Atlas Shrugs -III

I couldnt think of a better way of starting the day other than reading Ayn.

We were in Lillian’s party yesterday.We saw Franscisco entering the party and Hanks despise for him. But after some time Franscico went directly to Hank and expressed that he wished to talk with him.

Ayn puts it as “The action of naming an incident rather than evading it ,was so unlike ….” while referring to it.Franscico says to Hank that he has come here to talk with him. Hank wonders what he has got to do with him for which Franscisco says that he has to get acquainted to him to learn a thing from him. A huge discussion gets started b/w them on whether to have a discussion.

Dagny is shown hearing the conversation between the two men. I could see a different sense in Dagny this evening. She admires Hank more than usual sometimes for reasons outside business too. She also fumbles for words when Hank comes near her. I later found the same with Hank too. And the funny thing for me was she exchanging her diamond bracelets for Lilian’s Rearden metal bracelets. Lillian was showing her that this bracelet was so special for her since it was the first one made out of her husbands furnace. And when Lillian quoted that she would exchange for diamond ones but no one would offer to so to just gloat that she values it the most. Everyone in the party was surprised when Dagny offered to exchange her diamond ones for those bare metal.

Some nuggets from Dagny-Hank conversation…
“Party’s – are places where people strain themselves to me more sense less and aimless …”
“In order to get all the goods, one should at the first need them ..”

Also I could see Dagny regretting that she had revealed more of herself to Hank .. I couldnt get that. If you can please let me know.

We get some innuendos about John Galt and a pirate through two spinsters. Hank is shown ogling at Dagny and Ayn once writes..

He said looking at her body ..”Dagny what a wonderful waste!” Thats not a quote of lust. Ayn wants us to think on the purpose of life. Its for what the philosophical professors are bought in to the meeting. On the overall it was a nice party to attend with most of the characters coming in to a single place. Franscisco-Hank conversation was the highlight of the party.

Hasnt it always been hope but never to achieve.. Man that line triggers me!Then we are taken in to bedroom of Lillian where we enter the brain of Hank exploding the compelling questions of humanity examining the purpose of a relationship. Hank was wondering why Lillian married him? Though she didnt come from a royal family she had enough and she never seeked money from him; neither did she found joy in his industrial ventures; She did not show any sign of physical attraction for Hank; She had her own friends and her own life yet she behaved like a wife for Hank bearing him. Hank’s thoughts travelled back to ten years when he first met her in New York. He is a kind of guy who never liked anyone or expected to be liked. Further Hank had own every inanimate battle against nature except for one which he needed Lillian.He lost his interest in her after their first week of marriage but yet everythig happened like a custom for all these years.

Hank went on examining the reason “What did she want from me?”Thats a question we should ask in any relation ship for it to sustain.

Atlas will shrug….

38 th Wordsmiths toast Master meet

It was my first day as Sergeant at Arms in my club. It a heavy role for sure, I am quoting at the bag I need to carry to and fro.Luckily I had a friend to help me for the to and our very able Vivek for fro.

I was there in advance – to put up the banners and the placards. Managing people and sharing -rather making people do their work is the most demanding challenge to the human hood and you can learn a plenty of them when you are in toast masters. When I was checking with everyone whether I can start I was told that when the clock strikers four its my decision to start leaving others worries to them! Thats a real nugget – its the sign of better men management like that chinese cliche about fish.

I fumbled while starting the meeting since I didnt prepare quite enough for it. I forgot to mention to mute the mobile phones and when fellow toastmasters shown symbolic gestures I didnt get it quick enough. Thanks for the toastmasters to bear my mistakes and i guess this new role is beautiful. I am the first speaker and the face of toastmasters for the next one year. That excites me for sure.

Vivek was the stand-in president and the enthusiastic Zac was our toastmaster of the day.He spoke on how general electric did his hiring. Enthusiasm – energy – energize -execution were the four E’s they look for when you go to them for a job. I liiked that energize part.

