Cultural contrasts

"One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train."
Morihei Ueshiba 


International travels tend to be an experience to cherish and learn from since its usually the first time we come across cultures distinctly different from ours. More so when that country is a country that is not frequented by people from your own country. One such country that i visited is Laos. This little known country has so far been overlooked but has incredible potential. 

The first thing noticeable on the drive from the airport is that the people in this country do not believe in rushing around to accomplish tasks, they take their time and work effectively. Being from India where a walk along a main road in Mumbai reminds you of rabbits scampering in a hurry at the sight of a predator with people in a perennial rush, The rush to get from one place to another,to accomplish something, to leave a mark, the chance to slow down did feel good, but what is more amazing is that people in Laos are happier than people in India, not having to worry as much about accomplishments. The pace of life at Laos is undeniably better and healthier than that of India

On staying for a while, i realized that in Laos, women truly run the country in all but name. The society is seemingly matriarchal with women manning establishments and running companies, again a marked departure from India where women have only recently started coming to the fore and where women security is still an issue. The freedom and security possessed by the women in Laos if allowed in India could possibly turn India into a much more stable and efficient state.

Besides these major differences, the people in Laos have system of living which is reminiscent of the older Indian system of living where people living in a community gather together and talk in the evenings, a very simple and peaceful way of life showing how technology can and does coexist with normal social interactions given the right inputs. 

After the visit to Laos  i went to Bangkok and the culture shock was huge. The huge difference in pace, the sudden increase in visible population, the traffic, the integrity of people. People in Laos are more honest than the money minded madness in cities like Mumbai and Bangkok and makes me realize its better to be happy and live a simpler life than to run around frantically trying to achieve something.

"Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going to fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why."
Eddie Cantor 

Tinted Glasses

"The history of the world is not one big book, but several small ones"
No event recorded can ever be recorded in all its glory with every shred of thought that went into making the event . Even what little of it is recorded is based on the perception and bias of the writer, since it is upto him to decide what to record and what to leave out. So, the question arises, why do we read books when we know what is recorded in them is tinted?

A single event has several ways to perceive it. For example my very act of writing an article could be perceived as boring and ordinary by people who regularly use the computer or as an extra-ordinary feat by an il-literate person. This difference stems from the surroundings that the people are exposed to.
Every book, every article of any event is one such perception of an event, it is the point of view of one person, the author.

The author, even if he tries to maintain an independent opinion on the subject unconsciously calls on his upbringing when he tries to frame his thoughts. For example, an Indian author trying to describe the Indian way of life from a visiting tourist's point of view will unwittingly use a few terms that lie well outside the vocabulary of most tourists, simply because those are used frequently in his interactions

The simplest but not very time-saving way of going about this is to read as many books as possible about a certain event. Since, every book you read paints your perception of an event in its own tint, reading several books, each with their own distinct tint will paint a reasonably accurate picture of the event. The problem with this is, fairly obviously, the number of books that cover the event should be fairly large and should each have a different perception making it very time consuming.
The other solution which is much more challenging is to take a book, preferably of one who has attempted to remain objective about the event ( again, tough since events that are worth recording usually tend to bias people either for or against is ) and deconstruct the book within the psyche of his mind. Meaning that we first have to analyze the thoughts of the author through the rest of his books and using what is learned through that, attempt to workout the content of the book that isnt biased. Easier said that done.

Or as they say, let bygones be bygones, forget the event, pick up a fiction, play songs and let the world go round.


Music to listen :

Inspiration

'' Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. ''

To the inspiration of this blog-

You possess in you a spark which if you let grow is capable of unleashing an incredible lightning.  Don't lose it in the chaos you are in.
I need an inspiration.  ;-)
Keep writing!

 
''I never really sit down to write. When I'm moved, I do it. I just wait for it to come. You just hear it. I can't really describe writing. It's in my head.''
-Lenny Kravitz

Impromptu #2

5 days , 4 places.

Sounds pretty good , doesnt it? and its good while it lasts. But when these places each have a different weather pattern and you travel through them that quickly, there are two major problems that you realize later.

1) You never really did see all of any of the places and didn't do justice to visiting them and staying there.

2)You end up sick, really sick , because of the difference in climate , especially when the temperature difference is large.

But at the end of it, its still a time that will be remembered, if not for the joy of exploration, atleast for the photographic opportunities presented by going to so many places in the short time. The challenge? Keeping your camera batteries charged!!!
Do check out the pics i clicked in the photo-fiesta page

                                         

Temple Of thought

An incredible album by poets of the fall has me hooked on for a while. Its their recent masterpiece and i only found one song i didn't like ( and yeah, its a song i've not been able to listen to at all, strangely enough its called The Happy Song ) There's three songs that i really love in this album ( not to say the others are bad, but these rock! ). Try them out!

