Loong week that was. Hey come on even jobless, struggling entreprenurs have their bad weeks. Its quite fun to work for yourself i should say. Well it is fun so far primarily because no one is working for me yet. If and when that happens, it is going to be back to a form of the corporate world. Why think of that. Lets cross the bridge when it comes. In the meantime, i am going to enjoy this life while it lasts or while there is still money to enjoy this life :). Afterall whether we like it or not, money runs the world. No, i am not going to talk about money, capitalism, socialism, AynRand, objectivism, Morrie, Unbearable likeness of being or any of the other philiosophies that i know of and read about. Thats for another day.

I am sometimes scared if i will be able to stay this motivated for a few more months until i am able to raise the funds required to start this venture. The pilot is well on its way and i have until december to do the demo. Come new years, i have to have the business plan and the pitch ready to start hitting the sponsors and investors. It took me 5 months to get the seed investor to put in the 25K USD. Man, wonder how much more time it is going to take for the 20 times that money that i have to raise. It is not going to be easy at all. At the same time, i am trying hard to convince an acquaintance of mine that i would be able to resell his products in singapore and asia pacific and get a commission out of the sales. This should help me live for a while. Another consulting firm has promised me a research project and its still to be finalised. In between all this, my mom keeps asking me "what exactly do i tell the prospects you are doing?". As if i knew.. Well my answer to her was that thats what i wanted the prospect to help me figure out. If she can then I am in :) haha!!

Working for oneself has another advantage. I can work anytime i want sleep anytime i want. For the past few weeks have been working in the night until 3 am and sleeping till 10 am. And i get so bored sometimes, that i spent about 150 bucks on a DVD sale a few days back and bought these classics for 5 bucks a piece. And i have borrowed so many dvds from my friends that i have around 25 movies to watch over the course of the next few weeks.

I will stop here. Have to figure out how much damage Osama bin laden has created on the elections and who is gonna win. Cos if the wrong person wins, i am going to put this thought of going back to the US sometime next year out of my head for sure.

Status : Hungover, headache, dry mouth, sore throat
Time : Sat 12:00 Noon
Ok.. now.. bollywood movie style Flash back:

Friday evening Alumni dinner at the Royal Singapore Yatch Club. 8 glasses of white wine in 2 hours. Topped with 2 champagnes. Feeling a little typsy.. Back of my mind.. i have to get up for the rendezvous with the alumni tomorrow morning. i am supposed to be the photographer of the day. Alcohol is quite active in the frontal region. everything is cluded by mist. Someone shouts.. hey how about partying more. The clouded brain looks around, finds lots of pretty girls and Blink, the light bulbs call for the road to new asia bar, a bar on the 70th floor in a high rise in singapore.

Time now 11:00 ; One more glass of wine.. and then comes 2 glasses of beer. Totally drunk. Start hitting on the girl next to me. No actually, she came and sat beside me and started talking. Well i am drunk and so I Keep yapping till 1:00 am with her and others around me. Girl next to me disappears at 1:00 am.. hell what the heck is wrong with her.. My status: traumatised!!!. complain to everyone i see, Get some sympathetic nods and "its ok man, sour grapes fundaes". Dude, i just spent one hour. Well management guys will remind me of Sunk Cost!! So what the hell. Go dance to "Its my life" and "I will survive". Get back and talk talk talk for another hour or so. and somehow managed to get numbers of 3 other girls. God know what i told them and why they gave me their numbers. Was it pity? i hope not.. shall call and find out later.

Time 3:30 AM. Go to Another bar.. called Attica. Pay entry fee and get a vodka orange juice. 4:00 AM. totally drunk.. Ask housemate to take me home.

Flash back over...

Now.. left with a hangover. Cant go to the photo sessions that i volunteered for. Send panic SMS to the organiser. Dont hear from her. Guess she is pissed off..

Drink 2 bottles of water. Try one cup of hot black coffee.. Go back to bed. Wake up.. Time now: 5:00 PM. Have a small share of the two day old pasta from the fridge. Drink another glass of water. Go back to bed.

Man.. This is the third time this year that i have got myself into a good "bad day". Well resolutions never last. The first time i had a hangover this year was after new years party. And then i had a break for 8 months. Had bad hangovers twice within the last 2 months.. this doesnt look good..Nah..got to stop.. So make new resolution : Cant say no more drinks.. Well ok.. resolution is I will stop with 2-3 drinks.
will keep you all posted on the status.

I have a question. Who doesnt? But this one is definitely interesting..

If I have a door bell on my door, Will Opportunity still knock or will it ring the door bell?

Interesting question isnt it. I havent yet asked it to anyone. Wonder what the answer would be. I do remember someone once telling me that Opportunity always knocks its Temptation that would just lean on the door bell. This one makes a lot of sense if you ask me. But sometimes i wonder, why would we ever need a door. Cant we just keep the entrance wide open for opportunity or temptation to walk right in? That would make life much more easier wouldnt it? Hmm, come to think of it, it doesnt make sense, because i would rather not have each and every opportunity and temptation walking right in. That would cause me to spend too much time choosing between them after they butt in and that would rather screw up my time. So better to have a door and let the door have a door bell as well.