Aditya- the youngest president among all the clubs in the universe was our general evaluator for the day. Krishna Prasad was our joke master and he spoke about the mom who tried hard to send her troubled child to school. We couldnt stop laughing when the mom asked her child not to try to play any truants – “Son you are 52 years old and you are the principal of the school.”

When it came to the prepared speeches I observed a good practise. Zac first mentioned the speech and asked the evaluator to read out its objectives only after which he read out the speakers name. Thanks. I was struggling with this.!

Gaurav Jain did his ice breaker – and his life should be inspiring. Unconventionally he has chose to work very early in life and he has already started reaching up the ladder. He seems to have the niche to speak and I will be very glad seeing him realize his ability and giving some awesome speech.

Anupam -The man of determination told us the story of Abhinav Bhindra for his project-5 .It was a perfect topic for the speech “No Pain No Gain” . Words really started flowing from his mouth at a point. “No body had belief in him except him”. Those were the only words I wish to take home that evening. Thats inspiring Dr.Anupam.

Sastha Ram – Was presenting his project nine. The man has a commending authority and he spoke on “What right do you have “. He enacted a conversation first – dropped it there went on to the greetings and back in the introduction he referred to the conversation and that was magical. His presentation was good and could have been a world famous speech if he had little more care for the content to be aligned with his objective. When I spoke later with him I found that he had a noble objective but couldnt find time to put that together. All the best man. Would like to hear the same speech with your best abilities for I know that its going to be one of the best.

I am going to write a separate post on Table Topics since it would extend the already lengthy description.

Lalitha – the sympathetic evaluator did a great job evaluating Jain. Hari was inspiring Anupam and Ravi was sharp on target and didnt have even sweet coating for his pills! (Thats Ravi for you !) Overall that was three different evaluations each standing as one of the reasons why you should attend toastmasters.

Sastha was the best speaker and Lailitha was the best evaluator of the day. With that the president closed the meeting and we had a business meeting after the meet.

Our next meet is on Oct-4. We meet at Anna Nagar towers club Chennai. If you are inclined to check it out drop me a mail @ peerlessdeepaks@gmail.com.

Atlas Shrugs -II

Dagny continues her conversation rather altercation with Franscisco in the hotel room. She actually was in search of some ratiocination behind Franscisco’s action. Neither I nor Dagny couldnt sort out the reason behind the nonchalance of the once mighty and determined Franscisco. He told her that all some of his acts might hurt her and he had no other choice left other than doing those and asked her not to be surprised when she faces it. With that the downfall of Fransciso portryal continues and concludes. But still they love each other and its where Ayn Rand impresses her. Though Dagny seems to tolerate all the acts of Frans keeping in mind the relationship they shared years ago she is slowly thinking to get rid of him from her life and this again proves that one cant lose your qualities to the wild game of nature called love. Even in love you should makes sure that you dont lose your self for the sake of the other person.

From there the focus moves to the mine man Hank Raden who was forced to attend the party arranged by his wife commemorating their wedding anniversary. Hank realises that he had not given any kind of pleasure for his family and he so far has lived a life so preoccupied with the business. Now he thinks is the time to serve them. But the glow of the metal is more interesting to him than anything. But he is shown having a self reproach on himself.

“Whenever he convinces himself something is right the desire to follow it comes so naturally”..

We get to meet some interesting nuggets from various invites in the party.
Prof.Pritchett says “Man is nothing but an assortment of chemicals with delusion of grandeur”.
He further adds that the purpose of life is not to find it but rather to understand that there isn’t any.

Philosophers were here to explain that life is not to be explained.Then we see the surprise guests The Taggarts entering the party hall and Dagny gets more attention than her brother.

“Your sister is quite famous”… ” I am not aware that my sister is famous ” … James is always in contempt when it comes to her.

