Thinking about the dance, she was not just dancing but actually sending some serious messages to the crowd.  (Yeah, I am now entering the second stage of bloggers. Trying to find everything out of anything and nothing!  . It is like the new camera owners who take picture of all the non-living things in a hope of giving life to them as in Chinese folk tale. ) These are some of the things I was able to get (actually, process and extract) from the Belly Dancing event.

Focus:

I am not talking about the focus that people were having on the artist here. The artist came exactly at 8:00 and she exactly stopped at 8:30 and she was good in what she was doing.  You come, do your job and then you go.

Engage:

The artist was gliding around all the corners and engaging people. She maintained eye contact, she was smiling throughout and she picked people and asked them to dance with her.  One has to constantly interact and engage with peers (goal here is not to entertain but to engage. So there is no need to do a belly dance!)

Don’t Care:

The artist was dancing and there were so many jokes going around, everybody laughing and whistling. Some people may not be watching her performance too. But she kept dancing. That’s what it is. You do it for yourselves.  You like it, you value it, and you do it. Don’t care about what others will be thinking about it.  That reminds me of two quotes:

“Don’t care about what others may be thinking about you for they might be busy thinking what others think about them”

 “First they ignore you, then laugh at you, then they fight you, then they follow” – Mahatma Gandhi

Do not care too much about what others will think about you. At any given time, there will be as many people hating you as so many people liking you; or even more.  Nobody can please everyone in this world. Do you job, and keep going.

Skill:

Needless to say, the artist was so skillful in what she was doing. She may not be as good in other things like Speaking or gardening. But she did dance well. Choose your area of interest and work until you are an expert in that and then keep working.

Footprint:

This is my favorite. She came, she danced, and she went away.  But when she danced all people were watching only her. People were talking about her for a long time after she left and even the next day. That’s the kind of impact that your work should have.  It does not matter how long your work on something. You might be only working only for a shorter time. But when you work or when you leave, make sure you leave a footprint (of course, in a positive way).

Well, that’s about it.

Disclaimer:

This  post is the effect of reading too much of Dale Carnegie, Robin Sharma, Steven Covey, Shiv Khera, Zig Ziglar etc.,. If you feel suffocated after reading this post, please open the window and get some fresh air and carry on with whatever you were doing earlier.

Eunuchs at the signals:

They somehow are making it to my list now and then. I do not hate the girly them who listen to you when you say you won’t help them make their living out of begging. It’s the macho types that you get to see most of the times at the traffic signals trying to bully you into paying money. They explode expletives and demoralize your family. Readers from outside India (if any at all), please use google to find about this discomfort rather than finding about the solar system.

Fake giggles:

I can’t tell enough of how much I hate the needless, useless and fake giggles that one (or a group mostly) throw up (yeah, you read it right! I prefer to use that word here) trying to impress the superior. Be it at a social get-together or work or college or a family function you find a bunch of them. Women mostly giggle and men mostly LOL to the powerful person’s poor jokes. Some of them don’t even qualify for a joke, let alone poorer one. To stay cool in such occasions, I usually divert my attention to interesting things like looking at the sky, watching a spider spin the web or follow a fly’s trail.

Commodes that are not flushed:

Nobody likes it. I need not explain.

Don’t bargain for ten Rupees, sir! :

This is by far the most used phrase by auto drivers in the metropolitan cities. When you hear it first time, you won’t mind. Second time no. Third time, No. But if you keep on hearing every single time you try to hire an auto you get pissed off. When the drivers say it, they somehow make it sound like Money is growing on trees at the back of our rented house and they are the only class of work who work hard to earn money and whose pay is not justified. Every single rupee is out of my work and I will mind it. Auto drivers need not pay tax, but i have to. Doing a physical work, eating, drinking and sleeping is easy. Sitting at the desk working for long hours, we are likely to get bloated, get cholesterol and get an heart attack. We spend lakhs later for the medicine. White collar job is not that easy mate. You risk your life and work hard only to realize at the end of your service that what you had imagined as a life was not even close to the real life that you ever wanted. That’s a costly mistake/sacrifice i would say. So, don’t ask me not to mind my ten rupees again!

