Dixie Chicks - Not Ready to Make Nice

Probably everyone of you know that Dixie Chicks won 5 Grammy Awards this year including the Song and Album of the Year. But I'll still mention about it, because I have been listening and viewing their song video over and over. Sometimes simple things like watching a song or movie gives you lot of happiness, I want to register in blog the joy this song and video has given me for the moment. 'Not Ready to make Nice' is one of the nicest songs I have heard lately. If you haven't heard the song, listen to it right now, it's not worth missing.

See the original video below (they even performed at Grammy's)

In March 2003 just before the US invasion of Iraq, Natalie Maines (lead singer) provoked a controversy by stating publicly in a concert "and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas". Read the whole Political controversy on wikipedia.

This song is their response to the 12 words that erupted the controversy, anger, boycott, criticism and the death threats the band received and their nonacceptance of the war and their stand on Peace.

What I liked?
I like the passion and power with which they sing.
What I loved?
I love the statement, the courage, the music they play. Go Girls!

Best Photos from the World Press

We all take lots of pictures of ourselves, when we travel, when there's an occasion, party, marriage, birthday and with the world going digital it's been very easy to store and share these memories. Sometimes the best pictures are taken by random amateur photographers and whenever I see these random pics on Flickr or Photobucket I get encouraged to learn and better understand the art of photography rather than just clicking them from a distance without any understanding of the camera, lens or the light.

I came across the website for the World Press Photo organization (non-profit) which organizes the worlds largest and most prestigious annual press photography contest. World Press Photo of the Year 2006 goes to a picture by a US photographer of some young Lebanese driving through a South Beirut neighborhood devastated by war. Also while you're there don't forget to check out the Prizewinners Galley 2007 There are some mind-blowing pictures especially of the US marine returning back to marry (Portraits), Darfur Refugees (General News), Settler woman struggles with Israeli security officer (People in the News).
Go help yourself and see something nice! (Winners of the contest from 1955-2006)

While on the topic of pictures/photos, Techcrunch gives a nice overview of the Online Photo editing websites. This is a very hot space and there are lots of Web 2.0 companies in this area.

Anyone wants to share any of their random work ?

Quote of the day

"The more I think about things, the more I see no rhyme or reason in life -- no one knows why some things work out, and some things don't -- why some of us get lucky -- and some of us..."
- Bella (Gina McKee) in the movie Notting Hill. Notting Hill is one of my favorite movies of all time.

I'm fascinated by the randomness and luck in life, though I don't think about luck/randomness while doing anything good/bad but time and again I realise after the fact why some complicated things work out so quietly and ordinarily and some simple issues give you such a hard time. I believe perspectives and attitudes in life plays an important role in how you pursue each day, week.... life, work. It's remarkable how people having positive attitude always end up having happy experiences and outcomes even in a new situation.
For e.g. A survey in NYC for people looking for street parking in NYC every night/evening always find parking, not because they know the streets or spots to look but because of their attitude.

I'm sold.

Talks and Discussions - Bhushan

I invited Bhushan Shah for writing this post, he's the B dude I mentioned in the previous post who recently visited me from Chicago. He has taken forward the discussion of conversations and has elaborated his views on his migration process to the US as a student and asked me to take this post further as a discussion. So I urge all of you to write about your experiences if you ever stayed away from your home country, families as students or on work. People who've never gone through this process can give their views (if any) on what stopped them or what they think about the process. I've been a passive reader (without putting my comments) to many blogs, but this discussion would kind of give me a reality check on how many people actually visit my blog (not that it's important).
So for discussing it further write in your comments. Bhushan would surely appreciate it. Thanks!

For clarification, I'm the 'PJ' in the post and those are my initials. Some of my friends from SAKEC have given me that nick and it's one of my many nick names.

So after much nudging from PJ I am sending the following for his blog.

First of all let me thank him for his great hospitality and I do hope to return the great treatment. I feel the same about meeting old friends or new acquaintances. The interesting thing about meeting old friends is that the conversation begins where one left off, the time passes but the bonds remain as strong as ever. Not particularly sure about being more or less mature, but one thing does remain constant and that is “change”. I believe our reaction and adaptation to change shape our experiences and eventually who we are.

We had an opportunity to talk about myriad of topics and it could have been a broader discussion had time permitted. The interesting thing about it all is that PJ and I were addressing all of them with the perspective of “FOBs” (I don’t consider us Fresh of the Boat, but for lack of a better term for people in our shoes). Now as I write this note I wonder how the whole discussion would have shaped had we been in India, or even if the same topics would have been discussed.

Five years back the decision to come to the US was a no brainer, all of us pretty much were swept by the euphoria. Now students considering coming to the US have much higher stakes to evaluate. All of us are risk takers and the differentiating factor is our appetite for risk, some take the plunge and others keep wondering “what if”. The challenges of surviving in the US have been far from subtle but with every struggle there is a sense of achievement and the satisfaction of being fit enough to have survived it. Not sure how everybody else feels about the whole migration process but I would surely like to hear about it. I constantly struggle with the fact that no amount of success or monetary remuneration can compensate for the time we spend away from our families.

Someone once told me that “Life isn’t simple”, my instant retort was that “Life is as simple as we want it to be”. Have we all then added more variables to the equation of life?

Knowing that PJ and I are from traditional Gujarati families had we both decided not to come to the US, we would have met over a Sunday dinner in Mumbai with our respective spouses and the discussion would have been completely different. I also wouldn’t be distracting you with this blog :).

Saludos!

