101 Things To Do Before You Die...

I happened to watch a programme on the BBC called "50 things to do before you die"....an amazing 1hr show which motivated me in writing this blog (after ages I reckon). So, here it goes;

1. Ride in a hot air balloon.
2. Drive a Ferrari on the Autobahn.
3. Swim with a dolphin.
4. Take a walk on Great Wall of China.
5. Bungee jumping.
6. Skydiving/Base-jumping.
7. White river rafting.
8. Exploring an underground cave.
9. Para sailing.
10. Witness the Northern Lights.
11. Snorkeling and scuba diving at Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
12. Watching a live FIFA world cup final.
13. Lemon tea and buns at a roadside shop.
14. A visit to Paris.
15. Exploring constellations in the midnight sky.
16. Run a Marathon.
17. Trekking along a railway line.
18. Watching chocolates being made (and make them yourselves).
19. Compose your own theme music.
20. Throw a huge party and invite every one of your friends.
21. Have your portrait painted.
22. Write the novel you know you have inside you.
23. Backpacking in Europe.
24. Learn to speak a foreign language and make sure you use it.
25. Tell someone the story of your life, sparing no details.
26. Learn to rollerblade.
27. Get a tattoo
28. Go skinnydipping at midnight.
29. Watch the launch of the space shuttle.
30. Visit the Great Pyramid.
31. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment (giggle-loop).
32. Spend a whole day eating junk food without feeling guilty.
33. Be an extra in a film.
34. Make love on a forest floor.
35. Brew your own beer.
36. Buy a roundtheworld air ticket, a backpack, and run away.
37. Midnight walk on a beach.
38. Grow a beard and leave it for atleast a month.
39. Stayed up all night long and watch the sun rise.
40. Take a week long road-trip.
41. Ride a camel into the desert.
42. Watch a meteor shower.
43. Give your mother a dozen red roses and tell her you love her.
44. Be a member of the audience in a TV show.
45. Send a message in a bottle.
46. Taken a candlelit bath with someone.
47. Learn to ballroom dance properly.
48. Ride the TransSiberian Express across Asia.
49. Sit on a jury (be unbiased and righteous).
50. Drink beer at Oktoberfest in Munich.
51. Shower in a waterfall.
52. Learn to play a musical instrument with some degree of skill.
53. Teach someone illiterate to read.
54. Watched a lightning storm at sea.
55. Spend a night in a haunted house by yourself.
56. Experience weightlessness.
57. Have a snowball fight.
58. Write down your personal mission statement, follow it, and revise it from time to time.
59. See a lunar eclipse.
60. A gondola ride in Venice.
61. Get passionate about a cause and spend time helping it, instead of just thinking about it.
62. Sing a great song in front of an audience.
63. Ask someone you've only just met to go on a date.
64. Walk the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa.
65. Drive across America from coast to coast.
66. Pretended to be a superhero.
67. Make a complete and utter fool of yourself.
68. Spend six months getting your body into optimum shape.
69. Own one very expensive but absolutely wonderful business suit.
70. Sleep under the stars.
71. Take a ride on the highest roller coaster in the country.
72. Go wild in Rio during Carnival.
73. Spend a whole day reading a great novel.
74. Learn to juggle with three balls.
75. Grow a garden.
76. Had a one-night stand.
77. Raft through the Grand Canyon.
78. Donate money and put your name on something: a college scholarship, a bench in the park.
79. Buy your own house and then spend time making it into exactly what you want.
80. Learn to use a microphone and give a speech in public.
81. Attend one really huge rock concert.
82. Shave your head.
83. Give to a charity anonymously.
84. Lose more money than you can afford at roulette in Vegas.
85. Make yourself spend a halfday at a concentration camp and swear never to forget.
86. Run to the top of the Statue of Liberty.
87. Create your Family Tree.
88. Hit a hole-in-one on a golf course.
89. Ski on a Double Black Diamond trail (atleast a Green circle).
90. Learn to bartend.
91. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over.
92. Broken a bone.
93. Reflect on your greatest weakness, and realize how it is your greatest strength.
94. Kiss your sweetheart in the rain.
95. Gone to a drive-in theater.
96. Been on a television show as an "expert".
97. Been on a cruise ship
98. Created and named your own constellation of stars.
99. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
100. Forgive yourself.
101. Be the boss.

Cinema Paradiso

This is such a difficult film to describe in words because all of it is heartfelt emotion. This is a movie about the magic of the movies. It manipulates your perception of reality, suspends your disbelief, and ultimately either alter or affirm your view on life. It is the near-perfect blending of direction, acting, script, sound track, and cinematography. Ennio Morriconne's music is charming throughout, always totally in keeping with the images on screen and the intentions of the story.

Perhaps it was with this in mind that Tornatore made his modern masterpiece. Whatever the reason, the result is a beautifully nostalgic, utterly heart wrenching romantic waltz. Cinema Paradiso is almost certainly the most emotionally engaging film about a love of film ever made.

Do check out the trailer below...

SYnergy

Synergy: The combination of factors which each multiply the effects of the other(s) rather than merely adding to them.

In simple words, synergy means that the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. I've always been awestruck by this idea since i came across of it from Stephen Covey - 7 Effective habits, its like the holy grail to perpetual perfection.

It might seem like a very natural thing...there is synergy in every creation of nature...in life. But at the same time if we look into the cutural & socio-economic society there is so much of void, chaos & entropy. We have everything rampant from Capitalism Vs Communism, Democracy Vs Anarchy/Feudalism/Imperialism, Adhocracy Vs Bureaucrazy, Altrusim Vs Egoism, Science Vs Religion, Poverty Vs Aristocracy & the list goes on & on...by generalizing we could broadly classify them as Basic universal problems Vs Cross-sectoral problems.

What could/should/would this world be? If all of us could/should/would have a commom goal or an agenda & allow ourselves to be enpowered by synergy...

DVORAK V/s QWERTY

Here, is an interesting read;

The efficiency experts August Dvorak and William Dealey patented the Dvorak typewriter keyboard on May 12, 1936 (Patent No. 2,040,248) also called as the simplified keyboard. They tried to increase typists' speed by placing the most common letters on the home row and where the stronger fingers of the hands could do most of the work. The QWERTY keyboard, which you're probably using right now, was actually designed to slow typists down. (On old typewriters, speed would cause jammed keys.)

The One

Ever wondered what would it be like to be able to see your alternative self in a distant past or future. I personally believe there are two ways of looking at life. You could either look at things as though they were pre-determined in the first place, like everything was destined and a part of a master game plan. In other words to look at life as a tapestry of events which are meant to be uncovered in a particular fashion. Or you could look at life as a parellel universe where things happen based on the choices you make and there always exists an alternate self who chose the other way round. For instance there is a 'ME' who is blogging at the moment and there is an alternate 'ME' sleeping at the very instance of after a long day at work.

It's interesting or rather discerning to know that the fundamental idea of Quantum Mechanics is based on the theory of a Parallel Universe which I just put forth across. If you are a Science or an Engineering student who has tried out the 'Newton Rings' experiment in your Physics lab, you've actually witnessed the proof of this. In this experiment we actually pass light from a coherent source through a fringe and we observe alternate bands of light on the target screen. I happened to read this in an article in a novel(Timeline by Michael Crichton) and was awestuck at the magnitude of this theory.

And well after juxtaposing both the theories I believe the profound truth lies in living life as it comes, and live in the present moment and cherish it righteously.