I am lazy to do any exercise.  I guess many of us may be like me.   I don’t create time to do exercise (many people use this sentence instead “I don’t have time to do any exercise”).

Whenever I read an article about food, exercise or health, I enjoy that and feel as if I will be doing something  soon to take care of my health.  But as soon as I finish reading it, I again become lazy to do any exercise or control my diet.

I used to think many times why am I lazy?  Why am I not taking care of my health?   The answer is simple: It is natural to be lazy.

Is there any way I can get rid of this laziness and take care of my health?

I guess there is one way: Just spend 10 minutes everyday at a particular time say morning 7 am or evening 6 pm for the first 15 days or 30 days doing nothing (easiest, isn’t it?) or some small exercise (breathing or jumping, etc).  After that we may get used to it (like reading news paper) and 10 minutes may become 15 and then 30 minutes.

Note: (Wordpress Plugin style): This concept is not tested with any humans (ver 1.0 and above) by me.  I’m going to test it from tomorrow.  If you wish to test this concept, please write a comment here.

I had to attend an event in Mumbai last December.  I booked Two-tier Air-conditioned train tickets 50 days in advance.  I didn’t go for flight tickets because even though they were just two times costlier than these train tickets, they were non-refundable and I would have lost the entire amount had I canceled them due to any reason (actually I had more chances for cancellation since my mother was not well).  Since I’m an entrepreneur now, I didn’t wish to waste money by booking flight tickets.

Unreserved compartment from Mumbai to Chennai

While my travel from Chennai to Mumbai was confirmed at the last minute, the return journey was not confirmed.  When I checked flight ticket fares, they shot up to 10 times that of the train ticket.  I had only two options: 1) book a flight ticket for an exorbitant amount and reach home in 2 hours or 2) travel for 24 hours by Train in an unreserved compartment.  I choose the second option since I didn’t wish to pay such an exorbitant amount (you will understand this when you become an entrepreneur after earning a very good salary in a regular job).

The moment I looked at the unreserved compartment, I was stunned.  It was jam packed.  I thought for a second, “Should I go by flight to avoid this mad crow?”.  I decided not to.  I thought to myself, “Now I’m an entrepreneur.  I should take any risk in my life. What is the worst thing that would happen by traveling in an unreserved compartment?  Whatever it is, let me enjoy that.”  This thought gave me a wonderful experience.

I was not even able to board the compartment.  Somehow I managed to board it and was standing for 3 hours till the train reached Pune.  Standing was not painful because the first half-an hour I was standing carrying my luggage.  When I got some place to offload them, I felt better standing alone.  After Pune, I got 16 sq.cm of space to sit.  It was very comfortable than standing.  Normally I won’t feel like sleeping till 1 am.  But that day, I was feeling sleepy at 10 pm.   After 10 hours of travel, I got a decent space to sit till I reached Chennai.

What initially looked impossible for me, became possible and my confidence level went very high after this journey.  Also, the people who were in that unreserved compartment were more humane than those who were in two-tier air conditioned compartment.

You should try to travel in such an unreserved compartment for 24 hours and experience what it is.  You will cherish it through-out your life like I do.

Wow! This is what almost everyone said after watching this amazing event at The Music Academy, Chennai.

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to get a free invite and watched it along with other Chennai Bloggers and media persons – from second row.  After it was inaugurated by N. Ram (Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu), the show lasted for about 70 seconds (actually 70 minutes).

Watching this kind of show in TV is totally different from watching it live.  Even though I watched the ‘trailer’ in youtube, watching this event live was fantastic.

In such shows, claps from the audience give energy to those performers. Many times our audience forgot to clap and cheer the performer.  I wanted to tell those artists that, “Look, we were breathless because of your performance.  That’s why we didn’t cheer you by clapping.”

If you are in Chennai on 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7th Feb 2010, then don’t miss this live show.  It is definitely worth for various reasons.

Please Note:

There is a detailed article in today’s The Hindu newspaper which you can read here: http://tr.im/wow_article_in_thehindu

People are mortal but their thoughts are immortal.

Today, Humans are in such a comfort zone compared to several years ago is because many good people communicated their thoughts which has helped us to use them and build many things around that.

