I have been tagged yet again… I am a guy who tries not to post on matters of a personal nature on this blog… But, this time, I will not complain… I turned the last page on a quarter century of good living last week and doing an eight things post would serve just the right portion of reality check I need at the moment.

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, I open up to you on a few topics.

Eight things I do everyday (Read: things I am passionate about):

1. Read blogs and/or books

2. Listen to music

3. Hit the gym

4. Practice guitar

5. Criticize my friends’ culinary skills

6. Read comic strips

7. Talk to my family in India

8. Read the bible

P.S.: Not a very exhaustive list. In case you are wondering, I do shower after the gym sessions.

Eight things I am glad I did:

1. Decide to work for two more years before furthering my formal education

2. Join Uni-Y while in college (made some great friends there…)

3. Move to Chennai after the 10th grade

4. Be responsible for my finances and start investing seriously

5. Learn to laugh at myself even more…

6. Try out Squash (Yes!!! the racquet game….)

7. Start blogging seriously

8.  Decide against buying a digital SLR camera. I put that money to better use.

Eight things I would like to do:

1. Start a not-for-profit cafe

2. Cut my own music album

3. Sky-dive

4. Learn to juggle at least  3 items at a time…. (I am not talking about career, family and friends here… )

5. Drive at 300 kmph … On road of course… I do not want to settle for a train driving lesson….

6. Attend a professional bar-tending course

7. Scuba-dive in The Great Coral Reefs of Australia

8. Do my MBA from a top college (Still trying to shortlist colleges that would find me as good a fit as I would them… )

N.B..: I am not going to wait till I retire to do these things

Eight time periods I wish I could relive:

1. The relaxed vacation at Thodupuzha (my hometown) I had so long ago

2. My days at Loyola School among great guys who had a sense of themselves

3. The TCS ILP days at Pune with awesome people from all over the country to keep you company

4. The last couple of years at the Trust hostel at college… Vaalis rock!!!

5. The pre-college days I spent at Qwiky’s Coffee, Chennai

6. Consummacy ‘04 - for all its drawbacks, I learnt a lot from this inter-collegiate fest I helped organize.

7. My trip to Milan and Venice. All thanks to Jincy and Deepak.

8. Every dinner I have ever had with my family -  Dollops of advice and humor, with some great food to accompany

Eight songs that struck a chord with my heart:

1. Oasis - Wonderwall

2. Metallica - Nothing else matters

3. CCR - Brown eyed Girl

4. Pink Floyd - Comfortably numb

5. Snow Patrol - Signal Fire

6. U2 - With or Without you 

7. James Blunt - You are beautiful

8. Coldplay - Fix you

Eight English movies I could watch over and over and over again:

1. You ve got mail

2. Braveheart

3. Gladiator

4. Fight Club

5. Notting Hill

6. Love actually

7. Swordfish

8. Pulp Fiction

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There you have it folks!!! If there are any specific questions you would like me to answer, leave a comment. I promise to attend to them…

P..S: I will not pass on the tag to anyone specific this time around… But if you do feel like it, do this up… Quite an interesting activity this is.. Took me a while to compile this list!

A dear friend of mine is leaving for her studies at Tepper School,CMU…. One fine evening, I noticed that her GTalk status message read “I am tired of answering questions.” I enquired what that was all about. “A 100 people pinged me to ask me when I am leaving!!! I am tired of replying…”, she replied.