These were excellent thoughts and was very well written. Thanks Bhushan for writing this one for me. This exercise will foster good exchange of individual perspectives and views and hope it encourages you to write your own blog. I'm sure it would be a very good read.


Here's the last day (late night at Dunkin Donuts) picture with Bhushan during his recent visit.

Whatever you want it to be ..... - PJP

I thought of doing something different for this post. I invited one of my FOB buddy to write a post on my blog. (will invite some more friends over time). I want all my friends to start and maintain their blog. So this exercise will give them some food for thought. I follow some of my friend's blog and it gives me a chance to see a different side of all them which I don't see while we're together hanging out. So without further adu, I introduce my good friend PJP (a.k.a Smiley baba, Hrithik) who has written this post after lot of coaxing. He's one of the people who has a profound impact on me and I'm sure on many others, he always does the right thing at the right time and I admire it. Be generous in your comments and encouarge him to start writing regularly. So here is Mr. PJP......

Well my very dear friend invited me to write an article in his blog space. For some reason he has a misconception and thinks I have good writing skills (or maybe he was just pulling my leg which I didn’t realize ....until now) In any case I thought of writing something but then the difficult part was to come up with a topic. Should I write about the Indo-US nuke bill (which by the way passed with a whooping 85-12 in the senate) or should I write about my reaction after reading a blog of an Iraqi girl (articles that makes you realize and appreciate how fortunate you are). Should I write about my conversation with an old college friend which refreshed my college days or should I write about semiconductor and technology which I work on. So as creative as I am, I thought of writing on the topic of the topic itself.

I think the topic of the blog tells the kind of person the writer is in great detail. Is he emotional? Is he a person with political views? Is he very observant? Is he a tech savvy? Usually you would find a same kind of theme in different blogs written by the same writer. It’s more like all the Karan Johar movies (infact now even the songs in his movies confuse the hell out of me.) I find it interesting to understand the psychology of the writer. Some bloggers have money as their motivation; some are just pouring their heart out hoping someone is reading it. For some writing is just a passion. Some are writing to enlighten the world (or atleast that’s what I think they think). Of course then there are people like me who don’t know why and what they are writing. My friend told me that he does not care who reads his blogs, he just writes it and feels satisfied. I was impressed by that thought.

I guess you can write about anything and everything, share it with the world and still have more to talk about. Recently, researchers have analyzed the dynamics of how blogs become popular. There are essentially two measures of this: popularity through citations, as well as popularity through affiliation. In anycase I am not looking for popularity but just wanted to write something down. A question before I sign off : Reading my blog what kind of person am I ?

Don't forget to answer his question....

Here's a pic from our Chicago trip in Dec 2004 after both of us sailed through some tough times.

Life without Experience is no fun Life

My colleague recently received an e-mail from a young English woman who has 19 million in her name (in some will or trust) which she can receive only after she gets married. So apparently she's looking for someone to marry her and she'll give 30% of the money she'll receive to the person who marries her, so my colleague asked me if I'm available (he was joking)..... I was like yaa yaa sure, I wont have to work for the rest of my life, I'll retire .....

But than as I was thinking about this, I don't think I want to get/earn money like this, what's the use of getting money this way, what's my experience in this. I want to work to earn and I don't ever want to retire. I want to have the satisfying experience of working and want a fulfilling life which I feel I'll be missing without life's experiences. The more I understand about life and see people around me, I see we all have different backgrounds, different upbringings, different thoughts about pursuing life and we each carry our unique experiences on our shoulder each day and share with others in different breadths. We all talk to each other about our positive and negative experiences, may be however simple they are like dining at a new restaurant, or visiting some cool place in Italy or Hampton's, or your experience of visiting a particular lawyer or accountant. And we always see famous actor/director/artist/politician giving interviews about their life experiences. There are so many websites which are dedicated for product reviews and user forums where unknown people discuss their ideas and experiences.

However, there are somethings in life which I feel have to be experienced personally, you cannot take someone else's word for it.
- Experience like travelling through a foreign country where you don't know a single soul.
- Experience like coming to a new country for studies
- Experience like doing something really noble alone, where you're touching people's lives who cannot do things for themselves.
- Experience of sailing through the rough waters of entrepreneurship.
- Experience of fighting for something you feel is right (Y4E, Save Darfur, etc)
- Experience of falling in and falling out of love (both are important)

I do not like to form my opinion based on someones experience, but it's always good to listen to what they've to say even if you do not entirely agree. It's always prudent to listen to what your elders/parents have to say even when you feel there is a generation gap or difference in circumstances, because although the young person has never been old, the old person once was young.

Some mistakes that can be avoided after listening to others experiences:
- Watching a bad movie or eating at a restaurant your friend has told you to avoid.
- Avoid visiting a bad business/accountant/lawyer/doctor about whom you've read or heard. (I recently visited a very bad/rude Rental office when I was looking for a new apt, have been kicking myself ever since, because I had read/heard about their bad behavior)
- Making the same mistakes over and over again.
- Avoid consulting/listening to pessimist people because it's remarkable how "happy people" just seem to find the bright side of a new situation.
- Living an unhealthy life by either smoking/eating junk/no exercise and than living on medicines.
- Rash/Stupid/drunk driving and than sitting in the hospital with broken bones with pain and anguish for yourself and others (Read: I'm not against people drinking, I'm against drinking and driving).

I read a very nice quote "Although the young person has never been old, the old person once was young. When you look up the age ladder, you look at strangers; when you look down the age ladder, you are always looking at versions of yourself. As an adult, those fantastic younger incarnations can seem either long left behind or all too continuous with who you are now."

Peace & Love always.........