Honesty

When I created this blog, my purpose was to keep record of my thoughts and my views on various life changing issues. I have to be honest on what I write here because I do not write here for the sake of other people but I write here so that in the future when I read these articles, I can understand who I was at that point and where I have come from there.

Most of us are afraid of change. Some of us are also afraid of expressing our real thoughts on various subjects. When we think about ourselves how we were couple of years ago, then we generally realise how wrong or right we were at that particular instance. We see same thing differently at different stages of life. Due to that, it is obvious that we develop certain feelings towards daily issues that we might not have done so if we weren’t gone through certain changes in our lives. There is nothing wrong with believing something that is totally opposite to what we believed few months or few years ago, as long as it doesn’t contradict with the common sense and our self believe doesn’t harm anyone.

Life teaches us all sorts of things. Each of us is unique and live in different environment, sooner or later; we all go through life altering experiences. Those of us who dare to think about religion, philosophy, science or nature and asks questions on any of these subjects, gets answers at some point in their life. Some people do not bother to think about these basic issues of life while some people do but hesitate to express themselves thinking other people wont understand them. But if we cannot be honest with ourselves, we cannot live the life as we suppose to.

Meaning of a life

One of the most important questions we ask ourselves all the time is that what is a meaning of a life? Life is mysterious with plenty of strange things around us. The complexity of religion and science puzzles most of us, who are capable enough to think about the meaning and seeking for an explanation about the purpose of human life. Why cant we just keep life simple and make our own purpose out of it for living?

When a newborn baby dies after few hours, what should we make of her purpose? Did she do something wrong in her previous life that she even didn’t deserve proper life on earth? Or, was she really so good that god wanted her back to the heavens. It is common in other animals that newborn animals die and we treat these deaths simply as a nature’s survival principle and its result. So, why we have different feelings and perception about life for humans and animals?

Most of us find our own purpose and meaning of life within our work. Doctors want to save people’s lives, and that’s what they think their purpose is. Engineers want to create new instruments and make people’s lives better. And, criminals want to create chaos in the society and that’s what they see as a purpose of their lives. But, is it really what we suppose to do? Shouldn’t we looking for answers to the basic questions, shouldn’t we looking for a purpose and meaning of our lives on earth?

Is it right to be wrong?

In the population of more than 6.7 billion people, the significance of an individual person is very minuscule. Our act and knowledge influence only few people and outside of professional and social network, an individual person is just a stranger to others. What someone has to do so that millions of people can notice him? The act should inspire other people to do better things.

The world is full of bad people. It is still a living place because of hard work done by good people. Yet, those bad people influence our everyday lives and make more impact in the society. Those people who make and try to keep world a better place often do not want any publicity and they are our unsung heroes. However, in order to inspire our new generations, it is also necessary to recognise these people. And, how someone can make a positive impact on people’s mind? What one has to do to influence millions of people to move forward in positive direction?

Career freedom

It is a known fact that most of the people don’t like their work. They are doing it because they do not have any other choice. In order to survive, we need money, and hence most of us end up in the job or business where we make money but don’t generally work in the field that makes us happy. Why this is case for most of the people? Is it because we do not get enough opportunities in our interested field or there is not enough money to be earned to survive from our passion?

Rapid development in science has shown us new and excited fields like synthetic biology, nuclear fusion power, artificial intelligence, etc in recent years. Subjects like art, music, dance, history, philosophy, etc are evergreen. And there plenty of other engineering, medical, and social science related subjects are there to select for our professional life. Yet, most of us end up working in the field, in the company, in the environment or in the city where we don’t like working et al. Life is about grabbing opportunities when they come. May be we are not able to see these opportunities or not brave enough to capture them. Or, it may be just that because of personal and family responsibilities, we are not able to do what we like to do. We live in the society where freedom of an individual exists only on paper and not in practice. And, even someone has that freedom to choose the field he or she likes and even if that person has all resources to start the career, this person still have fear of failure in the future and this failure can be very shameful as this is what he or she really wanted to do and failed.

If every adult person had a job he or she really likes, then obviously world would be a better place to live in. But, that is not possible, not with current social system we have. And, I don’t see things improving in recent future because happiness in our life depends upon money and believe me, money is not a good thing.

Existence of life

The existence of god depends upon us. We human beings are responsible for god and I think without us there is no purpose of god. Millions of years ago when dinosaurs inhabited earth, did they need god for their survival? It is a common idea among us that dinosaurs vanished from earth because they were not capable enough to survive on earth and hence nature decided to demolish the whole species and begin the era of humans. Well, that belief is not true and in fact, dinosaurs lived on earth for around 160 million years while Homo sapiens have been on earth for only around 200,000 years. And, although we have more developed brain than dinosaurs, I see fewer chances of us surviving few millions of years on earth. And, if dinosaurs didn’t needed god for their survival, do we really need to believe in god for our existence and for our survival?

When we compare the age of earth and time of form life being here on earth with time of human being on earth, we are in early stage of evolution. And, when we check the history of religions, we can easily find out that there is no religion exists today which has been here for more than 5000 years. Does it mean that god came to our life since then? Or, is it that we realized about god when we were clever enough to figure it out about him, around 5000 years ago? There is no religion that explains clearly how life came to an existence on earth. Religions teach us how to live a good life and teach us about the practice we should do to go to heaven or for salvation. But I think it is very tough to live a normal life when we do not understand the existence of life and we do not know the purpose of it. The question of existence should have come across to each and every intelligent person into his or her lifetime. And there are chances that none of us will be able to find out the answer in the future. But that doesn’t mean that there is no answer to it. May be we have confined ourselves to logical thinking and that logic cannot go beyond our understanding of current knowledge and hence we will need people who can think beyond the limit and that will be way to find out answers we seek throughout our lifetime.

Visit to North Wales

Recently I visited northern Wales with my friends. I have been to Wales before but those visits were mainly concentrated near southern part. It is a very small country in size but has plenty of varieties in landscapes. While southern Wales has plenty of forests with almost flat countryside, northern part has one of the longest mountain range in Britain and has highest mountain peak in Wales called Snowdon. Our visit was mainly around this mountain region and near the shore of Irish Sea.

Although Wales is incorporated into England since 1500s, it has kept its separate identity from rest of the UK with unique culture including its own language, food, customs, music etc. Welsh language still has significance in local people’s life and it is also one of two official languages in Wales, another being English, of course. It has population of around three million.

