Christmas Eve In A Church

Hey Guys,

First of all Merry Christmas!!

24th of December, 2010 was my first time in a church during Christmas eve and I really wanted to share how awesome an experience this was with you. This is a memorable experience.

The bell that struck in my mind:

I was in the hall in my home browsing randomly through some videos when I heard some people singing and it was so serene to hear that, when I suddenly recognised that it was Christmas eve. I had totally forgotten that there was a church just a block away from my house. Just as it happens for all beautiful moments, decisions are taken in a flash, me and my room mate just decided to run out there to see what it was all about.

Things around us are really beautiful:

In seconds, we were at the back gate of the church. I have walked past these gates hundreds of times but I have never cared to even think to go in and check it out even once. This just showed me that beautiful things are all around and very near to us. It is just our duty to check them out. If we don't, they will reveal themselves in the most beautiful way you can ever imagine. The church was really BEAUTIFUL!!

An Awesome Church:

Not because there were great decorations or costly things around, but only a few lightings, a bell and few flowers hanging here and there around. This originality and simplicity made the church look so wonderful. We were really amazed at the kind of hospitality offered by the people in the church. The prayers were going on in the church and there were songs being sung. The wordings were projected on the dais and we started singing it out loudly. We did not care about the meaning, we just sang.

                                         

Those Evergreen Days:

This just reminded of my school -"St. Joseph's matriculation school" where I studied from class I to class X. Christmas is the THE festival you ought to watch out for in my school. The nativity skit where the birth of Jesus Christ and the events surrounding it would be enacted so beautifully, is one which I am missing the most. 

I wished I went back to school to watch only the Nativity skit once more. 

Not to mention, there would be other great events where Santa Claus coming and dancing with all the teachers, throwing out chocolates and gifts. Also the gorgeously decorated      X-mas tree, out of which we used to pluck the bells and balloons and run away before the PET master sees us. Oh my God! What a time!!

The Pretty Girls:

Getting back to the church, there were some pretty girls around who actually kept me awake lest I would have slept during the prayers. We greeted everyone around us and wished them Merry Christmas. Everyone of them were strangers nearby and I felt so great to see strangers smiling and greeting you. Cool...I only wished I hugged those pretties to wish them Merry Christmas. After some prayers, we went to the altar and we were offered bread and wine from the Lord's supper. It was great.

Chai sir Chai, Chai, Chai:

Penultimately, the other significant part was, we were given COFFEE and CAKE. Needless to mention, the hot coffee was splendid to have when we were walking back home at 14 degrees Celsius at 1'o Clock on a straight road that seemed to never end.  

What a WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS it has been!!

JavaScript - Ram or Raavan?

Hi,

Is JavaScript a boon or a bane? Let's go to the story.

Disclaimer : I have a limited knowledge about JavaScript and so I may not be completely correct in all of my opinions.

The first time I ever heard about JavaScript was in my second year in college where I had to use it for a project I was working on. I just read some random tutorials and learnt only those which are necessary for me. After that I have hardly used JavaScript in my life until I landed in ThoughtWorks in my first project. It seems that not many people have actually read about JavaScript when they are using it. But they are just - using it.

Recently, we had an interesting seminar/discussion on this topic in my office. That was the first time it struck to me as to what is JavaScript - Is it Object Oriented or It is Functional?

Everything is an object in JavaScript. There are no classes at all - which means it is not completely OO. Even a function is an object. You can pass around functions and play football with them - which makes it a bit Functional. Well, may be it is a mixture of both - An unnamed, weird product like some substance I used to get in my chemistry lab back in my school days when I used to mix some chemicals randomly and get a black pungent deposit. It stinks!!

In the seminar, we had some very interesting examples of some of the syntactic sugars in JavaScript. I was completely agape when I saw them. What a bull shit kind of a modern day language?! I was completely pissed off by the incapability of the language to handle simple stuffs like where to put a semicolon. Because of this randomness of JavaScript, there are even no proper editors/ IDEs for it.

For Eg: What is the difference between the following?

1. return {

a = 10;

}

2. return

{

a = 10;

}

It actually turns out that the second set of statements would not give the desired result because JavaScript tries to put a semicolon at the end of a line, if it does not find one and it may end up putting a semicolon after the return statement in the second example and the function ends up returning nothing at all. What the F***??

