Mourning the Loss of Common Sense

An Obituary printed in the London Times - Interesting and sadly, rather true….

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Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who

has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was,

since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He

will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:

- Knowing when to come in out of the rain;

- Why the early bird gets the worm;

- Life isn't always fair;

- and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend

more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children,

are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but

overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy

charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended

from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for

reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the

job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly

children.

It declined even further when schools were required to get parental

consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could

not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an

abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses;

and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a

burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to

realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in

her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by

his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son,

Reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers;

I Know My Rights

I Want It Now

Someone Else Is To Blame

I'm A Victim

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

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Peace.

Untitled

Update... I did drive  long distance... Over 1250 miles in a period of 2 days. Thats about 2000 Kms. Now i can proudly say that in life i am qualified to do one thing properly. Drive

But wait a minute driving in US is hardly tough. Sucks!!!!!!! Back to square one. I am not good enough for anything! :-) He he.

Peace.

Weekend Getaway

Going out this weekend..

The cities which i plan to visit are Bentonville, AR and Springfield & Kansas City in Missouri.

Best part would be driving over 1200 miles on this trip. Something which i like. 5th time i am going on a more than 1000 mile trip! Is that some kind of record? Hope so! :-)

Considering my lazing around last weekend all the time, this should surely be fun...

Hopefully i will have some pics to share for the very first time in this blog! :-)

Peace!

Random Bits

Don't have anything coherent to write. So incoherence rules the roost for now...

YouTube completed 5 years yesterday. Pretty amazing isn't it that it was built on such a simple concept and became so BIG. Now there are 100s of sites which have copied the concept but Google has bought and brought YouTube to an unsurmountable place. A big thumbs up to the founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. Isn't it amazing that they sold it to Google for $1.65 Billion. I wish them and am sure it would last many more years to come! For more on YouTube checkout this link

So Winter Olympics started last week. And it all started on a tragic note of a Georgian Luge athlete dying while practicing . Nodar Kumaritashvili lost control while practicing for his Luge event and was thrown off the track onto a pole causing his death. And this video of his death was shown to millions of viewers by NBC more than once on the day of the incident. Now even though it came with a warning, was it necessary to show such a disturbing video on prime-time television? I often feel appalled when i see that this ratings game makes reporters and channels lose any semblance of decency!

But coming from a country where sports in general is frowned upon as a career option and lack of any achievements in any Olympics, Winter Olympics looks like a fascinating event. Almost all events/games are so dangerous yet so elegant. And as a person who has tried Skiing i can understand how tough those sports are physically. Wonderful spectacle.

More blasts in India. This time it was in Pune. I know its so insensitive of me that i put it as just another event. But i do it with a reason. It has become like just another event, hasn't it. It happens so often as if its a common day to day event. When will our politicians stop putting on an act to the Indian people and start taking tough actions. I cant see such blasts going on without severe repercussions here in US. Why are we so passive? Why cant we show it, to these terrorists the costs of continuing on with such act and to nations supporting such terrorists what they can expect from us. But no, even such gruesome acts are used to garner votes and win electorates. Honestly i am pretty much sick of it.

Anyways i have lost the interest to continue with this entry because i am pretty sure if i write anymore, it would be some incoherent rant about Indian politicians and any such thing would be a little hypocritical from me since i am sitting in a land far away not even able to vote for the last 2 years.

So...

Peace!

Marketing Paranoia

I often wonder are pimples or dandruff so bad that you have to feel like a social outcast if you have them. Its not like having dandruff is something similar to having poisonous fumes emanating from one's head which kills people walking near them. Or having pimples is having some volcano on your face which will break anytime spurting white lava on people nearby decapitating them or something.

Both are minor medical conditions which can be easily overcome with slight medical care and goes easily away. Both cause minor changes in appearances. And both are much better to have than habits like Smoking or Drinking. But marketing has associated their images with some sort of revolting feeling. So every time someone gets them they feel weird and unworthy and become obsessed with solving them in very small periods of time. And others start treating them differently n badly!

"Dare to wear black" bullshit. You don't have to have a head with no dandruff to wear black apparels. Wearing some dress black in color isn't some Dare. Neither is not having a clean face criminal.

Its always important to understand the propaganda behind marketing of each product. And such marketing should be somehow discouraged/stopped because it pollutes impressionable teenager's minds.

I understand looks are important to a certain extent to be confident. But thats only if you don't have the confidence in your personality. In the long run beautiful airheads are always made fun of and smart people always respected. We just need to remember that.

