I don't know, how many are familiar with such a term,well here is a short explanation. This theory was devised by Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy during 1920's, this theory states that anyone on earth can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries.

Well I noticed something strange, Orkut which is a very popular networking site, shows a true example of this theory, here is what I tried, I logged into Orkut and chose a random community which I'm no way interested/related.

a) In my case I took up Photography- Sub Topic Digital Photography.

b) I took a random user listed on the side panel.

c) Once I clicked on this user, Orkut gives me a network on how I'm related to that user.

Well here is the surprising part, I got less than 6 people connecting me and the user.

I tried this on various other communities and various users, no way related to me, I always came up with a number less than 6, what does this prove, no idea, does this show the 6 degrees of separation works, well it is upto you(the reader) to experience this and write back to me.

More of Six Degrees of Separation on Wikipedia

"I can't do it", it is impossible for me to do this.

Well this is what most of us say, when somebody says he has completed a marathon, or cycled for 360 km, well here is a person who has done it. Sathish. Sathish, is a good friend, and I've learnt a lot from him, especially in the field of fitness.

He inspired me to start running, now (at-least I can boast of this) I run about 8Km on alternate days, so what have I learnt out of all this?I guess I can relate a lot of the learning's to real life, so here goes

• Alone:  When you run long distances, you run alone, at-least in the beginning, when you are not ready for a marathon yet.
  • Learning:So all you are doing is not competing with others, but competing with yourself. It is like trying to realise the potential of yourself.
• Giving up:During my runs, there are points when I want to give up and take a rick back home. It is not that I'm tired, not that my legs are aching, just that I'm bored. But completing it is a joy.
  • Learning:Keep a bigger picture in life as to why are you doing something? Say for eg.. why are you working say in Java? Why are you in advertising?I'm not talking about the long term goal, of becoming the CEO of a company, but why are you doing this? What is the penultimate goal, and are you doing the right thing to achieve it.
• Anti-Thesis to point 2(or semi anti-thesis): In total opposition to what I said in point 2, I say, when looking far, do not trip on your own shoe laces(this has happened to me ).
  • Learning: Look ahead to what you want to be, but at the same time, focus on what you are doing currently, else, well simply saying, you trip and break your jaw.
• WATCHOUT:With the Indian traffic you'll have to watch-out on the road.
  • Learning:Watch-out where you are going and what you are doing(I think this point is needless to be said explicitly)
• From One Telephone pole to the next: In Forrest Gump Tom Hanks answers to a question asked by him on how he ran so much "Well I just ran to the next telephone pole, then to the end of this town, then to the end of the county, then the state and then the nation". Something similar is what Sathish told, when I asked in awe how he could run so much. (this is for people who know the geography of Bangalore, else the previous example is good) "Well I run from Koramangala to Sun City, I push a little bit more the next day till the Intel office, then I push a little bit more to Multiplex, then a little more, and a lttl…".
  • Learning:Like Sathish in his runs, let us push a little more than yesterday. Let us do something better than what we did yesterday, let us take a risk, a little bit more than yesterday, let us love more than what we did yesterday.
• Relax, run slow:Every long distance runner knows, his limitations, he cannot sprint for a long time, so he takes it slowly, catches on a rhythm and runs(Thanks Sathish for this technique).
  • Learning:Don't hurry up in life. WE have seen an explosive growth of the Indian economy, but it doesn't mean to say that we have to hurry up, become senior guy in the first 3 years of joining a company, grow to managers in the next 5 years, become department heads within 10 years and so on.. remember, the guy who runs slow and a constant rhythm lasts longer in the race.

So these are some of the learnings. A very special thanks to Sathish to make me believe that I can run, someday I will participate and complete the marathon….. A dream as of now

