It could be that ...

What are dreams?

2012-01-09T22:06:00.000-08:00

Today I finished watching the PBS documentary on "What are dreams?". A lot of useful information.
Couple that I found particularly interesting were -
1. about the distinction between REM and non-REM sleep and dreams
2. about Dr. Antti Revansuo's research on inheriting dreams
3. about people who don't dream

1. Distinction between REM and non-REM -
I was reading through the wiki on reverse learning and my own blog post and I realize now, that reverse learning is actually a valid theory. It's just that Crick and Mitchison got it wrong that it happens during REM sleep. Since non-REM sleep is the one that focuses on past events, the clean-up and unlearning must happen during non-REM, leaving REM to plan the next Chess move based on how the board is laid out so far.

2. Dr. Antti Revansuo's research on inheriting dreams -
This makes sense. My sisters have had recurring dreams in which both dream of the exact same thing. They don't dream of it at the same time, and they are not twins. But they do have the same dream. Since neither told the other about it, it makes sense that it was passed down to them from our ancestors. Even from evolution perspective, it makes sense, per his theory, that, as we grow up we have dreams/ nightmares about modern problems.

3. People who don't dream -
The documentary informed me about the parietal lobe's (the part of the brain that combines all the senses) association with dreams by Dr. Mark Solms. This helps me find out that there really are people that cannot dream - for which my blog says they would go insane. In one sense, the patient does complain about not having quality sleep - since they keep waking up. The question is if this can cause insanity due to no clean-up/ reverse learning happening during this time. The other question is - are people who don't dream able to learn new things just as easily? Are they more forgetful? I would think so, since there is only limited cache capacity in the brain. So, if a new skill is learnt, something else would be forgotten. This might also explain why people who don't get any sleep for a night, don't make sense the morning after. Now that I think of it, this might also be a cause for Alzheimer's disease, or a symptom!

There were also other theories I want to explore - like Dr. Antonio Zadra's "prediction of human nature based on their dreams". It would be great to have a comparison between the north Canadian elders' interpretation of dreams as prediction of the future and Dr. Zadra's interpretation. Irrespective of whether their results match or not, the comparisons would be fascinating from a learning perspective for both.

- Sonia

Man's search for meaning

2011-12-28T07:43:00.000-08:00

I saw it as a sign when twice in one week, this book was recommended to me, by different resources.

Just finished reading it during my vacation.

Here are my key takeaways from the book.

1. What really matter during a lifetime are - love, nature, art, humor, luck and gratitude.
2. Discouragement leads to depersonalization. So, don't discourage people.
3. Logotherapy = meaning of existence/ meaning of life.
4. When you have a "why", you will figure out the "how".

All of the above are very useful to me. Now I need to find a nearby hospital to volunteer at. As I see it, that is my "why".

I highly recommend this book. If you don't have time to read all of it, I highly recommend reading the pages in II called "Logotherapy in a nutshell". While all of it is pretty useful, the section on The Existential Vacuum is particularly useful.

- Sonia

The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul

2011-12-22T07:59:00.000-08:00

Just finished reading it. While the imagination of Gods being naive in today's world amazed me, I was a bit disappointed with the humor compared to the Hitchhiker series.

There are a few humorous occassions in the book, but they are far and sparse.

Good thing is - I started and finished the book while on vacation.

- Sonia

My worst feeling

2011-11-18T23:01:00.000-08:00

To see a person, not knowing that, it's probably the last time you are seeing them in this life time - is by far, the worst feeling I have experienced:(. I experienced this - again - last week.

When people are mean to others, I don't think they realize, or think of this. Or maybe it's not that bad a feeling for them.

- Sonia

Here comes winter...

2011-11-01T21:13:00.000-07:00

and my mood swings:(...

Universe - help me... please.

- Sonia

Two miracles

2011-09-24T07:38:00.000-07:00

Last week, two miracles happened in my life.

1. A friend was going to move in next door, someone who I didn't want as my next door neighbor. It was supposedly a done deal. But, he pulled out last minute.
2. I was going to follow a dear friend of mine to his job a couple of years ago. On his advice, I waited to get a promotion first. But last week I found out he is leaving that place. The new organization would not have been a place for me. Besides, he is moving back closer to where I work:)

A lot of things have bugged me pretty badly this past year. But when things like the above take place, it sets one record straight - that Someone is always looking out for me. THANK YOU GOD!

- Sonia

:( :(

2011-08-30T22:15:00.000-07:00

My heart goes out to my beloved today. He is in pain and I don't know how to help him. I hope and pray that things work out for him.
- Sonia

If you cannot post blogs using blogger and Internet Explorer 9

2011-08-27T08:54:00.000-07:00

Sign into your blog and do the following -

Settings -> Select post editor -> Select the "Updated editor (Recommended)".

The old post editor stopped working for me some time back. Since the problem happened around the time I upgraded to IE9, and it works just fine with Safari, I think the problem might be using a combination of the two.

Updating the editor, fixed the problem.

HTH!

- Sonia

OMG...

2011-08-26T21:34:00.000-07:00

My cheeks hurt from fake smiling. I was trying to be nice. But I wish I left that place like an hour ago:(...

Even the margaritas didn't help.

- Sonia

Medecins Sans Frontieres

2011-08-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

Just finished watching "Living in emergency - stories of doctors without borders". Very humbling to see what these doctors do.

The whole documentary had my attention. But here is a quote from Dr. Tom Krueger that relates to me "... And I realize that this stuff still comes out to being a very selfish thing. Somehow fixing other people seems to fix yourself. That's what I found out, so, it's how I fix myself... So, you have broken people, just put them back together... that makes sense to me."

I want to help people. I'm drawn to it. I need to be consistent about a cause.

- Sonia

Music and lifetimes

2011-08-02T21:55:00.000-07:00

There is a kind of music. When I hear it, I feel like I've "experienced" it before. I know I haven't - not in this lifetime anyways.

It reminds me of a time, long ago. But it couldn't have been because I haven't been so old yet. It isn't a particular song, although there is one where I do feel like I sung it on a hill, amongst trees - but I haven't. In fact, when I heard the song, I didn't even know the lyrics of the song.

But there are other tunes that mesmerize me similarly.

Sometimes, when I am thinking of a song, I am able to produce the sound of it in my brain - with the simple thought that somewhere in the world this song must be playing at this particular moment.

The first time I heard a Fleetwood Mac album, I felt like I had heard it before. Except that, we didn't own audio cassettes/ tapes/ CDs as kids. The only thing I can think of is that maybe I heard it at a friend's place.

This one time, I heard the DJ Tiesto song, Forever Today, and cried because I felt "pain" and "sorrow" and couldn't think of how that song could have be made with so much pain.

- Sonia

Health care and freedom

2011-07-25T21:49:00.000-07:00

Saw Sicko a few days back. I was appalled to find out about Guantanamo bay criminal health state compared to the rest of the US. I know that a lot of people from around the world visit India each year to be treated for cheap at the hospitals. The movie showed the same is true of Cuba.

The benefits in France - are simply amazing! I could not get over the maternity leave and support from the government for the same in UK.

What the movie said about freedom is being reiterated from my previous posts "... choice depends on the freedom to choose. If you're shackled with debt, you don't have the freedom to choose... There are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all, frighten people, and secondly, demoralize them... The top 1% of the world's population own 80% of the world's wealth. It's incredible that people put up with it, but they're poor, they're demoralized, they're frightened. And therefore, they think that, perhaps the safest thing to do is to take orders and hope for the best."

Reminded me of the XFiles quote and ironically, at the same time, of the hope quote.

Waiting for superman specifically reminds everyone not to wait for superman. It urges us to be the change we want to see.

Time to putting my thinking hat on...

- Sonia

So how come you are still single?

2011-07-18T21:54:00.001-07:00

I just realized that there is no good that can come out of this question.

When asked, the question can

a. convey that the person who is asking this question is surprised to be with you OR

b. that they don't trust you, and are trying to figure out what's wrong with you and/ or why no one else decided not to be with you

This almost never comes across as a genuine compliment to me. No matter which way I look at it, I am turned off by the question :S. And I think guys should stop asking it.

- Sonia

Free will - part 2

2011-06-18T15:58:00.002-07:00

A confirmation to my free will post, one of my friends forwarded me this.

- Sonia

True grit

2011-06-16T20:44:00.001-07:00

Great acting.

I also loved the transitions in the scenes after the corn bread shooting in the prairies when the three are on their journey to find Chaney.

- Sonia

The Invisible Gorilla

2011-05-30T07:49:00.000-07:00

The one good thing about international flights is I get a lot of reading done.

One of the books I finished reading was The Invisible Gorilla and other ways our intuition deceives us.

I believe I wanted to read this book after I had seen the invisible gorilla video that was forwarded to me by Kiki, a friend of mine who networks a lot.

The book has a few good points and a few points where the authors seem a bit confused.

Here are lessons I learnt from the book

The amount of overconfidence is overwhelmingly high. People who are least knowledgeable think they know more most - people who are most knowledgeable suffer from overconfidence the least
Confidence, wrongly, is treated as an honest signal of a person's professional skill. Unfortunately, the doctor example the authors quote for this, hasn't worked for me. I am going to ditch my doctor since I don't think she knows what she is talking about. I wish the authors gave statistics on incompetence (not just confidence, or the lack thereof)
Less than 5% of tournament chess players are women - I gotta start practicing my chess skills again
Teaching people who do worse than others on logical tests, to perform better, seems to reduce their overconfidence and helps them perform better
A quote that touched me personally - "The very process of putting individuals together to deliberate before they reach a conclusion almost guarantees that the group's decision will not be the product of independent opinions and contributions. Instead, it will be influenced by group dynamics, personality conflicts, and other social factors that have little to do with who knows what and why they know it". This, the authors argue, leads to consensus with the false illusion of safety in numbers. In fact, they prove that 94% of the times, the answer is comes from the dominant person in the group who spoke first!
Spending time on planning before implementation can reduce the illusion of knowledge. Spending time talking to folks who have worked on similar projects can also help be more accurate in estimates
Tying with the sick society notion, the authors talk about how people suffering from depression, who are generally less optimistic, possibly have a more accurate view of the relationship between themselves and the world. I call this realistic
Information can be deceiving - always ask if the information you are using to make a decision is relevant short term or long term. Most important decisions benefit from thinking long term
Tying in to maya, the authors talk about brain porn - how images associated with articles can instill our faith in those articles as facts, even if the images might not be accurate. No wonder ascetics meditate with their eyes closed
Correlation between two facts does not always mean causal relationship. The only way to see if a relationship is causal is to run an experiment
The illusion of narrative reminded me of A whole new mind - when it talks about Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces, where the author argued that all myths contain the same general ingredients and follow the same basic recipe. We hear are about a hero rescuing a chic in the movies a thousand times. And we still see movie after movie to essentially experience the same thing - that is how bad (or powerful) the illusion of narrative is!
The authors talk about the illusion of potential in regards to human's utilizing only 10% of their brain. They argue that if that were the case, evolution would have gotten rid of the other 90% by now. In their defense, this precisely talks about the outright rejection of what cannot be measured
Think hard for those logical decisions. Intuition is good for visceral (how does something taste) or emotional decisions

- Sonia

Woman president

2011-05-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

A weird thought occurred to me today.