The discussion also revolved on the equality bill with most of the guests being in support of it. Ayn expediently exposes the absurdity in the bill by taking it to the writers.That no book should be sold more than 10000 copies no matter how great and good they might be. Full marks to her. That clearly brings out the havoc in such acts.

Dagny approaches Hank and I assume she wants to get her and the rail roads laid by him.~

My todays sojourn stops here.

Atlas shruggs- 1

After about 20 days I am hitting page 100 in Atlas shrugged.I hope from now I would get hooked to hit and even beat the schedule. Francisco has just entered my life and he seems to be THE MAN!I want to have this moments freezed ever for my life. I cant let me forgot what i am reading now.! So comes this series.

“Felt the sun on her eyelids,and the upward thrust of such an immense relief that she ground her feet in to the grass under her sandals,because she thought she would rise weightless throughout the wind ”

Of aimless people dragging the load of some unkown guilt – was not theirs //

Have it ..I dont know whether its an impending love story but I would like to make my love this way–She looked it him silently as if a voice was speaking : “Not the things that are but those we will make …” ! Dream aim goal and passion .!
“We are not to be stopped…you an I ..Forgive me the fear if I thought I could lose you to them…Forgive me the doubts ……..”

A nugget to me “Its not good to venture unsolicited opinions.You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to the listener..” Gosh the last 5 pages were the best I have read anywhere.

There is nothing of importance in this world except how well I do my work

“They disliked me not that I didnt do well but for i did them very well”

Dagny you are wonderful now… she says “I thought you always thought that way:(” . Marriage of the intellectuals is happening here.Come and join me!

Lets see who will do great..Either you to Nat or Me to Sebastian de Anconia!@ The race starts!

Dagnys mother — watched her daughter in a sense of bewilderment.She could have forgiven all the omissions but one:Dagny showed no interest for me ha ha aha ha aha ….
And the question is asked “Dagny and Franscico.. ” She says “Its nor a romance .its an international industrial cartel about something”.

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Thats 100 up and because of this blogging I am slowing my pace.Its worth spending time for it. One couldnt guess what kind of relationship both these guys are heading too.. Again I get an insight on how important and influential the childhood dreams are. Franscisco – A character which any aimer would love to emulate. Wow.. the slap he gave to her for her intention to be popular.I felt it in my chins too:) Further never be afraid of a danger for its an opportunity for another brilliant performance. Easily said but Ayn Rands style illustrates it and gets the real meaning which is beyond the words in to your brain.
once Dagny asks “Dont you know anything other than that.(Embedded for me!) ..There are plenty of things to think about”
He says “Let others think about it!”

Pages 90-100 Simply superb!Here I am 15 days behind schedule but guess I am going to catch up with it soon!

Plumbers at work

Plumbing

Once upon a time, the kernel stood alone and presented services to the system by way of the system call interface. In current systems, instead, users see a view of the system that is created by a whole set of utilities, including the C library, udev, HAL and more. Interactions between these low-level components and the kernel are not always as smooth as they could be, and despite the best efforts of the kernel development community, kernel releases have been known to occasionally break utilities like udev.
Jonathan Corbet

Jonathan Corbet calls this the “kernel ecosystem”. We call it the “plumbing,” a collection of essential interfaces and services provided by the libraries, kernel, and utilities that make up a Linux system. Currently, when a problem exists that involves both kernel and user space, a developer must attend several different conferences to discuss the problems face-to-face with other key developers. As a result, problems crossing multiple subsystem boundaries are more difficult to solve than those within a subsystem.

Will update once the conference is over ..time to sleep

Connect 2008

Thanks to kiruba. I had been to connect 2008 today and it was a nice experience doing live blogging of the event.

Catch it up at here

Live film blogging..!

Pearl day today..! What better way to say when they are screening two Mani Ratnam movies parallely (I have watched them umpteen times yet its special when you catch them unplanned.). Since none of my friends could join me in enjoying this movie..i thought to attempt at live blogging..

Its almost an hour since both the movies started.

