Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Dan Pink on Ted

Dan Pink talks about how incentives are not good enough motivators for exceptional performance in tasks that involve creativity or thinking. Especially the kind of creativity that is now required at every level to maintain an edge. The incentives can work brilliantly for the mechanical tasks i.e. those that have simple, straightforward or already thought of solutions.

Seth Godin

Joshua Walters: On being just crazy enough | Video on TED.com

Always apologize when you've done something wrong. But don't you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining.
- From Sarah Kay's poem

Intuition is critical in virtually everything you do
But without relentless preparation and execution it is meaningless
- Tim Cook at the Auburn University Commencement Speech

A Hundred Years from Today

A hundred years from today
who are you, sitting, reading a poem of mine,
under curiosity’s sway -
a hundred years from today?

Not the least portion
of this young spring’s morning bliss,
neither blossom nor birdsong,
nor any of its scarlet splashes
can I drench in passion
and despatch to your hands
a hundred years hence!

Yet do this, please: unlatch your south-faced door,
just sit at your window for once;
basking in fantasy, eyes on the far horizon,
figure out if you can:
how one day a hundred years back
roving delights in a free fall from a heavenly region
had touched all that there was -
the infant Phalgun day, utterly free,
was frenzied, all agog,
while borne on brisk wings, the south wind
pollen-scent-brushed
had suddenly arrived and in a flash dyed the earth
with all youth’s hues
a hundred years before your day.

There lived then a poet, ebullient of spirit,
his heart steeped in song,
who wanted to open his words like so many flowers
with so much passion
one day a hundred years back.

A hundred years from today
who is the new poet
whose songs flow through your homes?
To him I convey
this springtime’s gladsome greetings.
May my vernal song find its echo for a moment
in your spring day
in the throbbing of your hearts, in the buzzing of your bees,
in the rustling of your leaves
a hundred years from today.

-by Rabindranath Tagore

Today is his 150th Birth Anniversary.

The Dinning Table

Something I found scribbled in a notepad from a couple of months back..

I moved into a new apartment yesterday and eagerly waited for 'my' belongings to arrive. And when they did, the house finally felt like home. What came out of the boxes were my favorite shoes, some jackets I love, my dear scarves, pretty crockeries and the most vital posessions - my books. While everything started slowly fitting in into its own private space, the books sat around everywhere not knowing where to go. The apartment has no book shelves. After much thought and speculation, I decided to place them on the dinning table till I bought myself a book shelf. 'Whenever do I use the dinning table anyway.'

And this triggered the thought. Really, when do I use the dinning table. I eat either glued to my TV or my laptop. And the rushed meals are in the kitchen itself. The cons of living alone. Othewise the dinning table has or at least used to have a special significance in a family. The one place, where all family members would come together.

Dinning table conversations ranged through a variety of topics. The days updates, news, neighbors and gossips, school results, a lot of old days stories and often the dinning table is where parents impart values to their children. They talk about their parents and what they learnt from them. They talk about the world and where it went wrong. They talk about what they do differently. And every story has a moral. The morals that children vow to remember, teenagers mock at in their heads and adults are confused about. Irrespective the conversations are held.

Yet another way in which the dinning table illustrates its significance, is by defining the family heirarchy. The head of the family takes the single chair side of the dinning table. And for the rest, the elder one is, the closer he or she is seated to the head of the family. Interestingly, if someone above the head of the family in the extended family hierarchy visits, he takes the head-of-family-seat. There is no other part of a house that explicitly displays these family hierarchies.

Lastly, the dinning table offers that great opportunity for women to display their crockeries and admire them while the rest of the family admires the food. In homes where food is not directly served from the kitchen, women use another set of dishes and hence get to shop for them too. Whereas I like to gift the prettiest crockeries I come across to my mom for use back home rather than keeping them in this new apartment, where the dinning table will soon turn into a study space.

And in fact, if the world is right, if this music of the cafes, these mass enjoyments and these Americanized men who are pleased with so little are right, then I am wrong, I am crazy.
- Herman Hesse in Steppenwolf

Ted Video - Sheryl Sandberg

Ted Video - Sarah Kay: If I should have a daughter ...

http://www.thehindu.com/news/article1511940.ece

Pretty Paradoxical!!

My mother would be surprised if she found out that in our generation we setup the internet in a new house much before we setup the kitchen. And to take it a step further, I blog too before I open up the five cartons and the three suitcases.

Singapore!!

The use of 'Can':
"Can you pick me up from the bus stop?"
"Can"
[Okay]

"Let's see what the apartment looks like"
"Can"
[???]

At the end of a meeting... "Can"... [Weird!!! Can is not Okay, alright or anything similar!!!]

The woman at the cafeteria, when I ask for coffee: "Sugar - 3?"
I look at her confused. After I've explained I want 1 sugar.. "You are so long that's why I thought you want 3 sugar" [Long!?!? and the relation to sugar!?!?]

Cab driver: "Are you from Mumbai or are you from India?" [Hmmm.. we always thought only the Americans were ignorant]
"Mumbai is in Punjab right?" [Maybe I was actually really weak in geography!!]
"So are you white Indian? People from Mumbai, Punjab are white Indians right?" [I have absolutely no idea what he was smoking!!]