What if Oprah Winfrey retired her show so she can stand for presidency? Along with Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin (and someday even Angelina Jolie), I think she'd stand a chance.

Come to think of it, Oprah and Angelina, to me, are far more influential and "in touch" with people than Sarah and Hillary. I'm not saying all they have done is good, but they've definitely touched more lives than the other two.

NOTE - I'm not saying I am for or against this, it's just a thought - and I needed to write it out.

- Sonia

The road less traveled

2011-05-28T06:31:00.000-07:00

Great read! I recommend this book for all walks of life - work, personal relations, growth - all of it. I am tempted to call this book serendipity or an act of synchronicityJ.

I wasn't expecting this book to be anything about answers I was seeking. For the life of me, I cannot remember who recommended this book to me. I think it was Amazon that recommended it, if I'm not mistaken.

Lessons learnt

Unsolved problems remain a barrier to growth and development of the spirit
Confront your problems before you are forced to confront them by circumstances
If you're not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem
Acceptance of individuality and separateness is the only foundation on which a mature marriage can be based and real love can grow
Great marriages cannot be constructed by individuals that are terrified of loneliness and seek merging in marriage
Listening to people you love = valuing them
Feelings should be your slaves and part of self-discipline is to learn the art of slave owning
Exactly what I feel! A mark of maturity in scientists is their awareness that science may be as subject to dogmatism as any other religion. The attitude of many scientists of not only skepticism, but outright rejection of what cannot be measured – is exactly what I was referring to here. I also believe that a huge reason why love, miracles and grace needed chapters of their own is because they cannot be measured – but they do exist, don’t they? The author stole my exact thinking about miracles – the human body and the sky and the lakes and the trees and the flowers with their intricate, well thought designs that put the smartest engineers to shame are miracles for sure!
Because psychotherapists generally belong to skeptical, there is a tendency for them to consider any passionate belief in God to be pathological, occasionally leading to frank bias and prejudice
People to be so much more in touch with reality than their fellow citizens that they will be deemed insane by a sick society. This is something my sister and I have frequently discussed about. Goes back to there is no absolute right and wrong. Like the guy on business sutra said about management science, somewhere along the line the management science that developed in Europe hundreds of years ago was assumed to be universal – they were imported/ imposed upon China and India – which is incorrect because these management sciences are subjective to cultures, the right brain - respect and appreciate the right half, the subjective reality otherwise conflict will happen
The author also talked about ‘Patient's will to grow’ – this I admired most in my dad’s mum – she was healthy till the age of about 90 years! Any cold, cough, disease that passed her way – she took in her stride and overcame. My mum OTOH, lacked this will
Educated and successful people in any profession who admit ignorance are generally the most expert and trustworthy – wow, another act of synchronicity that another book I just finished reading ‘The Invisible Gorilla’ talks about the exact same thing!

Definition of terms -

Neurotics assume too much responsibility, people with character disorders too little. People with character disorders don't understand commitment and neurotics that have lost their parents fear commitment. Psychotics - poor parental care till 9 months age, character disorders - 9 months through 2 years, neurotics - 2 through 6 years
Transference – I already talked about here
Black lie - statement we make we know is false. White lie - statement that leaves out a significant part of the truth. I know someone I care about deeply that lies (white) sometimes. I also think that this person is someone who suffers from character disorder. I hope I am able to convince him to see a psychotherapist one day
Depression - feeling associated with giving up something loved, something that is part of us and familiar - abnormal if prolonged. This was good to know because sometimes it is difficult to distinguish depression from anxiety
Chronic pathologic depression/ giving up neurosis - happens when fate took away something when the person wasn’t ready for it. Another good to know
Falling in love - temporary collapse of ego boundaries, permitting merging of identities
Cathexis - process of attraction, investment and commitment
Mysticism - belief that reality is oneness (Everything is Maya - illusion). I do believe in this, and I think that is why I suffer from depression sometimes when another person doesn’t see the oneness
Narcissism - failure to perceive the separateness of another - cannot see beyond their own feelings - lack empathy. Parents of schizophrenic children often are narcissistic. I knew someone who just couldn’t empathize with their kid when he was hurt. A common logical response to hurt was – so why did you do this to be hurt
Principle of Synchronicity - fact that highly implausible events, for which no cause can be determined within the framework of known natural law, occur with implausable frequency
Serendipity - gift of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for. I am a believer of both PSR and serendipity. Way too many occurrences to ignore these. An occurrence I frequently give an example of about 5 of my friends at work. If I wouldn’t have met them at work, I would have met them through common friends. If I wouldn’t have met them through common friends, I would have met them in grad school. If I wouldn’t have gone to grad school, I would have been working in the same company as them right after my undergrad. If I wouldn’t have met them there, I went to high school with some of them. The reason I am stating this in reverse chronological order is because I didn’t know them before now. I didn’t seek them, but they are an important part of my life. We were meant to be together for an allotted amount of time. And while some of them have moved away, who knows – maybe I’ll see them again
Evolution is an eddy in the second law of thermodynamics. Wonderfully put
Aloneness - unavailability of someone to communicate with at your level of awareness
Loneliness - unavailability of someone to communicate with at any level. It was great to distinguish between these two. Now I know I am alone, not lonely

- Sonia

Yay to drinking

2011-04-27T21:07:00.000-07:00

I love this post - the stuff it says about drinking in order to make your company more tolerable is so true! It is so true that I am less critical when I have had a drink or two. It is so true that I do silly things like giggle when I've had a drink or two. Smoking doesn't have the same kind of effect.

- Sonia

Autism and Einstein

2011-03-29T20:19:00.000-07:00

This post further supports my theory of the existence of people described in case 1. I think its about time we call ourselves as having disorders, not the other way around.

- Sonia

Transference

2011-03-27T20:09:00.001-07:00

The road less traveled tells me transference is the process of active clinging to an outmoded view of reality.

My dad had a very constant job for about 50 years. In fact, in spite of given the choice of retiring sooner, he decided to wait, just so he could celebrate his 50 year anniversary at work. Yes, he did have a different job before then, but for 50 years, he continued to work at the same place - being promoted in levels in the job that he did.

My maternal grandpa, OTOH, was a business man at heart, switching professions - real estate, cement manufacturing, being a stock broker - all the time. He made some money, but constantly lost money in doing business.

I fear switching my job. I lack the confidence to believe that I can do something different, maybe even better, elsewhere. I think it comes from the combinational characteristics of my dad and my grandpa. I'd like to believe I am not risk averse, but in my professional life, I might just be. Now that I know about transference though, let's see if I can change, quit worrying and embrace the awesome changes that can be (in my professional life).

- Sonia

Our worst fears lie in anticipation

2011-03-25T22:05:00.001-07:00

Another profound saying... this time around by Don Draper in Mad men. I must say that some of these mad men were wise men:).

Totally relates to me right now. So, I'm going to make a more conscious effort to stay away from anticipation.

- Sonia

Philanthropy is the gateway to power

2011-02-27T11:39:00.001-08:00

Cooper in Mad Men made this very profound statement. This is so true.

Corporations can fight all they want to get to the top in order to be 'in power'.

Governments fight everyday to stay in power.

Both want the most money for the least amount of services provided. But both don't realize that it is the 'service' that gives them that power. The 'service' that makes something easier for the populace.

The wise man is he, who, maintains his philanthropic roots, whilst making money. The amount of influence in doing business, suddenly doubles when philanthropy comes into play.

Of course, political candidates giving out blankets to the poor in order to gain votes doesn't count as philanthropy to me.

The real question is - will I be against electing a political candidate who is a true philanthropist? Someone who has spent a significant amount of his own time/ money/ life serving others, making the world a better place?

- Sonia

Power or the lack thereof

2011-02-22T20:31:00.000-08:00

Going by my earlier free will post, I realized that no one really has power over anything. There is just a perception of power.

- Sonia

The spirit and the letter

2011-02-19T21:43:00.000-08:00

Business sutra had an interesting video on the differentiation between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law.

The guy did a good job differentiating between the earlier (principle defining) and the later (rule defining/ corruption heavy) human civilizations, differentiating the epic characters Ram and Krishna and where they fell in the quadrants of 'spirit of the law' versus the 'letter of the law' - along side their evil counterparts Ravana and Duryodhana.

He explains how rules became more prominent as civilizations progressed and the principles behind those very rules were forgotten.

I am very principled about certain things in my life - even tweaking rules to stick to those principles. But at other times, I am foolishly hell bent to stick to some rules. This video is going to help me try and stick to my principles.

- Sonia

Parallel synchronized randomness

2011-02-19T21:41:00.000-08:00

Just finished watching 'The science of sleep' which talks about the concept of parallel synchronized randomness - seemingly random occurences that take place in your life but are so synchronized that you feel that they were supposed to happen that way. One could call it coincidence or serendipity or to some extent seven degrees of separation. This is in line with my theory that we are all a computer scientist's code. Given that a program has a fixed number of variables but approximately infinite number of values that can be assigned to these variables, PSR doesn't seem to be too far fetched. The thing is - the variables themselves are so many that it's difficult to derive the possible values they can be assigned.

A part of the movie touches on one of my theory on dreams, which I thought was interesting as well.

- Sonia

Free will

2011-02-07T20:45:00.000-08:00

Last night I saw "Waking life" and "Invention of Lying". A LOT of food for thought in Waking Life.

One that particularly stood out was the one on free will (some of which Invention of Lying confirms too:)). Goes something like this - for believers, if God decides everything that happens in your life, you don't have free will. For non believers, if everything is governed by physical laws, one of which triggered an electric impulse in your brain to make you pick up that glass of water, you don't have free will either. So, no matter which way you think about freedom and free will, you are not free to do anything.

The other thing that made sense was how time is very different (mostly fast) in a dream. The lady explains how, in her dream, she could have been to a new place, spent time there, come back to her house, all in life-like moments, and all in a matter of an earthly minute. She goes on to say that life is really a dream. And our experiences are real-like but are part of a dream, and when a person dies, it's like not waking up from the dream.

I am going to try to switch the lights on/off in my dreams though, or look at the time.

- Sonia

Frank Gehry

2011-01-01T17:10:00.000-08:00

I was just watching 'The sketches of Frank Gehry' - a documentary on this famous architect. The more I looked at his work in the documentary, the more I was reminded of Experience Music Project (EMP). I looked up the architect and sure enough it is him.

The documentary goes to show that one should keep trying. His sketches look like scribble but he envisions them as great pieces of art. I think I am going to retry painting and drawing. I would love to be great at them some day.

- Sonia

Interesting times

2010-12-29T23:25:00.000-08:00

All of a sudden, four of my good friends are moving to the bay area. This place has claimed a couple more of my friends in the past. I am happy for them of course.

