Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Just a passing thought

Who you let in can change your life
- Tagline from the movie 'Being Cyrus'

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Love:Its all about sharing & giving


'Love' is one of those emotions which is very hard to express in words, I am sure many of you would agree with that. 'Love' is something which is found in every being & also intrinsic. Love can be observed in most of our actions & at any given point we are participating in things that we love. I could be conversing with a person; going for a trek in the wilderness; watching a favorite sport / program on Discovery Channel; writing a post; freezing a moment through my camera; listening to my favorite song; sketching a portrait; doing my routine job; cooking a dish; watering plants; hanging around with friends & guzzling beer; I could go on listing many such activities which I love doing. One thing that is common in every action I do would be the emotion called Love. I am passionate about them and have always given my best in everything. I hope most of them who have known me well agree with that ;)

The emotion remains the same when you love a person, you are passionate about them and willing to share & give anything to your beloved. The popular saying 'Opposites attract', is definitely true in some instances, but, that isn’t the case with me. Let me explain why I believe in commonality & why it goes well with me. Since, I come from an Electronics & Communications background, I would like to borrow some concepts from there. When two people share many common interests between them, then there would be less 'Impedance'. Also, achieving a near zero 'Impedance Matching' state is easier with those who share common traits when compared those who have diverse traits. Impedance matching (also called reflectionless matching) is for minimizing reflections and maximizing power transfer over a large bandwidth. When we apply the same concept between people who share common traits/interests, I believe there would be minimal conflicts & maximum exchange of 'Love' between them. I am not sure how many of you agree with that, but I would love to spend my life with a person who shares some of the common traits or interests that I have.

Just take a minute & try to remember all your close friends & analyze their traits/interests; I am sure you wouldn't be surprised to find many of them sharing the same traits/interests as that of yours. So, it makes much sense that when you share something common with the other, you also tend to give more than you receive - that’s one of the attribute of 'Love'.

Nita happened to tag me on this one a fortnight ago & I know I am late in responding to that tag. I had many things going @ that particular passage of time & I needed sometime to get over them. Now here goes the list of the traits of my dream partner.

  1. Honesty - I feel by being honest to 'Self', a person would be truthful to the other as well.
  2. Communication - I value this the most and feel in any relationship communication is the key trait. Sometimes it could prove costly on the relationship if either of them fail to communicate.
  3. Acceptance - Accepting people the way they are and being open-minded to others thoughts & feelings is something I believe in.
  4. Listening - Being a sound listener, as this helps a person give a sound feedback.
  5. Maturity - Maturity comes with age, experience & learning.
  6. Learning - I feel a person who stops learning, stops growing - spiritually, mentally & physically. I like people who are eager many subjects
  7. Independent – Should be capable of handling/dealing with situations or incidents independently & making the decisions.
  8. Social Being - Be a free spirited individual who moves around without much fuss about things.
  9. Adventurous - I am an outdoor person, who would love to travel & visit as many places as possible in my life time. I expect the same kind of enthusiasm from the other.
  10. Organized - I like people who are organized.
BTW I happened to meet (virtually) someone recently who shares many of these traits; unfortunately I am 6 months late in knowing her, as she is currently seeing someone else. It's the song “She's The One” by Robbie Williams that comes to mind when I think about her.

'Life with Love is a life of involvement, commitment & participation. Life no longer remains plain, it becomes a Celebration!'


P.S: Everything expressed on this post is only my perspective on the subject 'Love'; if someone feels that it’s borrowed or plagiarized I give a DAMN.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Bangalore Metro:Is it ever gonna materialize?


'Bangalore Metro' Proposed Plan

Today morning when I read this article on Times Of India, was again dissapointed. I really don't understand this government, which intially made all the right noises, now seems to be changing their tunes in implementing the 'Bangalore Metro' project. Everyone knows the state of city's infrastructre, which has been neglected by many governments. Everytime someone raises their voice on the infrastructre, they pass the blame on IT industry for the rapid growth. I hope this government which has the right outlook & mindset towards solving the city's infrastructre hurdles, starts delivering apart from making the noise.


