Thought Clouds

Its probably close to 8 am... still in bed, probably the plans for the day are already working on in my mind. From the sound I know its my maid who is rolling the mat that is on the floor. In all probability even my laptop is lying over there and she would lift it with a lot of care and keep it on the table. Was it 3 or 4 am when I slept or even 5.. I probably don't have the time to think. All I know is I got to get up now and check the number. Yes from past one month that is how life has been. Even before I rub my eyes, my hands go straight to the laptop and I switch it on. By the time it comes out from hibernation, I need to be out of mine! So I hurry up, wash my face and I am quickly back to iRead.

"When People stop growing, the organization stops growing and then the decline starts ..."

-- From a senior person at my previous job whom I appreciate very much.

.. we have entered a period of consequences
 --  Al Gore states introducing his film An Inconvenient Truth.

Today we live in a world which in the recent past, facing a very high number of natural calamities, gives us a tremor in the nerves as we put forth each and every step. Every day we learn media and activists are trying to highlight, find solutions/preventive measures for the innumerable, insurmountable problems/challenges due to imbalance in nature - global warming, mutations, extinction of species and imbalance in food chain, scarcity of drinking water and what not.

Have things gone out of control already? Not completely but we are definitely sitting on a time bomb. Its time to act. We all have been bombarded with emails, newsletters, talks on what we can do individually to help. Today, I came across something very different.

Update: Changed occurrences of "Save Planet Earth" to "Save Life on Earth"

"A necessity possession for someone trying to take control is to also excel at losing control."

Many a times it becomes necessary to lose control so that you can move on to take control of something else - bigger or better or because you never should have taken control in the first place. Whatever be the cause, one of the hardest problem to cope with is "losing control".

Now, what do I mean by "control" here ? It might mean passion for something, an emotion or a responsibility- be it self inflicted, obsessed or forced. Whatever be the reason, unless you involve yourself in the process of taking control, you have not really taken control. And unless you lose control naturally, you never took control. If you ever find yourself finding it hard to lose control it would mostly mean that you really did not extract what you wanted or should have while you had control, lest it wouldn't have been hard to lose control.

It was a splendid experience day before - trekking all night hoping to catch those heavenly clouds at dawn. Alas they were missing but the sunrise itself was so beautiful and nice and not to mention the feel of the gusty winds for whom you and the grass blade on the hill top are no different.

Till late afternoon on Monday, I had no clue about the adventure I was upto for the night. Pavithra, a very close friend from hostel/college insisted that I join her for the moonlight trekking that night. I was crunching numbers at office till 8:35 pm and rushed home to join pavithra with a target to catch the bus at hebbal flyover at 10 pm.
( travelogue here... )
Thank you pavi for making it happen and Anu, Sandeep for the great company and ofcourse the folks who organised it - Lacchi (who could not be part of the trek), Deepak, Anand, Mallika, Prasanna, Sandeep and others.

The same team is organising another 2 day trek to Bandajje near ujre (dharmastala). I believe its going to be one day uphill, passing through bandajje falls. Camp at the hill top and return the next day. If you are interested I can put you in touch with Sandeep.

Wondering what that means, no wonder! That's the first mail I read in the morning. The subject was "You're expired". Err there was no one else around to confirm but I could sense and was pretty confident I was alive. lol

A spam mail, nope, it was from McAfee. The mail read "Your PC protection has expired. Renew today"

Wow.. hold on, creativity is fine, but this, is a highly exaggerated metaphor <should i say beyond tolerance levels>. But would I have bothered to read that mail, if the subject read "Please renew your subscription with McAfee".  Can't say!

On a similar line, would you have read this blog till here.. ;) Though the blog as such might not be worth your time.. now that's the trick with advertisements. I appreciate the curiosity it brings though it could have been better in this case. It didn't have to make me wonder if it is actually my computer that holds my life ;) It might not get that bad, but possible.

Update:
>> It might not get that bad, but possible.
Google once definitely made me panic for a day when they blocked my Google Account for a day. I use gtalk to communicate with my colleagues too. Then no access to mail is obviously worrisome. Then I deal with Adwords, which is my daily bread!  And then their docs, community and other miscellaneous things. At times I wonder if it is dangerous/foolish to invest in one single entity and let it control you. May be I should spread my dependancy (IM, mail, etc . ads which i can;t)  across yahoo, google and msn!

And for those who are wondering, why McAfee.. I hate it too.. but that was a free version that came with the operating system. I think  ClamWin , which is a open source anti-virus software under GNU GPL is much better. Any why windows.. it is because of microsoft and google again :D