How do you counter an undesirable state?

All of us would at some point in time or other would have been in a state which is stressful, where challenges are hard to meet, where even though we are giving our best we are not seeing results, where even though we try not to yet we are anxious. These states take such a grip on oneself, that we get ensconced in it and trying to fight the problem from being deep in the pit. That is where you get stuck. When you are physically deep in a pit, you must first have to climb out of it to find the release. With the mind, it works a bit differently from my experience. You have to let the challenge or problem that you are so engulfed in be pushed to a side and focus on getting into a parallel state of ease or comfort or happiness. From that state you will see solutions more easy or find ways of dealing with a challenge. In such states of co-existence, you will find revelations. How do you get to that state. It is pretty personal. The fact is that you need to recognize that you have to be in a different state of mind. For me immersing myself in any creative activity is a good routine. Also once you get to this state, you want to make sure you stay in this state. It is easy to get disrupted. Recognizing what are the disruptions is also essential. I wrote a blog earlier about my personal cause of disruptions - the lousy quality of getting angry.

Welcoming Spring 2012 early on

It is nice to step out of the home and feel the fresh, crisp spring air!! When I took a break from work, I caught these moments of nature's welcome to spring.

Corrupt American University system

When it comes to corruption, the American universities must be ranking high on the list. This is not what usually people think. Consider the fact that many schools are considered 'Legacy' schools. They grant admissions to students if their family or relative has attended the same school. This is a totally ridiculous and corrupt criteria. Just falls short of calling it nepotism. Secondly, some schools don't admit more than one student from the same HS. This is really a killer in a way for talent and merit. Admissions must be made solely on merit. Yes, going by this criteria, the colleges will be swamped with Asian kids, but if that is where the cream of cream is, then the Universities must be open to that. Else, we will in the future start seeing best research coming out of Asia and American students will be vying for places in Chinese Universities. Another factor for admission is the last name, whether it is a Gandhi or a Clinton. Totally psychophantic!! It takes realy guts and foresight to deal with market forces than to be a conformist.

Beautiful Saturday morning

It is a beautiful Saturday morning and a perfect weekend start. Yesterday, I came back from Wilmington after a successful training at a client - one of the biggest credit card issuers in the world. You will be surprised how much overworked the employees are OR if they are really lax. The three days of training never started on time, always finished ahead of time and the number of trainees was always less then planned. Whatever the reasons, that wouldn't bother me. In the end, we accomplished what we had to for the few attendees who were constant. Part of the training was also to set up the real production servers thus we killed two birds with one stone. Next week I will be auditing the servers from scratch and certifying the environment.

I managed to drive out for dinner and the first day out, I found Nirvana on Rt. 202 - the restaurant was very okay; pricey and didn't live up to my expectations.  Next day I found it best to go to CPK in Newark. I took along a colleague of mine who hadn't been to CPK and the food was decent and as expected; the tab was reasonable. I would always go to CPK and do with one of their soups and a veggie pizza, half of which I can always take home. Unfortunately, thought I stowed the pizza away in the refrigerator, I forgot to take it back home when I left yesterday. So there will lye a great pizza wasted away. Wilmington downtown has more signs of the downturn. I would frequently bump into the homeless in front of the Courtyard wanting money. Pity state of affairs. I couldn't find the same guys on my way back from CPK as I wanted to give away the pizza.

I dropped off Mike at the Philly airport and took about an hour to get home with the Friday afternoon traffic. Was glad to be home and take a look at it and the 'Wall of Fam' as Bharath called it that I put up two weekends back.

Anyway I just wanted to write about today. The outside looks gorgeous and very much welcoming of Spring. A sunny Spring day is a great way to spend time outdoors and cheer up the spirit.

My Oscars weekend project

 Was to hang pictures of some of my best photos. Granted, we take a lot of snaps and most likely than not, they sit on the disk. Some have them as screen savers and that is refreshing. On many other hard drives, they sit unseen and soon forgotten. Best thing to do is to at least buy a digital photo frame (I have a Pandigital 10"). There is a problem with these digital frames too. Though they randomize displays, I somehow NEVER get to see my best shots, even after two years of running the frame. However, I wanted to display my best shots in my home and make a gallery out of it. After all these are the ones I am proud of taken and they make a good conversation start. Here is how I went about this project. It took about two months overall that is only because I took my time.