Last week I happened to meet couple of college buddies, one of them had returned from Delhi & was describing his travel experience on Delhi Metro. Just one ride on 'Delhi Metro' has smitten him, he feels that the implementation of 'Delhi Metro' is truly world-class & is very efficient w.r.t time.


I feel by going for 'Bangalore Metro', atleast the commuting problems in the city could be resolved & the government can spend more time in sovling other issues. I hope 'Bangalore Metro' doesn't suffer the same fate as that of 'Bangalore International Airport' which took almost 13 years for the project to take off. Well I am not exaggerating the number of years, its true.

Here is an extract from an article on Swiss Info, "Brunner, who has been in India for four years, speaks of having to cut much red tape with the authorities at central government and state level to bring movement in a project conceived back in 1993." Read more.

Logo of Bangalore Metro: 'Namma Metro'

Here is an extract from The Hindu," The logo in green and purple has the catchword "Namma Metro" and it represents the ambition of making the transport service dear to everyone, it was explained."

"The green in the logo represents the garden city while the purple represents technology and modernity while being easy to remember." Read more.

News Source: Times of India | The Hindu | Swiss Info
Images Courtesy: From a mail forward.

Life @ Googleplex

I happened to be browsing through the posts of 'The Unofficial Google Weblog' today morning & found this post. Last month one of my friend mailed me set of photos @ Googleplex & I tried forwarding them to few friends, unfortunately they never got the pictures attached with the mail. So, here is another chance for all those who haven't had the chance to peek into the life @ Googleplex. E Pheterson has posted few pictures on Flickr, titled 'Google Spy Photos'.


Take the Googleplex Tour (Click on the image below)
goog

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Greatest ODI: Australia Vs South Africa

I am very happy to have witnessed one of the greatest games in One Day International history today. I am not sure whether such a kind of game would ever be repeated between any two teams. Both the teams have put the greatest show in Cricketing History, by playing some decent attacking game. I feel South Africa very much deserved the victory for the kind of chase & gameplan, to achieve this mamooth total of 434-4 set by the Aussies in 50 overs. South Africans with their team effort scored 438-9 in 49.5 ovres to win the Standard Bank Series 3-2. South-Africans have come close on two occasions to win the World Cup, but they lost in the Semi-finals stages due to weird cricket practices. I feel this victory is one of the greatest in the history of the game & they don't have to win a world cup to prove their success.

Many records have been broken in this match & I shall update this post 2mrw on the same.

Update: Tonnes of runs @ the Wanderers

Source:Rediff.com

Sports Unlimited!

If you have noticed my blog offlate, two of my recent posts has been on Champions League matches. Well, that's because I am sports fanatic & recently I have been catching a lot of live! action on the tube; I watch different sports & here is the order in which I love them.
  1. Soccer - EPL[English Premier League], Champions League, Italian Serie.
  2. F1 - Formula 1
  3. Cricket - ODIs [One Day International]
  4. Tennis - All GrandSlams
  5. Basketball - NBA
  6. Rugby - Six Nations
  7. Snooker / 9-Ball Game
Now here are some of my favorite teams & players in the above sports.

