Be Intentional

Oh, great. Yet another introspective reflection on my past and future packed up by some basic common sense. Bear with me for just a moment.

It’s not easy to be intentional. Especially for a guy like me. I’m laidback and easy-going. This results in not having a plan, not having a defined goal, and a spine made of Playdoh.

It starts from thinking with the end in mind. I don’t quite know what that looks like. It’s a little fuzzy, but I know how I want to feel. I want to wake up and feel confident about the day ahead regardless of any distractions or interruptions. I want to feel confident by night’s end that I have been accomplished. I want to be up for any challenge and not have to psyche myself into them – I just want to be ready and love them.

Driving at dangerous speeds is one way to get a thrill. The high from going fast is short-lived. I want to gain satisfaction from all parts of my life. (Right now, I almost have it, but not quite.)

I’m establishing a variety of short-term and long-term personal and professional goals. It starts with being more intentional, more direct and more focused on execution. This is the first step among many to become great.

Osama Bin Laden DEAD

I must admit, I did like Bin Laden arrested or get killed.

Justice has been done to the thousands of innocent people he killed on September 11, 2001.

Credits to the soldiers who constantly risking their own lives and tirelessly tracked his footsteps.

While we are still in this fallen world, there will be another evil leader that would replace Bin Laden. But one’s things for sure, evil have momentary victory.

Evil is always a loser.

You Stole My Heart Away

 You Stole My Heart Away

Now, it’s time for me to emote. I just love this song. A friend originally posted this on her Facebook wall.

I dedicate this song to the women I’ve loved, but never loved me; to the women I’ve loved, but could only like me; to the one I’ve loved, then loved me back, but did not love me later; and to one I will love and will love me back forever.

The song is performed by Big Mountain.

Source Code Review

Source Code starts off on a very promising note. There is an explosion on a train. 100 people are killed. The army manages to get hold of some of the victims’ “brains” (literally) and harness whatever memory imprints are available in those brains before the persistent electrical activity in the neural networks die so that the imprints can be digitized in a reproducible form later.
I think I owe you all an explanation. This preposterous suggestion is not mine. Let me try to explain the “science” behind this.

Apparently, according to Hollywood Science – some parts of the brain do have some electrical activity in play for some time even after the brain is fried in a bomb blast – till the investigators get those brains to a high security army research lab – where brilliant scientists latch on to those electrical neural circuits and salvage the last eight minutes of the memories. They do this on a number of those brains and construct the world as seen by the travelers in the train in the last eight minutes of their life. This information is digitized and stored in what they call “The Source Code”

Enter the hero, a Captain in the US Army pulled out from an Afghanistan against his knowledge. He is strapped to a seat in a ramshackle enclosure with only a television screen in front of him – where an Army operative is impatiently waiting for him to come to senses so that she can put him “into” the source code – as one of the passengers – so that he can figure out who planted the bomb and hence help the Army stop a potential nuclear holocaust right in the middle of Chicago!

The Captain makes several excursions into those last eight minutes and tries to figure out the culprit.
If I go on any further, I will be spoiling your experience of this movie. The science is atrocious but the movie is not! It is quite good actually provided you leave your brains (pun intended) outside the movie hall – for good reason.

The end leaves you aghast though. There’s this lingering question at the back of your mind – perhaps more than one question – in all probability a million questions which the director conveniently chooses ignore – because he himself has no clue what the answers are. That’s pardonable because Hollywood Science is a branch of science that takes the explanation only so far as to make it a good screenplay. It does not even attempt to close the loose ends or the gaping holes. That is the very nature of Hollywood Science.
The movie is slickly made; has a great pace; a lovely premise and a politically correct end. In case you expect some character in the movie to tell you how the stuff really works; what the consequences are, please note that this is not a documentary on quantum physics which by the way gets more than a mention in the movie. For your own good, pay no attention to those dialogues.
Source Code is a good watch and Michelle Monaghan is HOT. Jake Gyllenhaal needs no introduction. He lives the character is immensely believable and likable.
My rating: Pretty Good.

10 Twitter Crimes You Really Shouldn’t Commit

Twitter has exploded over recent years to the point where your friends, family members and favourite celebs are all part of one massive network, but since the early days there have been people who don’t get it, misuse it or simple do it wrong. This post rounds up a collection of common crimes that Twitter veterans and newcomers will all be able to relate to, are you guilt of any of them?