Oh well...

- Sonia

The amygdalae

2010-12-26T22:33:00.000-08:00

Recent research shows that the amygdalae are the areas in our brain that are responsible for social networks. The bigger your amygdalae, the bigger your social network. The first thought that came to my head when I heard "amygdala" was how it has the same beginning as the word "amigo". I doubt it, but I wonder if amigo came from the same root as amygdala.

The other thought that occured to me when reading up more on wiki about amygdala was that about a social brain. The human social brain would be similar to those of birds - who know exactly how to create the formation while flying, how to migrate as a flock etc. I wonder if that is how we somehow are able to save things in the nick of time. Maybe we will use this social brain to combat global warming too.

- Sonia

Evolution and numbers

2010-10-17T21:56:00.000-07:00

NYTimes had an article on magic by numbers. The author refers to the fact that human beings are - base 10 - by nature because we have 10 fingers, which makes a lot of sense. Taking a twist on the reference of 7 pills as an ailment, 7 days a week, for 7 months etc. would change the base to 7 instead. And in order to understand it better, we will evolve to have 7 fingers.

Thanks
Sonia

Chimpanzees and humans

2010-08-11T21:16:00.001-07:00

Today while watching Life another thought occured to me. Chimpanzees, apparently, are great problem solvers. I wonder if the strain of humans that developed from chimpanzees are the engineers and the architects and the scientists of the world today. Dormant gene/dominant gene etc.

-Sonia

Baboons and humans

2010-08-09T21:32:00.000-07:00

Today I found out on Life that Ethiopian baboons are a patriachal society and Japanese baboons are a matriarchal society. Ethiopian male baboons punish their females for mistakes.

I think this is interesting because it explains the condition of women in the two societies.

I'd like to know if there is any correlation between the matriarchy and patriarchy relationships in primates of a region and humans in the same region.

Sonia

Demystified

2010-06-29T19:59:00.000-07:00

For the past one week, I have been smelling something bad in my kitchen. Being a clean person and having a sensitive nose, that's a problem. So... I start sniffing and cleaning. Usually in my effort to be "green", I clean the counter tops with water. Now I used Lysol. Sweeped and swabbed the floors, nothing rotten on top of/within the refrigerator, nothing rotten elsewhere. Even tried air freshener/odor neutralizer, cleaned the sink, took out the trash, ran the dishwasher, even cleaned the garbage disposal!

And yet the funky smell remained. So after all this cleaning, my kitchen smelled of what I call "onion skin garbage".

I noticed that the smell was coming from around the oven/microwave area. But how could that be? I've scrubbed these clean! But maybe the smell is strong - so I took baking soda in a bowl and kept it in the microwave. Helped with the smell so that by this morning I removed the baking soda.

But when I get back home, my kitchen smells... again!! So I start my least favorite exercice - sniffing:(. Countertops, sink, dishwasher, oven, refrigerator, counters, floor, pantry - all smell just fine.

Then I open the microwave! And I was gonna throw up! But this time I knew exactly why. In my passion for cleanliness, last week I was reading on how microwave filters should be cleaned every 6 months. I haven't done this in at least 3 years, so I decide its the way to go. And scrubbing starts and I spend the next hour cleaning out the grease from the filters. So far so good. Somehow though, (and I don't have an explanation for this), that is exactly where the smell is coming from. I think the grease on the filters was hiding the odor, so that now when it is clean it really smells bad from being overused for over 3 years.

Anyways, I just wrapped the damn things in plastic, ordered replacement parts and don't intend to use the microwave till they get here.

Moral of the story - filters are inexpensive ($20 a piece for the grease filter, $10 for the charcoal one). Don't spend your energy cleaning them. Replace them once a year. I also think if I would have been more regular with cleaning them, they might not have gotten so bad, but I'm not even going to try to prove that.

Sonia

Gratitude

2010-05-17T19:47:00.000-07:00

Everything else comes and goes. But I am really thankful for having such a wonderful family and such wonderful friends. I am blessed.

- Sonia

Forgiveness and moksha

2010-04-25T16:30:00.000-07:00

I was telling a friend of mine a couple of months ago that before I die I want to forgive everyone that has wronged me, because I don't want to have to reincarnate just because someone owes me an apology. I mean, if I do, I might hurt someone in that lifetime and might have to return to be forgiven then... and the cycle of life and death for my soul wouln't stop! I believe in karmic debt and hope that those, who I have hurt, will forgive me too.

I just finished reading 'Origin of the Soul and the Purpose of Reincarnation'. Here is what the author says -
"... The reason, I believe, that forgiveness is so important is that by holding on to resentments, we bind ourselves into karmic relationships with those we harbor anger or resentment. We get stuck in our soul development. By forgiving, we free ourselves, we let go of an anchor that holds us back...."

Turns out I was right!
- Sonia

Outliers

2009-12-02T23:31:00.000-08:00

I am trying to decide if the title of this book should've been "Final Destination" or "Luck - by chance". Given that the book focuses on success stories instead of darkness/failures/death, I am going to settle for 'Luck by chance'.

I liked Blink and Tipping point, but Outliers was a little less interesting. The concept was good, the research done fairly well to support the theory, but I think Malcolm Gladwell needed to collect his thoughts before putting them in the book. The information seems all over the place. Hockey players and Bill Gates' chapters are interesting and focused, but the immigration chapters are the ones that got to me.

MOST immigrants and their kids are hard working, not just Jewish. My theory is the farther away you are from your home country, the harder you have to work to establish yourself. So, for example, immigrants in the United States from Mexico or Canada don't necessarily have to work hard... just because they have a very simple fall back plan due to the socioeconomic similarities, for example, between Canada and the United States, or the geographical distance, for example, between Mexico and the United States. Of course I am being profession specific. A LOT of immigrants from Mexico don't want to go back and work REALLY hard. But for the highly educated immigrants, its not the same. Europe is economically superior to the United States. Today, the Jewish theory doesn't even hold. In his defense, he is talking about 1800s and 1900s. In his defense, Jewish people are supposed to be very academic. But did they get to be educated and academic because of the money they made, or did they make the money because they were educated? The data seems to get lost in his theory. And I HATE this specific generalization as it tends to put a group of people above others. His other chapters exclusively call out he isn't generalizing. I am sorry to say but this chapter did sound like 'Children of God' :(.

The chapters on Korean air were eye opening. I've always thought that certain groups of people are just not good at certain things. It is difficult to come up with ways to correct that though.

I loved the chapters on divergence tests. This is something we had in our class in the seventh grade. We had something called 'EREHWON thinking program' where the visiting instructor would ask us to think of all the things we could imagine when looking at a picture of a circle with spokes. I do owe a lot of my imagination skills and random paper generation skills to this program (and some to novels:)). I also agree with his theory on collective intelligence as opposed to IQ as the determining factor of a person's success. I also believe in the 10000 hours of hard work to make an expert. I will be one... in music... one day.

Jamaican theory proves there is nothing that is absolutely right or wrong. I like how he talks about himself and his family so he doesn't sound like a racist :P. Wonder if he got away with it being remotely related to Colin Powell and all.

I'm not sure about KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) schools though. I definitely agree they are for kids who don't get the kind of attention at home. I'm worried we are becoming robots with all these things:(.

- Sonia

Mass energy equivalance and me

2009-10-19T19:51:00.000-07:00

All that stuff that is mentioned about nirvana and salvation and all the joy and all the eternal bliss made me realize that this is all about the mass energy equivalence.

We are put into physical form (mass) so we feel pleasure and pain. Because flesh feels pain. To get out of the pain, we must need to get out of the physical form. And since

E=mc²

it must be, I realized, that nirvana is really conversion of mass to energy. Karma makes you stay in the physical form until you have paid all your debts. To be a form of energy is the ultimate goal... so you can transform flawlessly from light to electricity to any other form of energy.

That is what people (who are about to die) mean when they say 'I see light'. It because they are soon going to be converted to energy either for a short period of time (to be born again converted to mass) or forever (nirvana or energy).
- Sonia

Just be

2009-10-12T19:39:00.000-07:00

I don't remember who I lent my copy of Hitchhikers to. Today I got it back, but the funny thing is I don't remember who I lent it to and I don't remember it being lost. Another thing that was lost and found.

I finished reading Many Lives many masters last week. Very informative book... speaks of reincarnation which Hinduism believes in a lot. Tells us how reincarnation was mentioned in the old testament, but references to it were removed from the new testament by the Roman king and his mom.

But most of all, the book talks about master spirits, who you interact with on a subconscious basis - in dreams, thoughts, when you get suggestions from other people - and how they guide you through your life. It talks about how groups of souls are born together because of reasons like debt (karma in Hinduism). So one thing that I thought about was soul mates... and how it all makes sense now. And the amazing thing is the person who I gave a gist of this book to - came to the same conclusion in the first couple of sentences. This is the person I speak of in the sense of connecting. Certainly some divine intervention here.

I have always been fond of the sound and the sight of a water body. I love the sound of the waves - both gentle and strong. I love the sight of water - calm in a lake, misty in a waterfall, rushed in the ocean. I think that is the guardian angels telling me to let go. I think I subconsciously like seeing water because it is so forgiving and yet so accepting. It continues to flow, or rather maintain its state of being, it just continues to just be. The master spirits have proved to me several times that if its mine, it will come back. I need to just be.

- Sonia

The Host

2009-10-01T21:54:00.000-07:00

Just finished reading 'The Host' by Stephanie Meyer. The premise of the book is based on Hinduism's concept of reincarnation, but the focus is from the soul's point of view. I loved the way she describes what the soul goes through when making everyday decisions. The description of how the soul attaches to the body is so lucid and yet so scientific. It feels like the soul attaches itself to the central nervous system.

I was a bit disappointed with the end though. One couple with a big age difference (Jared and Melanie) was enough. Didn't need Wanda and Ian to be like that too :.

All in all a good read though.

- Sonia

Venus and atoms

2009-09-29T21:54:00.000-07:00

Chariots of the Gods is a great book! I can relate to so many things in the book... things I have thought about for YEARS. I am so glad I read this book. Now I want to go to Egypt and Peru. And now I have a bunch of theories...

1. One of the thing the book talks about is the orbiting of planets around the sun. Venus orbits around the sun in a direction opposite to the rest of the planets. This, to me, confirms the atomic model of our solar system (with sun being the nucleus, Venus being an electron and the rest of the planets being protons).
2. So given my first theory, my second theory is that since we have more than one atom of a given element (Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen) on earth, there must be more than one solar systems. This we already know.
3. So, my third theory is that since we have multiple solar systems - comparing it with atoms of a particular element - let's say Hydrogen for this example - there must be multiple solar systems with life-like symptoms as earthlings define life (btw he talks about definition of life too:)).
4. So, my fourth theory is that since we have solar systems very like our own, the possibility of the parallel universes is very high. I hope my version of me on a parallel universe is doing well.
5. But since no two apples are exactly identical my fifth theory is that life of me in a parallel universe is just a little different than it is here. While I must know very similar people there, interactions with them might be just a little different.
6. Since the book talks about telepathy and how strong human brains/mind can be, my sixth theory is that deja-vu and/or dreams might be things happening in a parallel universe... that is what gurus might mean when they say that your thought leads to creation/manifestation of that thought.
7. So my seventh theory is that we must be able to identify soul mates due to that vibe from a parallel universe.

