He knew that he was either being mocked or being manipulated when he was being "praised". But he is so desperate that he still wanted to believe that there was some truth in what he was being told.

There was time when you used to feel your brain working. When you could foresee into the Markov chain. You could think, and even act. You knew what you wanted.

Things aren't quite the same now. You obviously cannot recall when it changed, but you just wish that it went back to normal. You make conscious effort to keep your interests alive by involving yourself into stuff that you used to like, and it is not that you don't like it now. It is just that- you don't feel anything missing even if you are not involved in it. Everything looks gray. Everything looks autonomous. But you know that it is not.

They know that people will like it..only sane people I mean.
Sanity is relative though.

Weight

He has been feeling something really heavy inside him. He feels it all through the day as he carries out his everyday chores and till late in the night before he falls asleep.

Sometimes the load would become unbearable. Breathing would become difficult and then the heart would feel like it has been covered with sludge. This would last only for a few seconds, though, so there is no fear of life. But he knows that he is dying with every passing moment.

There is nothing personal. I just hate people.

Even a rat can work its way for food, make a hole to sleep in at night, or have sex.
One needs to be a human to earn a degree in business management or to understand quantum field theory; or to type in blog posts as reminders of that humanistic feeling.

You cannot f'in bitch slap the uncertainty principle!

The other day, I was reading an article in a web magazine. The article was about a novel method used by a team of scientists to invent a highly sensitive magnetic field sensor.

"...you can bitch slap the uncertainty principle" is what the author, who was only writing for the website (and isn't anyway involved with the team), said at one point, which I felt was so ignorant!

Although some web magazines, like this one, feature nice stories of up and coming technology; at times they go into specifics of the subject, like a big company's business idea behind its actions and so on which can be quite interesting, I usually skip any science articles that appear in such popular online 'technical journals'.

The problem is that these writers (or may be editors) in order to sound more tasteful, invariably go over the top to highlight something extraordinary, or to make something appear so. While this trick works alright when you are predicting features that are to be added in the next version of a mobile platform, science is different. Trying it on science articles makes them sound fictional and often stupid. Obviously, these are meant to be for general readers who have little or no knowledge of the likes of modern physics (myself included); it is irresponsible of the writers to cite wrong principles. You cannot talk about a something as fundamental as the uncertainty principle and then say that it can be gotten rid of.

I am sure that those scientists used smart techniques and trade offs to work around the limitations, they had no way to 'bitch slap' the uncertainty principle.

I'll help as much as I can

How dumb is the above statement? Still, I told this to someone the other day and immediately felt so wrong..stupid.

In my defense, the reason why I got carried away was because the other person asked me for information about something they (wrongly) think I am good at, and they sounded reasonably not-manipulative. (Naive..I know.) So this desire to show off my meager knowledge gave me a black out.
Secondly, I haven't really been of much help to the society lately so was kinda out of touch on how to behave.

All that is now
All that is gone
And all that's to come
And everything under the Sun is in tune
But the sun is eclipsed by the moon.

You were soaring high. Higher than where you had begun from and what you deserved. You realize that you had hardly dreamt of reaching this high. How did you get there? Perhaps a wave, that took you away without your knowledge! You stopped noticing because you were mesmerized by what you were going through and even mistook thinking those things to be within your reach.

Then, some time you starting falling. And since then you have been falling. Now every time you look around, you have fallen lower. You try glancing back up looking for someone...too bright. Searching for what is below - abyss. No idea of how far the ground is. How long you will fall before hitting something. You wish that it was all 0ver but you fall.

On closing note, check this out. Goosebumps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

DON'T PANIC

Happy Towel Day people!

One of the few things are better than listening to pF is to drive on a highway at 12 miles an hour above speed limit on a rainy Friday evening , while listening to pF.

You better run all day, and run all night
And keep your dirty feelings deep inside.

Icebreaker

I gave my first speech at my toastmasters club today. Sharing it here, as much as I can recall.

Good morning Mr. toastmaster and my fellow members. My name is sinkingsun and I am here to give my first, icebreaker speech today. This is my third session at the club. By the end of the last meeting, I had heard quite a few members who spoke upon various topics and obviously it was very motivating. I thought that it would be interesting to select a topic of my choice and share some ideas. So when they called for volunteers for today, I raised my hand.

But then I was told that for the icebreaker speech, the speaker is supposed to speak about himself. This is to make it easier for him since ideas on this topic should come intuitively. Besides, it also allows the audience to connect to the speaker.

Suddenly it was much more difficult than I had imagined. For one, it always bothers me to realize that what ever we think we know about ourselves is far less than how much we don't. The more we look outside, the more we ignore our inner self. But without going into the eternal philosophical question of the meaning of life and our place in the universe, the other reason why this was so difficult is because of the sheer size of the topic. 4-6 minutes are too less for someone to speak about themselves. Even 46 minutes would probably not be enough. So I basically had to pick up one or two instances from my life and elaborate. Here is one.

