The Reading Woman

The gracious simper!

Is it what she is reading? 

How I wish I knew?

This bronze statue of Roman Goddess Minerva is located at the entrance of Minneapolis Public Library, Downtown, Minneapolis. The sculpture of this ancient Goddess of Wisdom, made by Jacob Fjelde, was installed in 1889. Since then, the reading woman with a pleasant smile on her face has been an inspiration to many book readers.

Do you read books? If so, how do you define an ideal reading experience? That feeling of gentle rapture, that moment of euphoria? The feeling you get when you are deeply absorbed in your favorite book, the intense pleasure that soothes your life's little troubles in that moment?

Does music make you high?

Do you feel high when you listen to your favorite music tunes?

When my favorite song starts on my music player, at times I find myself stop focusing on the things around me and close my eyes to enjoy the song thoroughly. Magically, the work I do at that point feels mundane when those particular few tunes play. And scientists say that that awesome feeling is the result of Dopamine, a chemical our brain releases when we listen to the music that moves you. Apparently, it's the same chemical that is released by our brain when we relish our favorite food, or when people go high taking drugs or alcohol. This chemical which makes you feel happy through motivation and/or addiction. Some fun stuff going inside our body right? 

From Shakespeare's words, I can be trusted. Are you?

Festival

With lights or colors,

It is joy and jubilation.

Everyone unite!

Written for:

P.S.: Special thanks to Rumya for helping me out with Haikus.

Pursuit of Happiness

What makes you happy? 

(a) A great mug of coffee (b) an ice cream (c) fried maggi at 2.00 AM (d) All the above

Science says 50% of a person's happiness depends on his/her genes (?!), 10 - 15% on status (health, social, marital, material etc etc) and the remaining miscellanious. Now I don't get this gene-connection, 50% dependency is huge!!! Is it something like this - if my parents are not happy then I end up being low? Aila!

Everyone of us will, atleast at some point of time, retrospect on what we are doing in life now! Am I doing what I want, am I happy? Am I really? Well, I'm not really sure. I really was never! If you haven't asked this question to yourself, then do that now! You might be happy, but are you happy with what you are doing in Life is my question here! Right now I'm in this distant land, away from my family and friends, not really sure about what I'm doing and how happy I'm with what I'm doing. Am I sounding confused? May be I'm, may be I'm not - wish I cud get some help from Heisenberg to resolve my uncertainity on all these things. Wish there is a way to calculate my Happiness Index (just the way we have it for countries - Denmark the happiest and India ranking 125th happiest in the world) on a daily basis, and in this way keep track of myself. Wish I do things that makes me much more happier in future. 

Tip: If all your approaches to be the happiest go in vain, follow the Eight-fold path and attain Nirvana as Buddhism says!

PS1: Denmark has also got highest suicide rates. May be this is in a way helping them to be the Happiest nation with all the sad people killing themselves leaving behind just the set of happy people to participate in the survey... lol

PS2: Dada struck the chord by scoring a century in the 2nd test and balanced the stuph for his infamous remarks. Happy for him! Way to go Dada.

I'm loving it.

Well its my current state, I'm loving all that I'm doing. Coz work wise I'm doing absolutely nothing. *big grin* And fun wise doing lots.

Enjoying the regular gym sessions in the mornings. Its making me a bit organized early-to-rise-early-to-bed kinds. And this Sunday, I participated in a 10km run here in Bangalore. The moment I heard about the event, I made up my mind to participate in it. And lemme tell you, I did the right thing. The energy at Kanteerava Stadium was damn high with Sunfeast hosting this 10Km run. This was my highest distance to run (though trekked 18kms along the banks of River Cauvery on a sunny day in Feb 2006 at Bheemeswari) and took roughly 1 hr 20 mins to finish it, not bad for a beginner I guess. My disastrous performance at the 5.5 Km IT run conducted as a part of Bangalore Midnight marathon last year (lol, I panted like hell after running for a half kilometer) made me motivated to participate a larger distance run with better fitness. We (Srikanth and me) practiced a bit by running 6 kms and 7.5 kms the subsequent day (without any major break in between) on the roads of CV Raman Nagar area, and had real fun on the day running along with people of different age groups and nationalities.

Some other worth mentioning things in the event: the live coverage by CNBC, that helicopter hovering above us to shoot the event, the occassional rides of photographers and camera men on mo-bikes, lotsa people waiting for us and cheering us all the way, those colorful cheerleaders by Mallya saab, all the wonderful fellow female runners, the water that tasted like nectar in the hot sun, those km marks which motivate us to complete the remaining run, and the congratulations after finishing the run.
And a big thanks to all the organizers and Bangalore Police people who made the event much smoother. All in all had lotsa fun, during the main event as well as during the practice runs :)

I love to watch a movie or sleep for hours at work. Today I was really really happy after watching 'There will be Blood' in office. Awesome movie, worth Oscars for the male lead role and the cinematography. Be happy, live long.

Update (23/05/08):
A Big thanks to Mallya Saab for all those wonderful free photos from marathon-photos.com. Otherwise it would cost us around £11.00 to get a download-able copy of each of our pictures.