1) First off, whenever I go on a vacation after I come back I always mark my best shots and keep them organized in 'My Starred Photos'. These are really my best shots. I have about 80 or so from the twenty thousand plus photos I have taken. These are worth displaying in a gallery - my own gallery at my home.

2) I found Nations Photo Lab in one of the magazines I subscribe to on photography. I uploaded a four or five or these and ordered metallic prints. The photos came back quickly and they just looked fantastic! I didn't do any more research who else I should try out. The prices were reasonable, including shipping, I paid about $18 for these.

3) After getting these photos, I went to Michael's and Target and got some frames. These frames averaged about $10 each. But the problem with these are you can only get standard sized frames (8x10 or 5x7). Most of my shots were 6x8 or 6x9 or 8x12. The bigger the size, they get more expensive. I did some research on the Internet and found some sites where the cost for each frame I thought would be nice turned out to be between $35-50 per frame. That was way too expensive for me as I had in mind about 40+ photos to hang.

4) Then I found FrameUSA  (www.frameusa.com). This is a wholesaler and they have many frame types and colors and they are inexpensive even if you buy a few frames, But you will need to pay freight. I ordered the Value-added series in white for the samples. After receiving them, I found the photos looked great and went along with our home decor. The four samples I added, along with freight cost about $50.

5) I went ahead and placed my order for the remaining 40 frames for an additional cost of $412.When you think of frames for your photos, NEVER put one in a frame without a mat. A mat makes a lot of difference. First off, it keeps the photo from sticking to the glass and in the long run protects it. In addition, a mat adds a whole of beauty and structure to the photo. Just see a photo in a frame with and without a mat and you will see the difference immediately. A mat adds to the space a frame will occupy but that's what makes the difference on the wall.


6) My shipment arrived yesterday (Saturday) in three box. The packaging was well done. Each frame comes with the hardware needed to hang the picture - usually a saw tooth hanger. It is hard to press or hammer the saw-tooth hanger into the back of the frames. Best thing to do is to drill small holes and push it into place. Of course, you have to take the time to find the center of the frame and drill the hole just deep enough so that the hole doesn't go through to the front.


7) To hang the pictures, have some idea how you want to place them. One tip to keep in mind, lining the frames horizontally or vertically isn't the best thing to do. Staggering them adds to the interest and you will never get the lining up perfect when you have a lot of photos unless you spend a lot of effort and time. With 45 frames to hang, I didn't want to spend weeks to finish these up. This weekend was going to be it.

8) When you position the sawtooth hanger in place, place it so that it isn't near the top of the (back of) the frame. If it is at the top, then you will see the hanger on the wall; to mask the hanger (or the nail thereof), you want to be able to hide it with some of the frame itself.

9) I got this tool from Homedepot - Hang & Level. For $12, it is a great investment. It makes it easy to decide where to nail the hanger into the wall taking away the guessing.

10) By the time I finished up hanging all the pictures, it was Sunday evening and almost time for the Oscars. My empty wall in the family room was now the 'Wall of memories'. There were so many though that I had to spread them across on other walls in the family room. It gives the impression of too-many-photos on the wall, but in this personal space I wanted to have memories than anything else.


11) When you hang pictures, they easily move while dusting. Minor visual adjustments don't make then exactly horizontal - you will be surprised how one's perspective differs once you get away and look at the position. So you must do this - get a spirit level and find the exact horizontal. Then get one of the 3M photo mounts and use it to keep the frames horizontal. You will notice what a difference it makes by looking at the last two shots in this blog. The one where you are looking straight ahead with the two spotlights shining upon them, you will see some alignment issues on the horizontals. However, look at the very last one where the shot shows the frames from the side. These are with those 'stickies' putting the frames in place. There is much more alignment.