To communicate, we all need a language.  I choose English over my mother tongue because I thought that English language has more audience in Internet than my mother tongue has.  FYI: I’m neither good at both (because even ‘English subject’ was taught in my mother tongue in my school and like many others I also didn’t have an inclination to learn my mother tongue properly during my school days).

I also thought that whether I should start communicating after I perfect my ‘English Grammar/vocabulary”.  But I decided not to wait.

If you want to travel, you just need a vehicle.  As long as the vehicle can take you to the place you want, you can use that.  If it doesn’t look good aesthetically or if the seat doesn’t have a cushion, etc doesn’t affect my travel because traveling is more important for me than those things.  Similarly, to communicate my thoughts I just need a language.  It may not be ‘aesthetically’ good with nice words and good vocabulary.  But it will help me communicate.

Many of you may have some similar inhibitions in communicating your thoughts.  Like I said, to communicate, you just need a language.  How good it is, is secondary*.

If I communicated well in this article, you may immediately start communicating your thoughts from your own blog by signing in any of the FREE blog sites (like http://en.wordpress.com/signup/ https://www.blogger.com/start http://www.thoughts.com/free-blog )

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PS: * Note: If the vehicle also looks good, it would be nice, isn’t it?

While I was young, I used to get bored when my father starts this sentence: “In those days….”

Yesterday (at 11 pm) when I told my 6 yr old son to switch off the TV and sleep, he asked me what I did when I was a kid like him.  When I told him, “In those days when I was in first standard, I never watched TV because there was no TV in our home”, I immediately remembered my father’s sentence.

I guess that it is inevitable for us to compare what happened in those days and what happens now.  Instead of boring you all with what happened ‘in those days’ to me, let me ask this question to you all and let’s watch this tag #inthosedays in Twitter here –>  http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23inthosedays .

It may be interesting

I don’t know how and why January became the first month of the year.  While discussing with my Physics Prof. Ananthan, I realized that once upon a time, March was the first month of the year & February was the last month of the year.

Question) What proof do I have to say that “February is the last month”?

Answer) I’ve two logical proofs:

PROOF 1: If March is the first month of the year, then September, October, November and December must be 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months respectively.  In Sanskrit, “Septha” means seven, “Octa” means eight (that’s why eight sided shape is called as Octagon), “Nava” means nine and “Dasa” means ten. By substituting the meaning of these months, we can easily infer that March should have been the first month of the year. This means, February is the last month.

PROOF 2: This is about human psychology.  Assume that there are 14 apples & 3 baskets. You are asked to place 5 apples in each basket.  How would you fill the baskets?

Psychology 1:  Basket A- 5, Basket B- 5 and Basket C -4

Psychology 2: Basket A-5, Basket B – 4 and Basket C -5

Psychology 3: Basket A – 4, Basket B – 5 and Basket C-5

Almost all of us would follow Psychology 1, isn’t it?

Similarly, if we need to fill 30 / 31 days* for each month and one month with the least number (say 28 / 29), then according to the above example we will fill the last month with 28 / 29 days – isn’t it?  That’s why the ‘last month of the year’ – February has the least number of days. 

So, 27 more days to go for the “Original New Year” isn’t it? 

PS:  * It is beyond the scope of our discussion to discuss why there are 30 & 31 days in other months. And this  article is just to prove that February is the last month.

A man, who was of no use to anyone, after death, went to heaven.  He asked for a luxurious room, he got one.  He asked for excellent food, he got them.  He asked for an LCD TV with all his favorite channels, he got it. He asked for a vehicle to roam around the place, he got one.  Then he started asking one by one and the angels were providing all he wanted.

After a few weeks, he was fed up with all the luxurious and comfortable things.  He wanted to do some work to engage his mind.  He asked the angel, “I want to do some work.  Do you have any work for me here?”.  For that the angel said, “I’m sorry, here you can get anything you want but for work”.  This man was annoyed and shouted at the angel, “This place is horrible.  How can you call this as heaven?”.  For that the angel replied, “I beg your pardon.  Did you say this place as heaven?  I think you misunderstood it.  This is not heaven.  This is hell.”

