And the Music Plays!

Came across this blog a few days ago -

http://fakeiplplayer.blogspot.com/

Apparently it is said to be written by a KKR insider!

Its more fun to follow this blog than the match itself at times!

The extra ZING in the IPL! Enjoy!

***

Apparently the so called pseudo names in the blog are: 

(Hats off to the person who decoded these names)

I got an sms from BJP (!). And I wonder why? Oh yes, its election time!

It says -

‘BJP’s promise: Terror-free India, Hunger free society, Debt free kisan, Worry free middle class. 3.5 crore families to benefit from income tax up to Rs. 3 lakh p.a. Student loans at 4%. Advani for PM’

Well… fancy words! I would love to know actual statistics and the parameters that would be used to measure results. The measurement parameters should be known to the people who vote beforehand, isn’t it?

….are my blog readers still alive? Or have they deserted me?! Batao Batao…

Also, any tags happening on the blog world currently?

Here’s something that I read a while ago and had to share it.

It’s titled ‘Health Tips’. You may wonder at the title. But somehow it justifies.

• Make a Wish!
• Have good Thoughts!
• Give exactly what you want to receive.
• Believe in Dreams, Believe in Life, Believe in People.
• Learn the Lesson.
• Be aware everyone has hard times, this is a human condition, but always keep your faith on Good Times, it will surely arrive soon!
• Always Remember: “Love is the Answer”
• Everything you have is everything you need.
• Be conscious that every little action you do has a reaction; every small good thing you do will create good things; also every bad thing you do will create bad things. Be always responsible for your actions. An example: The boss is rude to the employee, who arrives home stressed out and is cruel to his wife, who being sad about this, gets angry with her son, who mistreats the cat.
• Drink lots of water!
• Make a fast diet once a week
• You are the Artist of your Life!

Just had to share this with all you guys. A bit long but worth it.

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of
Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12,
2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few
months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I
could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was
impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer
animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet,
keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

A Simple thing called marriage……

‘ When it comes to making the decision about choosing a life partner, no one wants to make a mistake. Yet, with a divorce rate of close to 50-60 percent, it appears that many are making serious mistakes in their approach to finding Mr/Ms Right! If you ask most couples who are engaged why they’re getting married, they’ll say: ‘We’re in love.” this is the #1 mistake people  make when they date.

Choosing a life partner should never be based on love (alone). Though this may sound not politically correct, there’s a profound truth here. Love (alone) is not the basis for getting married. Rather, love is the result of a good marriage. When the other ingredients are right, then the love will come. Let me say it again: You can’t build a lifetime relationship on love alone. You need a lot more. Here are five questions you must ask yourself if you’re serious about finding and keeping a life partner.

QUESTION #1:

Do we share a common life purpose? Why is this so important? Let me put it this way: If you’re married for 20 or 30 years, that’s a long time to live with someone. What do you plan to do with each other all that time? Travel, eat and jog together? You need to share something deeper and more meaningful. You need a common life purpose. Two things can happen in a marriage. You can grow together, or you can grow apart. 50 percent of the people out there are growing apart. To make a marriage work, you need to know what you want out of life – bottomline – and marry someone who wants the same thing.

QUESTION #2:

Do I feel safe expressing my feelings and thoughts with this person? This question goes to the core of the quality of your relationship. Feeling safe means you can communicate openly with this person. The basis of having good communication is trust! i. e. trust that I won’t get ‘punished’ or hurt for expressing my honest thoughts and feelings. A colleague of mine defines an abusive person as someone with whom you feel afraid to express your thoughts and feelings. Be honest with yourself on this one. Make sure you feel emotionally safe with the person you plan to marry.

QUESTION #3:

Is he/she a mensch? A mensch is someone who is a refined and sensitive person. How can you test? Here are some suggestions. i) Do they work on personal growth on a regular basis? ii) Are they serious about improving themselves? A teacher of mine defines a good person as ’someone who is always striving to be good and do the right thing’. ‘So, ask about your significant other: What do they do with their time? Is this person materialistic?’ Usually, a materialistic person is not someone whose top priority is character refinement. There are essentially two types of people in the world: People who are dedicated to personal growth and people who are dedicated to seeking comfort. Someone whose goal in life is to be comfortable will put personal comfort ahead of doing the right thing. You need to know that before walking down the aisle.

QUESTION #4:

How does he/she treat other people? The one most important thing that makes any relationship work is the ability to give. By giving, we mean the ability to give another person pleasure. Ask: Is this someone who enjoys giving pleasure to others or are they wrapped up in themselves and self-absorbed? To measure this, think about the following: i) How do they treat people whom they do not have to be nice to, such as waiters, bus boys, taxi drivers, etc? ii) How do they treat parents and siblings? Do they have gratitude and appreciation? Do they show respect? If they don’t have gratitude for the people who have given them everything, you cannot expect that they’ll have gratitude for you – who can’t do nearly as much for them! iii) Do they gossip and speak badly about others? Someone who gossips cannot be someone who loves others. You can be sure that someone who treats others poorly, will eventually treat you poorly as well.