When I was a kid, I read something somewhere. It was - "the more we listen, more we learn" and it made so much sense to me. Our senses are meant to gather data. If we put a good filter in place to select the relevant information for processing and retaining, and reject the unnecessary junk, all the energy that goes into it is so much constructive. It was this simple and obvious! So this idea basically stuck and I learnt to listen and made it a habit; And I think that it has worked quite well for me so far. I have received this feedback more than once that I am a good listener, and I would like to believe that this is reasonably true. One time however, someone gave me a good advice along with the above feedback. She told me that with listening, it is equally important to speak. This gives other person the impression that he or she is being trusted, which is as important as appearing trustworthy. This is actually quite true. They don't call communication a two way process for no reason!
This basically was why I joined Toastmasters - to learn to speak, and with this, hopefully I will get somewhere. Thank you.

PS: The above BS is totally superficial - at least most of it is. I didn't even want to join the club in the first place. I did just because I was forced to. In structure, the actual speech was even worse than what is written above. Besides, does it not sound too phony? Wait, don't answer.

Once in a while, when some bad timing, a technical glitch or any other inconceivable force of nature prevents you from doing something you were going to do out of desperation, is it not a relief to later realize that it would have been a cause of regret?

You had been thinking for time t whether or not you should make that move, feeling that it could momentarily ease the air (may be for even more, if you are the optimistic type). But then those forces didn't let you. And inside you know that that move can never ease the air for anybody.

Free

As mystifying as it sounds, zen is not something that can be easily achieved. One has to leave everything that he loves or hates behind in order to be free.

Well, all this righteous talk is alright, but consider this. There are far fewer successful people than unsuccessful ones. (Yes success is a subjective term, any reasonable definition will do for now though) After all that is why they are successful and everyone else is wanting to be like them. So, when a successful human decides to go into meditation it makes so much sense. He probably got fed-up (bored) of all his achievements and thought of exploring inner self. Wherever he will go, he will excel - even when practicing meditation. Spiritual intelligence will just come.

About the other guy, someone who is not wired as well as the successful fellow above doesn't even have the option to try that. Think about an average person deciding to explore spirituality. He can only be an average saint. Much below average actually - saints are not called learned people for no reason - their average is high. The point is that if someone has to struggle his way around, by deciding to quit in the name of zen, he is not fooling anyone.

And I didn't even touch what I started with - how much we are affected by our ecosystem, even when we are striving to be free.

I'm so happy, coz today I found my friend; in my head.

We all are what we all are, and not one is perfect.

love hate

Here is a new find on a webcomic. This strip in particular is just amazing. http://909sickle.com/s/love-hate/
It is hard to believe, I had thought of the exact same title for this post of mine. Something, I don't remember what, stopped me from using it, only till today.
I mean seriously, hate love. And hate waiting for something that is not desirable but not avoidable.

Even if you win a rat-race, you are still a rat.
If you don't, you run again. But then, the one who won the previous race does not stop either!
So the question is, if you quit, do you leave as something less(more) than a rat?

...but I am not so sure if there is some place where I actually do!

Right at this moment, I am fairly certain that I do not belong here.

Avatar

I have finally witnessed 'Avatar'. After seeing previews, I already knew I would like it. Then someone suggested me to watch it for she thought that it was my type; and beyond thoughts, it was!
I am not here to write a review, there are countless already, with praises and criticisms and technical analyses. I will just say how and what I feel about the movie and some of it's ideas.

Avatar is an absolute masterpiece. 3 hours in the theater were enchanting and after coming out, I wished someone could drive for me so I could just process, relax.

The movie is spiritual. I was delighted to be reminded that I named my comp in the insti "energy" - as in, the flow of energy across space and time, across places, people.
Tsaheylu - bonding. Neurons coming out of hair was new. I thought that it was interesting because they had to show some kind of physical contact between the two entities, or it would look like plane old telepathy. No electronic receptacles for living avatar through the DNA was not bad either. (Those Matrix plugs are still very cool by the way...)

There are so many other ideas I really liked and thought over, but for now, I'll just end this here and try to have a dream walk.

New game

Three things happened, not necessarily independent, that inspired me to get back into chess:-

1. Check out this beautiful interview with Richard Feynman on YouTube. In part 4 of the video, he pulls out a wonderfully brilliant analogy where he compares the universe to a chess board and natural laws to the rules of the game.

2. There is a book that I am reading these days, suggested by an insti senior, called The art of Learning. Author is a prodigal American chess player. He talks a lot about the game in the book. It is not technical but gives a psychological perspective.

3. The movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer" is based on a book by the same name. It is about the author of the above (The art....) book, Josh Waitzkin. Shows his experiences as he grew.

Last but not the least one of my favorite animes: Hikaru no Go is based on an ancient Chinese board game called Go, which always reminded me of chess.

I remember the time when I was a kid, learned the game with my Grandfather. Sadly I didn't keep up with the passion; hopefully this time I shall be serious. It is pointless to mention the beauty of the complexity the game has to offer. For now I can not come up with those good moves but just following good games and analyses generates good feeling.