etc. But then, I've had a long science background, and something I got a very limited exposure to while even in college was Modern Physics. I was fascinated by alll those dangerous looking equations, but then, I feel it's the bridge between one of the biggest conflicts of all times - the science and religion. Both Modern Physics and Religion try to answer one basic question - the evolution of universe, and the history of time. I feel excited about this subject despite the abtruse mathematical nature, and I'd want to spend some time delving into it's intricacies. Especially, I love all the paradoxes that come up due to the gap between what quantum theories predict and what the common perception is.

Finally, the question remains, how and when to pursue this interest. I'm not sure if reading part time after job would work, maybe taking a couple of months break from jjob would do. I'm not sure, let's see what can I do about it...

Games are much more fun now :)

I was just walking around my local market, and I spotted this simple USB Game Pad, a Joystick, just for 150 bucks.

And here it goes. It's so much more fun to play my old favorites :) On my laptop. And the best thing is that I can carry them along, wherever I go.

A few problems we Indians need to fix

I've been reading this excellent book by Narayan Murthy for a while now, and it let's me define the problems that I see in India, much better. Here are some important problems that I feel we should fix to go past the critical growth and take a big leap towards making India a truly great nation.

1. We're still very pessimistic about life. I understand this is attributed to our past, but we should now give this up. We're progressing, the world is looking up to us. We should now start thinking positive about everything, and take our dreams and aspirations to the new heights.

2. Our wrong understanding of the democracy. We feel democracy is all about our rights, and that the government is a seperate entity. These are some of the biggest mistakes a democracy can make. Democracy is equally about rights and responsibilities. And then, govenrment is what we make, and in fact, government is made by people from our own society and community. We have to realise and practice these in our lives. For without these two essential beliefs, a democracy is handicapped.

3. Strong imbalance between family and society. We almost always care only about ourself, our family, our community (read caste, religion...). However, we forget that the society we live is a mix of various individuals, families, communities and religious beliefs. Especially, in a diverse population such as India, we need to take care of this even more. We should realise that only by encouraging a symbiotic environment in the society, as we do in our workplace, we can prosper. We should utilize the energy that we waste in fighting amongst ourselves in various ways towards the betterment of our country as a whole, even if it requires a few sacrifices of family interests for the good of the society. Remember that man is a social being, and unless society grows, the growth of an individual will always be hampered.

P.S. I couldn't think of an image for this post. Pls let me know if you'd want to suggest one.

Resuming My Story

The weather may've become awesome, with such a beautiful rain all day long today, but it has also brought with it the "bad old viral infection". Luckily or unluckily, I'm caught into it, and since it's so contagious, I've no option but to stay home. Of course I'm ill, and can't really take up long work hours.

But what I can do to kill time at home? Yes, I've a lot of pending tasks, mostly outside home, but there's something that I can do this week while being at home - continue with my story. Of course the significance of the idea may've changed now, but I think it'll keep moulding until it gets published. So why not give it a fresh look?

So here I go, to recast my characters and the theme of the story. Of course the spice and the suspense still remains...

P.S. If you're wondering what this image means in this context, drop me a comment and I'd be more than happy to disspell it :P

Chrome is My Browser

I tried hard looking at others, but somehow I feel I'm in love with plain vanilla chrome. It's so intuitive and simple. Barely enough to do what you want. No intrusion whatsoever...

I looked back at IE7, which I really liked using before Chrome came in, but now it seems to have lost that charm. Of course it's the same, only my perception has changed.

Firefox maybe the best, but I could never really like it's look and feel, and it almost always goes away within seconds of it's install on my computer. Yes, I don't like a program, it's uninstalled. No mercy

Opera? I only liked it when I had a non-touch phone (Opera Mini) and I had to browse for something urgently. Otherwise, it doesn't even exist for me.

Finally comes Safari, the new (really?) browser that I recently came to know, from Apple. I guess it's new for Windows users, certainly iPhone and iMac guys have been using it for ages...It looks good, gives you a feel of the world's best UI design framework - the Mac, and yes it's super fast when it comes to loading pages.

