The River...

I really like this old story of the River.. Read on..

Rivers are interesting creations of nature.. She takes birth in the mountains, somewhere deep inside.. goes thru a lot of muck, junk, stones sand pebbles all along her way. She does not pick up everything, but only the necessary minerals and discards everything else that is unwanted. She brings fertile bits of soil to the plains, brings cheer, happiness, joy to the livestock, farmers and every insect on her way.
She could have the underground path and reached the sea, but she didn't. She chose to come out, see and experience things.
When you drank the river water, you were thrilled. It gave you some kind of happiness, maybe which you cannot explain in words. She made you forget all troubles/problems and stay happy even for a short while. She touched the life of one person at least for a moment, even unknowingly, and that happiness in those faces and lives of the is all that the river needs, to be happy.

She went through many things, she didn't care, she didn't bother what came on the way.

Every time I hear this story, it puts me thinking...

They need a little bit of your time…

Sometimes all they need is a split of a second. A wink of an eye, a minute of yours, a flick of the hand.

Well, a boring Saturday yet again being summer and no travel plans. Summer is a bad time in Karnataka to travel.

This post was actually inspired by the book ‘Blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell. I bought this book on the roadside pirated book stall who manages to give you the one at 1/5th the market price. Recession times leads to low cost solutions :-)

The author describes the main subject of his book as "thin-slicing": our ability to gauge what is really important from a very narrow period of experience. Here are links for a bit more description of the book from Wikipedia.
Wikipedia and Malcolm Gladwell

The book put me thinking on slightly different lines.. About people just like about ‘blink’ instances.

I’ve had a few experiences personally and have seen quite a few, when someone can do wonders with a flick. All people need is a spark, an ignition or a word of comfort sometimes. The first instance I can recall was a couple of years back when I was diagnosed with malaria and lay on the bed entangled in the drip pipes for 3 days. Every day the doc used to attend me twice. It was nothing that he did, but just speak a few words and check the temp scale. But those two visits game me real inspiration that I was doing well. The body used to cool own, eyes used to lighten up, some energy used to encompass for about an hour. It is no surprise, as each of us would have felt in a similar way. I could narrate a few more of similar or better ones but a little bit enthusiastic to get into the crux of the matter.


Sometimes it so happens for people that they get into situations or problems or happy things that they need to share. It happens so, that they want a pair of ears to listen and a pair of eyes to look at for expressing themselves. Very much like machines, which when oiled and greased at the right time works fine for years else it breaks down . The ability to thin slice such situations will remarkably make a difference for those who need it.

Btw, here is another incident which happened in college, when a friend of mine was totally depressed for a personal reason, which I ended up discovering was a breakup. He was totally down for a week, and incidentally we had invited him for a trip the nearest weekend. Our intention of invite was out of the blue as another guy who had to join us backed out, and college experiences say that trips are more financially viable if there are more people. Now, we spoke about everything like breakups, college rumours, how-i-will-be-a-few-years-later and many more things during the trip. It was an enjoyable trip as always, and a couple of days later this guy invites us all for a treat in an expensive restaurant and explains us the whole story about his breakup, what we spoke fitted into his life and how he understood a lot of things from the conversation. He was a happy man that day! So were we, with sumptuous food for free :-P. Incidentally we never knew that we were with him at the right time when he needed it. It just happened, unknowingly and that made a big difference to him. He is a successful guy and doing his PHd in the US now.

There are some people who might come and ask directly and some maybe pale white shy and express their concern in indirect ways. Parsing such situations to understand what they want is completely onto our abilities and thinking processes and is a challenge. The paradigm shift is what some people do to determine their situations and reasons, in short, reading between lines. There are some of us who believe that “If you have a problem, tell me I’ll solve it”. For some it does not work that way. People might always not need a solution for a problem. The problem, a lot of times is a solution in itself. If everyone were straightforward… psychiatrists, counselors, negotiators would be jobless. I’ve read that such people are highly paid by governments to determine the behavior and character of captured fugitives or their own soldiers, to read between lines and to predict the behavior or counsel them. That’s not much in the purview of this topic.

Sometimes it happens that because of our visual shadowing of people’s personality model, the cognitive abilities get masked. But the fact, that the difference the time slice can make is immeasurable. There have been instances where kids took extreme measures as their parents were busy and did not spend ‘quality’ time with them or mafia gang leaders quitting and leading a normal life just because they could speak with someone and ended up finding out what he had done so far was wrong.

