After a long hiatus ...

Thanks to the new blogger encryption notification, I got reminded of my blog. Not that I had completely forgotten about my blog, I haven't read any blogs in the recent past. All my reading has been confined to e-newsletters, subscriptions articles, shares by friends and family on social media. Is this a recent trend or is it only me?

Books

Have been reading a bit off late ... Some of the interesting books that I read in recent times are:

• Hard thing about hard things - Ben Horowitz
• Elon Musk
• How bad do you want it

Even though I have read over 50 books in the last 5 yrs ... these books were the ones which impressed me to a great extent .... 

Back after a long time !

Its been over 5 yrs since I last blogged ... a break during some of the interesting times ...
planning to restart writing again ... lets see .. whether I would be able to do justice to it or not ... 

Skype

Skype

What a wonderful tool! Never realised the significance of it , till I came to Singapore. In the last few days it has helped me save some 100+ dollars on calls to India and abroad. I feel that the voice clarity is far better than the normal cell phone, provides for a conferencing facility and no extra costs. It has also helped me in getting in touch with some of my friends abroad ...

one amazing tool, if u havent used it till now, i guess it is time u install this and start using it

Entrepreneurship journey

I was wondering for a long time whether I have it in me to actually become an entrepreneur .. but as things go I stopped wondering.. and got into the act ...

I have now started tredding on the path less travelled ...

as Frost says ..

Two roads diverged in a wood, and

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference

Armed with our vision, strengthened by our passion, with great determination and enthusiasm we have embarked on this journey .. hope this makes all the difference .. not just commercially .. ..

its been quite a while now ... the journey so far as been pleasant with few challenges ...

but still we have a long way to go ...

As Robert Frost said,

These woods are lovely, dark and deep

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep

And miles to go before I sleep

-Raghu

Back to Bangalore and Blogging

After a hiatus of nearly 5 years from Bangalore.. I am finally back in my hometown .. Bangalore. The city has changed a lot since the days I grew up .. the weather, the traffic, eating places, the people... most of these things hav changed... sometimes I feel alien in my own city .. but thats the cost of development or probably I was away from Bangalore for a long time I believe ...

well now I am back.. doing the thing that I like doing .. doing things on my own .. in my own city .. kinda excited .. lets c how things will unfold ...

Its an irony that I am writing this blog sitting in Singapore :) ... its a long story .. how did I end up in Spore .. will write it in another blog ...

-Raghu

North India Trip

Had been to one of the most exciting, adventurous, educative trips in August . Travelled between Mana Village in the east to Wagah Border in the west, in between trekked in Valley of Flowers, prayed in Badrinath, enjoyed the chills of Shimla, Kulu & Manali, did paragliding near Rohtang Pass, got educated on the Tibetan struggle in Mcledoganj, was awestruck by the moon-lit Golden Temple in Amritsar, Patriotism ran full flow near Wagah Border ....

2500 kms in 15 days in our car evading land slides, heavy monsoons, fog, night-long drives ...

Will pen the experience in future posts ...

Magnetism of books ...

Even though I don't find time to do lots of things I want to do, apart from the daily routine stuff; it is difficult to resist the magnetism of the books. It is not an attraction towards a particular book or a genre of books, but it is an attraction towards any book that can be read / should be read ... I hope it is not an addiction ... but I simply cannot keep myself away from books for a long time ...

But there is an opposite feeling as well .. If I take a long time to complete a book ... or am not able to make significant progress in a book in a given period of time ... I become restless... and I have this feeling which forces me to complete the book asap leaving other things behind ... the hunger of reading a book is replaced by the anxiety of completing the book ... I am not sure whether it is good or bad ... gud coz the book will be completed soon... bad coz maybe the softer elements of the book are compromised ... .... I hope I am not the only one in this boat !!

In the last fortnight, I was able to read two books. Thanks to the long journey I had to undertake to reach my in-laws place !