Best way to visit northern Wales is by car as public transport is limited. Weather was nice during our visit with few showers here and there and that made landscape look better with light warm Sun light bouncing from water particles. We were surprised by number of sheep we saw in farms and I think there are more sheep in Wales than humans. When you first enter into mountain area, you will notice water stream flowing from mountains, uncountable sheep on grassy lands and vast area with roughly no human presents. If you admire of nature and like mountain walk, I think Wales could be one of the best places to visit.

Errors and precision

Life is full of disorders, malfunctions and errors. And, then also, somehow, most of the things are working correctly in daily life and lives on planet are continuing. Murphy’s law says that if anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Our body is made up of so many different organs, and in total, adult human body consists of around 10 trillion cells. Except few sicknesses once in a while, our body seems to work normally throughout life span, which is typical of around 65 years. Society, as a general, has a multiple parts and even though some parts may create chaos sometimes, life goes on normally for each of us and we are moving ahead for better future. It seems that even though Murphy’s law is undoubtedly right in general sense, error doesn’t happen that often in our lives and somehow we manage to survive in this chaotic world.

Error has different meanings depending upon the context where it has been used. Error can happen due to lack of knowledge. But nature sometimes introduces these errors in its code to make species different from each other and to form coherent society, and this error generally referred to as mutation. Each of us has DNA that consists of millions of base pairs, and with the help of this DNA, our body is forms our body parts. Now, with only few exceptions, out of billions of people around the world, errors because of genetic mutation are rare. And it is amazing to know that copying of pairs in DNA happens in few seconds and still most of these pairs are free from errors. Is nature very kind to us or there is more order in life than we think? Even human made components, like computer processors, are an example of precision in life and when we see that each processor contains millions of transistors and each transistor holds a few electrons, protons and neutrons, point of failure is not in single or double digits but its in millions, and still, these processors work around the clock. It is in our nature to make mistakes but due to technological advances the rate of failure has been decreased recently in all major fields and work of nature provides us an example to become more accurate in every aspect of our lives.

Multiple personalities

Knowingly or unknowingly, we act differently to different people or to group of people and this creates various images of ourselves to other people. Most of us spend the average day at work with colleagues. Out of all colleagues we work with, each one has distinct perception about us in their minds. Although each of us is unique as a person, we live differently in our parents, friends, colleagues, rivals, etc. mind.

The moment we meet a new person, we start building image about his or her in our mind. At the time when we start our conversation with this individual, this person generally shows his or her positive side and acts civilly. When we get chance to meet or work with this person quite often, then we start adding his or her characteristics in our mind and build a strong image of that person after a few meetings. As we interact with a few friends, relatives, colleagues etc everyday, they get to know ourselves better and learn our different characteristics each time and we also add their traits, their behaviours, and their positive and negative sides into our minds that ultimately alters their image that we used to hold until then.

Although each of us has unique personality, somehow we appear different to each and every other person. And the same way, we have a unique image of each individual in our mind that may be very diverse than that person’s actual personality.

Fact on theories

As an electronic engineering student, I studied most of my undergraduate education studying around electron’s properties and its behaviour. I did so even without actually seeing electron by my eyes and putting faith on university lecturers and scientists who have discovered and studied it before me. The question is, how can we spend whole life on something which we haven’t seen or touched and just putting faith on people and unquestioning whatever they have substantiated a long time ago, is correct? What if someone will discover that the electron that we used to know is not what it is? Will lives of all electronics and computer engineers jeopardise if such thing happens? Or, nothing much will happen as computers and electronics device will work same as they were working before the new discovery.

Most of our educational studies and professional work are based upon some sort of theories. These theories are either established by some facts or verified by other theories on which current theory is based upon. Now, if predictions of any theory are verified by a few different sources, then we can confirm that theory is full proof. But if theory is based upon assumptions that we can’t verify directly but only depends upon indirect evidence, how much can we trust that theory? Most theories in Physical science are based upon such assumptions and those assumptions are, at least most of the times, depends upon indirect evidence. The question arises at this point is that then how can we trust such theories?

For example, all information we have about our Sun is a result of indirect evidence or calculations made on earth by scientists. As it is not possible to actually go to the Sun and collect evidences, is it worth to put blind faith in whatever scientists tell us? Most tests carried out by scientific circles show that Sun will be still there for another 5 billions years. But what if scientists have made some mistakes in their calculations and what if those mistakes were so catastrophic that we misjudged the whole process of chemical reactions in the Sun’s core? As we don’t know the whole secret of physical world yet, what if we haven’t noticed one significant process happening in the Sun that can alter our whole perception about it? What if we found that instead of 5 billion years, Sun’s remaining life is only 50 years? The chance of that happening is very odd, but, still, there is a chance!

In order to expand our knowledge, we always use old scientific notions and expand them further. We generally believe in our predecessors and their work. But, as it has happened before, they might have omitted minor facts that weren’t important to them in the discovery of something but those facts were also not that much negligible as well not consider for the bigger and better result. This may lead us all to the false results and to the future that is different than what we have predicted. There is no point going back to the beginning of scientific and mathematical origin and start verifying everything. But, there always will be a dilemma whether to trust on someone’s work that we can’t verify personally. Hence, I think it is always worth considering the fact that unless theories are based upon pure facts, they are still theories and we shouldn’t put our blind faith on them.

Friendship

Some of us are very luck in terms of friends we have got. Throughout our life and at different stages, we make friends and sometimes these friendships lasts forever and sometimes they don’t. I have good friends like, and because of these good people around me and with their help I am whatever I am today.

When I make a friendship with any person, I try to keep it that way forever. I have changed a couple of schools and been to two different universities in two different countries. Still, today I am in touch with my friends from my first school and still I am keeping in touch with all of them with whom I have friendship. Although each one of us is a little bit or more selfish, I consider myself very lucky in all friendships and I have gained more than what I have given whether that in terms of knowledge or help. I try to put every effort from my side to keep friendship alive, doesn’t matter where the person is living, how often he or she contacts me, how often actually I meet them in person or whether they were helpful to me or not when I needed their help. Friendship for me is to give something to people who I care about and seeking nothing in return. If any of these friends can help when I need any assistance, then I appreciate their input but if they can’t help me I don’t take it personally.

