Balidanam Veer Lakshanam

This was the motto displayed in entrance arch in a big army campus on the way to turtuk. The meaning is Sacrifice is the sign of a warrior. It has been a tradition from time immemorial that it was considered a warriors duty to sacrifice one's life for the country or a just cause. The tradition continues even now that our armed forces are ready to lay their life to defend our country from external and internal threats, so that people like me can live peacefully. I do have a feeling that as a nation, the leadership and people included, we don't value the lives of men and women who are serving our armed forces. Is it because we have many people willing to serve and lay down their lives for the country, that their lives have become cheap? If you see western countries, even a few causalities in fighting creates a lot of public outcry! Those countries use technology extensively as a force multiplier and try to minimise human causalities. Why cant we do the same? For example, our armed forces operate in harsh conditions in high altitudes in Himalayas without adequate facilities resulting in a situation where more soldiers die to weather conditions than fighting! It is high time that our soldiers get their due and their lives are taken more seriously...

Leh Travelogue

Actually it is a mini-travelogue. This is my first attempt at writing about my travel. So please bear with me! :-)

Leh Travelogue

Financial and Emotional Investments!

When it comes to the term "investment", most people seem to think of it in purely financial terms. When you invest time, money, human resources, agreed that these are all a financial investment. What about the investments we make in our personal lives? So could the time, emotions that we invest in our friendships or for that matter any relationship be considered an "investment" as well! If there an investment, then comes the return on investment (ROI). All financial investments are made with a good ROI in mind, but doing a emotional investment with ROI in mind would be sure recipe for disaster or so it would seem. But the unfortunate fact of lives nowadays seem that most relationships seem to be made on some expectation or quid pro quo and if that is not met, the relationship fails. The differences between financial and emotional investments seem to be blurring and I think it would be  easier to deal with a failed financial investment than an failed emotional investment!

Boredom Log

Life was generally boring. Work was becoming routine and monotonous after almost 10 years at the same organisation. There was no silver lining in the horizon. Add to it the chaotic way things are run in the organisation. Also I have accumulated a lot of vacation time by virtue being in the company for so long and which would go waste by end of the year if I don’t use it thanks to a new leave policy. It is in these circumstances I struck upon this brilliant idea to take 2 weeks off work. I didn’t have any clue on what to do in that time. Originally I planned this vacation to coincide with my friends visit to his native Chennai so that we could hang around and also go to Bangalore to meet some more friends. But his dad was unwell and hospitalised and he had to take care of him. As the vacation neared, I tried to list down things that I should do during this time and I couldn’t come up with many! So I decided to take one day at a time and not plan much in advance. So in due course of time, the last working day before the vacation arrived and I duly notified all and sundry about my vacation plan and put on the out of notification in my outlook mailbox and headed out….

For full story, go to Boredom Log

Blame it on FB!

It has been a while since I wrote on this blog, more than 7 months. I had wanted to write quite a few times, but it is because of my laziness that I didn't. But why take the blame myself, when it can be put on something that won't complain. Yes, its because of FB. I had been quite active on FB in the recent past. You see, to post in FB, you don't have to think too much, dont have to worry about noting down the thoughts that seem to happen at random moments and writing them to the blog. In FB, you can "post" a few one liners, "like" a few posts, cut and paste a few "links" and "share" some of your friends posts and be active. Not a lot of work uh! Not that Facebook is going to upset being blamed. Rather it would welcome it. If many people use it and blame it like me, its market value may even go up from $100 billion to $200 billion!