a common man ಸಂಜಯ

In physics, a quantum leap or quantum jump is a change of an electron from one quantum state to another within an atom. It is discontinuous; the electron jumps from one energy level to another instantaneously. ~ wiki

Electrons keep changing – leaping – vibrating – all the time. But minor changes are insignificant. Its said that the only thing constant is change.  Only when the energy level jump is significant, does it really matter as a quantum leap.

In the monkey story, the monkey is living a happy life initially, then it starts to pick up some wooden apples, becomes so posessive about them, and eventually learns to let them go and get on with life. It’s decisions (i.e. its behaviour) was based on an evaluation. The monkey evaluated the real satisfaction it got from eating fruit (which it probably took for granted), and a hypothetical far superior taste it imagined from the wooden apple. I guess this evaluation of the real with the unreal was what lead the monkey astray.

But the irony is… that though for a reader it is clear that the monkey’s perception of wooden apples was flawed, for the monkey, it appeared to be very much real. So being in the monkey’s situation, how to overcome this flawed perception?

There are plenty of situations. Just one example would be a typical case of a person having a more active life online, than facing offline reality.

In the monkey’s story, would it be possible if the monkey thought long and hard about it? Most probably the monkey wouldn’t even start, wouldnt even acknowledge that such a thing was necessary. And even if it tried that, going by what Einstein said… “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”, that might not even have worked!

So some kind of quantum leap is vital.

In the story,… the monkey’s acute hunger and fatigue was the driver for such a quantum leap.

But does it always have to happen the hard way….? For many it may never happen at all… as Henry David Thoreu had observed:

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

There is a well known saying…

A mind is like a parachute, it works only when its open!

and another maybe lesser known one…

Nobody ever complained of a parachute not opening…

Choice seems to be between letting life pass/rip by and plonking ungracefully into a grave some day, or actually landing there with a parachute

The basic premise of the Arbinger institute is the concept of self-deception, and ignoring it amounts to self-betrayal. As the book Leadership & Self-Deception says, even acknowledging that there is some scope for improvement by itself is a significant first step. (Of course it goes on to give various approaches to going forward).

There is a phenomenal movie – Patch Adams starring Robin Williams.

[Of course one might recognise that Sanjay Dutt's popular time pass comedy Munna Bhai MBBS was based on it it, but while the story line is similar, there is really no comparison at all. Patch Adams has a beauty, quality and depth and in a class of its own]

The movie begins with Patch (Robin Williams) in a mental asylum with several other patients. One of the patients is an old man, Arthur. Arthur abrubtly confronts people showing them four fingers, asking them “how many do you see??” and getting exasperated with anyone answering the obvious “four”. Patch answers four as well initially. While everyone treats Arthur like yet another lunatic, Patch encounters him again and makes another attempt to answer… here’s the dialogue from that scene script…

Arthur: How many do you see?

Patch:  There are four fingers, Arthur.

Arthur: No, no, no. Look at me.

Patch:  What?

Arthur: Y-You're focusing on the problem.
        If you focus on the problem, you can't see the solution.
        Never focus on the problem. Look at me!
        How many do you see?
        No, look beyond the fingers.
        How many do you see?

Patch:  (looking at him, sees a reflection in his eyes) Eight.

Arthur: Eight. Eight. Yes! Yes!
        Eight's a good answer. Yes.
        See what no one else sees.
        See what everyone else chooses not to see...
        out of fear and conformity and laziness.
        See the whole world anew each day.

What is our real potential, and how little are we really living up to it?

This idea is beautifully explored in the Disney-Pixar movie Ratatouille…

Tony Robbins in his book Awaken the Giant Within You talks about how powerful a decision can be. This of course is a powerful aid by itself. I don’t know how much resolutions work – there might be a shadow of failure involved as well. Just having a strong intention could make a bigger positive beginning. Both Tony Robbin’s book as well as the Seven Laws of Spiritual Success by Deepak Chopra talks about how important an action, however small it may be, is vital to getting things rolling!

This is not a comparison of the above books, I’m just relating them to each other as I see things from my point of view. I feel each of the books say something very positive and significant, and are well worth reading.

In general I’m a kind of lazy fellow, and for me I’ve found that this approach works better for me: work on being more clear on what I really want. Once that’s done, do something atleast one small thing, to actually get things rolling.

