Destiny

Quoting a friend of a friend, Character is Destiny. I heard this being said 2 days ago and it has helped to articulate what has been on my mind for a while.

In the past I have been unable to decide, as to whether there is a pre-programmed life that humans follow, things happen as they are meant to be, or whether man makes his own destiny. After much thought, here is my conclusion.

Analogous to software downloads, you can download the basic version for free. It gives you the basic tools to get around your goal. Similarly, everybody has a basic line set for them, you're gifted with basic tools, but to make it in the big league, to influence significant positive change around you, you have to invest in yourself. That would be buying the upgraded pro versions of the software, learning how to use them and to achieve higher goals.

This investment in yourself involves risk, hard work, calculation and passion. You can get through life just being happy, taking what comes your way (fairly) naturally, getting married, doing a job, having a social life, kids etc. Or you can risk investing in yourself, such as training your body, risking loneliness, studying further to train your mind and finding a path where your goals are not limited by your limited imagination.

Thoughts about failure are wasted thoughts. The higher the risk, the higher the reward, and common knowledge is that the most successful people make so many attempts are various things, that they fail more number of times than they achieve. Yet their total quantum of rewards are much greater than failure. Why? Your failures reward you with learning so much, that you end up making up for your failures with bigger achievements, as long as you don't give up. (these are collected quotes from a lot of people, which make a lot of sense to me now)

In the recent past i've met people who have inspired me greatly. I once again stand at the brink, wondering what to do next. I seek big things, I have the courage, time, passion and intelligence to pull it through, its just time to decide on my niche. World hold on, here I come.

Health

Its important to take care of your physical health. To deprive yourself of unhealthy food ,alcohol, drugs, and to work out to get strong muscles and bones. The future of the world depends on it.

Every human is responsible for procreation, and good habits over the generations can change your gene structure for the better, and create healthier human beings.

There is a reason why the Chinese have good skin, or Jews are academically intelligent people. Its generations of hard work upon themselves. Being irresponsible with oneself if being irresponsible toward evolution.

Release me

Every part of my body screams out to me to leave everything I'm involved in and train to be a dancer day and night. I feel trapped in my body which is incapable of doing what my mind wants it to do. I feel so much energy and no release, its like constantly being trapped in a cage after being given a shot of red bull.

I imagine myself as a contemporary dancer with limitless capabilities,for the body to be a vehicle to express in form what the mind comes up with. Analogous to what a Mariah Carey might feel in voice, a voice that obeys the mind. It's torture to realize that at the age of 26, its not possible to invest 4 years in your body, which has already started showing signs of deterioration.

Dreaming of revelry

Entertainment: To catch one's immediate attention is easy. But to be an eye catcher, and to sustain being in the human mind, there has to be food for thought. Success fundamental hence = psychedelia + intensity of unusual emotions.

The reason why bands like kings of leon, or pink floyd stay evergreen is because they talk about intense, masochistic, sadistic dreamlike desires or state of mind. The reason why psychedelic designs never go out of style is because its a hardcopy image of what goes on in your head when under the influence of chemicals. Everybody who has experienced it loves being in that state, and glimpses of that world in your everyday life, such as in artwork around u lets u escape reality and experience revelry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd_ou5JnKag

Independence weekend experiment.

This past long weekend, I decided to conduct a sociological experiment. I decided to hang out with all sorts of people, in all sorts of unlikely places. I wasnt proactive about picking a diverse set, I just went along with all the invitations that I got.

The result of the experiment is that I've had an overdose of people, and I realized that I enjoy my alone time more than anything else.

There were 2 reasons for me to conduct this experiment. 1 goal is part of an ongoing quest to know many many people in the world, and have them know me as well.Build my network which will come in handy when i'm building my empire in whatever field 2. was to find out how different people think, and be myself with them, my bare basics, and see how they respond to that.

