Two Cups and a Butterfly

It is said that, the universe is so interconnected with cause and effect that a flap of the butterfly’s wings can cause an earthquake in San Francisco, or a Tsunami in the Indian Ocean, or a Tornado in Kansas, or probably unite two nations. I don’t know which butterfly’s flap was responsible for making me get into wordpress and blog about some random stuff, get people’s attention, and make them like my blog. But the result of the flap is I have been awarded Two Cups and a Butterfly by my blog friends.

Sometimes you don’t know if you were doing good or bad, when you do something. Only when you see the effect of it, you will truly understand the impact that you have created by doing it.

I have been awarded a butterfly by Reema for awesomeness in blogging. I definitely know that my blog is awesome, because sometimes Reema leaves a comment in my blog that goes like  “Aww…so cute” .

A butterfly is meant to fly, not because it has wings but because only then it will fulfill its true purpose. A Butterfly has wings because it is supposed to fly. So I am letting this butterfly fly off as an award to my fellow bloggers:

Usha at Agelessbonding

A-Kay at Lemon and Chillies

Rads at Tunneling Thru’

Sakhi at her Lagukatha

If you are health conscious, do not worry, this is a “94% Fat free Butter”fly or “I-can’t-believe-it-is-not-butter”fly.

I have also been awarded a Trophy by Reema and another Trophy by Apar. When you participate in a race, it is not possible for you to get both the first and second prize and come home with two cups. But that is a race, and to me Life is not a race. Life shouldn’t be considered a race against time, but it should be considered as something to spend your time. That is probably why I got two Trophies at the same time, which doesn’t say I am the first or second, but just says I am good.

A Cup can hold a drink and a drink makes you feel good, not when you have it alone, but when you share it with a friend across the table. It doesn’t matter if it is Pepsi or Vodka or Orange Juice or Pattai Sarayam (Arrack), what matters is the friend who shares the Joy with you.

So since I have two cups, I would like to share my special drink called the Essence of Life with all of my friends in the blogroll and those who read and comment on my blog and those who just read my blog but don’t comment. Because Life belongs to everyone and Life is one big drink that is shared by everyone.

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When Evil is not chosen

It was going to be a long Thanksgiving weekend here as I was wrapping up my work on Wednesday. Two things happened right during that time that left me disturbed. A last minute work just before the holidays is always frustrating, But a terror attack on Mumbai simply silenced me. I did not know how to react when I saw a flurry of twitter messages tagged #Mumbai. Multiple things were going on in my mind. I closed the day by writing one simple twitter message:

I Pray for Love and Peace.

As Humans, we have the power to think, a brain and the mind to help us with that. We call it our sixth sense. When we are able to separate the good from the evil, we are using our power to think. But we have a choice. We can choose to be evil or we can choose to be good. A normal person chooses to be good most of the times, but we do fall trap to the evil once a while. Because, Evil is so evil that it can delude you and make you feel good temporarily. You will know what I mean if you had watched Spider Man 3.

Mumbai was attacked. Attacked by Humans who chose to be Evil, who thought that killing innocent people will bring them whatever justice they were looking for, who thought it will make them feel good for whatever they were thinking about.

As I was driving to the library on Friday, when it was not yet over, I had several things going on in my sub conscious mind. I was in a constant search for an answer to what was happening in Mumbai – Terrorism.

1. A few men entered the city by a rubber boat and went on their attacking spree. India as a country needs to have better National security, Intelligence and infrastructure to support it. When a fellow tweep (@imtipedia) messaged about Commandos arriving in BEST bus, my reaction was WTF. But here is the reality, Security will keep us safe from the terrorists temporarily. Beefing up security will not kill terrorism entirely though. Terrorism will be there and they will always try to penetrate the security.

2. The idea of attacking the terrorists camps and smoking them out and killing the last known terrorist will also only work temporarily. May be this temporariness will be longer than point 1. But when fresh individuals, whoever they may be, begin to take over from where it was left off, we are back to square one. So this means that killing a 100 terrorists is not going to kill terrorism until you identify and fix the root cause.

3. So Can we kill terrorism by fixing the root cause? What is it? Is terrorism caused due to oppression of one community over the other? Is it politics? Is it the envious neighboring countries? Whatever it may be, can we identify the root cause and fix that? Terrorists are not born, they are humans who are converted into being so. So can we fix the problem by looking at their motive? This will be very tedious and it is probably something that can only be done alongside 1 and 2. But even if we fix the root cause, as soon as a new motive/reason begins to happen, terrorism would be born again with a new set of individuals willing to take up the evil side for new reasons.