However, on second thoughts, I would also need a huge view hole and a circuit breaker for the door bell. Cos, I would rather not open the door and check the opportunity and/or temptation. What if they just barge in?? If the temptation is really not worth it, i would rather break the circuit than having to listen to the door bell chirping off into the sunset.

So at the end of the day, I have decided to have the door, install a good view hole and a door bell with a circuit breaker. Will keep you informed if anything interesting happens.. :)

I am someone who had always believed that everything happens for a reason. Now, what is this reason? How do i justify why a particular event happenned and why it happenned at this particular moment in time, why it happenned with the particular set of people involved..basically Why? I had long attributed this reason to a higher power who seems to be running things. Mind you, i am not shirking my responsibilities or my actions that could have caused this particular event, all i am saying is that there seems to be a higher power that somehow puts these set of actors and sets the scenarios for such an event to occur.

However, there seems to be a a flaw in this reasoning that some higher power is controlling the flow of this event. Now let us assume for a minute that there is a higher power that is controlling the event, then who controls the outcome of the event. A rational mind would say that the outcome of the event is based on the decisions I take and the decisions taken by the other actors involved. Who controls the decision i take, I do. Who controls the decisions that the other actors take, they do. Why do they make these specific decisions? Why do i make this particular decision? Well its driven by my experiences in the past and my rationality and logical thinking is driving this decision. Ok i understand, sometimes rationality and logical reasoning doesnt play a part in our decisions, but ultimately we are the ones responsibile for our decision. This is established. So, we are the ones responsible for the outcome of the event.

Lets take a step back, then if we decide the outcome of the event, that means the next event that happens in succession because of the previous event is triggerred because we made this previous decision. All the actors that take part in the next event and the scenario that that particular event happens is all because of some decision made by each of the actors in one of their previous events. So This implies that a particular event happens because of a series of previous events that have occurred over the past. So we can establish by induction that the present event is a logical and rational outcome of a series of past events and decisions.. Basically, we can draw a decision tree with the actors involved.

So my argument that everything happens for a reason is justified. The reason is the previous decisions and previous actions and events. However i cant find any role for a higher power in this series of events if i think rationally. So where does God/higher power play a role in our lifes if our life is in fact a series of such events that come together in a random way because of a set of events that had taken place before. Interesting question, but I dont know how to answer this. I felt ease in believing that the higher power wanted me to learn some lessons and hence this particular event happenned and because this event happenned, i am better off and wouldnt make the same mistakes again. but this argument doesnt seem to hold, although i do learn from the event and am better off that this event happenned, i dont see a role for the higher power a.k.a God.

However, i cant seem to get myself to become an atheist. I am not able to get myself to not believe in God even though rationally there seems to be no requirement for him to exist. Maybe its because i have been seasoned to believe that God exists. Maybe i somehow feel at ease when i visit a temple. I dont know. But i would definitely want to find out where God plays a role in this series of random events that we call life.

p.s: these thoughts were an outcome of a good discussion i had with a few friends of mine. yeah you guessed right, we were drunk :)

Quintessential Nerdness:

I dont know about others, but i definitely will fall in this category. Although was not the Tam Bram by birth, I consider myself a honorary member. For non Indians, this stands for Tamil Brahmins, the language/community that incidentally follow the typical engineering-silicon valley route..As per some recent studies, this species of homo sapiens is considered highly intelligent, influential and holding some good positions in academia and business world in the usa,uk and in india. Although i was not born in to this group, I had the chance to be closely associated with them. My first contact with them happenned in the fall of 1993 when i went to BITS Pilani for my undergrad. I slowly got pulled into their lifestyle and i am quite honored to be a considered honorary member of this community. :)

About nerdness, Well I wouldnt call the entire Tam Bram population nerds.. No way, there are quite a bunch of smart people. But i would definitely not be honest if i didnt say that this nerdiness is infact a typical attribute. The Tam Brams are the ones who gave the word Centum to the world. My dad picked this from them because of his close friend was one. So while i was growing up, centum used to be a constantly utterred word in my household. Centum in Mathematics.. which is getting a 100% in the exam is a must. If i fail to get this, then the consequences are best left untold.. one has to experience this to understand what i am talking about. You could do anything, but failing to get a centum in maths was the biggest sin ever possible and me being the careless guy, will always end up missing the centum.

Anyways, talking about nerdness, it never leaves most of us. Its there in me and however hard i try to mask it, it shows up sooner or later. No matter how cool I consider myself to be, the nerdness is there in me. When i was in undergrad, peer pressure to act cool made me partake beer for the first time. The same pressure made me graduate to hard liquor and then increase capacity, go to clubs, go to pubs, change the way i dress, get a good wardrobe etc etc.. The list is endless.. not that i didnt enjoy doing them, i wouldnt do it if i didnt enjoy what i was doing, but i would not be honest if i didnt not say there was no pressure to act non nerdy. Well at the end of it, what i realised is, however hard i try, i am the Quintessential Nerd.. No denying it. And hey, i am happy being one.. No wonder i feel happy to watch movies like revenge of the nerds!!!