I have never used Windows Vista excessively. Nor do I plan to. However, I love it that Windows Vista is driving more and more people to Linux/Ubuntu.
Vista rules! It helps Linux/Ubuntu rock even harder!!!
Just a heads-up. Orkut seems to be infected by an unknown virus. Anyone who logs in, gets his/her contacts spammed with scraps. You try to scrap them back to apologize, but, horrifyingly the virus blocks you from doing so! *GASP* . You can’t even message. Can’t message. Can’t scrap. OMG! Its like someone cut my phone line!! HELP! HELP!
[Update]
Now is not a good time to have e-mail notification of scraps enabled. Its several times worse if you are forwarding the mail to your phone as sms 
. 30+ sms-es in half an hour and still counting.
[Update Update]
Ah. The issue seems to have been resolved as of now.
‘Sparky Journal’ has been dead for a long time. And from its dead, decaying body, a new blog has re-incarnated (this one, in case you are wondering 
). Here is gathered the essence of 3 different blogs, thus transcending into more than the sum of its parts. Thus. this. blog. has. been. reborn!
P.S: I hope I post more regularly 
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Where does it come from, this quest, this need to solve life’s mysteries, when the simplest of questions can never be answered? Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream? Perhaps we’d be better off not looking at all. Not delving, not yearning. But that’s not human nature. Not the human heart. That is not why we are here. Yet still we struggle to make a difference, to change the world, to dream of hope, never knowing for certain who we will meet along the way. Who among the world of strangers will hold our hand, touch our hearts, and share the pain and triumph?
We dream of hope, we dream of change, of fire, of love, of death. And then it happens; the dream becomes real, and the answer to this quest, this need to solve life’s mysteries finally shows itself like the glowing light of the new dawn. So much struggle for meaning, for purpose. And in the end, we find it only in each other. Our shared experience of the fantastic and the mundane. The simple human need to find a kindred. To connect. And to know in our hearts… that we are not alone.
- Mohinder Suresh, Heroes - 123 - How to stop an exploding man
Immortality. The holy grail of existence. Many strive for it. Some attain immortality in the memory of others. I restrict my thoughts to biological immortality. Living forever. What if you could live forever?
Some would opine that living forever is a curse. You live on while those around you fade away. I feel that beyond a point, either one would become used to relations being transitionary or you remain detached from personal bonds. Since it is logical that the brain cannot contain an infinite amount of memories, older ones would start fading away as new ones take their place. Of course, special memories would take longer to fade away, and some may never fade away. It makes you wonder how a person’s perspectives on various aspects of life, change with time.
Love. How would love change with time? Let us assume that your partner is not immortal. How long would you live alone in the memory of someone who has passed on and will never come back again? I believe you would love again. Not that your former love(s) would be forgotten, but her/their memories wouldn’t/shouldn’t stop you from loving again. Now,what if your partner is immortal as well? Would the love the two of you have, fade with time? If the love was strong enough to survive and flourish for an ordinary person’s lifetime, why would it not endure forever? Of course, social institutes like marriage would become meaningless as our lives traverse the rise and fall of many civilizations. Having someone who stands with you always, as the world around you keeps on changing, would provide valuable companionship and relief in an everchanging existence. The relation would transcend all other bonds formed. The two would understand and know each other almost as well as they know themselves. They say that love is immortal, and I believe in that.
Power. Immortality is inevitably linked with power. “The power to rule the world”, so to speak. A day-to-day profession or the like, would soon become meaningless, prolly after a century or so. Once there is enough material wealth to sustain oneself comfortably or even luxuriously, then the need for work fades away. Believe me, you would have to be really dump if you don’t figure out how to become “rich” even after a few centuries. Thus material wealth would become of less importance. Depending on the psychological makeup of the person, they would probably pursue either knowledge or power (or other possibilities, these being the highest probable ones). I am fighting hard to supress any influences by fictional characters on my thoughts (notably Vandal Savage). If the person is possessed of sufficient intellect and cunningness, then it would only be a matter of time before he succeeds atleast partially, to rule the world. And time is something he would never run out of. However, this train of thought is severely affected by factors beyond biological immortality. If physical harm can still threaten the immortal’s life, then the future would be a lot bleaker, with people on power being under a crosshair almost perpetually. However, with sufficient cunningness, one can circumvent such weaknesses. One literary character that I can’t avoid thinking about in this context is that of Professor Moriarty. His “empire” was large and powerful, yet no one, except for Sherlock Holmes, figured out it was him at the center, controlling this vast empire of crime and curroption. Now imagine someone who has had centuries, or even millenia, to plan such an operation. No one would ever guess who the centre figure is until its too late. The web would extend globally, securing power through organizations and proxies until the time is ripe for the “King” to step in. Of course, this is just one of the possibilities and many more would present themselves depending on the intellect of the immortal.
Knowledge. The ocean. Knowledge would never exhaust, for the rate of new knowledge/information being formed, is much greater than the rate at which an immortal can intake them, atleast a Homo Sapien immortal. Having survived for ages and seen the rise and fall of civilizations, he would be uniquely placed in helping and providing information for the progress of science. Eventually, however, our quest would be for metaphysical knowledge. The secret of life. The existence of God. The meaning of existence. The pursuit of these, would easily take a lifetime, even the lifetime of an immortal. One day maybe these questions would be answered. If there is an answer, and if there is a chance of finding it, then given infinite time at your disposal, someday you would hit on the answer. The pursuit of knowledge alone can keep one occupied for eternity. All other wordly pleasures and pursuits would eventually fade away.