Deer Galore

Deers Galore in our backyard - for a brief few minutes in the weekend, these herd of deer decided to visit our backyard. So far, we have seen a family of 3-4 or 5, but they seem to have multiplied. It is a joy to watch the really young ones sprinting on such light feet. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, the county here has decided to give Deer killing licenses since last Fall to keep the population from growing, as they are considered a hazard for growth of vegetation

How to overcome a weakness

Say anger is your weakness. You get angry at being wronged, being sidelined, being misjudged, get angry at the injustices or the corruption, etc, etc. You can get angry at even simple things such as someone being late to an event. First off, you want to understand what the ill-effects of a negative behavioral aspect. It instills deep in your conscience a desire for getting stuck. Once you get stuck, you know what happens - you don't move forward, simple. So the key thing is not to get stuck. Overcoming such a stumbling block is not easy nor is it difficult. Say, you have an opportunity to get angry and you do get angry. Say again, this happens two, three, four, five more times in a row. Now you are already into a habit of responding to a situation with anger. You not only want to break that habit, but also not want to get in that habit. What you want to do is consciously at an opportunity to get angry, NOT to get angry and deal with the situation. More often than not, gut reactions to day-to-day situations can often be misjudged or ill-thought of. Once you deal with a situation, you want to recognize that event and see how you got past that and more importantly realize how you feel about yourself. You will invariably feel good about not succumbing to the vile, but also sub-consciously you will feel strengthened. Now, do this i.e., dealing with the situation five times in a row. Each time you will feel good about yourself and your confidence about dealing with the situation increases significantly. Now you are forming a habit of dealing with a situation and as habits are, that will continue. This is how you develop maturity and feel wiser and at the end knowing you can handle any situation.

Those stressful HS years

If your child is going to college (especially in the US), it can be a VERY stressful time for both parents and the child. There is way too much work for a senior from school alone and adding to this, filling out applications is a nightmare. It beats filling out forms for the US or Indian government for claims. The hardest part of the applications are the essays. These essays can be extremely challenging and time consuming as the essays need to reflect one's personal passion and personality. The colleges pay a great deal of attention to the essays. I know my son spent four weeks each on a couple of these alone. Then you need to file the financial aid forms which are a nightmare in themselves that beat out the tax forms filing by a few hundred yards. I would strongly recommend seeking help of professionals to do the Financial forms filling as they can provide accurate information and they would do this every year and it saves you a lot of time. Also seek help for filling out college applications. It might sound trivial why we smart people can't do this ourselves, but trust me, the counsellors have way lot more experience in doing these tasks and they know better. And if your child is in Junior year and taking SAT tests, again don't think your child is extremely smart and can ace the test. It can make a difference getting a 2300 or a 2340 or a 2370. Many children can easily get 2200 with practice, but beyond that it becomes increasingly challenging to add every 10 points. Here again, don't hesitate to get your child coaching. I am thinking the same concepts (coaching) is true for those studying in India too.

Secondly, the times can be stressful to the children. They are anticipating a future and everything depends on what colleges they are going to get into. There is indirect peep pressure (he got into that college, she into that) - all this takes a toll on the child and it wouldn't be surprising you would have noticed them already getting 'into their own world' i.e., less interactions with parents, etc. This would have started earlier on in HS, but will peak in the last two years. It is important we as parents, keep being connected to the child and support them despite our own hectic, crazy schedules.

Beware of EOS CCA

I got a call from a Lia at eos cca asking for my someone in the home. I said that person isn't at home and asked if I can take a message. She asked me to call 781 753 4235 and she will be there till 9 PM and it was about Government taxes. This itself is a clue - no government official calls at 6 PM and no one says they will be available till 9 PM. I hung up and thought of sending a message requesting the person call her. Then I got doubtful and checked the Internet. EOS CCA is a big scam. They call and try to snare unsuspecting people into revealing information. I called back the same number and the same lady picked up the phone. I said, you just called me. She said 'Did I'? No wonder she must have been making a lot of calls. I said yes you call and mentioned the persons name. She couldn't recall and asked for the account number. I asked for a government identification and she said she won't reveal that information. That's when I knew this was a scam. I said I am going to report you to the agencies and she said go ahead and hung up. If anyone easily gives an account number and gives additional information (for e.g., I forget what company was this with) they can easily look up that information as Verizon and ATT share the information with these companies. Then you are snared into the trap of conversation, etc. Just read about it on the net.

When you think you are in control

Heard this beautiful reality - when you think you are in control, He lets you do it all. When you think you are no more in control, He steps in. Lesson: When man thinks he can do it all, He lets you do it whether they are right or wrong. At some point, when you have done everything and think I leave the rest to Him, you will start seeing things happen that you didn't think would happen. This has happened many times to me. I have done everything I can, checked everything and the issue still exists. At that point, I just give Up not knowing what will happen and I have seen the next morning things turn around. Am I getting too old or what? Doesn't matter, this belief has worked for me and I intend to resort to it even more.