The 40min investment

For the last ~2 weeks my work life has gone crazy, average working hours are from 9:30AM-9:00PM with a lunch break of half hour and most times it boils down to grab something and eat in the lab. There was no break over the weekend either. Due to this, I was going home tired and drained every day. Because of the time I reach home, dinner was late and hence sleeping late and all such bad habits added to the agony.

In my previous life where I was doing simulations, I could take breaks while computer was crunching numbers and head to the gym or go for a run or do something physical to keep my spirits up, but the current situation is being stuck in the lab and there is more work for me and less work for the computer. In short no physical exercise is possible. 

Last night I got tired of this routine and decided to do something about this, of course there were several solutions ranging from taking time off for a day (if possible) or so and sleep through or go to the gym early in the morning before getting to work and so on. After a short analysis I figured, I do not lack sleep and hence sleeping longer wasn’t going to help; exercising early in the morning is good but somehow it doesn’t fit me (I have tried this in the past and concluded that evening is the best time for this).  

The answer to my problem was in the seven letter word “Sadhana”, the definition of which could vary depending upon whom you talk to; From my definition it is the routine that gets completed in 40mins or so and has to be done first thing in the morning. So, I set the alarm and made up my mind to wake up when the alarm goes off and slept a peaceful sleep.

Today morning I completed the 40min event and went on to do my other daily activities, I could see a remarkable difference in my energy levels through out the day. As usual I had a couple of meetings late in the evening and action items to catch up after the meeting and by the time I went home I was less than half as tired as I would have been otherwise.

I could have invested this 40mins every day and felt the same way everyday but I am not that disciplined (read lazy).

ps: if you want to know the what I am talking about do the YES+ or the Art of Living Course.     

Real or Fake Christmas tree?

Its Christmas and lot of people do buy a Christmas tree. There is always a debate whether to get a real one or a fake one. I got this on my company email list and felt it’s worth sharing.

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If you use a Christmas tree each year, you may wonder whether a real or fake tree is a better option. From an environmental perspective, the answer may surprise you. But we also want to consider the financial and health aspects too.

Show me the money - The fake tree usually wins the economic argument, as long as you use it for several years. Most real trees cost less than $100 for one use, while fake trees usually cost $200-500 for many uses.

The greener choice - While chopping down a living tree may seem “un-green,” it’s actually the more sustainable choice when you consider what the tree is made of and what it does to the environment when created and disposed. Fake trees are made with polyvinyl chloride (or PVC, otherwise known as vinyl), one of the most environmentally offensive forms of non-renewable, petroleum-derived plastic. 85% are shipped from China, so you have lots of transportation emissions, and more than likely pollution from coal power plants. On the other hand, real trees absorb CO2 during their life, are usually replaced with a new tree, and can be recycled / composted after the holidays.  

It’s worth noting that the most eco-friendly way to enjoy a Christmas tree is to buy a live tree with its roots intact from a local grower, and then replant it in your yard once the holiday has passed. However, since trees are dormant in the winter, live trees should spend no more than a week indoors lest they “wake up” and begin to grow again in the warmth of your home. If this happens there is a good chance the tree will not survive once it is returned to the cold winter outdoors and replanted.

It’s NOT healthy to hug a fake tree  - In addition to PVC, fake trees contain lead and other additives designed to make the otherwise rigid PVC more malleable. Unfortunately many of these additives have been linked to liver, kidney, neurological and reproductive system damage in lab studies on animals. The Children’s Health Environmental Coalition warns that fake trees “may shed lead-laced dust, which may cover branches or shower gifts and the floor below the tree.” So if you have or get a fake tree, check if there’s a label telling you to avoid inhaling or eating any dust or parts that may come loose.

Lastly, fake trees don’t have the real pine smell, and if yours does I would be suspicious. ;-)

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Call to Action – If you buy a Christmas tree, get a real one from a local farmer and have it composted or mulched afterwards. Click here for more ideas -  5 Ways to Green your Christmas Tree.

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When the intentions are strong . . . . .

This incident happened nearly a year ago. Back in 2009 we made a trip to India and in that we had planned to visit the Bangalore Ashram. The reason to visit the ashram was two fold, one was to see the place itself and the other was to buy stuff from the divine shop in the ashram. All was well and we picked a date to visit the ashram and since we were travelling from Mysore to Bangalore we added couple more items to our agenda.

We reached Bangalore as we had planned and thanks to my laid back attitude and inadequate planning, by the time we reached the Ashram there was a satsang about to start and because of which they had closed both the divine shop and the main meditation hall. We were told they will open it after the satsang, we were a bit disappointed but we got to see guruji and that took away half the disappointment. Since we had to return to Mysore the same day we couldn’t wait for the satsang to finish and then the divine shop to open. So, we came back empty handed from the Ashram.

After returning to Mysore, we checked out the local music stores to see if they had any of the CDs we wanted and all we got in return was bad (read angry) customer support. All avenues were closed and I was thinking we should make another trip to Bangalore before we get back to the US.

A day or so later some volunteers from Art of living Mysore came around distributing flyers about their upcoming courses and events. My in-laws took the flyer and kept it on the table. I saw the flyer and I remember making comments on its design and sandhya took it for safe keeping and we forgot all about it as we had a wedding to prepare for (sandhya’s sisters wedding).

One fine evening I had a brain flash and it occurred to me that if the Art of Living Mysore is a big enough chapter, then they probably have their own divine shop and I could get my CDs from there. So, I called the number on the flyer and the lady on the other side was really nice (true with any AOL volunteer whose phone number is listed on the flyer) and she told me that they do not have a divine shop yet but there is something better going on in Mysore. She directed me to Mysore Dasara exhibition where Art of Living foundation had a stall.

Next day evening we strolled to the exhibition grounds and visited the stall, we found all the things we wanted and much much more. I was ecstatic, it had saved my extra trip to Bangalore and since I was in the exhibition grounds I visited the Navakarnataka press stall also and got to pick up couple of books from there as well.

