Last week, I attended a week long course called YES+! It stands for Youth Empowerment Seminar, and is designed by Art of Living Foundation. It was such fun! Full of energy, dancing, music, meditation, exercise and breathing techniques designed to calm the mind, improve focus, get rid of negative emotions, find joy & peace in the present moment, feel connection and sense of belonging with others. I recommend it to everybody! It was taught by Natalie, a sweet young american girl who has conducted many many trauma relief workshops in New Orleans for Katrina affected people, inner city youth, prisons. I have always been overawed by all Art of Living teachers I have met. They really 'know' what they are talking about! Lets hope my discipline gets better of my inertia in practicing these techniques :-) Below is a music video made in Montreal YES+ course, which captures beautifully the essence of YES+.
The world of work is often viewed as a sterile pursuit of checklists, project plans, meetings, coding.. the whole grind, without many emotions or drama. Those last things belong in a movie or TV soaps that we watch after returning home from work . But work does have its moments, of inspiration, serendipity and clarity.. all dramatic enough to be put in a movie, which are the breadcrumbs that show us the way to our life's calling. One such moment happened to me in Bangalore early in my career, and made me decide to pursue control design as a career path. I wanted to pen this down for a long time.. but was not sure if I could share this publicly, despite it being of no commercial value. Since it has been almost 20 years since that incident, writing it down to share an oddly satisfying science discovery and its personal impact on me, without disclosing the business context around it. Hoping it spurs others to remember what drew them to their life's work, and for others who might ...
Recently had a very 'memorable' experience with Indian customs, which I was planning to blog about. This was my first firsthand experience with public corruption & bureaucracy, hence quite a learning experience. So this happened, when on my India trip, I naively carried two laptops (one for a friend & one for my work, as I needed both) without thinking twice about the custom trouble it might create :-) I was vaguely aware of 25000Rs limit, was foolishly optimistic of my falling below the custom radar or overly confident of dealing with any eventuality. Alas, on my way out of Mumbai terminal, when asked forthright, I declared the same, and was promptly asked to come to side & open my luggage. The officer, Mr.B was way too good for his job. The free & black market prices of all electronic valuables & accessories were on his fingertips. His knowledge of dell, hp, toshiba, ibm brands alongwith innards of chipsets, ram, dvd specs would compete with authorized sa...
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