यह क्या हो रहा हैं????

मैं सच में हेरान और परेसान हो रहा हूँ...

मैं यहाँ USA में तक़रीबन ६ साल के आस पास रह चुका हूँ, और अभी मुझे लग रहा हैं यह क्या हो रहा हैं... यह सोच मुझे तब आय्ही जब में अपना पिछला ब्लॉग हिन्दी में लिखने की कोशिश कर रहा था... मेरा दिमाग भी हिन्दी में सोचता नही हैं... वह अभी अंग्रेजी में ज्यादा सोचने लगा हैं...

उसी बात पैर अगर ज्यादा गौर करता हूँ तो मुझे समझ में यह आता हैं की हिन्दी में तो मैं कभी सोचता ही नही था... या तो वह गुजराती में होता था (तक़रीबन मेरे जीवन के २१ साल)... फिर इन्फोस्य्स में आने के बाद वह अंग्रेजी में सोचने लगा... फिर भी मुझे गुजराती में लिखने का इतना मन नही करता जितना की हिन्दी में... और एक बात अभी भी मैं जब भी कुछ गणित करता हूँ जैसे की भागकर, गुनाकर, जोडो वगेरा वगेरा तोह मेरा दिमाग उसे सिर्फ़ गुजराती में ही करता हैं पता नही क्यों... अगर में वह अंग्रेजी में करना चाहता हूँ तो बहुत देर लगती हैं...

तो मेरे दिमाग का जो cpu हैं वह हर बार आंकडो को फेले गुजराती में परिवर्तित करता हैं और उसेक बाद वह जो भी गणित करना होता हैं वह करता हैं और फिर वह जवाब को फिर से अंग्रेजी में परिवर्तित करता हैं.... कितने अचम्भे की बात हैं की मेरा दिमाग क्या क्या नही करता हैं सिर्फ़ एक 1 + 1 करने के लिए...

चलो अभी फिर से अलविदा... लगता हैं आज कुछ जायदा ही वेल्ला बैठा हूँ॥ :-)....

क्या आप यह जानते हैं?

मुझे हिन्दी अतिप्रिय हैं और मुझे हिन्दी में लिखना भी बहुत अछा लगता हैं... आप सोच रहे होंगे के यह भाई को क्या हो गया की अचानक आज वह हिन्दी की बात कर रहा हैं :-)...

मुझे कुछ नही हुआ, मैं सिर्फ़ यह गूगल ब्लॉग का यह हिन्दी में लिखाई करने की कोशिश कर रहा हूँ... यह बहुत ही बढ़िया चीज़ बनाई हैं गूगल नैन... तुम लिखो अंग्रेजी में और वह उसको परिवर्तित करके हिन्दी में लिख देता हैं... वह क्या बात हैं...

तो इस प्रकार आप हिन्दी में लिख सकते हूँ अपना ब्लॉग... हिन्दी के इलावा वह और भी भासा इस्तमाल करने देता हैं जैसे की तेलगु, तमिल, मलयालम... आपको सिर्फ़ उसको चुनना हैं अपने ब्लॉग के सेत्तिंग्स में...

हाँ एक और चीज़, अगर आप को घर बैठे कुछ पैसे कमाने हैं तो आप बस google adsense को चुन लीजिये... फिर अपने ब्लॉग को थोड़ा बदल फेर कीजये और adsense को आप अपने ब्लॉग में रख दिज्ये... फिर जब भी कोई आपके ब्लॉग से कुछ क्लिक करके किसी और वेबसाइट पैर जाएगा तो आपको कुछ पैसे मिलेंगे.... आप करके तो देखिये आपको पता चलेगा के यह कितना लाभ दायक हैं...

फिर आपसे अलविदा लेता हूँ.... सुक्रिया... थोड़ा लिंक्स भी क्लिक कर दीजयेगा ;-)...

I have learnt swimming...

I can now say that I have learnt swimming... earlier I used to know how to swim.. but I was never able to take my head or mouth out and breath in... and those who swim can appreciate how difficult it is to take mouth out and breath in.. it took me over a year (well I was not swimming that often that is the main reason here) for learning this... now that I have got in some kind of haphazard movement which I call as rhythm :-) that I am able to stick my neck out for breathing.. I feel elated but not satiated with the my swimming...

I need to learn more... may be practice for some more time... before I try out different hues of swimming like back stroke, breast stroke, butterfly stroke etc etc... it will take time but some day I am sure I would be able to do it...

Right now my current focus is on losing some extra pounds of fat in all unnecessary regions of my body ... I know swimming can do that but I want to do some running and cross ramping to quickly loose as I am still not able to continuously swim for more than one lap...

So far so long... I am able to shed some couple of pounds.. will keep posting my progress...

Yog and Pranayam

Many of you would have wondered why it is not "Yoga" and "Pranayama"... well the reason is I am an Indian and I know how to pronounce "Yog" and "Pranayam" without the adjunct "a" as the suffix. To cut a long story short Englishmen tried very hard to pronounce Yog as Yog but were not finding it easy so they conveniently added a "a" after it. Now since it has become such a hot culture in west that every one now thinks it is "Yoga" but in pure sanskrit and hindi it is "Yog". Even I do say it as "Yoga" and not "Yog" some time but now I am consciously make effort to pronounce it correctly.

