Rebecca's Legacy continues ....

I quite like the way "Rebecca's Tale" is progressing. This definitely differs from Daphne Du Mauriers' style of writing and after reading through about half of the book it seems more to me as a Holmes/Agatha Christie type story but certainly not the suspense thriller with a supernatural dread that Rebecca brings to the readers. But then every writer has their own style and I am glad Beauman did not attempt to mimic Maurier which would have led to an absolute failure. The book in itself tends to be a page turner at times and then there are areas where we have lapses of attention. Right now, there are various dangling threads of suspense. Who is Terence Gray ? Why does he seek to know about Rebecca ? What exactly does the author reveal about Favell ? There are of course more ... I hope that the Beauman does not disappoint because I do tend to linger on about in the small details.

The publicity is quite stunning for the book itself. Take a look here. http://www.rebeccas-tale.co.uk/

If you want to read this book you can get it here ...
http://www.amazon.com/Rebeccas-Tale-Sally-Beauman/dp/0061032042

More on Maurier here .. http://www.dumaurier.org/

Google Updates

Collaborative work is a big problem for people all over the globe. Writely was quite useful but for some scientists that I have met with the mix of Docs and spreadsheets would be a boon. Checkout http://docs.google.com [you will need a google account for this]

Workaholic parents - boon or bane ?

Been mulling over this issue for a while and I have found clarity finally. How much time do parents need to spend with their kids ? Do they need to work to fend for the family and spend time witht the kids or should they work on making the world a bed of roses for their kids. Thankfully, my parents have been a blend of both. When parents spend time only on their kids without contributing much to the society they are doing probably anything a good parent should do. But is this what we want from the world in general ? Imagine a scenario where all parents in the world live only for their kids and they have a job not a career. This would mean that scientific/economic/academic progress is going to be very slow. Well, the kids of course study and excel in whatever field but once they have their own family everything is for their kids. uman beings in such a situation will only be productive in their 20s to the 30s assuming that the kids don't arrive until then. They will be learning in their formative years and then teaching their kids what they learnt. When are they going to use what they learnt ? Even if they do, how will they give more than they can if they concentrate only on their kids.

So, we do need a balance between the two above mentioned kind of parents because the kids who have learnt a lot because their parents spent a lot of time on them should give more to the world. I now know why my Dad should have been the way he was because may be in a small way he has made the world a better place for everyone. Now I am no longer biased by needing his hand to lead me and am in a position to understand him better. Also, there is such a thing as paying too much attention to your offspring ... they need to be thrown in the the water to learnto swim.. you can not always be the lifejacket right ? I sign off by voting for all workaholics !! whoopee ....

Tagore's Dream.... Miles to go before we sleep

Most poets are idealists ... not only do they use their poetic license to over rule the grammar rules in the language but also work towards making the grass greener and the world a better place to live in. I happened to come across Tagore's poem today and how he pictured his country post the English Rule. Here is the poem:

My Country Awake

Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

by Rabindranath Tagore

Analysing this....

In today's world the country described by Tagore does not exist. We are a democracy and so are a number of countries ...but most of the world is ruled by fear. Fear need not just arise from terror but it we fear many other things. Fear of society is what has engulfed the world. Amongst the population I think Indians rank number one in this area. We do not carry on our daily tasks without worrying about the way we appear to our fellowbeings. Our "mind is not free" and will never be. Knowledge is never without a price thats not being debated. I am not sure why Tagore even thought this would work but the concept of "Guru Dakshina" has always been there. Of course, I smile as I write this because I work on open source "free" software.
All of India united before we got our freedom and we were broken into states, castes, creeds and races the very minute we got our freedom. The world atlas has changed much since I studied my Geography. Maybe one Gondwanaland would have been best ;). More later...

Software component recipes for the culinarily challenged

A recent read of mine was about how software components are similar to prime numbers. The paper dealt with the reusability of software components. To some cooking is absolutely impossible.
While pondering over the above mentioned paper over preparing my dinner, I started to wonder about how cooking also has basic building blocks similar to the kind of components we reuse in our programs. So, it is simply a matter of putting together these building blocks to make a wholesome and tasty meal. I will elaborate on this sometime soon.

The art of living ... alone

I seemed to have realized after talking to numerous friends of mine that it seem to be men that crave marriage more than women do. Of course, my observations are limited to the indian population alone. The men never want to stay alone for some reason, they feel that it would make them too lonesome and having a roomate will alleviate that fact that they are still single - neither engaged nor dating. They always need comforting of some sort or the other and I can't still understand why it is that the popular notion of women requiring some emotional support still exists. I do agree that women are more emotional but they don't require emotional support as much as men do. Anyway, I didn't mean to diverge from our discussion but was an important thing to point out. Having said that, men might benefit from learning about the art of living alone - what I have learnt - the do's and don'ts - the ups and downs. Maybe this might help the men out there to finally get out and try to have some fun and live independently.

My clamour for independence began at a young age which perhaps was the greatest motivation for me to stay by myself. I entered my own apartment, something I went around and picked enjoying the perks of being an adult ;) (well, there has to be something). Bought some household appliances(which these days includes a wireless router) and setup a wireless network jumped around on the bed that I had carefully picked after bouncing on several mattresses in various stores. They come in various sizes and number of coil springs matter, the sales people at the be store told me. Being an avid do-it-yourselfer decided to buy furniture that would satisfy my urge to play with lego blocks and still be an adult. So, this resulted in the building of a bookcase, a chest of drawers, a dining table and chairs, an easy chair, a futon cum lounger and a table for my TV. This of course takes up sometime and keeps you from feeling bored. Of course, for the most part, work did keep me busy but that would result in being burntout from too much work.

Anyway, and then came the bike. Biking to work started off and it was passionate for some days and then slowed down as it got colder. One could still go to the gym or go for runs. Sometimes, the creative enthusiasts, could go to a music or dance class. I am currently in the pursuit of a dance teacher myself to continue my dancing. There are numeous shows to go watch and you could round up some people from work. Climbing is another passion of mine and I applaud the person who came up with an indoor climbing gym idea because its so much fun and you can spend hours in one without even noticing it. With some friends, sports would be good like Tennis, Racketball or even cricket :) . Of course, for the days you dont feel like doing much there is always the library and there have been books that have taken me on journeys that I could not even dream of. Kudos, to all the writers. I am yet to explore the audio books and I hear they are a lot of fun. Ok .... theres a lot more....

Now after reading this do any of you guys or if there are girls who had doubts about staying alone have any now ?

That's all folks ... Deepti.....

Dashagrahas ... ?

Ok ... I invented that term and I did not mean dashavatarams. What I meant was that another new planet has been discovered. It has not yet been named though. It was quite unfortunate that our forefathers who very surprisingly judged that there are 9 planets in the solar system could not feel the existence of a Tenth as astronomer Mike Brown and his team from CalTech seem to have found. Note though that the navagrahas don't represent only the planets. They actually represent Surya, Chandra, Mangala, Budha, Brihaspati(oh now you know where the third of the Trimurthis sits in our Hindu temples),Sukra, Sani, Rahu and Ketu(like Dhuma ketu or comet). Anyway, it has been interesting to find out about this. and here is more information on this planet which unfortunately is called UB313 - http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/index.html