Later It occurred to me, when the intentions are strong, nature will show a way and all I had to do was to energize my brain cells and do a little effort.              

Why don’t they just call them what they are?

I saw this in an infirmary and figured its worth a click and share, but apparently it didn’t seem to make an impact on people who work there; I saw the duty nurse smoking outside the infirmary right after I saw this poster.  

What really motivates us?

Ever wondered why linux is still thriving and non profit organizations continue to flourish, the following video might shed some light on the same. The narration is a bit fast, might need couple of revisions before the message sinks in. 

Top ten reasons to do the YES+ course

Ever since I did the YES+ course, I have been advertising it to people. All these days I have been telling that it is a fun course and everybody should experience it once. Over time this rhetoric has grown stale, I decided to compile a list of what I liked about the course. Here is the top 10 list, not in any order though.       

1. Seva -  Not that I am a veteran in Art of Living courses but I do know a lot about courses offered and I think this is the only non residential course which has seva(service) aspect built in the course.

2. Designed by Bawa – If you do not who he is, here is his blog. He is one of my favorite teachers and one of the few teachers who respond to emails and queries on a regular basis.

3. Coolest teachers in town – The course is taught by the coolest teachers in town, ask any YES+ participant and they will vouch for me.

4. Games – If you thought other courses had games, do the YES+ to know the difference

5. Wisdom through practical – The course points are taught as practical than theory

6. No intellectual discussions – For someone like me who really cannot comprehend Yoga Vasistha or similar ones, but would like to get practical tips to make the existing life better, here is the course for you.

7. Food – There is never a scarcity of food in any Art of Living course and the food is usually catered by volunteers who aren’t doing the course. Here  in this course it is different.

8. Awareness about meat eating – Apart from Rajima’s part-1 course, this is one of the few courses that attempts to raise awareness about impact of meat eating on the planet.

9. Yes party at the end – The last day is truly graduation day

10. Making new friends – The processes in the course are different than other courses and we bonded way more during this course than others

Keep in mind I am have not included the usual goodies of Sudarshana Kriya and meditations.

Welcome to the world Avni

I haven’t been able to post in the last few weeks, for once it is not the lack of ideas but lack of time.

Thanks to my newborn daughter Avni, life has been pretty hectic.I admit, she is a good baby who only complains only when she needs food or a diaper change and we do have a lot of help at home but fatherhood ain’t easy; but from observation, I think it is easier than motherhood. I had written an article on her birth and will post it some time if it clears the review.

Here is a pic of Avni for you all to enjoy.

Columbia river gorge drive

The famous Columbia river of Oregon has carved through the mountains and created the gorge and the scenic highway, which was our destination on day 2 of our Portland trip. We started off a bit earlier than previous day and started our drive to the gorge, idea was to drive through the highway and end up at Mt. St Hood by dusk and drive back.    

Columbia river gorge scenic highway is a narrow and windy road that runs parallel to a highway. True to its name, it is scenic, on the  way before entering the gorge itself we witnessed some beautiful farms and view points. Since it was a bit early in the morning the view from the view points were foggy.   

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Driving along the gorge we realized the gorge has a ton of water falls, some big some small, some have nicely built access and some are more obscure.

The first one we stopped at was a small water fall with a short hike, there was a ranger led program going on at the same time we were there. We couldn’t attend the program but managed to hear snippets from the ranger. It was from him that I heard that the gorge has over a 100 water falls.

The next one was a more obscure one with no clear view of the falls and we had to do a couple of miles round trip to clearly view the falls, which we had to pass, but the hiker in us wanted to do at least a small hike and hence we took the small hike to the famous Multnomah falls. The distance was small but it had more ups and downs. Thanks to the rain and the abundant shade in the gorge there were a lot of ferns growing underneath the tall trees. Frankly, I had never seen such lush green fern undergrowth till then. The path had a magic of its own. It took a while for us to reach our destination but it was well worth the time.

Multnomah falls, is the biggest falls on the gorge and a true tourist attraction. It is not as big as the other falls in the world but definitely very scenic. It is a cascade of 2 water falls and a viewing bridge in front of the falls. It is a small hike up to the bridge to view the falls in full glory and the bridge was real crowded. There was a hike going up to top of the falls which we passed. Since it was time for lunch we stopped at the restaurant near the falls for food, being vegetarians the only option we had was the burger and the waitress commented that they get a lot of visitors from Texas and I thought we Texans need some escape from heat every now and then.

Driving along we made a stop at one last water falls called Horse tail falls, Sandhya was very happy to for she could take off her shoes and get her feet wet and I was happy to click pictures of the falls and her. If I remember right, this was the last water fall along the scenic highway and the road merged on to the actual highway after this.          

Driving along the highway towards Mt Hood, we saw the exit for Bonneville Dam and after a couple of moments of hesitation we took it. The dam wasn’t much and Sandhya wasn’t impressed at all. But it was almost full and due to security reasons they didn’t allow us any where on the dam. 

The exit on the road that would have led to Mt Hood was so backed up that we passed Mt Hood and made a U turn and head home. The drive back even though not the official scenic route but it was still pretty and scenic most of the way.

On the next post I will write about Crater Lake and Redwoods.  

An evening with Swami Suryapada

On Friday September 17 2010, Art of Living Austin had the pleasure of hosting Swami Suryapada, a traveling saint from India. Since he was in town for a few hours we had to be satisfied with a satsang and nothing more.

I had heard about swamiji earlier through some senior teachers like Rajima and Commanderji but had never met him in person.  So, needless to say I was excited that he will be coming to town. By the time we managed to reach the venue he had already entered the hall and was working on his Harmonium. In the first impression I was blown away by the simplicity of his attire and in some aspects he resembled the guru himself, the beard and the long hair added to the resemblance.