There were 4 distinct groups that I spent time with. In chronological order, the first being my distant relatives in howrah, a remote district in kolkata, who are very typical simple domesticated families, calculating the cost of bus fares vs tram fares and buying sugar in bulk from Big Bazaar to avoid paying extra in off season months. Whats interesting is that these people are not poor, nor miserly, for them saving a penny is just a way of life. They are not extravanagant, its not in their blood.

I thought I would get bored with this lot, as the women are domesticated and would not have much exposure and enough content to talk about. I was pleasantly surprised when I thoroughly enjoyed their company, and laughed the entire time that I spent with them , at their simple and loud jokes about themselves and their growing up years. These are women who were made to leave school to do housework, but can still joke about it and talk about their oddities and weaknesses as simply as talking about the weather.

The second set was a bunch of old school boys (29 odd years old) who did nothing but laugh at each other, making jokes about anything stupid that the other person might have said or done their entire lives. This did not affect me positively or negatively. It was neutral time spent.

The third set was a bunch of 20 - 21 somethings who took me with them to a faraway resort. These kids have travelled around, and having been in this city a few years, lacking a sense of belonging anywhere. This city, which is dominated by multiple layers of "cool" people, these kids were trying to network to fit in a category which seems interesting on the outside. I sensed that they were definitely uncomfortable around me ,and did not have much content to talk about, so they kept quiet most of the time, blaring loud music in the car, trying to fill up spaces in their heads. They enjoyed things like dark narrow alleys and speeding cars, an extremely form of adventure in my opinion. But then again, i'm not the worlds greatest daredevil when there is risk of physical injury.

The fourth set was a diverse set on its own, each with a history but desperately trying to fit in amongst each other. 1 cross dresser gay boy who was the nicest in my opinion, unemployed, fairly rich folks to support him and his antics, he was tactful as he could easily switch from talking about la de dah things with the others, and talking about silly basic things with me. 2nd person : an aspiring model who was mediocre looking, probably the girl in school who always wanted to look beautiful and took to modelling to get some attention to prove a point to herself. 3rd person: rich daddy's boy who was probably dating the model.

This bunch drained me off all my energy. The conversation was redundant, centered around places to party in different cities, talking about extremely expensive things as if they were ragular day to day commodities, and what cool people in the city were upto and where they partied the previous week. I tried many a time to change directions towards lighter things and silly jokes about ourselves, but i was drowned out by the rich daddys boy who insisted only to talk about branded watches and expensive diners. I must mention here that I have nothing against this gentleman in particular, I dont even remember his name.I'm just averse to what he represents.

There was a point at the dinner table, where I could have gagged.

As part of my experiment I had decided to be nice to everybody, and be non judgemental. I could only do the former.I wanted to establish where this kind of nonsensical behaviour sprouted from, and my conclusion was that this rich daddys boy was probably a loser as a teenager, a pampered kid who was a nobody in school. He now hangs out with models and buys them meals/drinks (he got the tab for the whole table this time too) so that they like him, just so he can be seen with the cool people and feel part of them. It made me realize that people who wear brands and flash them around, like our boy here, are people who are insecure, and use these established brands, and the goodness associated with it to make up for what they lack.

He spoke about how he travels to europe very often. People who travel should have exposure, but with the limited scope of conversation that he was capable of, centered around a small set of cool people in the city, I wondered if he had ever really opened his eyes and seen those countries. Spoken to those people and wanted to ever know them. I was tempted to ask him whether his life ever feels empty, or whether he ever gets sleepless nights because of non use of grey cells, whether he knowingly gets used, using his company in return for self gratification and image in the eyes of other morons like him. I refrained from doing so, as it would not have been considered polite dinner conversation.

I realize that there are plenty of people in cities who follow this pattern. It saddens me and I wish that we could go back to our roots, talk about plants and animals, instead of riches and brands, revelling in other peoples' glory.

So now my longing for nature grows stronger. To be away from city folk and explore fish and birds and plants and animals. Understand their sociological patterns and see if their lives are as disgustingly staid as our common rich city folk.

