For sometime, it looked like every good thing has been coming to an end. I was going through an embarrassing rough weather at personal front since the start of the year. A mixed feeling of shock, disbelief, disappointment and discouragement engulfed me. I was not interested in anything and nothing interesting was happening. But then, having gone through what I’ve gone through for the past 7 years, I regained control of my thoughts and emotions and tried to make the best of the situation. And guess what happened?

I’d been looking for a job since later part of the last year. Finally something that suited my interest with a financial increase came along. Before getting on to the job, I can’t say how it is going to be; but if I were to believe the HR, it is going to be all exciting!

With a change of job, I thought I would go for something which has been a dream for few years – a house near the beach! Well, I got a double bed-room house within my budget at a walk-able distance from the beach. If all goes well, I should be occupying it in a week or two. To start with, I am only renting the house and may be in 6 months, I could buy one.

Since the house is away from the city and the would-be workplace, car became mandatory. Well, Indian auto market is flooded with options and I settled for one that I could afford – HONDA city in Ruby Red color! Again, all has to go well and if so, when I move to the new house it would be in the new car!

Am I all turned on with all these changes? You bet, I am! However, I should admit though, there is still a little bit of sorrow about the recent past; but it has gone out of my sphere of influence and there is nothing that I could do about it. So I am molding my thoughts, not to dwell on what went away rather on what is coming on my way.

Last weekend, I moved to the ‘beach-house’. The house is just 10 minutes walk away from the beach, and it is not crowded at all – even during the weekend, there are

One can expect a cultural shock when moving from one culture to another; however it appears to me that it is usual go through the shock when moving back to the native culture! You presume to find things as it were when you left. Nope, they have changed as much as you changed, if not more. When I moved back to Chennai after 5 years of absence, I was looking in awe: is this the same place?

First thing to strike me was the ubiquitous ads of ‘Use condoms to prevent AIDS’. The whole world knows that Indians are very productive and was advised to use condoms to prevent childbirth. But now what happened? It took me a long time to realize the type of change in the society. If there was so much money poured into these ad campaigns, then there should be an awful lot of ‘stuff’ happening out of marriage. I am aware that ‘If there is marriage without love, there will be love without marriage’ and with 90% of marriages being arranged, is this an expected change? Aren’t these ads loudly and unashamedly proclaiming the degeneration of the institution of marriage?

I heard an equally disturbing news from my sister. It is about her college mate. He fell in love with a gal and they went out together for quite some time, before she broke the news that broke his heart – she already has a boyfriend, who is on a trip to the US! I’ve heard similar stories in my own workplace. (I should agree though that flirting happen with guys too. It is just that I heard many incidents which involved gals as cheats). Striking point is the increased occurrence of such incidents. Over the period our value system has degenerated. Instead of learning good things from the western world, we keep learning the bad things!

There are of course pretty good things happening around. But they are not so much of a change to shock me!

I am no geek. But I get so excited if I got to do something on the PC, of course things that I am passionate of: video editing, photo editing or programming. After the return to India, I have not had a PC, which gave me a feeling that I am crippled. Being an asocial person (a vicious circle?), I longed to get one.

Eventually I decided to go for a laptop. I was looking for a good one and gathering info about various brands and models. I should mention the excellent customer service that Dell have. I did call others including IBM, but they turned out to be lousy compared to Dell! Dell customer support person was on line with me for more than 45 min, getting my requirements and suggesting various models and their configurations. Finally I settled for M60. I got it delivered on Tuesday(18th). I just love it!

Then the search for internet connectivity started. Still possessing a nomadic mind, I was looking for wireless phone connection. In India, it is offered by Tata Indicom and Reliance. I settled for Reliance. I ordered one on Friday morning and was delivered the same evening as a fully operational piece. It gives me 114 kpbs speed and it is fast enough for me.
I am looking forward for writing more articles, re-writing FOW and editing my travel videos. I got to have more time now!

The saddest part of holiday is returning back to work, especially if one doesn’t enjoy the work environment. Somehow in the recent days, I have fallen out of love for work. But I try to improve any situation I am in and so I am at work wondering what I can do to make me enjoy what I am doing. I am yet to see how those efforts will repay.

On a personal front, my sister’s father-in-law passed away. Though he was sick for quite a while, it is still a major loss for my brother-in-law. Since he is a Hindu, he was cremated and for the first time in my life, I attended a Hindu funeral.

So in general, the new year has not been much enthusiastic so far. A cloud of depression is looming over.

It is not normal in this project to get long vacation. But then I am an anti-pattern guy! I am on vacation since Dec 23rd until Jan 3rd. After a year, I came to my parent’s home. Not much has changed in the town – except for few new buildings and few other renovated ones. But there is a striking change – there are lots of wine shops. They are seen everywhere.