We all are wired differently, so it’s extremely tough to predict behaviors. But it is proved fact that there are definitive patterns that can determine what a person has got to say. .....For the time spent well at the right time can be more rewarding for either sides than we could all imagine.

I would be glad to know what you all feel or think about this ‘perception’ of giving your time..

A Do-It-Yourself Solar Powered Laptop Cooler

May 1st week and Bangalore was hot. More so with we being used to AC's all day in office, it was pretty perspiring to sit at home. On the weekend, with so much of temperature, it was not a good idea for me to go out driving in the burning sun I thought, and took towards a favorite pastime.
Yeah, scrapping and facebooking and Gtalking. Its been hours since I began and still had my laptop with me all heated up. It wasn't a good idea to use a laptop as a laptop but rather found out that the name 'notebook' suits more. Probably someone who was intelligent enough that laptops cant be used for long on laps renamed it as 'notebook'
I thought I'l go buy a laptop cooler, and checked the price online. It was a cool 1700/- a one from Belkin with a 9v power adapter.

Being a boring friday noon, (1st may and a long weekend) I happened to spot the Solar Panel that was gifted by my company NSN as an annual gift as a part of the Go-Green initiative. Unfortunately the lamp ceased to work, thanks to the not-so-good battery provided inside.
So here I was with a project to build a Solar powered Laptop cooler.

All you need is some raw materials and some time :-)
The nearby computershop guy was happy to provide me a 12v 100mA CPU casing fan for a cool 70/- and I bought this writing pad made from cardboard that we used in school for 20/- at a nearby stationery shop. The project was to cut a hole in the pad, and fix the fan onto it and connect the DC fan to the solar panel.

From Blogger Pictures

From Blogger Pictures

How to:

• Cut through the pad with a hacksaw with the fan sweep as the diameter. Selecting a slightly offset point on the cardboard would help, as the laptop heating points are not at the middle but somwhere between the middle and the topleft corner. It would help if the area you cut is made slightly wet as cardboard gives way easily at those areas. Now drill 2 holes into the pad and affix the fan with a pair of screw and nut provided alongwith the fan.

• Now connect the panel power cable (its assumed to have pretty long about 10-15m) to the fan. Check the direction of the airflow before drilling or fixing the fan as the fan does not reverse direction if you connect it the other way round thanks to the internal circuitboard within the fan coil

From Blogger Pictures

From Blogger Pictures

From Blogger Pictures

From Blogger Pictures

The panel I used gave me an open circuit voltage of 10.09V 500mA. perfect for the fan of 12V to make it run at 80% of the speed. The fan running at full speed will not give as much airflow as 80% of the speed.

From Blogger Pictures

The Image below depicts the Airflow:

From Blogger Pictures

The device is working great for me. I first place it on my lap with the air exit towards my face, and place my laptop on top. The temp under the laptop has reduced by 8-10 degrees which is about 30% improvement. All at a cost of 100/-
In case you dont have a solar panel, you could use an old power adapter of 12v ~350mA for instance like the one I am using is from an old cordless phone. Buying one will cost 150/-
You can also use the power from USB of your laptop. In that case you need to buy a USB port male pin and a 5V fan instead of 12V. You can get the USB configuration here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus

From Blogger Pictures

All in all, its a very generic design and you can customise it with 3 or more fans, add more LED's to make it look like a UFO, put 4 rubber bushes on all sides to make it a tabletop laptop cooler etc etc...
It was a fun afternoon and the results were satisfying. And yeah, I managed to save 1500/- during the recession time :-)

Profile Speed...

Here is a pic blog ;)

Click on the picture to see the full size image..

Tagged !

1. LAST MOVIE YOU SAW IN A THEATER
Krazzy 4, it was one of the stupidest movie, and amongst the biggest waste of talents.
How could they make a stupid movie with Irfan Khan, Arshad Warsi, rajpal Yadav

2. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING?
Haven't read a book for long...

3. FAVORITE BOARD GAME?
Chess

4. FAVORITE MAGAZINE?
Some columns in reader's digest, tech stuff, and last few pages of outlook

5. FAVORITE SMELLS?
Nature...

6. FAVORITE SOUND?
Birds chirping in hometown...

7. WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD?
Breach of trust..

8. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE?
oh! is it late..?!

9. FAVORITE FAST FOOD PLACE?
BCB

10. FUTURE CHILD'S NAME?
Dhriti.. love d name...

11. FINISH THIS STATEMENT. "IF I HAD A LOT OF MONEY I'D...?
invest.. obvious! ;)

12. DO YOU DRIVE FAST?
Nope, a bit scared...

13. DO YOU SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL?
he he... v guys dont..

14. STORMS-COOL OR SCARY?
Awesome :-)

15. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CAR?
Swift, I'm lovingit..

