Guidance

This one is a collaboration between a friend and myself. A true jugalbandi of poetic verses. We both alternately came up with verses to attach to the ones already present:). Sort of like two minds coming up with a story on the fly.


It was a dark and scary street
To traverse it was a challenge indeed
I took my steps in sulking doubt
Guidance was hard to come about

But there was no need for despair.
Guidance like luck, often catches you unaware.
The right path is not easily seen
Visible to eyes, that remain keen

Spoken words cause a magic unique
Encourage me to aim for the peak
Am keen to turn words into actions
this dark street will not beat my intentions

Other times there is no need for a talk.
Magical sights can inspire us on our own walk.
Guidance here is languishing in third person view
Don't ignore, just take it as your queue.

Disturbing behaviour

Something that I have always noticed while browsing the web, social networking and while on chat clients. A large number of status updates are increasingly becoming negative - complains, sad, depressing etc.

I took this long to actually post this is because first time for a blog entry i actually did some research.  The first criteria towards making such a claim would be to have considerable hours of experience in the above mentioned media, which if you know me then I do not need to explain that I most definitely do. So onto my research. For a complete week I made notes of the status updates on Facebook and Gtalk and other chat clients. Considering the amount of time I spend online, data was easy to acquire. Then I simply divided the messages into negative and positive. Some messages were just so insipid, well there was no point in even categorizing them ;). My suspicions were indeed correct. The number of negative messages was definitely larger (62%/38% to be precise). The negative messages were more popularly received on facebook - they had more reactions and more comments on an average. Somehow it felt disturbing. As if being pathetic, sad, depressing or complaining is the new social fashion on the web.

To say I was surprised was an understatement. I mean people always complain and be negative in real life from time to time. But why take special time out to even type it out. Why give that emotion so much importance. I decided to dig deeper. A friend of mine sent over a link www.tedmosbyisajerk.com and through that I also found a similar page that said tedmosbeyisnotajerk. Guess who had more hits. Yup. you are right the former. It had almost 50 times as many hits. I found similar websites that liked and disliked elements of popular culture and every time the negative aspect was more popular. This only meant 2 things for me. Either people dislike more things in the world than like them or they are going out of their way to emphasize their dislike and not doing the same for things they like. I mean if you dislike something you do and that is it. Why waste extra time to go ahead and register you opinion. Would you  not rather concentrate of talking about and finding things you like. Wouldn't that be a more prudent way to spend time. The fan pages on facebook told me a similar story. 'I like/love XYZ' was always less favored then 'I hate/dislike XYZ'. Is this just a geeky observation?? Or does the observation hold some merit?? Share your thoughts.

And yes before you dismiss this as geeky ramblings I would like you to check out this TED link. Someone doing something similar but on a much larger scale was considered good enough to share their idea with the world. If you do not know what TED is, I can excuse it if you are not an engineer otherwise...we seriously need to reconsider our relationship :)


http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_harris_tells_the_web_s_secret_stories.html

The Movie Analogy

This one is inspired by a very brief conversation with classmates in a bus while travelling back home from class. It all started when for a few brief seconds they made me consider a world without movies ;) .

Traveling with mates by bus,
'twas the middle of the week.
As is usually the case,
About movies I started to speak.
They laughed and said, without movies,
my existence would be meek.
"Fear not!" I said, without movies,
people are whom I would seek.

Like Trailers, first you take peak.
Like them, then further information you seek.
In movies, certain genres you prefer.
Likewise, certain quality every person will offer.
Like it, and talking to them doesn't make you suffer

The kind of movie you watch,
sometimes depends on your mood.
A certain individual you prefer in a given setting -
The practice is really not that rude.

Some movies, set into motion a trend.
Some people too, have the ability to make your thinking bend.
Some movies you never tire to watch.
Some people for you, are really a perfect match.

Some movies out there are
quite ahead of their time.
Being different among a group too,
is certainly not a crime.

As is with movies, so is with people
There are a lot of options from which to choose.
If every once a while the choice fails,
There is nothing much that you loose.

Failure

I would like to make special mention of my classmate who helped me with a couple of rhyming words. I was in class and the computer battery had given up on me, so without google to help me, my classmates rhyming prowess was a great help.

In the long dock of life,

many enterprises we set sail.

While many of them reach their end,

Quite a few of them do fail.

Success and failure are reversals in grammar

but in real life it isn't so.

They are both results of showing up,

of repeated tries and never letting go.

Accept failure as an inevitable fact,

To face it, you just might learn some tact.

When you do fail, avoid the grimace, try the smile.

The habbit will become second nature, after a while.

Often occurrence of failure,

can potentially be a learning tool.

But craving failure to learn,

That is an idea of a fool.