- Sonia

One day...

2009-09-25T22:24:00.000-07:00

I will be at peace. But today, no matter how much I try to see happiness by making others happy, I don't feel at peace.

All those things that people talk about soul mates... I see mine and I want him back. If the thief would kindly return what is rightfully created for me, maybe they will be at peace someday.

He is my soul mate - that's what I think. If he thinks the same, he will want to and will come back. Till that time comes, I will meditate and try to make sense of today.

In other news, my volunteering interview is the week after next. I'm excited. I think I will learn a lot from this experience.

- Sonia.

Bambi eyes

2009-09-17T22:04:00.000-07:00

This woman I know - I've observed - I think makes people like her by talking like a 16 year old and acting like one.

Needless to say - sick.
- Sonia

Home and Mayan language

2009-09-02T21:03:00.001-07:00

Is home a place or a feeling? I think its a feeling. I've moved a bunch of times... the place I live in being the 12th one to be precise. I do have this feeling from time to time when I've been away for long - that I wanna go back home. But its not this apartment or that, this house or that. I felt at home a year ago. Then I just started working crazy hours to keep me busy.

So watching the documentary on cracking the Mayan code, I realized that Maya and Yash are words shared between Indian and Mayan. The people look like a mix of Asian, Indian and Mexican.

- Sonia

One day...

2009-08-04T21:07:00.000-07:00

... this won't affect me. One day, I will have my own joy. One day, this won't matter. One day, I will not be distraught.

- Sonia

Icecream sickness

2009-08-03T21:50:00.000-07:00

I feel so sick, I think I might throw up. I need to stop watching TV in these summer months. I tend to eat what's on my plate! Except that this time I was eating icecream straight out of the tub!

I like icecream, but not so much that I need to keep eating it:(.

I feel so sick I might not be able to sleep... I hope it gets better real soon. I feel sick to my stomach.

- Sonia

Lost and found

2009-07-06T17:10:00.000-07:00

I just realized the other day that I don't lose things. I was in a meeting a couple of weeks ago and I forgot my jacket there. I realized I had left my jacket in the cafeteria or in that meeting room, so I went both places looking for it, but did't find it. The jacket is a simple jacket and holds no emotional value. But it was the one black jacket that I owned - that was a light summer jacket - so it was a bit of an inconvenience.

This incident got me to think that I haven't lost a thing in a long long time. I remember as I was growing up, I lost my wallet twice. Once I got it back because the driver of the public transport I left it in, called me up asking me to reclaim it (everything intact). Another time I didn't even realize that I lost it until 3 months after (I used to change wallets frequently then) and the guard from the place that I visited said someone had turned it in.

Then there was the time that I lost my new beautiful flowery bright satin umbrella. It was one that I loved... because in addition to being all so lovely, it would cause dew drops when rain fell on it, making it very easy to dry it. I knew I had left it at school... and the next day some one turned it in to lost and found.

So after that incident some 10+ years ago, I hadn't lost anything until this jacket. I realized that I am lucky.

That's my experience with things. So I started thinking about people. And I realized people I thought I had lost did come back to me after all. When I was thinking all this, I was in a pretty foul mood - given that its been more than a year since I was seeing someone and I really liked the guy. And it didn't help that painful as it sounds, I was still thinking about this guy.

Last week I went into a meeting room and I saw a black jacket in the corner of the room. Needless to say it was mine.

I think it is God's way of telling me that what is mine will find its way back to me.

I wanted to say thank you God and thank you universe. I've had a rough time lately and I forget how things are well laid out for me. I will try and remember that what is mine will find its way back to me. Somehow. I should forget that I even lost it. It will come back to me in no time.

- Sonia

Let's see... that smartness... is it being put to use?

2009-06-22T23:05:00.000-07:00

I've had this discussion with different groups of my friends... on several different occasions... and a lot of us share the concern that a lot of well-educated/well-to-do/sane-headed people reproduce late/don't reproduce/don't have as many kids. This - as acknowledged - is degrading our gene pool and we might end up as fact to Douglas Adams' fiction! (That is supposed to read as EXTINCT).

But then if I believe in 'survival of the fittest', then aren't the people who are having 20 kids smarter? Cuz their genes are more wide-spread and have a higher chance to stay alive? Potentially, even longer (for a short term) before the world comes to an end?

I've always wanted to only have adopted kids, but this thought/discussion has made me change my mind. I still DO want to adopt but I think I will have at least one biological kid to pass on my genes. I think it'd be a waste to let it all go waste:).

In other news - I started watching Coupling today. I cannot believe I haven't seen it sooner! Three episodes and I can't stop laughing.

- Sonia

IE crashed

2009-06-08T22:27:00.000-07:00

What's more frustrating is that I had 8 tabs open - I can only remember three -
Yahoo mail, Nassim's video (I think I was 2.5 hours into it), Xenu. Wait and the internet on the plane page. Sigh!
- Sonia

Beaches beaches

2009-06-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

As kids, we went to the beach a lot. It was close to where we lived and every year summer vacation started by going to the beach. Even during the year there were lots of beach breaks. There were multiple beaches in town, but as kids we used to love going to the one that was the noisiest. It was just always more fun... there were lots of street vendors and stalls and people and noise and kids and well sand and water.

There was this other beach that my grandpa loved to take us to. This was in the same city but closer to where he lived. This beach was calm and peaceful and quiet and had a few people and crabs and fish and even sea snakes. There was an island too that was even more peaceful than the shore of this beach. I didn't understand why, leaving all the fun at the noisy beach, we'd go to this beach. But my grandpa was fun, so it was okay too.

A couple of weeks ago I went to a noisy beach in MD.

Ever since I have grown up, my dream has been that the guy I will deeply fall in love with (and who will be in love with me deeply) will walk hand in hand on a quiet beach with no one around and we will walk in the warm sunny sand and we won't talk and we will look at the sand and we will listen to the sound of the waves and relax. But neither of the guys from my past relationships have thought much about beaches. Its been just yet another hype for them I guess. Me - I LOVE the sound of water. So much so that I bought a place close to the freeway (see - vehicles travelling at high speeds resemble the sound of surfs). With both relationships going down the drain, my perception of this ideal guy has changed. But I still love the beach - only this time I picture myself alone at the beach - listening to the sound of the waves. The noisy Sonia has transformed into the one that values quiet. One day I will find my perfect beach and he will be there too.

-Sonia

My mind is playing tricks with me...

2009-05-28T22:51:00.000-07:00

...again.

Status quo is not helping. I feel restless... in excruciating pain. I suffer each day... every time I utter a word against my heart. My brain won't stop though. But everytime I have a conversation I hate myself for I have hurt none other than me. I don't know what to do. I wish I had the courage and the strength to leave. Its not that I don't care, its that I don't know what else to do. I don't know who to ask for help. I feel like an alien. I feel like something is wrong with me.

- Sonia

A dark thought...

2009-05-21T20:39:00.000-07:00

... has been on my mind for a couple of days. I wonder if it is evolution (fittest attacking the less fit) that led to wars OR it was wars that led to evolution.

If it is both, is evolution = war?

If it is, then would communism and socialism lead to the end of the human race?

In other news, collegue of mine said - Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. Myself - I think we don't live in a democracy. If we did, it would be the greatest form of government. Yes everyone would be more powerful, but it will only hurt a lion if they went about killing every deer in the forest. Appetite has been the limiting factor in all kills.

- Sonia

Laughter of the day

2009-05-12T23:11:00.000-07:00

Heroes Season 3, Episode 'Cold Snap' just finished. At the end of the episode, they show the names of the new characters in the episode. I usually stop watching this, but today my eye caught a character who was described as 'Handsome older gentleman'. LOL. Heroes - thanks for making my day.

- Sonia

Its the pyramids... again

2009-05-07T21:08:00.000-07:00

Started watching Part II of Nassim's talk today. Not denying the alien theory of why pyramids exist, I have a theory of my own on how they could've been built in a short period of time. Of course whoever would have built it would need to have brains like mine ;)

Given the fact that the huge stones could not have been gotten and so perfectly placed one over another even with the farmers working 10 hour shifts for 20 years, my theory is that the stones were not "moved" here but rather "made/created" here.
What was done was glue mixed with color was poured into open biodegradable containers (containers in the shape of rocks). When a sandstorm hits the desert, the dust from the storm can rise as high as 20,000 feet. The biggest pyramids are around 500 feet high. So the sand and the dust would stick into the containers that contained glue and could form the shape of how the containers had been placed. Eventually after the storm, the glue would dry up and it would form a stone/pyramid and the biodegradable substance would, well, biodegrade.
The reason this might actually be an explanation is the accuracy of the pyramids. Sand has this ability (since it is well fine-grained) to settle in a fairly and consistently clean manner. And dunes are nothing but pyramids in their natural form. So the sand settles in that shape due to gravity and the wind.
World's highest dunes are ~8000 feet and these are not the ones in Egypt. The reason the pyramids in Egypt were ~500 feet had to do with the height of sandstorms/dunes. I think that once the pyramids were created, they would serve as weather systems - giving a sort of a reference level - that could tell that after a sandstorm anything under this stone level might have been destroyed. By counting the stones, before and after a sandstorm, one could calculate the damage.

- Sonia

Talk

2009-05-05T22:45:00.000-07:00

Its days like today that I wish I could talk to that someone. I have been restless today. Don't care much for sleep.
- Sonia

My mind is playing tricks with me

2009-04-30T22:22:00.000-07:00

I was discussing Fountainhead with a friend of mine and this thought occured to me...

When I make a mistake, I wish that I am forgiven - by myself, by people I hurt and by that computer scientist I keep talking about. But there is no way of verifying that I have been forgiven. So I convince myself that it is okay that I made a mistake.

Now when someone else makes a mistake, that might be a little worse than mine, I hold that as the standard for what a mistake is and forgive them. My guilt says if mine was a mistake and I forgave myself, I must surely be okay with this. By virtue of the fact that I have forgiven a mistake graver than my own, I convince myself that mine wasn't a mistake after all. And the boundary of what qualifies as a mistake stretches farther over time.

Over time, I get to a point where the lines become very gray - between what is a mistake and what's not. I become more and more liberal in my views - so much so that I now wonder how conservative can those people be who thought mine was a mistake in the first place! Is that how the concept of conservative and liberal arose? But in doing so I become conservative myself. And for someone at the other end of the spectrum - since everything is a mistake - and they are encompassing everything, they become a liberal.

In the above post, replace 'I' with any person and it would still hold.

I can't fight this feeling anymore... I've forgotten what I started fighting for...