Each and every friend of mine knows me in different capacity. Although I have made few new friends since I have been here somehow I have managed to keep my old friendships intact and throughout last few years they have become even stronger. My colleagues here are telling me that these have happened because I am still bachelor and haven’t seen true face of each friend. People do change when they get married, get settled in their lives and when they have kids; people become more self concentrated and it will be hard from both the sides to keep friendships active. Well, I would like to think that when I will get married and when I will have kids as well, I would still try to keep in contact with all my friends and no matter what circumstances I will be, I will try to help them when they will need my help.

Memories

We often hold on to things that remind us our past, things which are belongs to our good and bad memories. Photos, gifts, mails, etc are such things that can bring us back to that joyful time at which we were happy and enjoyed our time with those who cared about us. But why we keep things that remind us our unpleasant past, why we don’t through those few belongings that does not only makes us sad but also makes us harder to come out of bad feelings again.

Life is a sum of good and bad memories. Each occasion is generally associated with some personal possessions. These personal items remind us how happy we were at the moment and some moments are priceless. Recent advancements in technologies makes our life easy to store those memories in terms of photos, emails, videos, etc which we can look back to those items anytime and refresh our memories.

But is it worth it to keep those belongings that although may reminds us the best time of our life but also makes us sad? Why do we keep those things? Do we keep those things to remind us what has happened and what could have happened? Or, do we just keep because that’s the only thing we have which connects us to our past? Or, may be, we keep those things thinking that this time, time will not be cruel and what didn’t happen will happen in the future.

Cameroon Visit (Final part)

It has been more than a week since I have been here. Due to long daylight hours, it feels that I have been here for ages. It is amazing that how we adopt new routine, new culture, new food and the new way of life so quickly. Apart from food choice, I didn’t have any major problem here. Because my colleagues are with me here, I have overcome of language problem with they are helping in French/English translation.

Work pattern is very similar here to the one I have seen in India, normally its 6-days a week for employed person. I met few professional people and worked with them in project work, and found that they work very long hours daily and everyday they finish their work between 8-9pm. It is because work progress is relatively slow when you compare it to the work done in the UK and hence it takes long time to finish any technical project. As our project was within government agency, it was even worst for us because they tend to work in different (African) pattern and that is very unlikely than European pattern.

As one of my colleagues was a local born, I had few chances to meet native Cameroonians and see their way of life. One thing I noticed here was that these people have adopted a few elements of French traditions into their lives. You will see African culture and its mentality in people’s mind, but few things they are still doing as French do. Unfortunately, because of this mixture of traditions, I see that society as a whole is confused for the future prospects and direction. There are many projects in progress for infrastructure developments which taking place all around Douala city; people are driving new Mercedes Benz and Lexus everywhere; internet and mobile phones are common among the people who can afford these, etc but still, you feel that there are so many things need to done here. It looks like that government has adopted few things from developed countries without understanding local etiquette and need of people, and hence, I think that’s why there is a tension in the atmosphere between different communities of people because of this western adaptation. There is no point of authorities to help mobile companies to provide iPhone to minority of rich people community while majority of people don’t have access to daily water and electricity supply.

The situation is very worst here than in rural India as gap between poor and rich is very wide here. Recent progress and prosperity in India has happened because of rise of middle-class families and their demands. Practically, no middle-class exists here in Cameroon, not even in the cities; someone is either poor or rich. Apart from two major cities, everything else is undeveloped and even basic facilities do not exists for people living outside Douala and Yaoundé. This is not because that lands are not fertile or they do not have enough natural resources, it is because minority of people handles the way country is going and they have interests in their own money and not much in country’s growth. I hope that those who are well educated and those who can understand their country better than any foreigners, will try to overcome basic problems in order to guide Cameroon to the better prosperity.

Respect

Most often we forget the inherited characteristic with which we born and that is respect to other human fellow. Before we are anything, we are human. That means that no matter what other person is, we are connected to him or her with one bond and that is human bond. But as we grow our knowledge, get rich and get more power either in professional life or in society, we generally forget the basic value of human race.

The line between ego and power is very thin. It is necessary for us to develop our skills, earn money to sustain daily life and get necessary artificial luxuries. It is also necessary to go to the top of hierarchical social or professional systems. But when we do so or try to do so, we always tend to forget basic value of our lives. And that value is respect; respect to other human being. No matter how much richer or poorer one is, no matter how sophisticated or primitive one is, no matter either someone is the owner of a company or an employee or no matter how old or young one is; we should always see other person as one of us. As each of us is unique, there always will be differences in opinion, difference in culture or tradition, difference in attitude, etc but no matter who we are, we always connected to each other with invisible bond with which we come to the earth.

Society and religions always try to teach us this value to everyone. But, we often forget this basic value as we grow from a child to an adult person. And that’s why it has been said that children are pure form of god as for god each us is same, children are above all the differences we have created in our societies. Children see another person as just another person, not as rich or poor, not as clever or dull. Only few of us are able to preserve this true characteristic throughout our life. If we can understand that because of these differences in each of us we are able to exist and live the life we like to live, we will be able to see that each of us is important in the society. We can earn more respect of others if we can respect others and if we can value their work and life.

Cameroon visit (Part 1)

This is my first trip to Cameroon and to African continent. Let me give you brief information about Cameroon. It is former French and British colony and its independent came in 1960-61. It is one of the prosperous countries in Western Africa and Yaoundé and Douala are major cities. My visit is in Douala with some chance of visiting Yaoundé in the second week of my stay. I am staying in Akwa area, near the seashore of Atlantic Ocean.

Main difficulty I had so far is a language. Being a former French part, main language is French and only 30% of city populous speaks English. My hotel is located just near seashore. As Douala being a major port in Cameroon, it wasn’t surprising to sea large ships and containers from my room’s window. Weather so far is mild and I guess its typical equatorial weather with good amount of humidity in the atmosphere. Traditional French food is available and as long as you don’t mess up with waiters, there are good chances of getting delicious food within an hour once you place an order. Vegetarian dishes are also available although choices are very few for that.

One thing you will notice in Douala is number of 4x4 cars around. I think there are more SUVs in Douala than in London city. There are two reasons for this, first is that roads in the city and outskirts are not in good conditions and second reason is that people who got money they would like to show their richness by driving big cars.

