Hairat Hai

Currently listening to Lucky Ali sing Hairat Hai .. from Anjaana Anjaani ... :) .... one day .. i just wanna be riding a bike down monument valley listening to music like this and have absolutely no one around! .. me the bike and ok maybe s ... but thats that ... oh and some awesome music.

Ganpati Bappa Morya

This years Ganpati festival was a bit different. Our Family didnt have the traditional Ganpati stapana at our homes. We are a huge family of 4 grandfathers and 3 grandmothers who are brothers and sisters.. and they each have about 4 - 8 kids on an average and we are the third generation of this tree. Us cousins used to have loads of fun hanging out and playing cards and loads of other games during Ganesh festival. In the two days that we would have the ganpati at our uncles place .. it would start with the first night of setting up the decorations for the idol .. called as "Makhar". Then followed by going and bringing home the lord and the first aarti. This was followed by lunch and lots of cards.. and then the late night hour long evening Maha aarti that was so unique to our family that it was with pride that we all enjoyed this. The next day was visarjan... and with it the official end of Shravan month ... which would mean awesome yummy food in the night :).

Nothing of that this year. All the uncles are old .. some are no more, and so its becoming tough on those that have to carry fwd the tradition. The third generation, us are all dispersed in different parts of the world and cant have it at our places. So we stopped this tradition.

This year to celebrate, I went to a friends place where we sang Aartis in similar tune to that at home, had awesome food, and ukadichey modak and then went to an aarti at the hindu temple.

The end line... Ganpati bappa Morya... tradition or not.. God has his way.. in a nice n lovely way.

Gnight.

Y2K Y2F?!

So remember how Y2K was a big thing a couple of decades back? Well someone needs to wake up and stop synching and integrating everything with facebook and twitter. Facebook updates this .. twitter account link this ... People need to stop making technology that is dependent on being linked and synched with fb and twitter.

Software Technology and technology developers have for ages tried to join whatever the hottest latest bandwagon is. Its by design not the best thing to do.

Can someone please tell the developers of the future that?

Travel

Doesnt travel bring out the best and or the worst of people out? I was recently travelling to a city I had never been to before. Its all under wraps :D. But I think there is no better art than the expressions that people have.

Saw a kid, poor little boy, scared to death. First flight experience. :)
Saw an old lady, lost in between time (read as decades and modern life) walking down the street.
Saw a cute asian girl notice me take pictures of flowers and came forth to better align her flowers on her stall for me to get a good snap.
Saw anxiety on person.
Saw a kid with autism making a lot excited noise in being able to see a plane up close. Unfortunately his grandfather wasnt up for understanding his excitement and pacifying him. God Bless.
Saw a whole bunch of military/Army/ROTC kids going back to their hometowns after a week long exercise. Making new friends at the last minute, sharing information, beer, friendships formed with a common bond and a week.
Met an old colleague, shared coffee and some excitement.
Saw a father suggest his son to kill time by sitting in a phone booth, thought that was fun, Kids response... Can I also call someone? :)
Saw a daughter in her mid 40s taking her mom in her mid 60's to a town monument and saw how they rapidly talked and shared their mother daughter bond.

Saw so many people in one place it was just too nostalgic.

Sometimes I think why do we need art? Art I believe is a medium to express. But if you turn so cold hearted that you can't feel feelings, then art just wont be for you.

New Blogger Template Designer!

Finally! this is really a great thing! wonder what took so long. but this is what I have been wanting. Thanks El Goog!

All this while I did get to learn some CSS and html and template designing. But this is good.

Weekend

Just watched braveheart for the first time in my life. Good movie,
fighting for freedom with a zeal that you just cannot develop in one
day!

Also went to the Charlotte NASCAR hall of fame, it doesn't open for
another 10 days but we got tickets to sneak peek soft opening, it was
really a good experience.

"you can overcome anything in the world but fate" - Richard Petty!!
This is a good lesson of life.

And thencooked food at home watched angels and demons and bravehert....

Now for some reason I just cannot get myself to sleep!!!