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 My Physics Prof. Ananthan doesn’t only talk about Maths & Physics but also tells me many thought provoking stories.  One of them he told me when we visited Rameswaram Temple was this ‘Hell & Heaven’. The context of this story came when we were describing about people’s motivation to build such wonderful temples few hundred years ago when they had everything in their life.

My advance apologies for two reasons: (1) This article is also going to be more than one page and (2) I may hurt few Graduates from India’s premier institutes.

1. Why do we need a University?

I had an interesting discussion with my Prof. Ananthan about the need for a degree.

If you take any famous contributor to Science or Business, they would be mostly a school dropout or at least did not get any degree from any University. E.g. Ramanujam, Einstein, Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple Inc.) etc.

Once it was thought that Universities produced Educated Persons.  But, with the latest technological advances, a person may get education without any University.  In fact, the syllabus in many Universities are so old that a student has to learn from private institutes or in a job – to cope up with the latest technology.

Today a person need not get a degree to do a job.  If you take my company M/s HomePlanGuru.com for example, I never insist for any degree.  All I want is people with good analytical skills & attitude.

2. Why there are so many “Deemed Universities” in our country now?

This is my belief:

a) Deemed Universities (DUs) can make lot of money since they can specify the number of seats in each course.

b) Education is looked at as a business today by both the Institutes and Students.  Most of the students join a course not out of passion but out of compulsion to get a high paying job.  These DUs find the gap between “Supply-Demand” and fulfill the  need of these students.

c) DUs can ‘produce’ more ‘qualified’ students since they set the exam questions and their own staff correct the answer sheets. [For external Examiners, they give a 'bonous' amount for paper valuation].

3. What is the status of “Government Universities”?

This is my understanding:

a) Government Universities (GUs) are worse than DUs because they have very old syllabus and pathetic examination system [a system that tests the memorizing capacity of students rather than their knowledge in the subject].

b) Many Government and Government aided institutes lack  basic infrastructure but is still famous not because of their infrastructure or staff, but because of the students who join there.  [Only 'Creamy layer' of the students join these institutes since the fees is very less and the institutes already have an established name - which helps them in placement].

c) Teaching and Non-teaching staff in GUs are pathetic. If you conduct an exam for all the teaching staff in their own subjects, more than 50% of the staff will score less than 50% marks in their own subjects.

d) Mostly, those who didn’t get any good private jobs stick to teaching in Govt institutes.  Or they may get excellent commission from the vendors who supply lab materials and other items to the institutes. [One of my friend in Bengaluru told me that he had to pay 20% of his billed amount as commission to the HOD of a department in a Govt Institute for supplying lab items.  This amount will be more than what a CEO of a private company may get].

4. Why are students from such Government Universities not complaining about the quality of their degree/Institute?

Come on! If I say that I got a degree from such a Government Institute, would anyone give me a job or at least respect my degree?  Why should I open my mouth and tell the truth?

5. Conclusion:

As long as companies look for a ‘degree’ for employment, both DUs and GUs will produce ‘low quality Graduates’ as they do now.  If employment is de-linked from ‘degree’, all ‘Doomed’ Universities will die naturally.  Also, institutes like ICA (Chartered Accountants) must inspire other Universities to produce graduates purely based on merit [you should ask a CA student how difficult it is to pass the exam].   I’m waiting for that day to come!

Do you have to change your online passwords very often? Do you have many accounts and passwords to remember? Do you have problem remembering your passwords?

Do not worry. Here is one simple solution:

Just write down your passwords in your ‘own’ alphabets. That is, first create a list of your own alphabets. [ Say for 'a' use some symbol like 'apple'. But let it not be very obvious for others to guess it. For 'A', just underline this 'a' symbol. Each 'new' alphabet should be understandable by you and not others. Do not let others know your own alphabets.] Then use this “new English script” to write down your passwords in a notebook so that even if others look at your notebook containing all the passwords, they won’t understand it.

If you want to store your passwords in an email(sent to yourself) so that you do not have to carry the notebook with you, then use an offset character list. i.e. for ‘a’ use an offset of 3 characters and so ‘a’ will become ‘d’. This means, ‘antz’ will become ‘dqwc’.
If you know a language other than English, then write down the password in an email(sent to yourself) in both English and your language so that no one will be able to understand it quickly. [But if they can read it, they may be able to crack your password easily]

If you find these tips useful, please leave a comment here!

