Many say that disease is bad… But, my typhoid really got me cleaned up in my mind.. Here’s what’s there to it.
- Learned that the projects, the hard-work I am doing ain’t worth it. Contrary to my beliefs, it doesn’t make me happy. Aye, I do get the satisfaction but that is only ’cause of completion, the feeling of “doing something in the day rather than wasting time”. But, thats not true happiness. I realize that I am getting more frustrated day by day.
- What makes me happy is to “help others”. Like the ROSHNI project I am doing. I would love to see visually impaired person who regularly visit Bharti Building to navigate freely through the entire building. There are many other examples, some involving psychology. I would like an opportunity to say so much as a “single line” to a demotivated person which he just “carries” onto his rest of life to become what he desires. So, work directed at making people happy while earning money is the thing for me.
- For myself, as always, I would like to go to adventurous trips in life particularly water bounds: rafting, cliff jumping, river crossing, rapplling etc.
I also realized that I curse myself too much for the high absorbing nature of my body. I shouldn’t do that. The high absorbing nature is needed for times like these: typhoid, adventurous sports etc. If you don’t the food to get absorbed much, then don’t eat much. Our body is a well-built machine, built to handle worst circumstances, difficult situations etc. Maintaining such a complex machine is also a hard job. The better the machine, harder is to maintain it. For a good supercomputer, you need ample amount of power, best air-conditioning etc. to suit its requirements. Same is with body. My body, being a better absorber will withstand more difficult situations than the one in which mostly drools out.
The mechanism of my body is as follows: The body looks for the incoming food. Digest it and absorbs all. Very good principle here. Absorb all, waste none. Whatever is needed, body consumes, rest is stored as fat to be used in difficult situations(You know what I am talking about…). So if you sleep after eating, due to lack of metabolism, there will be greater amount of fat generated.
So, don’t overeat. Your body doesn’t need it. Don’t undereat. Your body requires energy to work properly and definitely Don’t fast. You cannot regenerate the loss occurred by, say 6-hour-damaged of air conditioning system of the supercomputer room; by running the same at a lower temperature for the next 6 hours. That simply won’t do. You would still have to run it at the prescribed temperature. Whats lost is lost.
“A well maintained body, healthy mind with a twist of fun is what is needed!”
Thats all folks!
Incentive: Some philosophy.
Well, I think I have understood myself today. What I really want to do in life is things which give instant part results like web development, embedded systems. In these things you can immediately see what you have done. I wish to aim for that.
Secondly, I have understood that there is a cause for which great people fight for. There may be evil cause, cause to gain money through unfair means, cause to gain fame through unfair means. No offense, there are such people whose names come directly to your mind when I say this. After all who can have (m/b)illion friends without making a few enemies. But, there are people of other type too, or so as we know them like the great peace nobel prize winner. There are both kinds of people in this world and a balance is maintained between them. Both kinds are required.
About me, I have found that I get energy through fighting for a fair cause. I have tried to be evil, a cheater, a fraud who gains through unfair means (just as an experiment, don’t mention it in public!). In due time I came to realise the more I gained through it, the more unhappy I became. I became reckless, indiscipline and unable to control my mind. So, I will stick to the good side. This is the side which I choose right now and will stick to it(until further notice 
). It gives me energy, pleasure and satisfaction.
Incentive: Don’t get lured by the topic. This is expression of my monotonous life. Its plain boring. No need to read it.
Holidays are due and I am wasting a lot of time. I feel like doing work but the heat in Delhi is stricly against it. Also, I have a boring SURA to complete. So, here I am in my cousin’s house sitting on my laptop trying to do some profiling for my project. I have a class at 3 pm which I don’t want to go because of the heat. But there is a higher power inside which is dominating the will of not to go.
Yesterday I heard the online speeches of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates which somewhat motivated me. It compeled me to do things as if it was the last day of my life. I straight away left for my cousin’s house. Sometime later on the way, I started regretting my decision. It was too hot and I was tired. I didn’t wish to travel. There was no going back. I reached there and immediately dozed off. Right now my profiling has not completed so I am writing more. There is this dark room with lights off. Some sunlight coming from gap in the curtains. On my right there are statues, showpieces. On my left nice sofa. Laptop on the table in front. Nothing much.
Today, I wasted a whole day upgrading OS on my computer. I have got two operating systems in my laptop. Ubuntu and the other Ubuntu. I wished to upgrade both to the latest version. One from Lucid to Natty and the other from Maverick to Natty.