On Friday (23rd), my sister & brother-in-law (BIL) joined us. As a family we went for Christmas mid-night mass. After 15 years, I am going to this parish church; as a matter-of-fact, I am going to a church after so many years. One might wonder the reasoning behind this change: there is none; just the thought that I should go with the family. Life has been a fast-track roller coaster in these years. After the mass, at home, my sister cut Christmas cake and then we all had the family meal. It was a fun night and a family time. I am glad about my BIL – he is never an outsider; he has integrated well into our family.

In the evening, we (sister, BIL and I) went to beach. We walked through the soothing sand and past the never resting waves. The sky was glowing in colors. We were simply walking immersed in the surrounding beauty.

Little did we know of the forthcoming devastation. On 26th early morning I was talking to friend in Chennai and she mentioned that she was feeling little shake in her bed. I was teasing her, only to learn that it was a mild earthquake. Soon, news started to pour in of the destruction that the earthquake & the successive sea waves brought in. Even in our town there was lot of loss, though human loss was very limited. But other cities in the state were not so fortunate. One news item was very disturbing – many bodies being pushed into one grave hole and being closed by a crane. Actually I was planning to travel to the south-tip of the state. I don’t know what held me back.

I decided to utilize the time at home. I decided to paint the window panels and the front gate. It is a new experience and also physically tiring. But the feeling that I am doing something useful is keeping me going. Hopefully I can finish this by end of the week, for I need to go back to work after that.

I have been reading, ‘The 7 secrets to a life of meaning’ by Ian Percy. After a long time I am reading a practical and a useful self-help book. Only other book that I found to be so helpful was, ‘The 7 habits of highly effective people’ by Steven Covey (7 in both books is just incidental, I hope).

Ian’s book is no casual read. It needs to be absorbed and practiced. Out of so many action points that he outlines at the end of each chapter, one that I decided to put to immediate action was, ‘Positive Disruptions’. You got the meaning, don’t you?

This is how I went about disrupting my reality. Usually I wear plain, full sleeve shirts. I thought and still think it is professional. But even my casual shirts are so plain. They are not of dull colors but they are plain. That, I decided to change. So I went and bought checked half sleeve shirts. Selecting these shirts were, at the same time, fun and scary. What the hell, if a shirt doesn’t fit me it is fine; I will give to my brother-in-law! For a week, I wore nothing but these checked, half sleeve shirts. I got a pretty good feeling about the change. Even some of my colleagues commented positively of the change. The impact is so much so, that I feel dull to wear those old plain full sleeve shirts!

Past three days have been all fun. After little rest on Saturday, we left to a shopping street. The whole street is full of shopping outlets of the big names in garments – Arrow, Levi, Dockers, Nike and so on. Obviously, plastic money was in full action. I bought a Jean, a half trouser, a 3/4th, two half-hand shirts and a shoe. To my pleasant surprise my brother-in-law (BIL) paid for all. So sweet of him!

A disappointing fact though: I couldn’t meet the long time friend whom I wanted to meet; he had a last minute change of plan and left to Yercard, a near-by hill-station. But then that gave me all the time to spend with my sister and BIL.

On Sunday we went to a shopping mall called Forum. Floors and floors of shops – garments, gift galleries, BOSE show-room, eat-outs and a 9 screen theater. Theatre in a shopping mall is a nice concept and we decided to enjoy. We got a ticket for a comedy movie, 13 going on 30. It wasn’t so much of comedy, but a good movie. As I used to do, I stayed to see if there was any ‘Joseph’ worked for the movie. And of course there were 3!!!

We also went to couple of showrooms to see laptops. I miss doing video-editing for fun. It has been more than a year since I did anything on a PC at home. So planning to buy a laptop to spend time at home. One model in IBM seems to be a good choice. Still need to do little more research before getting it.

Now time has come to pack and go back. In another two hours I am going to board the train to go back home. The long deserved break has been a very good one.

If the last story I read in ‘Wild Stories’ was about a man who finished his life in snow, now it was about a few who survived 9/11 attacks. Each one of these stories are moving and their courage challenging. I especially liked the one of Ronnie. On that horrible day, he was a ‘good smaritan’ to a lady who was burnt almost completely; at about the same time, his sister and niece crashed into the same building that he was in; that day her daughter turned 11. So eventful day it was that he can not get that day out of his mind. When the author of the story questioned Ronnie about the meaning of all that, he replied, “Meaning is in the rest of my life!”. Those words means a lot to me. It is the rest of the life that has to bring the meaning. Though I am not directly affected by 9/11 tragedy, that event impacted me profusely. Most importantly it brought out the fragility of human life. I have read about holocaust and walked through places where those horrendous acts occured. But 9/11 happened in my life time. It taught me, among many other lessons, what matters is not how much you earn or how much you posses; but how you make your loved ones (and others connected to you in one way or the other) feel . It is then that I decided to be a catalyst for a positive change in other’s life. To me, that seems to be the meaning of life.