- Sonia

Boltzmann brain - Bull shit

2009-04-27T19:52:00.000-07:00

So Dilbert helped me discover the Boltzmann brain hypothesis today. Okay here is the thing. Take infinity for example. Just because we are incapable of counting numbers above 100000000000 (add as many zeroes as you like), it doesn't mean that number doesn't exist.

We try to measure regularity/organization in 2D or 3D. But if we have already proved that there are more dimensions than 3, then, quite possibly, to get to an equation you need to consider more than 3 factors (variables)!

I mean we all know that mixing hydrogen and oxygen doesn't always generate water... its only when there are 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen atom at a given pressure etc... and even then it occurs in more than 1 form - ice, water and vapor!

My point is entropy has an equation. We are just incapable of formulating it with the constraints we know of. I am not saying entropy doesn't exist... just that it's something we don't know how to calculate/explain. In fact, of course it exists... all equations are somewhat entropic whether they equate to infinity or zero. You could add anything to the left side of the equation/series/formula (or a simple divide by 0 would work) and it could equate to infinity. You could say 2-2=0 and it would be approximately true.

On a lighter note, I wish that random brain shows up... I could use a helping hand...

- Sonia

About Religulous

2009-04-23T20:19:00.000-07:00

Just finished watching it last night. Interesting movie... It was interesting from the same perspective as 'The other side of outsourcing'... The problem I have with these Thomas Friedman/Bill Maher tours is that the responses to the questions is very specific to a given region/set of people. It's not that I am against all such tours... I have seen good tours in the past.

Bill didn't account for all religions. What about Hinduism? What about Buddhism? These are major religions you know! Anyways, he atleast made an attempt at broaching a very hushed subject. Yeah he was rude, but how do you get responses for some of these tough questions?

Didn't know Mormens discriminate by skin color. Didn't know there are only 14 million Jews.

A thought that occured to me when listening to the sabbath guy is that these guys spend so much time and energy coming up with innovative solutions to live a normal life on sabbath day - they have created wheelchairs and telephones that don't use electricity! No wonder Jews are one of the smartest (and richest) people in the world! My thought though, is that - if the observance of a holy day such as sabbath makes human beings more creative (potentially even greener), won't they have evolved into the fittest breed over the generations? Which other religion can claim to make its believers smarter generation after generation?

Derivatives - the same doesn't apply to you.

- Sonia

Saying of the day

2009-04-17T22:06:00.000-07:00

A friend is one who won't let you drive when they think you are drunk. An aquaintance will merely hitch that ride with another.
- Sonia

Heroes

2009-04-14T22:20:00.000-07:00

Season III - Episode 5 - A character - Linderman - mentioned the New World Order. I wasn't expecting it to be mentioned in Heroes. But come to think of it, if not here, where else.
- Sonia

Thoughts on Laurence Gardner's "The real value of gold" video

2009-04-13T21:29:00.000-07:00

Cones of bread are a form of gold - This is quite a revelation! In my part of the world, my family celebrates new year in April. Part of the celebration is to offer cones of bread (made of wheat in our case) to water (our God is supposed to be water God... the one who offers fish to fishermen).

Considering the fact that my family traded goods with Egypt, Iran etc. and
this ceremony was performed on the banks of river Sindhu and
the new year starts the day after the first new moon after the sun crosses the equator from south to north on spring equinox

my theory is that while the cones of gold bread worked, that they cannot simply be consumed on any day, at any time. There was a 40 day period of worshipping (or workshipping) before such a thing was done - this work might have been required to free the body of toxins achieved by fasting etc.

Another thought was - has he himself tried this stuff out? How much of it has he tried?

Sweets - In my part of the world, sweets are covered with silver (much like Goldschlager's gold, the silver in these sweets is edible). So its been known for quite some time that atleast the solid form of some of the noble metals is not toxic. Note that consuming these sweets doesn't make you super-human:)... not that I know of, but it would be an interesting research point.

One reason to distribute these sweets is to symbolize the mark of abundance - if you can offer gold/silver sweets, you must be able to afford them.
But I can't stop think that this practice came as a way of discretely passing this valuable information to generations that more can be done with these noble metals.

Matter of time - I'm not saying that all the farmlands where nothing can grow are lands that have the white powder which is silica/gold/aluminium. But what if it is? Has anyone tested all the waste farmlands on the planet? If the US has electrodes that burn out before the noble metal's boiling point has reached, who is to say that other nations (except Russia of course) have tested it right? This reminds me of the analogy in Charlie Wilson's war. A character in the movie (Gust Avrakotos) narrates this story -

There's a little boy and on his 14th birthday he gets a horse... and everybody in the village says, "how wonderful. the boy got a horse" And the Zen master says, "we'll see." Two years later The boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg, and everyone in the village says, "how terrible." And the Zen master says, "We'll see." Then, a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off and fight... except the boy can't cause his legs all messed up. and everybody in the village says, "How wonderful." Charlie Wilson: Now the Zen master says, "We'll see."

And we call it a wasteland today.

Longevity - Has anyone verified that the longevity is higher in Eygptians than other nations? Search tells me that Switzerland, Japan, Singapore, Iceland have the best longevity rates. But if this method was more widely used in Egypt than in other places, and is known to modify DNA, wouldn't it be passed down to the generations? This was the part that I wasn't too clear on.

Ark - The moment I started watching the video, the thought that came to my mind was that the ark looked like a battery. In my case though the positive and negative ends were the handles on the ark. The last five minutes of the video confirmed the battery POV, except that the negative end was mentioned as the angel's wings. I was, in any case, happy to see I thought like he did:).

Muscat - I wonder if the capital city of Oman is named after Mfkzt (pronounced as Muzkat). Wiki tells me one of the Arabic meanings of Muscat is "falling place", another meaning is "hidden". Of course if this were true, the secret would have made its way from Egypt to its neighbor - present day Saudi Arabia. And if that is the case, then I wonder if this white gold is hidden in the sands (silica) of Muscat.

- Sonia

Humans

2009-04-04T11:16:00.000-07:00

And we have become so blindly consumed by technology that when we mis-type, we blame ourselves saying "fat fingers" instead of saying that the keyboard is too small. I am not just talking about computer/notebook keyboards. I have heard people say they have fat fingers even when using the tiny cell(smart?)phones. When will we wake up?

- Sonia

Conical theory

2009-03-28T11:59:00.000-07:00

I've been watching Nassim Haramein's Rogue valley talk on Physics. I am a little more than half done (the entire talk is 8 hours). Very fascinating so far. Part 1 is here. Watching it, I have a theory of my own. He talks about spirals instead of sin/cos waves.

Somehow thinking further, my theory is that since physics neglects the nasty and the other infinities, that earth is actually revolving around a body that is the tip of the cone. But since we neglect nasty infinity in our calculations, we are missing this point.

The line joining the tip of the cone to the center of the base circle where the sun is (represented as 'Possible locations of the body' above) represents the line where this body could be. For all we know this body could be close to the sun, but since even that distance is infinitesimally large, we don't know about this body because we cannot see it. This would be in line with the theory that the sun revolves around a body.

- Sonia

There goes my don't care attitude

2009-01-01T21:28:00.000-08:00

You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select - I don't know - that lumpy blue sweater, for instance because you are trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue. It's not turquoise. It's not lapis. It's actually cerulean. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent - wasn't it - who showed cerulean military jackets? ... And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it, uh, filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact you're wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff...

Hmmm... I don't wear Armanis and A&F for this reason... thought I didn't need to make a statement about myself by the clothes I wear... what are clothes but a cover up, much like make-up. It's not that I wear shapeless clothes. And it's not that I don't wear make-up. But I always thought I wasn't into spending my wages on the way I look. But this dialogue from The Devil Wears Prada has got me thinking. I guess its not the amount you spend. Unless I stitch my clothes, whether I like it or not, I am affected by the fashion industry. In fact, even if I do that, the colors I like and the patterns would depend on what is 'in' at that point in time. I guess I could pursue my creativity in fashion designing myself and get to a point where I define my own fashion... It's always feels good to be proven wrong by something that makes sense. What Miranda (Meryl Streep) says in the movie now makes sense to me
- Sonia

Snow white and movies

2008-12-21T14:35:00.000-08:00

I am finally catching up on some good movies... my last one being The Good Shephard
A bunch of good quotes from the movie -

The mental facilities to detect conspiracies and betrayal are the same qualities most likely to corrode natural judgement.

I have thought about this every time I hear about a conspiracy. I, for one, believe in a lot of the conspiracies. I believe they are mis-named:)... because a lot of them are true. But that is not to say, that for the ones that are not, my natural judgement is affected

I see this as America's eyes and ears. I dont want it to become America's heart and soul

Profound. How many times do we let this happen? Argument for the sake of argument, often comes from skewing the fact of a matter to where it doesn't belong. This often results in extremism, strong emotions and opinions

Carolyn and I, we just bought our first house. and everything is already broken. I spend my weekend fixing things. By the time I get everything fixed, it'll be time to sell the fucking house

Hmmm... how many people do I know of that live their lives like this:)? Actually, what makes me extremely nervous and stressed out is that this is not true just of people I know. Its beyond that. Its a lot of people... I mean a LOT of people. I think that media has successfully made robots out of us. Eat, drink, act like a corporate robot, be a good consumer (oh did I say consumer? I meant citizen), sleep, procreate. Repeat

We Italians, we got our families and we got the Church. The Irish, they have their homeland. The Jews, their tradition. Even the niggers, they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Carlson? What do you have?
The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.

Loved the question. Loved the response. Fuck! But it is true

My response - McDonalds. Ever since I was a kid, I have remembered the USA as the place that brought McDonalds to the world. But then again, with corporate giants ruling the world, does it matter?

- Sonia

Food for thought

2008-12-18T20:25:00.000-08:00

A thought just occured to me today while I tried to make an amateur painting...

I realized why copying is looked down upon... its because even a machine can do it

And if the universe really wants the best for you, how can it settle for so little... be true, don't plagiarize. It takes the best of you and it takes the best from you

- Sonia

Why the meaning of Ankh is unknown?

2008-10-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

This is a classic example of barriers in distribution of knowledge/ communication. Clearly when you rotate the Ankh symbol by 90 degrees, it resembles an eye (Ankh = eye in Hindi). This certainly was another symbol of the Egyptian eye

Wiki clearly states "Mirrors of beaten metal were also often made in the shape of an ankh, either for decorative reasons or to symbolize a perceived view into another world."

Hinduism has the concept of the third eye with similar powers of being able to see the other world, that is marked as a symbol of attaining spiritual being, that symbolizes the eternal state of a being

Like the quote from XFiles in my earlier post, artists improvise on symbols for a variety of reasons - money, threats, belief in a particular theory or simply as a statement of their creative talent. Isn't it always more difficult to build on existing work than it is to come up with one's own? But when you are successfully able to build on an existing piece of art, isn't the satisfaction magnified if the new symbol is more popular? The price one pays here is what is called the long term loss for a short term gain. For most individuals the short term gain is long enough... for it lasts at least for the life time of their existence. But the irony is that the loss of the meaning of the symbol lasts far beyond the demise of its creator, even more if meets creativity during its lifetime... a perceived view of another world

- Sonia

Type B connector?