Kanathil Muthamital..

The bed room scene where the entire family sleeps on the father ..typical scene for a photoshoot.Watch out for curious questions of the little girl. “Kasu kuduthu vanganigala appa…” — for which her dad says “Unakku vela ethu da kannu”

Gripping scenes where the little girl gets emotional on her neglect. Simran is stunning with her expressions.Infact this is the only movie where i fell for her:) Hiya …the flashback is on the roll.

Scenic beauty of Rameswaram is awaiting us..

Lets also have a look at Guru is:

Here also its a bed room scene ..Nenga etha athigama nesikiranga .is it me or your buisness..? Asks aish.. KM simran looks cute than guru ash. Guru goes to the market only to see it banned by government.

Doesnt look impressing so back to Kanna..

Wow…that beautiful romance b/w the scooter and cycle is on. The pavadai thavani some how looks odd for that tall girl. A.R.Rahaman treats us very specially with his background score.Simran and Maddy resides nearby. Sociology exam for simran 2mrrw:) “oru naliku etha thada vada pova” – A young mother at her child.

The scooter cycle ride continues.Wow what a request from Maddy to keep her quiet! Thiru Selvan thats how he is named in this movie.There is the heroine of the film completly naked:) She doesnt even have a name by now.. They are going to name her…avalathu azhugai amuthamaga olithathu..! So here goes the name Amutha..

“Paru Srilanka pakam kai katranga”— witty dialogue. Maddy steals the show without doing anything. A.R. gets that melody in the background. “Enna veiyathioo…” at the condition of child.. “athu ellam check paniduvanga”..simran..!

Guru: Party in guru’s home. Celebration time. Guru ” ethu varaikoom shakthi kudubam has worked for 18 hours here after we should work for 25 hours” All the employees share the happiness. “When you stop dreaming its the end of your life” ! Daring guru reminds me of taggart from The Atlas shrugged”

I know that some not be missed romantic scenes are coming up in KM..

“I am going to suicide”.. simran.. I will write a story on it –Maddy. What wat a sister! she encourages her brothers love. Love is after all not a crime as people portray! Necessity is the mother of invention. And here again a necessity to marry simran is created ………………..

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Shit i lost about an hours blog due to my shabby internet connection! Missed it !

Broke the break

Warning: The views expressed were my own and has nothing to do with my club. Also I beg your pardon in case if you find anything offensive.Please let me know if you find anything offensive so that I can correct myself.

And finally it happened! I broke the eight month long hiatus presenting my project-4 in toastmasters today.

In fact this was possible because now the club had moved to a new location close to my room!Yep wordsmiths toastmaster club is now in Anna Nagar.I will post my speech as a separate blog (I am yet to digitialise the speech! Prepared it in a short span but turned out be a descent hit!) In this entry I will attempt to describe the happenings of the meet.

I had dragged Venky all the way to toastmasters and we were sharp at four in to Towers club. Banners and handouts are placed appropriately which led us to the basement of the towers club. I greeted our new president

Zac started the meeting with his usual contagious enthusiasm sharp at 4 PM. Our new president was optimistic and sweared that we are back towards our heydays (Sure mam peerless deepak is also back in action:)). We had few guests ..One was a seasoned toastmasters who had brought his daughter and her classmate in to toastmasters (PPl atleast beleive now that we arent some sort of club which gets together to just drink the toast which you have in mind). We had a brand new member from Medley toastmasters,we had a top hats from chennai toastmasters and medley toastmasters since it was our resurgence meet.Jyothi pointed it out expediently by quoting it as birthday meet. Yep its been tough times for my club members to hold it together. Even I was out of action because of hard timings.

They did the right thing by changing the venue and timing and being geographically close with the kind of people who might love to be here (I assure two memberships right now !) Our sincere secretary TM Vivek was the toastmaster of the day and he began his speech by quoting on change.