First one to be done was "Freedom at Midnight" - this is the book I wanted to read for a long time ... but culdnt manage to get hold of it or read it ... If I remember correctly this is the only book that I have bought, till date, from an airport book shop ... (think the airport was the old Bangalore airport)... well usually people buy books in the airport to wail away the waiting time for their flight... but I bought it when I was rushing to catch my flight ... sometimes I can figure out the rationale behind my actions ... I was passing by the book store .. I noticed the book ... went and bought it... this wasn;t the first time I had seen it in a book store and I know that ample copies of the book are available in lots of book stores all over the country... but I had to buy it at the airport and put it in my bag to open it only six or eight months later ... :) !!!

The other one is "The Book Thief" .... I bought it when I had gone to shop for gifts for my wife's neice !! my wife was busy looking out for the gifts and I was busily searching for things which my wife's neice may read, may be, after 15 - 20 yrs ... !!! I plan to write a review of the book over the weekend ... will provide more dope then ...

Currently I am reading "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" - a book about America's attempt to build post-war Iraq.

Ooopss ....

Its been ages since I have penned anything new !! Its not that I didn't have anything to write, there were lots of things happening at my end. I had thought about writing sometimes but somehow I couldn't put the pen to the paper !!

So where was I all this while? What kept me busy ?!! ...
Well, I got married in december ... before december ... was busy preparing for december ... post that I couldn;t get much free time to contemplate about stuff and write about it... I hope that I can push myself to blog once in a while ...

Well I dont want to get into the details of my marriage ... but for the curious folks ... i just wanna say that I am happily married man now !!! :)

Commencement Address ...

Here are couple of commencement address I like.

Stanford University 2005
Steve Jobs made this commencement address and rightly called it "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish"

Harvard 2008
J K Rowling delivered on "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination"

Both Jobs and Rowling share their experience in life in their addresses. They have different stories to tell but the message is more or less similar. Its all about perspectives, the way we want to see things, what lens we want to see them in.

How do Great people happen, r they born with greatness or is it impossed on them or is it how they react/respond to the circumstances that make them great (in the end)!!!

Read them to get your own meaning or perspective!

Sparks !

One of my colleague at office forwarded me Chetan Bhagat's "Keep the Spark" Speech, the inaugural speech made by him to the new class of Symbiosis.

I am neither a fan of Chetan Bhagat nor think high of his writing abilities. Even then, I read the speech. There were few things in the speech that poked my brain. Some of them were

• Nurturing and protecting the spark !
• Life is like the nursery school run with a lemon in the spoon. No point coming first if the marble falls
• Let Go !
• Don't be Serious, be sincere !

Thought provoking and Inspirational!

If you haven't read it yet, you can do so here

Yet another incident packed weekend ....

Another weekend .... full of incidents ...
Friday was the great run ... I ran 6 km in the evening... well, I am practicing for the Delhi half marathon on Nov 9 ... dinner .. phone ... then I slept like a log ... was too tired because of the run ..

Saturday... was in office... yes, I know... weekend working ... noy my estyle .. but I think sometimes it helps .. it is a problem only when it becomes a habit ... ya ya ... it starts with sometimes .... within sometime it becomes alltimes !!! :)

Was in Delhi in the afternoon.. and there was yet another bomb blast ... well.. this was prettyy close.. the blast happened on the road which I take to reach Delhi from home ... quiet scary .. guess all bomb explosions should be scary !!!

To top it all ... saw 'A Wednesday' just now ... well... whattay movie.. a must watch... I am not going to disclose anything about the movie ... If u havn't seen it yet ... u need to do it rite away ...

read 'Bringing down the House'... a book on which the movie 21 Blackjack is based ... I picked up from my friend's place ... yup.. I visited a colleague of mine on saturday .. had lunch at his place .. actually shamelessly ... since he was not hungry .. and I had his share of lunch what his maid had cooked ... :)

I am planning to go home this week ... need to give some finishing touches to my marriage preparations !! .. hmmm.... yes.. u got this rite.. I am blushing .... :)

I am hope work will be pretty manageable this week !!!