The Chronicles of a Happy Life

Ravi has written a very thought-provoking post on forgiving and forgetting.

I completely agree with him. It’s really hard to let go and even when you do, it only takes a moment for something to trigger those awful memories and you are back at square one. And it is impossible to not care, when you are hurt by the people you care about. Of course, one solution could be to not care about people at all, but then that’s no solution.

It does help to understand the reasons behind the actions of the people who hurt you. I think Jeevan Vidya has helped me in this aspect. It was there that I learnt that there is often a mismatch between human intentions and human competence, which basically means that; although, at the core, everybody is good and only has good intentions towards everybody else; sometimes circumstances and misunderstandings lead to one person hurting another. 90% of the time, the person does not know that the other person was hurt. Predictably, the best way to deal with these situations is rationally. Rationalize why things turned out the way you did, what you should do to prevent the occurrence in the future and move on. Put it down to experience. What doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger.

Losing your temper or falling into the cycle of revenge is only going to make things worse in the long run. Burning bridges should be the last resort. It might help to let off the steam in a harmless manner like playing quake (my personal favorite :D), physically tiring yourself or yeah, even blogging!

There has really been a lot written about Google/OSS and Microsoft lately. Both have more than their fair share of passionate fans and equally passionate critics. In IIIT, the debate of which company is better, nay, which company is evil has even acquired the status of a religious debate!

I hang somewhere in between, rather like this guy who really only wants to get his work done, quickly and comfortably. I’ve worked at Novell and at Microsoft and both contain highly talented people working hard to make great software. Sometimes it clicks and sometimes it doesn’t. There is no evil man sitting all alone in a cubicle hatching evil conspiracies in either of them! I love using Firefox (haven’t got around to trying IE-7 yet) and vim editor but WinXP beats any distro of Linux hands down (I’ve tried a lot of them. Having few nifty apps that work is so much better than having a hundred little apps that don’t!) Though most of my projects have been in the Linux environment (courtesy, our fanatically pro-Linux profs), given a choice I would prefer the simplicity and ease of working on a Microsoft platform to the pains of working on Linux anyday.

But I digress. This post was inspired by Vasant’s thought-provoking post on the IT industry. He wonders.. “Should anyone who almost attains an almost commanding presence start to display traits of the dark side. Or is it that they just start getting reviled as the dark side?”.

I think the latter is closer to the truth. Even in real life, the people at the top start getting reviled as they achieve greater success. It happened to Dhirubhai Ambani too. It’s even suspected that Sikhs are the butt of a lot of jokes, simply because they are on average more successful than others (have you ever seen a Sikh beggar?)

Coming back to Google and Microsoft, are they really that different? Wouldn’t the CEO of Google be furious if one of his key employees, a man who really knew a lot about the internals of the company, decided to leave Google for Microsoft? Wouldn’t he too want to bury Ballmer?

Isn’t it infinitely stupid that the media and the anti-Microsoft fanatics have latched on to Ballmer’s choice of words with a fury, claiming that Microsoft is a house of cards about to fall down and that Google is going to kill Microsoft? Microsoft has 60,000 employees. The number of people who have left Microsoft for Google equals 100! I wasn’t able to find the number of people who left Google for Microsoft, but I suspect that it must be close to 100 too. Microsoft has profits of $12.3 billion on revenues of $39.8 billion. In contrast, Google had revenues of only $3.9 billion and profit of 0.4 billion dollars. Microsoft has an array of products unmatched by any other software company. It spends way more on R&D than any other company. Its pace of innovation has slowed (bureaucratic red tape?) in recent years but one must realize that the smartest people in Computer Science work for it. They have faced crisis before and can do it again.

Some more links on the subject:

Mini-Microsoft A blog by a Microsoft employee
Google balances privacy, reach
What Ails Microsoft
Troubling exits at Microsoft

I don’t remember where I read this, but it’s so true that I simply couldn’t keep from publishing it.

To the animal in a cage, is his captor the one behind bars?

We all try to put those we love in cages. We want ‘our people’ to be ours first, and then people. We are willing to gild these cages if necessary.

We all try to put those we know into little boxes. We consciously and unconsciously classify some people as trustworthy, some as dishonest and sometimes without good reason.

These mental cages can be worse than metal cages. They can easily step out because the cage is in our mind, not around them. The cage imprisons only us.

Movie Reviews

Confidence : stupid movie! Watch it only for Rachel Weisz.. but then that’s reason enough :)

The Island : Teen movie!! But the sci-fi story and the sleekness with which they portrayed everything was worth it. Will you spend 5 million dollars and sanction the killing of another human being (without any legal implications) just to live a little longer? I thought about it and came to the conclusion that I would. So would all the people (abt 5) at the mess table to whom I put this question. It’s sad, but it’s true - human beings would really do anything to survive.

City of God : good movie. Watch it if you like movies based on true-life stories. IMDB rating of 8.8!

