Aik Alif

English Translation and Lyrics originally in Punjabi:

Parh parh ilm te faazil hoya
(You read to become all knowledgable)

Te kaday apnay aap nu parhya ee na
(But you never read yourself)

Bhaj bhaj warna ay mandir maseeti
(You run to enter your mosques and temples)

Te kaday mann apnay wich warya ee na
(But you never entered your own heart)

Larna ay roz shaitaan de naal
(Everyday you fight Satan)

Te kadi nafs apnay naal larya ee na
(But you never fight your own Ego)

Bulleh Shah asmaani ud-deya pharonda ay
(Bulleh Shah you try grabbing that which is in the sky)

Te jera ghar betha unoon pharya ee na
(But you never get hold of what sits inside yourself)

Bas kareen o yaar
(Stop it all my friend)

Ilm-oun bas kareen o yaar
(stop seeking all this knowledge my friend)

Ik Alif teray darkaar
(Only an Alif is what you need)

Bas kareen o yaar
(stop it all my friend)

Ilm-oun bas kareen o yaar…
(Stop seeking all this knowledge my friend)

Allah Sayyaan Allah Sayyaan
(God is Greatness, God is All)

Nee main jaanaa Jogi de naal
(I shall follow the Jogi {ascetic/Sufi})

Jo naa jaane, Haqq ki taaqat
(those who deny the strength of Truth)

Rab naa devey us ko Himmat
(God does not give them courage)

Hum Mann ke darya mein doobey
(We have drowned in the river of Self)

Kaisi nayya? Kya manjhdhaar…
(the boat and the flowing waters do not matter)

Bas kareen o yaar
(stop it all my friend)

Ilm-oun bas kareen o yaar
(stop seeking all this knowledge my friend)

Allah Sayyaan Allah Sayyaan
(God is Greatness, God is All)

(thanks to the Lyrics from a co -blogger)

Telecommuting-From the Queen of Hills

Continuing with the odesk article and the aggression it brought forward, I thought I 'd pen down some thoughts on the way the remaining year has passed and what it has brought as the crests and troughs of being on your own-work wise.

Started with a big bang when recession hit and the fear of being sent home looked plausible. My company was thoughtful enough to keep everyone employed, but sent everybody home with a five hundred rupee laptop and a salary which was now paid directly to them. Thus came Telecommunication to India, and if The Flat World told us how bandwidth availability and Worldcom helped India get on the IT Map, then efficiencies and the search for cutting down operational expenditure brought to us the real remote work situation.

With it came power cuts, bandwidth blackouts, barking dogs and a till now unknown fear of joblessness. But its also brought the sweet tasting Remote work-the company has been open minded and has embraced it in spite of the known risks to allow resources to work from home in India. Its a maverick move and I am not in a position to say if it paid dividends, but sadly unlike as it should have stayed-consultants hired to work on their own at home-people quit and moved on to regular jobs, and their jobs were taken up by smaller companies with regular employees posing as 'contractors'.

The current model isn’t exactly a hit but its survived. I want to focus on the title of the post-telecommunicating and highlight the upsides of freedom with the downsides of responsibility.

Telecommuting Yay!

• Freedom to travel anywhere, log in from anywhere and work any time as long you attend the calls
• The basic groundwork on being an entrepreneur and the freedom of self employment-the ability to see the value -for example an MBA 2 year stint v.s. an Entrepreneurial 2 year adventure
• The ability to question your role as an independent worker viz-a-viz a corporate employee, and to determine life's priorities which get lost in the daily humdrum/rat-race
• No More petrol Bills, Traffic Cribs or protocols of commuting, free time better spent
• Concentrate on real work, and have time for the distractions that have been ignored making you dumber every year
• Office politics seems like a thing in the distance-m sure it’s alive but seems like its virtual
• Shut off work when you leave office if it given you hypertension-no more. More like shut off work when you log out
• The value of communication
• Time and its real value -and an ability to optimize
• Music at your volume -freedom of choice
• The ability to voice your concerns and opinions since unlike corporate HIPPO* rules-every opinion counts
• Going to the GYM is no more an excuse and the timings are up to you
• You realize water boils at much lower temperature in the mountains :)

Telecommuting Nay!

• The value in office humdrum and camaraderie-although I don’t know how many would agree
• The ability to communicate better in less time/energy when you know direct communication is better than aided
• No direct career path since being a contractor means you are on your own
• More time to travel means more adventure and more ability to crash :)
• Managing finances and Tax Returns is now up to you-since effectively it’s a small self owned business
• Need to mention here-Health Insurance since no one is taking care of you
• Retirement planning-your parents were insured by the Government through Pension Schemes which are inflation proof but you are on your own
• The biggest lesson is self discipline which the lack of freedom never imposed on anyone

Thoughts?

*HIPPO-Highest Paid Person's Opinion

Slavery 2.0-My Experiments with Nuconomy

Recession-[ri-sesh-uh n] –noun
1. the act of receding or withdrawing.
2. a receding part of a wall, building, etc.
3. a withdrawing procession, as at the end of a religious service.
4. Economics. a period of an economic contraction, sometimes limited in scope or duration. Compare depression (def. 7).

