Random Thoughts

This blog is to share my thoughts on different topics. The topics range from the mundane to the exotic, from the serious to the humourous. Your comments are welcome !

Tea?

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     We all know that tea contains caffeine, like coffee.  But, is drinking tea beneficial? There are divergent shades of opinion and every now and then we hear about some study conducted somewhere which either supports the view that drinking tea is harmful or debunks it.  If you are a tea drinker, no doubt you are confused about all this flip-flops. So am I, though I am not a habitual tea drinker.

      According to the Wikipedia, "Tea is the agricultural product of the leaves, leaf buds, and internodes of the Camellia sinensis plant, prepared and cured by various methods. "Tea" also refers to the aromatic beverage prepared from the cured leaves by combination with hot or boiling water, and is the common name for the Camellia sinensis plant itself." 

     Apparently, there are some benefits from drinking tea regularly.  But the benefits are  not the same for all types of tea.  That's right, types of tea.  Did you know that there are different types of tea and the level of benefit differs for each type?  Well, different types of tea arise from the use of leaves of different maturity and different methods of curing.  The most common variety which we usually refer to as "tea" is the black tea.  These are the fully oxidized leaves.  In contrast, green and white tea are not oxidized and retain many of their beneficial properties.  Both wilted (for black, white and oolong tea) and fresh leaves (for green tea) are used. White tea is rarer and consequently, more expensive, though it has been proven to be the most beneficial of all tea types.  Finally, there is this winter tea or "kukicha" which is made from stems, stalks, twigs and old leaves pruned from the tea plant during its dormant season and dry-roasted over a fire. It is a popular health food in Japan.  At times, the mere act of boiling different herbs in water has been termed as "making tea", for example herbal tea, hibiscus tea etc. 

     In case you are interested, here's a site which details the benefits of different kinds of tea http://www.teabenefits.com/.  Didn't know that there were so many varieties did you?


Procrastination

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I wanted to write this article right from the time I started this blog, but I kept putting it off, but I  finally got around to doing it.

We all love to put off things and I am no exception.  If something could be postponed, it usually got postponed, unless it involved a life and death situation or something close to it. I made New Year resolutions year after year vowing to overcome this habit and after repeated attempts, I got over it, the habit of making New Year resolutions, I mean.  But that's a different story. 

Why do we procrastinate in the first place?  Psychologists say that it is a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision.  Sometimes, it is also a mechanism to protect us from over-stress. In general, the most common reasons for procrastination are

# A perception that a task is unpleasant or overwhelming ( I just can't do it/ it's plain boring)

# Fear of Change (Things are better as they are, why go about changing them?)

# Perfectionism (Got to do this perfectly and I don't feel I can make a perfect job of it as of now. I'll try this some other time)

# Fear of Failure (I am afraid I'd fail. It's better to leave things as they are)

# Disorganization (It's so messy.  It would take ages to do this task)

So we love to procrastinate and at the same time, wish we could overcome this  habit.  So how do we go about doing it?  Some common solutions offered by experts are

1. Get Someone Else Involved: If possible, involve someone else, say, a friend.  It becomes easier to get things done and in addition, it is difficult to procrastinate with someone else involved in the work.

2. Do Things in Pieces: Break up tasks into smaller tasks so that you don't feel overwhelmed.

3. Prioritize:  Is the job you are trying to do really that important?  If not, just forget it and move on to something else.

4. Reflect On The End Result:  Think of what finishing the task would mean to you. What aspect of your life will be better because we have finished our tasks?  If you are unable to visualize that or if that doesn't get you motivated, just jump in and start the job anyway, i.e. focus on starting and not the finish.

5. Have a "To Do" List:  Have a list of things to do and keep this list within your sight.  As you cross off each item in the list after finishing, you will have that sense of accomplishment and believe me, it feels so good.  Write down this list the previous night and review it every night.  This helps to mentally prepare for the day to come and the jobs to be done.

6. Keep Things Neat:  A messy environment makes you procrastinate.  Keep your environment neat and tidy so that it doesn't create a sense of being overwhelmed, making you put off the task.

There are other tips and ideas, but I will stop here.  If you are interested, here's a good article that I came across:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/overcoming-procrastination.htm

I would love to finish this piece by proudly proclaiming that I have been cured of procrastination, but that is not the honest truth.  On the brighter side, I have had modest success in overcoming this habit and in managing to loosen its grip.  Looking at all those "go-getters", sometimes I wonder if they ever had bouts of procrastination. If they did have, how did they get over it?  I would love to know the answers.

Mind Control

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We don’t know about the Neanderthals and other homo sapiens – our ancestors - but we, their modern descendants have this real problem: How to control our wandering minds.

