The Alchemist And I

This post has been lying as a draft in my docs for too long now. Although I've figured out to a certain extend as to why things had gone wrong, and think that some of the conclusions drawn have become obsolete by now, but I spent too much time to write this damn thought and so am going to post it anyways. But one thing I would like to tell everyone, When things decide to go wrong, there is nothing stopping them. Its what your destiny was meant to be, maybe for your own good too.

"The Alchemist", a book which you can read infinite number of times and still crave to read one more time. Well, so I read it once again today, my third time so far. This time I read it envisioning myself as the protagonist and associating various events in the book to those in my life and I began to wonder about my achievements. I had many dreams (interpret as goals) while I was growing up (When I say dreams, I don't mean the dreams I had between Age 1 and 13 :-) ), and I had always been the kind of person, who's very optimistic and likes to take his own decisions in life. And that has helped me a great deal to get to where I am today.
I had my share of luck, burdens, choice, failures, hardships, risks and successes in life. And so I asked myself, have all my dreams been fulfilled? I wondered for some time if that was ever possible and finally declared that it is an impossible thing to happen. Why, you ask? Any guesses? No? C'mon you can do better than that...well OK, I concluded that as life goes on, so do your dreams, I mean you have new dreams everyday (or every night) right (If not you should seriously think of getting some help). So there is no way that all your dreams can ever be fulfilled. So I rephrased that question and asked myself have all my dreams, that I had a few years ago been fulfilled? It took me a while to recollect what my dreams were a couple of years ago. And finally when I tried to answer this question, only one dream kept coming back to my mind which was once my dearest, but was never fulfilled.
I tried to figure out as to what went wrong there. Why did I fail that one time? And I realized that I had not always been that "optimistic" and "taking my own decision" kind of person in my life that I had envisioned to be. There have been certain episodes in my life when I was very negative, hesitant and very afraid of loss. I was so afraid that I never even tried to turn that dream into reality. I was happy the way things were and continued to live on. But "change" is inevitable in nature and so is it when it comes to our lives. Things changed so drastically in such short time that my dream hit a hard deadline that had been set for it a long time ago which I had but ignored. It was too late to make things right then and I had to give up. The only way it could still have become a reality is if I could somehow go back in time, which is all but impossible.
So I decided today, never again to be pessimistic, 'coz the one time I had been like that, I had to pay a heavy price for it, and I don't want to feel sad for something I could've avoided, ever again. And so to all those who are reading, I say this: Dream big, never hesitate, never be afraid unless its upon your life, take calculated risks and always be positive. Never think how things went wrong when you fucked up, but think what you gained when things went wrong. And so here I am today, ready to read "The Alchemist" yet once again.

(D)Evolution

Ever wondered how actually the great pyramids were built, or for that matter how a structure as simple as a stone henge was made, or even why they were made? Ever wondered if our antecedents (ones before 0 AD) could have been super intelligent and genius beings and could accomplish undertakings, which we didn't even dream, of a couple of centuries ago?

How do you think they made the pyramids, or for that matter the stone henge, which is even older? They didn't use gasoline or electricity (sources of power) to achieve something that human ability or might cannot possibly accomplish. They used existing forces like the sun, the wind and yes the gravitational force. But here I am talking about people living way before the time of stone henge and pyramids. Do you think they could travel between continents at that time (yeah on oceans of course)? Do you think they would have traveled the entire earth and would have been able to make an exact model of earth, all its land masses and the oceans, and yeah even its curvature? To be precise, could they be able to make a globe with super fine precision (something like half a degree error in latitudes and longitudes) without being able to look at earth from space? O hell did we even know of latitudes and longitudes 10-15 centuries ago? Did we (people not living on America & Antartica) even know that North America and Antartica existed on the face of earth at that time?
OK enough questions. But I guess this last one won't hurt :). Will you believe all this to be true if presented with some concrete evidence? Well you have no choice I suppose. So this is where The Piri Reis Map comes in. Piri Reis was a famous admiral of the Turkish fleet in the sixteenth century and he drew a map on a gazelle skin and wrote on it that he had gathered the data from many different source maps to make his own map. The surprising thing is that he had an almost perfectly detailed map of the Antartic coast line and the Atlantic side of the North American and South American coast lines and the northern African coast line. Antartica was not discovered until the next 300 years. And Columbus had discovered America only about a decade ago. Whats more surprising is the accuracy of the map (cartographers corrected some errors in the present maps after getting hold of Piri Reis Map). And whats baffling is that he claimed that the source maps were much much older. How did some one at that time accomplish such a feat? And what the hell did they want to go to Antartica for? Also the amazing thing is that they were able to record the curvature of the earth on the maps as well. So they already knew then that Earth was not flat (for disclosing which fact many great people were mocked in recent centuries).
So now what happened to this civilization? Where and how did they disappear suddenly? If they would have lived, would they have been much more technologically advanced then we are today? Of course yes, and I could only dream some of their works of arts. So what seems to have happened was this genius of a civilization was wiped out and what was left was a much dumber civilization which took hundreds of years of learning to be where we are today (Does that justify the heading now :)). If you are interested, read more about Piri Reis Map here.