Sent from my iPhone

World at war

The other day in DC I visited the holocaust museum, I didn't quite realize what I was walking into until I actually started my tour of the museum. I was overwhelmed with a great grief and sorrow and disappointment with the human race. All the attrocities carried out by these people...You just can't say that you carried out your orders, because at a certain point of cruelty your own principles should have stood between the order and you. These attrocities were conducted by people who really believed in what they were doing and actually enjoyed it.

The museum itself has clippings of dead bodies being pushed into large pits like a farm produce gone really bad. I mean these Nazi bastards didn't even have the humanity to put a cloth over these bodies.

May god just bless the souls of all the people who had to die by the hands of the Nazis.

Mankind just seems to disappoint me over and over...under the pretext of religion, under the pretext of ethnic cleansing, under the pretext of race or be it caste! Do we really need these? Why can't we live an honest life? Don't your religions teach you that? And if they dont then I think they don't deserve to be called a religion.

Of late, the war against terrorism and stuff is also primarily a religious war. It's a shame we didn't learn a bit from the holocaust.

If there is any God, I pray to you to put some common sense in all people.

This is my only prayer to God.

Sent from my iPhone

At the smithsonian museum of natural history at Washington DC

Akheer

Woke up today listening to Juggy D's Akheer...

A very beautiful song...it gives a lot of examples about the end and
suggests that u take His/Her (God's) name....

It's almost like a bhajan kirtan type of a song, but it has a very
lovely meaning to it...

We all answer to some God, even if you are an atheist, your God is
knowledge o the belief that there's no God...but there is.... He is in
all of us, we choose to ignore him at times and we tend to think of
him in times of real needs... Our minds are weak and a lot many times
even the strongest person in the world needs support....

God is beautiful... So is life....

Ok shuffle played an iron maiden song right after this...gotto go and
change the music to the mood

Sent from my iPhone

The scientist

So here I am in a bedroom at a friends house all alone as I wake up...
S is out of town do I decided to drive up to a friends place in DC for
the vacations..

So as I woke up with the sun zoning on my face through the window on a
cold day after Christmas I put the iPod on shuffle and it selects
coldplays the scientist.

This song is such a lovely song...just thought I'd capture the
moment....

Merry Christmas.

Sent from my iPhone

Love

Ever have that feeling? Its hard to describe it, its even difficult when you miss it. What is it exactly? 

I mean waking up to the smile of the person

going home and to be greeted by a hug...

calling someone up when you know the storm just hit your area.. 

yeah .. it is these things.. but its a lot more than this. its not the stuff that we regularly see in tv's or movies or read about in stories. Its just a totally bizarre feeling. 

Its like, even if there are two immiscible liquids and they are poured down a tube and they somehow mix up get on with the flow, and the flow is this smooth streaming of joy, pleasure, peace, calm, care, laughter, smiles, teardrops, twinkle in the eye moments,secret yet public moments where no-one really understands what you just shared with her and no one will really even care about it but the two of you. 

Love's a tough cookie, I may sound a little romantic here, but the point is .. its our anniversary and s is out.. so sometimes its alright to miss someone and pine for em.

Friends / family?

I feel so close to my friends....a lovely homemade dinner with friends
at the table is as good as I could get to a thanksgiving dinner with
family...

When family is so far that they can be reached just through a
phonecall....your friends are ur family....I'm not talking about just
s I'm talking about everyone here... Ma, brother, cousins,
uncles....they all get replaced by ur friends to give and share love
and moments to remember

Thank you god for such good friends ....

Sent from my iPhone

Life is beautiful

Been listening to a lot of nice Hindi songs lately, and boy do they
make you wanna croon along.

Today I saw an acapella contest on NBC and it made me wanna look up
acapella on YouTube. There are a whole lot of talented people on
YouTube.

Was trying to figure out my wordpress email address the other day...
Took me a long time to find it. But I'm back to posting blogs through
emails.

Since s is back at her home in india, I thought I'd be on a salad
diet... But people have been extra nice to me!!! My boss gave me a
loaf of pecan cake, me neighbors invited me for dinner once, and a
friend who graduated packed me a days meal before she packed and left.

So far,
exercise = 0 diet = 0 weight loss = 0 weight gain = 2

But it's all good, it's the season!!! Lifes good!

Sent from my iPhone

Kit-Kat

Umm .. love the kit-kat commercial which shows people snap a bar and break it into 2 and take a bite with the sounds of all three acts.

