Diwali Break in Retrospection and Rants about the 'Rich' and the 'Founders'

How my Diwali bucket list failed miserably and rants about the Pot Bellied Rich and for-the-heck-of-it Startup Founders.
So I had planned to do so many things in the 10 day break I had.



Well this is the 8th day and I am going to look back on how much I have accomplished.

First, the grandiose plans that were made:

1. Complete these three books:
   
   • The Monk and the Riddle by Randy Komisar (Read!)
   • Dear Life by Alex Munroe
   • Think Everest: Scaling Mountains with the Mind
2. Resume writing about the trip to Ladakh
3. Start studying for the end semesters, because c'mon I don't even precisely remember the last time I went to the LT.
4. Work on the GCDC project.
5. Finish the dbms submission(Yeah right!)

So much right? The things we think we'll do and the things we actually do. The difference is wider than the gaping expression you had after the Red Wedding episode in GoT.

The percentage I completed?
26.6%
Wait the percentage does sound high. Misleading.

I worked on the GCDC project and completed one of the books. Yay me!

-About the book:
How is the book, The Monk and the Riddle?
I really enjoyed reading it. It starts a little slow but by the end it is really gripping. You can call it as an self help book for people who want to find their calling in life. But it really concentrates on start-ups and gives the inside story of the Silicon Valley culture. It's not about how you should manage a business or write a business plan or anything. Please. It's not that. It's more about asking yourself why you want to do it? It talks about how we keep postponing what we really want to do in life and instead do things which we think are the responsible things to do. It's about the deferred life plan. The one which you follow instead of the whole life plan. The writer is really passionate about the topic and speaks his heart out. I really recommend this book, check it out.

<rant>
Common Start Up Stupidity
I find a lot of people caught with the start up craze. I am sure you have too, especially if you are in an engineering college. I am not saying it is bad. It is bad when you are doing it just for the heck of it. With no originality what so ever. Doing something which is already being done. Nothing new. Bleh. But that is my personal opinion. Shouldn't getting something new to people, adding some really cool features to an existing concept, filling the gaps or changing lives be your aim? By doing something already being done with no substantial change whatsoever you are not really adding value to anyones life. Is it a new better way of doing something which is already being done? Foremost, do you really feel for the idea? I am not blaming you if making money is your only aim, but I hope you don't. If you are one of these people, please read The Monk and the Riddle. Please? Don't get me wrong, I am totally in for the independence and all the entrepreneurial spirit and all that but not for soulless-cash-making-oh-I-am-so-cool-founder shit. If you are not passionate about it you are going to lose your interest as quickly as you finished making the facebook page of your startup.
</rant>


Oh I have a few more rants.
<rant>
Super Rich Pot Bellied People
Diwali means meeting a lot of people and going to parties and community gatherings. Well most of them are infected with people that I have had the opportunity to inspect closely while sitting quietly in the corner eating the buffet dinners. Not that its hard to spot them, unless you are them. Super rich pot bellied people. Super rich people who wear shiny clothes, spit out of cars, buy expensive phones and flaunt them by clicking pictures of people they usually don't talk to, also take centuries to click that photo.
 The moment they open their mouth, all that they've earned drops out like coins from slot machines with the displeasing metallic clanking sound matching their ill worded mouths tone.
</rant>

Disclaimer: I could have thought more critically about this subject, but heck I just want to write whatever comes to my mind. Blog v2.00 remember?

Hmm, I shall limit my randomness.



I will finish the other two books by the end of this semester, which means 20 days. I will completely ignore the fact that it took my a month to complete Lolita with my 2 pages per day before bedtime routine. Also that I have my end semester exams starting soon and its only 12 days to my GCDC submission.

A place to note down and over optimism, the two prerequisites of making bucket lists.

Anyway, the second thing.

-Resume writing about Ladakh. 

Well that couldn't happen but I am planning to dedicate entire tomorrow to this. It's all about getting into the zone. Once I am in the zone with the right amount of nostalgia, enough to make me excited but not that much that'll render me dreamy and leave me feeling frustrated about not being able to go back in the near future.