My solutions were all temporary, but they have to be done.

I reached the library and I dropped what I had borrowed. But I had a choice, I could have been evil and stolen the borrowed materials and hacked into the library system, update it as though I have returned it. But I didn’t, I simply dropped the borrowed materials and left. Why? I chose to be good and Why? I didn’t know why I did that, But I did find the answer I was looking for. It was already said long back by a Tamil Poet named Pattukottai Kalyanasundaram:

திருடனாய் பார்த்து திருந்தாவிட்டால் திருட்டை ஒழிக்க முடியாது.

It means “Only if a thief becomes good and stops stealing, Theft would be eradicated”. Only when a terrorist chooses to be a good person and lets go of the intentions to be on the evil side, Terrorism will be completely eradicated from the face of our planet. This is it, this was the only perfect solution that I could think of and it is completely in one’s own hands, which is every single person on this planet including the Terrorists.

Every single person in this world can think of 2 kinds of possibilities for everything – Good Ones and Bad Ones. If every single person chooses only the Good possibility every single time, Good will win over the Evil, not by a War, not with blood shed, but by simply not choosing the Evil.

When Evil is not chosen, Good need not fight Evil. There will be Love and Peace forever.

Update: I think I didn’t convey my intended meaning properly. From this post, I say that the first 3 points – Security, Attacking the camps, Fixing root cause will all have to be done, in order to save ourselves from the current set of terrorists. But if we want to prevent terrorism from happening in future, we have to choose the last solution that i have shown. Choose good over evil every time. It is hard to explain that, but I am sure you will be able to judge what I really mean by that. I apologize if my point didn’t come out the way I wanted.

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An Opinion on God

Everyone has an opinion on God. Everyone who has a blog, at some point tends to write their own opinion about the being called God. A post at Paul’s blog made me write my opinion on what I think about the phenomenon of God. I am posting my idea of God here.

God has been equated to a super natural being so far by Humans (including Atheists, because Atheists use the God in the same meaning as theists, for argument).

If at all there is a being called God, and if at all the universe is created by God, there was no intelligent design behind it. God probably did a one time random work of art called the universe or a river of multiple universes and probably stands back and enjoys the work of art. It is like a painter making a unique painting, standing back and enjoying it for as long as he/she likes. The painter is not a God here, he is an artist who splashed the colors and whatever happens later he doesn’t interfere with it. He doesn’t sit down to alter the finished painting, but he rather moves on to the next. A Random work of art can also happen by accident. When you accidentally spill a plate of pasta on the floor, it can look like an art. My Tamil readers will be able to relate this to a scene in the movie – “Anbe Sivam”(which means Love is God). So God might have ended up creating the Universe while he/she dropped his/her lunch on the floor. This can only mean that the existence or non-existence of God doesn’t matter to our own existence.

Imagining this or Accepting this as a fact or trying to prove it right/wrong does not matter.

Because whenever we try to prove it either way, we only end up in an argument and cause division among ourselves. Whatever thoughts we have, we shouldn’t force it on others. This means that you do not have to take whatever I say, You are free to have your own opinion and I will not sit and argue with it. My friend who had read J.Krishnamurthi, used to say the same thing. Not forcing one’s opinion on others is also a principle of Zen.

What matters is we are intelligent beings born out of the universe like how a flower or fruit blooms out of a plant. We are part of this work of art and that is the connection that needs to be realized between us and the Universe we live in. We certainly did not jump out of nowhere into this Universe. Since we belong to this work of art, to us there is no relevant external divinity. The Universe itself is God(You have to change the definition of God here) and since we are born out of it and connected to it, we have God in ourselves. I have another post that will illustrate this. It is an idea that I read in a book.

Due to this reason, I really do not like to describe the term God with the dictionary meaning of “God being an Omnipotent being”. These are all not entirely my thoughts. They are just some thoughts read, understood and inferred from few books and websites. I do not claim to know everything on the topic and I do not mean to say I am completely right. I keep an open mind to accept new thoughts and correct myself once a while. I also do not believe in standing one way or another and arguing. This doesn’t make me an agnostic either. I could use a new category to describe myself, but I am really not interested in forming another new school of thought, because any form of cult only separates us from each other, than unite us.

