Anna Effect

There was a lot of euphoria about Anna Hazare breaking his fast. It was no mean feat to go 13 days without food - most of us cant last a day.

However, now that things are simmering down, and the Govt. is after the group associated with Anna for various petty reasons ( in-spite of a much greater stashes of money being siphoned off), the question that comes to my mind is whether the Anna Effect will last - and if so - for how long ? Will it lead to a transformation of society ?

One sure thing about the last month or so is that the Nation has got to know about the larger issues of Corruption. I dont think everyone necessarily agrees with the dictacts of the LokPal Bill, but they do agree that our Country is riddled with corruption - and it is in each and every rung of the society.

Talking with a few cab-drivers on a recent visit to Bangalore , got some insights into their mind.

The one in Delhi had gone to RamLila maidan to be part of the movement. He was adamant that changes will come, and he and his group of friends will not be a part of the corruption. The cab waala in Bangalore was equally vehement and was feeling miffed that he had paid Rs500 as bribe to renew his driving license.

But, once the euphoria settles down, I fear that we will just go back to our old ways. People will rather part with Rs500 than stand in multiple queues trying to get things done the right way. Call me a pessimist, but the behavior of our countrymen does not inspire much optimism in me. I had seen the demonstrations during Mandal commision and the more recent OBC reservation policy, and have seen that people have short term memories and easily forget the pledges they have made when the reality of life strikes them.

What are your thoughts ? 

Zen moment

Today I had a Zen moment.

Usually, you have heard it a lot. "Still your mind" say people. "Meditate and it will help you. Do yoga" etc. Of course you would have tried it, but never succeeded. How to still the mind when as soon as you close your eyes, you get thousands of thoughts coursing through it ?

The key is obviously, to still the mind.

The key is not meditation, rather anything that can still your mind.

For me, it came in the form of exercise. I am quite overweight, and my current lifestyle is really bad for health. I sit at the same place from morning to well into the night - 5 days a week. Sometimes even on weekends. Work is quite stressful and does not give much time for leisure activity. So, today, after a lot of mentally pushing myself, I went down to the park and jogged, and ran and jogged, and walked. Pushing myself as much as I can go.

And at the point of exhaustion ... the mind went blank. I was just doing the things without thinking.. the mind was completely blank. As I started the walk to cool down, I started getting some thoughts - with a clarity that I was amazed. Then it struck me - to empty your mind, you do not need to necessarily meditate. You do not even need to empty the mind - just to still it. And for me, exercise works. Then I started looking back at all of my ideas, and I realized I used to get them just after some strenuous exercise. That was my 'Zen Moment'. It was like a cloud lifting in front of my eyes. And suddenly, the world looked more vibrant - the shrubs greener, the flowers more vibrant, the vision seemed to see far. I had a smile on my face - and I am sure many people would have been thinking what the hell was I thinking of ?

If this is not a Zen Moment, I do not know what it is.

Now, I need to push myself more. Double benifit of losing some weight and getting some great ideas :)

Resume : A new style

I think people get confused when I try to tell them about my current work, and also about the time I worked in Good Technology. The confusion is mostly around the fact that I was in multiple companies but working on the same projects. So, I came up with a new way to visualize my work life - as a infographics.

What do you think ? Makes sense ? 

Lunar Eclipse (pics)

June 15th had a total lunar eclipse. Which means that the earth came between the sun and the moon, and overshadowed the moon. What was a full moon, disappeared and then came back to its full shine. This took place in the wee hours of the night, and i would probably have slept through it ( I was to drive back to Delhi the next morning), except that I was unable to sleep. So, got out of bed and went out with the camera to look at the show being put on by the heavens !

Pics are on facebook in the Album 2011 Lunar Eclipse

I am still trying to figure out how to embed the pics from facebook here. Any ideas ? 

Living - Faliure or Success

If you havent failed you havent lived.

This post by a friend on FaceBook started off a thought in my head. Is that really living ?

I think that failure or success has nothing to do with living.

As an example : Lets say you are in some hill station. You have a beautiful view before you - trees rolling down in the valley before you, the mountains further away with snow on them, a cool breeze flowing. You soak in the view and feel alive. Its not about failure or success at this time.

