Rocks, stones, and pebbles

To Communicate

2011-11-27T23:57:00.001+05:30

A feeling;
a need to convey the feeling to achieve a desired result;
real world gestures,
physical expressions,
sounds and words.

This describes what amounts to communication in a certain perspective.

Communication is one among the few foundations which support the human civilization ; its existence & its achievements(however pointless they both might be).

What follows is in part a reply to the paranoid post of my pessimistic pal Sharkey...
Here is the Link... Sharkeys Blog

The both of us have had innumerable discussions on this very topic and our communication process has now taken a new form; of that of blog posts. A very constrained form wherein neither will be carried away by the immediate controversial statement that one might make,which often steers the discussion away from the main subject (and we end up discussing other fantastical stuff :D, without ever reaching a conclusion ).

Now to the matter at hand.
I was going through some numbers; I was not surprised to find out that the total number of Facebook users from USA and the Population of USA (in between age 15-45 years) is almost same. That is a 1/3rd of US population and almost near 100 % of a certain age group.

This means that the social fabric has changed. The way people convey their feelings to each other has changed;Communication has changed. To put things in perspective( of the old ways Vs new ways of communication). The old ways were intense; very much more intense compared to the new ways of communication. Nothing compares to seeing the smile on your Girl friends face; notice the sparkle and the small tear of joy that drops down her cheek on seeing you after a long time.There is an absolute lack of this intensity in any Virtual form of communication. you might have a HI DEF video chat with her and might notice the tear and sparkle in the eye but never will you feel the warmth of the entire experience in her embrace.Yet, here we are with 800 million active users on Facebook. The virtual means of communication is not a completely ridiculous idea. One doesn't have to travel daily from India to USA so that he can tell her he loves her or to find out if she is doing well or to crack a wise joke with her...so on and so forth the convenience of staying in touch is just too cosy to give up.

Facebook( or the Face that sharkey fears ) is a virtual means of communication.
All Virtual means of communications are in large passive communications; without the Active real world communications to back them up they will fizzle out and die ergo virtual communications will never be able to convey what was actually intended. To make it more clear....

Lets say you try to develop a relationship with a girl entirely in the sphere of virtual communication.
You saw her Profile on Facebook; you truly like her from the little of what you see through status updates, album pictures, interests and activities.and she also likes you back though your Facebook profile and you get a hint of it through your interactions with her over the virtual domain. This relation ship will not last untill you meet her personally.; you will at some point of time get so busy that u wont be able to keep up with this passive form of communcation ( keep up with her status updates) and the liking will eventually come down. had you met her in real life, then there is some part of of your real self dedicated to her and your communications to her will be independent of whether or not u have a good internet connection and whether or not your PC got spoilt.:) . The Passive WILL NOT LAST without the ACTIVE.

So sharkey there is nothing to be uncomfortable with virtual means of communication(/facebook) it will never replace the active form. One should learn to use both of them to effective use and be better at whatever that one wants to achieve.

Coming to the other issue that bugs you. There is definitely an information over load on Facebook in its current form. On a certain level Facebook is just a tinted mirror of the real world society wherein existence of dislike is not acknowledged. Just as in the real world if you put too much information about yourself in the public domain you are inevitably going to land up in trouble . People have yet to come to learn this in the Facebook world. Besides, the information that you put online about yourself is what your trading when you freely enjoy GMAIL and FACEBOOK. ( The cost of free as one might put it). SO if each and every single user decides not to share his interests etc and not to let GMAIL and FACEBOOK sift through your emails and status updates for Keywords. Then the ventures wouldn't be viable economically and will shut down.

By the way nobody is asking you to see the status updates of everyone and then compliant that everyone is narcissistic.....you could just look away(or more appropriately unsubscribe/block the user whose status updates you don't want to see). as to the few persons who are in your friends list and you cannot unsubscribe ..well they are narcissistic in the real world too cant help it( Facebook amplifies the real world qualities in most cases).

Eventually people will learn not to make there life completely public.

First Love and Gears!

2011-10-25T12:21:00.001+05:30

A strict definition of love doesn't exist and by extension first love cannot also be defined in any clear manner, what I would be referring to in all that follows here though is the first time that you feel some sort of a mostly unexplainable attraction and affection,particularly your late teen years ( i.e in your under-grad years).