I don’t know – maybe one cannot really make a quantum leap in the quality of our life just like that. If we look at nature, a ripe fruit falls naturally, there is no grand plan, it just happens on its own. So I feel instead of resisting it, because a leap is generally into unknown and involve certain amount of risk – one only needs to facilitate it with an open mind

What I feel is that any kind of leap isn’t just some one time event…  I hope to make it a way of life… like a mountaineer would continuosly ascending a mountain,  like the solution to the nine dot puzzle…

Online one may have a lot of friends, be very popular, interesting and interactive. But is it possible that in reality one may be a boring nerd glued to a computer a lot of the time, and neglecting a lot of difficulties? Seeking a kind of escape in the online identity?

Of course I myself have been in such situations esp earlier in the initial electronic forum days (long before this site). It all had more or less began in internal discussion forums of my previous company where I started getting more and more involved. Many things including work began to suffer, and the main thing is I used to suffer from low-selfesteem for having over-squandered office time, this was kind of like stealing considering that I was getting paid for that time based on trust. When I finally overcame it, my professional life took a radical positive turn. More important issues once again began to finally gain priority that they deserved.

Still my guess is that with so many interactive sites like orkut, facebook and flickr and so on -  its quite easy to get addicted to an online identity. And once that’s done, its pretty hard to pry him apart from it. It may be quite hard for him to see that whatever satisfaction he’s getting from the online world is just superficial, and is coming at a heavy price of losing many other things like say health particularly. Online relationships may seem to be more interesting than the real people he’s actually living with on a day to day basis!

While this whole Web 2.0 movement has its risks of people being too much online, I’ve no doubts that on the other hand its really moving us towards a more connected world.

I have no idea whether, though I’m writing this, whether I’m not still on the wrong side of the balance… :roll: RwBs How to identify a blog addict was a cool guide :cool: for example. Still, many times old situations may reccur – and very inconspicously at first, just like the camel encroached into the tent!

Stephen Covey’s story seems to provide a reassurance that as long as we put the big items in, there will always be room for other stuff.

A time management guru was speaking to a group of type “A” personalities. He placed a wide-mouth gallon jar on the table in front of him. Next to the jar was a collection of fist-sized rocks. He carefully filled the jar with the big rocks, until he could fit no more.

He asked the group, “Is the jar full?”

Everyone responded, “Yes.”

He then pulled a large bowl of gravel from under the table and proceeded to pour the gravel into the jar. The gravel fit into the spaces between the rocks. He again queried, “Is the jar full?”

“Probably not,” was the group’s reply.

He reached for another bowl, this one filled with sand. He dumped the sand into the jar. The sand filled the spaces not taken by the rocks and the gravel. Once more, he asked, “Is the jar full?”

“No,” everyone agreed.

Finally, he reached for a pitcher of water and poured water into the jar until it was filled to the top. The time management guru looked at the group and asked, “What is the point of my illustration?”

One man replied, “That no matter how full your schedule is, you can always fit one more thing into it.”

“No!” the guru responded.

The point of this illustration is, “If you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in at all!”

A forwarded mail from Venki (Today’s Kagga)…

There once was a happy monkey wandering the jungle, eating delicious fruit when hungry, and resting when tired. One day he came upon a house, where he saw a bowl of the most beautiful apples. He took one in each hand and ran back into the forest.

He sniffed the apples and smelled nothing. He tried to eat them, but hurt his teeth. They were made of wood, but they were beautiful, and when the other monkeys saw them, he held onto them even tighter.

He admired his new possessions proudly as he wandered the jungle. They glistened red in the sun, and seemed perfect to him. He became so attached to them, that he didn’t even notice his hunger at first.

A fruit tree reminded him, but he felt the apples in his hands. He couldn’t bear to set them down to reach for the fruit. In fact, he couldn’t relax, either, if he was to defend his apples. A proud, but less happy monkey continued to walk along the forest trails.
The apples became heavier, and the poor little monkey thought about leaving them behind. He was tired, hungry, and he couldn’t climb trees or collect fruit with his hands full. What if he just let go?

Letting go of such valuable things seemed crazy, but what else could he do? He was so tired. Seeing the next fruit tree, and smelling it’s fruit was enough. He dropped the wooden apples and reached up for his meal. He was happy again.

