About Minimalism, Zen..

Getting Creative

Recently came across the concept of "minimalism" in a blog. Very simple, common sense idea but that I have (most of us have actually) lost when caught up in the society's swirls. Between this blog and one another blog of his, the author Leo covers lot of relevant aspects of life.  Most of the posts are on the dot. I like the author's crisp and up-to-point short posts on each subject. Most such authors of self improvement, personal productivity create needlessly longer posts that fails to get enough attention from me atleast. This was different. For the past two weeks, as a baby step towards getting my life right, I have managed to do the following  -

• Stopped visiting deal websites like slickdeals, deals2buy etc as often as I used to. If I dont have a need to buy anything, I dont have to know which is going cheap or is on a deal. Lot of peace and time saver for me.
• Almost completely stopped watching old movies which I have watched already. Even classic ones included. This has given me better sleep because of more sleep time as thats when I watch old movies as I do not have cable connection (another good thing atleast till now).
• Spend more time with family. ( I could do better but lot of improvements here).

I hope to keep continuing the above. Some others on my to-do lists are to eat healthy and do more towards my careers and to my immediately family.  Let see how far I go.

Today's pic shows my son busy at one of his creative stints. I liked the composition particularly when I cropped the pic to fit the rule of thirds. The DOF and IQ are very good from my new Tamron 28-75 f2.8.

Whose Line is it anyway ? - #16

• When we moved out of our previous home last month, I was eagerly looking forward to that. One reason, amongst others, was the endless graffiti on walls by my son using his crayons. In the new home, his artistic skills get itchy I guess when he sees the new white walls. I had told him strictly no graffiti on the walls. He had to ask why. Rather than concocting a reason, I thought, the real reason would be confounding enough to him not to ask further. So I told, because, we dont own the house and the owner may not like it when we move out. With a mix of frustrated and bored expression, he cried out loud "Why don't we move to a house which does NOT have any owner ?".  
• We thought we have somehow successfully imbibed in my son the fact of him being a vegetarian. But we do consume eggs and he has been french toast for breakfast for the past few weeks. He knew that eating chicken is not vegetarian. While on the subject with my wife today, he really did not like the fact that the eggs actually come from chickens and that we eat those eggs. My wife tried to convince him that eating chicken is not vegetarian while its okay to eat the egg. Something did not seem okay in his little mind and he wanted the eggs to be "more" vegetarian. He wondered loudly, "Why don't we instead buy eggs from VEGETARIAN chickens ?"

A recent conversation between my wife, my son and I. I was commenting on how expensive Pre-school is (~6K USD). The little one was eagerly listening in apparently."How much will you earn when you grow big ?" - my wife to my son.

"Eight thousand"..the number that sounded greater than 6 to him at that moment. We laughed.

"One hundred thousand" - he quipped, 100 being one of the biggest number known to him. We were still laughing. "What would you buy with all that money ?" -  My wife this time.

"A BIG car..." - he said. "and then...A BIG trash can" (we have no idea why a trash can should come next). ..."and then a BIG house". A smile of relief on our face. 

My wife continued "what do you do with the BIG house". No hesitation from him "I will live there with my wife and kids"..my wife was worried by now ..."What about us?". "You can also be there". Peace !

Pictures of the 1.75 (1 + 0.5 +0.25) men taken by my wife at Mount Laguna Snow.

Back to Nature

We live in an age of processed foods - right from morning breakfast cereals to dinner deserts if any. We like the choices we have (sometimes needlessly many) when we shop for groceries. Atleast in the US, the FDA mandates the disclosure of nutrition information in the food products. Any food item with such a label, even though it got FDA's approval, should have my wife's approval to find its way to our shopping cart. However, I have always been troubled by the needlessly lengthy ingredients list accompanying the nutrition facts. What do you expect to be inside a bag of potato chips - potato, oil, salt, some spices may be for flavor. Try a bag of Lays Potato chips ingredients list next time if you want to be surprised. 

The list of edible chemicals listed among the ingredients of such processed food has often made me wonder whether we are injecting too many unnecessary chemicals and synthetics just to afford the convenience of fast/processed foods - the chemicals mostly intended to keep the food from spoiling for a prolonged time and sometimes even touted to maintain "freshness" of an otherwise-month-old-stale food. Is that worth it ?

The concept of "Organic" food has captured my attention for while now but nothing like in recent times. Of late, they seem to strike a chord with my aforesaid suspicious nature to a great extent. I decided to explore it and give it a try. For the past few months, I have been opting for "organic" options in milk, yogurt, buttermilk, eggs, vegetables (as much as possible). Of course, the other staple items of Indian diet like rice, lentils are not yet available in bulk in organic variety. I would not say that organic switch is not costly. Nor would I be satisfied that all we are eating ever since is healthy. But a satisfaction that some key consumptions of the day like milk is to some extent (as claimed) chemical free. 

I should give my wife credit in this regard. She was the one who grew skeptical of such things even before I started seeing the point in her argument. She has moved away from non-stick cookware altogether (despite the labor intensive cleaning needed for stainless steel vessels). She makes it a point to cut down on processed food for our son (despite the occasional candy or so). She makes fresh rotis for his lunch daily (no frozen).  These initiatives from my wife and the move towards organics for few of our daily needs has given a glimmer of hope. But still a long way to go to get back to nature.....

Are we better than Animals ?

Recently an advertisement hoarding at a bus stop made me think of a big picture that has been troubling me for a while now. I will come to the ad towards the end of this post.