  • Soccer - World Cup-2006: Brazil, England, Argentina; EPL: Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool; Champions League-2006: Arsenal, Barcelona, AC Milan, Juventus; Italian Serie: AC Milan, Juventus;
  • F1 - Ferrai: Schumi; Honda: Button; Renault: Alonso;
  • Cricket - India:Rahul Dravid, Sachin, Kumble, Yuvraj, Kaif; Australia: Gilchrist, Ponting, Slater, Warne.
  • Tennis - Men: Pete Sampras, Boris Becker, Ivan Lendel, Michael Stich, Andy Rodick, Mahesh Bhupathi, Leander Paes, Roger Federer; Women: Steffi Graph, Gabriela Sabatini, Martina Navratilova, Martina Hingis, Maria Sharapova.
  • NBA - LA Lakers, San Antonio Spurs, Chicago Bulls.
  • Rugby - All Blacks a.k.a New Zealand, England, Australia.
Another 3 hours left for this season's first F1 GP to commence @ Bahrain and I am expecting Ferrari to finish the race with 1 & 2. Let's see how Schumi blasts off & how he handles the young guns who are right behind him on the second row.

Update: Alonso beat Schumi to win the race. Schumi came in second & it was Raikkonen's performance that was impressive; he had a terrible race from day one, due to the technical problems, he had to start from position 22 with a new engine and he managed to overcome 19 cars to finsih on podium @ 3rd.


Another 7 hours to go for the EPL's Super Sunday fixture between Arsenal and Liverpool. My bet is on Arsenal beating Liverpool with 2 goals to 1.

Update: The match ended the same way I had predicted, Arsenal (2)-(1) Liverpool;).


And finally here is the update on 2nd Test Cricket between India and England, Mohali: Day 3, @ Tea, India 1st Innings - 338/10, there by giving India the lead of 38 runs over England.

Update: India won the 2nd Test against England comfortably with 9 wickets in hand. Kumble won the man-of-the-match, he became the first Indian bowler to ever cross 500 wickets mark & fourth in the history of Test Cricket.


Thursday, March 09, 2006

Champions League: Arsenal qualify for Quaterfinals


'The Gunners' finally managed to qualify for this season's Champions League Quaterfinals. I have been routing for Gunners for almost 7 years now and most of my football frenzy friends know how much I support these guys. It has been a disappointing year for Gunners with their lack lustre performance in English Premier League, especially after Patrick Vieira's exit from the club & the more recent episode of Sol Campbell being sidelined. The side has only few seasoned campaingers left and there are rumours that even Thierry Henry would move out of the club shortly. Despite all these things, 'The Gunners' put up a great show against the Spanish gaints Real Madrid in their second leg match played @ Highbury. The match can be compared to David Vs Goliath, because the current Arsenal team is composed more of young players with few senior players and on the other side, Real Madrid has some of the world's best talent who were chasing for their 10th League cup. But after having said all this, the beauty of 'Soccer' is that you can never predict the outcome of any match. Thats one of the reason why 'Soccer' is so fascinating and the most loved sport across the globe. If you don't believe me, then read this article, which justifies what I am saying.

Let me share some of the moments from yesterdays' game. Even though I managed to catch only the second half of the match, it was game filled with action like most of the Champions League matches. The score remained @ 0-0 during half-time and it was Arsenal who played their natural attacking game rather than Real Madrid. I say that because, Arsenal had 1-0 away goal advantage from their first leg match. Theirry Henry had couple of close shots on target, but couldn't clear Casillas. Real Madrid did counter attack, but they had one decent chance to go one-up, when they got a 25 mts free kick from the post. Roberto Carlos took the free kick and it was the acrobatic dive from Fredrik Ljunberg who managed to block the kick. During the dying minutes of the match, Real Madrid did try everything to score a goal and take the game for extra time. It was during last 5 mins of the match, where Real Madrid had won the corner and even the goalie Casillas came to help his team. Real Madrid didn't convert the corner, but Arsenal could have actually scored the goal, since Casillas was trying to run to his post, which could have left him embarassed. The effort of Roberto Carlos has to be lauded, who managed to pull the ball inches away from the goal line & saved the blushes for his goalie, otherwise it would have been 1-0 win for Arsenal.

The match finally ended goal-less, Arsenal winning on 1-0 aggregate and moving to the Quaterfinals of Champions League. BTW, Arsenal is the only English team left in the race to become the Champions of Europe. I hope it would be the something similar to last season, where Liverpool was the only English side left in the fray, who went on to win the Champions League.