**************

Like that little monkey, we sometimes carry things that seem too valuable to let go. A man carries an image of himself as “productive” – carries it like a shiny wooden apple. But in reality, his busyness leaves him tired, and hungry for a better life.

Still, letting go seems crazy. Even his worries are sacred apples – they prove he’s “doing everything he can.” He holds onto them compulsively.

Currently my site seems to have some Unicode problem so all kannada characters are messed up. Root cause seems to be a wrong database collation after an import into a new database. Btw thanks to the super support of Weblogs.us, this site is powered by a lot more powerful and reliable server and database now!

Many have already used Quillpad so far, but I was looking for some kind of WordPress plugin that integrates into WordPress, allowing users to type directly in Kannada. Came across a nice one from Monusoft but can’t enable it yet till this Unicode issue is fixed.

Happened to come across the making of Quillpad…

From the NY TIMES – By DANIEL SORID
Published: December 30, 2008

The next chapter of the World Wide Web will not be written in English alone. Asia already has twice as many Internet users as North America, and by 2012 it will have three times as many. Already, more than half of the search queries on Google come from outside the United States.

The globalization of the Web has inspired entrepreneurs like Ram Prakash Hanumanthappa, an engineer from outside Bangalore, India. Mr. Ram Prakash learned English as a teenager, but he still prefers to express himself to friends and family members in his native Kannada. But using Kannada on the Web involves computer keyboard maps that even Mr. Ram Prakash finds challenging to learn.

So in 2006 he developed Quillpad, an online service for typing in 10 South Asian languages. Users spell out words of local languages phonetically in Roman letters, and Quillpad’s predictive engine converts them into local-language script. Bloggers and authors rave about the service, which has attracted interest from the cellphone maker Nokia and the attention of Google Inc., which has since introduced its own transliteration tool.

Frequently Asked Question by some candid well wishers: How do you get time for all this? Are you jobless, unemployed, you have way too much free time to squander on your hands?

Answer: several factors:

1. I really enjoy my work – my professional work as well as housework (we’ve no maidservants and do everything like sweeping, mopping, dishes, etc ourselves). I have a fairly heavy workload. I value quality time with my mother, sister, aunts and rest of my family of course including wife and son.
2. I’m a sort of speed typist.
3. As I’m not bound by office timings being a freelancer – I work at times I’m most productive. (may be some day I’m going to be disciplined, but I’m not yet there). (In fact my recent online chat status is “fingers dancing on the keyboard, wrist waltzing with the mouse – aka @work” )

I’m firstly an engineer and a parent, a photographer and probably last of all a writer. Still I feel its worth the time I spend on writing because even if nobody reads I myself read it at some or the other point in time. Circumstances won’t remain the same always, this is just the current situation. And of course even though it hardly happens esp nowadays, its real nice whenever I hear back from anyone!

Apart from also being lazy and neglienent and messing up things sometimes, I’ve also tried a bit of refactoring which has made a significant difference. While there’s always going to be plenty of room for improvement, in general I definitely value my time a lot – every moment of it!

BarackObama is asking you to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr by volunteering in your area. Visit http://USAservice.org or text SERVE to 56333 for info.

- Obama’s twitter update

Obama seems to be creating a revolution of sorts by by calling on Americans of all ages to step up and help their fellow citizens however they can. The best part about it is that its really leveraging on technology, using social networking tools like blogging and mobile updates, where people can answer questions like “How You’re Serving Your Community” and provide an answer with any kind of media they can. The site Renew America Together serves a central point of contact which facilitates both finding as well as hosting an event in any particular area.

This excellent rediff article about Obama talks about how much there is to learn from him. It highlights how he is goal oriented, organised to be productive, creative, disciplined, and works hard and smart. Indeed we can see this being applied in this context as well.

We can imagine this is only the beginning… a truly inspiring one… and this should spread around the world as well!

Somehow we’ve just kept procrastinating buying a DVD player. We got on without one by either watching movies that came on cable TV or ocassionally watching one on the laptop. So recently late December I decided to finally buy one, and went around enquiring for a good model.

I wanted a model that would play from a USB stick, and after looking around suddenly felt that support for 5.1 DTS wouldn’t be bad either.

