It is more important to be able to assemble the jigsaw pieces than to be able to connect the dots!

The basic principle in life is you cannot get everything. If you do end up getting everything, just consider yourself lucky for sometime. Nothing lasts forever.

Full Metal Alchemist -  To obtain, something of equal value must be lost."

Technology predictions are a self-fulfilling prophecy 

The 'Subway' of life

The Veggie Delight sub is the awesomest food ever! It is my soulmate in the Food category. I relish it wholeheartedly, without a tinge of guilt. It has all the tastes and flavors to be found across food. I just cannot get enough of it. With my requirements for additional spice, I tend to overload the sub with jalapenos and top off the sub with crushed peppers. The combination of all veggies, along with a burst of spice from jalapenos, leaves an amazing feeling in your mouth! 

Why no blogging?

Do people blog in groups? I have stopped blogging because my friends in the blogging circles have also gone silent. 

Piano brilliance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2qdFAwv3Bs

PS: While fixing a mobile phone

The other day I was fixing some of my old mobile phones. I wanted to donate it to some one instead of having it lying around at home. Yea yea, these days mobile phones are good items to donate. So, what's my mobile phone story? Over the course of 4 years I have replaced my mobile 3 times. Curiously enough, they all had developed display related problems. So, while my number remained unchanged, my phone kept changing. In a single stroke I got all the displays fixed and before giving it out, I wanted to check if everything was working and fine.

While I was browsing through the features, I happened to look at my inbox as well. I am so glad I did that because what I found in it was a memory of my life in the last 4 years. Through sheer chance each of the phones retained a portion of the text messages I had received and sent over the years. It was fun reading through them. I saw my reflection in the past and it was nostalgic. It also felt like I was reliving those days in the moment I was reading the messages. As I scanned through the messages, I realized so many things had changed in the time.

If you happen to have an old phone, I would urge you to take a look and see if you still have some messages in it. Maybe you will find something in it that you cherished. Perhaps a funny exchange of messages with a friend, perhaps a tough situation which you got out of, perhaps a silly conversation which you can laugh over. Whatever you find in there, it will definitely rekindle your memory, a part of you which is now only an imprint in the shadows.

It seems like my writing has become more practical and less intuitive. Atleast, that's what I feel when I look back at my earlier posts and compare them with my recent ones

RO Purifiers and Extensive Water Wastage

An urban Indian home is more often than not likely to face extensive water shortage in the summer months. The water shortage has spawned various products and services which attempt to fill up the infrastructure gap left unfilled by the government. Potable water is now one of the key resources in short supply. The reasons are manifold and I will not delve into the cause for the shortage. My post is mainly to highlight the role of RO purifiers, a product which is likely to magnify the problem of water shortage.

RO purifiers have been in use for a long time, mainly in industrial applications and large scale water treatment systems. With the present water crisis in urban areas, water purifiers have sprung up in plenty. Each product variant claims to turn drain water into pristine potable water. And people are lapping it up to save on the cost of tanker supplied water or canned water. The problem with RO purifiers is not in the water safety or potability. It has to do with the operations and working. RO is used to separate out solid constituents and other dissolved particulates by forcing water under pressure through a micro-sieve. By using this technology, even brackish water can be made drinkable. The catch is in the details.

For every litre of potable water produced, the RO purifier dumps 3-4 litres of waste water. If you passed 4 litres of water through an RO purifier, it would produce only 1 litre of potable water. Now, this wastage is admissible if one is trying to convert brackish water into drinking water. But the water that is supplied through borewells or tankers or cans are not brackish! They are largely usable, with minimal filtration and UV. Since the RO purifiers are designed for treating even brackish water, they perform poorly in the normal household conditions.

For every one litre of water produced, the remaining 3 litres go wasted when they could have actually been used for non-drinking applications. This presents a serious concern since the final beneficiary of imposing further water shortages is the RO companies. The relevant water authority needs to take a look at this emerging phenomenon and impose measures to curb the usage of this product.