Baristta coffee, I was in deep discussion with Sushil my friend, when these words came "Do we exist or we live?" What is the difference? Well for starters.... Animals,plants,animate, in-animate, living, non-living, things exist Living beings live, a much more deeper sense, we each breath we live, to see the wonders to nature, to experience love,hate, to laugh, to cry, to hurt and to be hurt, to be jealous, to be forgiving, to be crazy, to JUST LET GO. Sounds like a commercial punch, it is. There in the quaint entrance of the coffee shop, with the music blaring into our ears, we realised, most of us exist, without knowing , feeling, experiencing life, the way it should be. Never we get up one day and say "I'm going to live just for today, I'm happy even if I cease to exist henceforth". Notice I said 'exist' and not 'live' . A person is alive even if she ceases to exist, if she has lived her life to the fullest. Getting caught in the nasty web of worries of, what about my job, why am I not earning more, what position am I going to be in, what about my marriage, what about my kids, what about my wife, what about my kids marriage, and finally what about my health? By the time these questions are answered, we have existed for a life and will be waning away soon, without even living fully. This is not about philosophy, not about religion, by the time a person realises, all this that he has to wake up, it is late, too late infact. My elders always say, you have not seen the world, thereby you have less experience, I say then it is time for me to see the world, go places, breath that fresh crisp morning air, eat that dish slow feeling every grain, every drip of it running down my throat, touch somebody like feather, feel the sun being naked running on the beach, getting drunk, eyeing that beautiful girl. Live a LIFE cease to just exist, but LIVE A LIFE. So much so, the coffee was not too good said Sushil, the tea(Lemon Zinger I know strange name) was a zinger all the way,.............................................................

Chandini Chowk,is a quait restaurant in Koramangala, which tries to recreate the Dhaba feel for the noveau rich. (Atleast it feels like). First things first, the seating is terrible, all they could manage was rough cut granite slabs. Pretty low seating, which is a trouble for tall guys(like me). The flooring is rough with gravel, give a nice feel though. Menus are made out of a silk cloth held between the embroidery rings. A large selection in both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. Nice beverages, especially "Kullud Wali Chai" a must try. The food we ordered was simplistic, with Soup, Paneer Tikka for starters, Roti and Malai Kofta. (Sorry I do not thrive on meat of any kind so cannot comment much on that). Ambience good, with the painful Emraan Hasmi music in the background, we waited, and waited and waited. After about 20 min, the waiter walks in with the Roti and Sabzi, we ask why not the soup and starter, and right behind him, another guy walks in with the rest of the mail. the whole thing is dumped and they walk away. Later the chai comes, a real nice one too. Just right for the Indian Palate, Kadak and sweet, with a dollop of cream on the top. All in all, Service: Horrible Food: Good + Ambience : Fair Value for Money: Fair. Chandini Chowk is at No.28, 80 Ft Road, Opp IBP Petrol Bunk, 6th Block Koramangala, Bangalore-95. Ph: 51105454, 51105757.

've been discussing with a friend of mine, on this topic for quite sometime now, and here is the jist of it. With todays world moving at such a great pace of development and change, we have come to a stage where we have extreme patience or completely lack it. Something strange that there is no middle path followed in this context. Let us delve into some scenarios where we can see this in daily life a)On the Road : Some people lack complete patience, they keep the horn pressed believing that even if there is a traffic jam for miles, it will somehow get cleared due to the sound of the horn. I don't know how we could cure this disease, sometimes I just feel like getting out of my car and tearing open the circuits of the horn. On the exact opposite, people have extreme patience, when it comes to parking in wrong locations. Even though a huge traffic is building up, the car driver has to stop in the wrong location to drop of the overburdened lady/man exactly in front of the shop, meanwhile, the traffic build and releases itself into a nasty jam. b)Garbage: Carrying garbage till the bin is a pain, sometimes, one gets an acute (Carpell Tunnel Syndrome)i.e.. wrist injury for the uninitiated. We never take time to throw garbage in the bin. We are living in a small locality currently, where there is not driveways/garages at any of the homes. Hence all the cars are parked on the roadsides. I park my car at a certain location, once night after a tiring day, when I park my car, a lady shouts at me, saying that I should not park there as she cannot throw the garbage. I ask her why? Why throw here, when there is a nice bug bin at the end of the street, she beings to fight, seeing all this here husband joins in, and I ask why throw it there to him too? He has no answer but just supports his wife. So now I've made it a point not just to park the car there but to leave my house garbage too, right next to their entrance gate. Well after that things have changed and the garbage is going to the right place :-) I've seen so many throw garbage out of their car windows at the traffic signal, what is so difficult in keeping a chocolate wrapper in a plastic bag and then throw it at the nearest bin??? This not specific to Bangalore alone, I've seen this in Chennai, Mumbai, Cochin and Hyderabad. WHY?? c)Traffic Sense: I don't need to talk too much about this, everybody knows this one. d)Strange Feature of Patience(Swalpa Adjust Maadi(SAM): Kannada for please adjust a little bit) : I've seen this too often, a long queue for the bill payment and a guy just walks in and says SAM, to a person. Now this is an art, one cannot just go ask to anybody,(if he comes to me, even if he is an elderly guy I'll question why?), so the SAM asker, follows a nice pattern of first walking next to the queue atleast twice, determining, who is the best scape goat, and then with a very sheepish grin approaches him/her and asks (SAM). If two or three people add into the queue, especially during utility payments, there is every possibility of the counter closing, (as govt officials close ontime and open late). All in all patience or the lack of it is a strange feature only prevelant in our society, wonder why? If anybody can help me find the why, I'll promise to be more PATIENT:-)