OK lets leave that aside for now, the reason I posted this is as I have again started doing yog. By yog I mean mostly paranayam and little bit of asans (see a below) also.

I was aware of the pranayam from the days when I did the "Art of Living" basic course. From that time I am aware of how to do pranayam. I do sudarshan kriya (see b below) on Saturday and/or Sunday. The reason being it takes atleast 30 to 45 minutes to do the kriya.

I saw some videos from Baba Ramdevji and tried to put that in my routine, I just do kapalbhati, bhastrika, AnolomVilom pranayam. And yes the best one I like is Bhramari pranayam. The kind of quietness and clarity which Bhramari gives daily I have never experienced except for after doing long sudarshan kriya.

I think it is starting to have its calming/soothing effects on me already in 3 days... I will let you know about the details later when I have followed for couple of weeks atleast just to make that it is not my new found love for Bhramari is having its effect.

Coming to asans, I do suryanamaskar, sirsasan, sarvangasan, viprit karni and ardhmatsyasan with bhujangasan as the finishing asana in the order. I used to do them regularly and do not remember from where I got this knowledge to do various asan, may be it is something in my gene or may be I have seen my dad doing it in the house during my childhood.

Hopefully this enthusiasm of doing yog and asan goes for some months if not years... I would prefer it to do it continuously for years to come but who knows what is instore for tomorrow... :-)

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a - Note the use of "asan" instead of "asanas" again same reason.
b - sudarshan kriya is also one kind of pranayam which was taught in Art Of Living classes.

Khaman is NOT Dhokla

I am from gujarat and I am proud gujarati like millions around the world. Every gujarati would have eaten khaman and dhokla at some point of time in their lives. For those who are not aware what is Khaman and Dhokla, you can visualise the same from the picture given on the side. The one top (white in colour) is dhokla and Khaman is on the bottom picture ( yellow in colour).

I have lot of friends who are from India outside of gujarat who also love khaman and dhokla. While they love it, I only have one request not to say Khaman as Khaman Dhokla as Khaman is Khaman and IT IS NOT DHOKLA. It is the wrong packaging done by Gits and likes of those companies who have created this misconception by printing Khaman as Khaman Dhokla on their package.

So, please next time you are savouring your taste buds with these two delicious dishes, please do remember which one is what... Happy hogging khaman and dhokla...

After 3 years....

I have been using linux for over 3 years. Now that I look back at it, I have mixed feelings of using linux. On one hand I am happy about things which I have found, learnt and over a period of time experienced. My first install of kubuntu 6.06 on my amd64 laptop to my current install of ubuntu 8.10, I can see so much maturity in linux desktop/laptop whatever you want t say. I sure feel happy that linux system has matured and has become very userfriendly. The other day I was at my friend's place installing linux on his laptop, and I was pleased with how linux (might be a ubuntu usability feature) recognized the printer and configured it for me even without touching anything, no add hardware, no cd required. That was one of the most wow moments of my life where in I could see my friend appreciating the usability features of linux. I am also happy looking at the number of software updates I do not have to keep. I being a geek and always experimenting with latest and greatest I used to keep downloading winamp, firefox and tons of other softwares and installing them to keep the updated. This is no longer the case, well atleast not searching independently. I just update the ubuntu version and I kind of get latest and greatest of all the software. I do not have to hunt down the net for latesst version, I just type some command (I prefer that) or open up synaptic and I am all set. So, over all I am very happy with my system.

On the other hand, I miss out those games which are windows only... I know I know there is wine but still it is not capable enough to play all the games. I loved playing Age of Empires, Caesar etc... while I am able to play Caesar with wine, I was not able to make AOE work. Also, the company that I work for has all its internal application drenched with MS stuff. This does not allow me the flexibility to work on my linux computer in office. Also, I do hate linux some times when things go all messy, and I am not able to figure out wtf I did wrong or what has messed it up... but I do feeel happy when I do a clean install and I am all set with some minor tweaks...

Overall it has saved me time ... I would say naahh due to my company policies of using properietary softwares... but I have learnt a lot... so much so that I always try to spread the word of using open source eg. ubuntu, open office etc to my friends and there are some friends who are pretty darn satisfied with ubuntu installs I have done for them...

Why I do not use Chrome and Stick to Firefox

I tried out google chrome, it is slick, minimalistic however I still stick to firefox for many reasons some of them I am giving here.

1. It does not have adblock, this one is no bummer as google wont block its main source of revenue ;-).
2. No stumble upon, I am one of them who is now addicted to it and there no such thing for chrome yet.
3. No keyword or tagging of bookmarks. I use keyword shortcuts to go to pages quickly, chrom does not have such provision.
4. New process for new tab is memory hog, try opening 14+ tab in chrome and it crashes my computer while firefox crash around 25 or so tab. I know not all will open so many tabs :-).
5. Mouse gesture, I love them esp when I have mouse connected to my laptop.
6. No extension framework or I am not aware of. This does not allow things to be added to chrome.
7. I have used 3.1 version of firefox with new javascript engine it seems much faster compared to chrome in processing the sites like gmail, docs etc.
8. It does not have bookmark syncing between computers. I use foxmark to sync my two laptops and work pc with the same bookmarks.

So, all in all I will stick to firefox :-).