Pushing of De Tao

So I'm sitting on the plane, thinking about what a great time I had over the weekend in Hyderabad and decide to write something. Life came to mind, so I thought I may as well write about that.

While I was writing, I was listening to music on shuffle and ironically a song I haven't heard in a while played. Ironically, because it's called 'Wasted years', so the pome sounds a little sad at times, but ends on a positive note.

I think I've realised I need to push now, but despite spending most of the last 15 years attempting to embrace change, it still psyches the hell out of me.

This 'Pome' is my way of explaining to myself that second chances exist. There is always hope, but planning in life is what I've missed doing in my endless quest to live in the De. I now plan to be the oldest kid alive :-)

For DD & Jo

My eyes are open.
I am awake.
I thank you both
for the gentle shake.

Pushing Tao
------------------
The brook flowed on
He went with the flow
The rush of life
The best way to go

His life was full
His vision strong
The way it flowed
His time would be long

In his state of bliss
He flowed with Tao
Laugh lines on his face
Ran over his brow

The world was youth
Those lines set in
Laughter and joy
Friend and kin

The stream flowed on
Cutting paths through time
Life was the joy
Of song and of rhyme

Childhood came
With the people less grown
The time was ripe
He yearned for his own

The forks in the stream
He never noticed
They must have existed
But they were all missed

The river flowed on
Cutting ox bow lakes
Comprehension crept in...
He'd made his mistakes.

The flow of the river
Began to slow down
The delta was nigh
He longed to see ground

He had no choice
And into the ocean was thrust
A new beginning
This time Tao will be pushed.

De return of Des

So I've had writers block for almost two years now. I used to love writing, and think I still do, and even though I've had enough material to write (with all the stuff that's been happening over the last couple of years), I just haven't gotten around to writing it.

Bad excuse. I got on a reduced work week, so for four months in the past (and a few months in the future, depending on how busy work gets over the next few months) I've been putting in four days a week instead of five.

What would you do with the spare time? The one day a week on a weekday that you've got to yourself? Home improvement? Extra work? Consulting? Setting up a business? Getting on the stock market?

So what I've done so far is think about setting up a solar panel fabrication plant (small scale, low efficiency, lower cost solar panels). I thought this would be a good way to do something interesting while helping people (would be ideally suited to rural areas where electricity transmission isn't really upto reasonable levels), while keeping me busy and employing a few people to get the work done. It's also a very green thing to do. I did a little research on it and found that it would be cost effective, but I've been just too lazy to execute. The excuse I've been using was the lack of funding. Getting space anywhere near home would involve pots of money that I just don't have, which brought on the next plan...

The fact that I'm on a four day work week helps out in that for one weekday, I've got time to get on the markets and see how they're swinging... and they're swinging... I'd get addicted and wind up losing most of the money I have (and probably some I don't) if I didn't put a cap on what I'm putting into the markets, so I decided that if I have money that I can afford to throw, I'll throw it in and see if I can make some more... if I lose it all, I won't feel too bad about it since it was "extra" cash. Enter the 1 lakh cap.

During my purely experimental stage, I managed to pump in the entire amount on stocks that dropped... and they dropped pretty far down. I was left with roughly 70% of the value that I'd put in... in such a situation (where you're sure they're going to go back up), you normally wait. But hang on... this was investing where I wanted to trade! So I decided to up the ante a bit and put in another 100K, only this time, I'd try day trading... managed small profits, went on a holiday to Turkey and saw my "investment" shares pick up like mad. Cashed out as soon as I could (on hindsight, this was probably a mistake since they went up by quite a bit more after that). I was left with 250K and a holiday (mostly) paid for by the markets. I decided then to up the total to 250K on investments and 100K on trading recently - after I realised that annualised, my profits stood at 98%. I don't expect anything like this if I trade one day a week on a regular basis, but a little extra cash never hurt anyone... much...

Okay, so I got carried away. I always do. I lost sight of the goal. I wanted to make a bit of money on the side so I could carry out the plan. But then land is expensive, and this money; although it's not exactly small, is nowhere near enough to cut it. I refuse to gamble more money on a market that goes up and down more on emotion than facts, so what next?

