New Year, New Writing

Resolution time. I will post at least one item every month on this blog. Here goes the January post.

Looking back just a bit: Fall 2008 was crazy as well as blissful, thanks to Guruji’s visit to Texas and especially right here to Austin. We’ve heard before that the work of a Guru is done at a very subtle level, and this time it has been reinforced manifold for me. He was full of praise for the public talk we had organized, though it was far from being perfect. I learnt first hand what it takes to organize an event with a $20,000 budget, 700 attendees, 40 volunteers, and a Guru. (Hint: having the latter makes all the difference… everything else becomes easy to handle.) After our day with Guruji was past, I traveled with Guruji to Dallas and onward to Houston where I was volunteering for the Art of Living Part 2 course for five days. The short span of a day when Guruji was in Austin, and the bus ride to Dallas, and the time we got with Him in Houston – nothing can come close, and it still feels like it wasn’t enough! (Is it ever enough?) Here are some pictures on Picasa from Ravi R, our official photographer for the Austin event.

I got some good rest in November and December and restarted some reading. I completed The Audacity of Hope, the second book by President-elect Barack Obama who at the moment seems to be the beloved of the whole world (except for the Republican half of the US).

I am amazed at how well this book lays out the whole platform for the presidential campaign. Once he had written out his thoughts in the form of this book, I don’t think there was much new by way of ideas or rhetoric that he had to come up with for the campaign. Foreign affairs, race relations, economics, family values – it’s all there in the book. Another impression I carried away from the book was how well Obama can see both sides of an argument. I’m betting we’ll see less of the black-and-white “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” presidential world-view we’ve become used to in the last eight years in the US.

Here’s another book I’ve started reading: The Toyota Way, by Jeffrey Liker.

My own employer, AMD, has rolled out our LEAN initiative a while ago, starting with our manufacturing where it has apparently done wonders. We haven’t yet changed our ways in the engineering organization though, as far as I can tell. I haven’t reached the part in the book where he talks about LEAN for engineering and service organizations. Let’s see what comes up. Based on what I’ve read so far, I recommend this book highly.

Part of this new year break has been spent reorganizing my computing environment at home, migrating from a mostly desktop-based environment to having a laptop and a home server. More updates later on this front. And for the first time, my photography arsenal is seeing the addition of a compact, the Canon A590 IS, which I’ve decided to use as a walk-about camera at all times and especially for low-light and B&W shooting. Quality is nowhere near my Canon DSLR but here’s what I like about it that the DSLR and my 24-70/2.8L can never provide: it’s human-sized. It’s been fun so far!

A First Look

He didn't quite know why he had purchased the 10x magnification vanity mirror from Bed Bath and Beyond, but there it was on his bathroom counter. It was an impulse purchase, especially more so since he was a bachelor. It was a 6-inch mirror, one of those concave ones that make the world appear all upside-down until you got really close to it, and then it would show you yourself up close and personal.

It would please his girlfriend whenever she visited, he supposed.

And, he supposed, it would help him trim the hair that stuck out of his nose. It did. That was the first thing he did with it. What a great amount of detail it exposed. The perfectionist in him was pleased, once the job was done.

He played with the mirror before brushing his teeth in the night. He noticed how his usual bathroom mirror always showed him a guy who was standing three or four feet away. This mirror demanded closeness, and in return it gave closeness. Distance was not tolerated.

Gosh, were his teeth really that yellow? And what was that between his teeth? Hmm, time to floss...

Then he noticed how dry his lips were. And the skin around his lips. Must apply some ghee before going to bed...

And the stubble. What would have passed as acceptable after a casual look in his usual bathroom mirror was beginning to look a little shabby when examined closely in this mirror.

The pock marks from the chicken-pox he had had as a child were still there on his cheeks, even after 23 years.

He could see worry wrinkling his skin around the cheeks, where his face muscles weren't relaxed. He deliberately relaxed them. Relaxed his forehead. Let the skin slowly stretch itself out back to its smooth evenness.

And once all these preoccupations were out of the way, he started to look into his own eyes.

The whole world had gone away. His face filled the 6-inch circle, and was magnified 10-fold. Nothing else was visible to his eyes, and nothing else was occupying his mind. He got his first ever good look at himself, up close and personal.

How odd that he had been looking at himself in a mirror daily for years, for the purpose of combing his hair or shaving. Other than achieving these mundane objectives, he never really had a use for mirrors. He had never really seen his own face.

He was seeing it now. He liked what he saw. He was fascinated.

He resolved to look at it and love it often.

Slowly he broke out into a grin. Wow -- what a comic and gleeful look! And then he wrinkled his nose. How funny! Slowly he furrowed his brow, raised one eyebrow, pouted his lips, wiggled one ear.

His whole being broke out in laughter like never before.

Standing Up For A Character

You may be a character, but that doesn't mean you have character. So says our dear friend zedzded (hereafter referred to as Z) who writes at http://zedzded.wordpress.com.

Why have I come out of my long hibernation to post here? Because my heart bleeds for dear Z. Z has accompanied blackmamba on her jaunts across the Atlantic. And visited Veena. With them both, Z dutifully wolfed down extra-large portions at the 24x7 food festival that their trip turned out to be. If that were not enough, Z is even bm's sibling. Real honest-to-goodness born-to-the-same-mother-and-father sibling. And if even that were not enough, Z and bm are also apartment-mates.

Yet bm and Veena have treated Z's blog with a studied indifference. No references at all! The word "disowned" comes to mind. Why has this happened? Because Z appreciates fine musicians like Amit Paul.

Um, that's an understatement. Actually Z is the founder and admin for the Amit Paul fans website linked above. :)

Be that as it may, bas karo ye nainsaafi. Garibi hatao! Blogroll mein naam lagaa do! Amit Paul Zindabaad!

Let it be known that even those with character need not be characters. Even if they were characters, if said characters type in enough characters into a blog, other characters with character can put some characters into their blogrolls to link to the characters on the original character's blog. That's character. (Reading this paragraph thrice daily is recommended for curing confusion.)

PS: Z, please to return the favor and link to bm's and Veena's blogs from your own blogroll, in addition to the Amit Paul link. And if all this doesn't work, start commenting on their blogs. :)

Adversity

I am starting my own line of inspirational posters using pictures I've taken. This is the first. Enjoy.

PS: Full-page PDF available for printing: just ask!