Random Access Memories

Do not worry, this is not a highly technical article on RAMs and their size and bus speed (Which is not the speed of bus number 23c or 47A). It is a Tag on memories from Usha at Agelessbonding.

Memory has always fascinated me. A Human brain can hold so much information that no discounted online retail store’s Tera Byte hard disks can hold. Yet sometimes it is hard to remember what you ate yesterday for lunch. We tend to remember things in the order of significance to ourselves and those that are important to us. I still remember my first bicycle that I used to go around Madurai but I may or may not remember by friend’s first bicycle. So here goes the tag:

MY OLDEST MEMORY:

I remember my Kindergarten days. It was a small home based school by the street corner of our house. My Paternal Grandma used to take me to that school everyday and she would bring me home for lunch. I remember the summer days when I used to have Mangoes with lunch. There was a test that we were taking once and I was using a pencil to write. I pressed the pencil so hard that the lead broke and I was trying to write with the small left over lead really hard. I have no idea how I did in that test and how many marks I scored.

TEN YEARS AGO:

Warning: Alcohol consumption is injurious to health.

I was in my Final year of College. I had a Job in hand from the campus interview and this was when I had tasted my first beer. It was awful, I had to brush my teeth to get rid of the stink from my mouth. We used to go for treats every time one of our friends were selected in a Job interview. When the cash flow is high we used to go to the Pub at Residency inn (Tinto it is called I think) and when the cash flow is really low, we would go to a local wine shop called Om Sakthi Wines and have fun at the Besant Nagar Beach. Me and my best friend didn’t drink. We kept accounts and gobbled up the side dishes.

MY FIRST THOUGHT IN THE MORNING:

Thank God it’s Friday

IF YOU BUILT A TIME CAPSULE WHAT WOULD IT CONTAIN:

iMac, iPod, Universal Power adapter and Some amount of Hope that where I go, there will be an Internet Connection and my iMac will not be too outdated.

THIS YEAR:

It has been a hectic year so far, but I have enjoyed every bit of it with my family.

14 YEARS FROM NOW:

I would be about 44 years old and I don’t care where I would be or What I would work on or How much I would be earning, but as long as I lead a simple peaceful life with my family, that is all I need.

Update: In a memory tag, I forgot to tag at the end of the post. I will leave it open for anyone to take it. I am not tagging any one in particular yet I don’t mean to tag every one. You take the tag if you like.

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“Tag”

I wrote the title Tag in Quotations to denote that this is a Quote Tag. I was tagged by Sandeep to list 5 favourite quotes of mine.

I come across a lot of quotes everyday and most of them are brilliant. So it is really hard to pick just the 5 best out of it and chances are you may know all of them and you would simply comment on it saying I like #3 the best.

So I set on a quest to find new quotes from great minds of the world. I posed them a simple quote of my own and they came up with answers that completes the quote appropriately.

BILL GATES:

Me: “Life is like typing a password, you will not know if it is right until you finish typing.”

Bill Gates: “You will have to press ctrl-alt-del to type and only after you finish typing, you can press the start button.”

WARREN BUFFET:

Me: “Economy is like a cycle tyre. It takes a lot of effort to inflate it with a hand pump, but takes only one nail to puncture it!”

Warren Buffet: “One should nail Economic Inflation, Even if you want to buy a Cycle tyre”.

JERRY SEINFELD:

Me: “Genius is one who can make millions with nothing.”

Jerry Seinfeld: “Genius is one who does nothing with millions and makes Billions.”

MAHATMA GANDHI:

Me: “Experience is like a Haircut Coupon that you get after Shaving your head.”

Mahatma Gandhi: “Experience has to be shared, So it doesn’t go wasted.”

SACHIN TENDULKAR:

Me: “When the going gets tough, the tough gets going and then the going gets tougher!”

Sachin: “You become Tougher from Tough only when you keep going.”

YOURS TRULY:

Someone held a T-shirt in front of me and I was too tempted to Complete it:

T-Shirt: “I was a born genius, Education ruined me.”

Me: “I then gave birth to another genius and now I am planning to ruin her.”

HINDU TEMPLE PRIEST in US:

Finally I stumbled upon a local Hindu Temple Priest (If you are at the Temple, Stumbling upon the priest is 100% likely to happen) and he urged me to ask him a quote so he can try to complete it.

Me: “Even Grass can be a weapon for the Brave” (I just repeated an old Tamil saying in English)

Hindu Temple Priest in US: “Even Eyebrow tweezers can be used to pull the Oil Lamp’s wick.”