Indeed, ever since man acquired the power of thinking, he has been struggling to control his thoughts.  Even in the early days, calmness of mind was a virtue which was sought after by many, including kings.  In an attempt to attain peace of mind and learn the secrets of mind control, they sat at the feet of venerated sages who had conquered the mind. We do not know how successful these attempts were, as we do not have much information on people who actually succeeded. The ancient methods of mind control were yoga and meditation. 

Today, apart from yoga and meditation, we have a myriad of tools and practices for controlling our brain patterns, thinking etc.  All these are based on the concept of brainwaves.  You can get a good idea of brainwaves here: http://www.web-us.com/brainwavesfunction.htm . Suffice to say that by artificially inducing different brainwave patterns using sound frequencies, a person is brought to an aroused state or to a state of meditation or deep sleep. 

There are many companies on the Net claiming to have patented the technology for inducing brainwave patterns. There is the Brainwave Mind Voyages, which claims that its CDs perform near miracles.  The CDs range from simple brainwave music to lucid dreaming, OOBE and remote viewing.  The last three are interesting topics in themselves, but more of that later.  Then there is the BrainSync of Kelly Howell which has different CDs for meditation, sleep, for increasing creativity, to stop smoking etc. It offers some freebies too.  Dr.Jeffrey Thompson  is another person who produces music which is claimed to have healing effects.  His USP is "Healing the Body * Heart * Mind and Spirit with Sound".  He even claims to have recorded the sounds produced in space through NASA's Voyager probes. The Hemi-Sync is another site claiming to have patented the technology to safely alter brainwaves to produce the desired results.  The site has lists of common human problems like Anger, Frustration, ADD etc. and claims to have CDs for each of them.  Others in this line are HoloSync and iMusic. 

All these claims are intriguing and sound fantastic and there are critics, but binaural beats do have a beneficial effect. More of it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Binaural_beats.  Such technologies are even claimed to have induced certain glands to produce desired hormones, though this is yet to be documented properly.   

The list goes on, but what I wanted to say was that with all these technologies available now, it is worth trying out some of these techniques specially since there are no known adverse side effects while the benefits of a calm mind are too well known to be repeated here.  Of course all these will set you back by a tidy sum, but the Net being what it is, just search around and you will come across free copies for download.  So just grab your digital music player and get going.  Good luck !

Nostalgia

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    Have you ever experienced nostalgia?  It is that strange euphoric feeling when your thoughts wander back in time and long forgotten memories come flooding back. Nostalgia is said to be triggered by some event or symbol which has an association with the past.

     In my case, the trigger was a song which was released years ago when I was in my teens.  I don't travel a lot, but when I do, I prefer the train.  But there are places which are not connected by train and so I have to take a bus.  The bus operators in my place have some pretty weird notions.  They are convinced that all their passengers prefer some sort of entertainment while travelling and this they provide by way of movies.  It never occurs to them that people also prefer to travel quietly,  without disturbance. So you are stuck in a moving bus with some crummy movie which most of the passengers do not watch anyway.  I digress. I was thus stuck and firmly too, and was just about at the limits of my endurance when the movie ended.  Mercifully, it was not followed by another sappy movie, but by music.  And the first song that came on immediately lifted my spirits.  This was a song which I had enjoyed during my school days.  As I listened to it after many years, my mind travelled back in time and relived some of my memorable moments of those days:  The day I was one of the few students of my school who received an award from an organization for proficiency in English, the day I played hooky just to escape a boring lecture (on something which was not connected to studies), of window shopping in the nearby commercial area , visiting the newly opened video games parlour near the school etc.  Suddenly, the old movies, songs , pictures and even merchandise of the bygone era are starting to look attractive, more than even the contemporary ones.  Strangely, all the undesirable incidents in the past do not dampen my enthusiasm when I think of the "good old days of yore". 

     From a practical viewpoint, while nostalgia can be a sort of harmless day dreaming, it would be wrong to argue that things were much better in the past than they are now. True, we had lesser crowd and pollution in those days, but that is all.  Today, information technology has grown by leaps and bounds along with advances in the fields of medicine, engineering, communication etc.  Things which were deemed impossible years ago, are realities now and we must be thankful for them.  True, these advances have also brought along some undesirable spin-offs, but that is only to be expected.  Indulging in nostalgia is all very well but practically speaking, we are better off now than ever before.

     Interestingly, nostalgia was at one time considered to be a disease and treated by doctors.  During the endless wars in Europe in the turbulent 17th and 18th Century, soldiers serving outside their countries felt homesick and dispirited and this was usually cured by sending them home for a short time.  Here's the whole article, if you are interested.

     Never experienced nostalgia before?  Don't worry, it's just a matter of time.