How about using the day off to do what I enjoy the most? Enjoyment? I'm now the sort of person who's not truly happy unless I'm partying as many nights as possible - and a few days as well. I decided to overdo it a bit and wound up pulling late nights every night of the month for a few months now. I've taken 4 days off in the last couple of months or so when I wasn't out drinking at night, and at a friends wedding recently, drinking in the day time wasn't set aside either.

I do enjoy a drink or six, but then I'm not getting the sort of exercise I should be getting. Podgy isn't a word I'd like to be associated with, but at this rate, that's where I'm going to be in a couple of months.

So this one day a week I'm thinking I'll start using for the markets (for a couple of hours) and exercise, to compensate for the wilder portions of my hedonistic lifestyle. It would probably also be a good idea to get my room setup. Having thrown most of the furiture out of here, I think it's time I get off my beanbag and paint my wall or something.

Come to think of it, maybe I should start using the time to get some writing done :-)

De great infinity

I've been here long enough. There's lots to do, but that will to do it has dropped dramatically over the years (as it invariably does).

I always start new things with a vengeance... then the intensity begins to drop as I realise I can complete it. This applies to just about everything I've ever done (and possibly to everything I'll ever do). Let me give you an example or three. I switched schools relatively regularly in the early part of life; trying to get three kids in the same school at the same time in Delhi couldn't have been very easy for my mom. Every time I shifted schools, I'd be one of the class superstars. Things were new and interesting so I had the thrill of change to spur me on. The same thing happened at college where I started out with the seemingly effortless ability to do well. The marks started tapering off almost immediately because I realised that the subject material was all stuff that I'd learned; exceptions were handled erm... well... exceptionally.



I'd grown up thinking of everything as simple. Getting a machine to do what you wanted (no matter what you wanted it to do) was easy. At some point early in my experience with computers (in the early 80s) I came accross an article on Elisa - the first NLP program. Getting a machine to pretend it was human seemed to me to be the next step, so I started (a few years later - was always really lazy) working on an NLP program, only to realise that I had no idea how humans would react to situations and questions.



A 16 or 17 year old kid standing back and looking at his life and realising that he'd spent so much time understanding machines that he'd neglected one of the more important things in life. Life itself. This scared the living daylights out of me. I wasn't a machine, yet I could write a program to "emulate" me. I was at the time a relatively anal guy (yep... that's the word I'd use now). I had no problems with lending people stuff in college as long as they put them back... in the same place they found them... in EXACTLY the same place that they found them. I'd optimised my life to the extent that if anything was out of place it hurt because it was sub-optimal. At the time I was also neat to the point of OCD.



Then things began to rapidly change. While I was breezing through college, I took time off from talking to machines to actually interact with the scariness of people. I made it a point to get out and meet as many different types of people possible to get an insight into how they work. What they would do given a certain situation, how they'd react to external forces. I tried to change myself in the meantime into something less predictable. Someone yet. I discovered life. I moved over to chaos and (I didn't know the name at the time) the chinese concept of Tao - going with the flow. My neat and tidy room became, in second year, the place that it is now. Clothes thrown in what appears to be a haphazzard manner.

So here I am... drifting through life, allowing all earth shattering decisions to take care of themselves. Every now and then, there's a little push I put in, but life seems to be most enjoyable when you run with it. I'd turned what was an introverted technogeek to an extroverted philosopher. It's sometimes really difficult to get me started on a conversation, but it's usually very difficult to get me to shut up once I start. A mass of confusion topped with rigourous planning of my social calendar.

This story's far from complete... it just keeps going... it's life after all, so I'll publish now and consider part II sometime later... it's been over a month since I started on this post.

Lazy life...

De Ferns’n Petals Fiasco

Here's a really innovative way of conning people. Start an online flower delivery service which caters to remote locations. If someone sends you flowers, how often do you call them up and thank them (mentioning exactly what the order received was)? Do you think anyone would really complain that they've received an order of flowers from you with a poor quality gift? They'd sit there saying "How considerate... what lovely flowers..."

