Is it worth it?

There is something the "Bhagvad Gita" which states something to the effect of, "Work your ass off and forget about the expected rewards".

I have been working too hard for a few months now, chasing a dream. Its not been a pain. It's actually been fun as I enjoy what I do. I enjoy making sense of disparate bits of specifications and give something working first time. I enjoy (after a hard day's work of politicking and alignment meetings) to just take a piece of analog circuitry, make sense out of it and get it to work.

These days though, I have been able to get very little of analog circuit design. It's been mostly emailing, ppt'ing, MS-Word'ing and meeting reservation-ing. It is still fun. It is still nice to make a difference and have people listen to and be influenced by what you are saying. It's nice to feel in a corner of your heart that the project will be seriously hit if you were not around.

So while I have no complaints about what I do, sometimes I do wonder if it all is worth it for various reasons.

While I have been chasing one dream, another one has come to fruition. I have held it dear to me for the last eight years. Held it close to my heart. Wept over it. Tossed and turned at night lying awake, dreaming of it. Today it's mine. Do I feel happy?

Well you can say a bit but I am frankly not over the moon about it. Hell, I have'nt even updated my Linkedin and perhaps have no intention to.

So...is it all worth it?

Ayn Rand

Someone suggested I read Ayn Rand to tide over my present grief.

There are a few things though which would upset that person:

• I downloaded an illegal copy. He (ok...its a he) is a fervent believer in protecting intellectual property
• I dislike Ayn Rand. To me she was permanently scarred from her childhood experiences in USSR and that affect her entire world-view. I dislike the choices she made in her personal life. I dislike the fact that her philosophy does not leave room for kindness and gentleness in dealings with other people. Its all me and mine.

I am going to go read "The Fountainhead" anyway. It is strangely comforting.

I get comfort in how Howard Roark approaches each episode in life with intellect and with emotions in control.

I tried to do the same and (sort of) succeeded.

Time for breakfast at 1:00 pm

I am still here!

A few things have changed. And that has led to some soul-searching on my part.

Let me write it down in bullet points like I do at work

• Why do blog-posts need to be small literary affairs? I update stuff on Facebook quite often but that's because I feel lazy to type out an essay every now and then on my blog. Why does it need to be an essay?
• Why do some people give me unconditional love? Why do people offer support and sympathy when I have done nothing on my part specifically for them? Is just a smile and a cheery 'hello' every morning enough? Is just a willingness to listen to them with a smile and the urge to not be in their way while they are trying to do something enough? Why do we expect so little from some and (at the oposite end) so much from others?
• Why does hearing about someone else's tragedy make you feel that you can cope?
• And why can't we men be internally strong individualistic creatures? Why do we run to safety and stability? Weren't we supposed to be the wild ones?

MJ - RIP

D was telling me that the death of MJ is an event that can be compared with 9/11. Till your dying day, you will always remember what you were doing when you heard the news.

I was taking my early morning news fix at 7:30 AM yesterday while rubbing my sleep deprived eyes.

While I was a kid, Michael Jackson was the epitome of the American culture for me. We had this old "EC" - TV at home. It was black and white and had a manual channel change knob which I used to wrestle with everyday. It sometimes gave me electric shocks and the picture would erratically blank out leaving me with just the audio to make out what was going on.

It was on this television set that I discovered Michal Jackson. He had planned a concert in Mumbai (the first one which got called off) and Doordarshan used to air his music videos for a while. To my rock music deprived child-hood, this was manna from heaven. I never could make out the lyrics, at times could not see the dance moves but the music kept me up at nights.

My brother eventually recorded "Smooth Criminal" on our music system. I listened to it again and again at max volume with my ear stuck to the speaker (the music system was one of the quieter ones around). I sang the song at various times as "Everybody wants to..." or "Ubi-guchi wompchi" or something quite similar to keep track with the music. There was no internet then.

I came to college and while getting ragged I let fall that MJ was one of my favorties. The seniors quickly took me in hand, forbade me any more MJ and introduced me to G'nR, Aerosmith and Pink Floyd. It was apparently "pansy music" not suitable for Patelians.

I have since moved on to ACDC and Cold-play (and am discovering Airbourne). After the news broke, we played his songs on our laptops. It is nostalgic to listen to his songs and finally sing "Annie are you ok?", but I also realized that I have moved on and have a different musical taste now.

Michael Jackson brought a lot of joy to everyone. He tried in his own way to make things right with this world but got misunderstood and paid a heavy price. If you read his biography, you come away with the impression that he was a helpless and sad little kid till his dying day

May he finally get some rest and peace....

Why I (may) not convert to a 'twit'?

I love reading magazines. After me and D got bored of the Straitstimes drivel, we decided to curtails our newspaper subscription to just a weekend delivery and subscribed to the Time.

Its quite a nice change. The only fly in the ointment is....where is the time?
Weekdays go in work, weekends (should) go into house-cleaning, meeting up at Brewerkz, and catching up on my Equalizer project....

Just been reading this frontpage art-kill on twitter and got inspired to blog. No, I am not in any near future converting to a twit. Part of the reason is that I feel too old (my 28th birthday was last week) for these new-fangled ideas and the other part is that I do not want an insistent, "What are you doing now?" thingy beeping away my attention span.

Results also last week. Got an A- and a B+ :|.

Married....

A few interesting things that can happen at your wedding:
1. You try to pull a grave (I am now a responsible guy) face all through the ceremony. It comes out looking worried and scared. Your wife is all smiles of course which leads to questions later on about whether there was a "difference of opinion" the night before..
2. You cannot eat during either the reception and and the wedding. Weeks later, while looking at the photos of the food you feel hungry.
3. You put in North-Indian customs. The wife puts in the Kerala ones. The priest decides to add in a few Kannada ones also. Everyone comes back slightly confused as to how many times we got married...
4. You wait for guests in the reception hall before getting in. The guests wait for you before they get in. Everyone gets late...
5. You lose the "mangal-sutra" just before the wedding. Rather you lose the key that keeps it in safe custody in a suit-case. When all burglary attempts fail, the brother-in-law sets a speed record to the nearest jeweller and back so that he can become the brother-in-law.

Oh well, I am married now. And I love being so....
(Notwithstanding what you say "Crazy"....)