These days, surnames are the norm all over the world. Or is it? I come from that part of the world where people don’t use surnames and go by a single name. However, surnames are the norm in many parts of my country. Seems like a trivial issue? Not if you are in my position. What do you do when you are constantly asked to state your surname in all transactions? Especially when you don’t have one?

The tax department made me fill out a form which asked for my surname, first name and middle name. And this when I use only one name! Just use your father’s and grand father’s names to fill out the form, I was told. So I did. And when my name went into their records, I found that my own name had become my surname and my father’s became my first name. And then my credit card company, bless them, had a different take: They sent a letter purportedly addressed to me, the only problem being it bore my father’s name! Apparently, in their records, my father’s name is my surname. I saw red but they said that they were sorry, but that is what they had in their records. It started to look as though everyone was getting into the act: I wanted to book an airline ticket and guess what? They wanted my surname. When I proffered the usual “I-don’t-have-a-surname” story, they were considerate. As per their rules, they said, I had to have a surname. So they split my name (remember I use a single name) and printed out my ticket. So I have three different versions for my non-existent surname.

I often wonder at this obsession for surnames. Can’t a person go by a single name without having to go through all this rigmarole? I was also curious about the origin of surnames and the handy Wikipedia, revealed that till about the 12th Century, people didn’t use surnames and it started so that people could identify each other if they happened to live nearby. The first surnames were occupational, i.e. Butcher, Carpenter etc. Later it became locational or based on nicknames. Many communities were forced to adopt surnames in the 18th Century according to the Wikipedia, which has an interesting article on surnames here. And while I was on this piece, I had a visitor: A young man representing a charity. We got talking and I agreed to donate. He drew out a form. “Can I have your surname please?”


           Photography is a hobby, nay, passion for some people.  Talk to them about photography and they literally go into raptures, explaining the wonderful photographs they had taken and the circumstances and the tactics employed by them to get the "dream shot". Most of this is lost on me. When I happen to be with such people, I get the distinctly sinking feeling when this topic comes up.  I do my best to avoid the subject as I know that there is no stopping them once they start.  When I tell them that I do not have any interest in photography and so am unable to follow, I am variously looked upon as a creature from outer space or a strange specimen of mankind depending on the level of their passion for the subject.  The general reaction goes something like this: "What!  You have no interest in photography?". Well that's the honest truth.   It is all Greek and Latin to me. All the animated talk of the "fantastic effects" in a photograph leaves me cold. The photographer's jargon of "shutter speed", "exposure", "light and shade" etc go over my head much to the dismay of the narrator.

            Among my friends and relatives are some established photographers, yet I have not picked up either the interest or the expertise. For me, photographs primarily serve as repositories of memories.  If that purpose is served, then I don't look further.  It is not that I do not appreciate photographs.  It is just that when I want some really good photographs, I scour the Net and usually find more than I want.  After all, it doesn't matter whether the picture is from your camera or someone else's. I do own a camera, courtesy a gift, which I use to aim and shoot on those occasions when I want to capture something in pictures.  Of course, all this will sound blasphemous to the dedicated photography buffs, but somehow I can't bring myself to take enough interest in all this mumbo-jumbo.

            Now don't think that I am a weirdo. Just to prove that I am not, I'll share one of the photos which I liked:


          Apparently, this is called "hyperphoto" where the same object is photographed repeatedly from the same spot and then all the photos are merged to create the above effect. Here's the link:http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/legendes/?lang=en

           Then there is the dedicated photography site pbase where you can upload and view thousands of pictures, some of which are really beautiful.  Whenever I am looking for some really good pictures, I visit such sites.  It is just that I do not have any inclination to do all this original work by myself.   

           Not a bad logic, is it?


      I had always wanted to learn a foreign language and so I decided on French after some deliberation.  I had always liked France and the French people and so it seemed like a good choice. I had known French to be a difficult language, but I didn't reckon with the pronunciation and grammar.  Being used to English all this time, I was all at sea. To begin with, this language has masculine and feminine attributes to everything including inanimate objects, (even countries - it is La France (feminine) but Le  Bresil (masculine) )  which I found to be strange, having been used to the ubiquitous " it " of English for inanimate objects and things. Then there are the strange rules of pronunciation: "le" and "de" are pronounced as "lu" and "du" and "les" and "des" are "lay" and "dhey" respectively.  It was just the beginning.  "lis" is "li" and "lisent" is "leez".  In addition, the letter "r" is pronounced as "h". By this time, my head was in a whirl and to my horror, one day I found myself reading the English "brow" as "bhow".  I realised then that I needed to take a break to save my language skills in English and I did. 

    I have started again and hopefully, I will carry on without any more scary breaks. And French is indeed a beautiful language, and many French expressions are used in English as well.  The progress is satisfying and I feel good whenever I cross a milestone in the French language course.  One of these days, I hope to converse in French. 