There were a lot of models, but shortlisted the Philips 3256 and Samsung P480R both priced around Rs. 3300 with the Philips model slightly more expensive. But I liked the Samsung more as it had more buttons on the base unit which can sometimes be quite handy, and also an FM Radio and recording feature. The Philips model had some scratch card kind of thing where we might win something, and also free DVDs of 3 movies (no idea which ones) that would be home delivered after purchase. Hmm didn’t buy either that day as we were in a hurry, and eventually forgot about it.

Then a few days later while roaming around Big Bazaar one Sunday afternoon, came across an offer of some unknown brand Passion DVD player – and this one was clubbed with a Koryo (another vague brand) 5.1 DTS Surround Sound speaker system with inbuilt amplifier, all for Rs 3000. And on top of that they’d included in the same package a DVD Rental (BigFlix) membership at a subsidised rate of Rs 150 for 2 months (which would otherwise cost Rs 300 per month) and a chance to win some bumper prize, and some “surprise gift”. A DTS Sound system like that would cost atleast Rs 5000 on its own, so this looked like a pretty good deal.

When I examined the product I could guess it was not of really the best quality. Also I’d bought a Koryo Sandwich maker from Big Bazaar a year ago, and that used to roast only half the side of the bread, and we’d need to turn the sandwich around to do the other side, but somehow it had atleast worked.

Usually I’d prefer a good quality brand compared to nothng, but since I’m going through a somewhat asphyxiating financial crunch right now, and the greed of the ‘deal’ kind of got into me. So against my better judgement, I thought I’d try this out as an intermediate solution to my DVD player requirement.

So I was handed over these two boxes – the DVD player and the amplifier – and after picking up my prizes I went out of the shop to my bike. It turned out that my bike had got towed off due to a No Parking ticket – this was maybe the sign of things to come. I was quite horrified because this was the first time such a thing had happened. When I’d parked it there, I’d not thought much of a No Parking sign which had been quite a distance away, but when I found the bike missing I looked up a tall pole and right above my head there had been a No Parking sign, no idea how I’d missed that one! Anyway, I hadn’t even had my lunch and was really hungry, called home and my wife said I better come home and we’d get back the bike later. This was a welcome suggestion so I just went home. (thanks to my brother in law we did get back the bike later on)

Btw the “surprise gift” was a somewhat unimpressive microwave container, and I have no idea what I won in the New Year lottery.

When I went out with these two boxes – in the first place there were no batteries provided for the remote in one box. Maybe this is usual. And in the other one, the battery had leaked out! So I had to go and procure two AAA batteries from somewhere. Finally after everything was connected, it turns out that there was just no sound. After all the permutations and combinations and doublechecking all the circuits, I found that there was just no sound at all. Later on I had to go to Big Bazaar once again and look at how they’d connected it.

The DVD player has two audio outputs, one is a Stereo output – two cables – Left and Right speaker. The other was the 5.1 output – which has 6 cables – 5 for 5 speakers (Surround Left, Surround Right, Front Left, Front Right, and Center), and 1 for a Woofer (hence 5.1 which means 5 + 1). The point of the latter being that the sound gets distributed among these speakers to render special audio effects.

In the demo, they’d just connected two cables for the stereo!

Anyway to cut a long story short, it turns out that by changing some settings using the menu, I was actually able to get some output from the speakers. But even then, the dialogues were hardly audible and though I watched a couple of movies, it was almost impossible without the subtitles on.

This wasn’t even going to be an intermittent work around, Big Bazaar had succesfully managed to dump a Rs 3000 piece of electronic junk in my house!

Finally after a week or so I made time to take the whole thing back to the place – I told them I really need something else. They empathised with me but I didnt have the wrapping packages, and also I had exceeded one week (they had given this timeline for a return earlier, but when I’d gone with my earlier complaint they’d said reassuringly that they’d exchange it no problem). Still they did try to file this return in their computer system, and in the meantime I identified a Philips player among the few other models they had on display. I was temporarily relieved this mess was finally getting over. Unfortunately they came back saying it wasn’t possible as it had been over a week. So I had lost my case. They were kind enough to exchange it for another Passion DVD player.