I bow to his out of the box innovative thinking and tag the following Five Men, (Should I call it the “Five Man Army”).

Amit, Arvind, Praveen, Rambodoc, Sharad.

Kuyirkey Tag

Sharad , writer of twisty short stories, tagged me to write about 6 Quirky things I have done, and I start off the quirky things by spelling the word Quirky as Kuyirkey. So here goes six:

1. Do you know the biscuit Milk Bikis? As a Kid, I used to eat them artfully. I chew off the outer boundary first and then slowly nibble the center portion to get only the word “Britannia”. I then chew off one letter at a time and giggle.

2. As a kid I used to be the transporter of stones in the street. I walk from my home to grandma’s in the next street and I take a stone along with me by kicking it all the way. I felt like I was supposed to help the stone to go from my home to my Grandma’s.

3. I was once asked to perform something impromptu at school. While every one tried their hand at dancing, singing and story telling, me being a fan of Bruce lee I did the Enter the dragon stunt bit. I got up on the desk did some ooh aah with a fierce angry face and jumped off the desk with a wild angry shout and kick like Bruce lee. Detailed Description is here.

4. I once had a crush on a senior girl who was compering a function that day. I was listening to her talk in the auditorium and she was gorgeous in her saree. I don’t know what went through my head but I took a rose with me and went to talk to her after she came off stage. She refused to even talk to me looking at the rose I was holding and her body guard (a female friend who is big and ugly) shooed me away. I might have been punched that day.

5. In a college function, I once made a paper arrow, got up boldly and shot it right at a hot senior girl looking at her in the eyes. She shot it back at me and I saw her laughing when I turned back.

6. The way I am going to tag others for this “Quirky Tag”.

I tag 6 Women in my blogroll, Muhaahahaahaa (Evil Laugh!). If you have already done this tag you can skip it. If you are not interested you can skip it. Here are the victims – Usha, Apar, Aparna Gonibeed, Nita, Rads, Shivya

Blog Action Day – Poverty

Man invented money for trade. He exchanged goods for money. He defined prosperity in terms of money. He who had more money was the richest of the rich. But he failed to set an upper limit for the amount of money. Mathematically it is possible for anyone to own an infinite amount of money.

But nature’s rule is, for everything there has to be an opposite. An Anti substance or an Anti-matter has to exist for a particular thing in nature. A simple example is Man and Woman. In Science, people say there is Matter with Positive mass and Anti-matter with an equal negative mass.

So as human went after seeking more and more wealth, acquiring it faster than they should, they didn’t realize what they were leaving behind. They were leaving behind the folks who do not have all the opportunities in the world, who are unfortunate by birth or by situation.

Is it their fault that they didn’t go to school or college?

Is it their fault that they are suddenly not able to afford food due to inflation caused by a heated economy?

On Blog Action Day, I am not going to speak at length on the topic of Poverty as we probably know a lot about it already. I am here to throw 2 main points that I think is very key to eradicate Poverty.

1. Education. Without this no one can be competitive. The difference between the people who are well off and the ones who are not is the opportunity to learn. Education is not a material that is obtained using money but with a thirst for Knowledge. Hence, My ultimate dream is Free education for all. I feel it is every one’s birthright to get free education to give every one a fair chance in life.

2. A Steady Economic Growth. We need Growth to create good jobs and wealth. But it has to be steady. Growth has to be natural and when Growth goes off in a tangent not coinciding with nature you fall off the cliff, the bubble bursts, the trouble deepens.

How I ate another Orange

It is my habit like most people to have a small snack in the evening, after coming back from the office. I have anything from Juicy fruits to Junk food. So on one evening this is the conversation I had with my wife to try and get some Junk food as snack.

Me: Honey, Can I have some snack to eat?

Wife: Sure, How about an Orange?

Me: No, Do you have anything else?

Wife: Sure, I have another Orange!

And that’s how I ate another Orange!

The Orange was juicy fresh and delicious. Do you know what else is? an Award from a fellow blogger friend. Few good words from someone who interacts with you in the blogosphere – Brillante Weblog, is definitely a Juicy fresh and delicious experience. Apar at Headtrip, a lovely and expressive writer, has awarded me with the Brillante Weblog award and I am very much excited about that. Thank you, Apar! It means a lot to me coming from you. I am not sure if I am worthy of the award but it encourages me to write even more. I would also like to take this chance to thank all my readers who have been giving great comments on the posts that I have made. Readers and awards such as this are the lifeline of blogs. Thank you so much for being a part of 18,000 RPM.