It made me realize that the most worthwhile and educational time during this whole weekend was the few minutes which I spent everyday chatting with my father, as he spoke about the struggle that our countrymen went through, to fight for independence, and how to breed beer eels to feed fish in his ponds, and the non complexity of the taxation system in thailand.

It saddens me to think of the braindead society that our youth makes, in a city which was once known for its intellectualism. I'm left deeply troubled and with a need to escape these crowds to a land full of animals who have no need for show, or with people like my parents who could intellectually stimulate me.

Dexterity of the fingers Versus Dexterity of the mind

Over the past year, I have switched  priorities. One of them being creativity over practice. I used to pride myself over the hours of practice i put in everyday to be able to play the piano according to the prescribed syllabus and foolishly assume myself superior to people who called themselves electronic musicians, without putting in any disciplined hours of work to hone their skills. 

I was stuck up on conventional musical instruments, listening to particular genres, alt rock, country, pop etc. I never gave much importance to electronic music, thinking its fake stuff, created from pre recorded tracks coming out of a macintosh, something any idiot could press buttons and do. 

As is true with any form of pride, it was just my stupidity and ignorance and immaturity to think so. Creating music from a million different kinds of sounds, mixing tibetan chants with spanish guitars and adding in a tabla, and making it sound good is an artform which is far superior to what laymen like I can do, practise for hours and learn up stuff ppl wrote 400 years ago. With the world having become such an easily accessible place, it is now possible to explore sounds from different countries which gives you so much more variety to work with, which possibly even makes this harder. (Public apology at this point to a friend who's skill I undermined)

To be able to spontaneously add the right sounds and build up music like a piece of art, is what the true art of disc jockeying is about, now possible without discs, just with a computer and some mixing software. Its just that easy, but whats hard is to let go of the mind, be crazy enough to be that creative. Far more difficult than being disciplined and trained. 

Marions olives stuffed with tuna

I ate a fish and I liked it

The taste of its fleshy scaleskin

I ate a fish just to try it

I hope my grandma dont mind it

It felt so wrong 

It felt so right

Dont mean I'm non veg tonight

I ate tuna and I liked it

I liked it

(My take on katie perry's song "i kissed a girl", on having eaten olives stuffed with tuna by mistake.I really did think they were peppers.)

I need some inspiration

And its not coming easily

Power Currupts

Speaking not of politicians, but of everyday situations. You talk mean about someone behind their back, because you CAN do it. You boss over someone and make them feel small because you can do it, knowing its wrong, just because you have the power to do it. You talk rudely to your parents or family, because you know you can get away with it. 

If on such microscopic levels power can corrupt us, why do we blame politicians when they get corrupt. 

In corollary, an evolutionary consequence is that the feeling of guilt is slowly being replaced with the fear of being found out. 

Redundant zen

When a problem seems too difficult to solve in a wholistic way, dont give up. Break it down and take it slow. 

1920

I saw this ridiculously scary horror hindi movie called 1920. I'll spare you the story, as it was of no significance, it was the same old girl gets possesed in a gorgeous gothic architectured scary old house. Although, when the climax happened, when the priest came to perform exorcism to the possesed girl, she just got out of bed and ran away like Jack Sparrow in The Pirates of the Caribbean. Exactly how he runs. 

It was so ridiculous, that the spectators at the theatre were as shocked as the poor priest in the movie. Then the priest had to send the not so faithful butler to run after the ghost,as if commanding him to do another cotidiano daily chore. I cant even comment and say that "these modern day concepts" because the movie is called 1920. Gone are the good old days when the possesed just hung around flying 2 feet above her bed. 

Golden rule of baking cake.

While baking a cake,underbaked is always better than overbaked. Anybody would prefer their cake moist rather than too dry. I tried baking yesterday and exceeded the prescribed baking time by 15 min just to be sure that it was done. Bad idea. 

Class 9 Economics Chapter 1

I wonder if the Marginal Utility theorem applies to boyfriends too.

