50/50

So, I have been thinking of writing a blog for quite a while now. I have even made a list of topics too. But a kind of laziness got to me and lately I am not quite myself, haven't been for a real long time. Anyways we'll get to that some other time. Coming to the blog itself, here it is....

No,its not another name for One Day International Cricket. Its the name of a funny yet thought provoking moving starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogan, Anna Kendrick etc. It's about a 27 y.o. guy(Joseph) who discovers that he is suffering from a type of cancer which gives him 50/50 odds of surviving and how he and people around him deal with it. This reminded me of a lot other movies(whose names I can't re-call right now) in which characters suffering from cancer gain this new perspective on life, make some kind of a bucket-list and do all kinds of stuff which they would not other wise have done. This made me think, why does it have to be this way? I mean, does someone have to be punched right on the face by cancer or some kind of terminal illness to realize that life is too short and you need to be making the maximum out of it. Are we as humans living too long a life that we waste most of it slacking, not being the best we can be, hesitating or being afraid of taking risks, etc? As a solution to this, maybe we should like psyche ourselves into thinking that we do have some kind of terminal illness, then make a kind of bucket-list and check every item on it out and make a whole new one again and repeat. I made my first one and I hope you did too.

Anyways that's the thought the movie put in me. You should check it out, its a good one.

P.S. I have two and three quarter years to live. :)

GOD

When I was a kid, I was told to pray. It could have been in a temple, mosque, church, gurudwara or synagogue etc. I was told that there is this person/thing/being called god and he/she/it will answer my prayers, grant my wishes and make me happy etc. But I was just a kid and hence did not have the cognitive skills or logical reasoning to know if its true or not. As I grew up, I started to realize the facts, know whats true from myth. And there not such a person/thing/being as "god".

But again, being a sports fan and being born in a country where Cricket is considered a religion and even better, being born in an era in which I got to see this Little Man play the game. The man known as SACHIN RAMESH TENDULKAR. The man who was born only 38 years ago on this day.

The man who is visible, made of flesh and blood. The man who does the improbable. This man who gives us hope, answers our prayers and makes us happy or at least tries his level best(and mind you his best is way way up there) to do so is THE GOD, not just for me but for millions of people.

Practice Partner

Those of you who are interested in and/or play sports know the importance of a practice partner. Especially if it is track events or two player sports, it is even more important. Couple of days ago, I saw this Ad on tv in which, Usain Bolt is practicing his sprints beside a huge, long screen on which the video of himself sprinting is being played. So it is kind of he is trying to beat himself. For the world's fastest man, to improve his performance, I guess there is no other way, but to practice against himself.

For the rest of us people, we all need practice partners. Not only in sports, but in all aspects of life. A practice partner is someone who helps you grow, makes you want more, pushes you to your limits and then some, helps by competing against you and prepares you for the real deal.

So let me ask you this. Do you have a practice partner? If so, Who???

Anticipation

Alright, so I promised another blog in the month of February and I am keeping it. Though I don't really know how many are even following my blog anyway. If only there was a way to let me know, like writing comment/critiques. So, if you are reading it, do leave a comment, you lazy asses.

Anticipation, something we undergo on a regular basis. Some of them are little things and some are big ones, like an up coming interview or game(for athletes) or a date or a presentation or an audition(for actors and actresses) etc. You make all the preparations, study well for the interview, practice hard for the game, groom yourself for the date etc. As the moment starts closing in, the nerves come in, a lot of things run through your mind, like what will happen, you start ANTICIPATING, what if this happens, what if that happens, etc and when the big day finally arrives you could even break a sweat on a 20 degree weather.

After the event begins, it can go two ways (1) the nerves could continue, your mind could still be thinking a lot and everything could go south or (2) you stop thinking, fall in sync, enter into a zone, nothing except the task at hand matters, you perform better than you knew you can and everything goes better than you anticipated. If it goes the first way, well there ain't much you can do but suffer through it. But if it goes the later way, hmmmm, its such an amazing feeling, you can't put it in words. After the event is over, then you think about it, you run it over and over again in your head, thinking about the great answers you gave, the perfect plays you made, how charming you were, how well you demonstrated etc.

At the end...........

huh, I dont know how to end this blog. I am a little lost. That's how I have been off late.

Never mind, I dont know why I wrote it. I dont know why I am posting it. Anyway it's not like a lot of are reading right? or are you??? /:)....... Lemme know :D

Initial and Boundary Conditions

OK... so I cheated the last time around. Well cheated not in the sense you dirty minds are thinking....:D I kinda din't really come up with something good to write in the month of January......Actually a lot of ideas did come into my mind but I was too occupied with other stuff and could not put them on here. Anyway, here is the blog for this month.

When I was in Sophomore year of college, a friend of mine(Nitesh Pandey) was taking a Humanities class and in that his Prof. has asked them a question which he brought it up to me. "See how we can tell the position, velocity of a body(don't get all Heisenberg) if we know the initial conditions of it. Can we do the same for human beings as well?" Meaning, given the type of a conditions a human was bought up in, can we predict how he/she would behave in certain situations or what he/she would become in the future etc. For some reason, I remembered it last month and ever since wanted to write about it.

I agree with the Professor to a certain extent, i.e. depending on the initial conditions meaning how someone is raised, the environment someone grew up in, plays a major role in what that person makes of himself/herself. But that is only to a certain extent. As he/she grows up a lot of other conditions start interfering in the behavior of the person. For instance the people around him, the situations he/she comes across everyday, etc. These are like the boundary conditions. They do play a major role in shaping the behavior of the person. But unlike in the case of the Boundary Value Problems that we deal in Finite Element Analysis etc, we can actually change the boundary conditions. What I mean by that is, the boundary conditions that we come across are changeable, all we need to do is stretch the boundary, fight right back, turn them so that they favor you.

I know its a lot of random stuff I blurred out, but I hope you get it. Like I said, there has been a lot on my mind lately. Hope you forgive me for that. :D

P.S. I promise another blog in this month. Until then, Ciao.

Technically

This is also a blog entry....:)

P.S. I am a little too tired to write a blog and have to only an hour left to fill the quota for this month. So here it is...:D