The satsang (or as I usually refer to as Sat Sang) was very different, instead of starting with random songs, he started us off with an initiation mantra which he recited in sanskrit and then we sang a song in the praise of lord Ganesh, next song was in the praise of the guru or teacher and the very next one was in praise of goddess sharada (goddess of learning). At the end of each song he would recite a few more verses in sanskrit. His voice was so captivating and his pronunciation of the mantras felt so authentic that the whole room had gone into a trance. After these three we sang for a while and by then I had lost track of time.

At around 7:45PM or 8:00PM, he said lets meditate and I was expecting we would be getting all the kids out, closing the doors and dimming the lights but to my great surprise none of it happened. He just asked us to clasp our hands above the head and start chanting “Narayani Narayani” and after the continuous chant for a while he asked us to lower our hands and guided us through a small procedure and asked us to open the eyes. I felt  lighter, more energetic, I felt I had meditated.

After the meditation, he gave a small knowledge session. He was natural, dynamic, effortless, completely in the moment, spontaneous and had an awesome sense of humor. His talk did not feel pre meditated or targeted towards anybody nor did he have any specific agenda. I felt perhaps after sri sri himself, here was one person who could translate the complicated knowledge of spirituality into a concrete, tangible, practical wisdom. He had the audience captivated. When somebody asked if this talk were recorded, he said all it matters is it being recorded up here (he was pointing to the head). He had the breadth and depth of knowledge.

I would have loved to listen to him if he had spoken the whole night, but the evening had to come to an end and we ended with the kannada song “baghyada lakshmi baramma”. Many people in the audience couldn’t understand what he was singing but his voice, music and the tune made us all enjoy the song.

It was truly a pleasure hosting him and spending the evening with him. Thanks to all who made it happen. I only wish he were here for a longer time and had conducted a course or two. If you ever get a chance to be in his presence, do not miss the chance.

The post would have been more effective if I had posted some pics from the satsang, I do not have any with me and will post them once I get them.  

Portland trip part – 1 : Rose garden and Japanese garden

Me and Sandhya love traveling and would love to take time off from Austin few times a year. So, when the time came to decide on where do we want to go for this year’s vacation, the choice wasn’t easy to make. Considering Sandhya’s present condition hiking was ruled out and hence most of our favorites were crossed from the list. No California and no Utah left us with east coast or north west coast. We picked the north west when my brother announced that he will be moving to Portland for his new job.

When we landed in Portland, it was a near perfect 70F temperature and the greenery of the place completely impressed me. There were a ton of rose plants planted along the side walks. While in Portland we visited a few places in the city, took a road trip to Crater lake and Redwood national park. Also, did a road trip to Mt St Helens. In this part I will cover the places in Portland.

Rose Garden: My brother who is currently a resident of Portland and had visited the places before mentioned that Portland Rose garden and Japanese gardens were worth a visit.  He also cautioned us that it is off season for roses. We wanted to start the trip slow and easy, we drove to the rose garden. First thing that amazed me was there were a ton of roses for the off peak season and the park visit was free. They had multi colored roses, some specially bred and dedicated to great personalities. they had roses with single layer of petals to roses with multiple layers of petals. I was amazed with both the quality and quantity of roses in the garden. Some of the roses were in bunches while some were individual, some roses were shrubs while some were individual plants.

           

           

          

They truly had some unique colored roses. Considering it was  a weekday and afternoon there were considerable number of tourists in the place. I had to control my shutter finger and see the roses through the naked eyes rather than through the camera lens. The fragrance in the garden is worth mentioning and sad there is no technology to capture the same. It was very colorful and picturesque. I wish I had taken an over all picture of the rose garden to share. Since the garden is on a hill top it also offers a beautiful view of the down town In the end, I recommend rose garden and it is worth the time.

Japanese Garden : Just above the hill top from the rose garden is the famous Portland Japanese garden. There is a small road that we could walk up or there is a free ride shuttle ride to take us up to the park. I have to mention the effort the shuttle driver made to accommodate a handicap women and her scooter into the shuttle, made me think this guy should run for the senate or even better governor. Unlike the rose garden visiting Japanese garden costs money ($10 entry fee). It is a nice place but we weren’t completely blown away by the garden, may be our lack of understanding for Japanese culture or our eyes were colored by such beautiful roses. The garden had some unique and nice things and supposedly one of the Japanese ambassadors to US had told that this place is the most authentic Japanese garden outside Japan.

      

      

They had a few unique things and it was real clean and well maintained. I think we spent less time at the Japanese garden than we spent at the rose garden. After the Japanese garden we thought we would head towards Powell book house but on the way we stopped for coffee and shopped at a locally owned grocery store, which my brother said there were a lot of them in Portland. Finally instead of Powell book house we headed home. 

Day 2 of the trip we headed towards Columbia river gorge.

Publicizing events at Farmers Market – Event Day

By the time I reached the market, Sanjeev had already set up the table. Geeta came around the same time I reached. We had good neighbors on both side, on one side was the cloth seller and other was the community radio KO-OP. Here is a list of things I re collect from the day.