2008-09-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

Who uses those anymore!! So I finally bought a new keyboard (Yamaha YPG-235) to replace my $25 beginner's keyboard. Wise decision I thought... plays really well, sounds like a piano, what else do I need:)?

Okay it is one of the newer models... but then why the heck does it have a Type B USB connector?? Who uses those anymore? Everything is moving to mini Type B USB connectors! Even my 5 year old camera doesn't have a Type B connector!

Anyways my printer has a Type B connector, so thankfully I don't have to wait to download my melody:)

Sonia

True or false

2008-09-08T20:58:00.000-07:00

The nature of modern life is obsession - Battlestar Gallactica Season 3, DVD 6

I believe this to be true. As I grow older, I realize how a lot of what humans do is due to an obsession of some sort. It is scary to find that a lot of this obsession is derived from media. Being told what is good, what is bad, what to go after, what to waste time on, what to not worry about, what is a cause worthy of saving, what needs to be saved from extinction - a group drive, a group hug, a group mentality. Animals are more protected in groups because individually their brains do not possess the sharpness and their bodies do not possess the strength to save themselves in times of danger. But to put a human being in the same place - being driven by herd mentality only makes it easier for those in power to smash down on the individualistic expression of that very same human being, devolving us back to being humanoids

I will rise. I will question, I will try my best to get rid of these obsessions. I will try to find out what really matters

In other news, the main title theme of BSG is the Sanskrit mantra of Om Bhur bhuv svaha. I have been seeing it for so many months now and only realized today that it sounded like it... confirmed it on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Battlestar_Galactica_(re-imagining)

- Sonia

Dell fails me again

2008-08-25T11:32:00.000-07:00

With not much to do during my one week off, I decided to buy memory for my Dell Inspiron 700m. Before doing so, I decided to find out where my notebook's memory modules are located. Needless to say videos linked from Google provided more information than the Dell website... Anyhow, the lower memory module (obviously the one that is easier to replace) seems to be the one that has 512 MB RAM and the upper memory module (the one hidden strategically beneath the keyboard and the one that can be removed successfully only if the stars align) is the one that has 256MB RAM on my notebook

Why would Dell want to annoy customers by doing this? Why not give customers the opportunity to remove the least useful memory with the least amount of pain!!!!

- Sonia

Yet another confirmation

2008-08-10T21:44:00.000-07:00

Supernatural divinities are the primitive's answer to why the sun goes down every night

Battlestar Gallactica - Season 2.5 Disc 3

- Sonia

More on aliens

2008-07-23T21:43:00.000-07:00

Did the word Alien come from the word Aryan? Aryans have been quoted in history to be different. I am trying to find out how different is different

- Sonia

Status moi

2008-07-23T21:30:00.000-07:00

Everyone I know is fighting to get back what they had. I am fighting cause I don't know how to do anything else - Kara Thrace (Starbuck) - BattleStar Gallactica Season 2 Episode 2

Echo

- Sonia

Aliens and Egypt

2008-07-13T22:26:00.000-07:00

Today a thought occured to me. I think that ancient Eygpt had alien visitors. Incidents that point to this are the concept of mummies, some made in gold which in present day is considered the noble metal... it must have meant a lot to aliens. Other artifacts in my opinion that point to this fact are the pyramids that have stood the times and exist (even though in ruined state) till present day. I believe that these structures were built for one of two purposes -

1. As a docking station for a space ship - ships with a different sized pyramid dents on their ventral plane could dock over the pyramids. The larger the ship, the bigger the dent and the stronger the support of the structure: the pyramid. There was land everywhere but height (at least in those times) provided them a strategic advantage

2. As a land mark for docking into known territory

Belief in the fact that there is life after death, that one becomes "divine" after they die support the fact much like regenerating aliens in any sci-fi movie

Sonia

Ringworld and aliens

2008-07-07T19:43:00.000-07:00

I finished reading Ringworld last night. Great imagination by the author... loved the description of the world.

The book supports my theory of God being a computer scientist:) (well an engineer per the author actually).

It also affirms my theory of relativity on multiple fronts - for one Louis mentions this just as I do, and then there is the fact that God of the planet/ universe is relative to what you are and where you belong. For the Ringworlders its the engineers who made Ringworld. Anything that is not explanatory (paranormal?) can be attributed to the term GOD. Makes me rethink if God is an alien... I am tempted to write about this too, but am only 30% done proving my theory

Also watched some YouTube videos on hemp and marijuana. One of the theories claims that marijuana is an alien plant because it is very different from other plants found on earth. If this theory is true, I think it should be used more broadly to educate people about this. The one reason I wouldn't try pot in the future is for fear that if it really is an alien plant, it is being used against human race precisely as a pyschoactive drug so that when aliens are trying to take earth over (yes I don't believe this has happened yet), humans submit to them without retort? If it has the ability to modify neurons, are they programming us to make way for them?

What if that is real purpose and all the supposed "cures" associated with marijuana are really side effects? If your mind "opens up" wouldn't that mean it now starts seeing possibilities and acknowledging them thereby "widening your horizons"? But doesn't submission mean that you let someone do what they want to? That you submit to what they say/ they do, acknowledge, allow, encompass what they do? All in the name of freeing your mind!?!!

What is freedom anyways? Take nations for example. Independence and freedom are always "from" someone. But if you free yourself from someone or something, doesn't that mean that you are now a patriot or a citizen of another nation? How does that make you free? And if it does my friend, beware - for you may be submitting to the cause you fought against in the first place. That was media, this will be in the name of "a better world" or "a new world". The question is will you be able to reason that this world is better...

- Sonia

Blink blink

2008-05-26T22:39:00.000-07:00

Finished reading Blink today. Must say that I am not all that impressed by this one... Tipping Point had a lot of informative stuff... this one did too, but was overly repetitive. I guess that is Gladwell's way of writing... a detailed description of his sources of information (even when their appearance doesn't have anything to do with the content of the book) and repetition of information through chapters to prove his point

A few good catches -

The power in recognition of facial expressions - I was upset the other day and was waiting for my friends at a waterfront. While I was waiting several thoughts passed my mind, but my face must have looked sad. An elderly passer by walked hand in hand with his partner and said "Don't jump... everything will be okay... I promise". I laughed and told him I was waiting for my friends, but it proved that we signal emotions all the time! These signals are visible to everyone... even strangers. And exercising these at the right place and the right time may really be able to save lives
Priming - Honing an individual to feel a certain way. I guess that is what encouragement is all about. I remember being encouraged to do well in school... and I did. I don't know why or how, because I wasn't a great student, but honing in a certain way made it happen
Did you choose the school or the school chose you - do students at good schools score better because they are smart or because all their life they have had the privilege to grow up in good school
You've got to let people work out the situation and work out what's happening. The danger [in calling] is that they'll tell you anything to get you off their backs, and if you act on that, and take it at face value, you could make a mistake. Plus you are diverting them. Now they are looking upward instead of downward. You are preventing them from resolving the situation
Sensation transfer - In the customer's mind, Product = Product + Package
Genuine smile - I have a friend who cares for people a lot. Part of this caring results in him smiling infrequently given the state of things. Sometimes when he smiles, I catch him giving what I call a genuine smile. He is usually perplexed by what I mean and I try to explain that the smile, well, looks genuine. Blink's definition has made this easier for me:) - If I were to ask you to smile, you would fled your zygomatic major. By contrast, if you were to smile spontaneously, in the presence of genuine emotion, you would not only flex your zygomatic but also tighten the orbicularis oculi, pars orbitalis, which is the muscle that encircles the eye. It is almost impossible to tighten the orbicularis oculi, par orbitalis on demand, and it is equally difficult to stop it from tightening when we smile at something genuinely pleasurable.

- Sonia

Dilemma dilemma

2008-05-14T19:14:00.000-07:00

And so it goes... she was on a vacation trip, he was working that year in that city. They were both single, didn't know each other. Later on her mom passed away. A few years later they got married introduced through common friends only to find out that they were staying very close to each other during that time 10 years ago when she was on vacation and he was working in that city!

This is the story of my own parents. While they remember the coincidence fondly, I remember it too, fondly, but more than that because there is a high probability that my grand mum might have seen her to-be son-in-law long before it was to happen... I remember it because there is a chance she saw her son-in-law before she died and somehow that would have made her happy... even though she didn't know

And so when I was told that dinner was a maybe, I looked forward to it... I hoped... until there are 2 more days left until my dad and sis are here... I don't want to push it, I haven't pushed it. But I don't see it happening. The thing is he is 70. I haven't had him meet any of my guys... I thought this would be different. I wish it were. I understand the dilemma. It is a confusing state to be in... but to hope is human. The good thing is - what is not yours can't hurt

- Sonia

Saying of the day

2008-04-23T21:14:00.000-07:00

Firefly - Episode Jaynestown

Conversation on Serenity after a mudder in Canton (the town where the mudders have made a statue of glorifying Jayne) gives his life to save Jayne's

Mal: It's my estimation that every man that ever got a statue made of him was one kind of a son of a bitch or another. Ain't about you Jayne. It's about what they need.

Jayne: Don't make no sense

Profound... another affirmation to how Gods are born... how religions are born. It's always amongst the poor, the needy, the ones that have no where to go, the ones who have been discriminated, turned down by society, the ones that have been oppressed, the ones for who there is no where to turn to and hence no harm in believing. And this isn't even about rich and poor... a rich person could emotionally be very needy and have no where to go to too... and so the virus spreads...

- Sonia

Going organic

2008-04-21T20:25:00.000-07:00

So over the weekend I saw this documentary called "The future of food". Interesting how this didn't blimp on my radar like commercial movies do. Lots of points -

Kinda outrageous that GM companies make poor farmers pay for "misuse" of their patent, where the crop got into the farm unknowingly in the first place
Four corporations/ six companies own most of the crop/ herbicides business
Law passers in the EPA have formerly worked at the giant GM company mentioned in the movie in one form or another
The giant's sister company has a very high ranking government official as a very high ranked employee at the company
The company states that any place the gene goes is now owned by the company. Eventually these seeds are consumed by humans - are humans then, owned by them too?
The terminator crop - doesn't reproduce after one generation? The seed cannot be reused? That's like forcing customers to upgrade to a newer version of a product!!! And making them pay for it too!! Not to mention the loss of variety in the crop itself. The documentary talks about how we only have about 4 varieties of potatoes consumed widely thanks to GMOs
Herbicides produced by this company kills the herbs/ plants themselves, so poor farmers are forced to buy GMO'ed plants that survive these cides
Europe and other nations banned corn exported from the US that was GM'ed. How come all I hear about is how toys made in China were banned because they contained lead. That doesn't even come close in population impact. I mean these things aren't even made to pass through severe testing... and we are eating this very food... whether we are kids or not

About a year ago, I heard about all the bees in the world suddenly disappearing. If it is possible to kill pests by spraying these pesticides, it wouldn't be impossible to kill bees now, will it?? It would only profit companies such as these. Wind pollination is not a substitute of insect pollination. Seeds spread by insects are heavier and hence cannot make it to long distances. With no bees left to pollinate, wouldn't farmers be forced to buy crop from these giants? I see this as misuse of authority

If they can modify plant cells by injecting E Coli, I don't even want to start thinking of the number of ways they can make human cells less immune or even worse, induce epidemics at their whim

Now I might not be able to fully control the food I eat at restaurants, but home cooking - I'm going organic

- Sonia

WYSIWYG, but where is what I don't see?