Atleast in this one the audio is relatively better if I connect it directly to the TV speakers – so its some consolation that atleast I’m able to watch movies now! Connecting it through the speaker system still wasn’t working, but I’d rather live with this than go through any other hassles – I might write to some customer support later maybe. (The ‘paint’ on the speaker system amplifier is actually a paper stuck on it which is already coming off!)

Ok apart from paying a big price for a real cheap DVD player, I think the only thing useful I got in the whole thing was the BigFlix subsidised membership where I saved a few hundred rupees for two months

I don’t know how exactly I ended up going through this situation – wasting a lot of time and energy. I think this really shows complete lack of wisdom on my part right from the start. I suspect maybe somewhere the greed that I might win some big prize pushed me into buying this cheap stuff. Hard lesson (re…)learnt was to be aware of the real intention behind any act without just looking at the superficial intention! Hope I manage to avoid (or if thats too overambitious – atleast reduce) getting victimized by my own stupidity and greed again

A US student did a gullibility test asking people if they will sign a petition demanding strict control or total elimination of the chemical “dihydrogen monoxide”. The reasons were very convincing…
1. it can cause excessive sweating and vomiting
2. it is a major component in acid rain
3. it can cause severe burns in its gaseous state
4. accidental inhalation can kill you
5. it has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients

Out of 50 people he surveyed, only one refused to sign. Dihydrogen monoxide is popularly known as water !!

Source: why are we so gullible

Now, well after almost a decade after my dad died… this year of 2009 we decided to celebrate his birthday a little more significantly than just remembering him.

So we went to this place called Samarthanam Trust in a quiet corner of Jayanagar, and asked them about any deserving candidate who was a good student but just lacked the opportunity to take their talent further. The caretaker there thought a while, and then came up with the name of a girl who was doing her 10th standard but was in real poverty with her parents struggling to make ends meet. We even got to meet this girl, of course we only had a general conversation with her, and she had some fun playing with my baby son for a few minutes and then went on her way.

It was nice to have met her, and after she left we wrote the cheque for her, wishing that it would give the chance for the sparkle in her eyes to keep shining!

We left the place with a sort of undescrible feeling of a quiet joy, and wished the same for my Dad.

Well known saying that “Love is blind”

Today I came across a quote so uplifting that it simply took my breath away… Though I felt I should avoid writing about meditation any more as I’m too much of an irregular novice, I could not help sharing this quote here

(More about it the reader is free to find on google)

Love alone is blind;
meditation gives it eyes.
Meditation gives it understanding.
And once your love is both love and meditation,
you become fellow travelers.
Then it is no longer an ordinary relationship.
Then it becomes a friendliness on the path
towards discovering the mysteries of life.

Very unexpectedly, I ended up teaching a couple of neighborhood kids how to paint. Here are some of the ideas.

Assumed that there is already an initial outline picture on the paper which is to be filled in…

• only the tip of the paintbrush should be dipped in paint, not the entire brush.
• first paint the outline very carefully and neatly, making sure not even a single drop of paint comes outside, and then paint the interior gradually
• use only strokes in the same direction as much as possible
• wait for a coat to dry before applying a second coat
• clean the brush thoroughly after use
• its good to buy a coloring book which has empty outlines where the child can paint inside. But its can also be fun to actually ask him what he wants to draw, draw the outline for him on the spot, and then he paints it.

[optional reading] Background trigger… series of unrelated events…

I was recently watching What Dreams May Come had seen it earlier once long ago, but watching it again the dialogues and story was more rivetting than ever, and the main point related to this post is that there’s a LOT of painting involved in this movie…

Was browsing through the very colorful Jana’s Journal and appreciating the lovely pictures there…

And recently was writing to my Mukthabalaga friends on a nice activity at home – my wife gives my son a watercolor paintbox and paintbrush, and then sits with him somewhat nonobstrusively, aiding him to just experiment with colors.

So recently a couple of neighbouring kids were playing at home with Abhinav, and they started using his paint set and I was passing by and was really aghast looking at them scrubbing the paper like they were using a toilet brush to remove a stain. I had to stop myself from shouting “NOooo Noooo nOOOO…” So sat down with them, and started explaining how to paint. As I started, I started recollecting more and more how I used to really enjoy painting during my school days – and it was a really nice time