It don't mean a thing ...

Ha..ha.. never saw a clearer definition of my own personality than this one. I've always loved jazz and dreamt of playing the sax. Now I know why. Here's the definition "Saxophonists think they are the most important players on stage. Consequently, they are temperamental and territorial. They know all the Coltrane and Bird licks but have their own sound, a mixture of Coltrane and Bird. They take exceptionally long solos, which reach a peak half way through and then just don't stop. They practice quietly but audibly while other people are trying to play. They are obsessed. Saxophonists sleep with their instruments, forget to shower, and are mangy. If you talk to a saxophonist during a break, you will hear a lot of excuses about his reeds." he..he...check http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=15614 for more ;-)

...if it don't make you swing!!

Did you know?

Hmm.. at no point of my life did I doubt my understanding about myself. But for some strange reason; its only today that I could put my "growing up" into a logical structure. The fact that I could classify my personality type and analyzed what I am helped. I'll try to put what I was, what I did, what it lead to - all of it in chronology and all of it with the greatest possible honesty.

Stage 1 - Know nothing. (What's being okay?)
Age - 0 to 8
Was - Nonexistent
Lead To - Unrealized knowing
Did - Exist

Stage 2 - Know something (I know what it is to be okay!)
Age - 9 to 12
Was - Curious, confident.
Lead To - Realized learning. First time I felt that when it comes to influencing myself, I can do it too!!! I remember this history lesson in Grade 3 about the Chola empire. The first time I could actually think and remember anything some way other than what I was told.
Did - First time read what I needn't have. Thought what I needn't have. Comics, drawing, self-invented games and imaginary experiments came. Drifted apart from fellow-everybody.

Stage 3 - Know wrong (I'm okay, you aren't)
Age - 13 to 18
Was - With a self-identity to suit my own idea of it and far from truth.
Lead To - The feeling of being special. The need to do special things. To get into only those things in which I can be special. (resigned from sports and any creative pursuit)
Did - Conscious manipulation of self. Developed preferences on how I wanted to look, what I'd read, what I'd say. Start aspiring what I should be - thereby drifting apart from family that thought better ;-)

Stage 4 - Know better (I'm okay, so are you)
Age - 19 to 22
Was - Self conscious to the extreme. Not the kind to give inferiority, but the kind to make better of myself. Dead down to earth and extreme modesty.
LeadTo - Developing my specific skills. Graduation. Friends out of choice. Languages. Opinions. Viewpoints.
Did - Put a perennial effort at self improvement. First encounter with focused thought and action. Fell in love. Got up and firmly out of it. Drifted apart from my first person self.

Stage 5 - Know back (I'm feeling okay and more okay. Don't care about anything else!)
Age - 23 to now
Was - Introspection and retrospection to the extreme.
Lead To - Continual molding and fitting into an ever expanding horizon. More reading, more travelling, more discovery.
Did - ... Here I am.

 

The thing that I seek..

What is that I seek when I'm over and out.. down and flat..worn and tired... just like it happened yesterday? I was just trying to find out what is it that would make me happy.. I searched my contact list..mailing none seemed appealing..logged into my messenger and none in buddy list that I wanted to chat up with.. scrolled down my phone book.. I realized it needed a cleanup. So was it company I was seeking? Nope. not at all. I can't imagine a company that wouldn't bore me in just a little while. And it was then I realized sitting in a nice cozy restaurant scooping steamed rice and washing it down with beer - all at closing time when every table around me was empty. The need with creatures like me who don't know for sure what makes em happy.. is to keep discovering. Got it. Novelty.

And then.. it doesn't suffice that I describe what I thought and what I did. I'd rather have the third person view of myself. And putting in this blog really triggered a log. I found out minutes ago that I can classify myself as INTP behavior type. Time to find out more ;-).

 

Heads or Tails...

Hey.. I've a choice now.. (makes me feel good to say thus). let me put it as one of three.. I can do something that's noticed all the time, by everybody around which means that I'm under lights always. Part of a team. And for someone decent enough, the advantage of being noticed for accomplishing overpowers the disadvantage of being noticed for failure to do the same. The problem is that the team builds boxing gloves, has never used a pair and worse; it claims to know the best when it comes to making them. There's a HUGE disconnect from reality. Moving over to the second option, there's this option of actually boxing.. actually kicking and being kicked.. and the "kick" follows naturally. But what goes before a fight, the gruel, the practice, the grit is for only the four walls to see. And when I'm fighting someone else's fight, its really necessary to be able to justify what goes before that fight - but I'm cut from that. And more importantly, in the effort to put up my best fight with a bad glove, I've already been hurting myself a lot.