Like this, you can see many examples in your life where you felt alive - and nothing to do with the outcomes.

I think we have been brainwashed into thinking of failure and success. What is success anyways ? How do you define success ? Too often people miss the point and start equating success with wealth.

What are your views ?

OSama or OBama ?

Errors as reported by the media. Know more ? leave a link and I will include the pic !

NDTV

Fox40 News

BN updated with 2011 calendar pics

I have been having a real dearth of time. The last few months have been really hectic after tenCube got acquired by McAfee and I joined McAfee. There is just too much to do and time is running short.

So, after a long gap, the BN website has been now upaded with the 2011 calendar in soft copy. The pics have all been taken by members of the group and the design was done by Chaitanya, another BN member. We have amazing talent within the group.

Last year, I had been editing each pic and uploading. But this year since CV had done all the work, I only had to resize and put it up on the site. So, I wrote a small python script for resizing the huge original pics into web manageable ones. The
script reads all the images in the directory and resizes in 3 different sizes. Following is the python code - and its amazing how small a piece of code this is.

from PIL import Image
import os, glob

#adjust width and height to your needs
thumb = 200,150
small = 800,600
normal= 1600,1200

for infile in glob.glob("*.jpg"):
    file, ext = os.path.splitext(infile)
    im = Image.open(infile)
    im.thumbnail(normal,Image.ANTIALIAS)
    im.save(file + "_normal.jpg","JPEG")
    im.thumbnail(small,Image.ANTIALIAS)
    im.save(file + "_small.jpg","JPEG")
    im.thumbnail(thumb,Image.ANTIALIAS)
    im.save(file + "_thumb.jpg","JPEG")

Neat eh ?

RIFT - First Impressions

Started playing RIFT yesterday - I got totally bored with WoW and anyways it was too demanding a game at end game. I just was not able to find the time required to raid.

So, after a lot of thought, I signed up for RIFT.

Initial thoughts on the game : Its a game which could have been great. Comparison's with WoW are of course going to happen.

A lot of people would have told you that its a polished game. I will differ. Its got more 'realistic' graphics than WoW. However, a lot of things that we think about when we think of WoW are missing.

Some things which I think should have been taken care by the devs are :

• All races of a faction start at the same place. I find this a put off. If you have 3 races per side,they should start of in different starting areas. 
• All the races look the same, with hardly a difference in how they look unless you are a dwarf. Sure there are hundreds of customizations on how you look, but once you start playing in the 3rd person perspective, they all don't matter. Contrast this with WoW where the orcs look totally different than the taureans than the undead.
• An element of fun is missing. All the quests, the feel etc is so serious. It gets boring. 

The good and the bad of the game has to be the soul system. Essentially what it means is that you have 3 talent trees, and you can choose which 3 trees to use out of 8 available. This is pretty cool as it allows for a lot of customizations. However, since this is thrown at you pretty early pretty fast, you end up confused. As you get each new tree, you get 2 new spells with each. The spells in the different trees overlap many times, and this is lame.

I initially started out with a Warrior class - as I was looking at end game kind of content, but got bored.

Rerolled as a mage - who got the souls of a Warlock , a Necromancer and a Chloromancer. So far, this is feeling  much better as to what I like playing.

More updates at the end of the month of playtime.

शायद ज़िंदगी बदल रही है!!

I got this as a forward, and loved it. Sharing for your reading pleasure.

शायद ज़िंदगी बदल रही है!!



जब मैं छोटा था, शायद दुनिया
बहुत बड़ी हुआ करती थी..

मुझे याद है मेरे घर से "स्कूल" तक
का वो रास्ता, क्या क्या नहीं था वहां,

चाट के ठेले, जलेबी की दुकान,
बर्फ के गोले, सब कुछ,

अब वहां "मोबाइल शॉप",
"विडियो पार्लर" हैं,

फिर भी सब सूना है..
शायद अब दुनिया सिमट रही है...
 

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जब मैं छोटा था,
शायद शामें बहुत लम्बी हुआ करती थीं...