               

Existentialism: How it probably came about

Warning: Plenty of Ranting against education system and exams ahead!

My mid semester exams are going on right now, and an observation i made was that everyone turned philosophical a few moments after the exam, specifically because the education system is aimed at trying to prove that they did not know something instead of trying to prove that they do. So, when a friend of mine had two exams one after another, he came back and said 'Sab mohmaya hai' ( Translation: Everything is an illusion) and he isn't the only person to react as such. It has often been observed that when unable to accomplish the objective, people tend to think that their actions are pointless. Another friend of mine came back saying 'This is fate' and another saying that no matter what we do, the world is against us doing well in the exams ( well, i'll be honest, he said lecturers, not world, but hey, an extension is possible. )

So,anyway my point being that Existentialism as a philosophy states that human actions are pointless and that nothing that we do matters. Sounds similar to the reactions of my friends, doesnt it? I think they are the same, Existentialism is a philosophy that is steeped in depression, probably founded by a person in depression and the fact that we still talk about it and make movies on it (Ref:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_the_Absurd  ) shows how we don't want to let anything go, no matter how useless it is. Add to that the fact that its a part of my syllabus makes it all the more  more laughable and shows how the education system is the last thing that will evolve despite the fact that its supposed to be the first.

PS: if you've made it this far, thanks for reading me vent my frustration. Here's some songs for relaxing.

Insomniac Thoughts

 

"Sleep is a naturally recurring state characterized by reduced or absent consciousness, relatively suspended sensory activity, and inactivity of nearly all voluntary muscles"

8 hours a day is said to be the ideal sleeping time for a human but i wonder, how many people across the globe actually achieve that? In school? maybe, but after that, at college, 8 hours is a luxury.

There was this particular night, i was unable to sleep practically all night, But there were a few things i ended up pondering about, mostly because of a few recent movies i'd seen. And that got me thinking about sleep.

So a little reading later i figured out that REM sleep is by far the best thing in human evolution, thats the stage in which we dream, and the reason its that good is because it satisfies youre desires without them ever getting satisfied in real life.

So, My next question, is that good for human evolution? If the person's wishes are granted in his sleep, why does man want to wake up and work, is it because he wants to work or because he wishes to improve on his dream?

Is dreaming simply a means of projecting the ideas of man using senses for better visualization so that it can be improved on later? If that is the case, is dreaming actually a part of conscious thought?

I wonder... perhaps i can dream up an explanation sometime. Brings a whole new meaning to 'I'll sleep on it' .

Microsoft Windows 8 - A review

Heya folks, first off, i'd like to apologize for the long gap, but i've been keeping busy this last month, and you can expect a whole lot of posts trying to sum up the experiences.

Anyway, Back to the subject of this post, As a student of BITS, we all get a licensed version of windows 8 free ( :D ) and earlier than the official release. So, I installed on my laptop and this is a summary of my experiences with it.

Laptop Specs:
processor - i7 2670QM
Ram - 8GB
Graphic card - Dedicated Nvidia GT540M 2GB

The first time i booted up windows 8, i was a little confused by the layout and had trouble finding my way around. It Basically has a start menu which occupies the whole screen and offers an entirely new way of interacting with the computer. The live tiles allow quick access to most regularly used applications.

Another important difference is that while the main UI is the same as that of windows 7, the Modern UI ( The start menu ) is meant more for touch devices , and allocates more importance to the mouse, specifically the right mouse button ( which is for the most part ignored in windows 7 ) is used a lot to navigate around.
The corners of the screen are used for navigating the UI and once you get used to it, it seems almost intutive that this is how a  UI is to be navigated. ( The start button is removed and the lower left corner takes it's role )

The fact that all drivers and applications designed for windows 7 seem to work on windows 8 makes this upgrade less of a hassle and a natural upgrade. The battery life remained almost consistent with a slight increase after shifting to windows 8.

But despite all that, the OS is a mixture of two entirely different ecosystems and the continuous shifting between the two isnt the most pleasant and the fact that there is a lot to learnt to learn before shifting entirely from windows 7 to 8 might be a putoff for a many.

All in all, i'd recommend an upgrade since even though its a chore to learn the nuances of windows 8, it makes sense once you start using it and the look of the modern UI more than makes up  for the trouble.