Another one of those poems that needs to be here:

Young Apollo, golden haired,
Stands dreaming at the brink of strife,
Magnificently unprepared,
For the long littleness of life.

- On Rupert Brooke by Frances Darwin Cornford

Copied shamelessly from Mukta's blog

Something interesting for today...

Interesting things come out when you do what you love: http://flowingdata.com/2012/06/19/spaceships-drawn-to-scale/

I love inter-national trash-talk: globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/19/spain-vs-uganda-in-twitterverse/

I used to think the same for turbo-pumps, sputtering chambers and the Squid: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-06-19/. Guess what, Mr., you are wrong. Things crash all the time!

Guitar lessons and learning

To whom-ever it may interest,

I am taking personal guitar lessons with Craig A. this summer and here is a list of songs I would be learning as part of the class:

1. Best of my love by Eagles

2. Killing me softly by Fugees

3. Life by the drop by Stevie Ray Vaughan

I am trying out personal lessons for a change instead of the usual group lessons. So far, I am really enjoying this style much more. I think it better suits my personality. I am quite private about my work and learning. I am not a great group learner. I consider that a weakness and not a strength, but it is how things are now, or even now.  So in addition to developing my guitar skills in private, I would like to work on my learning style in general as well. I am thinking of trying out playing guitar with other enthusiasts or playing with a group of people with different musical talents.

Some other songs I plan to learn on my own:

1. Better Days - Eddie Vedder

2. Bluest eyes in Texas - Nina Persson and Nathan Larson

3. You're my home - Billy Joel

4. Country Roads - John Denver

5. I still haven't found what I am looking for - U2

6. Breakfast at Tiffany's - Deep Blue Something

7. Time of your life - Greenday

8. Blowing in the wind - Bob Dylan

9. Moonriver - Audrey Hepburn

10. All apologies - Nirvana

11. I don't know what I can save you from - Kings of Convenience

12. Dream On - Aerosmith

13. Beatles - Norwegian Wood

If you are interested in either playing or singing along any of these songs, do get in touch.

Alternatively, if you would like to have a discussion about different learning styles and their appropriateness to different people and different activities , lets get coffee sometime. As someone told me back in my undergrad days, college is not about learning the subject at hand, it is about learning how to learn.

Of all things purple....and green

If I had it my way, 

the world would have just two colors:

purple and green. 

Purple is what things would look like, 

green is what they would be.

< The last basil pot. Worms ate the other three!

My fair-weather bike>

Serve. Love all.

I had it all figured out wrong. Life is not about learning something new everyday. Life is about serving every second. Knowledge is the wage paid for the task of serving. Serve and love all.

WeTalk

I had a voice. Just like any other person. I had a voice.

They promised to take that voice far and wide.

The voice floated. The voice flew and blew.

But the voice did not reach far and wide.

What made it to the other side of the universe was just words.

Text. Type. Font. Words. Chat. Tweet.

And now the voice is lost.

I need to bring the voice back.

Voice is human.

Voice maketh a man.

Henceforth, WeTalk.

Are you from elsewhere? I am from elsewhere too.

Are you lonely? I am lonely too.

Are you different? I am different too.

That makes the two of us same.

PS: Sometimes to get an outsider's perspective, you have to stand on the outside, just leaving the window open is not enough.

How to fail in a few simple steps?

1. Do only what comes easily.

2. Place yourself at the center of the universe and let alone care, don't even bother acknowledging the needs of others.

3. Procrastinate about the important stuff.

4. Place small-term needs ahead of long-term goals.

5. Never say no. Never assert yourself.

6. Just let people guess what you are thinking, never mention words.

7. When the going gets tough, get going in the other direction.

8. Judge yourself by your faults, and others by their virtues. And then be jealous.

9. Never be proud of anything you do. Just criticize and get depressed.

10. Doubt your vision in face of reality.

Truth

I don't think it is difficult to be yourself.

I don't think it is difficult to understand the world as it is.

The trick is to be able to be yourself, while also knowing the world to be as it is.

One-liners

Life is open at one end. How can that not bother you? Or, better yet, how come that does not prevent you from seeking closure for every damn thing in your life - work, relationships, dreams....

This may just the summer I have always life to be. Yet I can not trace anything different about the circumstances as such, except my attitude towards them.

You are an adult the moment you start giving to, instead of taking from the world. That's it. It's that simple.

Somehow listening more than speaking seems like the sign of maturity to me.

Let go!

“And I told him, I said: "One day you're going to miss the subway because it's not going to come. One of these days, it's going to break down and it's not going to come around and everyone else will just wait for the next one or will take the bus, or walk, or run to the next station: they will go on with their lives. And you're not going to be able to go on with your life! You'll be standing there, in the subway station, staring at the tube. Why? Because you think that everything has to happen perfectly and on time and when you think it's going to happen! Well guess what! That's not how things happen! And you'll be the only one who's not going to be able to go on with life, just because your subway broke down. So you know what, you've got to let go, you've got to know that things don't happen the way you think they're going to happen, but that's okay, because there's always the bus, there's always the next station...you can always take a cab.” 
― C. JoyBell C.