To help myself in choosing, I've done the fight and understand a glove and can't build it otherwise. And to fight without being able to answer for my performance.. i'm no sage.. Even I need a shack up once in a while...

That takes me to the last option, make my own glove or go without it.. and fight my own fight. Now is the time to toss or to just decide the outcome.

Hmm.. do you know what you want to be?

There was once this man. The one who could do exactly what he wanted to.. Not that he was super anything. Lets put it that he just chose what he actually is capable of doing and may be a little more - that which makes him work a little harder everytime than the previous. Now this looks ordinary, but since when do we do what we can? Sounds absurd?? take a sheet and a pencil. List everything you think you should be having done by the end of the day. Compare notes when you go to sleep. That surely made me rediscover absurdity. Found it in the mirror.

My experiments with her

He..he..Caught ya!! It isn't her that i'm talking about.. it's the pronoun "her". I was just reflecting on the way everybody around(including me) speaks, and am trying to manipulate my own speech. Don't know how far I'm right but I've got this conviction that my speech shall influence the way I feel about something and the way others feel about the same thing :-).
Take for example the code that I write. Most people around keep referring to the interacting modules as "HE". A invokes B coz HE wants B's help and so on. Now now, come on. I'm trying to love the code I write, don't I? Hence I'm putting a "SHE" as I refer to my modules ;-).

Moving forward from jokes, I also happen to work in an environment that professes collective ownership. Now this actually makes it imperative for all the stake holders to own all mistakes all the time, but lately it's turned too pretentious. Believe me; it's come to the level that person-X asks person-Y something like this - "Are we sure this is allright?" when what he intends to ask would be - "What kinda crap are you feeding me?".. He.he.. isn't infinite fun!!! Now am I not supposed to manipulate it? Yes ofcourse. Hence I'm framing every sentence in passives!!! And to put a cherry-on-the-top when not to risk conclusions, I at times add a "atleast I think so.". Being egoistic is helping :-)

I met this Bihari once and they have this sweet way of referring to their selves in collective nouns. "Hum aapse milne aaye hai", "Hum ne isko thik kar diya" and so on. All I knew was that this sounds sweet. But this person I met explains that it's because people want to keep away all traces of "mein" - the self-recognition, the pride! and put a "hum" in it's place. Set me thinking until I asked his name and he says "Humara naam @@@ hai". I'm LOL.

Now isn't this all so very fun!! Pronouns make a difference. And that's exactly the reason.. that I LOVE HER.

 

Surely I'm joking

I surely am. There was this 13 birthday of mine when I got my brother's letter telling me that Tom Edison set up his lab when he was 13! And most of my teens, I've been having this feeling of getting late.. to what? ofcourse.. to greatness. Now I'm reading "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" and I recollect my years that went behind. The half year I spent building a telescope. The weekend I spent trying to break the record of longest numbers ever multiplied by writing one myself over a wall-sized paper. The whole day spent collecting cow-dung from all over the town with the intent of making a piece of my garden the most fertile one ever!! When I set a patch of the lawn on fire!! When I fought with my teacher in highschool claiming I had a better proof to the parallelogram theorem than as given in the textbook.. Now I know what I mean by the heading.. I surely must have been joking.. But I wish I'd been serious!! Gives me a feeling of having grown older than I'd care to be.

 

The Programmer's Stone

Well for those interested in mending the way we think, here's a new favorite of mine. "The Programmer's Stone". One of the rare books that I'm reading a second time. Chapters go "Thinking About Thinking", "Thinking About Programming", "The Programmer At Work", "Customs And Practices", "Design Principles", "Prudence And Safety" and finally "Some Wierd Stuff". To call this book as something only about programming would in my view be an injustice.

It's worth checking out for oneself. http://www.reciprocality.org/Reciprocality/r0/

 

Blink

Yup!! That's the latest book that I read. By Malcolm Gladwell. Well, if you're my types; someone who asks at the end of anything - So what do I do about it? then this isn't the book for you. Lots of information packed between covers but leading me nowhere. Finally if I were to ask myself, what I learn out of it. Keeps me *Blink*ing.

 

My "Lateral" Mind

 

Well those no-dirt-on-my-mind folks; stop reading this. Because when I consult my Lateral Thought part of my brains, it's usually the dirty parts that answer !! Well it so happened that I let a blood bank drain a bit of my blood today for the eighth time, and then there was this question that I asked myself why I did it. Knowing myself, I am not an altruist, not one who goes any extra distance to help others. Its just the good feeling part of it. And it's exactly then that I found this naughty answer to throw at the next person who asked me the same question - "Well, that was my only chance to get laid by that nurse you know.. and she even let me squeeze a ball ;-) !!!!!".