Constantine : They tried to do something like the Matrix, but they failed miserably. Keanu Reeves looked almost the same. I half expected him to suddenly put on the dark glasses and do his Superman thing! Though, the story just wasn’t deep enough, it was an okay attempt. (I just can’t get enough of these world-behind-a-world types movies like the Matrix, the 13th Floor, Donnie Darko).

Athena

?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla

You are Neo, from “The Matrix.” You
display a perfect fusion of heroism and
compassion.

What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

You are Form 6, Elfin: The Wyld.

“And The Elfin saw the evil and
misjudgement in the world and shot her arrow at
the sky. Bolts of lightning struck the earth
and gave the world balance and
growth.”

Some examples of the Elfin Form are Demeter (Greek)
and Khepry (Egyptian).
The Elfin is associated with the concept of growth
and balance, the number 6, and the element of
water.
Her sign is the half moon.

As a member of Form 6, you are a very balanced
individual. You can easily adapt to most
situations and you may be a good social
chameleon. You aren’t afraid of changes in
your life, but sometimes you evolve too
rapidly, leaving others to think that you are
leaving them behind. Elfin are the best
friends to have because they are open minded.

Which Mythological Form Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

This is for Rama

Who starts this and why? Is this some conspiracy of huge movie corporations? Is this a conspiracy by Google? What is the correct etiquette with regard to this? If someone tags you and you don’t post, is it considered rude? What if you do it after a long time? What if you aren’t a regular blogger anyway? Does that let you off the hook? Is there a no-tagging list you can subscribe to or some logo which you can put on your blog so that noone ever tags you? Is there karma in bloggerdom? Is there karma in real life?

To these, I have no answers.. But here the answers to the questions I’m supposed to answer..

1. Total number of films I own on DVD/video:
A. Zero

2. The last film I bought:
A. Zero

3. The last film I watched:
A. City of God IMDB rating of 8.8. Truly stunning, in every sense of the word.

4. Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me:
A. The Matrix (all of them, of course.. best movie of all time. It’s profound enough to start a religion on)
Fight Club (for the mind-blowing story and idea and awesome acting by Brad Pitt.. and everything else)
Before Sunrise (for the senti-ness)
Before Sunset (same)
Chicago (for the cynicism)

5. Tag five people and have them put this in their blog:
A. five people! I usually don’t get five people to post a two-line comment on my posts!

missing feeling alone in a mass of people
huge crowds on Dadar Stn
IITJEE
failure
fear of failure
struggle for success
desire to win
Uncertainity of direction
dissatisfaction
getting betrayed
feeling loved
the few people I can trust
the many people with high expectations
need for peace and quiet
missing noise
winamp
wmplayer
searching for a movie
chatting on Yahoo
hunting for more things to do
finding no time to do them
Jeevan Vidya
contemplation
introspection
new hopes
higher goals
Microsoft
IIMCAT
finding old friends on orkut
running out of new topics to talk abt
the new crush
regret
blogging
poetry?

Found ‘Lady, hear me tonight’ by Modjo. I used to love that song but weirdly, I remembered that artist’s name as Moby and so all my efforts at Ctrl+Sing at DC++ for it came to naught. (Just remembered a poster for world environment day) Now, if only I could find the song - ‘Tricky, Tricky’ by Lou Bega, life would be heaven!

I got 19/25 in Linear Algebra. I feel so relieved :) Of course, Bunny had taken the course as a PCO and still got 22, the highest in our batch!

I’m sick and tired of friends acting arrogant/irritating/unreasonable and then claiming that they were only joking. There is a time for joking and it is not when a friend seriously needs help. Have I ever ‘jokingly’ refused to help someone, claiming that I needed to comb my hair?! I’m angry at them and angry at myself for getting angry.

This stupid VLSI Algos project is eating up my time. It is too simple to justify the amount of time I’ve already spent on it and that irritates me to no end. There were so many better things that I could do with that time.

Funny, how one gets so many ideas to blog about (I’ve about 12 of them in a .txt file on my desktop) all of a sudden and sometimes there are just none.

Can one fall in love with someone just by reading someone’s blog? I’ve spent the most of last night and all the time since I woke up today, reading a gal’s blog. Found her link on the blog of a friend of a friend (I was completely vella yesterday :D) and I was instantaneously hooked.

The worst part is that I knew her in person. She was in my coaching class (I had many coaching classes with many students in them, so no use trying to guess :P). She even tried to talk to me once, but I kinda snubbed her away. Then I had thought of her as a dumb chick who was wasting my time (yes, she is good-looking but I was an idiot then). It turns out that not only is she not dumb, but she is also a billion times cooler than me. (Wipe that smirk off your face. She must be billion times cooler than most people I know). I guess it’s all karma. Everything that goes around, comes around *sigh*

Obviously, I’m not going to post her link here. Don’t even ask.

Btw, this is the first time that I’ve had a crush on a girl not because of her looks. Am I going insane?