At some point or the other, possibly, we would feel the monotony and loneliness in living forever. However, most would find it in them to live on. The reason to live on? Varies with people. Love. Knowledge. Curiosity. Transient pursuits.
Corny they may be, but these are some Bollywood “quotes” that have caught my fancy. See if you can figure out which movie they come from.
“I am slave to the law of the land. Don’t see this as an emperor’s cruelty, but as a slave’s helplessness“.
“Why do you feel that all the burdens of the world rest on your frail shoulders? Who do you think you are? What is the point in praying to God when you don’t even value the life he has given you? I may not know much about your life, but I do know that what you have, may be less in your eyes, but from an outsider’s view, you have so much.”
“.. you first job, your first suit, your first salary, the first time you touched a girl, the first time you kissed her, the first time your heart fluttered… how many such days do you remember? .. 15? 20? 25? .. 30, right? 30 special days, 30 special days.. you’ve lived for 30 years and you only remember 30 special days? what happened to the rest? you have 90 days left to live. you can waste them agonising about death, or you can live 3 lifetimes in these 90 days.”
There are more. Will post them when I remember…
I got this from an old blog of mine. The article is written by RainMirage on E2.
Hopeless romantics believe in love and fairy-tales. They dream of roses and candlelight, walking on the beach at sunset, and dancing in the rain. They know that somewhere out there is a knight in shining armour ready to carry them off, or a beautiful princess waiting to be carried off into the sunset. Hopeless romantics believe in true love, and the eternal bliss that comes from being united with one’s soulmate is what they crave most.
Hopeless romantics recognize in themselves the ability to love infinitely deeply, and they ache to be loved with the same fervour in return. When a hopeless romantic has someone to lavish their affection on, lavish they do. Hopeless romantics sometimes write love letters full of poetic phrases and send flowers, but mostly they try to find a thousand thoughtful little ways to show their love. They make romance into an art form.
Hopeless romantics wear rose-coloured glasses. In their eagerness to find “the one”, a hopeless romantic may either be extraordinarily picky or not discerning enough. Hopeless non-romantics think that hopeless romantics are delusional and too intense. Other than the seeming futility in the search for a soulmate, nothing frustrates a hopeless romantic more than a significant other who does not understand the hopeless romantic temperament.
Sometimes, in this cynical world, it seems like the population of hopeless romantics is declining. One has only to look at the number of movies and songs about love that are currently popular to prove otherwise. It may also seem that there are many more hopelessly romantic women than romantic men. This isn’t surprising in a culture where a man might get snapped at for opening the door for a woman. Men and women often have different ways of expressing their emotions, and the number of hopelessly romantic men is probably much higher than anyone could tell simply by observation.
Hopeless romantics are the idealists, the sentimental dreamers, the imaginative, and the fanciful. They give the world its once-upon-a-times and happily-ever-afters. Hopeless romantics may have their feet on the ground, but their souls fly somewhere over the rainbow.
All my delusions of youth were shattered when I took my cousin shopping last time I went home. We went to this really classy place (according to my cousin) and I was busy shopping. However, after a while, I noticed that my cousin was hardly interested in anything and was just standing around, staring at the ceiling. I asked him what was wrong.
‘Nothing here really interests me’, he said. ‘Oh-kay’, came my skeptical reply. I wondered why. This place had some of the best garments collection in the city. So I asked, ‘then where do you want to go?’. ‘Oh, there is this place I like..’.
Half an hour later, we were standing outside this box-like room that called itself a garments store. My cousin went in and I skeptically followed him. Together with the boy at the counter, we filled up 3/4th of the entire “showroom”.
The moment I stepped inside, I was blinded by the dazzling lights, only to realize that it was the sunlight being reflected from the clothes there. There was metal everywhere. Every single piece of clothing had metal on it. Rather, there was metal in all shapes and sizes, with strips of clothing hanging from it.
He took a jeans with a few (thankfully) cloth straps and only 2 metal buckles on it. He showed it to me. Trying to appear supportive, I made a long ‘hmmm’ and suggested he try it out. His face eager, he made his way to the “trials” room and soon came out. I was, somehow, reminded of Joey pretending to be 19. Keeping a straight face, I nodded and said it looked okay. I was very careful in choosing my words. It was a tricky path to walk.
As expected, his choices became more and more unpalatable, until I had to put the brakes on a pant that looked like the love child of Denim and a chainsaw. A very wicked chainsaw. Deciding that I have had enough, I told him I would wait outside.
As I watched from outside, many “youngsters” came and went, all dressed in flashy clothes and heavy metal. I liked heavy metal but not in this way. A melancholic thought descended on me at that moment. Have I grown old? Has time and fads moved on, leaving me behind, a relic of the past? Is the desire to wear clothes made from cloth, that doesn’t have holes in it, old-fashioned now? I always used to pride myself at being part of the “youth of the nation”. Suddenly, I felt so old.