First Impression

I always feel this phrase is overrated mainly when i relate to myself. Most of the time people get a first impression of myself which I am actually not.
Be it positive or negative, mostly I'm being misjudged. Even I have had to change my view on something after several impressions. For a long time I wanted to write about this.
I may have writen about this on a notepad and forgot about it, I don't know!

Our take on something depends on variety of parameters. The mood, current knowledge, preconceived notion, prejudice etc.
When I first watched Russel Peters, it was about he making fun of Indians and I disliked, I thought just for the sake of popularity he makes fun of his own peoples.
Later I realized its his way of things and he was already popular. Breaking Bad for instance, I didn't liked the first few minutes of the pilot episode.
Few years later I happened to watch it after hearing about it in Radio, I have watched it almost 3 times now and I love it.

Yesterday something happened which made me write this. I was at Sai Baba temple and I saw somebody giving preaching about 'Giving'. I don't usually like the way guru's or such devotional speakers sits in decorated chair and the god like status they get. I thought he is boasting by following similar peoples by sitting in a elevated chair. Though I initially disliked his points some were good.
His first impression on me was bad, then it turned okay in few minutes. After all he knows better than me to sit in that chair and talk.

May be the 'First impression is the Best impression' should have been 'First impression is the best impression to start thinking'. When we are impressed we stop questioning.

In certain situations, this phrase fits perfectly. For certain cases the first impression is important.

Y no post?

My prelude notion was I can blog frequently but its turns out I am not as frequent as I assumed.  Here is a crisp dope of what happened, found out during a tiny soul search.

Many thoughts that I wanted to blog were filtered out at various levels. I have branded this blog with a name so I think I should ONLY write something related to the title. That is a first level of filter. When I get an idea or topic in mind I open a notepad and jump into writing mode, but soon after few lines I feel like ‘who is going to like this?’, honestly, I dislike it after I write few lines!  I feel that is the beauty of my writing, it makes me hate what I do, instantly. Terrific power; Second filter.

Even after passing second filter I feel who's the blog going to help by the way, it turns out to be a blog of social message and I fear that the reader might think who the hell I am to write as if a hardcore social reformer. After all these I use to minimize the notepad window to give a time for myself to review the blog's worth in the future so that I might like it later. Then I realized that is not a great idea as almost all of the time I forget about that minimized notepad so now I am closing the notepad immediately without saving it. No procrastination whatsoever. Hey!

Although my ultra powerful amazingly brilliant blogs could not make into this page, they are helping me like this, with the kind of noise I make with the keyboard at least the person sitting next to me thinks that I seriously type SQL queries all the time. :) 

Is this the way to blog? I don't know for now. Though I wish to write more, I have not read much blogs. But while drafting this piece I have read few blogs and got some new ideas. Hopefully I should be augmenting my  blogging frequency in the future.

I now have an idea to get pass those filters. I gave a name to this blog and will stick to it, all other thoughts not falling in this category will go into a separate blog.  I should not care much about the reader as I don’t know who is going to fall into this page, even accidentally?  Ergo, two filters passed. Don’t know what to do with the second one, but that’s worth a filter if I deal it wisely, so I can let it stay.

Contradiction

Sometimes when I read an inspirational quote or a formula to success, I wonder why most of them are contradictory. I feel just picking one of them and sticking to it might not work for everyone every time. All of them are bound to some context. I think it is useless to follow something bluntly until the context is clear.

If you did not realize that it is useless to follow that old proverb or inspirational quote.

A - “do not plan too much and confuse yourself”, “take life as it is”,  “take life as it comes”, “be a roman in   rome”, “everything is pre-written”

B - “have a vision about your future”, “think ahead”, “be proactive”, “where do you see yourself in 5   years from now?”, “hard work never fails”

Both A and B looks like good set of advice. But a closer look reveals A and B are contradictory to each other. Given a situation, not all of these will hold good to that situation. It takes a wiser mind to figure out which applies to what.

Note: Don’t ask me if I have a wiser mind to suggest this, a food critic need not be a good cook, heard somewhere!!

Dirty India, who to blame?

There is a Tamil movie dialogue that goes like this, "Kalanchi irundha than veedu, illati athu museum”. Will that person hold the same logic while booking a hotel room?

This is really funny. I spent one year in US and went to India for Vacation. In that one year, I really admired the cleanliness of US and how everyone contributes in maintaining a cleaner environment. I throw chewing gum in dustbin, I wipe the place where I spilled something in a restaurant or wherever I go. I am just following what they do. I thought I changed after being in US. But, I instinctively spit the gum in the roadside right after I landed in Chennai. Suddenly I realized I have not changed. I just did something which I was not doing for the past one year. So I found environment do affect instincts.

Looking at the Chennai roadside gives a feel like, spitting there won't change anything as the roadside is already filthy.  