- I first upgraded Lucid to Maverick accidently via command line which I got from internet. I didn’t knew that it won’t work.
- I then downloaded the Natty iso image from Ubuntu.com
- I tried to mount it but it wouldn’t mount.
- I then created a disc out of the iso image but came to know that the image was broken.
- I then went to Maverick and tried the network install. This time not through command line but through System -> Administration -> Update Manager.
- It went well but in the last few minutes of downloading but then puff!.. the network was down.
So, here I am. The results : One Maverick and the other Maverick. Back to the start-line of the race track.
Lesson Learnt : Always upgrade* through System -> Adminstration -> Update Manager. That is the fatest and the safest option.
Now after writing the above line, I think I have completed the race.
P.S. : Maverick, Natty, Lucid are the versions of Ubuntu, a linux based operating system.
*Conditions Apply. Fresh installation is always better than upgrading.
Incentive: Its clear from the title
Yesterday, my driver picked me up from my college. I was so exited to go home after a week-long boring exams. In that exitement I phoned my father and told him that I am going to pick him up from work and we (family) will go for an outing. He agreed. I picked him up. On the way home, we talked about a lot of things. I asked my father about his work, his plans for the next day while he inquired about my exam performance, hostel life etc. Initially it all went well but all of a sudden, I lost control. I started taking about money, hostel fees, buying a new Desktop and things like that. I forgot that there was a poor driver in front driving the car. My father was annoyed in silence. This made me silent too. At home, I got a harsh scolding.
I then realised two things:
- If my driver is a good man, he must have felt bad.
- If by some chance he is a bad guy, then I have set a mouth-watering bait for him to catch. He knows our house, our workplace, about our joint-family etc.
Now, I think I should let bygones be bygones. While writing this blog, I am feeling a bit comfortable as I have expressed what was struck inside me for the whole day.
I wish that I never do such a thing again.
Incentive : To remove the emotional stress which spoils my ability to do work in day to day life.
An example..
50 min remaining …… coding.
45 min remaining …… blank.
30 min remaining …… opening another problem.
20 min remaining …… looking here and there on other’s points.
10 min remaining …… what do I do?. No work.
Interval ….. talking with brother.
Challenge Phase ….. opened two problems…. knew they were wrong but still don’t want to take risk….. So, somebody else got those points.
These are the things that happened at my topcoder contest. I spend some time to analyze why did this “lack of confidence” thing happened and hereby present some of the very vast list of explanations:
- Miser : Psychological term that dictates that we tend to take shortcuts in our life. I always try to get to the end without putting much of my hard work since, in the end only the result matters.
- Time Pressure : Happens with most of us. I solved the problem today in 20 – 25 min but during competition, I didn’t gave it much try when 30 min were still remaining. I thought I wouldn’t be able to complete it.
- Scared of Competition : When you actually see other scoring in front of you, it gets messy.
- Emotionality : How does it matter if I don’t do well?. This ain’t going to effect my life, so why bother?. But this “mentality” really creates an impact on personality.
These are the reasons I could think of. I haven’t come across any standard mentionable way to cure them apart from forcing myself to be more “self reliant”. If you have got any (more), please post them here. It would really help me a lot. Thanks in advance.
By mentioning this, I therefore complete the first step to problem solving i.e. :
“Know and accept the problem.”
Rest is to be continued….
Incentive : Don’t be too exited or too sad about achievements or failures.
There’s a little boy and on his 14th birthday he gets a horse… and everybody in the village says, “How wonderful. The boy got a horse!” And the Zen master says, “We’ll see.” Two years later, the boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg, and everyone in the village says, “How terrible!” And the Zen master says, “We’ll see.” Then, a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off and fight… except the boy can’t ’cause his legs all messed up. and everybody in the village says, “How wonderful.” Now the Zen master says, “We’ll see.”
Charlie Wilson is pleased with the performance of Gus in the movie. But, the latter says “We’ll see”.
Actually, It was them (US in collaboration with Pakistan) who set up Taliban in Afganistan against the mighty Soviet Union. It was a good motive to stop the Russian bombardment of Afganistan in which lots of civilians were affected. Now that same “Taliban” is terrorizing US , Pakistan and its own mother of origin , Afganistan. Crazy world we live in…
(Refer to Google for details)
A bright boy:
Studies well for the tenth board , gets good marks and is very happy. But the coaching center head says ” We’ll see”. He goes through hell for two years, gets selected in IIT. All the people around him are horribly exited. But the IIT professors say ” We’ll see”. He goes into IIT puts a lot of effort and finally gets placed in Google!. Everybody congratulate him but he himself exclaims ” We’ll see”.