Night is always darkest before the dawn

At some point in our life, we come to a situation when we face several difficult situations at the same time and we don’t know whether we will be able to get out of these successfully or not. At that point life seems like a long dark tunnel and we standing alone at the intersection where we see doors surrounded by darkness and we don’t know which door is the one which can lead us to the light.

Time is cruel. God is cruel, too. Time and god tests us to see our abilities and self believes at various junctures. We are nothing but the result of our past. The wrong decision taken in the past rebounds one day and number of those wrong decisions brings us to chaotic circumstances in the present. As a human tendency, we always believe that no matter what the current situation is, we will come out of this. We always hope for the best, and as night is always darkest before the dawn, we think that our future will be bright again some day.

Each of us is alone and each of us dies alone someday. Hence, we have to be prepared for any situation that comes in our life. Everyone has to pass this phase some point in lifetime. The only positive thing someone can have at that time is support from the closed ones. At that point we know who true friend is and who is really at our side. It is warmth and comfort of these people brings us out of our miseries. I really believe that there will be at least one door in the dark tunnel that can lead back to light. The path may be darker than we though but we will be able to cross it if we have support from our loved ones and if we have someone with us who really cares about us. I wish that no one come across the dark junction where he/she finds alone and no one there to support. I also wish I do not leave anyone alone in the dark when he/she asks for my help and I will be able to support the person.

We always have a choice

We always have a choice to do right thing. Everyday we come across many different situations for which we will have to make decisions in order to solve personal or work related problems. There always be a right path to follow to solve those problems, and that path may be a long and stringent, but at the end, we always finish our task with complete satisfaction. With all these situations, we also see shorter and less painful unethical path involving deception and dishonesty. And, it is up to us to follow right path or the wrong one.

Some of us have principles towards each and every aspects of life. Strong dedication to those values makes us different person from others who don’t have any moralities. It is what we do define us. There always be people around us those will try to pursue us to choose wrong path and we will need to beware of these pessimistic minded people.

Those people who have ideologies in life, they should always try to stick to those ideologies. With pure commitment to values of life, we can be what we want to be. It is always strong-minded person who gets tough tests from God. God and nature will not test weak-minded persons, as they are not capable of any test. If you believe in any religion, stick to it. No matter what anybody convinces you otherwise, you do what you believe is right for you and right for the people close to you. If you are vegetarian, try to stick to it. If anyone asks you to eat meat, you can always deny that.

It is an honest person who always gets tested by dishonest people and these dishonest people want to see whether this honest person will stray from the honesty or not. Dishonest people do not have any rules and hence they can play dirty games. But, if you are a person, who believes in certain values and follow principles in life, please stick to your beliefs, because once you dishonour your values, you will never be able to go back to the stage where you were before. And the image you created for yourself will vanish forever from your mind and from other people’s mind, too. If you follow right path, then no matter what happens on that path, do not deviate. Try to walk on it and you will prove it yourself (and to others, as well) at the end that you have made a right choice by walking on that path.

Extraterrestrial life

According to Darwinian theory, life on earth has evolved from the same common ancestors through the process Darwin called natural selection. We haven’t found sufficient proof regarding ‘same ancestors’ from whom we have all evolved. Some says that life has started here on earth as a result of chemical process on primordial elements while other suggests that life on earth has originally came from other planet from other solar system. We are still not sure whether there is any form of life available on other planet in the Universe.

Frank Drake, a famous astrophysicist who founded SETI programme, devised now famous and controversial Drake equation in 1960. Using this equation, one can find our chances to find any extraterrestrial life or to check whether there such life exists or not in the universe. Within scientific community, considerable disagreement on the values of most of the parameters for the equation exists, and hence, we have no clear value for our chances to communicate with civilised communities within our galaxy.

It is fascinating to think that what if the life on our planet is the only unique creation of the universe and no other form of life exists anywhere in the universe. If this is true than we are special, each and every other species on this planet are special because it took nature millions of years to form life as we see it now. It will be our responsibility to preserve life on earth because we as a human are the most intelligent species and hence we are more responsible to take care of our planet.

Thinking about other possibility, what if there is an intelligent life exists somewhere, may be in our galaxy or in other galaxy? Can we be able to communicate with them in our lifetime? By looking at recent technological advancements in radio telescope and astronomy in general, I don’t think that right now we have that much capability to probe in the distant galaxies or to understand signals from aliens if we are able to capture any.

To probe further:

http://frombob.to/drake.html

http://www.seti.org

Looking from space

My colleague and me were talking about my next trip to India. Suddenly, he told me that instead of spending money in small trips to India and other countries, why not I should do saving and plan a big trip for the future. The above-mentioned big trip is really big. It’s not like a world tour or going on top of Himalayas. What if I can save enough money in next 2-3 decades and have sufficient fund to go outside of our atmosphere for 10 minutes and see earth from space?

It has been said that we should go and see different places in order to widen our knowledge and turn imagination of other lands in reality. We often see documentaries about mountains, sea life, polar landscapes, earth from space, etc and often the sceneries in those films are mesmerizing. If those sceneries can have last long effect on us then what will happen if we are able to see those things on the spot? I think that that will be an experience which we cannot forget for a whole life.

Going further on this imagination, what if I have enough money in the future to afford space visit and see our lovely planet from sky? I think it will be something amazing and those who have done this are amongst the luckiest people on earth. Just imaging it makes me wonder about the earth, the beauty of our oceans, marvellous landscapes we have on continents, etc. I think if someone will be able to do this, it will change his/her perception about life, about earth and about the nature.

Scientists are saying that if current technology progress will be continued for next couple of decades, it will be possible for general public to visit moon. I would like to think that this is true and I will be able to travel to the moon before I die. But when I imagine myself standing on the surface of moon and looking back to the earth, I think my first thought will be that how small as a human we are. Although we have built skyscrapers, we have built pyramids, we are the builders of gigantic dams on rivers, etc still we are a tiny compared to the universe and we are nothing but a dot against nature’s other creations.

Growth is life

‘Growth is life’ is a tagline of India’s largest company, RIL. For a company that has achieved tremendous growth in a little time in various diverse businesses, it’s very hard to find better tag line than that. But, I see this sentence more suitable to me, as an individual person. If at any point in life if we think that we are satisfied with something, e.g. money or career, it means that we have stopped progressing. But, we always should ask for more. It’s not about greediness; it’s about development.