Now, I will be the good samaritan and distribute this award to some of the best bloggers I have known.

Anshul at Brainstuck – His cartoons are simple, effective, zen like, funny and thought provoking. I wake up to a daily dose of his cartoons almost everyday. (i.e., if he blogs daily and if I am conscious at 7AM daily).

Maxdavinci at Dappan Koothu – This man is innovative in his blog posts. He talks to Gods via Baba Bangali and questions them like Karan Thapar. He watches every Bollywood movie and alerts the entire human race to avoid the bad ones. I mean he is practically a messenger of Human Rights!

Shivya at The Shooting star – She is a delightful writer of her life experiences, from bungee jumping to F1. I can proudly say that I know someone who has seen the First ever Singapore Formula 1 grand prix under flood lights.

Sriniani – He is a very informative blogger and one of the first few who appreciated my efforts here. I just wish he blogs more often than he does, but he deserves the award for the way he brings out rare contents even if it is less frequent.

Twisted DNA – This man brings out the normal life around us in a very hilarious way. His replies to comments are very interesting and funny, and will make you revisit his blog just for that. I liked that so much, I am replying the same way to the comments in my blog. Beware of stomach cramps due to extreme hilarity.

As I always say, all the folks on my blogroll deserve an award for their brilliance and they are there in my blogroll just for that reason. Keep up the great work folks.

Let the spirit of blogging live for ever.

Roman-Tic-Tac

I have been tagged by Vishesh to answer a few romantic questions … sorry … to give some romantic answers to question … let me try again – to answer a few questions related to Romance. First of all I wanted to mislead every one by titling it as “Roman-Tic-Tac” so that people will start reading this post thinking that it is about a Roman Mouth Freshener called Tic Tac, but it is just really a twisted way of saying Romantic Tag. In any case if my answers are boring, you will atleast have the satisfaction of reading a “(mouth) refreshing” title!

So here goes the Tag, I will try to keep it simple:

RULE #1 People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blogs and replace any question that they dislike with a new question formulated by themselves.

RULE #2 Tag 6 people to do this quiz and they cannot refuse. These people must state who they were tagged by, cannot tag the person whom they were tagged by, and must continue this game by sending it to other people.

So here are the questions:-

1)If your lover betrayed you, what will your reaction be?

Honestly, I will be heartbroken and would try to let her go her way if that is where her happiness is.

2) If you can have a dream to come true, what would it be?

To be in peace with myself and the world.

3)What do you love the most in your lover?

Indivdualilty.

4)What would you do with a billion dollars?

Spend 10% Save 40% Donate 50%

5)Will you fall in love with your best friend?

I have married, fallen in love and made her my best friend in that order.

6) Which is more blessed, loving someone or being loved by someone?

By loving someone you make the other person happy, which will make you happy and hence that is more blessed.

7) How long do you intend to wait for someone you really love?

In what unit of time – hour, days, years? this question is ambiguous!

8) If the person you secretly like is already attached, what would you do?

Another ambiguous question, attached to what? a leech? Whatever it is I will have to find out why and how it got attached.

9) If you like to act with someone, who will it be? Your gf/bf or an actress/actor?

Tom Hanks, Madeline Stove, Rajinikanth, Nayanthara – Yes, I am gonna get thrashed by my wife for saying Nayanthara.

10) What takes you down the fastest?

Anger.

11) How would you see yourself in ten years’ time?

Same way as now, with my eyes!

12) What’s your fear?

Fear of running out of ideas for blog posts and keep writing tags!

13) What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?

A Good Thinker.

14) Would you rather be single and rich or married but poor?

Married but poor. I can always earn and become rich.

15)What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?

Turn off alarm clock and get up carefully so i don’t wake up the daughter and wife.

16) Would you give it all in a relationship?

Why do you need to give? There is no question of giving, The sense of belonging automatically happens.

17) If you fall in love with two people simultaneously, who would you pick?

Logically it is not possible to fall in love with two people.

18)Would you forgive and forget, no matter how horrible a thing that special someone has done?

I usually take some time to forgive and forget. Something like an hour or two, but yeah after that I am fine!

19)If you get to go back in time and fall in love all over again, would it still be with the same person?

Definitely Yes!