Ananth was Jokemaster of the day who did one mistake which he told me that he wanted to avoid .. He started his speech by saying that I am your joke master and I am going to tell a joke 🙂 Sad that , that poor soul needed to remind us that he has said a joke to get some laughter on .In fact it turned out to be a big joke. I personally feel that this guy is not even exposing 50% of his best on stage. His theme was on beer and he brought in a couple of jokes !

Our martinet TM RaviBaskaran was our general evaluator of the day. Vanitha from Medley toastmasters was our grammarian (Hers is the best role description I have ever heard for that role) She brought out the purpose of the role and quoted that she is here to spot us what are the good things to pick and bad practise to drop. Hats off Mam..Thats the learning attitude which makes a toastmaster special and rich than a commoner! We had an interesting ah counter too..Sorry that I missed your name gentleman. But your symphony with those filler sounds was interesting.

Moving on to prepared speeches RajManohar presented his project-4 enumerating “Out of the box thinking”. He seems to have great buisness knowledge and gave us lot of examples of out of box strategies. For most of the time he was refering to WaltDisney,Jack Welch .. He started with the story of Dell. Thanks to him for stating it once more that the biggest loosers and gainers are those who dared to things which no one else dared to do.

Next it was my turn.There I am after nearly 10 months of break in the middle of a podium.I have prepared the speech only today morning hence I was really nervoud (Though didnt have dinos i had some butterflies in stomach.!) I also did my project -4 and I spoke about wanna be dreams (I will have a separate post for discussing about it). But I did notice Nina Mam taking her pen while I spoke and that was enough for me to conclude that I have uttered some useful words:)! I always make sure that my speeches should have some value and the challenge was to convey that value effectively to my fellow toastmasters. This time I was to tell them its okay to not achieve your dreams but its important to get something out of your dreams. I couldnt judge wheteher I took that to the people’s heart (I had to rush to end my speech and hence I couldnt shape the conclusion as I wanted it to be). I finished sharply at 7 minutes 29 seconds..there I go If I had taken even a second more I would have been disqualified.

Then it was Indiras turn ! She was emulating a interview and Vandhana did a perfect job as her interviewer. That young lady has charming smile which makes most of her speeches beautiful. Veteran Indira played the perfect guest – evoking classic humour and handling questions in a diplomatic manner.

Then it was table topics time and we had some real fun here. TM RamPrasad was our TT master for the day and he centered the first few topics on teachers day. Zac was asked to speak about his FIRST TEACHER. Gosh this man brings too much humour in to what ever he does. He told that his mother was his first teacher. And all through his life he was with teachers – mother,sister and wives:) (He also told that he had two wives -the real one at home and the other toastmasters wife :)) Sure did he ..He loves being a toastmaster and I am glad that I am part of the club where he attends!

Then came a young man Rohit who was asked to speak on his favourite teacher. He seemed nervous at first but since he spoke straight from heart ,it was not difficult for him to give a splendid speech. He spoke about the teacher who serves him as a mentor till date. Boy who earned my respect and admiration for it. Welcome to the Toastmasters fraternity and I am sure you are going to enjoy your stint with Medley Toastmasters.

Nina Mam was asked to speak specifically about Newton and apple but she ended up speaking on coconut:) Gosh..If it had been a coconut tree the complete human history would have taken a different shape!

Aditya was asked what he can learn from ants. This chap is brilliant and adept in bringing in instantaneous humour.He questioned back the TT master why should he look at ants when he had time to look at lot of a(u)nts (Pardon me Aditya:)I assume your college girls look like aunts). He deserved three cheers for his frolic speech for which he expediently got the best speaker award.

We had similar humourous speech by Mr. Venkatesh  who told its not good to learn from ants.Dr.Anumpan gave an excellent speech (Because he used the word of the day as promised!)

TM Shanthi from Medley closed the session by speaking about the satisfaction she gets from being a teacher. Folks once again I observed here that when you speak straight from the heart it becomes naturally beautiful so that you need not take extra care in preparing what you utter.