Certain aspects of our society and way of life makes me wonder if, as human being, we are indeed headed in the right direction when it comes to being at the top of intellectual chain and the most intelligent species to inhabit the 3rd rock. Are we really using our sense of reasoning the way one would expect after centuries of civilization. War - and its related aspects come to mind. So much resources and time spent in defense of nations from fellow nations - sometimes to riduculously low levels (think of palestine conflict). So many lives lost in meaningless and ill-conceived wars for no good reason. If animals, living in jungle, fight among themselves for territorial superiority or other reasons, thats a different ball game. Arent we supposed to be better than them. Arent we supposed to use our sense of reasoning. Arent we civlized enough to find out a meaningful way to coexist and share the resources in fashion fitting our human nature and sixth sense rather than extending what animals do to new levels and proving we are no different from them when it really matters.

Pragmatic minds may argue that not all human beings are created equal and what I suggested would tantamount to the much maligned "s-word" or "c-word" - socialism or communism - which is bound to fail. I hear you. [I have already dealt this matter in a previous post of mine on respecting the rules we create for ourselves.] My question then is if we cannot figure out a way to peacefully coexist and share what we inherit in the earth and the only answer is drawing boundaries across the earth and protecting what is inside, WHERE does this art of drawing boundaries stop ? We have tons of different boundaries in a society other than the land boundaries - boundaries that are in mind -boundaries created predominantly by thoughts that are along the lines of "generation ME" rather than "generation WE" - boundaries created by an uncanny ability to glorify petty differences between people to reign one's or one's social group's superiority over the other. This very nature of self-centered insanely-competitive mindset is slowly consuming the very synergy that should characterize a society of intelligent creatures and eventually is making humans feel more and more lonelier. May be the realization on this mindless race for superiority in various fronts with utter disregard for the common good, will come the day when we run out of ideas or aspects with which we can create or demonstrate differences amongst us. May be then we will realize the need to peacefully coexist and share what we have in a manner befitting our position at the top of the intellectual chain.

For what its worth, the ad that got me into this ramble of thoughts was one for a "bailbonds" salesman. The slogan read - "Its better to know me and not need me than needing me and not knowing me". You can pretty much say the same thing about any form of insurance as well - auto, home, renters, life etc etc. And can even extrapolate all the way to time and money spent on maintaining armies for nations. Underlying character in all this is the same - a sense of insecurity and mistrust at various levels of the social strata borne out of the blatant refusal to coexist in a fashion commensurate to our innate but mostly dormant reasoning power.

The pic is of the General Assembly, Security Council and Secretariat buildings of the UN at Manhattan - the organization founded to establish peace and eradicate the insecurity (mostly defense related) and help us co-exist in a fitting fashion in this planet. Interestingly only recently I came to know that these UN buildings are actually  "international zone" and not a US territory.Don't forget to notice the sculpture of a revolver with its muzzle knotted  to symbolize peace (bottom left of the pic).

Whose Line Is It Anyway ? - #15

These days my son has started talking about lot of stuffs non-stop that I am not able to keep with him to record every bit of it.

• Once while he was talking big on shapes and their differences, I tried to pick his brain a bit. "What is the difference between a square and a rectangle ?". I was eagerly waiting how he is going to tackle the concepts of length and breadth. With an elaborate hand gesture resembling the fours sides, he went "For a rectangle, THIS is big, THIS is small, THIS is big, THIS is small". Point driven across. ! Peace.
• Our kid is attracted to stuffs which sometimes makes us - as parents - worry about the future. His attention-grabbers at one point were - (drums roll !!) - dump truck and fishes (cymbal tone !!). Obviously concerned, me and wife tried to implore upon him the concept of doing great jobs that earn you more money etc etc. My wife even went to the extent of quoting me (of all people) and my engineering profession to drive home her point. Praying deeply that he got the message, my wife asked "So tell me what you want to be when you grow up". After a moment's pause came the reply - "An Engineer who goes Fishing in a Dump Truck" !!!
• Once I got a doubt if my son is aware that he has a middle name (my name apparently. So I asked him. He was hearing the term "middle name" for the first time I guess. Without missing a beat, he improvised "ANJAY". He removed the starting "S" from his first name and made everything else his middle name. Now how the googly feels !!

Pic for this post features my son proudly posing behind his architectural creation.

The Half Full Cup

Its has been a while since I used my camera or returned to my blog. I was getting distracted by mundane aspects relating to my recent move etc. A photoblog I came across in a mail list sounded like a perfect time to return to my blog.

Like any mortal human, I am trying to balance the vagaries of life - the plus-es and the minus-es, the happy and the sad days, etc. You get the idea. I try my best to keep myself on the positive side, looking at the brighter side. On days which are decidedly not mine, my little one helps me to get to this side. For those days where even his innocence and smile could not bail me out from my mental abyss, my better half proves to be just that - "better" - bearing with my grumpy face and attitude till the day passes. But then aim has always been to enjoy what I have gotten, to put it in glorious terms, "celebrate life"- which leads us to the point of this post and its title.

The blog I was made aware of is titled "Celebrate What Is Right with the World" . Amazing captures which try to remind why life is worth what we go through. Have a look at the photos.

The other website that caters to this mantra is Happy News . Have been following it a few years not but not regularly as I used to. A refreshing change from the gory, gloomy, adrenaline-driven, sensational reporting seen in media like CNN and other big names.

Foggy Christmas Morning