We all have fondness with cleaner things that is why movie songs are recorded in bare streets of foreign country. Given a choice we all like to lift a clean baby instead of a baby with butt full of shit!!

I feel the reason for cleaner USA and dirty India is not the people, the reason is, lack of Dustbins. We really suck at waste management.

During my wedding vacation the bus I travelled stopped in a newly started tea/snack shop which I assume was started just 2 - 3 days earlier. Everything in that place was new and shining, in short, that place had all except for one basic thing. There was no dustbin in that entire place. Every day hundreds of peoples stop there to have coffee and tea and they all threw the plastic cups right in front of the hotel. That spot had around 1000-1500 cups. Neither the owner nor the employees cared for a dustbin. Obviously the cups on the ground will be cleaned once a week or more frequently, but until then?

Lack of dustbin is the foremost reason for dirty India and the people’s attitude comes second. How many of you trash waste in roads when there is a dustbin nearby. In US when I think of trashing/throwing something 90% of the time I find a Dustbin nearby. Sadly that is not the case in India. Had that restaurant had a dustbin in place, at least 30% would have used it intentionally and 60% would have just followed them. Remaining 10% will need some more time to change or leave them as exceptions.

How to have a cleaner environment? If I were given power to decide on this, I would direct the NSS/NCC of schools and colleges to do that. Small portions done by small set of peoples when carried nationwide will have great results. Someone will not like to throw garbage in a place which his/her kid just cleaned. The National Service Scheme (NSS) is not doing any national duty. When I was in my school my teacher took us to places to clean, but I am sure this practice has reduced drastically.

Kindle younger generation and sow the seed. They are very fertile and the change WILL happen.

Destructive Pessimism

It is very true that most of us love being noticed and we do hell lot of stuffs to get noticed. That's one of many basic instincts of human. But being pessimistic just to get noticed really irks me off. I have a story of two peoples who were so destructively pessimistic and got the attention. Here goes the story..

I have recently seen a debate where two groups were arguing about Lok Pal bill. I want to pin point (gun-point, if i could!!!)two persons who were destructively pessimistic about Lok Pal. It’s apparent that they wanted to get noticed among others.

One of them was a lady who said what happens if Lok Pal peoples don't do their duties in the future? What happens when Lok Pal team work like CBI who are little biased these days? She also said instead of Lok Pal she wanted to change the attitude of all the people to avoid corruption. For heaven’s sake I do not know how that is possible. She wanted to punish Anna Hazare because she sees hunger strike as a suicide threat. She kept going like this and was in the camera frame for more than 5 minutes. She got what she wanted, attention. But what is the social outcome? To me, having Lokpal is better than not having Lok Pal. I am sure that lady would knew it already.

Person number two was a guy who talked in a very high tone about having quota for SC/ST in Lok Pal committee. I wonder why the hell we need to have a quota. Corruption is across the board. He should protest if it is said that the Lok Pal person should not be a SC/ST guy. Reason is simple, out of 5 seats, Prime Minister takes one and Supreme Court Judge takes one and remaining are 3 seats and that guy needs quota for that. Brilliant thinking dude. I feel Quotas are for poor peoples and a poor person might not be in a position to fill those 3 seats as he might not be aware of the Government and Corruption at Nation level. Well if that poor person is well educated to know such things, he wouldn't have been a poor person. Fact. But still that person got attention and applauds on his talk about minorities.

An Optimistic invented the Airplane and Car and the Pessimistic found Parachute and seat belts. Here the Pessimism is constructive which found a way to avoid effects but not the subject. In contrast, a destructive Pessimistic would have avoided the invention of Airplane and Car altogether as they might cause accident and argued we have legs to walk.

I see these two peoples in this story as Destructive Pessimistic. They pass wrong messages in main stream media and corrupt the minds of a considerable amount of people. Somebody wanted to say this to those peoples, "Grow Up nerds!".

Hello World - first blog

Though the title says otherwise, this is not my first blog. I had been writing blogs for many years. I should say I am not blogging for the last 6 years because there is no need to do so. The above statement is made out of the fact that I consider examinations in Schools/Collages as blogging. Yeehah.. Now most of you would agree with me I guess. Peoples like me have blogged in our exams all the time. I even blogged in Maths and I passed just because there is a lovely concept where the teacher give marks for steps. Somehow my blogs were relevant and I passed, mostly. I do not have a copy of those blogs, but I wish I could.

Yeah, this is my first online blog and now I know there is no Syllabus and time tables to adhere. I am the king. I came across blogging 2-3 years ago and wanted to have my own blog. Here its happening. Late but still I'm glad its happening.My mind works better when I write but while I talk it works the other way. I praise the Guy who invented online blogging and publish this. Does this blog looks lame? well, I do not know for now.