La lengua de las mariposas

El titulo de mi blog fue la pelicula que debimos ver el mes pasado para escribir el ensayo final del curso de verano que hago en Granada.
Ironicamente, no lo he escrito todavia, y no tengo ganas de tampoco, pero escribo el blog en espanol porque he buscando mi nombre in google hace un rato, y he visto que puede ver este blog y mucha informacion para mi. No quiero que la gente puede conocer la informacion tan facilmente y por tanto escribo en una lengua que la mayoria en mi pais no puede entender. Y las mariposas porque yo escrito sobre verguenza y espero que las mariposas tiene verguenza. No tengo razon ,pero creo que si.

Mi viaje a Espana fue el mejor en en mi vida, sin duda. En 1 mes, he aprendido poco espanol pero mucha cosas sobre yo. Tengo capacidad de ser muy alegro y divertir mucho y en 1 mes, mucha paredes que habia construido en mi vida en Bangalore y Kolkata han destrozado. Las paredes que no permiten entrar muchas personas, y muchas experiencias alegras y que no me pueden tener confianza en mi. . Estoy triste que he pasado mucha parte de mi vida en una manera tan aburrido y con arrogancia. Pero en Espana, he aprendo como vivir sin verguenza.
La gente de la pais y tambien la lengua is mas passionado que ingles y yo creo que si conoces la lengua un poco, puedes expresar mas mejor que en ingles. Es un pena que todavia yo pienso en ingles y creo que escribo en una manera muy aburrida. Pero intento mejorar.

No se que si la lengua puede influir la gente o es el contrario. Porque, yo creo que cuando estaba en Granada, estaba mas expresivo y energico y tengo mucha ganas de ir de copas y bailar y conocer mucha gente y tengo mucho mas passion para hacer muchas cosas. Estaba infuir de la gente y la idioma al rededor a mi. Pero en India soy tranquilo. La transicion fue dificil, es claro, pero despues de algunas semanas, soy como antes.

Un amigo me ha dicho que cada cuidad conta una cosa. Por ejemplo Barcelona me conto que tengo que ser mas creativo y ganar mas dinero. En barcelona se habla catalan, una idioma la mezcla de espanol y frances y es mas suave de espanol y porque menos passionado.

Los cuidades del sur me han dicho que tengo que ser mas apasionado un cualquier manera. No se si la gente son intrisicamente apasionado, energico, dramatico y expresivo, o es porque la lengua es como eso.

No quiero este persona que soy yo ahora. No tengo ganas de hacer nada, y creo que si siguiendo ser aburrida y sola el resto de mi vida, voy a sufucar mi ambiciones y energia hasta cuando muera.
En mi pais y en mi cuidad, no tiene mucha posibilidad de conocer mucha gente porque la gente tiene verguenza y amor propio y la infujo de espana, que ha detrozado estos malas vicios ha volvedo, y soy tambien como ellos.

Me encanta mi pais y la sencillez, pero quiero que tiene un poco mas drama en pequena cosas cotidiano.
Tengo un razon para escribir estos cosas sobre verguenza, porque no soy alegro conmigo. Estoy un cobardo y no me gusta que tengo arrogancia. Acabo de hacer una cosa mala.
No puedo escribir que he hecho aqui porque existen paginas de internet donde la gente puede traducir que he escrito!

Serendipity

Using what I was taught in Digital Signal Processing, where the Information content of a signal received, is directly proportional to what is Not expected, I realized and am going to explain why I get stirred more by classical music as compared to commercial music.

Giving a piano players technical point of view, in commercial music it is easy to decipher the bass clef (left hand chords) once you know what scale the piece is played on, and what the treble clef(right hand notes) is.

Now this is applicable obviously to not only pianists, but anybody listening to the music. In layman's terms, in commercial music, subconsciously you sort of know whats coming.The information content is just whats there in the melody, and not in the bass, hence the information content gets reduced to half.The expected part of it stems from those involuntary brain cells which act up sometimes, and what we call instinct.

