That 70's show

i been on a that 70's show spree lately...finished 5 seasons in abt a month.. the show has everything...the amount of drama that the show has discussed without losing its comic charm is amazing....right from the first season, if u consider the kind of really serious issues that are considered...on the macro level, post vietnam, american soldiers trauma, unemployment following the collapse of american army and nixon gate...on a personal issue, how a family deals with day to day problems of lack of money with father losing his job, mother working triple shifts to keep the fires burning, strained relations between father and son to enforce discipline, hippie culture displayed via smokes and drinks, loosely moralled hippie sister who's a major nympho , the girl next door, pre-marital sex and early pregnancy, how couples turn to desperate measures to save marraige, effects that parents splitting up have on their kids, survival of the kids who live on the streets, cheating amongst teenagers....man,,,,thats a long list and i am just about getting started!!!

Neways, this is my tribute to a GREAT show which can actually manage to be ultra humourous whilst depicting such major problems both in history and society that shaped american culture and the world at large

n now back to season 6 of that 70's show!!

the habit of reading

Nothing beats a good read. the sheer thrill of a well written book for me beats the shit out of watching a movie any day..the best thing about the book, is that there is so much activity involved...ur hand exercise as they turn the page, the eyes exercise as they focus and move on diff areas and most of ur imagination runs wild as u can try and picture imagination...beats sitting n staring at a screen ne day...best thing is u can picture urself in situations and u can actually live the experience so as to speak.

just finished a book called bombay rains , bombay girls...a really good refreshing read...not like the normal candy floss teenage senseless books that seem to be aplenty nowadays..has a strong backbone of a story and tells a interesting tale whilst conveying several messages that society wud do good to follow, cud absolutely identify with the core theme of the book...

the first sex talk

I am sure that everyone in the world, has that awkward moment in adolescence where in whilst watching tv along with ur parents very innocently, suddenly out of nowhere comes a sex scene / scantily clothed women and suddenly every1 looking elsewhere and coughing praying for the moment to pass by quickly... luckily for me my parents have a relatively open view to things ... i never felt embarassed abt watching baywatch even when Yasmine Bleeth or Pamela Anderson ran in slow motion along the beach coz it was just a normal thing, nothing to be really embarrassed abt...Indeed i never understood what the fuss was about when it came to watching Baywatch for a long while...

However, even my folks drew the line at long sex scenes...i remember my mum's reaction to me watching Titanic and later French kiss when the sex scenes came in....she almost screamed at me for watching blue movies.. :)

neways, thanks to a much older group of fellow travelers in my school bus, me was wise abt the birds and the bees very early probably by the 5th standard... later, having sex talks by doctors in school meant that i had the education by the best authorized people as well...i guess i should really be thankful to Deep Vihar for the number of sex talks that they organised...i remember pretty much 2 in a year for 6 years!!

coming forward to the first time, i spoke to my dad, it was at the age of 14..a frd of mine had been receiving crank calls from a guy who said that he wanted to sleep with her...at which time i advised her that she needed to report the no. to the cops, post getting a caller id ..dad hearing my part of the conversation asked me what it was all abt...told him that a guy was bothering a frd saying that he wanted to have sex wid her..dad was so shocked at me uttering the word 'sex' , he immediately went away from the room and 5 mins later i found him reading the bible!!!!!!

that incident still has me in splits...how my dad followed up trying to talk to me abt sex, 2 days later after having a few hushed whispered conversations wid mom is another joke altogether...i rem the akwardness wid which he ambled ard in my room for abt 5 mins before finally asking me whether i knew abt it...to which i obviously said yes mentioning the doctors who had already given us several talks,..dad gave a huge sigh of relief and almost ran away...hehe....kickass!!!

I hope i have an easier time of it when it comes to my turn to impart knowledge!!!

the pursuit of happiness

remember the times where there were a million of us, a zillion possible things to do and we cudnt coz we were broke and had no money to do it...? and yet, we just as easily found a simpler substitute coz when u existed in a big group then the fun happens neways and the activity is secondary...

and today, we have the money , and sometimes even the time, but not the people to do things with,...not everyone's free of together at the same time and things can be just inconvenient.

worst of all , the substitutes are also become so lame..today, i had a haircut, shave and a massage just coz i had nthg better to do...actually haircuts are like the new past time with chitresh too periodically going in for haircuts to kill time...maybe it cud be like the new fun activity that no1 ever thought abt....hair cut for kicks..!!

the Xander zone

The Xander zone is the zone of absolute concentration.its also called as being in a state of zen. its a term that was coined by Merv after watching Vin Diesel in XXX.
He used it to describe how he could play carrom better whilst he was in the Xander zone.

I seem to hit my xander zone whilst walking. studies worked best for me while i was walking within the room. it helped me concentrate. now, breaks to just take a walk in between intense work sessions help me re-focus.

So how do u hit ur xander zone?? :)

The dexterity of the human mind

This all started with a single comment by a brand manager. Whilst talking about the performance of a brand he made a comment that please analyze performance of my brand on a long term annual basis trend for the last 5 years. if we consider month on month or quarterly data than e may say aberrent fluctuations which may cause shifting of focus to trivial issues. long term trends are more difficult to explain and result on more adequate focus..

This single comment led me into to think in so many different ways that i was just amazed at the dexterity of the human brain. a single comment can lead to such intense thought , its just crazy.. Parag's comment comes to mind here (while hiking at Karnala) , when he was talking about how humans just perceive the path amongst rocky stones and just choose the best convenient path to take which would take robotics engineers years of programming to master into robots..

coming back to long term perspective...this comment can be applied into our lives as well.. Issues that are current seem so long to tackle. a failed relationship, death / loss of a loved one, failure in exams, loss of a job, etc..etc.. just seem like such massive problems..But you consider this troubles that plague you for a month or so or maximum a year,in a lifetime of 60 odd years plus, it just seems so trivial...!!

You tend to lose focus on the bigger picture if you go about trying to resolve the smaller issues..its all about the big picture in life and achieving the overall long terms goals..Its a long way to the top!!

Computers have been around for about last 20 years , the television for close to 100 years, the age of reading and writing for about 2000 years, civilised human beings for maybe about 4000 years..Homa Sapiens for GOK, need to consult google for that or my old history/science text books fro school. the point is that dinosaurs were around for 65 million years and they died out millions of years ago..we human beings ourselves are just a small speck in the large universe..at the rate we are using our resources, that speck appears to be fading pretty rapidly as well.its scary to think about life beyond the next 30 years as resources get scarcer and population increases..the kind of wars that ill be fought for resources..the movie , 'The Book of Eli' may turn out to be rather prophetic after all..

Even had we had the knowledge of how many years we get to live, it would still be scary.. It would make us apprehensive as we approach our expiry date, so to speak and maybe we would not be able to enjoy the days as we ought..me thinks death ought to be a sweet and quick release rather then a long prolonged battle..

Is there life after death? a question that has plagued me forever and probably mankind as well.. Being a Christian, all i can think as a answer to this, is a response quoted in the Bible in the Book of Job when Job questions God about the various sufferings sent his way.. The reason why God is God and why we worship him is the fact that he has the answer to all the questions that human beings pose and just cannot answer..and probably would not be able to handle even if we could....................