Going back to books

Of late I have been preparing for some technical certifications which has become a mandatory deportment for survival(of the fittest). The emphasis is on how colorful your profile looks!! Aaaahhh…Well, back to books after a looooooong gap of 4 years. Can someone get what it means to be back to tech books? It’s so easy to go to sleep after reading a technical book. After every line or two I read , I conveniently take off to a fairy land. That apart, I have realized that the memory chip that is installed in my brain is volatile! It needs a fresh reload of data after every restart! Each time I open the book, everything seems so fresh. The feeling is miserable and depressing, I tell you. Ufff… Believe it or not, I have read the introduction to the subject that I am currently going through for about 10 times, on and on. And I have a problem, unless I get a hang of the introduction I cannot continue to read the other chapters!!! Sounds weird? I remembered mamma would always make me write what we read so that it stayed long. So like a good mamma’s child, I have started typing the programs in the listings. It does take long to finish the chapter but it is working!! Just the act of typing in a program seems to help me remember what I have read about it. I decided to get some Dilbert-type exercise – making my fingers humongous! LOL! I jus gotta see how long I will continue to do this.

Coffee: The first peripheral

Some interesting quotes I happened to come across which I strongly concur with!

An English proverb says, “Behind every successful man, is a woman”. And Stephanie Piro says, “Behind every successful woman is a substantial amount of coffee”. Kudos to Stephanie! How witty! :)

And if in case I don't have my cuppa this is what happens to the computer in my brain:
“Caffeine Allocation Error: COFFEE.SYS Not Found: User startup disabled” ;)

I must confess, I’ll die without my daily dose of caffeine. Inexorably addicted! :D:D:D

DRIFT

How many of us are often asked to DRIFT? I mean, DO It Right The First Time! And this is so much so heard all the time in every other meeting at work, re-iterated and re-emphasized! The idea behind DRIFT is that management wants all of the processes that make up the Just in time philosophy to be done correctly and efficiently so that there are no delays in the production process. Now, as I mulled over this, something infinitely worse hit me. How can one be right the first time? How does one know that he is right? Nothing can be right the first time. If it is then it is assumed and asserted to be! If somebody says that something is right and it can be that means he has done it before. If someone has done it before how can it be the first time when I do it? In that case things become simpler when he guides me to do it right when I do it for the first time. Am I making any sense at all?

Hence, one can do it right some time when he has perfected the art to do so. And as we know, practice makes it! Rather, “guided” practice does it. But at the end of it no one is perfect and nothing is perfect. So where are we headed? What are we striving to achieve? One is bound to make mistakes consciously or otherwise. And we all learn from it which leads to the betterment of something that we are currently doing. It’s just that one must not stop trying to do the right thing. And one has to stop considering it a problem! There is no problem so big and so complicated that there is no solution. Even a no solution could be a solution in itself. You just never know until you have tried. Triumph against the overwhelming odds. Just bounce back and achieve what has to be, without worrying about doing it right the “first time”! That is all there is to it. Take time to realize that “PROGRESS” is better than perfection and keep moving. One step above. Each time. Every time. You just have to discipline yourself to work on achieving it. What do you think? Does drifting against DRIFT make any sense at all?

Bits...

... of a travel in the woods.

First showers.
Wet eyes.
cross roads.
Jigsaw puzzle.
A miscellany of odds and ends.
The bridge.
Time of change.
Road less traveled.
Unending journey.

No hardfeelings

26/11/08. Mumbai terror attacks. The worst that happened to India. And the last thing I can do about this is to pay my heartfelt condolences to all those who lost their loved ones. It was gruesome and a heartless act. Such events are a norm in India. Every other attack (inter or intra) only becomes just another attack. And it would soon become history, and people forget them as if it were just another day. But India needed something to this intensity to awaken! Anyways, having said that, how easy is it to forgive the sinner, forget what happened and move on? Anyone who has been victimized has no middle ground to what he decides to do about it. He either decides to forgive or hold on to the anger/grudge/bitterness.

Life is not fair most of the times. Let the situation be what eva. We always ask, why me? Why is life so unfair to me? Many incidents in life teaches us a good lesson but with a price that of pain. Have we ever been thankful for what happened? For awful lot of people it is difficult to forgive. You end up hearing something like “I haven’t been forgiven. Why should I?”. So, with hardened hearts and stiff lips, they say, “I’ll never forgive”. And the sad thing is that in wishing to send someone to hell they end up sending themselves there as well. Trust me, when you are angry, your big mouth can do a lot of irreparable harm and get you to trouble. Doesn’t that hit us hard and let us take some time off to think? According to the law of karma, what goes around will definitely come around.

Develop the attitude of gratitude. The art of forgiving. Well, I understand when I say this that it’s easier to say than do it. True. But you can’t carry the bitterness all your life. In year’s to come, you’ll only turn to be a potful of venom. Now, none of us wanna be that. Sure? Remember, vengeance is not the solution. It neither can heal you. Well forgiveness is not reconciliation. It is a larger process of which forgiveness is but one part. Forgiving does not mean that you have to let then\m go off the hook legally either. But the energy that keeps the grudge will just drain the strength in you.

The beauty of forgiveness lies in giving it even before you are asked for it. So remember that if anyone has ever hurt you, you don’t find forgiveness, you give it. Forgiveness is the act of untying yourself from thoughts and feelings that bind you to the offense committed against you. And it is purely emotional. YOU have to do it and you can’t be forced to do it. And more often than not, ego, self-esteem et al shall raise their hoods and stop you from doing so. But have you ever realized the sense of satisfaction you get when you do forgive? How much you heal yourself and just everyone and everything around you? You free yourself of your greatest burden: hatred. Care less about how much the other person values your attitude of forgiving. Everything comes with a cost. But a word of caution – do not become a person of whom people can take advantage of. It’s often a notion when you smile back at the person who hurt you is that, you are weak. They take you for granted and just do not mind hurting you again, and again, and again. Just be firm and strong. And yet, forgive and forget. And mind you, no ongoing references to the events of the past. Practice to perfect it. At the most you can do when you are hurt is to do nothing at all. It’s only the strong who can forgive and not the weak! To err is human but to forgive is divine. Be willing to be brave. Brave enough for love.

Oscar Wilde quote: “Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them most”. How do you like that?

At the end, hold to the thought that you too are human and you can be at the receiving end some day. Standing there, to be forgiven. Jus slip into that moment and think about how you would feel if you are denied forgiveness while you are begging for it heart in heart. And when you are truly sorry about just what eva you did, you can even feel like killing yourself. Would you like to be punished? When you think something is not good for you, it just cannot be good for others either. Right?

A message!

Wishing you all a very happy new year!
Click on the image to view full size.