-Start studying for end semesters? . . . .
Bleh.




-Work on the GCDC project?
Oh btw, GCDC is Google Cloud Developer Challenge.
It is going really well. More about it in a different post. But it is almost done. We just need to plug the backend and then frontend together and work on the interface. All major backend problems have been solved.

-Finish the DBMS lab submission.
Well it is almost done. We were asked to make a dbms for a project management software. Completely from scratch. From the SRS (Software Requirement Specs) to the implementation in PostgreSQL.

Well I was recently working on populating the database with fictional data using a Python script. It really was a no-brainer but it was fun randomizing the data and making sure the foreign keys weren't violated.

Well, that is it.

Happy New Year and Happy Diwali :)

Comment about your Diwali break bucket lists and what all you did :)

Stop being an idiot before your exams!

How all of us behave like complete idiots before our exams.

Pre-Examination Rant:

Second in-semester exams start day after tomorrow. We've got Algorithms and Database Managements systems on the first day. I can count the number of lectures of DBMS I have attended on the fingers of my hands, one hand, even if I were suffering from Oligodactyly . I really find it uninspiring and have sympathies for the person who has to handle databases when he graduates. I don't want to be that person.

Its too much theory and blah blah. I am probably wrong and am sure DBMS is a very important subject, but I just don't get inspired by it. I have to start studying it. Probably after this post.


I had a lot of tiny epiphanies today, Um usual pre-examination behavior. Even the beginning of this blog was through one of these mini epiphanies.

Anyway,
I hate something about examinations a lot. No, not about the system or anything. It's about how most of us behave in the few days before exams.

We dedicate few days before examination to studying. Just studying. It may be ten days for few or a maybe a week. These days suck. It's like the only thing that you think you are supposed to do in these few days is to study. And if you are not studying you better be sleeping or eating.

If I look at my complete day in which I was supposedly studying and denying myself of any recreation, I hardly studied. Then what did I do? Nada. Void. Nothing. Neither is my studying proportional to the time I invest in it nor do I permit myself in doing anything else. If I want to take a break, I take a nap. Wake up in cold sweat and rush back to my desk to make up for the extended sleep.

This is completely stupid. Stupid Stupid Stupid.

Shouldn't I just study properly for some part of the day and do something else in the remaining. No. Rather take the small amount of learning and distribute it throughout the day so in the end half of it doesn't make sense and there is hardly any retention. Argh. Who are you trying to fool?! You are just being stupid! You keep checking your Facebook, Twitter, Webmail and Gmail. You keep cycling through them. You read random articles. You strike up a conversation with friends you've not talked to in a long time.

Hey!
Long time!? How have you been?!

And then you don't even look for a reply. You don't give a fuck. You are busy reading comments on Feline videos on Youtube. You think how can everyone be so easily distracted? Oh and in between all this you read a line or two. Pretend you are studying. You are just killing time and waiting for the day to end. Waiting for the exams to end.

Dude, I spent the whole day studying! The course is just too large!

Can we just be a little smart and not waste 10 or 7 days before every exam pretending?! We anyway pretend a lot in our lives. Leave this out please. Don't pretend to study just because everybody is studying the whole day! It is not sacrilegious to do something else than studying before exams. There is no police.

Don't be a sheep!

Source:  Fluent in Spanish

But it is really funny, how I am so touchy and feeling so much about productivity just right before my examinations. Because after it ends, I'll turn a deaf ear to all such pleas in my stupid head. I'll be completely vella. I'll be in the state of doing nothing at all and wasting time till the dates for the next examination are announced.

"Vellapanti is a series of endless actions having the sole aim to kill time and doing chutiyapa at the same time"
Source: UrbanDictionary

True. We miss something when it's denied.

On an unrelated note. Only know you love her when you Let Her Go. Awesome song. Check it out. One of my favorite voices! The band is called Passenger.

 

PS. I have been tampering with the blog layout throughout the day and finally decided upon the sidebar thingy, which you see on the side. Duh. Tell me what you think of it? Please? I just can't decide.

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