QUESTION #5:

Is there anything I’m hoping to change about this person after we’re married? Too many people make the mistake of marrying someone with the intention of trying to ‘improve’ them after they’re married. As a colleague of mine puts it, ‘You can probably expect someone to change after marriage … for the worse!’ If you cannot fully accept this person the way they are now, then you are not ready to marry them. In conclusion, dating doesn’t have to be difficult and treacherous. The key is to try leading a little more with your head and less with your heart. It pays to be as objective as possible when you are dating, to be sure to ask questions that will help you get to the key issues. Falling in love is a great feeling, but when you wake up with a ring on your finger, you don’t want to find yourself in trouble because you didn’t do your homework.

So here comes the most important question: HOW WILL I KNOW IF I’VE MET THE PERSON I SHOULD MARRY?

The choice of a marriage partner should not be based on ‘I get a warm, wonderful feeling whenever we’re together and I want to have that warm wonderful feeling forever, so let’s go get married’. Feelings, as we have discussed, have no logic on their own. They need to be acknowledged, of course, but they need considerable assistance from your brain. Marriage means choosing the person you will spend the rest of your life with. This, as you may have guessed, is a very long time to spend with one person. This person will live with you, eat meals with you, sleep with you and go on vacation with you. More important yet, this person will share your children. You need to choose wisely. The decision should not be made based on feelings alone. You need to ask yourself some tough questions.

The decisions have to be made on solid considerations.

Will this person be a good partner?

Is she mature enough to put her own selfish desires aside to look out for what is best for the family?

Is he prepared to be a good provider?

What is his track record?

Is he responsible enough to get a good job and keep it?

Will this person be a good parent?

Can you stand the thought of your children turning out exactly like this person? They will, you know. Children spend a lot of time with their parents and consequently pick up many or most of their parents’ character traits. You had better like your spouse’s traits a lot because you will be seeing them again in your children.

If something were to happen to you, would you completely trust this person alone, with the task of raising and forming your children? This is not a pleasant thought, but it is an important consideration. Not everyone dies at a ripe old age with great grandchildren gathered around the bed. Sometimes a parent dies and leaves young children in the care of the other parent. If you feel that you would need to be around to correct or lessen this person’s influence on your children, then you are considering the wrong person.

Does this person share your faith in God/ Spiritualism? God does not give us children so that we can mould them into the coolest, most popular people in school. Our job is to make them responsible, humble, spiritual and balanced human beings. To do that, we need to raise them believing in God and or being spiritual. It is tough to do that if only one parent believes or is spiritual. Saying ‘This is right and that is wrong, and I want you to ignore Mommy until you are thirty-five does not work. Small children ask about eight million questions in a single day. The answers to those questions go a long way toward forming the kind of adults they will become. Who will be answering those questions for your children?

Does this person you are marrying have sexual self-control?

Single people sometimes have this idea that marriage is just some kind of lifelong sex festival and that as long as they have each other, they will never be tempted by other people. Wrong! There are many times in every marriage when one partner or the other is sexually unavailable – illness, the last months of pregnancy, travel. There are also times when spouses, just get on each others’ nerves. At times like this, other people can seem very appealing. That can be dangerous, because there are plenty of very attractive people out there who are willing to make themselves available to married men and women. Do you want someone who has never said ‘no’ to sex? If he is not good at saying ‘no’ at eighteen, it won’t be different at forty. Do you want to worry about whether or not your spouse is being faithful? These are very important questions, and if you are not comfortable with all of the answers, you should definitely not marry this person.

None if this is to say that feelings play no role at all in a marriage decision. You don’t have to, ‘Well, I suppose that you would make a good spouse and parent, so even though I don’t particularly like you I guess I’ll marry you’. You need to be happy and excited about the prospect of spending your life with someone. Your brain however must acknowledge that this person as a good choice. Don’t listen to your heart alone nor your head alone. Wait until your heart and head agree…

Read this a while ago. It’s been lying in my inbox since ages. Finally got to read it.

Worth it! Check it out! 