People who do fall in love in those years and see it through, as some might put it should consider themselves to be very lucky and luck aside I believe they definitely are a happier lot as compared to to others.
At that particular age is the very first time you actually start gaining a perspective of the world around you and how to apply yourselves in it, but essentially though you are still unformed. To put it from an academic perspective lets say in the machine of the world if we were all Gears!( :D don't start laughing it is an interesting comparison) then by the age I am speaking of only the core of the gears have formed and the tooth are yet to take shape.

You have the basic sense of all the good and bad, the beautiful and ugly, the interesting and boring stuff, but the edges aren't trimmed, the discretion about the issues is largely vague and not fine tuned yet.
Now, if you fall in love with another person at this stage you finish your characteristics together and each one would have seen what the other person is at his basic level and hence the understanding for each other is at its greatest.

Coming back to gears comparison. Each one would have witnessed each others core i.e each one knows what the soft spots of the other person are, each one has an understanding of where you would yield and where you have your cracks, weakness and can compensate accordingly. More important than the core; the tooth of the gears of the two personalities in question will be a perfect fit with the least amount of friction as they work together ( while they try and lead there lives in the WORLD MACHINE... ROFL it does sound funny).

In comparison if u take up people after they have grown up (i.e after they have passed the stage that I have described). They always have issues with their partners, there could be mistrust owing to the lack of knowledge on what the other person actually stands for and believes in. ( The gears have a lot of friction now) and it gets harder as time passes by to find the one with whom you'll be as happy as the other bunch.

There are a number of other comparisons I could further make such as adjustments to forced fits and compromises ...etc. etc. but I would leave it to the readers wonderful imagination to think for themselves.

At the end of it though I realized one thing you shouldn't develop heavy biases and extremely narrow views on big subjects( which is bad in general also) until you meet your life partner.Try having a bigger core and refrain developing your Gear tooth yet :D ........

~ Visa from his home sweet home.

Everything will change

2011-10-10T01:50:00.001+05:30

..................Nothing in this world is yours, everything and everyone are just fooling around. No one has a plan, no is playing anything. What you think you had yesterday wont be with you today and you wouldn't know what will happen tomorrow.Everything will change. There is hardly anything that is yours, you will loose her, you will loose him. What you love, what you like will be long gone. The circumstances develop without your say, all you do is after there is nothing more to do. You will be made to let go.On the hope of having a say, for some choice and mostly for the love of everyone and everything that made you ponder the very same-thing you carry on. Do remember everything will change and nothing in this world is yours.......................

An eloping mind

2011-05-11T20:14:00.000+05:30

A smile, a tear,
asleep with a fear.

A moment of bliss, a thought,
all the things that were not.

An eloping mind and all the strings it hangs on by,
the feelings that it still drags on by.

what have I gotten myself into
not an end in sight.
many questions to answer,
truly strange is this humans life.

Happiness hasn't really deserted me,
so hasn't the terrible agony!

Hell they fear, or the Heavens they might dream
Haha, petty things they truly are , for both of them I have seen.
or so i think!

An eloping mind and all the strings it hangs on by.

my only source of joy ,the only line of happiness, the things I learn and the ones I love.

Sigh, the feeling though still drags on by....

.

RANDOM //lost// THOUGHTS

2011-02-05T19:57:00.004+05:30

There was, once there was,
a heart, simple and mighty plain,
and then there was....

this and that :)

There was, once there was,
a heart, troubled and terribly sad,
and then there was....

this, that and a little more :(

There was, once there was,
a heart, quite wise and a know all,
and then there was....

this,that and a lot more

And yet again, there it was,

with its wisdom vanishing into thin air, troubles made to disappear,

Once again as simple and mighty plain as it could be,yet

as a stranger to its own-self!

something has changed, something has probably given away or

was it?, was it just another sway?

lost in thoughts, just random thoughts.

Think no more,sure, I am, Yoda would say.

But what once was, was for a reason,

known not to me nor to you,

haha how insignificant and unimportant we all might be,

just an act in another mans illusionist play!

whatever, whatever, may the force be with you!

and think no more,sure, I am, Yoda would say.

~ ViSa, lost in random thoughts.

