Coffee's distinct acknowledgement

I walked steadfastly to the counter in the Cafeteria and grabbed my ceramic cup from the closed closet and rinsed it. As I looked to get some tea for myself and was about to grab the tea bag from the collection of gazillions of them, the coffee pot said "Hi !! "  

"Oh. Look at you! You look pretty from the inside. Someone must have made you in the morning, fresh for me :)" I said. Surmising my greed to drink some of the exotic smelling caffeine, pot replied "I think in clock it says 10 o'clock and I was made before atleast you entered the office today. But never mind, I stay fresh until noon and then I got kiss the dishwasher."

Amused I looked at the pot for another nano-second and I decided to pick it up. Before I could pour some morning nectar for my cup, breaking the awkward silence in the cafeteria, the pot said "I might look like a black dalmatian dog with light brown spots on me, but I clean from inside and don't worry about it, go ahead and have a good cup of coffee". I gawked. Then blinked. And finally smiled saying "I could see that the black dalmatian with brown spots is actually gold inside! Thanks for the cup of coffee"

As I started to drink my cup of brown coffee with a peanut cookie, I realized this might be my first cup of hot coffee in like 5 weeks. Wow!

Since the time I have moved to New Jersey for work, it feels different. Different than Rochester. Yeah ya, as people say it Upstate New york. The people here in NYC area, NJ and CT areas think Rochester is upstate however that's not true and I was "cordial" to clear this mis-understanding to whomsoever I met at work for the first time.

Sometimes I like my coffee brown and more often I like it black. This may not sound weird and uncommon to you, but for a person who started to drink Coffee at the age of 23, I think it is pretty good to be able to develop a cognitive taste of the different flavors for caffeine.

Moving to NJ - Deam or Destiny

Random shit happens to all of us. I was laid off without any prior notice and without any fault of mine. Companies just don’t understand how they crush someone’s dreams about life in just moment.

Dreams like yours, like mine.. graduation dreams, dreams to see their proud parents sitting near the graduation rows, pay off your college loan, moving in with your special someone, buy a very cherished and long awaited electronic device or may be just nothing. Just a happy moment in short!

Well honestly, after 6 months of soul and job searching, I figured I had to give consultants a try. Graduating from one of best schools in the North America, I had a rough time doing this. I adopted a certain lifestyle that I think is the best anyone should be doing. I set aggressive targets for me in terms – rigorous gym, tenacious swimming regime, strenuous book reading, and tough healthy eating, and a strict walking routine.

My walking partner, a female friend “H” decided to send my resume to a couple of friends and float it and see what happens. So I give my resume to her boyfriend “N” and decided to see what happens.

Two days after in the morning, I got a call from this guy “J” for a phone interview. I got it  So the next thing I know, I have to physically be here in NJ. Ground zero!! I decided to come to the same person “N” for this temporary accommodation and before I know I was packing up my stuff for a 5 day visit to NJ.

Some say dreams are your reflection. Some say dreams are mere revelations; some say some sort of calling. I will buy that! Dreams are generally your calling, and you should listen to it. I did. I do. I was watching this movie called Latter days, and I heard this quotation that

“Like the game we played when we were kids, joining the dots. Life is full of those dots and you will see that may be they don’t make sense right now, but they will make sense later on, just keep on joining them. ”

That is what dreams were to me. – Dots connecting my life to a meaning, so that I can fulfill my dream to give meaning to the entire world.

Struggle of Beacon !! - Juice or concrete!

Reading this one quote from the book I have been reading, it made me think. More than just think, it let me believe that I can still hang on to belief and not give up.

I have been struggling lately, but struggling doesn’t mean giving up. It just means you are not happy with the way things are and you are trying to change things and iron things out, but it is not really working that way and you aren’t satisfied with the results that follow. The quote reinforced the concept that belief is a tangible and variable personal entity which will grow or die based on what food is given to it. You can let go of your belief in one moment of struggle and feel “comforted” for a moment or you can hang on to it and still try. After all, sometimes you might have to kiss 100 frogs before you find your prince. (Smile face)

Eureka moment is not here yet but the YAY moment is and came from this paragraph:

“From all these episodes, Jacobsen learned an overarching lesson: Don’t let disappointment lead to disillusionment. Surprisingly, after all these letdowns, Jacobsen has kept the faith.” I tell students this all the time,” he says. “The most important thing you can have is the ability to believe. Believing is a controllable aspect of people. You can let it be beaten out of you by bad events. You can become cynics, and a cynic does nothing. If you are going to invent or create, you have to put a lot of effort into something strictly on the idea of belief, because you can never know enough to justify doing it otherwise. It’s pretty much the same way in anything you do. The venture guys bitch and moan and fail about 60 percent of the time. I bitch and moan and I fail about 60 percent of the time. You’ve got to roll the dice. It’s easy to be let it be stomped out of you. But failure can teach you to keep the faith.”

This paragraph has been taken from Chapter “Embracing failure” of the book (page 158). The intention of sharing of this paragraph is to inspire, discuss and if possible learn from it, and not pursue copyright infringement.

Everything for everyone is different. And so is struggle. This part of my life called struggle, is infact different. It is the way I live, it is the way I work, and I feel about things.

Review of “Confessions of an economic Hit Man (EHM)”

I don’t exactly remember which of my friends and/or acquaintances told me to read this book in the first place, and like always I added this book to my “to be read” list and decided to wait whenever it’s turn comes up in the my list.