20) List 6 people to tag:

Gandhi, Lincoln, Alexander Graham Bell, Thirumalai Naicker, Elvis Presley, R.K. Narayan.

Muhaahahahaahaaa … I am the Terminator of tags. I am grounding this tag right here. But honestly, I don’t think I have anyone left in my blogroll who would do this tag as they have already been tagged by others. If you feel it is interesting to answer these questions, please feel free to do the tag. I am not going to pin point it to someone.

Now, I’ve got another tag to do from Aparna, which I will be posting tomorrow.

Two more blogs and an Award

When you start a blog wanting to write personal opinions on stuff, it is possible that you might soon feel like writing about a lot of news that you read or a lot of blog posts that you come across. As a result, your blog flavour might sometime suffer and take a detour whenever you make an impulsive writing. So, In order to keep my distraction away and separate the impulsive writings out, I have spawned 2 news sister blogs for Maduraiveeran.

A Blog for Blogs:

Bloggers in my blogroll come up with great posts everytime. But sometimes, they go over the board and come up with simply brilliant ones. This blog is to bookmark all those special posts, so I can return anytime later to read and ponder.

A Blog for News:

A lot of times I come across news that I itch to write about but cannot write more than a few lines. I wanted to separate these kind of posts out and called this new blog as Maduraiveeran Times. This way the main blog is not crowded.

Do check them out when you get a chance.

Now comes the award, the award for being an Honest Blogger, and my first ever in the blogosphere. I have to pat on the back of whoever invented this way of bloggers awarding fellow bloggers, because this is simply brilliant and fosters a good community based relationship.

Vishesh awarded me with the Honest Blogger award and honestly I feel honored for receiving the award from someone who is a great thinker. Reema also awarded me with the same Honesh blogger award. I sure have to be one hell of an Honest blogger, to be awarded twice. I feel like eating a delicious Double mango Ice cream in Summer. Thank you so much Vishesh and Reema, I don’t know if I deserve this award honestly, but I am accepting it wholeheartedly. I would like to thank all my readers, whose comments, appreciations and encouragement inspired me to write well. This blog’s heart stays with you and this blog will not function without the heart.

I would like to pass on this award to the following folks who have a tremendous blog themselves.

Usha at Agelessbonding – When it comes to being honest, age doesn’t matter. Her flow of writing everyday events in life is very captivating.

Amit at Mashed Musings – His movie reviews are very interesting. He has a creative way of narrating Personal/Global incidents.

Anniyan at Indiapavan – His thoughts are portrayed well in his posts in a simple way. He is no stranger to writing honestly, yet he calls himself Anniyan (meaning: The Stranger).

Aparna at WTML – She has fascinating dreams and thoughts and expresses them beautifully.

Rahul at Mypaper – He is multi talented. He writes well, sings well and does good mimcry. His podcasts are interesting and I am waiting to hear more from him.

Rambodoc the word Twister – The Tornadoes in the Kansas and Oklahoma is a joke compared to the Twists of words that Rambodoc can do. Beware of Stomach cramps due to extreme hilarity.

Above all, they are very honest about what they write.

All the other bloggers in my blogroll would deserve this award too, but to keep the essence of Blog Awarding intact I had to pick only a few. I love all the blogs that I have in my blogroll and they are there in a dedicated page simply for that reason. It is like whenever I am writing a comment on their blog post, I am appreciating what they write and I am implying an award right there.

Blogging is one of the best things that has happened in my life. Let the spirit of blogging live forever.

Nano, Robo, Busy

A Haiku for the new iPod Nano – Nanochromatic.

slim, shiny colors,

comes In Eight and Sixteen Gig,

nanochromatic!

Coming soon: Imaginary Climax of Robo (Endhiran). Read the first half of the story here.

I am on a training all week this week and hence I am sorry that I couldn’t read a lot of my blogs from the blogroll. I will be in full speed from next week. Until then, Please hang in there my fellow bloggers.

In Memory of 911

A Haiku in memory of the victims of 911. I hope everyone finds peace.

Buildings fall some day,
People die day after day,
Freedom lives forever!

Sometime back I had posted that the fallen twin towers (World Trade Center) will be rising like a Phoenix as Freedom towers. Do check it out!

Filling Medical Questionnaire

To fill a Medical questionnaire one needs courage. Wait, not courage, you need intelligence, Super human that is, and a lot of patience. Atleast the questionnaire that I got to fill for my Annual checkup.

