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.