We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. — Randy Pausch

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

A book Info : http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2318271.The_Last_Lecture

Biohacking Infographics

Biohacking is the practice of engaging biology with the hacker ethic. Biohacking encompasses a wide spectrum of practices and movements ranging from Grinders who design and install DIY body-enhancements such as magnetic implants to DIY biologists who conduct at-home gene sequencing. Biohacking emerged in a growing trend of non-institutional science and technology development. (From Wikipedia)

The Gap Between Our Taste And Our Work In A Startup Context

Ira Glass is an American public radio personality, and host and producer of the show This American Life. He talks about what separates a great taste from great work, and that the only way to bridge the gap between ability and ambition is to actually do the work — is one that rings true for just about startup entrepreneurs life. Personally i liked what he said, check it out below.

What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

How to Deal with the Future: Using business insights to plan your life

Author and futurist Tamar Kasriel shows how resilient companies plan and make decisions, and reveals how individuals can exploit these techniques to create a better future for themselves.

You can't predict the exact wildcards that may or may not occur in the future, but you can predict their impact and prepare for it.

Advent - More Than Christmas Season

After 24 hours we'll be in December, the season, the jolly season of Christmas. Few of my friends have started their "Awww, Its is Christmas season, yey" thing almost a month ago. But this Christmasyyy smell doesn't seem to passing by my nose even remotely. This year am having a hard time of putting myself in a usual Christmas mood. I've a lot to on my plate. NO Christmas related program is on my calendar.  Prats asked me to join our church's Christmas play 'The last Christmas', i didn't show up on the audition day. Am 100% sure am not gonna do any caroling either. Leaving my story aside here is what i'd like to share: what Glenn Packiam says about how  Advent can be more than Christmas season.

1. Focus on the Longing.It has been said that at the bottom of human personality is the fundamental question of what a person is living for. What do we set our hopes on? What, in an ultimate sense, are we waiting for? Advent puts us in touch with the pain in our lives. It helps us to give voice to the ache in our souls, the cry within us that says, "This is not right!" Many people find themselves hurting around "the holidays" because the pain of losing a loved one or the ache of loneliness is more pronounced. But a secularized "holiday season" does little to heal those aches because it cannot direct it toward a hope. But Advent tells us that the deep longing, the ache we have for the world to be set right, for pain to be fully healed, for death to be defeated must be given voice. More than that: it must be given an Object. Advent reminds us that the hope of the whole aching, broken world is Jesus Christ.

So, instead of avoiding the pain or the ache in your soul, let it point you toward Christ. Pray, as the saints do at the end of the Book of Revelation, "Even so, Come, Lord Jesus!" Children know the feeling of waiting for Christmas to open the present that is under the tree. So in a similar way, followers of Jesus can let Advent teach us to wait longingly for the day when all that God has "purchased" for us in Christ arrives in its fullness, when our inheritance-- of which we now have a "downpayment"-- is fully received.

My To-Do List - 2013

 

This shot clip has encapsulates most part of how I want to live the year 2013.

I want to read More. I want to browse Less.

I want to meet people More. I want to chat online Less.

I want to use bicycle More. I want to drive Less.

I want to travel More. I want to plan Less.

I want to Make a mess. And if it doesn’t work, start over.

Emmanuel Amberber's favorite video clip.

EMBRACE SIMPLICITY (Abana & Pharpar) vs. (Jordan)

Simplicity as the ultimate form of sophistication...

While reading 2 kings chapter 5, we encounter a valiant solder of king of Aram called Naaman. Naaman wanted to be healed from his issues, (skin issues) so he went to a man of God called Elisha with cover later from the king and lots of gifts.When he reached he was told to “Go, wash himself seven times in the Jordan river, and his flesh will be restored and he will be cleansed.”
When he hears that Naaman flipped and went away angry. He said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn't I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.
Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “Sir, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you something as easy as, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

The moral of the story is: Personally I've my own version of Abana river and Pharpar river for every difficult situation I face in life. Most of the time these Abana and Pharpar are seemingly logical, better, cleaner and nearer than Jordan river. But, when am asked to do the "jordan" its too easy in my mind, so i won't. Its constant tendency of complicating really simple things. Most of the times I try hard, and end up complicating what might have been simple. There is beauty in simplicity though we often forget that. Lets embrace complexity to make it simple; that seems to be the art of living for me.

What did some of my favorite entrepreneurs said about simplicity?

SMALL: Life Experiments - Part One

Happy Diwali Everyone! Its nice to have a mid-week holiday. So, today i've been a coffee shop hopper. I met four people in different coffee shops. I have not eaten much, probably due to too much coffee and mochachino my appetite gauge is down. I'm not complaining at all, because i've had an awesome conversations at the coffee tables. I came back home in the evening and went up to the terrace to see the view of the entire neighborhood, their fireworks lit the skies, their crackers increased the usual silence into war-zone like noise... over all it was fun and awe-invoking (minus the pollution) . After all its a festival of lights, who doesn't like light?

What Christmas is for world, Diwali is for India.

Even though i'm going through a phase in life trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel in my personal  spiritual  professional, social.. almost every area of my life. (Let alone the light, sometimes i wonder where the hell is the tunnel itself) But then its just a season. And one thing i know for sure is season replaces season. Its just is that some seasons are longer than the shorter ones, hotter than the colder ones.



New things i've been doing lately as part of my SMALL: Life Experiments.


1. Started running in the morning at KBR park's inside track.
2. Started to cook but note like the ones in master chef show.
3. I re-started to practice & attend a salsa class twice a week.
4. I started to live life without a back up plans or exit backdoor.
5. I started reading a lot about TAX Laws of India and Ethiopia.

Hoping for the best but expecting the worst.

 Is it cognitive dissonance?

... post to be continued. 
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