Name: Are you sure you need my name again? Because I just filled it 10 times on the registration form and printed my name under 15 signatures on privacy notices.

After the name, the form goes on with trivial information like DOB, Today’s date (I will gift you a calendar so you can see today’s date for yourself everyday), place of birth and Reason for visit (Duh!), all of this that was already mentioned in the previous registration/insurance forms.

Family History: Has any blood relative had the following: (Circle if yes)

Mental Illness, Cancer, Diabetes, Stroke, High Cholesterol – Nope none of these even remotely match the word “yes” or even abbreviate to “yes”, So I am not circling them.

Social History: And under this comes the occupation. Are you trying to insult me? You want me to say that of all the great things on earth like Mountaineering, Rafting, Photography, Scientists, I am a mere Software Engineer as Occupation when it comes to my Social History? I understand you are enjoying the peak of your career as a doctor but is this your way of asking your patients to fill their profession and calling it a Social History, to have a sarcastic chuckle? Why wasn’t this called Employment history?

Then comes a blunt question: Are you (circle): Single Married Divorced Widowed.

I am not Circle, I am not square, I am an irregular shaped humanoid. Now what do you want me to do with the other 4 words?

Do you smoke? Yes No. I answered No but it went on to ask How much? and I am left to wonder how to answer How much I don’t smoke!

Exercise Program: Walking around the apartment to get to important places like Bathroom, Fridge, Couch. And as a software engineer I haven’t written any “Program” for Exercise.

List all Medication allergies: I don’t like medicines. They leave a bitter taste in my tongue, unless it tastes good like Benadryl. So you can take it that I am allergic to all medicines.

Surgical History: Nope, I haven’t conducted or performed any surgery on anyone, not even as a 17 year old trying to enter Guinness record, and not even insects or frogs, I was a Computer science major.

Non Surgical History: List all hospitalization without Surgery – Let me check the yellow book and see if there are any hospitals without Surgery department and then get back to you on it.

Sometimes a seemingly trivial but a necessary questionnaire can leave you wondering “WTF”, not just a medical form but it can apply elsewhere too. At somepoint we must all have been Vogons, why on earth otherwise we have to fill form after forms for every single thing that needs to be done.

Like Munnabhai said, “Aadmi martha hai, thab form bharna jaroori hai kya?” (When a man is dying, is it necessary for him to fill the form?).

Full Moon Haiku

What a sight,

Beautiful and Bright,

Full Moon Night!

I took this picture last week during the Full moon night and I thought I could try my head and hand on haiku. This is my first and I am not sure if I insulted Haiku enough.

I don’t think I am a poetry material and especially not with Haikuing, what with all that embedding of tons of wisdom in 3 lines. But I am going to keep trying until you scream stoppppppp! So why don’t you take another closer look of the moon to help attempting to forget my poem or perhaps numb the pain.

Haiku is a short 3 line poetry which can convey profound meaning in just a few words similar to Thirukkural or Doha. The 3 lines will have 3-5-3 syllables in them when you pronounce. I love this form of the poetry for its simplicity and depth.

Finding Oxygen

Nemo: Dad, let me go! I am not a baby anymore. I am ready to go on my own.

Marlin: Son, Please don’t go. It is dangerous out there. Please listen to me.

Nemo: Is it the sharks? I am not afraid of them, in fact I have befriended a bunch of vegetarian sharks.

Marlin: It is not the Sharks son. In fact, the Sharks are in danger too.

Nemo: Is it the Jelly fish? I know how to go in and out of a Jelly fish mesh. Please let me go.

Marlin: I don’t know if Jelly fish will be spared either.

Nemo: What is it dad? Why are you obsessed with me staying with you all the time. Why can’t you let me go on my own and explore the world. Is it the divers? Are you afraid they will catch me and I will end up in Sydney again?

Marlin: If you are caught, I can find you back son. I did it once, I can do it again.

Nemo: What is it then?

Marvin: It is the Oxygen. We are losing it, our habitat is being depleted of oxygen, by the supreme most intelligent beings in this world. You think your mother died protecting you from the shark? She was alive after the fight. But she died because there was not enough oxygen for her to recover.

Nemo’s face turns sad.

Nemo: So we will all die someday of no oxygen?

Marlin: I don’t know son. Let’s keep up our faith and hope that the Humans will spare our lives someday.

Slightly Related Post: Sea is Earth’s tears.