Well, my friend… Welcome to the Internet-enabled smaller world of the 21st century…

I remember the good old days… You had to read newspapers or magazine to know what was happening around the world… Else you did have to make it to your television for the 9 p.m. news… [Lazy people like moi used to just watch Pranoy Roy's 'The World this week' on Doordarshan 9 p.m. Fridays ]

You had an “analog” telephone which came in only one color - black. You either wrote down your friends’ numbers on a sheet stuck to the wall or in a nice leather bound directory. I used to remember a couple of my landline numbers (No mobiles yet) back then…

I used to visit a dingy ‘cyber cafe’ close to home to access the Internet… They had a 56.6 kbps connection. Later, to my elation, they upgraded to a 64 kbps line… That meant my only e-mail inbox opened up a minute earlier than before…

All this was before I hit college… Things have changed since then…Enough nostalgia already…

Now I use a 4 mbps line, which is just not enough for my second-life avatar… I never could become a ‘model’ in my real life, given my mirror-cracking looks… But then, hey, why not lead a virtual life??? This is straight out of the Sidney Sheldon novel “Tell me your dreams”… A manifestation of Multiple Personality Disorder?

From Copenhagen, I now make calls and chat with friends all over the world… Trivandrum, Mumbai, SF, NewCastle, Texas [Courtesy VOIP and Skype-Out]

4 different mail ids… An orkut account… A facebook account… LinkedIn… Google reader to address my RSS requirements… Twitter to keep the world updated about my boring life… A MyBlogLog account to collate all my various social networking accounts (which have become quite unmanageable, really!!!)… del.icio.us account to hold my bookmarks online… Last.fm subscription to listen to the latest music on demand… The list goes on… To top it all, a Second Life avatar to live a life different from the one I am enjoying right now…

Has information tech changed our lives? Hell, yeah!!! It has made the world I live in smaller… Do I like it? Now it’s all about time-management [Given the number of accounts I hold online] That’s the new challenge.

This is a forward I received from a dear friend of mine. She felt this mail strongly represented truth.

Men Are Just Happier People– What do you expect from such simple creatures? Your last name stays put. The garage is all yours. Wedding plans take care of themselves. Chocolate is just another snack. You can be President. You can never be pregnant. You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park. Car mechanics tell you the truth. Wedding dress $5000. Tux rental-$100.
Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat. A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase. You can open all your own jars. You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness. If someone forgets to invite you, he or she can still be your friend.
You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes. Everything on your face stays its original color. The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades. You only have to shave your face and neck.
One wallet and one pair of shoes — one color for all seasons. You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look. You can ‘do’ your nails with a pocket knife. You have freedom of choice concerning growing a mustache.
You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives on December 24 in 25 minutes.
No wonder men are happier.

Now the Golden question? Are Men really the happier lot? Lets dissect the mail and award points to the miserable/affected party in each area.

< Your last name stays put. > I pass this one. Score: Women

<The garage is all yours. > Who gets to sleep on the bed after a fight? Score: Men

<Wedding plans take care of themselves. > We just have to get it there… Wooing the woman of your dreams is not such an easy thing… Especially on your wallet. Score: Men

<You can be President.>

María Estela (’Isabel’) Martínez de Perón: President of Argentina from 1 Jul 1974 to 24 Mar 1976.

Vigdís Finnbogadóttir President of Iceland from 1 Aug 1980 to 1 Aug 1996

Agatha Barbara President of Malta from 15 Feb 1982 to 15 Feb 1987

The list goes on… Where’s your GK, MiLady? Score: No one

<You can never be pregnant.> There’s nothing to say here. Really!!! Score : Women

<You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park> No one is stopping you. Score:Women though.

<Car mechanics tell you the truth> Dunno… Guess guys are hard-wired for stuff that works on gasoline… Score: Women

<You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives on December 24 in 25 minutes> Some call it efficiency… others call insensitiveness… But it does get done… Score: Women

< You only have to shave your face and neck. You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look. You have freedom of choice concerning growing a mustache. …..> No arguments here… Especially on facial hair… Score: Women

Alright,Alright!!! I give up…

Since women seems to racking up points already and I do not think (or want) to win this argument, I will agree that Men do seem to be the happier lot. My arguments just would not change anything.

 

If you want to make it to the moon but your glands do not pump enough adrenaline to help you become an astronaut, the deadline is approaching to at least send your name around Earth’s lonely God/Big-Bang - made satellite.