This particular article may be a bit lengthy(may not fit in one page) since I need to explain almost everything.  If I write like this: “We went to Rameswaram, saw the annular eclipse, it was wonderful, it was a life time event, amazing!”, then it won’t reveal how I really enjoyed the episode.  So, I’m writing in detail here:

1. Plan:

When I called my Physics Professor.  Ananthan on 1st Jan 2010 at 00:00 hrs (since 1992 I’m greeting him every year like this), he told me that he had planned to go to either Kanyakumari or Rameswaram on 15-Jan-2010 to watch the Annular Solar Eclipse (which will not happen again in our life time).  I expressed my interest to join him.

2. Travel:

Mr. Badri Seshardi, one of the promoters of New Horizon Media, booked the train tickets to Rameswaram (since tickets to Kanyakumari were not available even in ‘Tatkal’) and Hotel rooms in Ramanathapuram – 60 kms before Rameswaram.  The train reached Ramanathapuram on 14th Jan 2010 at 3:30 am and it was a pleasant journey. The Hotel was just 3 minutes drive from the railway station in an auto rickshaw.

3: Stay:

I never imagined that such a good hotel will be available in a small town in Tamil Nadu.  It was an amazing hotel named “Hotel Garish Park”  [ neat rooms, luxurious look, clean bathroom (very important) and with TV, split AC & backup power supply].  The only drawback was, they didn’t accept credit/debit card for payment.  We had food in near by restaurants which was quite good and reasonably priced. We didn’t get a room in Rameswaram itself because the Governors of TamilNadu and Puducherry were there those days ( not to watch the eclipse, but for some religious reasons, I guess).

4: Observation Location

The day before the eclipse, we went to Rameswaram to decide about our observation location.  Initially we thought of going to Dhanushkodi - a ruined city at the edge of Rameswaram (about 6 kms from it).  But later we decided to watch it from Rameswaram itself (on the roof of a Guest House Building) as there were many other scientific groups.

5. Expected things that happened:

A few things happened as I expected during the Annular Solar Eclipse:

a) During the eclipse I expected the ocean waves to rise higher. It happened.

b) During the eclipse I expected that the birds and animals might get confused about day & night.  It happened (many eagles that were flying there returned to their nest during eclipse time).

6. Unexpected things that happened:

Few unexpected things that thrilled me are:

a) I was thinking that the Sun may not be visible during eclipse and only a thin ring would be visible.  But without a cooling filter, the Sun looked normal with less intensity.  i.e. if you looked at the Sun during eclipse with your bare eyes, then it would have appeared normal to you.

b) Before the eclipse, the temperature at our location was about 34 degree Celsius.  After that, within 2 hours, the temperature decreased to around 26 degree Celsius. i.e. 8 degrees change.  It was amazing.

c) My shadow on the ground changed.  During eclipse, the shadow of my hand became blurred as I moved away from the wall.

d) I went there with my simple 5 mega pixel digital camera.  I never thought that, using a simple filter, I could capture the annular eclipse in my own camera.  It was really a great surprise for me. SEE THE VIDEO here –>  http://tr.im/ase15jan2010

e) An young boy from “Sky Watchers Association of North Bengal” taught me how to adjust my digital camera settings to capture the photo.  So far, I was using only the “Click button”, “ON button” “Zoom button”, “View mode”  and “Delete button” of my camera.  I never bothered to learn how to set the camera for different exposures (though they were available in the camera).  I felt ashamed. I never expected that my ignorance would hinder me taking pictures during eclipse.

7. Conclusion

I witnessed once in a life-time event on 15th Jan 2010 with my Physics Professor Ananthan at Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu India.  When I saw people from other parts of the country there to watch the event, I was happy that “scientific temper still exists in our country”. I’m grateful to my Physics Professor Ananthan and Publisher Mr. Badri who helped me watch this event live.

Photo Album:

Annular_Solar_Eclipse_15Jan2010_at_Rameswaram_Trip

I am a member of The Physics Society and I am very much convinced about the reason for the existence of the society.   According to the founder and my Professor R.Ananthan, the education system is in such a way that students who can memorize better can score better in exams.  Very few exams test the knowledge of students.  Also, the so called ‘brilliant’ students are more informative about the subject and less knowledgeable about the subject.