• The lady who organizes farmers market is truly sweet and very very accommodating.
• People who visited the market during the morning 9:00AM-10:00AM were mostly interested in grabbing veggies and fruits and very few stopped by our booth.
• For a lot of other folks it was a family outing with kids and dogs and they weren’t interested in us either. In short our target audience was pretty narrow.  
• Our neighbors from KOOP studio told us it usually takes a few weeks before it registers into people’s mind that we do exist. 
• I realized it is tough to get people’s attention, even with free food to offer. We started of by asking people “would you be interested in learning about yoga and meditation” and modified over time to “would you like to try our food” and tried to sneak in a flyer while they were enjoying the food  
• We encountered the whole spectrum in the market. Some donated generously for small things, while some took all we had to offer and didn’t drop a dime into our donation box.
• There was one lady who mentioned she has seen our center on N. Lamar Blvd.
• I remember one young girl walking from stall to stall asking stall owners if they were interested in the $2 hibiscus tea, I figured that was one way to keep the kids busy on a Saturday. I think she was an obedient daughter for she came around couple of times to see if we had changed our minds about the tea.      
• Texas heat was brutal, it was bearable in the morning but became real bane by afternoon. Thanks to our neighbors we managed to get some shade every now and then.  
• I was amazed to hear that our neighbor cloth seller lady was a barsana dham devotee and she moved to Austin for that sole reason.
• In hindsight I think people had trouble understanding vegetable puffs, we had to explain it as vegetable lean pockets but made at home (just my opinion).
• Juice became a dare, it was a big hit amongst us who were tabling the event and the few who drank it, but most people refused to try the juice. Those who tried were completely blown away when we mentioned the ingredients.  
• Henna was a hit, Geeta is really talented. She truly catered to her customers with each one getting a unique design to fit their personality. It seemed to me that she has already planned for a alternate career, if ever the need arises.
• By the time we were done, we had given away almost all puffs and devoured the juice ourselves completely.
• One last thing I learnt was it was not sufficient to buy the canopy sold in the market to get shade at the table, we need some heavy objects to ground the canopy and prevent it from flying. 

All in all it was a unique experience, would I do it again? yes, but not in the same scale and would like to get more people involved. It would have been really nice to rotate people at the table.  

 

Publicizing events at Farmers Market – Prep Day

The volunteers at the Art of Living Austin foundation have a long history with Farmers Market, every now and then we show up there to hand out flyers regarding our events and courses. A passive approach of handing out people flyers and trying to make people aware of us.

Our dear friend Sanjeev decided change this and made a plan to put up a stall at the sunset valley farmers market. The idea was, with a stall located inside the market we get to grab people’s attention for a few seconds than we would have if we had just passively handed out flyers. I had to agree it was quite an innovative idea and it hadn’t been done during my time the foundation. He floated the idea amongst the like minded people and the consensus came to “it is a good idea, but we need to sell food or do some activity. Just having a plain stall isn’t enough”. After some debate on what to do we decided to sell Bawa’s Juice concoction (Orange+Apple+Carrots+Ginger) and vegetable puffs and do henna painting for a donation.

All was well till Friday afternoon when we realized we need to have a permit to sell food items at the market. So, we decided to put all the items up for donation. After completing the shopping work by Friday afternoon, the crew (Me, Sanjeev and Sandhya) assembled at our place on Friday evening to start the prep work.             

 

We all had our work cut out, I was put in charge of the juicer and Sanjeev and Sandhya took up cutting veggies and boiling them for the puff. Despite some oppositions from dear Sanjeev, veggie pizza with bread sticks was the dinner. By the end of the night had cut and steamed a ton of veggies, had made more than a gallon of juice (no water added). There was some drama too with our juicer refusing to work half way through the process. I guess it needed some rest for it came back on after a break. 

Next day Sandhya woke up early in the morning and baked over 40 veggie puffs. I helped her a tad bit here and there, but majority of the work was handled by her.  

By Saturday 8:30AM we were all set with vegetable puffs, we buried the juice in 10lbs of ice, loaded up our cars and headed to the market.  Geeta joined us directly at the farmers market with henna. 

The simple idea that Sanjeev came up now looked real. What we learned during our time in the market?, I will write about it in the next part.

No wonder they are called fanbois

“No Phone is perfect but IPhone is more perfect seemed to be the premise of what Steve Jobs was said during his press conference last week.

While I was browsing the tech usual websites I came across the article “RIM, HTC say Steve Jobs is full of it”. There is not much fun in the article itself as it quotes the statements from HTC and RIM regarding Apple’s statements. The surprise was waiting for me in the comments section, where some person has collected all(most) possible videos on YouTube and  other websites that show the signal degradation for different phones and posted it.

I didn’t know if I should appreciate the persons work and dedication or to think some people are so jobless. But wait these are apple fanbois we are dealing with, we should expect this kind of stuff from them :).

I was concerned the link might go away so decided to put a picture of the links this person has posted.    

Responsibility brings joy

Last weekend we had a get together party. After the food was served and most people had left, some of us old timers decided to hang out for some more time and do what we do best, “HAVE FUN”. While some were enjoying singing and dancing and others were busy catching up with things, me and a few others were entertaining some of the kids who still hadn’t left the party.

We were using all kinds of props like white board markers, balls and pens to keep the kids occupied and entertained. During one of these activities with the pens we started demonstrating how to catapult a pen, one of the kids who I must say is really smart decided that it is more fun to catapult more pens at once. It was fun and the pens flew some distance and “only the flying pens” caught the attention of the Mom. In no time the disciplining session started and the kid was protesting against it, I watched for a few moments thinking I shouldn’t get in between mom and kid. But some how I couldn’t digest the fact that the kid was being punished for no fault of its own and I went up to mom and told her its not the kids fault but us(adults) and convinced her to let go. May be she walked away with some anger towards me and I was feeling bad for the whole situation. All of these vanished away the moment the kid smiled and hugged me when I told the kid that there won’t be any punishment and I have told mom that it was my fault.

Later in time, when I was reflecting on the events for the day, I realized the reason I rose up to mom and confessed my wrong doing instead of the kid facing the brunt is because I had been in the receiving end myself quite a few times. I now believe all those situations could have worked out better only if the responsible adults had done what I did.

It truly was nobody’s fault, the kid did not commit a crime as it thought it was having fun, we thought we were having fun and mom thought the kid was acting frenzy without knowing the complete situation. For me it was a situation of “responsibility brings joy”, (want to know more about this, do the August YES+).

I hope the kid got the balloon it was promised earlier in the evening.