Manipulators:

How in the world can you manipulate someone for your selfish motives? But manipulators are prevalent in every aspect of life and are inevitable. The sooner you identify one, the better chances of not getting caught in the loop. I always wonder, if a manipulator has sublimed his/her skills into something productive rather than manipulation this world would have been a better place. There sure should be transparency in every level. Openness needs to be encouraged.

Now, I will stop this post with an assurance that I will find better things to post about next time. Thanks for wasting your time here! 

This is my first ever experience with Unix/ssh and i am sure there are other ways to overcome the problem defined below. I did not explore much due to time constraints. I welcome any suggestion/comment regarding any other alternative that would have worked well in this case. ]

Problem:

Currently, our app is running on Windows server. As a part of the app, we would invoke batch scripts that in turn call Hyperion Essbase command line utilities to extract plans from the Hyperion Essbase. The proposed architectural change of moving the app to Linux server posed two challenges with respect to this app:

1. Installing Hyperion Essbase Client on the Linux box

2. Converting all the Windows batch script to Linux format.

This was a challenge majorly because of the tight deadlines and very less experience in installing Hyperion Essbase clients on Linux.

Solution:

As a temporary solution, it was decided to let the batch scripts stay in the Windows box (where it is already running fine) and call the batch scripts from the Linux. Please note that setting up Samba directory and then calling the batch script from Linux will not help. Because the batch file will still be invoked on the Linux box that calls the script and not on the Windows where it is present. So the best way to do it is to set up SSH server on Windows that would allow a login from the Linux box and invoke the batch script. This way the batch script will run on the Windows box where it is invoked and not on the Linux box where it is called from.

There are variety of SSH servers available on the internet like OpenSSH, FreeSSHD etc.,. Here I am listing the steps involved in configuring  SSH on Windows using FreeSSHD and setting up of password less key file authentication.

Installation and Configuration Steps for FreeSSHD:

1. Download FreeSSHD software from http://www.freesshd.com/?ctt=download

2. Install the Software on the Windows box (say, Win1) where the batch scripts are running currently. [Please make sure this is installed with Administrator privileges. Else, it will not complain about anything but will fail to work without throwing any error ]

3. In freeSSHd settings, make sure SSH Server is running in the Server Status Tab

4. In freeSSHd settings, go to Users tab and add the windows logon user (eg., anon). This is the user that will be used to logon to this Windows box using SSH and invoke the scripts.

5. Set the Authorization to Public Key (SSH Only)

6. In freeSSHd settings, go to Authentication tab and

a. Set Password Authentication to Disabled

b. Set Public key Authentication to Required

This is for setting up Password less key file authentication

7. Download and run puttygen utility that will generate private-public key pairs.

8. Once the key is generated in the puttygen, go to Conversions -> Export OpenSSH key and export the public key to Openssh format. Copy it to notepad

9. In the windows box (Win1) where freeSSHd is installed, browse to c:\program files(x86)\freesshd\, create a file with the same name as the user (anon) without any extension and paste the public key generated by step 8 above.

10. In the Linux box (say Linux1), cd into $HOME/.ssh folder. If .ssh folder is not there, create the folder using mkdir command

11. Create a file called id_rsa.pub in this $HOME/.ssh folder and copy the key generated by step 8 above.

12.  Save the private key from puttygen and copy it the linux box as $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa . This can be either FTP-ed or the contents of the private key can be copied from the saved file and then pasted to id_rsa file. Note that private key file does not have any extension. And this file should not be shared with anyone else.

13. Set the permission levels to 600 on the .ssh folder by the below command:

chmod –R 600 .ssh

Now it should be possible to login to the Windows box from linux through SSH without having to give any password. Below is the ssh command:

ssh <username>@<Windowsservername>

(eg.)   ssh anon@Win1

A shell script with this command clubbed with the commands to run the batch script can be created and called from any other app to run the batch scripts.

