Friends are precious

This is something I got from M's blog and it makes perfect sense to me:

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography, in lifestyle, because the older you get the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

-- Baz Luhrman

Mystery and Wonder

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

Albert Einstein

Our sense of wonder is the first thing our school teachers manage to kill...
Most of us almost stop asking questions by the time we get out of college. Do we even stop to wonder about the things around us?

Frankly the media and stuff nowadays just tends to repress whatever "imagination" people have...
Dont see too many kids reading books or even bothering to go out exploring their neighborhoods...

Dont see too many adults having a good imagination and a sense of humour either...

Maturity

Snoopy Says:

Sometimes when I get up in the morning, I feel very peculiar. I feel like I've just got to bite a cat! I feel like if I don't bite a cat before sundown, I'll go crazy! But then I just take a deep breath and forget about it. That's what is known as real maturity.

Wish a lot of people would get this kind of maturity!!

Into My Own

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew--
Only more sure of all I thought was true.

From "A Boy's Will", 1913
Robert Frost

Da Vinci Code and The French Connection?

I just finished reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I must say it's a pretty well researched book and the plot is well-conceived too...I find it amazing that people manage to think of such intricate stories and then put it in words too!!

A lot of stuff related to the things in the book has been making the rounds on the net and media lately. Moreover, the guy makes such claims about Jesus Christ and the rise of Christianity using the different characters in the book that one would think that it might have happened...conspiracy theory galore!! So much so, that Opus Dei have a section on their website refuting the claims in the book.

No wonder the book is getting rave reviews the world over...
Overall a very "readable" book but I found the ending a bit too tame and there were a few places where the guy just seems to lose focus...

The plot of the book is almost entirely set in Paris... Well, this book would need to be in France considering the fact that the Louvre that has one of the biggest collections of art and other things from medieval and post-Renaissance Europe and the story starts off there...
I wonder what it is in France that draws most authors. I find quite a few authors who almost invariably turn to France and history in their books at some point or the other:

Frederick Forsyth : "The Day of The Jackal"
Robert Ludlum: "The Bourne Identity" & "The Bourne Supremacy"
Alexandre Dumas: "The Three Musketeers" & "The Man in the Iron Mask"
Victor Hugo: "The HunchBack of Notre-Dame"

and the list goes on...
I guess one needs to visit France to figure out what it is that draws these authors to it!!

Dreams

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

Goethe

Wonder if I would become a megalomaniac trying to do this? Hmmm....Interesting thought that...very interesting

Profound thinking in Traffic Jams...

Today I spent half an hour waiting for a traffic jam to get cleared en route to office...It was a pretty long queue with the line of vehicles stretching nearly a kilometre..
It was then that I realized: it is only in traffic jams that I get to stop and think about things in general!

Most of the time we spend is in a race to get ahead of things...
In school and college, it's a headlong rush to get good grades...After college, it's a race to get a job...once you get a job, you start chasing better jobs...bigger money...a better life...

But what really defines a better life?
When do we ever stop to catch our breath and enjoy what we have?
It's a restless life with our noses to a ceaseless grindstone...
Do we really understand the purpose of all that we do? Why we go through this entire cycle of life?

I guess that's a question that's been plaguing people for aeons...
But then if we really found an answer, wouldn't all the fun go away?
Isnt it the quest that drives us?

Maybe one will find something close to an answer some day...

Confusion Galore

Overheard a colleague ordering dinner at office:

"Hello, Can you take my order, please?"

"OK, I'll have a half-meal, a gobi-manchurian and My name is Gireesh."

"No, No, I dont want Ghee rice!...my name is Gireesh"

"Arre yaar, I want just a half-meal and a gobi manchurian!!...I dont want Ghee Rice!!! My NAME is Gireesh"

"Hello, Listen to me...I want the meal and Gobi and my phone extn is 3185. Please send it soon"

"Gireesh" to "Ghee Rice": Hohahohhe what a transformation
(BTW, he spells his name with ee not an i)

Finally, the numbers did the trick!

Chaos and Order

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star

Nietzsche

Life is so funny

Life seems so funny...

I wanted some things desperately at one time and try as I might, I couldn't even get close to those things!!

Now when I have let them go and have focussed on something else, those opportunities come back falling over themselves!!

I guess that's what is called irony!!