December 6, 2011

The World Around Us...

I have been pretty lazy with posts here - its usually once a month or so. In reality, its more about the confusion - how much of my real life should I be writing about here. Before social networking came along, not many people were reading stuff online. But now, the number has just exploded and now everything you do is instantaneously visible to half the world. This thing just scares me away - there are people on my FB friend list with whom I might not have spoken to in more than a decade. And some of them I would conveniently ignore if I saw them in a mall or in a restaurant. So, its quite scary as well as disturbing to think all those people may have access to what I think, or about my plans. And to make matters worse, google has been merging all their products under a single account name - taking away the small comfort that I had. 

Otherwise, life has been moving along smoothly, in a strictly relative sense. Anyone not living in mars for past few years would know times aren't really rosy for people working in financial markets. Though I can safely assume the conditions aren't very much different in other parts of the society as well. The world as we know it is transforming - and people are questioning the very basics of modern finance, and even the basics of democracy. I think the world would emerge a much better and balanced place out of this crisis - with slightly lesser inequality (between nations, as well as within nations). 

Read a few of books recently - three in total: (a) Made in America by Sam Walton, (b) The Monochrome Madonna by Kalpana Swaminathan, and (c) Cross Fire by James Patterson. The first one was the planned reading, and the other two were more like fillers before I wanted to start with another biography. Would recommend Sam Walton's book to anyone looking to read a great biography, or looking to understand 'starting a business', or purely for inspiration. Unlike Steve Jobs, who had a great vision for the future, Sam's goal in the beginning were just the run the most efficient store in the locality. He didn't have a 'great idea' to change the world, but it was more about old world virtues of hard work and perseverance. One of my friends gifted my the Steve Jobs book on my birthday, and should get started on that soon. 

Have been watching a lot of TV shows recently, and have finished almost all the aired episodes of BBT, HIMYM and even Gossip Girl. Looking to find another couple of good shows - mostly along the same lines. Planning for a trip also some time around end-January or early February, either a meeting-with-friends-seeing-citylife trip of Singapore and Malaysia, or a beach-holiday thing in Thailand. Depends on the number of holidays we can take, and also on the weather around that time. On a similar note, think blogger should have a photo album integration - just like FB has (I know there is Picassa, but its not the same thing). 



2 comments:

Nightflier said...

I have embraced the 'social' phenomenon more than I would have ever liked/thought of. So I dont really care who reads or does not read me :D

on the tv shows front, try castle,30 rock. won't suggest some grim ones :D

SK said...

I think I will not get easily used to the social phenomenon thing....and just pray that it dies slowly...or at least there are more and better privacy settings...thanks for the suggestions, let me try out a few episodes of these...