Wave Creators:

These are the people who stand out from the crowd and create a wave. They are the trend-setters. This includes people like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, fashion designers in limelight etc. Wave Creators again can be classified in two based on how they became trend-setters: By choice or By chance. I am not going to get deep into these classifications. As a side note, I strongly feel it is enough if you are able to make it to this space only once in your life. Once you make it to that position, whatever you do after that will be called ‘The Trend’.

Adopters:

These are the large mass of people who do anything to be in-line with the trend. Their usual chats include things like

“OMG! I got the latest iProduct. What? You don’t have one? You are missing out man. You will be left behind.”

“I got my XXXX designer bag. Awesome it is”

“That Tarantino/Nolan/Scorcsese movie was just awesome. What you didn’t understand that? How can it be? You need to be high class and intellectual to understand it”

I think you get the point. Yes, they try to associate themselves with whatever is famous or whatever the world thinks is intellectual or a class apart from normal standards.

Rebels:

These are the people who believe that opposing the in-trend thing is cool. Benefit: you seem to stand-out from crowd and thus seen as intellectual. They do not ideally rebel the trends. They are in with the trend. But they just won’t agree that the trend is cool.  People who hate giants like Microsoft, Google, facebook; who say the famous movie is a piece of crap; who say an enjoyable book has nothing in it and no-brainer fall under this category. It has to be noted that they will still be active in facebook, watch the movie and read the same book.

Blenders:

These are class of people who blend with the group in which they are with. If they are with the Adopters kind, they will say “yeah! What you say is so cool”. If they are with Rebels they say “you are right. I don’t know whats the fuss about that thing! People are crazy”. They do this because they avoid arguments, or have a inferiority complex or have no idea about what the group is talking about. So they camouflage.

Whatever!

These are the people who neither worry in knowing about the trend nor worry about accepting/arguing about the trend. They are happy and contended within their own space. Their replies usually be like,

“Who is facebook?”

“What is tarantino?” or even,

“What is an email?”

I think the last sect are the people who don’t have to worry too much about keeping up with the trend and thus be peaceful.

So, which category do you fall under?

Disclaimer: These are strictly my classification. There is no solid evidence to these or no studies to prove this.  So take it in a lighter vein. And this is for the sake of introspection. Don’t ask me which category you fall under. You wont get the right answer because i am a blender myself.

How wonderful it would have been to live amidst the nature without having to rush and compete through the so called developed post-industrial revolution city life? Wonderful.

Why can’t we do that? Because we will be left back in the race

Why the race? This race or madness is the sign of progression

What did we achieve through this progression? Name, fame and wealth

Did everybody get that? No.

Then what is progression? Is it personal or social? Moot point. Personal progression that aided social progression.

What do one gain out of personal progression? Name, fame and wealth again.

What after earning those? He leaves back a legacy

Legacy of what?  His name in the history. Recognition. Wealth for his future generations.

He is immortal? No. his name is.

How does that benefit him or others? Is that benefit eternal? I don’t think so?

Now coming back to the question again.. why do we need to progress? To show that we are a superior race

I agree. So what have we achieved? Landed on moon, researching space, predict eclipses and what not?

Predict eclipses spending so much money, effort and time of so many people.  Our ancestors used to predict that without any instrument. So how do we call that a progression?  It’s just an example. We have progressed in medical field also. We have found cure for so many diseases.

But there were no such diseases earlier. We had Ayurveda and other alternative medical systems appropriate to the vegetation people lived. As the lifestyle changed, new diseases set in. Can we call that a progression?  I don’t know.

What would have happened if there was no industrial revolution? There would have been no jobs.

Why do people work in industries? To earn

And? Lead a comfortable life

Exactly how?  Like by buying machines that could wash

Wasn’t that a product of industrial-revolution? Yes. Exactly my point.

