Benjamin Franklin

Author, Inventor, Scientist and Revolutionary.

Quote:
Who is wise? He that learns from everyone.
Who is powerful? He that governs his passions.
Who is rich? He that is content.
Who is that? Nobody.

Venkat Reddy

Few Quotes on Social Service

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
by
Mahatma Gandhi

“Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.”
By
H Jackson Brown Jr

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
By
Rabindranath Tagore

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.”
By
Benjamin Disraeli

“Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.”
By
Albert Schweitzer

“Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.”
By
George Bernard Shaw


Venkat Reddy

Grameen Bank

We all are quite familiar with the Grameen bank, a micro credit lending institution which lends micro loans to poor without any collateral. Lesser known is that it was conceptualized by a economics professor Muhammad Yunis who returned back to Bangladesh after a short stay in US. He was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace prize for his contributions in lifting millions from abject poverty. Most of the current micro-lending programs are derivatives of the initial concept he started. Watch this wonderful speech at Brown University he gave recently, he talks about a interesting idea called "Social Business" wherein contrary to the aid programs he says how new business models can engage poor to lift them out of poverty.

http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/buniverse/videos/view/?id=129

Its slightly lengthy in time with introductory talks, but worth the time.

Venkat Reddy

Subprime

Currently there is a big hoopla about the ongoing meltdown of subprime housing market, apart from the scary tone of the articles I couldn't understand a iota what the heck is a subprime crisis, if you too feel the same way, you should watch this comical conversation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ_qK4g6ntM&NR=1

Damm capitalism, look at the irony of the situation, we as individuals have choices either to invest or save. Invest and your money gets gambled by so called reputable Wall Street firms, or save to see it depreciate with inflation. Hmm what should we do?

Venkat Reddy

Spaces

By spaces I mean the buildings where we work, live and visit. For most part we have a notion of how any particular building looks, I mean the structural composition and typical shapes. Its rare we come across buildings which invoke a sense of awe and wonder, they could be nothing of any sort of what we thought a building should be. Rather than meeting a pure functional aspect, if a building can invoke a emotional response like one we feel when we watch a great painting, thats a remarkable architecture. Few days back I was watching a architectural documentary called "Sketches of Frank Gehry", an interesting analogy I found was that you can think of his buildings as abstract paintings. In abstract art the painter breaks apart various objects and reassembles the pieces in a abstract form, instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context.

Attached picture is one of his famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao Spain.

Venkat Reddy

Dreams

Most of my growing up days have been quite passive, except for passive recollection of events, I barely remember putting my mind to any active thinking. In the last days of engineering one classmate noted in my farewell book by saying "if you don't dream how will dreams come true". It didn't even cross my mind the depth of that statement at that time,
years later every time I recollect it, it just drives sense.

Watch this nice music video of a kid who dreams up a spaceship to destroy a impending meteorite.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIExZvqX4j4

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."
By
C S Lewis

Venkat Reddy

Tenth Dimension

With our natural perception of length, width and depth its easy for us to sense a 3 dimensional world, but any dimension beyond that is something incomprehensible. Here is a interesting video of visualizing what higher dimensions would feel like. I was lost after 4th.

Mind bender:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU1fixMAObI&feature=related

There was a nice comment by someone saying "we exist only in between the nothingness of the nothing"

Venkat

Elegance

If you look at each piece of the picture, a run down scooter, shabby sidewalk, two old Indian women reading a newspaper sitting on the scooter, it doesn't look that interesting, rather sounds silly. But some how it looked quite interesting, may be its the elegance of the two women in their crisp Sarees totally immersed in their task oblivious to the surrounding.

Picture Source:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/boaz/2183823587/

Venkat Reddy

Moods 1/10, Numb

“Self-acceptance comes from meeting life's challenges vigorously. Don't numb yourself to your trials and difficulties, nor build mental walls to exclude pain from your life. You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously. You will find peace not in denial, but in victory.”
By
J. Donald Walters

Photo Source
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adrbranco/2162220915/

Venkat Reddy

Wrapping up 2007

Start of new year offers a chance of another 365 days to make the best, but before we set the course its good to reflect on the past 365 days to understand where we are and where we want to head to. With its due share of ups and downs, for the most part of it 2007 has been quite good especially in terms of my personal growth. Here are some reflections of my 2007:

Thanks to Web 2.0 tools like Blogs and Google Reader, never had I read so many influential posts, among the best I should thank Atanu Dev's blog on Indian development and Steve Pavlina's blog on personal development for their positive impact on me. For 2008 I need to find more quality blogs and reduce the 200+ feed clutter to a manageable chunk.

Though I did start blogging in the middle of year with around 50+ posts so far, thats minuscule compared to what I really wanted to. For 2008 post more summaries of other blogs and my personal views on various topics, to put a quantitative target 4 posts/week would be reasonable. I liked the idea of "Moods" I tried with couple of posts, hopefully I could come up with more such ideas.

Books are one aspect I really enjoyed for most part of 2007, the ones I could recommend are "Selfish Gene", "Losing my Virginity" by Richard Branson, "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer, "More than Human" by Theodre Sturgeon (partially read), "Richest Man in Babylon" by George S Clason and "The History of Money" by Jack Weatherford. Though I read around 10-12 books, thats no where close to my goal 25 books/year.

Thanks to Netflix for helping me find a lot of quality movies from hollywood, bollywood and a lot of foreign languages. Few 2007 recommendations are , Heaven and Earth, The Straight Story, Apocalypto, , Driving Miss Daisy, North County, Only Human, Life is Beautiful, Garden State, The Last Kiss, Anwar (Hindi), Mr and Mrs Iyer (hindi), Black (hindi), Downfall (German), Road Home (Chinnese), "Nowwhere in Africa" (German). Out of total 68 movies in 2007, most of them have been documentaries on Biographies and Arts. Going into 2008 it would be predominately documentaries but will also like to watch more foreign movies.

Thanks for Atanu Dev for his posts of Indian Education, "Reach a child" initiative is something I would really like to make it happen in 2008.

Importance of Spiritual pursuit cannot be de-emphasized, getting to know "Isha-Yoga" has been a wonderful thing in last Nov, looking forward to meet Sadguru and experience advanced programs of Isha in 2008.

Lately I am convinced natural vegan diet is way to go, rather than a sudden change in the diet it would be better to make a gradual transition from meat based foods to fruits and vegetables based diet. So the goal is to make the transition complete by 2008.

When it comes to exercise never had I been able to keep up the rigor I had in college days. For 2008 it would be more disciplined visits to YMCA, with more participation in group classes. Seattle surrounding is such a wonderful place to explore hikes and road bike trips, purchasing a road bike is in the plans. Golf and swim lessons are in the pipes for summer.

On a personal level, smoking is one nasty addiction I never feel good about myself, though I have been away from it on and off, this is one serious hurdle I need to overcome if I need to make complete healthy lifestyle. So watch out tobacco you are history no later than early 2008.

With this let me make some peace with 2007 and heartily welcome 2008

Have a great year everyone.

Venkat Reddy.