Hiring people tweet on your behalf

The biggest criminals in the whole of Twitterville has to be the celebs who try to gain extra cool points by being on Twitter, but they end up with a profile updated by their ‘team’. There’s a decent collection of high profile celebs who “get it”, but the majority simple don’t understand the whole meaning of Twitter and end up talking at their fans with no personal interaction.
Whether you’re an average Joe or this year’s hottest idol, you should be Tweeting messages yourself. A get out of jail free card may be supplied to companies who use Twitter, who allow their employees to interact with customers and fans.

Tweeting spam messages, especially as a bot

No doubt we’ve all experienced this one, either as @replies selling you something or random messages when you mention a certain keyword. Companies soon caught on that Twitter was a good marketing and branding tool, but yet again they go about it completely the wrong way by trying to ram their message down your throat. Don’t bring junk mail and cold calling tactics into the digital age.

Keeping the default avatar and profile design

Nothing makes you stand out as a Twitter noob more than sticking with the default profile background and avatar. People follow other humans on Twitter; a default profile has no personality and doesn’t relate to you as a person. Make sure the first thing you do is upload a picture of yourself as your avatar and take the time to change the background image and colours of your profile.

Never responding to people

Twitter is a great communication tool, but many people don’t realise that communication is a two-way process. If you don’t respond to your @replies, mentions or comment on the status of others you’ll simply come across as an ignorant arse. Make sure you listen and engage with your followers, don’t just talk at them. A common excuse is users don’t want to fill up the streams of their followers with response messages, but they don’t realise your @reply tweets only show up in someone else’s stream if they’re following both you and the recipient.

Gaming your follower count

Twitter newcomers often get caught up on the all powerful follower count and try to game the system to increase their numbers by following people in a hope for a follow back in return, often just ditching them once they’ve gained that extra number. Be a real person, chat and engage with others and your follower count will grow naturally.

Overtweeting

There’s a fine balance between every day social interaction and being an annoyance. Be careful not to get overzealous in your tweeting as it doesn’t take long for a person’s Twitter stream to become completely saturated with nothing but your tweets, especially those who don’t follow a great deal of people. If you’re tweeting links or any kind of self promotion give it at least 15 minutes between posts.

Excessive Multitweeting

Twitter is limited to 140 characters for a reason. It’s aimed a short and concise messages, so don’t be that person who writes complete novel in their stream 140 characters at a time, with each successive tweet taking up more of your screen real estate. If you want to express yourself in more than 140 characters, consider writing a blog post and linking to it.

Converting every other word into a hash tag

Hash tags are one of the great resources Twitter provides which allow us to keep track of tweets based on a certain subject and find new friends. Hash tags are exceptionally handy for conferences and gatherings, but they can also be used to tag every day tweet content. Sometimes the odd person really gets it wrong and ends up converting every noun or verb in their tweet into a hash tag. The words in your tweets are crawled in searches anyway, so think about whether the word you’re hash tagging is really going to be worth clicking to see all the other tweets including that word.

Starting a tweet with “is…”

Finally we’ve got a petty crime that is often excused, but could be the start of the path that turns this person into a hardened Twitter criminal. Unlike Facebook, Twitter updates don’t start with your name, so posting updates starting with “is…” simple doesn’t make sense. You’re not observing yourself from a third person perspective, tell people what you’re doing as yourself.
Do you have any Twitter pet peeves of your own? Add any other Twitter crimes you can think of as a comment.

Business

Business.

Is something else.

I gather the word busines comes from being very busy!! A business sure makes one busy. I have, for better or worse, so very recently, entered the world of business. If only in a very small way...but still, business is business.;)

One of the first things I have picked up in just a few months, is that one needs to be thick-skinned to do business of any kind. If you dare to start your own thing, you have to grow those extra layers of skin. No other go.

Especially if you are the 'non-business' type (as I'm sure I was hitherto considered to be), people will look you up and down...and then some. They will gaze shrewdly at you and make some remark or the other. The remarks from such folk may often be encouraging, but not always ring true. Words of caution on the other hand, almost always ring true, but seldom come ...unless from someone very close.

So, mostly, a 'green' businessman/woman must endure many a discouraging word or lack of support and take it in his or her stride.

Therefore, I have thickened my skin as much as I can(!) and am trying to steer well away from 'over-sensitive' as I usually might be accused of being. Not that it all doesn't bother me, but I am TRYING to shrug it off and concentrate on the many, many tasks at hand.

I'm making a serious attempt to focus on being practical.

After all, if I fail, I would be neither the first, nor the last. And if I succeed...well then too, I will be one of the many. So, this brings me back to a memorable lesson I had in school about tennis star Chris Evert who, I understand, was being interviewed for her 'grace-under-pressure' or some such thing. She was heard quoting Rudyard Kipling:"If you can meet both Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two imposters the same..."