What would have happened if there was no industrial revolution? No washing machine

And more time to wash clothes? Yeah, probably if he is not farming

And nothing to race for? There are other things to race far. Name and fame was a motivation since long time. Industrial revolution wasn’t the reason.

I agree. But not everbody was into the race? Yes.

What happens when you are only one who swims in the pond? I can swim at ease

What happens when 5 or 6 people swim? Space issues. But still will be able to swim

What happens when 100 swim in a pond? No place to swim

So? Chaos

So? People choke to death. Stressed out.

So? They look for things that can help them relax like meditation, massage

And what if people see that as business? Adds more to the chaos.

What will happen if everyone follows these as daily ritual instead of obtaining it as service? Minimizes atleast that chaos.  Practically not possible because people don’t have time.

Why no time? They are racing ahead

What’s the destination? Fame, name and money

And then?  Die peacefully

Which is better – to die peacefully or to live peacefully? To live peacefully

Then why madly race?? Don’t know

Just when I thought I am going to get enlightened I was woken up from my sleep: “It’s time for your meeting! Wake up! “ Let the race begin.

How many of us really laugh when we laugh and really cry when you cry, every time? Imagine this.  Someone made you angry.  You are keeping a stiff face to him/her.  Suddenly they make a comment or do something which really makes you happy or will make you laugh out loud. But will you laugh? Nope. We will still be holding the grudge and show keep a stern face. Look at a small kid. It cries for whatever reason. And suddenly you do something and the kid starts laughing hysterically. (oh, how I love it when Malu starts laughing suddenly even though she was  crying a second ago. That transition is fast but beautiful). The point I am trying to make here is that kids are being honest with their feelings. Whatever they feel like doing, they do it completely with full heart.  The same applies to eating and sleeping as well.  We teach them to successfully underplay, mask, or even suppress their real feelings and then take pride in it.

One more incident: We bought a new dress for Malu and my wife helped her wear the dress. She was all happy and excited about the new dress that she is wearing. No sooner a guest arrived that she started telling him in her own language about her new dress. This is not surprising.  But what was interesting was that she started telling him that I got her the new dress and her mom helped her in wearing this. She acknowledged us. It reminded me of another occasion when we bought her a small watch. She was flaunting the watch to everybody that day without forgetting to acknowledge me (who got her the watch) and seller (the uncle who gave her the watch).  Got the lesson? Yes, right: Acknowledge others who helped you even in tiny bits.

Looking forward for more lessons/wonderful experiences.

Then our family relocated to another town. I was advised by the visionary seniors to join a college that was second best in the town. We knew the admissions for the best one was already closed. The advantage in the second-best college, as the visionaries told, was that it was one of the very few arts and Science College that was co-educational.  So, as it is quite obvious, I started hitting the gym. My cousins in that town were also working out and so it was  motivating enough to exercise. After a month, went to the college only to find, well you can guess easily, it was not worth it. Totally not worth it. Add to it the ration of 64:8. Bummer.  But I used to intermittently join and re-join the gym. I sporadically hit the gym.

Then I moved to the city again for my post-graduation course and hit the gym again. Since this gym was nearby, I was able to continue in a longer stint. My friends were also hitting the gym and so it was not boring. This was the period where I pre-dominantly started watching Hollywood movies and whenever I come out of the movie I will have the desire to get the body like the one sported either by the hero or the villain.  My primary aim was to bulk-up to look like a body builder. Though I was not able to achieve perfection in that (actually, not even close to perfection) I had a decent one. I and my friends started discussing about exercise routines and most of our discussions were about fitness if not about girls.

Then I moved to another city for job and joined the gym yet again. But I was not regular. I got access to the internet and started reading more and more about the fitness and exercise routines.  I read all the theory but didn’t practice. Eventually, I found out that the kind of the body that I wished to have in fact was a lean muscular one.  Thanks to the internet for without which I would still be lifting heavy weights to bulk up. I joined a sophisticated gym to find out that it was a grave mistake not to have done cardio during all these years and it was the necessary with the right mix of weight training for fat loss as well as stamina.  I was not regular but was exercising at least decent amount of days. And I was able to lean down a bit.

