'Hey! Long Time! You have lost weight' *I lurve this one..
'Are you feeling ok?'
'Hey Babe! Saw you at the bus stop today. Are you alright?'
'Your face is losing its colour'
'Eat well!'
'You look so dead. Go sleep!!'
Thats not all, just the most frequently used ones! This is what happens when you are doing 6 core modules out which 5 have projects and you have missed the first half of the sem to attend an AIESEC conference in Brazil! You are on the National Team of AIESEC and are the conference manager of the biggest conference in your country which will be held in Early December. You are also assisting at Landmark education and working at the Development Office.
I am tired but happy! I now know how much I can stretch myself at one time and I am learning a lot from all these things. In one and a half months, my exams and NLDS (the conference I mentioned) will be over. On 15th december I will be free and then will go back home the very same day! Really looking forward to the break!
I have finished reading the Kite Runner. Khaled Hosseini has done some justice to the children of Afghanistan in this emotionally breathtaking novel of his. Afghanistan has a lot of children but very little childhood! And he has presented this view in the most simple words possible.. A rare quality found in writers..
But this post is not about 'The Kite Runner' or Khaled Hosseini or Afghanistan. Its about a conversation I had a couple of hours back which indeed triggered a series of conversations inside my head. I was discussing about how the entire country (Afghanistan) has been devastated because of the whims and fancies of few - Soviet/US army or Taliban, we would never know! The irony of our times is that we are so well informed about the world and yet, so much in oblivion - seeing things through the eyes of the media. Never knowing what might be true!
She made a casual comment - 'You know Shub, we never know! People in today's world are just too intelligent. We will never know what is the real power/person behind it and what the real motive is...' I couldn't follow the remaining part. A separate conversation has started in my head!
Intelligent.. are they? To me they appeared to be the most stupid people ever born in this world. So much so that I feel they were born as humans by mistake, they were supposed to be some animal.
Is taking away love from the world (for whatever real motive was) intelligent? Is taking away children's childhood intelligent?
Sometimes, I feel the older we get, the more stupid we become, and we feel we are becoming wise! When we are young, we fight over things worth fighting for, things that last for eternity. We fight for our parents' love, we eat with our servant's children, we don't hesitate in showing our love to strangers, we smile, we laugh!
And then we grow up! We become wise. We start fighting for things which we ourselves know won't last for long - money, religion, what inch of land is my country...
Are we actually becoming intelligent or becoming more and more stupid in the garb of maturity and wisdom? Some questions have no answer but they need to be posed.. These questions make us human again! And I think thats what human race is lacking - people with humanity. Will this vicious cycle ever break? I have no answer. Period.
Yay!.. I have got the Bestest Diwali/Bhai Dooj Gift from the Bestest Brother :)
"The greater the intensity of desire and the later it gets fulfilled, the greater will be the gratitude." I am going through the exact same experience as I have tried to get hold of the book since I don't know when! And from the time I have got it, I am not able to stop myself from reading it, even with the exams and project deadlines coming up. But hey.. this is the Kite Runner and I need a break! So I am now leaving everything behind and going into some serious reading :)
Thanks a lot Siddharth Bhaiya! I couldn't have got a better advance Diwali/Bhai Dooj gift!
WHAM! Thats exactly what I needed from someone for the past few weeks for not being myself and turning into an all-time-complaining-and-seriously-retarded-paranoid-female. My enthusiasm and positivity was affected and I was losing my productivity! But hello, I am back again :) Yay! Thanks to the stranger who's blog generated life in me again. And now, I am super excited about life itself.
While having a conversation with my brother, I remembered a line from this song which is my all time motivation!! Enjoy!
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '99: Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you can imagine.
Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blind side you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Sing.
Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't know.
Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.
Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And then you do you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. Respect your elders.
Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.
Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look like 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it.
Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more that it's worth.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its 2008 peace prize on Friday to Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president who has been associated over decades with peace efforts and quiet, cautious diplomacy from Asia to Africa and Europe.
Out of 197 people nominated for the annual prize, the committee said, Mr. Ahtisaari had been chosen for his important efforts in several continents and over three decades to resolve international conflicts.
To outsiders, Mr. Ahtisaari, 71, has often seemed an undemonstrative and aloof figure. But some people who worked with him praised what Gareth Evans, the head of the nongovernmental International Crisis Group in Brussels called charm and humor in dealing with his various negotiating partners.
He has played a central role in ending conflicts that took root in the late 20th century and threatened the early 21st century with conflagrations in many places, some of them remote and all of them complex, presenting mediators with tangles of ethnic, religious or racial passions.
Specifically, the committee mentioned his work in ending South African domination of Namibia, the former South-West Africa, from the 1970s to the late 1990s , and peace efforts in the Indonesian province of Aceh, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Central Asia, the Horn of Africa and, most recently, in Iraq.
- from the New York Times
Martti Ahtisaari was an AIESECer from Finland. How cool is that? Not only are we the only student organization with a seat in the United Nations, we have a Nobel laureate among us. Congratulations Mr. Ahtisaari!
So, finally after having a week of emotional roller coaster, I have a reason to be happy all over again :).. For a lot of you, this post might have been from a 2 years old (if they knew how to blog) rather than a 20 years old, but as they say : always keep the inner child alive :D
So, do you remember this song : 'Tan ki shakti, mann ki shakti' Yes, I am definitely talking about our good old Bournvita. Do you remember that morning glass of milk with Bournvita before you went to school, and the one which you drank in the evening before going out to play some random game with your colony's baccha party, and definitely the one which you drank after a tiring day just before going to bed? Oh and forgot to ask, the bournvita you nicked out of the kitchen when no one was watching! Hmmm... now u remember all those moments :P
Well, I have always been an outright bournvita lover. I can drink it all the time. Life was difficult to imagine without bournvita. But then I came to Singapore. Whoosh, we were separated and I found replacements. But then if your love is true, you realize it sooner or later. So, after 2 years of separation, I am back with bournvita! Though, it doesn't come in a jar here and can only be found at Mustafa, I just can't express my happiness when I drank the first glass of bournvita in Singapore this morning. It was like heaven :) I guess, sometimes you can't live without some things!
Leia Mais…
Here to make a difference in as many lives as I can, I believe in the inherent goodness of humanity and that the ultimate purpose of every person is to make this World a better place to live in!