मैं हाथ में पतंग की डोर पकड़े,
घंटों उड़ा करता था,

वो लम्बी "साइकिल रेस",
वो बचपन के खेल,

वो हर शाम थक के चूर हो जाना,
अब शाम नहीं होती, दिन ढलता है

और सीधे रात हो जाती है.
शायद वक्त सिमट रहा है..

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जब मैं छोटा था,
शायद दोस्ती

बहुत गहरी हुआ करती थी,
दिन भर वो हुजूम बनाकर खेलना,

वो दोस्तों के घर का खाना,
वो लड़कियों की बातें,

वो साथ रोना...

अब भी मेरे कई दोस्त हैं,
पर दोस्ती जाने कहाँ है,

जब भी "traffic signal" पे मिलते हैं
"Hi" हो जाती है,

और अपने अपने रास्ते चल देते हैं,

होली, दीवाली, जन्मदिन,
नए साल पर बस SMS आ जाते हैं,

शायद अब रिश्ते बदल रहें हैं..
 

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जब मैं छोटा था,
तब खेल भी अजीब हुआ करते थे,

छुपन छुपाई, लंगडी टांग,
पोषम पा, कट केक,
टिप्पी टीपी टाप.

अब internet, office,
से फुर्सत ही नहीं मिलती..

शायद ज़िन्दगी बदल रही है.
 

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जिंदगी का सबसे बड़ा सच यही है..
जो अक्सर कबरिस्तान के बाहर
बोर्ड पर लिखा होता है...

"मंजिल तो यही थी,
बस जिंदगी गुज़र गयी मेरी
यहाँ आते आते"
 

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ज़िंदगी का लम्हा बहुत छोटा सा है...
कल की कोई बुनियाद नहीं है
 

और आने वाला कल सिर्फ सपने में ही है..
अब बच गए इस पल में..

तमन्नाओं से भरी इस जिंदगी में
हम सिर्फ भाग रहे हैं..
 

कुछ रफ़्तार धीमी करो,
मेरे दोस्त,

और इस ज़िंदगी को जियो...
खूब जियो मेरे दोस्त,
और औरों को भी जीने दो

Overall, I just wanted to thank you

Yesterday was not particularly a good day. Still recovering from a bout of seasonal flu, and was feeling quite low in the day. Late at night, was not feeling like sleeping and was browsing the net, chatting with friends. When suddenly an email popped up. A reply to a mail written 2 years back! Wow! This changed the total 'feel low' mood. I am a firm believer of Karma, and this coming up makes me an even bigger believer.

Sumit was an intern in Symantec, and on the time of completing his internship came up to me to ask for advice. He was in a different team - but still wanted some advice from me. It was probably cause I was more approachable than other managers. The conversation and the reply are below with kind permission from Sumit.

Firstup the mail I had sent out on 2008.

from    Vibhu Rishi
to    Sumit Agarwal
date    Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 3:38 PM
subject    Best of luck in future endeavors
   
hi Sumit,

My interaction with you was very brief. But here are a maelstrom of thoughts that I have i wanted to share with you but never seem to get the time to say them :) . They are in random order, so maybe difficult to read the mail at one go ;)

I see great potential in you. Go forth and conquer.

Great men are not born. They are made. From time immemorial, even with kings, its not always someone who is born in a great family that becomes great, but people who think different that they reach heights others did not even dream off.

As Steve Jobs (one of my icon figures) says : Stay Hungry Stay Foolish .

