Now isn’t this a little amusing? New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day were blackout days for SMS users, meaning that they would be charged a whole rupee for sending text messages on those two days. They were not national holidays, nor were they entirely special days for everyone. Yet, everyone had to bear the brunt of premium texts on those two days. Why? That’s because SMS usage peaks on those two days, especially before, during and after midnight. Users are quite active in these two days, and most of them don’t mind spending a rupee per text.
Compare that to today, 26th January. It is a national holiday. The Republic Day of the nation is expected to be a day of importance to all Indians. But that doesn’t seem to hold true in case of SMS users. Yes, there were many text messages sent today as well, but not too many for a blackout to be declared. This isn’t a complaint; I’m glad there wasn’t a blackout, but it’s just a little amusing that a national holiday doesn’t get the same kind of attention that a so-called-holiday (New Year’s Day) gets.
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It is really hard to keep track of time. Sometimes it crawls slower than a snail, and sometimes it races faster than…well, whatever is fast. While there are scores of examples for this, the latest example is how January 2012 is crawling, and how fast 2011 has melted away. Sometimes I wonder if 2012 is moving on slowly because it wants people to enjoy their last year on Earth! Heh, even if all that hype around the end of the world were to be true, it can’t change the fact that time is moving slowly now. Perhaps that’s a good thing, because there are only three months remaining in this academic year, and after that there will be nothing but chaos.
This three months factor is a bit creepy to be honest. While it sure is great to finish graduation, it is also a bit scary for the lazy creature inside me because there won’t be time for slacking anymore. So I do hope these three months take their own time to get finished, so that I can finish tying up any loose ends in life.
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XAT is a very old examination and is considered to be quite tough, almost as tough as CAT. Yet it does not attract the same amount of applications as CAT does. Still, it does have a lot of competition, and at the moment it is sort-of my final hope for pursuing an MBA in 2012. I missed the cut-off for SIBM by more than two whiskers, but it still felt very close! And since I felt I wrote XAT better than SNAP, I do have my hopes up for this exam. The results are expected towards the end of this week and I have to say that I’m excited about it! If XAT does not open up any gates for me, then it will become a confusing path ahead…
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And so it comes to an end. The final moments of the workshop were certainly fun, and rather amusing+inspiring as well. As the 40-odd participants bid goodbye to each other, I did notice that for a moment I felt sad that I wouldn’t be coming to the hall again the next day, and there wouldn’t be no more prancing around or relaxing on the carpets after all the prancing. In five short days the workshop has certainly made an impact on all the participants, including me. It’s not over entirely though. There’s a follow-up session on Sunday, which will again be a full-day session, but I’m not really sure that I’ll be attending that one. So for now at least, it’s goodbye to YES+ and a huge thanks for the memorable five days that it brought along with it.
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7 hours. Actually, it was somewhere around 7 1/2 hours. Day 4 was a long session of 7 1/2 hours and I expected it to be full of action. Well it was, but it still left a hole somewhere in the middle. The games, the group-lunch, the explanation of the seven levels; all these were quite interesting. But at the end of the day, it still left a void in there somewhere. I get the feeling that this workshop is being held without a complete plan, or that the plan is not yet complete. That said, it was truly wonderful to see so many people lose their stage fear and feel more confident about themselves. The lunch activity was fun too, with people sharing their menu with the others! Yes, such activities are hard to find over here in Karimnagar, and it reminded me of the days I spent at my school in Hyderabad! Coming back to Karimnagar, the day was too long but rewarding as well. At the same time, I’m glad that the workshop will be coming to an end tomorrow evening, so that I can reclaim my evenings!
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After a minor accident prevented me from performing any asanas or pranayams, I do have to admit that today’s session was a little tiring. Everyone around me were doing something while all I could do was sit and wait for some action. The concepts taught today once again seemed quite generic. However, they are quite useful and one would surely benefit from them.
So far my thoughts about this workshop are mixed. The sudarshan kriya does seem to be worth its weight, but the rest of the workshop should have been a little more…full. At the moment there seems to be a lot of what is known as filler content. Maybe I’m just impatient, or maybe I never knew a 3-hour session could be so long. Whatever the reason might be, I hope the remaining two days bring up something new and better. Tomorrow being a Sunday, I hope there’s lots of action!
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Today was all about learning the Sudarshan Kriya, the USP of this workshop in my opinion. I say that because all the basic pranayams and other words of advice are…a bit general. Yes they are interesting, but not entirely new to be honest. But the sudarshan kriya is quite different and is worth the entire ticket of admission of the workshop. Simply put, it is a breathing exercise, and it improves a person on seven levels – body, breath, mind, intellect, memory, ego and the soul. Now that’s something which is quite impressive. The first session today was conducted through an audio tape, and it was very refreshing. As with the rest of the workshop, this session is supposed to be strictly confidential as well. And of course, the effects of this kriya will be evident only through regular practise.
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When I first signed up for the YES+ workshop, I was a bit doubtful of whether I took the right decision in signing up for a 5-day workshop which would take up almost 4 hours of my time every evening, and an entire Sunday in between. From what I knew of it earlier, it taught various breathing exercises and aasanas, most of which I knew. Still, I joined it as the other aspects interested me – complete personality development, relaxing the mind and similar stuff. today was the first day, and I’m not regretting the decision to join the workshop. Yes, the aasanas and exercises were all familiar, and there was a lot of concepts that were old too, but since I never put any of those concepts in action till now, I felt this was a good way to get started. I actually did a lot of exercises that I had only heard about till now.
Since I’ve virtually signed a non-disclosure agreement, I can’t write even in my own blog what actually goes on in the workshop, but the experience of it is quite satisfying. Other people said it was the best experience of their lives. Well, one down, four days to go.
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The blackout is here! Wikipedia has a shiny new banner that displays its angst against SOPA. The “learn more” links helpfully suggests that the website can be accessed by turning off Javascript in the browser, but there’s a very good chance that a lot of people won’t click that link and observe that line! I did find it irritating to see that black page whenever I wanted to search for something, but once I disabled Javascript, the site was back. I do have to admit that those few minutes when I was annoyed by the blackout were very irritating, and I did curse SOPA. That’s the objective of this blackout anyway. So here’s hoping that SOPA gets scrapped soon and that we don’t have to see another blackout like this one.
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If India is concerned about concerns about screening of content on Facebook and Google, then at the moment the US and most of the online world is worried about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). This act proposes to shut down any site which has even the smallest of illegal content. This could affect many huge sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, Youtube, and many such sites which depend on user-generated content. In protest of this act, many websites have started to protest, with each website protesting in a novel way. Wikipedia has come out with its own plan to protest against the act. It has decided to shut down for a whole day. That day is tomorrow.
Now it will surely be interesting to note how a netizen can go through 24 hours without Wikipedia. The website estimates that around 100 million people will be affected. I do agree that the SOPA act needs to be stopped, but is it really necessary for Wikipedia to resort to such a move? Other websites like Google have merely covered their logos with black boxes to protest. But Wikipedia’s move seems to be the strangest yet. This is very much like the raasta rokos that we get to see in real life. Inconvenience is caused to people while someone is protesting. Wikipedia is free to do whatever it likes with its own site, but it should have thought about the massive number of people who would face problems due to the blackout. Well, let’s wait and watch how the blackout goes!
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