Okay, so here's the deal. Place an order for some flowers (with maybe a gift attached to it). Pay a premium on the delivery (since it's timed so well). When the wrong arrangement arrives (with slightly wilted flowers), you, the orderer, would never really find out as they'd be masked through the "niceties" of society.

Let's give you an example of this. I'd ordered the Exotic Life Size Arrangement from fnp.in. The description?

Mind blowing arrangement of 100 Seasonal and Exotic Flowers..3 to 4 ft high…for someone very special in your life..

This was supposed to be sent to my mother (who coincidentally lives in the same house as I do at the moment), so when the delivery arrived I was at home to receive it.

Okay, so now you're thinking "So what actually got delivered?"

The order note said Life Size Arrangement (which is 25% cheaper incidentally) and is described as:

Your feelings reach new heights with this expression of Love….An arrangement of over 100 Red n Yellow Roses of around 4 feets high.

What actually arrived was however quite a few (definitely more than 70) pink roses about as tall as my dogs (how does 2½ ft strike you?). It was quite nice in a few ways, but nowhere near what I'd ordered.

The order process itself was difficult enough. Yatra.com advertises a partnership with a discount of 25%. They even give you a promo code to enter on the fnp.in site to avail of this discount. When I tried using the promo code I got a "Sorry!! Try again" repeatedly. I thought it may be a problem with the code I was given, so called up Yatra (where a customer service person asked for my user names and passwords on both Yatra.com and fnp.in – I even provided them in the interest of getting this worked out). They acknowledged that there was a problem with the fnp site.

I tried using an alternate promotion (for ICICI bank account customers) which gave me the same error, so called the fnp customer care and was asked to "please try again in half an hour as there may be a technical issue". Strange that 22 hours later it's still not working with ICICI.

I got a little fed up with speaking with the person on the phone so left a comment on the website about the it not working properly and was surprised (quite pleasantly) by a call from Ashish the webmaster who informed me that he could help me with my order if I could order it on my ICICI card (and get a 20% discount instead of 25%) as they'd stopped the promotion with Yatra for Diwali (but still hadn't contacted Yatra with this information).

I mailed him the order details (along with my ICICI bank debit card details – I was wondering how he'd get the payment through with this info, but he'd asked me for it so I sent it). I got a call back a few minutes after sending the mail saying he wanted a credit card rather than debit card. I don't have an ICICI bank credit card, so gave him my HDFC credit card information for him to use, which he said would be okay.

I'm still sitting here waiting for the correct order to be delivered. The instructions for delivery at 9am sort of went down the tubes when the incorrect order arrived at 10, followed closely by a phone call from the "head office" which I passed on to the delivery man. I'll possibly update this if the correct order arrives.

It's arrived... and just as I was getting on the phone with the company again. They've added a top to the original one they sent, not quite what I'd ordered, but it' still nice.

I don't think I'd have written this entry if this was the first time I'd had such problems with them, but then I didn't get to see the last order they'd dispatched and assumed it was a one-off mistake. Hope they're not doing the same thing with you.

Ode to De living

My life is a lie...
DON'T TOUCH THAT KEY!
Behind that door
is the truth you see!

I am who I am
but I won't tell you
Who knows what you'd think
or indeed what you'd do.

The pain of knowing
just what I've become
may unravel those lies
till they're completely undone.

Where would that leave me?
At the beginning I guess.
So just let me be
in this wretched mess.

I'll wallow in misery
I'll live in doubt
I'll try what I want
but you'll never find out.

On my judgment day
you'll look at me
You'll likely be shocked
by what you will see.

My life is a lie
but you'll never know.
I'll keep it from you
till the day I go.

This one's dedicated to the one who knows.

Your life is yours
and yours alone
Let nothing sway you
(not even this "pome")

Stand tall, stand high
like a might oak.
spend those lies
till your conscience is broke.

Tough as it may be
people want to know YOU.
In this huge web of lies
this much is true.

No ill intent is meant by this pome. It's inspired by the hypocrisy of our culture symbolised by the most open societies, which went to war to hide the openness.