some criticism and helpful ( in my opinion which may be totally wrong ;) ) tips
- Dressing is important. make sure you dress for what you want to become and not what you are. I should probably not be giving this advice as I myself don't dress appropriate, but then I do not know what I want to become ;) .
- Keep your body language positive. Most people will have good looks, wear good clothes, but not know how to keep their body language positive. Walk with purpose. Look with intent. You already have some of it, just keep it in mind , and you will develop a 'presence'
- Your interaction here has been with some individuals who are ... umm.. hyper. This may give you an impression that maybe that is the way to go, yelling and getting the things done. On the short term it works well, but if you plan to have your own company, you get better loyalty out of people in other ways. I know people in pretty high positions  ( govt service and private firms) who are the most humble people - but the people who follow them are loyal to the hilt. Its your choice which path you take.
- You stammer a bit. I notice that it hampers your communication abilities. This is normal. I had it in school ( 11th class ) . it happens when your thoughts outrace you, and your words cannot keep up with your thoughts. The way we mostly try to cope up with it is to try and talk fast. But sometimes, to go fast , you have to go slow. Slow down your vocal speed. Think through what you are going to say, and say it slowly, deliberately. You will get out of this habit of rushstammer.

You want to become someone great. Know that you cannot have everything in life. there will be setbacks in life - most of which are out of your control, some , because you messed up. Don't be hard on yourself. Give yourself room. One learns to run by falling repeatedly. You can't blame yourself for falling. Just get back upright and go ahead. Rough roads lead to smooth ones with time .

In fact I believe rough times are not that bad as everyone makes out them to be.

Develop a few role models. I find it helps me. If I am in a particular situation where I am not getting answers, or do now know how to proceed, I think what my role models will do. That gives you the answers.

Baki, enjoy life. There is much more in life than work and making money. Take care of your health - no amount of money can give you back  your health after you have lost it. Live life to the fullest - the time does not ever come back. Make time for doing things that you want to do. My philosophy is to sit aside sometime, and think - what are the things i would think of and say 'oh shit ! i did not do this' , if it was the last day of my life. That gives me a list to work with.

chalo. enough of gyan. :)

Have Fun.
Ride Safe.

Vibhu..

The reply I got yesterday out of the blue. Thanks Sumit :)

from    sumit agarwal
to    Vibhu Rishi
date    Sun, Mar 27, 2011 at 11:11 PM
    
Hi Vibhu,

This might feel weird as i am replying to 2.5 years old mail, but your mail became younger day by day through all this time. The thoughts are coming randomly as am typing, please bear with that.

After my internship at Symantec, I got a PPO as gautam had pushed my CV. But as I had already shared this with many of our team mates and may be with yo also that I didn't like tech much and wanted to pursue a career in finance or do a start-up.

So after college, I declined the offer from Symantec and started my company in Gurgaon. We ran it profitably and professionally till Jan-2011 and then arrived at decision to exit. The whole start-up experience (1.5 years) was great and may be can share it some other day :). This was the period when I got to see the world closely and learn from it.

After exiting from the biz, I applied to number of finance companies, but got call from just one company and that was JP Morgan. After multiple rounds of grilling, they hired me in Investment Banking division.

Tomorrow is my first day at JPM, Mumbai and I would like to thank you first. May be we didn't spend much time during my stay at Symantec, but I have been following you continuously since then. Reading about your bike trip from Pune-Hyderabad-Nagpur-Bhopal-Jaipur-Delhi-Dehradun..... was quite a experience and definitely some day I wanna pull something like that.

I wanted to attend the recent bike nomads meet in goa but couldn't because of biz commitments and exploring my options. Now I feel that I can think straight and can afford to do more things I always wanted to ( Riding long is one of them).

I plan to purchase a bike in next couple of months, hence will need your expert advice.

Overall, I just wanted to thank you.

See you soon.
SUMIT AGARWAL

Shaken by Japan

I was horrified to see the distruction caused by the quake and the subsiquent tsunami. People say that the 2004 Tsunami in the Indian ocean was more distructive, but the images from the current one are the ones that make a dent in ones mind.

This is the second time that I am having this feeling of awe and horror together. The last time was when the planes crashed into the Twin Trade towers. One manmade calamity, and the other by Nature.

Its a wakeup call. No, I am not talking about the predictions about the end of the world. I am more thinking in terms of living our lives. I used to have a blast. But somehow, I too have been drawn into the rat race and living has just become a stream of days of just exisiting. Working, working, working.

Need to wake up. Look out. Look at life again and enjoy each day again. The world wont end in 2012, but you do not know when your life does. Its doubly important that each day you live you have memorable experiences.

Do it your way. But, Just do it.