On other thoughts. started watching Man vs. Food... awesome series. that guy can kill himself eating so much food. but i love the food they show. and surprisingly it makes me full.

Netflix rocks. Grooveshark rocks. Best buy rocks. Black Friday does not.

Oh btw s, I doubt that you will read this. but in case you had, you would have know you were getting a surprise tomorrow.

Windows 7 Help needed

I have a program that is a 32 bit application. I have Windows 7 Professional 64bit OS installed on my PC.

My PC hardware is not compatible for Virtual Windows XP mode in Win7.

My option is:

- Dual boot windows 7 and windows xp. (I have original Windows Xp cd) But how do i do this?

I need to dual boot Windows Xp with Windpow 7 (where Windows 7 is already installed)

Help please!!!!

Social engineering

With the onsite of the internet and the social interface of the
Internet a new trend seems to be emerging. In the days long before the
Internet and when Prince was just going from Prince to TAFKAP and a
symbol, peoples social needs were completely different. It was about
the Nike Air shoes that everyone wanted and it was about the Party
that everyone would be going to. Peoples social needs were
materialistic and they were a commodity that actually had a value.

The regular junta post Internet period now is completely different.
Social status is not based on who has the Nike air shoes or who went
to the pink Floyd concert or which parties u attend. On the contrary
social status is based on who is the first one to get on the band
wagon of anythig new in the Internet.

Email was long available to everyone through yahoo and hotmail and USA.net
and whole other services. Then came in gmail with invites to gmail.
Everyone I knew back in 2002-2003 wanted to get into gmail. Then came
facebook, privy at first just to college kids and then opened up to
everyone. And now comes Twitter withthe retweet button, available to
some but not everyone. There's a reason why these things are in beta
mode. So that people could try it out before and give some kinda
feedback, utterly importantone that I's. Boy if I get one of these
requests it could drive me nuts in half a day.

Later now, time to sleep.

Spread peace and love!!!

Sent from my iPhone

Collective Soul - Shine

Oh, Heaven let your light shine down. 

I must admit, this song is just awesome. Its such a perfect song for my Sunday morning. Just had my coffee on this beautiful Fall Sunday Morning. Sunlight coming in through the windows around me, beautiful music playing and a warm coffee. This is just so perfect!

Back to my post from yesterday, isnt this heaven on earth or what?

Planning to do some laundry today, then visit Walmart to get some winter supplies (read lip-balm). Would also be visiting Barnes and Nobles. Ive been wanting to getTime or Newsweek subscription, will check that out... Next stop would be the local library for some cd's with piano music in em. I heard Journey by Michael Montes' and so has anyone who has watched tv in the last year, its the Canon EOS commercial where life starts with a baby walking in a backyard and goes on to a guy playing football as a series of pictures not related. This piece was so amazing that now I have this hunger to listen to more piano music. So I will search the library for some piano music.

Spread peace n love.

Simple things in life

Today I saw two different people going to two different places and
declaring these different places as "heaven on earth"... To both these
friends of mine I wanted to say nah uh huh I have seen heaven on earth
and it's at a completely different location altogether.

So I sat down and thought to myself, what was it that made me feel
taut this place where I stood there that day made it a better
candidate for the heaven on earth title.

The answer is simply in our minds. When we are at peace with our mind,
oblivious to the world around us, just awed by something so simple in
life as nature itself to such an extent that we forget all our wordly
worries, take a deep breath loosen up he body and just enjoy the
moment, that is heaven on earth.

So to all my friends out there, sometimes it's just important to
ignore our worley worries, uncomplicate our life and just unwind.

:) spread peace and love

Sent from my iPhone

Testing blog on both

I was recently named manager of the department of redundant managers
department...or something to that effort.

Well since I like some o the features of wordpress and some other
features of blogger.... I decided to post simultaneously using post
via email feature. :) redundant^3 I guess.. Bub still pretttty awesome.

So this here is the test for both together...

Http://Shailen.blogspot.com
Http://Shailen.wordpress.com

Now to check if it works

Moment of Surrender

Awesomely beautiful U2 song. Feels even awesome to listen to this song live.

:) Good Night