The only negative about Safari is that I can't search from Address Bar. It's one of the foremost things I need, and therefore it's dumped. Of course if Safari can bring this feature in, I might reconsider it. But then I feel I'd have to temporarily dump away Chrome, or else I wouldn't even look at others.

Why do you need to go out on street looking for pretty women when your wife is so awesome :P

Btw, you might be wondering I didnt speak much about Chrome here. Was this post meant for that? I doubt, hehe, but I'll come up with an xclusive post on what chrome is really about. However, I'd wait until I get to test Chrome OS, coz that'll make more sense, if Chrome will live or die...

The delivery boy

I found myself in a dilemma recently. This was about the business protocols and emotions, and I'm still unclear about what to chose.

On this Friday, I reached home at about 9 15 in night and decided to order Pizza for dinner. Usually I order a combo meal which doesn't have a service guarantee, but this time, since I was alone to eat, I ordered a single pizza which came with a 30 minutes delivery guarantee.

I was hungry and eagerly waiting for one of my favourite foods. It was 10, and still no sight of the delivery boy. I checked back and realized it's more than 30 minutes. I felt happy, that I'd not have to pay anything now. Just then I heard a scooter parking, and I rushed to the door to pick the delivery for free. The first sentence I spoke to the guy was "You're late". And he accepted and apologized and said he couldn't locate the house as it was dark and late. But he offered to call the Domino's centre and ask what I have to pay now. I was in a "pure business sense" and I called up and my order was made free.

I took the order and started to get back, when I had a glimpse on the face of the boy. He looked worried, and disappointed. I realised that the boy would be held accountable for the delay, and this could at the least mean poor performance in his records. I felt bad about it, and felt guilty. How could I be so mean, that to save a few bucks I could endanger someone's career in such a badly hit economy. I tried to help the guy by offering him the full payment, but he said "It's OK sir. It was my mistake". And he left.

I stood wondering about what had just happened, and was really sad over it. I wished I could undo the damage, but it was one I had no control...

In restrospection, now, I feel I should do something about this. At the least, I'd never again say "You're late" to a delivery boy. On a bigger front, I plan to do something here, which would obviate the delivery boys to hear "You're late".

Katrina Kaif in New York

Now don't think she's my new crush. Asin it is. But I just love this pic. It reminds me of my dream college, the college I always wanted to go, and the smile which I always wanted to wear while in the campus. I'm not sure if that happened, but here it is - young, cheerful and beautiful. Our very own Kat :)

The Good Old Video Games are back :)

Thanks a lot Saurabh for mentioning those good old video games. I remember when I was in secondary school. We’d just come back from school and the first thing we did was switch on the Video Game set. Nothing doing before we’ve played for an hour or two – no lunch no changing clothes, nothing was acceptable. It was so much fun.

Forget we kids, even my dad was addicted, to his “simple old man’s Doctor Mario”. It was a "Tetris like game", though different from the "brick game thingi". Mom would go crazy with all three of us glued to the TV for long long hours.

My personal favorites were Mario, Contra, Street Fighter, and a dark Egyptian Game whose name I unfortunately forgot :( But now I'm back to gaming on my laptop, using these ROM emulators. I guess these are illegal, but, who cares. All I care is fun, ultimate fun that's there in these games. I'm soon gonna buy a PC joystick too, and that'd make it even more fun.

Here are some more snippets that'd remind you of the good old days. Maybe you'd also wanna take a new look at them, leave aside your latest PS3s and X-boxes for a while...

Ken was my favourite. I still love to pick him.

And Mario, I knew so many tricks, and what's great that I still remember them. Do you know where was that place with unlimited lives in the 7th stage??? Surprised haan...it always helped me kill the dragon and win the princess in the final stage. We'd reach there, leave Mario jumping over the duck and go to play cricket :P. And when we'd return after a coupe of hours, we'd have much more than the lives that anyone can ever lose while fighting the dragon :)

I'm glad I have my childhood friends back with me. Hope you'd also enjoy rejoicing those golden day :) Of course, do drop me an email if you want these games, all collected into a neat archive, so that you don't have to search them all over again

Try this, it's fun :)

Just recalled something at random. It was in 8th standard, and I got a chance to represent my then school in a supposedly Science Quiz. We had no Idea how big that event was (at least I didn't). Even more, we never thought we'd be winning it. Yes, we got the First Prize in Tamil Nadu Agricultural University Science Quiz, way back in 1998.