Windows Live writer

For my fellow bloggers, specially who use blogspot. We know how painful it is to use the editor that is built in to blogspot.  From my personal experience I always had trouble with inserting images into the blog and adding text around the image without getting into the HTML or I want to insert 1 line between paragraphs and I have to take whatever blogger decides to give me, more I try to modify the worse blog looks (this doesn’t apply to people using Google reader though).  

While I was doing some research I came across this great editor just built for blogging, called Windows Live Writer. I think it is the second best tool developed by Microsoft (first of course is excel).

The editor is pretty light, loads fast and will directly link to the blog and can do a 1 step publishing. What you see is what you get. No 2nd   guessing on line spacing and paragraph spacing and all. 

The image controls are also way more than offered by blogger (I have inserted a test image and tilted it just to prove the same). I could link more than one blog to the editor and could switch back and forth.

Unlike Blogger, where you need click on “preview the post” to preview the blog, the Live writer has a preview tab right next to the “Edit” tab (sweet). Less than a day of using it and I am already a fan. Try it and I am sure you will love it too.

Just like any other Microsoft products it is compatible with windows only and hence will not help my buddies who use “Open Source”.     

Dog entertaining a kid

Another example of a domestic help, dog entertaining a kid. I wish I could get one of these. 

Parrot doing Laundry

Ever Wondered you had a domestic help like this?

Thing that caught me was the curiosity of the parrot. 

Shlokas

As most of us residing in Austin are aware, Austin Hindu temple conducts Sanskrit speaking classes on weekends. A few days ago a question arose in me, Sanskrit is such an ancient language, all the ancient texts we Indians can think of are in Sanskrit. The language is so powerful that a few lines of verses in Sanskrit demands pages of explanation in other languages like English, Hindi, Kannada and so on.

After bouncing this thought off of my wife, I realized that the reason ancients texts are in Sanskrit stems from the fact that it was the medium of mass communication in ancient India. Over time the language evolved and the poets used this language and wrote some awesome poetry (like Kalidasa, Valmiki among others). The enlightened souls used the language to spread their message on meaning of life and beyond life.

All was well and I could see how reviving a language meant starting to use in day to day communication and hope it will survive long enough to give rise to poets and writers. So, that takes care of the prose and the poetry. There is still one thing remaining and that is the Shlokas or vedic chants. Apart from the fact that they are used during worship and only certain people are trained to chant, I do not know much beyond that.  

The following posts from our own dear Bawa on facebook has shed more light on Shlokas.             

Khurshed Batliwala What's the meaning of Shloka? Apart from the obvious?
G: Let's ask Swami Pragyanandji about it...
SP: There is an ancient language, Sanskrit. There are 2 basic styles in it, prose and poetry. When you use Sanskrit as Poetry then you go towards the meaning of Shloka... But it's not just poetry

Khurshed Batliwala Poetry which is full of Knowledge, with excellent use of the language, which either brings some gain some profit or inspires one into action or brings about some light on a difficult subject is getting even closer to the meaning of Shloka...

Khurshed Batliwala When excellent language made into poetry brings about all of the above together, then this is the perfect Shloka!
Brings light, brings gain or profit for the listener (possibly even the speaker) AND inspires chivalrous, courageous, good action... This is Shloka

PS: Bawa posts lot of knowledge on his facebook page, you can link to it here or follow him on his webpage.

The day Chrome froze

For the last few months I have migrated over to Google Chrome to be my default web browser. It was all working fine till one day last week, chrome refused to load any website. As a typical user of Windows system, I uninstalled chrome and reinstalled the same, sadly that step did not help (of course I repeated this step multiple times hoping it will work at some point). Around the same time I noticed that the other browsers like Firefox and IE had started to work with diminished capacity. When I say diminished capacity I mean, I do a google search and click on the results I would be redirected to a malware website and pop ups come up every now and then.  

It didn't take a genius to figure out that the system has been infected by a malware or some such virus. So, I un-installed the AVG free antivirus (which I had been hoping will save me money) and installed the Norton Internet Security 2010. After doing a complete system scan with Norton I was surprised to see that  no virus was found. Next step I ran the Malwarebytes to detect any malware infections, still no luck. One good thing that came out of installing Norton was that the other browsers started to work better (read less redirection to malware and less popup) but Chrome still did not budge. 

After doing some Google search I found that the registry settings may have been modified by a virus or a malware and websites suggested registry fix options and alternate browsers. I tried a couple of free registry fix softwares and that didn't fix the problem either. 


As a last resort I booted the system with windows installer CD and asked it to repair the system. It took a whole hour and a few reboots and a ton of Microsoft updates later chrome started to work fine and firefox was back up too but another problem showed up and IE refused to load. 

Last step was to make IE work and for this I had to uninstall the previous installations of IE using the alternative steps described and then download and do a fresh installation of IE8. After all this IE started to work but with disclaimer "IE is running with add-ons disabled". Again after consulting    Dr. Google, I had to install and un-install Google toolbar and again re-install the same to get rid of  the disclaimer.    

The post looks like an ad for Norton or scare people away from windows towards Mac or Linux but that is not my intent. My intent is to say that registry fix softwares alone might not fix all the problems. There probably was an easy way like system restore to an earlier date but I was concerned that the restore may screw up my installations of Norton and other softwares. 

YES+ - We participated, We played, We learned and We had fun

For a long time I had been asking my good buddies Anoop and Shraddha that I want to write about their efforts in making YES+ happen and appreciate their efforts in energizing the YES+ team. They always told me to do the course and then you can write and my excuse was, when you teach by yourselves, I will think about doing it. 