Nonetheless, there seems to be a history behind JavaScript but the crux of the story is that JavaScript is like a premature baby taken out of a mother's womb and had not grown after that at all.

Nevertheless, JavaScript is the most popular client side scripting language. Even though there has been no improvements in the language as a whole, it is still used in almost all the websites in the world. There are some frameworks on top of JavaScript like JQuery and Prototype which actually make life a bit simpler, though.

However, it seems that there is going to be a new standard announced for JavaScript in 2011/12 which will actually make the language more strong typed and powerful and less random. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best.

Finally, according to me, JavaScript is as of now a Raavan in the guise of Ram.

The Way My Mind Works

Hi,

Its been quite a while since I blogged, not due to the lack of topics but because mainly because of sluggishness and slightly because I had work. So now this story goes like this.

I was watching a movie now, one of my all time favourites and I think it is precisely the 33rd time I am watching it, when some points just struck to my mind on how my mind actually works!!

First of all, I feel that more that 99% of thoughts that come to my mind fall in one of the following categories.

• not-at-all-useful
• cannot happen
• happened in the past
• will be better if it happens like this
• should have happened like this
• I should have reacted like this**
• this is what I should do**
• completely pessimistic
• WTF??
• Random, as in there are no meaning or structure to them**
• Should I do that now when doing this **
• this is what I want to be ( seeing almost anything), etc etc..

** -> thoughts that more frequently come to my mind.

Robin Sharma in his "The Monk who sold his Ferrari" states blatantly that more than 95% of human thoughts are completely useless. I am starting to wonder is it the same in all the age groups?? Why have I never ever given this a thought?? May be I was not mature enough or my corporate environment is making me think so (:) ThoughtWorks definitely is not a corporate environment. It is like being in a KinderGarten in here. It will take me another post to speak about this.) or is it because I am genuinely getting older?? I don't know.

So, let me take a step back and think aloud for what is the reason for such randomness in life or life without a discipline. Let me elicit some of the reasons.

• Is it because the filter property of the mind is not working fine? Is my mind not able to filter out properly unwanted things from necessary things?
• Is it because I am goalless/ the goal I have set at the back of my mind is not motivating enough/ not clear/ this is not my goal at all?
• Is it because I am not able to achieve my short term targets?
• Is it because I am having too much of a target to achieve more than my capability/ I keep adding more stuff as soon as I see myself approaching my target?
• Is it because I am not celebrating my victories and becoming avaricious of more and more stuff?
• Is it because I am thinking too much not leaving some of my life's moments to nature itself and sitting back and relaxing?
• Is it because I am not taking nutritious food like fresh vegetables that is making me sluggish?
• Is it because I am looking at other successful people in my family, putting pressure on myself to become like/ greater than them in my life?
• Is it because of my mom who always hints that what ThoughtWorks pays you is nothing but literal peanuts?
• Is it because of my ego?
• Is it because I am not taking to many people and the socialising factor has become much low?
• Is it because I am thinking to over achieve than my capability?

Having written so much "Is it because", I almost forgot why did I start writing this even? However I now get a embarrassing feel that what one of my friends told me is actually becoming true - "You are also using your blog as an outlet to vent out your hearts feelings and there is actually nothing useful in it for other readers". Sorry guys, that may be true with this post and some of the previous ones but I promise I ll try my max to inhibit myself from doing it.

However coming back to my analysis, I feel that there are no concrete reasons for this. It just happens/ happened. There are however, ways to overcome it but not to stop it from happening. "The monk who sold his Ferrari" actually tells some very good ideas to actually control one's own mind which when mastered makes you the master of the everything in life. Practising every damn step will actually make me a monk, which I definitely don't want to become now. However I feel that I should start actually practising some of those to control "The Way My Mind Works".

On a finishing note - "Even Elixir in excess becomes a poison - The same applies to Randomness in Life". FYI -This is my own quote.

Social Network

Hi,

Ogay!! Here I am to blog about the Blockbuster "Social Network". It is the most cherished, most watched movie by me only after "Anniyan" and "3 idiots". When I watched the movie for the first time, I knew exactly that I would keep watching this movie for ever.