Lament, Rejoice and a promise.

2011-01-17T21:27:00.001+05:30

For too long I have put you in the dark,
far too long had gone, I am missing the spark!

Where were you my dear love,
where in the entire wide world were you?
Hidden from plain sight,
I couldn't find you my dear love, I couldn't find you,
try however hard I might.

Along the way there were distractions,
all but two of them mis-attractions,
way too bright was the essence of their light,
but, oh not me, not me!,
it was always another in their cross-hairs sight.

I come back to you my simple love,
I realize, where you were,
was where I had left you.

And I promise now my dearie,
you shall always be my beloved angel,
for your unconditional love is what I seek,
and come what may, in any other contender,
I shall keep you in my heart and never lose you again!

♥ visa!

A Proposal

2010-10-24T00:06:00.000+05:30

...........It was a cool breezy night, as he looked out of the window his eyes shone more than the moon. Dressed to kill, he goes out pocketing the symbol of all his warmth and affection, the symbol of respect and admiration, of purity and truth in his love. That spark in his eyes were probably only matched by her charming smile, breathtakingly beautiful! was the very purpose of this mans existence. As they made there way in, the existence pauses his purpose and puzzles her with the inevitable question "Dear, I won't ask questions because silence will follow,But I just want to know how long my heart will be hollow" as true as they both were the answer was there even before the beginign of all time, before me and before you, before even them and it was an answer to complete his existence, and a meaning to the purpose...............

The sentence in quotes, was found somewhere on the net.

Ensuing fight

2010-07-09T21:03:00.000+05:30

Well my friend. Dreams most of them, or all,
with only the hope to achieve them, is not sufficient at all,
the universe is a strange place afterall,
without a fight it seems it doesn't prize what you dreamed,be it big or be it small.

If what you want is what you dream,
enter then the paradox of men,
life will be tough and it will be mean.

Further ahead as you move,
life will be vile and make u a fool,
there will be a while where you fight to just keep your dreams alive.

Lose not the hope then my friend and more significantly loose not the will to fight for them!

~VISA

File liFe

2010-06-02T21:25:00.000+05:30

Contd......

If one has to try and understand the system, the basic way to start is by giving definitions to all the various components of it ....some of the definitions are already in place (referring to the various things that classically come under the purview of science).

And when you try to define life the problems in doing so are many..........just after all but a little straining of our teny tiny brains,the conclusion might be that life is nothing special its just matter........but here I am and here you are thinking about the very same thing whereas an atom, does not on its own do such a thing...........now, immediately one might ask does an amoeba think of life?.......well it does not think of life as we do but it does think of its own survival....

and at this point exactly we might have hit upon a basic definition for life.....Is life something that tends to promote itself?.......

a simple mathematical description of this would be; life is a function (of what? for a later discussion) that always tends to increase its value...i.e if its a function of time then ...at say our reference natal time it is 1 then some time later it trans forms itself to 2 then to 3 ...so on and so forth....As I said there are a great many number of problems with this.....but for now lets just stick with it and see how far we can go about explaining the various phenomenon around us..........

System guide

2010-04-26T00:50:00.001+05:30

And I was wondering the other day,( having declared the world around me as a system or rather a combination of various systems in the previous post) is it possible to arrive at some ground rules for the functioning of the system.....for some systems we already know the rules, for example we already know about the system called gravity and what its behaviour is and are not mystified by it in fact we use this knowledge to forward our own causes about this system we are at quite an advanced stage wherein we are able to predict this systems behaviour with precision of a mathematical equation...but originally we started off with the ground rule that gravity is some kind of force existing between masses that pull them towards each other.....and what I want to figure out is something of that sort . What guides life?.....the immediate answer I suppose I would get if i conduct a survey among the masses is that ...God guides life...but that is not answering the question its just giving up on it ( most of the things since the cave man time that one couldn't explain have been given the name God)...and I realized as I was reading what was just written, I used the word life in my question.....and before we move any further....what is life?....................
........(to be continued .... much later)

The system and life

2010-04-09T21:02:00.000+05:30

In the previous post of mine I had concluded that as long as I am inside the system...a complete understanding of it is impossible....we could be just stones in the mortar of a bigger universe, I thought.
But, one can, without even thinking much, question this statement. Why is it not possible to completely understand the system?....