Lesson learnt : I don’t think there is a need to explain. Stay neutralize. You never know what it gets to in the end, or for that matter, will there be any…
Today, like everyday I learned something. Its worth expressing. The topic as already mentioned is “incentive”. Yes, “incentive”. My good friend taught me that (Don’t ask me the name). He told me that we should always have a motive before we do something.
As an example, I was developing a website a few days ago, just for no reason, just for time-pass. Nothing came out of it. I worked on it for two days and then left it like that half completed.
Similarly, when I launched this website, I only wanted to launch it and keep it as it is. (an incentive) But, one day I started browsing my website again (with no incentive at all). I was just looking at it, moving from one page to another, doing nothing. Honestly speaking, I was just pleasing my old work.
These are the examples of various “time-wastes” that I have done. So, from now on I’ll be more careful. I’ll always first ask myself (or write, whatever) the purpose of doing something. Then, and only then I would move ahead. I think you should try that too. It serves in many ways including,
- Helps you develop the love for the work.
- Increases your speed of doing the work.
- You do work better , get focused and don’t get distracted.
- Finally, you reward yourselves for the work if it gets to the end.
Incentive is good but only having incentive leads to nothing. You need to implement it also.
“Good incentives require substantial hard work too.”
So let me conclude this with my incentive of writing this post. From now on all my blogs( If ever I write any) will contain this word just next to their heading. Thank you my dear friend.
Incentive: I wrote this so that I never forget the importance of the word incentive.
At first my body refused to believe that this deadly semester has ended. For nearly three days, I had the feeling in my mind that something is still left to be done. My mind would not accept the calm atmosphere and I checked the email again and again for any important information.
This was the result of the so called ‘deadly semester’ that occurred in our life. God knows how we all (each one of us 
) got out from it alive. After the “three days”, I began checking for the grades. Got a satisfying sgpa this semester. So, here we go again.
As I remember, the previous post written by me (on facebook ) on ‘failing to get good grades’ ended with a lot of good suggestions from you people. I tried concentrating on exam performance. Hmmm. I got something (…) . That increased my results by some bit. Thanks to the commentors.
But (stressed… syntactically wrong though!) ….. I came to know the unsolvable inappropriate grading system that we have here. Its nothing personal dirty minds! I am happy with my grades. Its just business and the comments will convey you!. I will only give examples, without names. Consider that I was on the positive side whenever you think it applied to me. Still I am writing.
- Two students getting 96 and 80 marks in the same subject and 79 and 90 in another respectively. The former student got one A and an A- while the latter got both A’s.
- Two students got the same grades after securing 77 and 65.5 marks in the same subject.
- A student getting 8 for securing 71.7 marks and another getting 9 for 72.1 marks.
- Someone getting a 6 in the practical subject with no mention of any reason from the professor.
All the cases are genuine and to the best of my knowledge. I take full responsibility for any mistakes that may have cropped up.
Now I would say why worry? lets …. oops …. sorry…. no…. I will not write further. First I would like to know your opinion on the system .
So, I got very little suggestions than I was expecting. Anyways, here’s my thought regarding the stituation:
- Encourage a cumulative grading system where the “weighted mean” of all the grades should be taken as the final result. By weighted mean I mean to say :
- sigma (g(i)*c(i)) / sigma (c(i))
- where,
g(i) is the grade secured in the ith subject
c(i) is the number of credit awarded for the ith subject
This clears out some of the issue.
- The student should have the freedom of clearing his /her issues with the professor on a practical subject’s grade.
- The professor should outline the grading system of the course beforehand and should adapt to it. He/she should not change the relative grade just by a factor of 1 or 2 marks.
Hi I am Dhruv Jain, second year student from IIT Delhi. About myself I can tell you that I love everything around me viz. air, water, land, fire, weather , hot or cold, food, girls and most important ”my dear life”. You can make out from this what kinda person I am.
I don’t have any idea as such but this website was merely created as a “conclusion” for the web development work that I did in my three months summer break. It was complete velapanti. You could help add content in it or publicise your blogs through the same. I assure you whatever relevant you add here good or bad, long or short would be appreciated. As, the title suggest, I wish IIT people especially from IIT Delhi to come forward and lend me a hand in developing the website by suggesting new ideas, adding information and inviting friends.