Picture Courtesy: Arsenal-Mania

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Champions League: Barcelona beat Chelsea to enter the QuaterFinals

The second leg game between Barcelona and Chelsea, in Champions League was worth every penny. The match wasn't boring a bit untill the final whistle, even though the English Premier League Champions Chelsea managed to keep the score @ 0-0 till half-time, they couldn't stop the current footballer of the world, Ronaldinho, from scoring in second half and giving his team the lead 1-0.

The lead was levelled by Chelsea in the final moments of the game when John Terry earned a penalty and Frank Lampard didn't fail to convert it. Even though the final score was even @ 1-1 and the game ended in a draw, Barcelona advanced to Quaters of Champions League on the aggregate of 3-2. So, finally Barcelona settled their scores with Chelsea, when Chelsea had moved ahead during last season's Championship with 5-4 aggregate against Barcelona.

Today too there are some interesitng matches to watch - Arsenal Vs Real Madrid, AC Milan vs Bayern Munich, Liverpool vs Benfica & Lyon vs PSV Eindhoven. I am supporting Arsenal & the current European Champions - Liverpool.

International Women's Day

'Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects' -Oscar Wilde

How true is the above quote from Oscar Wilde, the only person whom I can relate the above quote is my 'Mother'. No matter what you do, what position you attain & how far you move away from her, her love will always be unconditional & stay by your side forever.

I hope our 'Society' in general & we 'Men' in particular give women their due respect & rights.

Here is an interesting flash work titled 'A Woman... one of the most beautiful creation of God' from Shreyans Shah.

Courtesy: http://www.funonthenet.in

Monday, March 06, 2006

Life:Participation, Analysis & Adaptation

Offlate, I have been little more pensive than usual, especially when I contemplate the passage of time.


Life! is one heck of a game, where you need to be loaded with energy to play the game. Irrespective of the outcome of every game, whether you like or not, you are gonna play it & at times play the same game over & over. I visualise every activity I perform in a day as a 'Game', every game may have more than one player - who is involved actively(directly) or passively(indirectly). Each game has a definite outcome/result associated to it @ the end, you may call this outcome/result as 'Success'('Winning') or 'Failure'('Loosing'); So @ the end of the game, every player will find themselves on one of these sides . It doesn't really matter which side you end up, because both the outcomes are like two faces of the same coin. What really matters is how well we 'understand' the end result & how best we can adapt these 'experiences' for all the future games which 'Life' has in store for us. Trust me each one of us play many games every single day & every outcome has an impact on the other. Its all connected, it so happens that @ times we just don't realise or pay attention to them.

Let me borrow something from Vasu, where he spoke about 'participation & analysis' theory in Life on his recent post. "Atleast this part is true w.r.t me 'participation and analysis'; all throughout the day I participate in various activities & at the end of the day I analyze them. I feel this process has helped me", that was my response for his post. I would like to add another word to this 'participation & analysis' theory, which is 'adaptation'.

In 'Life' we always need to enrich ourselves with the analysis that is available @ the end of team-game. As mentioned before, there might be games where we might be playing alone & in some we are playing along with a team. At the end the game each player has his own analysis of the game, so it would make more sense to share & analyze how the others perceive the same.

I have always learnt a lot from my own failures & successes and at the same I also tend to learn from others experience. If you aren't learning from others experiences, then you better start learning from today. Time is something which you can't afford to waste, so value your time in the way it is being spent currently and do the necessary changes if required.

By default we all are playing a game called 'Life', therefore, we are participating either actively/passively & at the end there is a result. So, while you are playing/participating in this game make sure you are enjoying every moment & cherish it, because you can never re-claim it. As far as the results/outcomes is considered, analyze them and adapt your experiences in your next game.


Life! is all about 'Participation, Analysis & Adaptation'.

Enjoy!