YES+ as it is advertised is the Art of Living Course (basic course, part-1) but designed and modified with youth in mind. Since I wear the old timer hat with the Art of Living organization and I have done quite a few part-1 or basic courses, I did not feel the need to the YES+ course. Basically, what is the point in drinking the same medicine in a new bottle  So, I was pretty reluctant to enroll myself and whenever the course was announced I was thinking of my excuses. Finally the time came last week and I was enrolled into it without me actually wanting to do so and at the end of 6 grueling days and 28hrs later, I am glad I did it and I am proud to call myself a YES+ graduate. 

The course is a complete package in itself, it has the seva, the sadhana and the satsang (for the purists, I mean company of the good). There are more practicals than theory, the processes/events in the course stir up emotions in you and at the same time you are given the tool to handle it. It brought out the leaders in us and at the same time taught us the very important lesson of life "TO HAVE FUN and ENJOY THE GAME". It was physically demanding (not as much as advertised though). Other courses try to teach the lessons and this course makes you learn the lesson. All done in a fun filled and happy environment. I wouldn't sugar coat and say it was all goody goody, on the weekdays, sessions were long and tiring but definitely not boring. I can't say anymore without giving out the course itself.   

For a good course we need 3 things, good venue, good participation and good teachers. This course had it all, everybody gave their 100% and no holding back. The teachers truly led us from the front, they always were there before us and had the place ready for us to start. Some of us knew that they were teaching for the first time but none of us could say they were novice.   

In the end I felt the course is advertised in a wrong way, it has parts and elements from the other courses like any other course taught under Art of Living umbrella but in the core it is completely different. In short, it is not the part-1 course targeted towards people in the age group 18-30, it is a course that anybody can do as long they are willing to be physically a bit active.  

If the above writing did not convince you to come join the upcoming YES+ course, then here is the carrot. There is a very important meditation that they teach during the course that is not taught in any other Art of Living course.  

The post wont be complete without thanking behind the scene volunteers who got us food every day. Special thanks to Bawa and Dinesh for designing this course. 

Anoop and Shraddha, you guys rocked. Keep the good times rolling.      

Part-2 Course at the Texas Ashram

After a big push from my wife, I finally enrolled and completed the part-2 course during Memorial day weekend. It was a 4 day course held at the beautiful and scenic Texas ashram. This was my second course but after a long break.

The teacher Commander Suresh, whom we used to call Commander-ji had flown all the way from India to meet his daughter and grand kids and in the middle of his vacation he decided to teach the course for us. He was a gem, one in a million. He took personal interest in each and every one of us. I liked his schedule driven approach towards the course. He used to come up with a schedule for the day to the minute and worked hard towards maintaining it, too bad we students could not keep up with his schedule. His preparation towards the course is another thing worth mentioning, he had the audio for the meditations on his ipod and couple of sets of tapes. He was so sweet, I almost wanted to call him grandpa. His devotion to the master is another story onto itself. He advised us to continue our sadhana on a regular basis and said you will see a benefit but at the same warned us not to attach expectations to the sadhana. He said even if you stop doing sadhana for a week it is almost like starting all over. He was very approachable and non judgemental, this is the first time during my time in Art of Living that I havs spoken to a teacher during the course about my concerns, I wasn't alone either. At the begining of every meditaion he would make sure he could completly see each and every participant and insisted on people to change their postions so that he can have a visual.    

The course itself was a roller coaster ride. On day 1 I was completely miserable and was feeling very tired and sleepy, by the end of day 1 I had a throbbing head ache on my right side. At the end of the satsang on day 1 I went to my room and crashed only to wake up at 4:30AM next day. Day 2 was better then day 1 but by end of the day left side of my head was throbbing away but the intensity was milder than previous day. It was on day 3 morning during one of the meditations, something flipped and I was energized and went on a complete high. By the end of the day 3 I was on cloud nine only to be brought down in night by some weird dreams. Next day morning I was sad again that my high is gone but the sadhana in the morning gave it back to me.

The days I was feeling tired, my mind was thinking may be its the heat outside that was making me drained, or may be I didn't sleep well previous night or I didn't have enough for lunch and so on. At one point I started thinking, I am probably wasting my time here and should have stayed home and played wii and saved some money also. But something in me kept me pushing and I simply followed the teachers instructions without questioning and now that I have completed, I feel it was well worth the money, the time and everything else. If I think back the duration of the course was exact for me, if it had been even a day shorter I would have come out with a negative thought and not on a postive high.    

I went to the course with lots of questions on my mind and I came back with all of them resolved. Another observation was on the meditation in the course, start of the course the meditations were more like sleep sessions or day dreaming time for me but by the end there was a complete 180 degree phase shift in the meditations. On the 3 days of the course we got three specific messages from "THE MAN" himself.

On the way back I got the wonderful opportunity to drive commander-ji back to airport and that in itself was a experience. When I appreciated him on his time sense during the course, he said the sign of a true leader is to be ahead of the rest and report 15mins before the expected time, this he said he learnt while he was in Indian Navy. He said you need love and discipline to progress on this path and not just quote guruji and create chaos and think we are enjoying it.

Thanks to Selva, Yamuna, Prakash, Uncle and Aunty and a bunch of other volunteers, all the cottages were well kept and the food was amazing. We didn't feel a pinch while staying at the Ashram.

One last thing I have to mention is the co-ordination among us 4 room mates, they all were just truly wonderful, using the bathrooms in a sequence went like clock work. Each one honored others timing very well.

A beautiful experience in the end. 

An year without cable TV

About a year ago, US went through its digital TV transition. I saw an opportunity to get rid or minimize my addiction to television and I took it.

At that time we used to have Time Warner cable at home and were pretty happy with it. I was aware that I am becoming more and more addicted to TV and used all kinds of techniques like, not watching repeat telecasts, watching only selected channels and so on to reduce my addiction but none seemed to work. My excuse for not getting rid of cable altogether is that the analog transmission at that time was crappy and getting rid of cable means end of TV and I had tried this once before and had failed (I watched a lot of movies and spent money on movie rental than cable TV). When the US went through its long awaited DTV transition I had no more excuses to get rid of the cable and with a strong mind and heart I took the chance and got rid of the cable.