Preventive measures (!):

1. If a man wants you, nothing can keep him away. If he doesn’t want you, nothing can make him stay.
2. Stop making excuses for a man and his behavior.
3. If you have ANY doubt in your mind about a man’s character, leave him alone.
4. Allow your intuition (or spirit) to save you from heartache.
5 Stop trying to change yourself for a relationship that’s not meant to be.
6. Don’t force an attraction
7. Slower is better.
8. Never live your life for a man before you find what makes you truly happy.
9. If a relationship ends because the man was not treating you as you deserve then heck no you can’t “be friends.” A friend wouldn’t mistreat a friend.
10. Have faith in God regarding your relationship, but don’t let faith make you stupid. God does things decent and in order.
11. Don’t settle.
12. If you feel like he is stringing you along, then he probably is.
13. If he keeps changing his mind about the relationship–take that as a BIG sign that he is unstable. Do you really want to be with a man like that?
14. Don’t stay because you think “it will get better.” You’ll be mad at yourself a year later for staying when things are not better.
15. Honorable men take care of their business and aren’t involved in a whole lot of mess.
16. The only person you can control in a relationship is you.
17. There’s only one ‘reason’ a man dumps you; he doesn’t want you.
18. Avoid men who’ve got a bunch of children by a bunch of different women. He didn’t marry them when he got them pregnant, why would he treat you any differently?
19. You really do have to kiss a few frogs before finding the prince.
20. Always put yourself and your happiness first.
21. Always have your own set of friends separate from his.
22. Maintain boundaries in how a guy treats you. If something bothers you, speak up.
23. Like from the show Sex and the City, if he doesn’t call, he just isn’t that interested.
24. Be honest and upfront.
25. Know when to cut the cord, don’t be strung along.
26. Don’t fall for the “I’m confused role”. Remove yourself from the situation to let him figure things out (but don’t wait for him, move on).
27. If you want to have a clue as to how he will treat you, watch how he treats the WOMEN in his family (not just mom).
28. There’s more than physical abuse, there’s emotional and mental abuse.
If he causes any of them…flee.
29. You cannot change a man’s behaviors. Change comes from within.
30. Don’t let him place rules on you that he is not willing to follow himself –double-standard.
31. Don’t EVER make him feel he is more important than you are…even if he has more education or a better job.
32. Do not make him into a quasi-god. He is a man, nothing more nothing less.
33. Demand respect and if he can’t give it, he can’t have you!
34. Don’t compete with other women, but be aware that men are attracted to what they see.
35. If you think he is cheating, he probably is. Confront him right away and if you feel he’s lying, let him go.
36. Actions speak louder than words.
37. Never let a man define who you are.
38. Never rely on a man for compliments, look to yourself for that.
39. Never borrow someone else’s man.
40. If he cheated with you, he’ll cheat on you.
41. Just because he says he loves you, doesn’t mean that he won’t hurt you and it doesn’t mean that you are meant to be with him.
42. To use painful hard-won wisdom to ‘get it right’ the next time.
43 Know that you deserve to be the number one person in the life of the #1 person in your life.
44. Love is a verb …
45. Learn to give up your lifelong task of trying to make someone unavailable-available, someone ungiving-giving, and someone unloving-loving.
46. A man will only treat you the way you ALLOW him to treat you.
47. All men are NOT dogs.
48. You should not be the one doing all the bending…compromise is a two way street.
49. If you don’t love self…you can’t love anyone else.
50. You cannot mend someone else’s broken heart.
51. Yo need time to heal between relationships…there is nothing cute about baggage…deal with your issues before pursuing a new relationship.
52. You should never look for someone to COMPLETE you…a relationship consists of two WHOLE individuals…look for someone complimentary…not supplementary.
53. Dating is fun…even if he doesn’t turn out to be Mr. Right.
54. NEVER give more in a relationship than you are getting out of it.
55 Never become your man’s “therapist”.
56. When actions and words conflict- believe the actions. Respond to the actions.
57. A real healthy relationship requires two people. One person can end it – but it takes two to make it work.
58. Don’t fall for the “I’m not the loving type”…when a man loves you there is nothing in this world (within reason) that he wouldn’t do for you.
59. Make him miss you sometimes…when a man always knows where you are, and you’re always readily available to him, he takes it for granted.
60. Give him his space…let him go out with his boys, don’t pressure him to spend time with you, You can’t force a man to hang out with you.
61. If you wouldn’t allow your daughter to be with him you shouldn’t.
62. Never let a man know everything. He will use it against you later.
63. Never move into his mother’s house.
64. Provide financially for yourself and don’t depend on anyone.
65. Never co-sign for a man.
66. Never believe you have the perfect guy and he is so innocent.
67. Never spoil your man let him spoil you.
68. Never let a man mess up your credit.
69. When its time to let go, let go.
70. Good men should be treated like good men.
71. Don’t play games.
72. You can’t make a whore into a housewife – or husband.
73. Don’t fully commit to a man who doesn’t give you everything that you need. Keep him in your radar but get to know others.
74. Compatibility in terms of educational attainment, values, beliefs, personal and career goals, and socioeconomic status, are important.
75. Never date a guy who wears colored contacts.

Seems like paanipuri is just not happening! Haven’t been able to blog much since the time I left this blog!!!

So I am back here! To the place I love the most!