Many people refer “Information” as “Knowledge”.  Recently I saw this in a Tweet: “One person’s knowledge is another person’s information”.  I disagree with this.  Because, in my perception, both are different.

In my perception Knowledge is “Information with understanding/application of mind” and Information is “Data about some fact”.   My view point is this: if both Information and Knowledge are same, then which sentence would you prefer (a) “You are a very knowledgeable person” or (b) “You are a very informative person”?

A simple example will explain the difference between Information and Knowledge:

Many persons who think that they are good in Mathematics or at least the basic four operations (Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division) may still be informative about the basic operations and not knowledgeable about them.  For example, they may know that -1 x -1 = +1 (because they were informed about this rule by their teacher) but they may not know “Why -1 x -1 = +1 (and not -1x-1 = -1)?”.

Do you know why “Negative Number multiplied by another Negative Number is a Positive Number” (i.e. -1 x -1 = +1)? If yes, it means you are knowledgeable in Basic Mathematical Operations.  If no, it means that you are informative about Basic Mathematical Operations.

I was using Hotmail and Yahoo! mail for my personal use. After Gmail, I use them only to check those emails which I subscribed to before Gmail.

Why did I switch from Hotmail and Yahoo! mail? I am sure that many may have the same question. There is only one simple answer: “Usability is very good in Gmail”

Usability means something which makes it easier for the end user to use it with ease. All the features in Gmail has increased the Usability for the end user.

This is the reason why my venture www.HomePlanGuru.com focuses on Usability Plans rather than aesthetic plans like how Architects do. Because we understand that “Usability is what the customer needs”!

Do you KNOW EXACTLY what’s going to happen 5 MINUTES from now?

And are you WORRIED about it?…probably NOT!!!

Then how can you KNOW what’s going to happen TOMORROW…or with that meeting, job, family, school, or LIFE?…and WHY are you WORRIED about it? Worrying CAN’T predict or change things…just live in the NOW and BE HAPPY

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What a brilliant thought!  I found this article in my friend Sharon’s facebook wall.  Just thought of sharing with all.

My cousin who is learning ‘Ethics’ in her B.Tech degree had a different view point about killing rats / mice to test new medicines for the sake of humans.  As per her, it is unethical to kill such creatures for our sake.

During the discussion over phone I told her that even though it is legal to do research in other developed countries after getting a degree from a government institute, it is unethical to do so because the degree was almost given free of cost by the government using the tax-payers money and the student is obliged to return some favor to the tax payer (not through money, but through Intellectual Property to the country).

Her argument was that the country doesn’t have proper infrastructure to support research scholars and only developed countries will allow such scholars to do research easily.  Here she had to save even a pencil in the lab.  If that is the case, she was wondering what her focus would be on – research or pencil?

I gave her an example:  “Assume that your father has an IT Research company which trains people for 3 months getting only 10% of the training fees from the student and paying remaining 90% from it’s pocket. Also there is another IT Research company which does similar training but charging 100% of the fee from the student.

After getting 3 months training from your father’s company, if a trainee joins the other rich IT Research company citing the reason that it has more facilities to do research, they pay well, here in your company they have a limit for email storage and there they get unlimited email storage (whether I’ll worry about my research or email storage?), etc, what would you say?”

She told that she had exams the next day and she had to prepare.  Did I hurt her?  Because after getting her degree from a number one government college, she is planning to do research in a developed country.

I’ve good respect for Barack Obama, the president of United States of America. Please read this article, with this statement in mind.

When a person gets ‘Power’, many times he/she misuses it because it is natural.  Only very few who are extremely matured and  have lot of self-control will be able use their ‘Power’ properly.   In my perception, few US leaders have misused their power outside their country.  During those times, even people in US raised voice against such misuse of power.

I was wondering why Obama was given Nobel Peace Prize this year when his term as president started less than a year ago.  Then I realized a proverb in Tamil: “Give the key  to a thief if you want your valuables in the locker to be safe”.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has done a great job.  After Obama’s tenure, they should be given a Nobel Peace Prize.