    Would you like to learn French too ? (Don't worry about the "language scare", it will pass.) Or may be Japanese or Russian?  Here are some of the sites I found on the Net where you can learn languages online. Some of them connect you to native speakers of those languages who happen to be online at that time, which is really useful as you can get your doubts clarified in real time.  And the best part is that they are all free! Check these out:

http://www.101languages.net/

Happy learning and au revoir !

Are you one of those who are in the habit of maintaining a diary?  Yes ?  If so, you should be aware of the potential for embarrassment in case your diary falls into the wrong hands.  All your most private musings will be out in the open.  Besides, the chore of carrying the diary around is also irksome.  If you are a tech savvy person, you can easily use the humble notepad application in Windows to maintain your diary. Intrigued?  Just open up the notepad and type ".LOG" (without quotes of course). Make sure that you use only capital letters.  Give some name and close it.  Now open it again and you will see that there is a time stamp at the top.  You can now record your thoughts and close it.  The time stamp appears every time you open the file.  Simple isn't it?  

The only draw back is that it is still vulnerable to intrusion.  So what do you do?  Get the free application LockNote and use it to lock your file so that prying eyes are kept out.  You can get it here: http://www.steganos.com/us/products/for-free/locknote/overview/.  This is a free application requiring no installation, which means you can lock your diary and carry it about wherever you go.

Neat, isn't it?


What is spirituality ?

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Spirituality means different things for different people.  But the underlying theme in all these different shades of opinion is the fact that it is a means to attain peace and quietitude of mind.

What is spirituality really?  To some, who are religoiusly inclined, it means following the tenets of one's religion including faithfully observing all the practices that are ordained in one's faith.  To others, it simply means following their conscience and living according to its dictates.  Some people actually dislike the term "spirituality" since it is , according to them, allied closely, or rather too closely to religion.  And they themselves deny that they are "spiritual" and they debunk the very term.

Well, then what does the term convey actually?  It simply means improving the quality of one's thougthts and thereby the quality of one's life.  A spiritual person need not be a believer.  Any person, who is desirous of improving his inner self and thereby his outer life can be termed as spiritual.  This is because ultimately, by following all the religious practices and reading the religious texts, one hopes to attain that elusive peace of mind which can also be attained by anyone who learns to control his thoughts.  Purity of thought and deed results in peace of mind and so it is essential that no negative thoughts disturbs our mind and prevents us from attaining that state of mind which we aspire for.  You can never be really spiritual when you are attracted to those stories and news that speak of mayhem. 

"Just what is the connection between my thoughts and my state of mind?" you may wonder.  In these days of mind-body medicine, it is an incontrovertible truth that we are what we think.  And if we constantly think of negative things and live in negativity, then negativity is all we are going to get in return.  Don't believe it?  Try to go on a "news fast" for a week.  Don't read or watch any bad news for a week.  Focus only on the good, uplifting news be it the story of some invention which will benefit mankind or the story of someone's success against all odds.  The change is perceptible after a week.  You are much more relaxed, and feel at peace more than ever before.  This then is the secret of spirituality: Get rid of the morbid fascination for negative things and you will be at peace with yourself and the world or to put it diffently, a "spiritual" person.



On Audio Books

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         One of the best  ways to absorb knowledge is listening to Audio books.  Well, the name is somewhat paradoxical, as we have all learnt to associate books with the printed matter and find it difficult to imagine a book in an audio form.  Well, audio books are the way to go these days when time is at a premium.  The conventional book may be good enough if you are at home and want to spend some quite time with your favourite book, but when you are on the move, the printed book is not of much use. I can hear you saying that you always read when you are travelling.  Of course you do.  But then, is it such a good experience?  The honest answer would be no.  Reading on the move is an uncomfortable experience.  The constant cacophony of the surrounding scenery added to the jerky movements of the vehicle you are travelling in makes it a forgettable experience.  And from a medical point of view, it causes eye strain.  From a logistic point of view, books eat up space at home and if you are an avid reader, you will soon find your home overflowing with books. 

         The Audio books have none of these disadvantages.  They are portable, can be stored on a hard drive and the narration is lively (instead of the dull narrative of the printed page) and in most cases the author is reading the book and he puts in all his emotions and feelings in the narrative, which makes for a good listening experience, especially the first time.  This is specially true of self help books. Of course, the only drawback is the availability of audio books for various fields.  While they are available for almost all the self help and self improvement topics, audio books are unavailable for a vast variety of text books and works of fiction.  Perhaps if you want to read a work of fiction or a text book, then for present, you will have to stick to the printed matter.  But if you do want to experience an audio book, you can start now by searching the Net for your favourite self help authors.

Happy Listening !

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