For me, growth in every positive prospects of life is important. I want to learn new technologies, learn new skills, and learn new techniques etc that can help me perform my job more accurately and quickly. To keep up with technical skills development, I also need to develop my mental and physical strength. Growth in those areas is helpful to become better person. I am always eager to learn about religion, philosophy, logic, science, etc because only growth in all aspects of life will make me diverse from other individuals. Some people do not want to learn new skills, while some are satisfied with their career path and some even do not want to cultivate themselves to become better person.

We may not be able to do develop in all above-mentioned things at the same time but if we decide to learn these things and put a little bit effort, we will be able to achieve significant success.

Data security and privacy

Internet has made our lives easy. Most of our professional and personal work depends upon network and computers. But how can we be sure that various service providers have provided enough security to our data? Our personal details are store into Banks, councils, credit card providers, utility companies, etc systems and previous data thefts incidents in many of these industry suggest that our data is not secure with them. Even governments in various countries have failed to protect public information going in malicious users’ hands.

Most of new electronics devices come with embedded software; even our Digital TV viewer or refrigerators are now coming with various software inside to make our life easy. These devices store lots of our personal details. Now, how can we be sure that information stored inside these devices are secure and even companies those who have made these appliances can not access it without our permission? People buy their mobile phones from Internet and local phone shops. How can they be sure that those phone are not cracked with malicious software? It only takes a few minutes to load malicious code inside any mobile phone and cracker can use all or any particular information without user noticing anything suspicious.

It is now possible to track a person using his mobile phone. This can be done either by network location algorithm or using GPS, which now comes with new phones anyway. With the help of new software services like Google Latitude and Loopt, people can see where their friends are at any particular time. This may be a nice feature for parents to keep track of their children, this may be a nightmare for others and raises a serious questions about privacy.

Quantum computing is on the horizon, which can crack most of security algorithms almost instantly, and lack of trust for most of current cryptography algorithms that are being used in internet, it is worrying to know that our personal information is not safe and our privacy is not guaranteed anymore. Recent demonstration of basic flow in Internet itself shows that even researchers and scientists don’t trust technology for any sensitive data transfer and unless we will not able to solve these basic issues, current situation may go worst.

To probe further:

http://www.loopt.com/

http://www.google.com/latitude/intro.html

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/oct08/6818/

Love

Love is one of the most complex feelings a person can ever experience. Although it is one most the most common expressions, it is very hard to define and more importantly, most difficult chemical (and emotional) behaviour in heart to understand. I am going to express my views on love that can be present between a couple, man and woman. Although being naïve in this subject, I strongly believe that it is love that completes us, and marriage and life with loved one accomplishes the purpose of our existence.

Love is not a single emotion; it’s a mixture of different feelings in our heart and brain. It is so complex that when person is in love, even he/she won’t immediately feel that. I believe in mature love, meaning love happened after certain age. This age depends upon person to person. Most of us see crush or infatuation as love in early age, especially in teenage. I am sure that love is very mature phenomenon and hence I don’t think that at teenage any of us have that much maturity to develop such a strong feeling for any person. Nevertheless, there are chances of this early crush to be developing as a love.

Thanks to Bollywood/Hollywood and experience from my friends, I have come to know the truth about a woman, and it’s that a woman is a very complex equation. Each girl has different set of parameters for life, life-partner, marriage and of course, for love. Those who have understood to find those parameters and solve them have finally solved the biggest mystery of life. As a boy, I think male person has very straight forward requirements from their life partner and unless a person is introvert, a girl can easily read boy’s feelings and make her decision whether that’s a right person or not for her.

It is a time on which we all depend for love to come to us or us to find love of our life. In order to understand a person, we will need to give time for relationship to grow and see whether that person wants the same things from life as we do. Although everyone is free to make their own decision for love and marriage, we still live in the world where either from male or female side there are always some constrains and sometime complex situations also happens where love tests both persons strength. As it has been said, a path of true love is never smooth, lovers must be ready for tough tests if it required. And, I strongly believe that if two persons have true love for each other, at the end, it is always love that wins. And, also, the beauty of love is that, it always grows even after marriage to the loved one and only death of both persons ends the journey of love.

If you are one of the lucky people who has already found your true love, first congratulations and second don’t lose that person. And, if you haven’t found your true love, yet, it is not because that person doesn’t exist but it is because that person or you might not be ready for an adventure. If we can wait few days for our exam results, a month for our salary to be credited in bank, few months for our next vacation, I think we should wait a little longer for our love to find us.

If people are right, then marriages are decided in the heaven and it’s up to us to find that partner. Hence, keep looking for that person and make sure that you will be able to read signs. And if destiny brings that person into your life, make sure that you tell your feelings. Destiny will not help a person who is not courageous enough to make the first move. If love has come to other people’s life, then I guess you are not an exception and you will find your true love one day. So, whether you are single or with partner, make sure that you make most out of this Valentines Day.

Diet

My colleagues at work and most of my friends here in Southampton, follow non-vegetarian diet. Because of me being vegetarian, topics of vegetarianism and non-vegetarianism often comes in our discussions. I know that none of us are going to change their diet based upon these discussions we still enjoy discussing it. My main point about food choice is that irrespective of source of the food, we eat whatever we eat based upon taste rather than from where it is originated.

Typically, our diet pattern comes from our family and at least we stick to it until we grow-up. Its very rare for a child to be a vegetarian in non-vegetarian family, and vice-versa, unless child has some sort of disease in which he/she is not allowed to eat certain things. Those who grew up as a vegetarian, only becomes non-vegetarian if they like taste of meat or under extreme circumstances, if person moves to another region or country where it’s difficult to find vegetarian options and/or high cost of vegetarian food. But, according to my experience, most of those people who became non-vegetarian were due to meat’s taste and they couldn’t resist it. There is nothing wrong with it and a person has own choice to eat whatever they like as long as they don’t eat human! However, most of non-vegetarian people justify their view saying that they eat meat because it fulfils all body requirements that might be very hard to find from vegetables, fruits and non-meat products. That’s totally wrong. People eat food because of its taste and there are always meat alternate foods available to get necessary ingredients that are necessary for human body.