 

 

Don't Write Me Off !!

 

Sorry Mr. Schumacher, I had to borrow your lines. Just for once, I wanted to try writing with nothing to write about... he..he.. Wonder what's causing it.. am happier than I usually am.. and for reasons I know not. Feel alone at times and want to be alone the rest of the time !! And for a while I've felt neither. Am really confused for now.. don't know what's next in life.. but not confused for lack of options but because of them being too many ;-) Hmm.. like the song.. Can't Wait For The Rest of My Life.

 

 

 

What's it about beer by the way..

 

If anyone's reading this at all.. excuse me.. am a little drunk and am more philosophical than I usually am ;-)

I've always tried to evaluate myself.. what's it about me that's ordinary.. and what's it that isn't... I've seen and gotten impressed with these kind of people... the one's who make big impressions on their firsts... and I know that's what's ordinary about me... I AM NOT THAT. And then.. I've always proved myself over time.. (forget that I haven't been too confident all the while). I was so hidden as to let a girl apologize in the second year for not knowning that I was in the same class.... and by the end of graduation.. I wasn't the pin-up but never met anybody who didn't know me.. same at school..same at job.. same at most other things.. Guess I'm more like this thing I'm loving having it.. BEER.. you want to have more of it.. but only after you've had more of it already...

 

 

Funny how we think..

 

Well I for a while knew this thing of measuring one's career progress. That of defining it in four stages - unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, concious competence and finally over to unconscious competence. And it never in its repeated recurrence as a thought failed to astonish me how simple and true it could be. I was only wondering if we could say something about the way we think as well. Most of the times, and most of us, seem to be only complaining. We only seem to look at problems. It is so blatantly visible in our conversation, but that's only if we care to observe. Look at this story - I am reading an article that asks "Should Prostitution be Legalized". And pat comes a sarcastic comment from a pair of eyes behind my shoulder, hooked out of an otherwise very sensible brain - "oh there are better things to be legalized!!!!". There wasn't much effort in pushing those brains into thought; I only had to ask back; "like?"... "Err... hmm... ooo.. Gay marriages probably!!". He he he... we better be careful in announcing our thoughts buddy...it shows too much of us. Like all philosophy, my friend probably thinks he's smarter.. and I probably think I am.. But for once, I've had my spark-of-amusement. And ofcourse, a train of thoughts flowing out of it!!!

 

 

One Of The Fountains..

 

My job in this lovely little town of Bucharest is that of technical support in a team of two (including me) deploying a software application worth i-dont-know-how-many-zeroes kind of money. Well, had heard quite a lot about this client interaction thing, about being street smart, about developing "connexions" and committing with care. And then a couple of things that I did observe... If I am not smart, people take no time in riding me.. and if I'm too smart, people take no time in seeing thru the bluff and you know what follows.. Being smart is mostly mistaken for scoring over others. I need to score, but I needn't score over anybody. It's only got to be aligned. And I've never got to let somebody score over me either. The demand the customer makes probably should never be thrashed. That's my only chance of being useful. And it's the only way forward. And so it is with most other obligations in daily life.

We all know of smart asses who go about complaining against everything and still get "ahead". And then, we know of people sweating it out and still getting "ahead". And if you're asking me, the first one ain't smark work and the second ain't hard work. It's work worth it's effort only if it can make a contribution. I now know how I want to feel at the end of a work day.

 

 

First Weekend outside India

Well it's Sunday.. and I'm out in the east European town of Bucharest. Have had lots of talk about the feeling one gets on his first visit out of India; but nope; I haven't felt anything at all. Well it’s one thing that I am busy with work and another that I'm increasing growing insensitive to everything outside me. Got nearly mugged y'day night while trying to take a look at the underground metro station, but somehow it never felt as dramatic as my companion explains it now. I figured out the mugger wasn't too sure of what he'd wanted to do to me; and while my companion started running away making exclamations; I calmly walked along without sparing a look at the twice-heftier-than-me danger beside me. Ya.. the town is a lot more cleaner than Bangalore for example. The temperature is way lower hovering around 0 centigrade. But yes, one difference I did observe. Almost a week, and I am yet to spot children. I read on the net that the Romanian society makes up a receding population ("makes up" ??). The government even pays around 10 Euros every month for each child until he's 18.. It's funny how things work in different places.