Anyways. Coming to the fun part. I'm still not sure if this belongs to Science. We were asked to speak a tongue twister, and believe me it was fun. We were given 10 minutes to rehearse for it I guess, and you know what, I can still speak it quite fluently. Just try this, it'd be fun :)

Bitter bought a butter but the butter was bitter so he bought a better butter to make the bitter butter better butter

Do let me know how you fared :P

She's so beautiful :)

Here comes my first post with an image. I'm pretty much sure she looks awesome. Somehow over the past few years I've lost interest in celebrities, but here it comes back with Asin. I just love to keep saying she's so beautiful.

I just love the innocent looks on her face, and for the first time in my life, I've had a crush (yes, I've a crush on her :)) on a celebrity who's younger than me...

My blog gets a new skin

Yeah...I got bored of that dark look...here's a fresh and brighter reincarnation. Watch out this space for more frequent activity...

Clear sight of end goal : A learning

It's sad if you have to learn from your own mistakes. But it's also good that this learning goes a long long way. Let me talk about about one such recent happening.

Competition, stiff targets, meeting goals, we keep hearing these things all the while in the corporate world. People scramble to meet deadlines, individual goals, etc etc. However, I recently realized we tend to lose sight of what is it that we, as a team, want to achieve as the end goal. Understood it's good if everyone focuses on his activities diligently and tries to bring the best out of it, but then one should not lose focus of the end goal of the team and the organization as a whole.

In these rat races of getting more and more, we tend to compromise on the quality. For example, when it comes to innovation, we should understand very clearly that, apart from building ones individual profile, how does an innovation help the organization? We should think beyond our individual benefits. Does the company gets benefited if I get an engineering award but the idea never gets used thereafter? Or, let's say I present a great looking idea, which however is too difficult to implement in a product given to other constraints? We should always consider the end use of whatever Idea we come up with, and analyse carefully if it would make any contribution to the organization as a whole.

As a general side note, our investment in looking what's good for the company will actually come back to us as returns in the longer run. We might find it cool to keep innovating fast and more (read reinventing a slightly better wheel which may never get into the car...) and keep meeting targets n all, but this may prove to hamper our efficiency later on, which eventually means lesser profits to the company, and ultimately lesser growth opportunities in a market that's driven by efficiency today. On the other hand, if we just work towards routine business activities, and in due course get a really good Idea, evaluate it thoroughly if it makes business sense, and then execute upon it, I feel this will pay better returns, even if it means we cannot meet those innovation targets (read numbers...).

In the end, I feel as far as innovation is concerned, what matters most is the quality and not quantity. Of course we always get to learn no matter we gain or lose, but it'd be better if we contemplate and have a clear sight of where we head as a company, for each and every action we take, whether it's a business decision or innovation.

P.S. As learning is a continuous process, the above reflects my state off mind today, and it's very likely that a different learning can change these thoughts, in a different direction.

My strongest beliefs in life

1. The only constant is change
2. Survival of the fittest
3. The Law of Large Numbers
4. Interest of community should be more important for people in a growing community. In a developed community, however, there must be great balance between the interests of family and that of community.

The genesis of Innovation

Innovation comes from the power of a mind that is happy, energetic and enthusiastic - N R Narayana Murthy

Beautiful Lines

The fun is in the journey; destination is just a moment...

Parkinson's Law

Parkinson’s law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”.

Learning the hard way is the best way

You learn most through failures. People who don’t fail are usually those who don’t try

I believe in this too :)

I'm a firm believer that most people who do great things are doing them for the first time - Marc Andreessen

Another One...

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing - Jim Barksdale

A nice quote...

Great markets draw competition. So if you do not have any competition, you're not in a great market

The Story of Life - The Xchange Game

The story of unsuccessful: -

1. Change is the only constant - Everyone realizes it.

2. Change is always unwelcome - Everyone acts it.

The story of successful: -

Just exchange "realizes" and "acts" in the two sentences above :)