Personally, I like to be vegetarian because I don’t see any reason why I should eat meat? When I can get all the vitamins, protein, fat, carbohydrates, fibre, etc from vegetables, fruits and dairy products, I don’t see why I should eat meat. Main argument at this point I receive from non-vegetarian people that cows and calves suffers a huge pain in the whole process of milk productions in dairies. I agree with that and I insist that we all should do our best to make sure that dairy owners take care of cows and calves and other animals, too, even if it means that we have to pay higher prices for dairy products.

Environmental protection

In recent few years, the subject of environment protection has been discussed more than any other topic and it is the one of the most written topics in magazines and newspapers. Nowadays, each company, either small or big, is now taking environmental issues seriously and trying their best to reduce any material wastage and trying to recycle things as much as possible. As a public, each one of us is trying our own bits to protect our environment and that will ultimately secure future for next generations. But big environment agencies are failing to show true commitments to the issue. Recently, UN has suspended world’s biggest auditors of clean energy project after finding ‘non-conformities’ during their inspection at its headquarter, in Norway. This raises a serious question about how much can we trust these big auditors and agencies that are doing wrong business and hence wasting taxpayers’ money.

Since the discovery of CFC’s (Chloro Fluoro Carbons), compound that was a main source of refrigerants between 1960s-1980s, affect on earth’s atmosphere, especially on ozone layer, public became aware of their role as a polluter. When in late 1990s scientists found that due to carbon imbalance in atmosphere, earth’s temperature is raising and causing greenhouse affect, we understood how an excess CO2 is dangerous to the environment. Since then, numerous projects have been started to tackle greenhouse affect and public is also supporting governments effort to reduce carbon emissions.

But current winter in Western Europe, which is one of the worst winters in decades, and very hot summer in Australia shows that we are very far away from any temperature stability in the world. Although developing nations are emitting more carbon in air than they should, carbon emission reduction from people is huge in proportionate and there are big industry leaders which are also cutting their emissions. But it is governmental and international environment protection agencies’ wrongdoing not solving this issue. These big agencies are abusing their power and making under table arrangements for carbon trading. Carbon trading is a huge business now and in terms of total revenue it comes after stock market and oil trading. Hence, the principle of carbon reduction has been gone and all these environmental protection agencies are making money out of carbon trading.

If earth’s current temperature will increase for another decade or so, we will see some more hazardous weather conditions and unless and until UN and governments in each country doesn’t do their part to cut emission of carbon dioxide, I do not see any chance of greenhouse effect going within next two decades. We will need to start using more renewable energy sources in everyday life like solar energy, hydrogen power, tidal forces, wind energy etc to put less burden on power generation from oil and gas and we also need to make sure that environmental agencies are performing their jobs properly.

To probe further:

http://kn.theiet.org/magazine/issues/0901/carbon-swindle-0901.cfm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_emission_trading

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/dec/12/thegreatcarbontradingscam

Prayer

Those of us, who believe in god, pray to god to bring success and happiness in life. As it has been said, god always fulfils the wishes if prayer has come from pure heart. But those who are atheists don’t pray et al and they think that there is no god or external force and sees prayer as a form of begging. But to do prayer, one doesn’t have to believe in particular god and can be done in good faith for him or for sake of others and one doesn’t have to ask for anything to god if person doesn’t want.

When we were kids, our parents used to accomplish our requirements and they used to give us gifts in exchange of our good behaviour. In the same way, for an adult person prayer can become significant part of life and he/she can treat almighty as his/her parents. We always come in the situation where we don’t have self believe to handle it and we often seek help from others. Now, at this point, if we are lucky, our friends or relatives will help us to solve it. But, if you believe in god, this can be main source of positive energy at this stage when you need it most and if you have faith in god, he will give you strength to overcome all the problems by following right path.

In order to do prayer from heart, one has to believe the existence of god and keep faith in him. It’s not possible to ask for results and then to believe in god. Atheists take this point very seriously and argue that they will only believe in god if there is some evidence of its miracle. Well, that’s not possible and that’s never going to happen. It’s not that god doesn’t show miracles or god doesn’t complete person’s wishes, but atheists will always have argument against it and there is no need for god to come to earth to prove them wrong. Every human being believes either in god or the non-existence of god. If everyone believes in something, then why not believe in god than being atheists.

One can also remember god even if he/she is not in trouble. I see prayer as a way to connect to the source of positive energy. Whenever each of us prays, we generate positive energy and it flows from us to main source and that energy can be used when we need in the future. At the bad time, when we have more negative energy inside us, by doing prayer, we get positive energy back from the source. The god is a source of this energy and he governs input-output of it. Those of us who do not believe that the god exists, they will be able to perform prayer because it doesn’t have be done for particular god. One can pray by considering sun or nature as a form of positive source for human life.

My KISS (Keep it simple, stupid!) theory

Life is simple, if we can see it that way. But, unfortunately, most of us, including me, try to make it very complicated. I always try to prepare a plan for the future. I always think in profound manner for things like career, job, education, marriage, money, family, etc and make preparations for all those. And because I know that there is an odd of one of my plans failing, I also think about the options that I can use if something or someone doesn’t behave according to my inclination. But, life doesn’t have to be planned and I think I should leave few things for time and let me make decisions at that instance.

We want certainty in our life but nature is cruel and hence no matter how many efforts we put to create full-proof plans, uncertainty always comes in our life. At that point, if the person is so used to live life according to his rules, he gets puzzled in this uncertainty and his mind floats around everywhere. This has happened me to, as well. There were few moments where situation didn’t work out the way I wanted and because I never had a backup plan because I always thought about the outcome to be in a certain way, my mind was packed with reactions and took me a while to recover from the situations.

I am not suggesting that we shouldn’t plan for the future. We should and we must. We always have responsibilities, even if we live alone or we live outside from our home country. Some people have more responsibilities than others but we always care about people around us and hence we always think about the future and plan according to it. But, sometimes, its better to leave certain things for the future to decide and not make any arrangement before actually that situation comes. This uncertainty makes us more aware of the circumstances and decision taken at those moments, though very quick once, develops self-confidence.

Therefore, think about the future and make some plan as well. But, remember, each plan makes person’s life more complicated and life doesn’t have to be complicated. Life doesn’t have to be like a flow chart, and hence, leave certain small and sometimes major situations for the future to come up with. Try to keep life simple and I am sure that that life will be more enjoyable.