I consider that to be a very wise decision and I must say, I had complete support of my wife in making that decision. The idea was we will give it a 6 month try (of which we were out of town for close to 2 months) and see if we miss cable.


I confess, initial few weeks were tough for me and I used to watch some of the paid programming on ABC and NBC and so on. But over time I discovered the flavor of network TV and I started following certain shows in a day instead of mindless surfing of channels and shows. Currently my favorite channel is CBS and I occasionally switch to ABC, NBC or FOX. I still haven't fallen for reality TV which most of the network channels want to emphasize or developed a condition that says "no David Letterman or Jay Leno", no sleep.


My own analysis says that I do not gain a ton of time on week days but I do gain a lot of time on the weekends. A trial that started with a time limit of 6 months has now reached a year and I am quite happy about the fact that I am saving money every month.


I realized how easy it is to fall back when I discovered Netflix streaming of movies and shows, I started watching the show 24 like a maniac (completed season 1 and season 2 in less than couple of weeks). Thanks to my breathing practices, I am able to get it under control without falling into the cracks.

STOMP

If you thought you need a precision tuned musical instrument to generate music then stomp is here to prove you wrong. If you ever tried generating noise using house hold things and imagined you generated music then check out stomp, they truly generate music with household things. 

Thanks to our Bahraini friend, some of us were fortunate enough to witness the show yesterday at paramount theaters in Austin. The show was spectacular, incredible, no adjective would do justice for the show. 

Never in my wildest imagination I had thought that somebody can generate music with things like broom stick, trash can, pipes, sticks, match box, cigarette lighters, gutter pipes, trash bags, news paper and on and on. They had amazing rhythm and the co-ordination among the members of the team was a feast to watch.  The short hour and half show was an interactive one with the artists interacting with the audience very frequently. The show had comedy too. Some parts of the show were pretty loud but not unpleasant  The show was performed in a single stretch without a break. I definitely would appreciate their stamina and teamwork. I came out of the show thinking, all I need is rhythm and music just happens. At the end of the show the artists got a well deserved standing ovation. 

It wouldn't be fair on my part if I do not complement the acoustics of the paramount theaters and their organizational skills.  I doubt if there is any other theater in Austin with better acoustics than paramount theaters. Their organization skill of employing just enough ushers and distributing them arond the theater in right quantities is something to learn from.    

The group is currently performing at Austin Paramount theaters and they will be there till sunday. The tickets are well worth the price and keep in mind the shows are running houseful.  

Wild flower drive

This blog is dedicated to the people who are in Austin, Texas and like the wild flowers that have sprung all around Austin. If the wild flowers that have sprung in and around Austin have made you want for more then here is the drive you should consider. 

Take TX-71W towards Llano and take TX-16S towards Fredericksburg. You will truly will be in for a feast. Fields are filled with colorful flowers. I am not sure how long will these last, so if you want to make it do it soon. While you are there you can take FM 965 and visit Enchanted Rock and the Wild seed farms in Fredericksburg. If you are even more enthusiastic consider the willow city loop (we didn't do this).  

Here is a glimpse of what you might see. 

The above red flowers were not on the way but at Wild seed farm Fredericksburg. 

  

Some times simple solutions isn't what I want

After I posted a comment on my friend's blog, I realized when it comes to myself, many a times simple solutions is not what I look for. Here is one example for the same. 

I retired my old Athlon based PC and built a new Athlon X2 based PC. Everything was new including the hard disk and the OS and all. The PC was running fine for a few months and then started blue screening and complain "Insert OS disk and boot". I used to faithfully re format the disk and re-install the OS, until I realized I can solve the problem  by unhooking the SATA cable from the hard disk and the motherboard and re insert the same after some time (cooling time). 


Over time the blue screen became more and more frequent, it was like sitting on a time bomb not knowing when it will go off. I suspected the memory interface, so I slowed the memory speed in the bios. I downloaded memory stress test and ran the same, there were no errors in the memory interface. 

Since I had already invested too much money on the new PC, I had to fix it and make it stable. I debated on changing the hard disk. but I wasn't sure whether it was the hard disk or the motherboard that was faulty, I decided to ditch the SATA disk completely and installed the OS on an old IDE hard disk. The 80GB space on the IDE disk was not nearly enough to hold the pics and the music among other things, hence I decided to use the SATA disk for data. 


The instability of the PC got solved but every now and then the data disk would drop off and become unavailable. The only way to recover was to unhook the SATA cable and hook it back. I did some research on forums and based on those suggestions, I uninstalled the nvidia SATA drivers. This step did help to some extent and the data disk fail became less frequent. 

One fine day I realized I had an extra SATA cable and decided to swap the cable, I can't believe all my problems with the PC is solved. The fact is I had this cable for ever and could have done this long time ago but my logical mind couldn't accept the cable could be at fault, but turns out it was. If only I had taken this simple step in the first place, I could have saved myself a lot of agony. 

In hindsight I think the cable was failing as the temperature of the CPU box went up and the system used to blue screen once the cable failed. For a long time I had setting "Reboot on failure" and hence I used to get the error "Disk not found". Uninstalling the SATA drivers helped because the data transfer rate reduced and hence the heat generation reduced.  

Not fair at all

Mr. Shoaib Malik - Ms. Sania Mirza wedding hurdle has finally been cleared. For those who read times of India online you couldn't have missed the dispute. For those who don't, turns out the cricketer was already married to another girl by name of Ms. Ayesha. 

Times of India has been running articles on this every day for the last couple of weeks and made sure it got the prime time. I was pissed that the paper is giving such importance to this. They had interviews with this lady Ms. Ayesha and they were posting comments from Mr. Shoaib and Ms. Sania also, in the end they managed to keep the issue alive very well. 