When it was time for evaluations TM Hari evaluated TM RajManohar. TM Aditya evaluated me – He did a splendid jon by finding some matching patterns with the project objective (Well done Chap..Actually It was all accidental..:) Thanks for finding me matching with the goal) He also asked me to add some pauses and slow down a bit (Thomas Sir actually congratulated me for slowing down a bit:) ) Thanks Sir and Aditya I am aware of it and will try to be normal in a speech or two.Shanthi evaluated Indira and she was in all praise for both the role players. She insisted that eye contact should be made with the camera while giving such interviews.

Our GE TM Ravi Baskran spotted out some lacunas in the way President and ToastMaster of the day did their roles. And he also requested TT Master to be specific with the topic. But here in toasmasters we are free to do our mistakes as long as we do it only once and learn from it! TM Ravi is a complete toastmaster (I wont bother if lose my manual..I will ring him and ask for what I wanted to refer in the manual!)

With Nina giving a special address marking the rebirth of Wordsmiths we came towards the end of this resurgence meet. President Jyothi closed the meeting after announcing the winners. I got my first “Best Speakers” award and Aditya was rightly given the best TT speaker and evaluator awards. With that the president closed the meeting mentioning Sep 20 as our next meeting date.

I opted to fill the Sergeant@arms role – an extra burden to carry that bag – But I agreed to it because I am staying close the club and in a selfish way it will make me attend meetings regularly. If I am not there the entire meeting may get a halt:)

Thats it the comeback meeting was action filled with lot of light moments and hope. The venue is really cool and should be crowd puller. I should complete maximum projects before the slot booking gets a heavy rush.

Three Mistakes

Chetan Bhagat – He is the one who made me realise that reading a fat (even two hundred pages for a book makes me think it untouchable) novel is no rocket science. My inclination in to the world of fiction started only beacause of his five point someone. Not only me many average Indian boys and girls started reading because him (Those peter groups who just keep some shidney sheldom books to show off are exceptions).

Let me get to the three mistakes. My mistake so far is not reading three mistakes for a very long time. I have been used to Chetan’s style and seeing his inclination to make scripts for Bollywood I thought its not going to be worth the time.(Money was never a problem with Chetan’s books..IIM part of him plays the trick here..:))  The back cover and the first two pages suggested that its yet another book made to deceive people by enumerating their mundane experiences with an animated narration. So this book didnt get my time till I found it lying in one of my friends room with no takers for a week end.

After IIT and call centre Chetan has choosen small town as his setup for there are more small towns than IIT’s and call centres in India. The novel starts with cricket in the back drop and to my surprise it just starts with it but along with it the author has mixed entreprenuership, romance,communal violence,sportsmanship,patritotism.There it go – any bollywood producer would be happy to give it a try. With little modifications it can even me the next ChakDe (The last few pages of the novel was like a screen play written for a movie).

Though its a welcome change to see the literature and movies getting married, it not good to let the tone of movies set in to the former. Only thats the mistake with three mistakes. Its was a racy read apart from that (Considering the amount of distractions I had in my two hour read I guess one page is worth less than 30 seconds!) The novel is very simple that you can suggest it to even your sixth standard brother (But be careful! Some parts of the novel needs parental guidance ..may be tear thos e pages which are meant to sizzle teens:)).

I spot three reasons to read three mistakes.

My main reason for liking the novel for its portrayal of enterpeneurship among middle class boys and underplaying professional courses.Second is the way he connected history (Slew of cricket tours,godhra incidents and communal politics.

Next reason is of course vidhya!:) (Chetan you wanted that huh!)Vidhya’s confidence and take easy attitude is difficult for a girl to acquire and a logical boy like me (The protagonist is a maths teacher) can do little help for not falling for her.

There is so much in to this short novel (The once fat chetan novels are now slim like me for me:)) and if you havent read that that might turn to be one of the mistakes of your life!