A revolutionary idea in science

I was reading an interesting article in recent New Scientist magazine about evolution and suddenly one thought popped-in my mind, is it possible to come with a revolution idea in this internet age? Yes, I know that there are many mysteries in physics, chemistry and biology that are still need to be solved. But, is there anything left for me to find now that is so much intuitive that no one has ever thought about it before me? Is it possible for me to come with an idea like relativity by just thought experiments and not depending upon any pre-existed theories?

In Physics, we have yet to find answers for black holes and inflationary universe, Chemistry is asking for explanation on alpha affect and chemical origins of life and Biology is still seeking a total theory of evolution. Some of these problems are with us for a quite a long time and we are trying to solve those by finding small pieces of answers everyday. But, is there an idea still left to be discovered in the world that is so much revolutionary that no one has ever imagined it before and is about to emerge from the mind of a student who is sitting under an apple tree? The idea must be so much world-shattering that it should not only change the face of science but it should impact everyone’s life on the planet. Do you think we have any chance to come up with it? Or, everything astonishing has already been found by great people in the last few centuries?

It only can be possible for someone, considering there is still something left to be found, if that person does not have any bondage with our limited world and that he is not afraid of asking questions to himself or to others which no one has raised before. Most of us have made some presumptions about the things we see around us and our minds are confined within-in these walls of conjectures. Often, we do not have that much courage to push those walls further apart from us and hence our minds can not come with ground-breaking thoughts like gravity and relativity.

I am pretty sure that god (or nature) hasn’t revealed all its secrets to humankind, yet. And hence, in order to understand the nature of our universe, we will need minds which can go beyond the limits of current understanding and stand out from the crowd.

Economy and technology

Some scholars and economists are now suggesting that current global downturn is happening because there is no new technology around which can survive economy. Since the industrial revolution, mankind has depended upon machines and electronics and indirect way those inventions have helped global economy on move. But since the mobile and internet technologies, we haven’t seen any major invention and lack of new technology, there is no driving force for money to flow around.

In early 1900s, telephone and car industry made a huge impact and they were the first of few technologies that were involved and counted a big part in economy. After that, we have seen electronic chips, television, computers, etc becoming part of our daily life. It’s the new technological development that brings new projects from government, construction for new buildings and sites, skilled worker employments and prosperity in our lives. Currently, we are just seeing upgraded versions of computers, laptops, mobile phones, websites, mp3 players, etc and there is no great product on horizon that can start global economy moving again.

Important projects like robotics, nano-technology, fuel-cell powered vehicles, biotechnology, etc are still in development phase and scientists are not sure when these technology will be available to mass audiences. Until we will not able to see any of these technologies in production line, there are very less chances that global economy will recover.

Who are we to judge any person?

We often try to judge other people and make up our mind about them without knowing them personally. Most of the time, people are not bad only time upon them is bad. Therefore, their decisions taken during the bad time makes negative affects on observers or people who are closed to them. Hence, I think, we should not judge any person, and instead we should try to put ourselves at his or her position and see what choices they had when they decided to do something that we cannot justify as a positive decision.

For example, most of us think that Hitler was a bad person. I agree, that he killed so many people and he was one of a main causes to start WWII, but I don’t have any authority or I am not that much knowledgeable to make any judgement. I cannot rely upon the resources that are provided by those who have written history from one point of view and often did not depict that person’s angle. I know that there is no justification for massacre and whatever Hitler did at that time could have been avoided and he could have achieved his goals without being mass murderer but I cannot say that he was a bad person as a whole because I cannot make that decision without going through the same or similar pain he felt and the circumstances on which he chose to do such a big bloodbath. As all these things happened in the distant past, it doesn’t affect us that much in our daily life.

But, when a person close to us, like friend or relative, makes a certain decision because of which we get a lot of pain, we most often make assumptions about that person and his/her personality. We generally ignore to understand their perspectives and we do not put ourselves into their position to see why they have made such a nasty decisions. Even worst than that, if we receive some opinions from third-person on them, we generally believe third-party and we close our mind to think from our friend or relative’s point of view whose decision has caused such a great frustrations. We feel such emotions only when the person is very attached to us and hence we should try to understand him/her and should not make our judgement on what we have seen or what we have heard but on which conditions that person has made such a huge and controversial decision. If we are able to see that point of view, we generally find that he/she may be right and whatever he/she has thought is best for all the people who are involved in the situation.

We will be able to do this only when we put our ego aside and when our mind and character are strong enough to withstand whatever result may come in the future.

Change

We are used to certain things, timings, environment, arrangements, etc in our daily life. By knowingly or unknowingly, our certain acts on certain things depend upon particular sequence and if some part of that sequence changes, we get frustrated. On contrary, some people get bored of routine life at home or at work in few months or in few years.

Only one thing in our life is constant and that is change. Sometimes, these changes are very big and we are not able to take those easily and we take a while to adapt to those transforms. Personally, I like to vary few little things in my daily life on a regular basis. I generally take different route between office and home every few days, try to do experiments with my diet quite often and I am not afraid of trying new hairstyles regularly. But, I am also afraid of few hasty changes in my life and want few things to be the same as they are or at least I should have control over them. But that is not possible in real life. And when these changes happen, I struggle a bit to get used to those. I take these situations positively and try to learn from them.

Most often, the work pattern and work environment frustrates people. I know someone who gets bored and frustrated within few months in the same company. I have been with my current employer for last two and half years. I like the environment here, working style, working hours, etc but I know that if I want to work longer with this company, I have to make certain changes every often in my work style, lunch timings, things I do when I am not busy in work and I need to keep it up with technological updates so that when big change happens in the company I am prepared to adopt that easily.

Most of us like our home and love our life with family members. Hence, we try to avoid moving to new house until it becomes unavoidable, make any changes in living room or in bedroom, paint new colours in house, etc etc. We get attached to all these non-living objects so much and want them to be as they are forever.

Religion as a tool for socialisation

Recently, I had a good talk with a person who often comes to local temple, here in Southampton. He has already been retired from and spends almost every evening at temple. What I noticed about him was that, although he helps a priest a lot for arranging prayers and keeping temple clean and tidy, I never saw him praying to god and just sits around and chats with people.