Shutting off the engine at signals

Price rice of gasoline has begun enforcing this behaviour. I turn the engine off at signals when the waiting time is more than a minute. Strangely, my mind also goes blank during these waiting times!

Are you the kind of person who has the magnanimity to forgive a thousand wrongs but you harp on being unforgiving about one wrong in specific?

Electric Cars and Bikes - The Myth of clean energy

Of late I have come across many advertisements and articles which tout electricity powered vehicles as being environmentally friendly and clean. This information is grossly incorrect. The sight of an emission-less vehicle as compared to one which spews out noxious exhaust fumes is embedded in people's minds. This perception often makes people believe they are indeed adopting cleaner transport. But are they?

In India, close to 65% of the energy generated comes from coal based power generation. For every unit of energy consumed as electricity, 0.65 units is produced from coal, one of the dirtiest known energy sources. And by the time that energy is delivered to homes, over 30% of the energy goes wasted due to various losses. So, the energy companies end up producing more electricity and burning more coal to compensate for the losses.

By shifting to an electricity powered vehicle all one is doing is centralizing pollution and shifting the 'dirty' fumes to a remote location. But that's not all. The creation of infrastructure required to move the dirty fumes also end up polluting. So, there goes the myth of 'clean' electric vehicles.

The Two Fundamental Levers

What more can I do?
How can I get better at what I am already doing?

Everything else follows.

Caffeine fixation

How could I have not thought about this earlier? :) When you have Coffee and Chocolate syrup at home the most obvious thing to do is to add the syrup to coffee!! Yes. That's exactly what I am going to do tomorrow morning (assuming that the morning does come). In the meantime I am getting curious about how the mix might taste. This experiment might just spur me on to try a few more flavored coffee variants. You might have already realized that I am a coffee addict. If you haven't.. well, you have the answer! So long...

In pursuit of....

I had gone out this morning to meet a friend of mine. I was not very sure about the route to start with. And being tired of driving all the time, I chose to use the public transport. On the way back, I was talking to family over the phone and just kept walking along without realizing where I was going. For the initial part, I kept going in circles without making any progress. But after sometime, I intuitively figured out the way to not go in circles.

I kept walking for 6.6 km or so this way and this lead me to the metro station. Now, I must say that it had been my wish to travel on the new Bangalore metro for quite sometime. For some reason or the other I missed doing it. Today it finally happened. I found the ride on the metro to be enjoyable after a long walk! After getting off the metro, I took an auto to reach home. So, why am I posting this?

Often in life, you are lost and wonder where you are heading to. The thing is, everything usually sorts itself out and along the way you also end up doing what you wished to do. This was my learning for the day and this is how I am signing off the end of this weekend, on a positive note! :)

The rear view mirror

You look into the rear view mirror while driving your motor car. Doing it every now and then helps you navigate forward. Doing it a little too often tends to slow you down. Being fixated on it draws your attention away from what is in front of you.

I think the same holds true for life. Introspection is a necessary thing so long as it is in a limited quantity. You can look back every now and then to help you on your way forward. Too much of it just gets you stuck where you are.

The rear view mirror is not provided to look back all the time. The past is not embedded in our memories to keep thinking about it too often. The only purpose of the past is to enable us to face the future better prepared.

Three Musketeers - A good watch

The movie 'Three Musketeers' is a must watch. Ignore anything the reviews have to say about the movie. It is an entertaining watch and is fully worth the money you pay for it.

Wow, times have definitely changed... I blog sitting in the train and i have a bunch of people around me sitting with their laptops. And you had those 'good old' days when people just read books or mags or simply stared out of the window.

Here is a tribute to all the frozen friendships and broken ties. While they lasted, my life was enriched and I am grateful for that. I am an optimist (except over weekends :P) and I hope that sometime in the future some of the ties will be resurrected.

Appetite for the rainy season!

Tomato basil soup (served piping hot) + plain garlic bread at pizza hut - Two Things worth dying for this rainy season in Bangalore :) Surprisingly, the non-pizza menu items at Pizza Hut taste much better these days!