In classical music, the bass notes are totally unexpected, and they compliment the treble beautifully. Unless you see and hear and play the notes, there’s no way you know what’s supposed to be coming your way.

Whats unexpected and pleasant, catches my attention more than otherwise. Its serendipity. I love what it does to me.

This sudden realization happened while trying to play this piece to myself called Traumerei. Tis lovely.

This is vladimir horowitz's (who i only came to know about through youtube) version of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq7ncjhSqtk

Not so ordinary

Today I accidentally jumped out of my usual energy level and transcended into another level while listening to this young village boy (of grade 5 piano) playing the piano.
I’ve heard a lot of people play, grade 8 students, teachers, performers etc, but have NEVER been as enchanted.

I was sitting at my piano class, trying to finish that theory workbook, feeling silly about it because it was obviously meant for really small kids and yet I made mistakes, when this young boy started practicing his piece ( Fantasia in D minor by Mozart) on the piano. He was utterly depressed because he probably thought that he couldn’t get it right. So while he was fiddling around, his fingers just dwindling on the keys, while waiting for the teacher, grumbling and sulking to himself, I discovered a new found emotion in me. So far I had only read in books how people get mesmerized. It was fantastic , his fingers had magic in them, and he didn’t know it.

My teacher told me later that in her whole musical career she’d only come across 2 such musical people in her life, and one of whom became so arrogant because of praise, that he almost lost his touch. So this poor boy was creating magic with his music, while he was being told that it was all rubbish. Infact he was made to take a walk around the area(birla temple in ballygunge) and come back, to get over his depression and to get some fresh air.

Makes one realize how ordinary we are.

The story of you, the ganges, and I.

Love flows deep in rivers.

So lazy.

I had the laziest day in the history of planet earth today, starting from the tertamezazoic era.Its possible that a few of those dinosaurs were lazier than this.
Its 9 pm and i havent had a bath or washed my face.
Ive watched 2 movies and played 4 games of scrabble.
Thats it.
All done right from this spot on the couch.
I think its possible that my skins gotten fused with the couch material.
Somebody help me out of here.

guilty?

I saw this movie last night called blood diamond. It left me in a sour mood and with a sour taste in my mouth.

Its about the civil war in Sierra Leone which started because diamonds were discovered in this area which both the government and the Rebels (locals) want control over. The Rebels use the revenue from these diamonds to further fund the war, by buying sopisticated arms and training (even underage) locals, hence causing more bloodshed.These diamonds are termed conflict diamonds and they say that this problem has been solved to a large extent by curbing the sales of these conflict diamonds,by certain international governing bodies,but not entirely.

After having watched the movie a lot of people said that "now I never want to buy a diamond" but I wonder if the war started because of the buyers' vanity or whether the war just feeds on it. This sort of a civil war had happened before because of ivory and other things as well, so I cannot help but blame the people in question rather than the diamonds.

And the moment had arrived

I finally quit my job. I did it.

I was subconsciously waiting for a day when I would be extremely happy, and know for sure that its not homesickness or any deeprooted sadness which was causing all this drama in my head and making me want to quit.
So one fine day, when my niece laughed all morning just because she saw me eating toast, and I saw a girl with a wedgie at the food court, I just knew that the moment had arrived. I couldnt be happier, had not laughed so much in a while, and I decided to summon the authorities immediately and tell them to find themselves a replacement for me.
Slept like a baby that night.

People often tell me that I'm going to regret my decision, but as the days pass, my instinct grows stronger and tells me that I made the right move. It may just be plain rebellion but as long as there isnt a doubt in my mind.

I must confess that a couple of fortune tellers and well wishers told me that I shouldnt quit before such and such date, and that did affect my decision. I wholeheartedly went against their advice and it gave me immense pleasure in doing so. I dont wish to undermine their clairvoyance here, its possible that they knew how well reverse psychology would work with me.

I have no clue whats to follow next. I dont even want to clutter my head with options. Its going to be complete vaccuum for the next few months, till sudden inspiration takes over and enlightens me about what should be done next.