.....until recently i had been thinking that if X was part of the system that was trying to understand the system then it would ultimately be left with the last piece that is itself 'X' to understand and that it was impossible to understand oneself, hence the knowledge of the system remains incomplete. But that last statement is as good as saying and blindly believing without questioning that "Steve Martin is the next bond hero!!" ......

Now how do I say that it is possible.....well

Say the X in question is divided into infinitesimally small parts (as small as one wants) each part being dx...now there are n number of dx say dx1,dx2,.....now dx1 can understand the rest of X-dx1 and dx2 can understand the rest of X-dx2 so the collective integral of all the dx has a complete understanding.... i.e the collective of dxi's understands itself i.e X understands X.....
(Mind you this proof holds true only if one doesn't question the fact that for somebody outside a system it is possible to understand it, questioning this will lead to a different discussion with the same end result that i have here).

so we can now gaily say that It is possible to understand the system.

And now that we have an enlightened X lets ask it "Ex!,hey Ex! do u know why you are in this system?"

EX Bewildered by this question ....will try and find out about the system that put it inside this system.....(realizing that it was part of a bigger system) and extending the same logic as above it understands this completely and gets bewildered again...and the loop goes on.......

Ultimately what this proves is that a complete understanding of the system is not possible and that is because it is infinite and not for any other reason...... (To be continued)

Unfinished

2010-01-16T02:47:00.005+05:30

I exist, I exist, I exist,
Day in and day out I exist
and why I think ,
may be for thinking all day long why I exist?,
though I don't find answers I still exist
and wonder why?

people said..we exist to reach god...
I wonder if god knows why he exists

Does an ant know why it exists?
does a plant know why it exists?

Do you know why you exist?

yet you exist and so do I...
to what end and purpose, knowing not,

puzzling and strange the problem persists,

and what shall happen when I cease to exist and get out of the system.
intriguing the possibilities.......Dire the consequences for the one who loves and cares.
In-spite of all this, get tangled I will in all of life...seeking knowledge seeking joy..not being crazed and unhappy ,as its certain I wouldn't know.

- VISA

On Indian railways!-------by my sister

2009-11-12T21:45:00.002+05:30

Railways are very ancient,
their features are very salient!
they take us to our destination.
And to children they are of great fascination!

The glory of railways is emphatic,
to study their history is enigmatic
without showing any discrimination .
they carry people of different generations!

--Sri Gouri

I sing without a song

2009-10-11T15:14:00.003+05:30

Like a gamer without his game,
like a rider without his ride,
Incomplete and uncouthly made.

I write without a thought,
like Sachin without his straight drive shot,
like Pudge wihtout his rot,
lowly and needed not.

Until I realized,
that my wish was fulfilled
and slept with my head on the book,
imagining Storm was given back his grapple hook!!

:D

In his heart!

2009-10-11T14:58:00.010+05:30

A girl there was,
the sweetest and cutest to ever walk under the blue blue skies,
giggling and smiling all the while,
a bouquet of roses she was.

So pretty, so nice!!

A girl there was ,
with a wholesome heart and a goodwill thought,
an angel from heaven or heaven herself?,
always in an awe he was.

So tender, so nice!!

A girl there was,
never did she hurt anyone,
never did she hate anyone,
always caring she was.

So pure, so nice!!

A girl there was,

with a spark in the eye,
and a charm in the smile,
wow! what a girl she was.

So beautiful, So nice!!

His heart,
young and fickle it was,
insane and unwise,
never did he realize,
head over heals in love it was.

So confused, so crazed!!

-VISA

The Agony!

2009-08-02T14:34:00.006+05:30

Of wasted chances,
of lost dreams,
of shattered hopes and broken hearts,
of the things one could have done and of the things one shouldn't have done,
of those haunting night mares and recurring shivers,
it minds not the place nor the time
forever shall remain it's maim,

The agony goes on,
the agony goes on lest it encounters hope,
the hope that dreams can still be pursued,
the hope that ways can still be mended,
that cause is not lost and purpose undefeated,
for without this hope and the dream,
hath not the one a man, but a stone chipped off from the sculpture of universe.

Lose not the dream my friend,
and lose not the hope to achieve it!!!