2008-04-17T21:55:00.000-07:00

Today I saw "This film is not yet rated"... such a proof of what I have said before. Media controls the mind of the public. And who controls media? Large corporations! Local governments!

This has always been the reason I don't take what I hear about anything seriously. There's always another side to the story - a side that doesn't even come close to being shared with the general public!!

Let's see if I remember the big 6 - Sony (owned by Sony), Warner Bros (Time Warner), Walt Disney (Disney), Universal (GE??? Wow, would never have guessed), Paramount (Viacom?? Again would never have guessed), 20th Century Fox (Fox)... and they control 95% of the media... and of course its content

It was painful to see how certain movies were misfits in the categories that were rated, and to know that government specific movies were sent to the Pentagon!?! Don't they have better things to do?? Don't want to paint the real picture of the military?? And they had clergy men on their appeal panels?? Sigh! When will they stop judging people's moralities?? I hate having standards for anything... there are fine lines between what is acceptable and what is not... there are always exceptions. Like in this case MPAA thinks sexual content is worse than violent content... somehow it doesn't surprise me any more that he was re-elected

The country reminds me of cult members humming and blindly nodding to the tune of the pied piper that is called controlled media

- Sonia

Is this my calling?

2008-04-13T21:36:00.000-07:00

Today I saw Taare Zameen Par... finally. A beautiful, very thoughtful movie. Children around the world suffer from high competition from peers, seniors, friends, siblings and from expectations of ambitious parents. But the problem is even more severe in countries like India where parents are busy manufacturing "engineers and doctors" only

Having moved to the United States after graduation, I have come to embrace the fact that pharmacists, teaching, music, painting are also world class professions. No one here is "ashamed" of the fact that they are a nurse or a marine biologist or a figure skater. They are all well acclaimed professions. No one judges a person by their profession. And this is important in the development of a child's career, their personality, their confidence, and their being!

United States of course has the privelege of being an abundant nation with employment opportunities for one and all. India on the other hand, has child labor. So if a kid from a poor family can bring money to the table because of their painting skills, an employer doesn't have to pay a professional painter to get the same. No demand (or relatively lesser demand) leads to no encouragement from industry to enhance the education system to mandate art in schools. And what is society but the norms decided by a centralized body? Now computer courses on the other hand...

I would be such a different kid if I was born and brought up some place other than India. I don't know how other countries are about child education, but brought up right, I would be so much more creative... its not that I can't imagine, but I definitely lack the confidence to put that imagination to any good use. A few times I have thought of ideas only to see them actually commercialized within months! And here I am not even saying them!!

An interesting thing - the hostel school that Ishaan is sent to in Panchgani - New Era - is the one that my siblings and me came close to being signed up at a couple of times. A few times when my mum was ill and a few times after she passed away. The then principal of the school was my dad's friend. Thankfully, with the help of my mum's sis, and some help from my dad's sisters, we have made it well in life (touch wood!)... didn't have to go to boarding school after all. But this is one of those things that I always wondered about... how the school looks, where on the hill it is, how it would be... it was great to see it in the movie:)

An interesting way of looking at things - the movie mentioned an Oscar Wilde saying - The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing

I still want to volunteer but I haven't put that thought into action... I wonder if I should teach little kids.

Universe - help me put my ideas into action

- Sonia

Use and throw nation

2008-04-06T14:26:00.000-07:00

It has amazed me over the years how much waste the United States of America generates. And why not... there are -

ball point pens trashed when the ink runs out (ever heard of ink refills?)
disposable toilet bowl cleaners, bath cleaners, scrubs
disposable razors
paper towels
plastic forks, spoons and knives at food outlets
use of paper plates at small parties
plastic bags at stores

Recycable or not, manufacturing, transportation and maintenance of these product lines wastes resources at so many different levels. While they generate revenue for corporations and in some scenarios facilitate the intended use for end users, they are costly in the long run

So a couple of days ago when I heard that starting January 2009 store shoppers will be charged 20c extra for each plastic bag, it made me jump in joy. While I am not a big proponent of governments shoving down yet another law down our throat, I even more vehemently oppose lavish waste. Its not like the non-disposable alternatives aren't easily available. There are people living outside of the US that use hand towels as an alternative for paper towels... even restaurants in the US do that... just that its not as popular. People in India change refills in ball point pens all the time. People around the world also carry reusable bags while shopping. I even do it here

Being aware is the first step. Doing something about it has a joy of its own. Be the one that makes the difference

- Sonia

Methane and Titan

2008-04-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

Today I just found out that part of Titan is made up of a lot of methane and contains nitrogen in the atmosphere. If methane based life forms exist today in the Black Sea, I wonder if these same organisms either -

already exist on Titan or
will thrive on Titan if we move them there from here

That makes for another possible theory of how the life came to exist on earth. I mean think of all those microbes and other particles attached to these vehicles sent to explore space. Agreed, most of them wouldn't survive the travel. But if some are protected so as to use them once they reach the remote destination, wouldn't atleast some of them survive? So then if left in the correct conditions (methane based life forms on a methane dominated moon, or oxygen based life forms on earth) what's to stop life from evolving?

The surface looked eerily like a gray mattered brain to me. Maybe life is neurons to a brain that is earth (in our case atleast)

- Sonia

Status report

2008-04-02T18:09:00.001-07:00

Started learning to play the keyboard. Going well, need to practise more often

I hurt a friend:(. I can't think of anything to mend the hurt. It was a very cherished relationship, but something that has no future. The only good out of ending this is that we closed on good terms. I wish loads of happiness for this friend. We have been through a lot together

Often I find myself at a point where I cannot talk to anyone. The other issue is on stand-by now... seems like for about 6 months. I think I might have mentioned this before but maybe I haven't so I'll say it again. I hate married people! They are always trying to hook up singles. I hate that. If I like someone, I will go ask him out. This guy I am started to see got asked by a married friend to see her girlfriend... yup not public yet again :S

One day I will learn

At this point, universe please just sort this out. I need sanity. I need peace of mind. I need all the other the other things that a normal girl dreams of. Its mutual, please let it stay. Just sort the rest

- Sonia

The brain and the heart

2008-03-15T21:41:00.000-07:00

Brain... yeah why not. Heart I am sure of... and it found the most priceless smile. I cannot describe it. It is rare but its beautiful.

Universe - this goes out to you... help us be.

- Sonia

The disposable relation?

2008-03-09T12:14:00.000-07:00

So we have been dating for 3 weeks. Didn't think it would last this long... not because I didn't want it to; but past history has made me very skeptical of the concept of "dating". Everyone makes money at your expense... the local florist, the suave restaurants, your favorite salon, and the list goes on

Only when its time to pack up, you don't want to have anything to do with any of these places. Anyways, damn media isn't going to stop promoting greeting cards and diamond rings anytime soon... so hey just wake up and stop believing in these materialistic possesions! Besides if I were to stop going places, half of the United States and some of Canada even would be off limits a long time ago

But the point is that I have never been a fan of elaborate celebrations... of course the term elaborate is very relative to the person experiencing this, but honestly I don't see the big deal in flamboyant affairs

I feel a connection. Maybe it is the smarts, maybe it is the point of view on current affairs, maybe it is the rebel in him, maybe its because of his belief in the existence of the concept of God that is not the norm, maybe its because he is one in a thousand people I know who isn't a TV buff... just like me, maybe its because he reads meaningful stuff. It certainly isn't just another thing. The start defies this though, but I cannot undo that.

The hardest part has been the technical difficulties associated with this relation. It is a secret:(... I hate secrets and so does he. My last long time relationship was a secret for a long time. I hated it. I don't want this to be the same. There have been some wrong turns in the 3 weeks - but isn't 3 weeks too little to judge these? I really like this guy but I get this feeling that he wants out. I want to believe that I'm just being paranoid, and I'd love to stand corrected... especially because after passing those hurdles, I believe that we can be. I want to believe that I am not just another disposable relation to him. But since I cannot clap with one hand, I will wait patiently for the joy or the pain

- Sonia

Planning and thinking

2008-02-26T22:08:00.000-08:00

The gym and taking the bus twice a week isn't going to well... but I am carpooling for the most part, which is a not-so-good excuse but hey!

Some serious thought is being put into starting to read about marketing/ advertising. No, I haven't started yet. I was reading much more last year and the year before. But I have a plan. I need to buy the half cork board/ half white board combo. Hopefully I will get to it this weekend. Once I have that, I think a fair goal is to spend an hour every week day reading meaningful books on these topics.

I already own at least 3 books on the topic that I haven't even started reading. Maybe after I read those, I will chat with my sis to see if she has any recommendations. It looks like I have found the goal... online gaming. No I haven't forgotten about my food idea that I am going to patent, but that seems like a broader scope and realistically speaking not financially feasible to me just yet

- Sonia

Opportunites or regrets

2008-02-13T19:39:00.000-08:00

Had an interesting conversation today... about how you should be more open, do as you please, not live by others' standards. I know... because YOU define your own standards... not your family, not your friends, no one. You are not answerable to anyone.

I had blogged on this subject a while ago... I wanted to jump off my seat in joy and just hug this person. I even went silent for a while because it was so what I felt. I mean I have been preaching this for years and it felt like I was the only one!! Everyone is trying to impress someone...

A big reason why I cannot "settle down" yet is because people try to define my standards. I've even tried explaining this to them, but I don't blame them... what is commitment but a social standard right? I'm not saying its right or wrong... I'm not against the entire marriage fluff... just a tiny bit queasy about the compromising or the settling involved in this standard. Come guys its over-rated right? Yeah I want to get married, yeah I want to wake up with the person I love laying right besides me, but not because its "the next logical step". Yeah I might die a spinster (I want to live to be a hundred and twenty years old, but that's a separate discussion), but atleast I will not have tried to "get to the next rung on the ladder"... I wonder why a cookie cutter analogy isn't used more frequently in this context

The thing that I don't agree with is when you try to judge that if someone is not defining their own standards, they will mess up in life... that they will regret what the path that they chose. Everyone is different. While some may regret things in life, others might not - for they follow this path with conviction or they just go with the flow. For those that do regret, wouldn't they have regretted whatever it is they chose anyways?

Here's the thing... I haven't regretted anything in my life. Each event, each incident, each experience has been unique, and I have learned from it. Would I like to change anything I did in my life? Emphatic NO! Food that didn't make it to the table was well left... and I will not give up on tasting something new for fear of disliking what I taste. Life is short. I won't know until I try.

