Being Indian

Source: https://www.facebook.com/drsubramanianswamy/photos/a.118146701658320.18858.107229389416718/401429553330032/?type=1&theater

Goodbye 2013, Welcome 2014

I am not so good at remembering things, so this is not going to be a rewind post on how 2013 was. 2013 was good for me, well, as far as I remember, all 28 years of my life have been good to me (So now you know how old I am and that I am an optimist). I am bad at keeping my resolutions, so this is not going to be a post on my future goals or resolutions for 2014 either.

If 2013 has taught me one thing, then it is that life is made of lot of unexpected joys and sorrows. The more we plan, prepare, research, and decide things that we would want to do, the more unexpected events are arriving at your door. The only thing I remember is how crazy the world was when we were at the end of the year 2012, an impending apocalypse expected by many. Yet, we survived the frenzy and are very much here to welcome 2014.

Life, to me, is almost surreal.

Surrealism was the cultural movement that started in the 1920s with an aim to resolve the previous contradictory conditions of dreams and reality*. While I am not going to talk about what the previous era was, or what happened during the surrealism movement, I will only share the most amazing piece of the surrealistic movement and the one I admire and associate my time most with.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory

This is the painting by Salvador Dali, a Spanish surrealist painter. Dalí attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes" to an "Arab lineage", claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors.**

The painting - Persistence of Memory# is one of my favorite paintings. I am not a painter, neither do I understand art, but I this painting invokes in me a sense of timelessness, a feeling of extreme turmoil, peace, and despair co-existing within me.

Life, to me, is almost surreal.

*source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism
** source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD
# source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory

Social Media in Plain English

Made in 2008 by @CommonCraft  the Social Media in Plain English #video still makes absolute sense! #socialmedia 

When life seems a little dull...

What do you do when life seems a little dull at 7 PM on a Monday evening?
I do this: 

10 favorite Calvin and Hobbes quotes that never fail to crack me up:

1. I like maxims that don’t encourage behavior modification.
2. Reality continues to ruin my life.
3. Everybody seeks happiness! Not me, though! That’s the difference between me and the rest of the world. Happiness isn’t good enough for me! I demand euphoria!
4. Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
5. I'm killing time while I wait for life to shower me with meaning and happiness.
6. As a math atheist, I should be excused from this.
7. When life gives you lemons, chunk it right back.
8. Girls are like slugs - they probably serve some purpose, but it's hard to imagine what
9. Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless.
10. And the bestest and the most favorite of all: Why isn’t my life like a situation comedy? Why don’t I have a bunch of friends with nothing better to do but drop by and instigate wacky adventures? Why aren’t my conversations peppered with spontaneous witticisms? Why don’t my friends demonstrate heartfelt concern for my well being when I have problems? …I gotta get my life some writers.

What do you do to cure Monday-evening-gloom :)