-VISA

Life's all so sad!

2009-07-08T09:10:00.002+05:30

Life's all so sad!,all so sad!
I miss the endless night outs and nocturnal lifestyles,
miss the anc, miss the sac,
miss the beautiful peacocks moving about the lawns,
miss the insti and,
the misty mornings filled with joy.

Miss my friends for they are the ones who made the place a heaven for what it was,
miss the statues, miss the games
miss the dark eyed gamers, ever present to answer your calls,

Amiss were the classes always in pilani, and for what they were they'll always be missed,
the very poor jokes, and the wierd comments,
will there ever be a time when i wont miss them,
endless useless movies and forever continuing animes will there be ever a time,
when i can follow them with same intensity.

what a beautiful experience it really was!

I miss her,
I miss them all!
I miss them all!

Just tell me!

2009-07-08T09:08:00.000+05:30

There are many reasons to-
love me, hate me;
kill me, kiss me;
hug me, hold me;
sell me, keep me;
punch me or poke me;
but you've got to tell me,

there are many reasons to-
play against me, play with me;
dine with me, drink with me;
have fun with me or be sad with me;
all i want you do is tell me,

there are many reasons to
see the good in me or bad in me,
what ever it is just tell me!!!

-VISA

Imagine this!

2008-09-14T17:08:00.000+05:30

Imagine a system so advanced you don't even need to make a effort to climb it and once your in it the highly advanced technology enables you to stand without taking support from anything,
in fact the evolutionary systems within it are at such an advanced stage that , when your stop comes you just need to make sure your at the right spot so that it takes care that you get down in time. Also the high fidelity, crystal clear public address system makes sure that you never miss out on the station that is coming by(its as if some beside you is shouting in your ear the name of the next station). And believe me, when i say that it offers you such comforts that you can play cards, you can have a nice time with your girlfriend, listen to songs on any volume level that you want to. Now if you are jumping to conclusions that all this technology must be owned only by the super rich and super famous believe me you have dipped your self in some dal tadka. In fact the technology is so affordable that it is used by the poorest sections of the society, and of course hot chicks and cool dudes do get attracted to take a ride in it daily!!.

No wonder bal thackrey wants all non Maharashtrians to leave Mumbai!!

:D :D

Jokes apart there is not a single over exaggerated statement in the above paragraph.
I am 100% correct when I say that u don't need an effort to climb the train (just stand at the entrance at the office rush hour times and the crazy crowds just push you you into the train).
I am not wrong when I say you don't need to catch anything so that you don't fall ( the trains are so tightly packed that you hardly twitch a muscle so let lone the space for you to fall).
I am absolutely right again when i say that it has a hi fi public address system ( there is always a guy beside you shouting the coming stations name and asking you to get down or move aside).
Oh yeah if you were thinking I must have absolutely exaggerated the playing cards thing!! you have again dipped yourself in dal tadka, me and my friends have found a batch of office goers who happen to get into the train at the first stop and travel till last stop i guess so they get a whole block of seats for themselves and play cards in the morning rush hour!!and about
the romancing in train hmm love does not discriminate, love does not see, love does not smell, so you can always do it in the local train. :D

Now putting the jokes really, really away in my trunk and locking it up.

Believe me when i say there is no Mumbai without the local trains, day in and day out the arrive at almost the scheduled time to take you to your temples of cash and get you back to your home sweet home. They have a history, they have a heritage that one can be proud of as an Indian. yes they are shabby yes they don't look beautiful but they do their jobs without failing you. Even though one loathes them daily for having to travel in such conditions(ultra tech conditions :P) one cannot do without them.

that is the beauty of the local trains in Mumbai that is the status they enjoy in Mumbai. and hey good news for mumbaikers the railways are getting new coaches and they sure look good...

p.s let me leave you with some amazing facts

The system carries more than 6.1 million commuters on a daily basis and constitutes more than half of the total daily passenger capacity of the INDIAN RAILWAYS itself.
This was also the oldest railway system in Asia. The first train ran between Mumbai and Thane, a distance of 34 km
go to wiki to take a look at the new locals they are quite good.

p.p.s: next post is on the hot and not so hot chicks of Mumbai :) :D :P!!

Vaada paav khate ho kya???