Till today Mr. Shoaib kept denying that he ever knew this girl Ms. Ayesha from Hyderabad and denied even meeting her let alone marry.  Today all of a sudden he decided to divorce the girl he has never met. 

The unfair part I am screaming about is the settlement, a paltry Rs 15,000 that too to be paid in 3 installments over 3 months. To top it all, everybody is happy with the settlement. I feel it is one of those settlements that is not even worth the paper it will be printed on.  

I wonder if the TOI forgot to add a couple of 0's in the end.  

Rainbow inside the apartment

Couple of weeks ago we managed to capture a beautiful rainbow formed on the window blinds. Before the geek inside you start to wonder where was the prism for the rainbow, the light was going through the aquarium. 

Here is another view of the same (playing with settings on the camera). 

Snippets from Corpus Christi trip

After every trip I usually log a travel log about the trip. Since this time the trip was pretty local and we visited standard Texas attractions I will only post snippets.  

A brief history of the trip : we started on Saturday morning and spent most of the day at Seaworld San Antonio. In the evening we headed to Corpus Christi and spent the night. On Sunday we spent the day at Mustang Island state park. In the night we took a stroll on bay front road. On Monday we toured USS Lexington warship and visited Texas State Aquarium. 

• When you book a hotel room through Hotwire, they do not guarantee the room type, for ex: I had asked for a room with 2 queen beds but because the hotel was so completely booked due to a conference and all I ended up getting a room with 1 king size bed. 
• I got pulled over by the highway patrol on the way to Corpus Christi not because I was speeding but one of my license plate lights were out. I didn't get a ticket but a warning (not a verbal one but a printed one).
• Sea world still has shows with the killer whales but I could see that they weren't pushing the whales as they used to do before. I guess it is good both for the whales and the humans. 
• If you ever visit seaworld SA don't forget to do the lori bird feeding, it is a unique experience  of holding a small cup of nectar in hand and having the bird sit on your hand while sucking the nectar. 
• Seaworld SA does not host the Clydesdale horses anymore, instead they have couple of Texas longhorns and couple more uniquely Texan animals. 
• If in corpus christi you decide to tour the aquarium and the warship on the same day, I suggest you do the aquarium first. 
• In the aquarium I suggest not to miss the wild flight show. It is a truly unique and a great show. 
• Driving from Corpus Christi to Austin, if it is spring time and you are a bit adventurous, try the scenic route along highway 181 and highway 123. We truly were in for a surprise when we saw lush wild flowers all along the way. Google says it takes close to 4 and half hours if you take this route, but we managed to do it in less than 3 and half hours. Keep in mind you need a good GPS and a truly alert mind if you decide to take this route. 
• I have been to corpus twice so far and I think mustang Island state park is a better beach than corpus christi beach. 
• The sand in mustang island state park is so fine that it is guaranteed to fill in to all nooks and holes of the car.      

Mesmerizing concert by ustaad Zakir Hussain

Last September when the founder of the IFA announced at the end of Manna-Dey's concert that ustaad Zakir Hussain will be coming to Austin, I grew very exited and made up my mind not to miss the concert at any cost. Then the India trip happened and  my parents decided to make a US trip and so on and I almost lost track of the concert. It was not till a couple of weeks ago when a friend of mine said he picked up his tickets, it again dawned on me and I hurried to get my tickets. I aimed for the lowest level for the tickets only to find out its all sold out and was forced to be bumped up to one level higher.

The concert started with a 3 men Bengali folk art team playing their version of drums. They played really well but I personally felt it went a tad too long. Once ustaad entered the stage he simply took over the show. Rest of the first half of the concert was dominated by ustaad and his younger brother Taufiq Qureshi, who has an amazing talent to modulate breath. The one most people would definitely remember was Taufiq's performance of husband and wife fight. 


The way ustaad described the language of tabala was truly remarkable. He described a train, a canon and quite a few other things in the language of Tabala. Words just can't do justice for the performance. I am usually the kind who would look at the watch every now and then but during the first half of the concert (7:30PM-9:00PM) I didn't even think of my watch. A combination of Taufiq and ustaad's performance was truly mind boggling. During the first half it appeared as though the whole room was in a state of trance. 

The second half started with subtle music of violin, the artists were great but I couldn't appreciate it much. I think I have a mental block for Indian classical music with violin. The second half gained momentum when ustaad and one other guy on mridangam joined the violin duo. There was one more artist playing another percussion instrument (I don't know what it is called), he was also wonderful. The concert ended with an amazing performance with all the nine artists on stage. In the end the artists got the well deserved standing ovation from the audience. 


One thought came to me during the concert, the speed at which ustaad's hand moved and generated such fine and wonderful music, can I move my hand at 25% the speed let alone generate any pleasing sound in the process.   

They truly were masters of percussion. It was worth every single penny and probably more. It was a memorable event. When I told my mom that we are going to a concert on Thursday of the previous week she was indifferent but after the concert she felt she would have missed something if she hadn't gone. We all were truly mesmerized. 

This was my 2nd concert of ustaad in Austin and I loved both of them. Thank you IFA for bringing such a memorable event to Austin. 

      

The day March 6th turned out to  be special both for me and the IFA. IFA was celebrating the 15th anniversary and we were celebrating my parents 35th wedding anniversary.  

The technology of spirutuality

A beautiful talk by Bawa aka Kurshed Batliwala. I have been following his blog for quite a while, but never heard him or watched a video from him. This is the first video I watched and it is truly inspirational. I like his presentation skills, organization of thoughts, the simplicity of his speech and the quotes themselves. 

It is a series of 7 videos on youtube and here is the link to part-1 of the video. Watch all the 7 and don't stop in the middle, it is pretty lively and entertaining. 

A must see for everyone even though the talk is targeted towards YES+ category.   

I thought of just a google reader share but realized this video series deserve a wider publicity than just the reader.