16. FAVORITE DRINK?
Mango juice :)

17. FINISH THIS STATEMENT, "IF I HAD THE TIME I WOULD .....
Keep creating new new stuff... like music, movies etc...

18. DO YOU EAT THE STEMS ON BROCCOLI?
vots that.??!

19. IF YOU COULD DYE YOUR HAIR ANY COLOR, WHAT WOULD BE YOUR CHOICE?
Streaks of purple and blue...

20. NAME ALL THE DIFFERENT CITIES/TOWNS YOU HAVE LIVED IN.
Bangalore, traveled to quite some places..

21. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH?
've been not liking sports of late..

22. ONE NICE THING ABOUT THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU.
D best person by heart i've seen

23. WHAT'S UNDER YOUR BED?
bills ;)

24. WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE BORN AS YOURSELF AGAIN?
Yes very much

25. MORNING PERSON, OR NIGHT OWL?
Both !!

26. OVER EASY, OR SUNNY SIDE UP?
Neither. I hate eggs.

27. FAVORITE PLACE TO RELAX?
dark room

28. FAVORITE PIE?
mm.... I'd choose sweets ,,

29. FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR?
Black Currant

30. OF ALL THE PEOPLE YOU TAGGED THIS TO, WHO'S MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND FIRST?
Dhanya...

The Missing Link…

Raksha Bandhan – Raksha Bandhan (the bond of protection in Hindi) is a Hindu festival, which celebrates the relationship between brothers and sisters. It is celebrated on the full moon of the month of Shraavana..

Long back a few of our friends during our regular trips to the forests had some time waiting at the bus stop. We had an hour or so for the bus to arrive. One of us began saying “Guys let’s have a debate... For fun! ”
“Debate?! What the..! Are you crazy...” everyone said.
“No, let’s have a small debate, some of us will talk for and some of us against... what say? Ain’t it a good idea to spend some time?” he replied to which everyone nodded.
We started off with a topic, “Siblings or single child… Which is fun...?”
The discussion went on for hours, even after the bus arrived, we spoke and fought the whole night over the topic, and got blasted by the fellow passengers in the bus, for not letting them sleep :-P

Well I felt it’s the right day to write a few lines on the same. I have been the single and a pampered (of course, single goes with pampered) child. People ask us (us from here on means the single child community) “hey you are a single child to your parents? Ah! Lucky you! ”. Hmm, yeah, have been lucky in most aspects.
Being a single kid has all its advantages, from buying the school stationery we get to choose what we want, the books as much, the crayons with all shades of blue and fluorescent. The birthday chocolates of our choice. A cycle that we want, and the best in class. Of course, the pressures and scolding’s of scoring bad in school also doubles. School fest time? Hmm... It’s the time of complete attention for us from preparing our exhibition models, to the fancy dress costume... Ah! It was fun... 

After all the joyful years of schooling, when we step into the college, we are assured of a seat in the best (affordable of course) college, and the expensive tuitions… and 2 year long nonstop supply of pocket money.  It’s the time when interests begin to widen, from cycles to bikes, from uniforms to branded Jeans (Mobiles were an expensive commodity then). Ah! Now that we’ve completed with our PU, we step into engineering and some of us are fortunate to stay back with our parents, thanks to their expenditure on payment seats and management seats to assure their kid stays within their line of sight and their fear of cranky hostels, blatant ragging in college hostels are submerged. Parents heave a sigh of relief.

“Ma! Roger waters comin to Bangalore ma!”, “class trip Dad!”, “Rahman’s concert!! You can also join me ma!”, “need a new guitar, only an electric guitar will do”, “Metallica’s new album”, “ ‘Ve to treat my friends on my birthday”.. Yet so many wantings, parents don’t dare to turn em down.. After all their only kid... Let him/her enjoy..! Hmm... Of coffee days, long drives, re-valuation, the want list longer than the syllabus book :-P

That was an awesome life!..  Not having anything to share not having to fight for anything  and you get what you are obstinate for … not many questions asked...

Somewhere down the line, a link of the ‘awesome’ chain looks somewhat creaky.... “Hey, what’s that?!” life gave you everything...” Very much dude. A few more things that made up the link… The joy of snatching a chocolate from you sis, the joy of stealing her crayons, the joy of using her makeup kits for your fancy dresses. The quarrelling over a small issue and winning, sometimes giving up coz your parents scolded you and made you give it to her. Competing with her on the birthday gifts and the cake sizes. Sharing your cycle as parents didn’t get one for each.