2008-07-19T17:46:00.001+05:30

3 rd JULY 0530hrs C.S.T Mumbai Railway station:
"utto saaab station aagaye!!!"

Thus started my journey into a completely new and exciting life, ah the first impressions of Mumbai were quite plain and dull nothing interesting except for just one thing......
I was waiting in the station looking over the luggage while my good friends went to the enquiry to find out the means to reach our destination. And I saw a mada(homo/o.5) very well dressed in a blue saree( aqua blue) and with two assistants(male) she(/he) conversed with the cargo in charge for a few mins and went ahead to alight the train!........
Never mind, I would be seeing many more such things probably, I thought to my self, and returned to watching over the luggage........
we went ahead to the Local train part of the Chatrapathy Shivaji Station Terminus...
It would be an insult to my Civil Engineering degree if I were to forget mentioning the amazing architecture and building of the CST . It is a truly amazing Gothic structure with very high standing roofs and out-standing metal work pillars, it evokes a feeling of grandeur and power.....
coming back to the First impressions of Mumbai.
As we proceeded towards the trains it was a disgusting sight to see the filthy, shabby and yakky( i couldn't find a better word pardon me for using such slang and pardon me for any future slang too) trains I was not happy to make my travel in those trains and in between all of these I also saw a queen train omg this was a Delhi metro type train but it was with open doors i was hoping for more such trains as I was alighting my disappointing local train to vashi....
In the train...
I happen to meet a telugu speaking guy ( who works as a distributor for a telugu paper "sakshi"), i was not inclined to talk to him , but my good friend vinay had a long conversation of 20 mins(it takes abt 30 mins from cst to vashi) and i heard good bits of him scolding the CM of AP and MAHARASHTRA ,how they ate loads of public money and scolding his brother who happen to cheat him in a business and brought him to his current state and appraising vinay of all the local stuff to be careful about, most of which were like "BEWARE OF PICKPOCKETERS"..........
And we got down at the Vashi it was a huge complex i was wondering what the structure above was for.....(more on that later)
ah we reached the ps station in a very shabby manner at abt 7 o clock in the morning and were taken to the
The impression of the room was too disgusting to describe and on seeing this the incharge who was with us had promised to shift us to better location in 2 or three days which he did!!
anyways we got settled and got ready to go the ps station to talk to the boss!!
and to our surprise we were given work on 3rd itself!!! a day before our ps starts, the employees most of them ex bitsians were surprised why we were working a day before............

the work given to us was the worlds most boring job
it was to copy comments made on auto cad onto to the blue prints !!! about 5*5 sets
I believed it must be a Mr. miagi kind of thing and went ahead, to my dismay it was but only a peons job!! lol lol
my job improved a bit, after a few days though, with me working on a formula to calculate tower deflections and analyzing a coal bunker structure!!
Moving on, my boss my coordinator from DCl side(Devlopment Consulltants Limited where i am the intern now)Mr. kanjkar or dear Mowgli as he will be further refrenced from now on is quite a character he had scolded every body in the office in a span of 2 days except for the ps students( I wonder why!!)
about the company its a fairly good one working on high level infrastructure projects both in India and overseas acting as the governments Engineer and in the past it seems has worked on classified defense projects and has been involved in building all of India's Nuclear reactors and the mobile launching platform of Sriharikota launch facility .......
coming back to Mumbai.....
Imagine any normal Indian city( me refrencing HYD) add beautiful girls who are fiercely Independent and dudes with misfitting goggles and every office goer walking at break neck speeds or running!( funny thing is that i had observed it is too easy to spot a non mumbaiker in a crowd at vashi railway station he is the slowest person and has an uncomfortable expression on his face...Two days of Mumbai life and I have become a mumbaiker well at least in terms of walking fast lolol)... .....
all in all the first day went on OK may be slightly on the bad side but hey nothings ever like u expect
and ya there are more, many more incidents to talk about keep visiting back every Sunday to have a look at mumbai through my eyes
p.s: the next week ur gonna know abt the mumbai train network and all the socail ramifications of it! most of which are comically brilliant.....
---

p.p.s: The tiltle has got nothing to do and everything to do with this post.... i eat vada pav as break fast daily( for the past week here),it is as much integrated into mumbai life as much as biryani in my life!!!:D......