I made it a point to understand the depth of these words even then, and I do so admire the meaning even more now.

Yes, business is...something else.

On the phone

The telephone is super. Chatting with people over it is the best. I especially, was not one for particularly short phone chats. I have talked hours on the phone ...to the same person(who obviously, was as into the phone as I was) . The longest would be a chat with a friend that lasted overnight -- maybe 6-7 hours, and then there were those other times when I have chatted with some other friends regularly, for three hours -- give or take an hour...and so on.

45 minutes was nothing.

But today, I had a 25 minute phone chat with a friend and I was tired at the end of it. I chose to end the chat and hang up. I cannot today believe my earlier phone conversations lasted hours. Of course, I did not have so many things on my hands those days as I do now... Those days were basically footloose and fancy free. Such a condition is given to change! He he. Just 11 years ago!

Phone chats were and still are (despite tiredness and all!) so FULFILLING and de-lonely-fying (!). Not to mention convenient...

Manmadan Ambu Review

The Universal Hero Kamalhasan seems to have falsified our hopes of giving a thoughtful film through this crappy product. I am sorry but have to be frankly admitting the fact. Some of the best films of Kamal were as below:

1. Chachi 420/Avvai Shanmugi -- Strong support of family ethics even challenged by external factors; embedded with lust-less lustrous comedy
2. Panchatantiram -- Passionate love for Mythili from Ram CM .

 The divine seed between life partners should be sowed with trust. When the basic 'trust' is missing and the 'apprehensions' are a catapult on the fine fabric of divine relationship I don't think they are travelling anywhere. With the emphasis on trust and transparency alone is the only thing the film has in positive. The minuses are a lot.

1. Romance is a mild p0rn
2. Songs are a amiss.

Sorry Kamal. Can not approve. We would like to see you to radically refine your ways in giving films like Chachi 420 wherein comedy and family welfare reigns supreme rather than such crazy romantic paramour gimmicks.

Top 20 Tamil Album of The Year 2010

2010 is an unforgettable year in terms of the quality of music that we have heard. As in the recent past, this year too saw newcomers making it big along with the veterans, who can never be missed or forgotten.
Here is the list:

Top 20 Tamil Album of The Year 2010

• 20. Easan – James Vasanthan
• 19. Va Quarter Cutting – GV Prakash
• 18. Myna – D.Imman
• 17. Asal – Bharadwaj
• 16. Singam – Devi Sri Prasad
• 15. Kadhal Solle Vanthen – Yuvan Shankar Raja
• 14. Sura – ManiSharma
• 13. Tamil Padham – Kannan (debutant)
• 12. Manmadhan Ambu – Devi Sri Prasad
• 11. KaniMozhi – Sathish Chakravarthy
• 10. Naan Mahan Alla – Yuvan Shankar Raja
• 9. Madrasapattinam – GV Prakash
• 8. Goa – Yuvan Shankar Raja
• 7. Boss Engira Baskaran – Yuvan Shankar Raja
• 6. Nandhalala – Ilayaraja
• 5. Ayirathil Oruvan – GV Prakash
• 4. Paiya – Yuvan Shankar Raja
• 3. Raavanan – A.R.Rahman
• 2. Vinnaithandi Vaaruvayaa -  A.R.Rahman
• 1. Endhiran – A.R.Rahman

Overall from the list… the top 3 is ARRahman and Yuvan Shankar Raja is Music Director of the year 2010. 5 top album in one year.

Australia - Tasmania

For most part of my life I have lived in a big and busy city...so a getaway break was something I always looked forward to. And then some remarkable events brought me to Tassie, a pure travel destination, a physical stunner! And ever since I have looked around for 'unique experiences', not featured in Lonely Planet Guides...Here is a list I hope to keep updating for the rest of the year.

Hollybank: Tree Top Adventures

Catch an incredible bird's eye view of the intriguing forests of Tasmania by gliding across treetops. You can enjoy the adrenaline rush of a high-wire, super-fast canopy ride in Hollybank, just twenty minutes from Launceston.

Wynyard: Unforgettable Views
The Wynyard Tulip Festival (September-October) is a chance to walk amidst thousands of blooming tulips and feel like a Bollywood star in a romantic song sequence. If flowers do you no good then explore the bleached sands of Sisters Beach and go swimming in the crystal clear waters of Boat Harbour Beach.

As they say, Tassie is nothing if not for its dazzling wilderness, colonial charm untouched beaches and incredible wine and food. Its urban spirit, fairly recent, will make you wonder if God froze time in Tassie for a small period in time. For a place that accommodates some amazing natural wonders, Tasmania is rather shy...this is my attempt to unearth its dazzling character.