Finding Neverland

I happened to watch the Marc Forster’s flick “Finding Neverland”, a tale looming around a theatric writer called J. M. Barrie who wrote the play Peter Pan. There is a scene in this flick where Barrie says “Use the pages of your imagination to find neverland”. (Neverland is a metaphor used to refer to a place where Barrie gets to see perfection & happiness. It is a place where he finds only children and these children never grow old (The child above is a metaphor for the child within each of us who always stay’s young but restricted by our egos). Well it was quite an emotional movie with an awesome ending and I was forced to introspect about the place I would call neverland. Would it be:-

1. Driving a Ferrari Enzo in Autobahn (the best highway stretch on planet earth).

2. Steering a Russian T-54 & destroying a vulnerable target, or say something like the Hoover dam.

3. Making a time machine that is based on quantum theory.

Phew…what a jerk.

Then I tried to think clearly “Have I been to my Neverland before”. Then I managed to put my thoughts together could visualize my neverland as follows.

It’s a place where I and my friends used to play football, where we used to cycle in the rain, where we found freedom in uniform (bunking & watching movies), where we celebrated the new year parties on the terrace rocking, where we hired a boat steered it to the middle of the pond and slept for a long time, where we did the school projects and were the best always, where I met one of my best friends when both of us were listening and singing “Hotel California”, where we looked up gazing at the stars realizing that we were watching history (the light emitted from the stars takes light years to travel to earth so the light which we are seeing actually was emitted so many light years before) and of-course where there is no sorrow & a zillion years of peace……………….

The Fox Effect

I managed to configure “Sage” in my Firefox browser. It’s a great extension which helps in keeping you updated by tracking the news feeds from your favorite web sites. All you got to do is go to Tools – extensions in your Firefox browser and search for this plugin.

“Sage” is like any regular RSS feed aggregator and the good thing about RSS feeds is that it makes for easy reading minus the advertisements and the pop ups. It also helps by avoiding clutter in your mail, by the newsgroups & news feeds.

There are a great deal of plugins & extensions you can find for Firefox, whilst the many features already in Firefox.

Eater In The Rye

Well I got to tell you that the Indian cuisine is coming of age. I think that is an understatement I’d rather rephrase it as too evolutionary as the former makes it look revolutionary. Yesterday I’d been to a marriage reception of a distinct relative. They opted for a catering based food service instead of a buffet system. I don’t understand whether they had a fixed course dinner or I guess they planned for a 6 course dinner. They had Sweet Corn Soup, Gobi Manchurian and Cucumber Salad as starters. Then the second course consisted of Masala Dosa followed by Rotis with Vegetable Kurma and Paneer Butter Masala. The third course had sweets such as Badam Halwa, Jelaebis and Bhasundi. The fourth course had rice with Rasam and Curd. Lastly, they served desert - ice cream with Chocolate topping.

After the marathon dinner, I walked out to an opening nearby to catch some air and I was surprised to see that the place was a separate enclave where ppl were getting served with some chats. I was really perplexed and was left pondering about the Indian eating etiquette and cuisine.

I just wondered about an idea I read in a book. It said “If you want to sell something to your friend take him to an Italian restaurant and if you want to buy something take him to a Chinese restaurant”. The concept was that Italian food is expensive and Chinese food is cheap. But I can add something more to this quote. “If you want to overwhelm your friend take him to an Indian marriage”

To Be Or Not To Be

Well, another exasperating week comes to an end, not in terms of working but in terms of not being able to do anything constructive. And now I’m left with some serious conundrums. I have to make a choice in things concerning my career & my personal life.

Whenever I got to make such choices, I just get nostalgic and think about school. When I was in school I had a couple of very good friends, who had different ideologies and convictions. At times they had to face their prejudices and used to have a problem with getting along. And once it happened that they had a cold war going on between them and both of them expected me to part with the other. During this phase, I had to discreetly meet either one of them for their friendship and had to say “I’m with you buddy”. I should add that this was certainly not done on deliberation but rather compulsion. The fact was that both of them were great friends and I really cherished their friendship.

One fine day my buddies recovered that I was cris-crossing, and it hurt one of them really bad. He just came over to me and just said “Buddy at times in life you are at the cross-roads and you got to just choose your path. You have to clearly see two roads ahead of you and you got to make a choice and once you choose you just cannot backtrack”. So what do you think happened next?

I made my choice I’d rather say ‘so called choice’ and bid farewell to the alchemist (my dear friend). Yeah, I called him the alchemist because after a few months he met with an accident and passed away but left me haunted with his words. I’ll never ever forget the words he said.

I keep wondering is it we who make the choices or is it the choices that make us. I don’t think there is anything such as a choice technically. All our lives we keep thinking we are choosing but we end up with what we were meant to deserve. All I can think about in this moment is “today is the first day for the rest of my life”.

The Fellowship Of Adventure

Well I just finished my first week of work @ Adventure (name deliberately changed due 2 implications). The week kicked out with a 2 day induction program which I personally think was an awful abuse of time & resources. Firstly there were those huge organization charts which looked more like a food chain & made us look ridiculous @ the bottom of the pyramid, then there were about 10 ppts 2 instate the company’s culture, values & ethics. And lastly there was a session about ergonomics (might have been informative 2 ppl who had no cognizance about it). The only thing informative was the stuff about “India Protection Services” an organization with a JV with Adventure for awareness about first aid & things u should do in case of X situations. For instance bomb hoax or fire breaking @ ur workplace.

And then the actual training commenced on the third day which was interesting in a different perspective. I couldn’t probably abstain from writing some dilbertisms wrt it. We had a training coordinator who thought that his job was 2 just commute between the first & the fourth floor with the context of coordinating. We had a couple of sessions which emphasized only on the management aspect as though the threshold work of an organization is management and not the actual technical work & skill ( the work needed 2 make the product work ). Then the quality ppl grilled us on the QMS, CMMI 5 and other such initiatives which r more on the business side. Anyway it was more of good 2 know than need 2 know.

Then we had 2 fill out time sheets for the pay 2 be transferred 2 our account. A gr8 deal of hard work was required 2 do this. You need 2 enter an alphanumeric charge codes for all the activities u do. That means a charge code for a working day, a holiday, a national holiday and yup even the HR induction program. There was some discrepancy in entering the charge codes and everyone ended mailing their info two 2 three times. I pity the HR dude who got spammed but it was his work 2 ensure that we did not goof up in the first place.

Thy Begins

Hi brave new world. Have I arrived on the shores of luminus or oblivion? Time will tell...