And then the best thing happened. My daughter started running by this time. I lost most weight while I was playing with her. This and some frequent stints at the gym helped me reduce greatly. And I feel light. (of course not tube light)

Now when I go out wishing that people appreciate my effort for losing weight, to my dismay, people , be it my folks or buddies, invariantly ask if I have any disease and if everything is okay with me.  Some even suggest me to go test my sugar level or if I have TB. How motivating!

He plunged straight away into the matter. He had lost his purse and he didn’t have any money to go to Cochin. My reflex reaction was a “No” and tried to move on but he stopped me by touching my arms and was trying to convince me that his case was genuine and not any cooked up story. I totally hate it when a stranger touches me while speaking to me. But since he is a stranger and he would have had no idea that I hate it, I decided to forgive him and was keen on moving on. He was stubborn. Now while he continued telling his tale and how he would send me money through money order once he reaches Cochin, my mind was slowly slipping out and started concentrating on a discussion between my brain and heart.

Heart: Poor guy. He looks real. Should help him to buy tickets to Cochin . I pity him.

Brain: Are you bonkers? You are running late. Just dodge and run to do your work

Heart: People should have compassion. Help the needy. This guy is a senior citizen too.

Brain: Senior citizens can manage somehow in train and reach Cochin without ticket. There is absolutely no need to ask for money. He can instead plead the TTE to leave him.

Heart: Now that he is asking for help, you have to help the poor soul.

Brain: That is n..

Me: Stop guys. It is enough. I can’t take so much bombarding from both inside and outside at the same time. I have decided. I am helping the guy by giving him Rs.10 to reach the main bus terminus where he can get the bus or train to Cochin. That’s it.

I explained the old man that all I can help is only this much and moved on.  Before moving, the evil part of me threw out a sarcastic remark that I did not want any money order for that amount. Though I felt sorry for the old man, I didn’t want to take any kind of risk as these days it is more common that people get cheated easily. I wiped out the guilt and consoled myself saying that I at least helped him to reach the main bus terminus.

Few days later while was returning to office, I saw the same old man talking to another guy in the same manner – touching his arms – and this guy looked embarrassed too.  I wondered if this old man still didn’t get enough money to reach Cochin or if he lost his purse again. Not worrying much, I went away.

Few days later I saw him again speaking to another man in the same fashion. I was irritated. I was so angry that I wished he did not get any money.  While I was crossing them I noticed that the tall man to whom our old man was talking to was looking at me. Out of instinct, I nodded my head and indicated him not to help him. But I saw him taking his purse out of his pocket and I sighed and moved away. I pitied him.

I didn’t see that old man again for couple of months and one fine day I saw him talking to some random guy in his trademark style.  My anger shot high immediately like a rocket tearing the sky and my nerves started bulging from my wrist, moved higher through my arms and reached my neck just like in the movie Ratchagan (Excuse me non-Tamil Readers). I was hoping that the victim will look at me so that I can try nodding no to him but I saw him looking elsewhere.  I turned in the direction he was looking at and saw the tall man, who helped the old man earlier, nodding his head and signaling a No.  We both saw this new man taking out his purse. We sighed. We pitied him and moved on.  It all happens.

How do they do it?

It is simple. They force the citizens of Bengalooru to have a Candle-light dinner, atleast 3 times a week – just using PowerCuts as a tool. How Romantic!

Me: Independence Day is nearing.

She: So?

Me: Just saying. There will be no parade in the Marina. Only on Republic day we have the military parade. I feel like seeing one.

She: If you had you been to the Republic day parade in 2008, I would have been the happiest person by now.

[Can somebody get me a polygraph ??!! i want to check if this TRUE or FALSE ]

Republic day 2008 was the day of our engagement and we got married the next day!