Peace.

Maturity.. Or the lack of it!

I always wonder how my life would have turned out if i had rocked my college a little more maturity style. But then i realize no one knows. It might have turned a 100 different ways and i am better off not knowing it because the reality of it all is what I am now.

College... 4 yrs of it... I dont know how it went by but there are so many things which i did during then that i am so ashamed of... I cant make myself to disclose all of them here because well basically i am ashamed to do so. But i can always say Sorry to them if they are reading.

Sorry to Mom n Dad and my young(back then) sister for deciding to quit college and in the most blatantly stupid/absurd manner at that. I guess thinking back now, i should have confided more in you. I can still see the look on your faces when i saw you after that and the feeling that i made you go through that is something which will haunt me till my grave. I should be Sorry to my friends as well who also had to suffer some because of that.

And i am sorry to you as well Shiva.. I still dont know why i did what i did! And i am still so thankful for the way you handled it. Worst punishment, is for me to go through my life with a pang of guilt every time i think of you and i surely deserve it.

To be honest, i have lived all my life with a sense of Inferiority. I always hanged out with a group in which i was inadequate in so many ways. Thinking back i really dont think there was not anything wrong with that. What was wrong was i wasn't ready to live with what i was. I always Acted out / Lied to try and impress people into thinking i am something or someone else. Sad part was i used to do it even to my close friends. And for that I am sorry to all of them.

I am sorry to those people who thought i had more potential and who kept encouraging me to do better. Because i now realize that i could have done better. Much better. But Laziness and a lack of confidence has brought me to a place where people around me feel that i have under achieved. And so do I.

And finally even though I am not Sorry to myself, I am sorry for myself because to this day I dont feel comfortable under my own skin and prefer to be someone else all the time. This feeling sorry for self can be considered as Self Pity but believe me i dont feel pity for myself right now, i just feel pity for the person i was all this time which made me what i am now.

But the silver lining in all of it is, God blessed me with a great family and some wonderful friends who in spite of all that i mentioned above and countless of other things which

i haven't mentioned, have been with me throughout and always made me feel better than i was. I cant promise to change overnight but i am trying to show you that i realize my flaws and am not oblivious to them and i am trying to work on them!

I am Pathologically Lazy!

These blogs are fun. Every time i take a long sabbatical and come back, i look at my previous posts and wonder how could i have been so lame to believe that i can actually do something with continued interest over a long period of time! I cant because of 2 reasons, first would be that i lose interest easily and lack any sort of will power to egg me on if i am not interested; and the second n more important one would be i am Pathologically Lazy.

So now the wonder is how is it that i seem to be writing this one? Well its mainly because one of my friends recently started blogging and i came out here to check his blog out. And while doing so i thought maybe i should post something as well. By the way, if this post by some mistake or chance is seen by someone else's eyes other than mine, you should follow my friends blog. He is a smart guy and is very incisive in his thinking and you would like reading his blogs if he becomes a regular. His blog's link is http://elitecynic.blogspot.com/

So what happened to me or things that interest me during this sabbatical of mine?

• Well for starters I went home for vacation for a couple of weeks. And i can proudly say i spent a lot of time with my family which is something i wasnt doing a lot even when i was staying with them. So i guess the old cliche of realizing the importance of things close only comes when it becomes hard for you to do that is true.
• I moved into a new apartment and now have no roommates. So thats something commendable and it deserves a pat on my back even if its my hands which is doing the patting. Why, because now i cant mask my loneliness! :-)
• This was also the period when i did some great work @ work (now thats a confusing sentence), did not get the recognition and lost interest in my Job.
• Arsenal had a pretty good season till this weekend where they ended a 3 match streak with such bad form that to imagine the optimism which i had of them winning the PL this season seems very distant and absurd!
• I traveled to a lot of places in US and did a lot of driving on the US interstates which has made me realize that i love driving and also that i would have more passion doing my work if i was a Driver rather than what i have now for this IT Stuff which i am doing.
• I did a lot of new things like para sailing, shooting, horse riding, bar hopping, dieting (yeah for the first time in my life even though i have been fat for a longgg time) etc..

The list above would go on but there are things which i dont wanna share in a place where even though its difficult but not impossible for other human beings to stumble upon. But in summary this was a great period in my personal life as i experienced a lot of new things and emotions and a shit period in my work life!

Anyways now i feel like i cant go on as i have lost interest in typing more things to be part of this blog. So farewells to myself, meet you next time here!