Snatching the pocket money, or borrowing for a new pair of jeans or a Movie ticket. Getting caught with your girlfriend or your sis getting caught going around with the guy of her class. The umpteen blackmailing not to tell parents about it :-p. Scanning her scrapbook for something interesting to poke and tease her… sharing the internet connection at home .. Ah! Some materialistic things you might say..

The tidbits you take from your sis to go and speak with interesting girls, the inside info you get from the tell-a-woman broadcast line gossips...:-P the agony aunt that she chooses to be when parents are furious at you…. The satisfaction and the happiness of a cheerful laughter, heartful smile, an empathetic tear, are a few that makes the link complete. Am sure those of you having siblings will have a different perspective, ahem! Grass is always greener on the other side.

C’mon life hasn’t been unfair. …! Having a huge gang of friends’ didn’t make us feel something’s missing. Thanks to the zillions of treats, hundreds of outings, lots of trips that’s kept us all busy all through. A bunch of crazy friends is all you’ll need to freak out and give the necessary break from the monotony that work offers you.
But, Inadvertently I hear a tiny wind chime hanging in a corner of the house waving to every gush of the wind, and its sound rings in the ears everywhere. loud….

Wishing all you brothers and sisters a very happy Raksha Bandhan! :-)

Ungrateful...

Well, its been quite some time since i could have spared some time for a new blogpost.

Dunno how many of us would have thought about our jobs, cribbing about our bosses, the salaries, everything around us in office from the office boys to the admin people's work in organizing things in office. I sometimes feel we've been blessed with such beautiful and good work compared to a lot of people around the world, thanks to the good education our parents got us for all of 25 years striving hard every day.. Kudos to them.

The post is a very crude one, and am throwin it onto the blog just as it comes onto my mind.

It sometimes wrenches thoughts and the feeling is that deep down guilt that shouts saying "idiot! look at them, why do you crib,... you are so blessed!"

I've felt it every time i see people who do odd jobs just for a living.

There is this person, at the utility building parking lot, who runs around on a wheelchair looking after all the vehicles parked in the premisis. I'm sure, the guy would make say.. 2000 per month?? yeah ..roughly.. to sustain himself and his family.. And the happiness and pride with which he does his work .. left me wondering..

And there is this person who sells groundnuts on a busy road for 1/- .. how much would this guy make? 2000 again? for his family ? is that enough?.. for a family of 4, in bangalore, 2000 sustainable, and still he does it with so much of confidence and ownership.

Yet another person, who sells corn near a park in rajajinagar, and i was struck when my friend told me he was a degree holder, and he took up this profession just because he had to earn a living for his family... hmm.. and we talk about us not getting proper "Work packages".

its feels weird when i see small guys working as waiters, in restaurants doing the cleaning and serving jobs, we spend like mad, shelling out what..? 400 per meal?? hmm.. sometimes.. which is about 1/4th of his salary..

the Bus conductor, who gives us a smile with the ticket

The security guy at the shopping mall...

The small kids who runs around small restaurants carrying the plates..

I've seen most of us squirm at these people.. Clean this, clean that.. this guy checks my bag every time... this guy doesen't have the change for a ticket.. ah! aren't these ppl doing their duties?

Have we wondered what would have happened if our bosses in the "IT" industry had squirmed at us for not meeting the deadline?? I'm sure we wud have changed jobs.. the next day..

I think its time we understand, any work is good.. any work has a reason, its not that i have a good work, i have a bad work.. Its the way we take it ..

I've thought about my work too, saying this is good, this is bad.. hmm.. wait.! its first, we have to be dedicated in what we do, we've to think we'are paid for it.. am i worth the 20000? salary I get? am i doing the work worth my salary's worth? or even 1/2 of the worth?

Its true that companies pay peanuts to us, by giving say 15$ per hr when they charge 50-70$ from their clients.. thats immaterial .. what matters or should matter to me is am I worth the money I'm being paid? Its this satisfaction and not the greed is us that should drive and guide us with the work and the dedication. All of us are good people, but somewhere down the mind the peer-pressure starts to bite.. Thats when things go outta control.. he has got it, why not me? what have i done wrong? whats my mistake.. my boss is partial.. hmm.. taken.. but i think we have to spend more time on thinking on being worth the salt than wanting more from work. Just think.. can the corn guy or the Parking guy ask for things like this?

Deserve before you Desire