What makes this movie so special is that I was able to see a reflection of myself in that movie. Not that I am so intelligent as Zuckerberg, but I meant the core intent of the film. I was able to feel what I have missed out in my college not doing some stuff. But again, its the great human (Indian precisely) tendency to blame someone/something for any mishappenings. So I am going to blame my frikking goddamn college for this. "I had no goddamn exposure in my college to become intellectually capable of doing or even thinking of doing such stuff!!".

However, I envy this guy Zuckerberg because according to me, not all ideas become great ones and for that to happen you should have LUCK. Luck and Fortune favors(ed) the brave guy. Relating to the calculations in our mythology - "The amount of good deeds - The amount of sins you do in this Janma(Birth) is directly proportional to the amount of well being and fortune you ll enjoy in your next Janma". Think so this guy was a philanthropist or the like in his last birth. The point is, he is the same now too. He has donated $100 million for improving the US education system!! So he ll continue to be the same in his next birth too.. And we will see Zuckerberg II and I think this will go on and on like some Serial on Sun TV.

But alleviating my envy, I sincerely feel that this guy is doing something really great. Kudos to the facebook team and congrats to Zucky for being the "Time Person of the Year". (However Julian Assange should have got it. You stole it from him Zucky!!). Last but not the least, from my heart.... "Social Network" roCKS!!

NSS Nostalgia

Hi,
For the past few days, I have started to feel a bit more nostalgic about my college days and my NSS unit in my college. As I specified in my MY FIRST BLOG EVER, my NSS unit has had a profound impact on me as an individual. Today what I am, the way I think and the things I do are all, I believe, are because of my NSS unit and the kind of friends I got there. It has created an everlasting friendship and understanding among us.

And now I am in my home, with my other friends in different parts of the world, missing all those evergreen days, those galatta, those egos, those small fights, manuals, culturals, break, pothu mathu ( local slang for bumps ), orphanage visits, camps, post camps, scoldings from seniors, care from seniors, dance in bus etc etc. The list will go on if I have to say everything that I am missing.

I only wish if life had frozen when I was a sophomore in my college. That part of my life was the carefree. And now, we guys barely talk to each other ( may be one of the reasons why I started blogging too ), or put in a proper way we barely have the time to talk to each other. All we do is someone puts a photo or a video on facebook, we go and like it and add a comment. That's what and at least that keeps us in touch. Although, there are a few people whom I still have phone conversations with, but its been long since we all met.

I get angry because when I am writing this blog, my heart says "That's how life is moron!! There's still lot to go and lot of people of meet. RUN!!". If I slow down and think, then I feel what this bugger says is right. Those beautiful days are gone and will never be back. "You are right bugger!". However the memories about my NSS will live with me and will be cherished by me for eternity. And that's how I got the "NSS NOSTALGIA".

P.S. For some of the videos about my NSS Gala, you can view these videos on my facebook profile
1. http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1689364947573&comments&ref=mf
2. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1041196684#!/video/video.php?v=1671779027936

My First Blog Ever

Hiya all,
I am joining the blogging bandwagon. I feel great about me when I am writing my first blog now because it has taken me almost 2 years to push myself or more subtly find time to create a blog of my own. Not that I am a 24/7/365 busy man but nevertheless I am a normal human being with a bit abnormal amount of sluggishness. Like everyone else, I find procrastination to be a feel-good thing - mainly due to 2 reasons.

1. You can postpone your work indefinitely.
2. And when you finally do the work, you have been feeling like postponing indefinitely, it creates a sort of Award winning, Capturing the world feel like "Yes, I have done it!!"

So here I am into the blogging world finally with an Award winning feel.

Before I end my first post, I just want to give a few words about how I was able to break my procrastination and win this award.

So I was in my house, watching all my NSS (National Service Scheme) photos and videos and it made me nostalgic about my college days. I just then remembered that I had challenged or promised a friend of mine in college that I would create my own blog as soon as possible. My brain's impulse as soon as it reached my heart, my mouth said "I have to create a blog", I did a search, came to blogspot and here I am finishing with the cliche word for first time bloggers - "MY FIRST BLOG EVER"