- Sonia

People need hope...

2008-02-11T21:38:00.000-08:00

... but they trust fear - Heroes, Season 1, Chapter 0.07%

Confirms my theory in an earlier post God must be a strategist

Heroes is a great series... has been so full of surprises so far

I wish that one day we get out of trusting fear

- Sonia

Human touch

2008-02-02T16:51:00.000-08:00

Has it ever happened to you? You are on the brink of an emotion, like say you are fighting hard to hold your tears, and someone just pats your back and you burst into tears? Or maybe you are in pain and a simple rub on your hand makes it feel better? Or how just hugging someone makes you feel on top of the world even though all you were having was a mediocre day!

Its amazing what the touch of another can do to you. I guess it makes us feel that we belong. Scientifically, it just brings out the resonant frequency... a smoother wave I guess... a hyper excited blood flow to a more regulated one... like the third, hybrid wave created when two waves of different amplitudes meet

I must be getting old. I woke up at 7:15 AM!! On a Saturday!!!

- Sonia

Wake up call

2008-01-27T18:37:00.000-08:00

This past week has been pretty stressful. I have had difficulty sleeping AND to add to it I tend to wake up early these days. I don't know what it is... but what if I do?

I mean today is a Sunday and I woke up at 8:30 AM!!!??? That is unheard of!!! I do get a lot done during the day, but this is not me...

There is this thought on my mind and it refuses to leave. The very thought of this thought is insane. I have had these thoughts in the past and they have only brought me misery. Every single time I've said to myself - this time it will be different. And every single time it hasn't. Every single one of these times, it has been worse than the one before. And it can't be any better this time...

Neglect of self has gotten me a sore throat. Not that I needed one. Not now anyways. I finally saw the video of "Can't stop thinking" on YouTube. Hmmm... looks like a really old song. But I love it anyways. It has great beats and... the lyrics are just perfect

- Sonia

Mars and Venus

2008-01-23T22:05:00.000-08:00

This thought just crossed my mind today... Mars is a red planet and Venus is blue.

They say men are from Mars and women are from Venus...

They also say opposites attract...

Is that why a lot of women like red and a lot of men like blue?

- Sonia

I hate UPS

2007-12-31T19:18:00.000-08:00

Dec 20th - I order a lap top bag online, pay shipping only to realize that the store is physically located at a 10 minute drive from my place

Dec 23rd - I get email from UPS saying my order will be delivered by Dec 27th

Dec 27th - I am home all day. I get an email at about 3:30 PM saying they stopped by but I wasn't around. What the fuck!?! I wasn't buzzed from the main entrance AND there was no knock on my door. Oh and BTW, there is NO missed delivery notice on my door

Dec 28th - I leave a note outside my door requesting them to knock harder. I miss a call from the entrance by 2 minutes. Now I need to leave for my doctor's appointment so even though I see the UPS truck below I can't do anything. This time there is a notice outside the main entrance saying they will try redelivering on Jan 2nd. I get another email saying they missed me. I call them to reschedule for pickup for the same day. The store is located in a remote corner and I miss their 8 PM deadline inspite of having circled that area for the past hour looking for the store. I call and confirm they are open Saturday the 29th

Dec 29th - I finally find the store BUT IT IS CLOSED! Didn't I ask them this? Anyway, I see this one guy who works there. I confirm and ask him if the store will be open on Monday Dec 31st and he confirms that it will

Dec 31st - I am not feeling very healthy, but I don't want to wait until Wednesday Jan 2nd to pick up the packet because its out of the way and I won't be on vacation then. I have been until now. I go to UPS TO FIND IT CLOSED AGAIN!!!!!

At this point, the next time on I am trying very hard to not use UPS to ship. This is not the first time this has happened to me. Earlier this year, I took a day off work just for this... only to get a similar notice of non-availability. Or maybe I will stop buying stuff online. It defies its benefits

- Sonia

Emusic rocks!

2007-12-25T11:54:00.000-08:00

The song is called "I can't stop", the artist is De-javu. I have looked for this song on Yahoo music, MSN music, Amazon, AND Nehaflix and never found the artist or the album anywhere. Mind you that I first heard this song almost 4 years ago!

Recently I got membership with this online music buying site recommended by Netflix called Emusic... Membership is $9.99/ month (with 50 free songs when you signup) and boy I have found more songs there than I have anywhere else! This song is the most amazing and unexpected Christmas gift. No no, you don't understand... I have been dying to hear this song forever!!!!!! So they had 4 versions of the song and I downloaded them all :)

One thing though is that this site only has non-top-40 artists. So there is no U2, no Nickelback, no Nelly Furtado. They try to promote individual artists. But I guess that's what makes them special because you find songs here that you wouldn't find elsewhere! At some point though, I hope they add the famous tracks and artists too. Songs are 33c/ song MP3 version only so maybe that is one reason. They also have audio books but I haven't tried those yet. I haven't quite caught on to that fad yet

- Sonia

Fascinating facts

2007-12-19T21:29:00.000-08:00

Wow I've had an information overdose!

1. There are organisms living on this very planet whose food cycle depends on availability of Hydrogen sulphide! Okay at this point I have no doubts in my mind that life exists on other planets as well

2. The hydrogen sulphide is what reacts with water to form sulphuric acid that corrodes the rocks to form caves. And what's more is that no river survives above these caves because the constant corrosion leads to the water cutting the rocks thereby burying the rivers underneath them

3. African flat lizards in the desert are so colorful they look like someone dipped them in color... except that it would have to be a darn good artist since each one of them is bright blue, green, yellow and orange. Check it out!

4. The saguaro (cacti that grow in Arizona) reminded me of my old post on when trees stopped talking. Seriously, I cannot help but think looking at some of these images of these trees being human like. They even have flowers growing on top of their head! Just like we have hair. What I haven't decided yet is whether these cacti are the evolved trees or the trees that are going to be extinct because they haven't evolved yet

5. At night, the lightworms in the caves glow like stars in the sky. What if all the stars and the planets are nothing but lightworms of another system? Life is attracted to the sun much like insects to these glowworms. The closer you try to get, the lesser are your chances of survival

- Sonia

Wise words from Arthur Dent

2007-12-17T21:10:00.001-08:00

... well actually Tim Canterbury (played by Martin Freeman II) in the Office Series...

The people you work with are people you were just thrown together with. You don't know them. It wasn't your choice. And yet you spend more time with them than you do your friends or family. But probably all you've got in common is that you walk on the same bit of carpet for eight hours a day.

Profound.

Two things come jump out at me contemplating the above -
1. Subconsciously, at some level, you probably connect with some of these people more than you do with friends or family
2. But sometimes really all you have in common is the carpet you walk on and people can be that different

I have my fair share of the first kind, and am happy to see that except for a couple folks I don't know too many people in category 2

P.S. Tim and Dawn got together finally! Nothing makes me happier than a fantasy-land-series... oh get off it! It happens in real life too!!

- Sonia

Truckless evolution?

2007-12-11T21:50:00.000-08:00

While driving on the freeway today, I was thinking how it is pretty inevitable to have something disastrous happen if to someone who gets hit by a truck. NOTE: When I refer to trucks think 16 wheelers please.

Looking at nature in the same light, makes me wonder if evolution weeded out monstrous animals like dinosaurs, dragon-like creatures, mammoths for a reason. I can see how their mere existence could cause a lot of intentional and unintentional deaths. So then evolution decided it was time to stop the loss. While I don't disagree that evolution resulted in survival of the fittest, it still points out that, however unseeming it sounds, maybe, these creatures were not fit enough to survive.

In the automobile world, I think of this in terms of the monstrous trucks. I am totally in favor of having trains and subways for transportation... the damage there is limited. Its the trucks driving alongside Beattles and PT Cruisers and smart cars that I question. While on one hand, trucks seem to be a cost-effective solution to transportation, I question their effectiveness when it comes to safety. Maybe its time we learnt from nature.

- Sonia

Can't get enough

2007-12-06T21:37:00.000-08:00

Premonition = XFiles Season 8 Episode 6 called Redrum

They just changed the gender of the person who died

- Sonia

Code reuse

2007-11-29T23:31:00.000-08:00

On the lines of the existence of the Creator of the Universe to be a computer scientist, came an additional thought...

REINCARNATION - The belief that while the soul remains the same, the body changes per cycle of life of an individual. More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation

Does it happen? - I think it does

Theory - Let's declare some variables here and assign them values...
1. Soul = Intelligent OS API
2. Body = Intelligent application written using the available intelligent OS API
3. Rebirth/ reincarnation = implementation of the intelligent application on the OS
4. Liberation (moksha/ mukti) = Deprecation of OS due to old OS APIs

The soul and the body evolves over the course of its existence, hence referred to as intelligent.

Explanation of Theory -
The Creator boots the OS making the soul available. A body is then manifested from using the basic soul. Over the course of the lifetime, the body tries to use more of its soul in order to evolve.

During this process of evolution, sometimes it "learns" things that should be made available in the OS, so it gives this feedback to the OS. If the OS already has these APIs available, it lets the body know. If the body is old enough that it cannot be written with the new APIs, the body needs to be rewritten, causing death to a body. Sometimes this might also be because in order to use the new APIs, an OS reboot is required. In the next life, it is born using the newer, more complex APIs but still using a lot of the same OS code.

Soul upgrades take place in parallel. This cycle continues until a point is reached when the soul cannot provide the necessary functions asked by the applications. At this point, the soul is liberated.

In a world such as ours, OSes are used in a varied set of applications... cell phones, MP3 players, cash registers, counters, space shuttles, GPS navigators, even microwaves! It is hard to imagine all the possible ways OSes are used for. The soul's usage on earth is just limited to its use as a microwave... and liberation means being promoted to being used as a cell phone in another world

- Sonia

Parallel thoughts - American Gangster

2007-11-18T22:24:00.000-08:00

The movie was good, the acting was good, but why the heck did it have to be two and a half hours long!??? There was absolutely no reason!!

Anyways, at some point in the movie Russell Crow states something to the fact that maybe the cops don't want to find the drug suppliers... because drug usage has generated so many employment opportunities amongst lawyers, cops, hit men, societies devoted to prevention from drugs and drug abuse etc.

Not with a negative connotation but I have felt like that about two things - the Apple IPod and Star Wars. Lets take these one at a time -

IPod - hmmm... where do I start - IPod case, dog looking IPod case, cat looking IPod case, pink IPod case, royal blue IPod case, IPod headphones, IPod speakers (dog looking, boom box looking, speakers to fit in your car, your butt and everywhere else you wish!), fake IPod prank toy, IPod docking station, IPod my foot!

Starwars - okay its an era started about 30 years ago! And Sharper Image has only just started selling R2D2 looking robots and the life saber looking torch! Toys resembling Yoda, Darth Vader, Princess Leah, Halloween costumes - Chewbacca, Han Solo, Master Yoda, video games, watches, you name it!

I cannot even begin to imagine the lost emloyment opportunities had these not been created/ made

- Sonia