Leap Frog Test

More Games at arcadecabin.com | Cool Generators


Move the green frogs from the left to the right. Move the brown frogs from the right to the left. This can be done in around 3 minutes with an IQ above 50. Just click on each frog to move them, there are no tricks good luck!
Id appreciate if you post how many tries and how many times you moved, before you got it right… enjoy!

Hit Reiniciar to restart (thats retry in Spanish)

To all Indians who read this blog today (Aug 15'th 2007 IST), I wish you all a Very Happy 60'th Independence day. India has developed so much in the past 60 years, that it is simply unbelievable what a country can achieve in such a short period of time. But we are not at the end of the tunnel yet. There are so many more finer details for the development of a country that we yet have to take care of.
Many of you must have got this as an email forward, but if not here's what A P J Abdul Kalam has had to say about our development, where he emphasizes most of these finer details. We've achieved so many things but yet theres still a long way to go. So kudos to our achievements so far, and lets all work towards the final step in converting India from a "Developing" country to a "Developed" Nation. Jai Hind.

Follow your dreams...

"when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."

If you've never read the book "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho, I would recommend you to get it and read it. It doesn't matter if you are a big novel buff or have never ever read a book (I don't mean text books...Of course you would have read those for sure...atleast...). This book is meant for everyone to read. It would be a very good first read if this is the first ever novel you are reading. And for others it would be very refreshing and enlightening at the same time. Its very different from the violent, thrilling and action filled conspiracies like The Bourne series, Sum of all fears etc. or the slow, sentimental love stories like The Love Story, A Walk To Remember etc. or the innovative science fictions like Time Machine and Star Wars or the legerdemain fantasy novels like Harry Potter or Lord of The Rings.
The Alchemist deals with the experiences of a boy who decides to follow his dreams. Its his journey through the unknown land, which he had never ever dreamed of treading on before. Its about his losses and his realizations (as to how to deal with life). Its about his beliefs and trusts. And yeah of course its about The Alchemist himself and what the boy learns from him. But more than the fictional story in the book, its about what everyone who reads the book should do, is what I like the most about the book. Yes, its about believing in your dreams and trying your best to see them materialize before you. It tells you never to give up, to fight on, to always be hopeful and never to lose heart.
The core message of the book is "when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it" which I can't say is a 100% true. Because when you do something great or good and you're on your path the success, there are always a lot of people out there in this world, who try to see you unsuccessful and would do anything to achieve it even if they don't gain anything out of it. I would agree that there are also others who try to help you and see that you succeed, but saying "all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it" is a little contradictory for me. Well I would say that even in the book, the boy does has some bad luck when he gets robbed, and when he is put up to an impossible task by the army. Did they help him in achieving what he wanted or were they a hinderance to him? I would say he would've reached his goal faster otherwise. So then how could the core message be true.
So what I learned from the book was to follow your dreams, always listen to your heart, fight the hurdles placed in your way, never lose heart, never be so content that you lose sight of your dreams and yeah never trust everyone who agrees to help you out, although sometimes it may be for your own good to fail in certain circumstances. There are other things I learned too, but still I seriously don't think that "when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." Still read the book friends, maybe you can get a lot more out of it and do follow your dreams.