I was enthusiastic about his opinions about god and wanted to know whether he believes in god or not. So, I asked him whether he believes in god or not. I was expecting negative answer. But, surprisingly, he told me that he does believe in god but doesn’t like to pray or bow his head to god that something typical devotees do. In order to explain this behaviour, he told me that he sees religion, at least Hinduism, as a tool for socialisation. We had a good talk and I grasped few of his views on religion believes.

At the time of when Hinduism was formed, according to him, people were depressed, only self oriented and society as a whole were near collapse. Clever people from that time met to discuss the situation and decided to act together by creating new thing, called a religion. They became Monks (Sadhus) and built temples all around the places. Their aim was to start people getting socialised again and in order to do that people have to travel around and meet new persons. Hence, those monks built temples at the top of mountains, in jungles, near rivers, etc so that when people visit those places for religion purpose they can also see the beauty of nature and learn new culture around those places.

If people understand this way of thinking and take this positively, it may help us again to build the society. Right now, societies, in India and in Britain and in some other parts of the world as well, are collapsing. I believe we are not spending enough time to get socialised anymore and seeing religion places as tools by monks for making money. But, a person doesn’t have to give any money to these places or he has to believe in god in order to go to church or temple. If a person doesn’t believe in god, even he should go to church or temple and try to interact with people, understand culture around religion places, take positive things from priests and give something back to the society either by some volunteering work or by sharing things with others in which he is good at.

Influence on us by people around us

As we grow old from child to an adult person, people around influence us. When a child is born, he/she doesn’t have any name, religion, identity, etc. That’s up to his/her parents to give all necessary identity and put him/her into the society. For a kid, most significant impact comes from parents. Kid learns good and bad things from parents very quickly. By knowing or unknowingly, parents influence enforce religion, believes, behaviours, habits, etc and as child doesn’t have enough power to understand or oppose, he/she will accept most of these things.

When we become old enough to understand, we generally learn new things from friends, teachers, relatives and brothers/sisters. If any of these persons have any bad habits like smoking, drugs, drinking, etc, there are chances of getting these into a person’s habits, too. Its only when we start getting understanding of life and start learning new things by ourselves we start influencing people around us.

It will depend on how strong that is. I have seen people who do not have any idea about real life situations and they have survived because of good friends and relatives around him/her. When this protection has been removed from the person, I have seen these people struggling a lot to cope up with everyday challenges.

I think person’s characteristic depends upon religion and/or philosophical believes. In Indian culture, generally, parents’ religion is imposed on child. Parents generally do not give any freedom to child to believe in different religion or follow his/her own philosophy based upon his/her own understanding. Most of the time, this believe pass-on goes undetected because by the time child has grown up, all those believes are also embedded into his/her mind. But when this doesn’t happen, family sees chaotic atmosphere in the relationships and even division in the family. Should we give more freedom to a child to choose his/her religion when he/she grew up and not that of what parents believes?

Curiosity

We, the people, had born with curiosity in our nature. Some of us have curiosity about technology, engineering, business, etc while others have more interests towards arts, history, life science etc with different level of it at each topic. Because of curiosity in our nature, we ask questions to ourselves and always try to find answers of those questions.

But what I have noticed in teenagers surrounding me that they are not that much inquisitive to normal day-to-day things. These youngsters are able to use mobile phones easily and spends hours on internet chatting with their friends, but they do not have any clue how normal things work. Or may be they do not have to worry about it?

Engineers and scientists of one generation ahead of us have created world around us in which we live today. This world is very simple to live in and hence sometimes people, including me, take most of things as granted. But, I still ask questions to people around me or to myself if I am not able to understand working pattern of simple things. This inquisitiveness is lacking in young generation. They haven’t got any clue how to replace a punctured tire in the bicycle, which bus to use in-order to go to town hall, how to replace a mains fuse, etc which are the things which I remember doing very easily even at my early teenage life.

I think its our partial fault that we not encouraging kids around us to learn new things. May be we do not want them to ask questions to us while we are relaxing in the weekend. But, in order to preserve our and next generations future, we have to do something right now.

The ultimate goal of biological science

One of the topics that is in discussion in general public is Stem Cell research. Recently, Glasgow, Scotland, based Institute has announced that they have received permission from Government to pursue their research into Stem Cell use them for stroke and blindness. This has caused some frustration among those who opposes this idea.

This is not a new research topic. Scientists are trying to find answers about complex human body structure and their ultimate aim is to create Cloned Human body which will have no genetics disorder. Are they trying to replace nature by technology?

Personally, I am a supporter of both the ideas when they are used separately. But, when we will combine those two to create a perfect body, which will have no diabetes, no cancer, no genetical irregularities, no complex physical problems, etc, we are going against the nature. With the help of Stem Cell research we will be able to help disabled people by giving them normal life. With the help of human cloning, we might be able to "generate" people in laboratories who can go to other planets in long space missions where normal human body may be subject to more difficulties than cloned body.

But, as this has happened before with other technologies, once we will achieve success in human cloning, we will lose control over who and when should use this technology. In my opinion, let general public decide whether they support these kinds of research and upto what level government should be involved over control of the technology.

There is no such thing like Present

I had discussion with one of my colleagues at work about how to define our time in present sense. In his opinion, no matter what we are doing, there is no such thing like Present. The moment I will finish typing this line or even this word will be counted as past because the work has already been done. My colleague argued that there is no such thing as a current time because the moment we define that time or we want to live up to that point, that second will be lost for ever. And, hence, there is only past and immediate past, next past, next past and so on.

In counter argument, I said, although this sounds right, it can't be. If there is a past and there will be a future then there has to be Present. Otherwise, none of those two things will happen. I had to do a bit search on this topic to understand what present time is and what it really means.

According to wikipedia, and according my understanding of it now, one can only see or work on his/her present time. It is not possible to observer other's present time. No matter how close you stand to the next person, time is always relative. As Einstein has already proven that space and time are relative, I can see only my present time and no one can because by the time observer gets that information and process it, it is already become a history.

Although time frames are almost same to people in one room or in one city due to small relative motion, reference to time is always different for each and every object. This is very hard to see in our everyday life and most of the time difference is very small that we don't need to worry about. Nevertheless, this time difference is significant for few technologies to work properly, for e.g. GPS.