Initially I had reservations reading this book. For a guy like me who had none whatsoever background of accounting & economics, words like Economic Hit Man were totally intimidating. My first reaction to the title was of fear. It appeared daunting and a bit of too subjective to read. It is not clear to me, what made me read this book – my internal ability to push myself to do new (read weird) things and keep myself open (read vulnerable) to everything or my ability to torture myself with most awkward things in life just because I want to see myself as strong (read Mighty STRONG) or just random curiosity. But whatever it was, I can’t thank it enough for making me read this book and completing it till the very end.

John Perkins writes very candidly about his life, his geographically widespread professional entourage, turbulent personal accidents and of all the stories which his experience brought to him. The book started with a confused and a not clear note, which is acceptable given the fact that the reader should be able to put things in “his perspective” rather than putting things in “author’s perspective”.

At first I guessed that this book would be a fable of some economic blunders made in the US economy and some of its “free trade partners” in this global economy, but to my surprise this book contained that and much more.

The way John passes through countries through countries and explains tirelessly about what MAIN Corporation stands for and how MAIN reaped him in, intertwined with the notion of personal life as well is nothing short of indescribable. Earlier just professional and later his personal experiences started to revolve around MAIN’ strategy to expand the global empire and meeting to my realms of understanding, this thirst of oil continues to evade US supported MAIN from one continent to another.
Horrifying examples of Ecuador, Panama, Indonesia, and Canal country are meant to open the eyes of the readers and the masses (by a long shot though) to the corporate bureaucracy. The author coined a new term out of it, which is interesting too. The book clearly shows that the oldest democracy in the world has outlawed all the international laws (the experience stories about Vietnam and Iraq war), nullified all the popular democracy movements in the targeted countries (for e.g. Canal), CIA assassinations imprints (for example, murder of Roduge) all over the books, colossal amount of national debts incurred to these countries in lieu of providing foreign aid for building infrastructure ( such as highways, dams, power plants, oil plants and many more), loss of national freedom, and many similar activities.
Why this book & its controversial experiences seem to me as different is a good question that I am asking myself, way before even I thought I would write a review about it.

Big fish still eats the small fish. A mightier country today dictates the smaller country by means money (read foreign aid), technology transfer (read lobbying for concessions and army base) and sometimes war (read US supported army coup). Oil thirst seems to overtake everything else in the world and on this planet. NOTHING stands in front it. The fact that first EHMs are sent to a country to investigate and prepare the ground to a new country and if that fails, the jackals are sent shows the pinch of might these bigger conglomerates have over you and my daily affairs.

Each one of us likes to think that I am free and I am equal as guaranteed by the constitution (this is usually true for most of the countries, irrespective of where you belong to and from where you are reading this), but in the bigger picture, these big money earning and oil thirsty juggernauts will destroy the very fundamental of freedom by enslaving everyone of us with their products, services and money.

To our greatest fear, even today the imperialism prevails. It really doesn’t matter that which nation you are reading this entry from, but it matters what history you nation has and most importantly what it is going through now. Imperialism as we knew it, ended ages ago. Now you don’t see geographically spread colonies and rampant human slavery, but you see huge national debts of countries once rich with natural resources, now we don’t see blacks and browns tortured because of their skin color (partly thanks to the system and partly to education that let’s everyone to be seen as equals), but we see good people like John Perkins working as EHM and helping to create global empires for the countries like this one on the expense of so many others.

You can visit this page to read on goodreads

Good reads

On insistence from a friend, I went to Good reads and to my amazement, I liked it. I thought I would just share.

I know it not be a big deal for the people who don't read or are already expert users of this website, either way, I think it is a great way to keep in touch with what you are reading and your preferences.

If you are a book lover, you wouldn't want to miss this website, if you haven't been to it. Believe me, you won't regret it.

There is plenty of books available to select and maintain your shelves from. And you create your profile and create an inventory of books you have read, want to read, and reading. And there you go,you share your reviews, books and catalog.

Greatest fears

The whirlwind inside me has been increasing the pressure lately and all the stable and concrete things inside of me seem to revolve around with equatorial speed, but one thing that has kept me sane and has kept me "intact" for so to speak is a belief. Yes, a belief.

A belief that doesn't let me loose my temper, a belief that keeps me sane for most of my day in 24 hours/day, a belief with which when I walk, I can hold my head high, a belief that makes me believe that I will smile cheerfully again even though I don't remember when was the last time I did laughed my stomach out, and a believe that I will see the morning again.

I consider of myself & everyone around myself as a person of great integrity and character values. For myself, I hold myself to the highest levels of expectations every minute of everyday of every month of every year. I have a reading target, an exercise target, a networking target and to much a surprise to many people - a spiritual target as well.

Ideally, I would hold myself to the highest standards and then fret about not completing them if I end up not meeting them. Over the years I remained ferment and versatile, yet restless & hopeful.

I wanted to become more, I want to learn more, do more, give more, contribute more, read more, explore more. But all I can see myself is to remain reduced to nothing but a mere mortal. I would love to define what a mere mortal stands for in my terms, but I rather not. There is not one day I feel, I should be doing more than what I have been doing, there is no one moment, I think I should be writing more than I have been doing lately, not one second passes feeling that I can be the greatest achiever of all, but all I have is some lame schedule around me.

It is quite clear that I am frustrated and deeply moved by this present state of my mind.

Resumes aka Vita