Moved to wordpress till zaadz gets ready, this move is from Blogger to Wordpress, just waiting for the feature where I can import everything in zaadz. <a xhref="http://rovingthoughts.wordpress.com/">Ramblings</a>

Humans have always gossiped. From time immemorial, we talk about things, that are really not important to us. This is the only way, human beings bond. However in today's context, this gossip turn into factual information, and if one probes leads to pure and fanatical hearsay. For example, a few days ago, there were riots in Bangalore, due to Dr Rajkumar's death a lot of things said to each other during conversations was hearsay, like "Hey do you know that the riot crowds were brought in truckloads just to create riots","There is defnitely a hand of the opposition party to conduct these riots", "The police have stopped responding to the riot group in fear of their lives, bad policing". All this got me thinking why hearsay prevails, here are a few reasons why I think, do add in more if you have any

a. Gossip is fun: Just because we can talk on any topic not being based on facts, we take for granted that whatever we say passes by without any factual backing to it.

b. Society of Trust:We are a socitey of blind trust, if an elderly person utters some words, then we accept it as though it must be true. None of us and sit back to think if they are correct. This is especially true in religious and superstitious matters.

c. Laziness:We are lazy to find the actual facts. We never out in efforts to test the waters. d. Mass mania:Having a greater amount of group orientation than individuality, also to a certain extent attributes to accepting hearsay. This could be more to do so with peer pressure, that we belong to a group and the group thinks/acts in a certain way, so do I have to do it.

 To a certain extent all the religious books are written on hearsay too, but I rather not discuss that here.

Hearsay is one of the most dangerous elements, trust in a person does not mean to say you have to believe everything he/she says, "The Waters MUST be tested".

I've always been wondering, how my German colleauges are so damn efficient.( By the way if I've not mentioned before I work for a spftware company, and I'm in the field of Forensic Accounting.)

One consistent reason I've seen is that they have a serious hobby, other than software writing. This OTHER is the most important term. Coding, software designing is fun, if you are in that field. Some of us, come back home and hack away at our own projects, that is good, however not tooo good either.

Having a hobby which is different, other than what you do at work really helps to cross-pollinate ideas.

So what is cross-pollinate ideas?

Most of us in India atleast stick to a single profession throughout our lives, you don't wake up one morning and decide that you have to buy a farm outside your city to grow vegetables to sell it off. Or learn/teach music. This kind of an alternate profession, would give insights and ideas, which could always be carried back to your first job, if you ever decide to get back, or the ideas from your earlier profession could be carried into your latest one.

Since not many of us do this, hobbies are the best ways to pollinate ideas from a different world. Pollination in the true sense is within a species of flowers only, however I'm saying think beyond. Learn something new, do something different, and carry  that learning, that method, that lifestyle into your current job.

Some people do have hobbies, but never stick to it deep enough, that they can carry the ideas from there.

Trust me to survive in todays world, you have to constantly innovate. You can stay ahead in two ways, either be really fast, or change directions extremely fast. Now consider how many times can you be really fast(take Roger Bannister for eg.. once he broke the mile record, everybody started breaking it). Changing directions is far easier, to change directions, you have to have new ideas, and the best way to have new ideas is to learn from other professions,fields,hobbies ...

So hobby fsat, build models, get to being a photographer, run the marathon, cook something, learn tea/wine tasting( I mean seriously).....

This blog is coming to life from tommorow. I'm currently trying to write into this blog all my articles and news.

I will shifting to this space soon, Watch this space.