June 27 marks the last day to enter your information on the Web to send your name to the moon with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Your name will be incorporated in a database and loaded onto a microchip built into the LRO spacecraft. The service is free and comes with a printable certificate assuring you that you are indeed a part of the LRO experience.

LRO is the first step in sending humans back to the moon, according to Cathy Peddie, deputy project manager for LRO at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. The orbiter will scope out landing sites and resources, and also study the effects of lunar radiation on humans. The orbiter is slated to launch no earlier than November and will orbit for at least a year.

And if all the people in the promo video for NASA are to be believed, this will be a popular trip. 

Send your name to the moon now.

One of the comments on my post What we can learn from the vulcans was from pR@tz. It read “Renji John, you are tagged @ a world of my own….”

It got me curious. Was this similar to the chain mail phenomenon we are so accustomed to in the e-mail world?

A few seconds of googling and wiki-ing later, I found out that this phenomenon had a name. It was called Internet Meme.

At its most basic, an Internet meme is simply the propagation of a digital file or hyperlink from one person to others using methods available through the Internet (for example, email, blogs, social networking sites, instant messaging, etc.). The content often consists of a saying or joke, a rumor, an altered or original image, a complete website, a video clip or animation, or an offbeat news story, among many other possibilities. An Internet meme may stay the same or may evolve over time, by chance or through commentary, imitations, and parody versions, or even by collecting news accounts about itself. Internet memes have a tendency to evolve and spread extremely quickly, sometimes going in and out of popularity in a matter of days. They are spread organically, voluntarily, peer to peer, rather than by compulsion, predetermined path, or completely automated means.

                                                                                   - Wikipedia

So I have been ‘memed’. This particular thread involves

• Posting about 5 different (personality types) characters I hate.
• Passing on the tags to 5 different bloggers

However, since I am a religious man (Jesus asked us to ‘love thy neighbors’), I have changed the rules a bit. I have decided to post five Blogs I read religiously. (and don’t blame me, pR@tz. Wikipedia does mention that Internet memes have a tendency to evolve. )

So, there it is. The meme is now on posting 5 blogs you read on almost a daily basis.

1. Zen Habits:

Zen Habits covers: achieving goals, productivity, being organized, GTD, motivation, eliminating debt, saving, getting a flat stomach, eating healthy, simplifying, living in frugality, parenting, happiness, and successfully implementing good habits.

2. The art of Manliness

Generation X and Y is a generation of Lost Boys. We live in a Never-Never-Land where boys stay boys and never become men. More and more males today are putting off college, family, and adult responsibilities in order to play video games and do keg stands. Don’t believe me that today’s man is lost? How about some numbers?

• 2/3 of men in the U.S. are overweight or obese.
• Men only make up 42 percent of U.S. college students.
• The average male carries around $2,369 in credit-card debt.
• Three out of ten drink too much
• A majority of males between the ages of 30 and 18 receive greater financial support from their parents and has more debt than previous generations.
• The average adult man plays video games 7.6 hours per week.

The Art of Manliness is dedicated to helping men uncover what manliness means in the 21st century. What skills and knowledge should a 21st Century man acquire? What traits should they develop?

3. Creating Passionate Users

The Creating Passionate Users bloggers are all fascinated by brains, minds and what science can tell them about the practice of making users passionate about their lives and tools.

4. CNET News Blog

My source for techie news!!!

5. Paul Graham

A good read. Especially, if you are entrepreneur-ly inclined.

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There are posts I might disagree with, vehemently, in some of the above-mentioned blogs. But that doesn’t make them any inferior. If anything, that’s because they make me think. That is one reason I like them.

Now for the tags. Here’s the blog roll-call.

1. http://deepakleads.blogspot.com/ (A friend of mine I met at a PLM conference in Italy)

2. http://prabhagovind.wordpress.com/ (Friend and a former colleague)

3. http://4sometime.com/blog/ (I know this person only through her blogs)

4. http://eapenz.blogspot.com/ (a friend from college days)

5. http://emjay-online.blogspot.com/ (A cool guy to hang out with)