Greed got us. Good.

Background

I think the entire conversation around the 7 year cycle of the economy's birth and death is largely true. WHatever goes up comes down and so on and so forth ad infinitum nauseum.

The Gecko
Pre-empt anything that threatens 70% profitability. That includes refusing obvious bonus payouts, changing statements, not publishing anything in writing quoting legal implications-and passive aggressive employee treatment.


The Simple Truth
OK-Most porobably the reader by now is baffled by the mismatch of the title and the content. Well, the above will make sense once the following is absorbed.

My Employer -a $160M 70% profitable privately held IT provider decides one day that the entire workforce out of India is expendable. The decision is made to give employees the option to either stay(they will be replaced) or sign up as independant contractors on ODESK.


ODESK

Ahaa! I dont trust people I represent -So pay me 10% of what you pay them for work they do and I will help you click a picture of their Desktop ever 15 minutes.

Bonus!!! If you'd like We can monitor their Web Cam. Lets get the Indians and The Russians. They don't mind working at $5 or $10 an hour doing extreme programming, while they get monitored.

We also Guarantee that the slaves working harder will be better rated as we will be monitoring their mouse activity/key strokes and processor utimization. Better Slaves =better productivity

IT & Panopticism
Hampered productivity Via deterred multitasking,low morale, constant fear of monitoring-welcome to new age commoditized outsourcing.

Hello! This is bad for us!

youtube.com/watch?v=IdmnxcClEMc

Raid De Himalaya 2007

The Raid is back this year in it's 8th run.

-Looks like we are going to Srinagar
-Reliability is now called Adventure Trail
-Registratiom is on, Early Birds get to pay only 25,000 if register before 30th may
-This year will definitely see stronger participation
-Adventure trail gets 6/10 for diffilculty, Xtreme get a 9!

Itenerary looks like this
6th October 2007

Leg 1 Shimla – Manali

7th October 2007

Leg 2 Manali – Kaza - Tabo

8th October 2007

Leg 3 Tabo - Darcha - Pang

9th October 2007

Leg 4 Pang - Leh

10th October 2007

Leg 5 Leh - Keylong

11th October 2007

Leg 6 Keylong - Patni Top

12th October 2007

Leg 7 Patni Top - Srinagar

13th October 2007

Prize Distribution after the final Scrutineering and the conclusion of the Raid.

So Buckle your seatbelt Dorothy, Cuz Kansas is goin bye bye!

Calm Under the Waves

Not that this blog enjoys much readership , but I realized I sent some 79 new and 27 returning Visitors back disappointed since I posted last.

I have just been traveling, and had some other things on my mind, so didn't find the time to post. And then I read this article on a website that said that most blogs today are dying(ghost blogs)and I have decided not to join that list.

The mid twenties seem to be the toughest age for youngsters in India as the support system that existed back in College/Home runs out and the move into a so called next stage is finally taking shape. This can be a life changing event for this when the word responsible finally starts making sense, and the wait for life to begin is revealed as a hoax! All I can say is that its a crazy experience and can be humbling at times, yet fun throughout. Although this blog tends to stay away from being autobiographical, we do see the entire world through our own eyes and to call everything completely fiction or descriptive is again subjective.

Coming back to the main reason why I wanted to post this ramble, I wanted to share a few things I read some time back:

From Zorba the Greek:

Throughout my life my greatest benefactors have been my dreams and my travels.
I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.

Henry James:
Be someone on whom nothing is lost.

These three have left a deep impression on me. I think on order to find your Nirvana ( or your own Nirvana) or whatever we seek as a manifestation of N: Money, Power, travel, Respect, love, blaah.. The answer to finding them lies in among other things, traveling. I think in order to get comfortable you need to get uncomfortable.
And also what I always preached and now seek to practice, the action is the Juice!


Ramblings on a Friday after a slightly scarce week, work wise that is.

So this marks the beginning of a hopefully enriching journey, which as much as possible will actively live through and hopefully blog about!

Reproduced from ET

Mobility has an aspirational swing in India : Partha Sinha

AT THE early stage of my working career I used to work with a foreign bank that had a very pronounced recruitment hierarchy. Fresh MBAs were clearly divided between a brahminical and non-brahminical order based on which management institutes they came from. But the most fascinating aspect of that caste system was that these two categories were popularly known inside the bank as the 'mobile' and the 'non-mobile' category. Needless to say the mobile people were from the brahminical institutes. Mobility in India had traditionally been bestowed with a coveted status and was intrinsically linked to material well-being. Contrary to popular belief that Indians are a 'rooted' lot; higher esteem has always been accorded to mobility. From the recurring Bollywood theme of the village boy moving to big town and changing his life almost as a rule, to the entire phenomenon called 'brain-drain' or the obsessions of certain communities to migrate to the UK or Canada the potent power of mobility can be witnessed in many aspects of the Indian life. If we try to understand the codes of mobility in more details, we will find that it's intrinsically linked to the social structure of India. Our society is marked by a linear hierarchy and that invariably produces a desire to move up the hierarchy ladder. This desire is the driving force of mobility. In India, there's nothing called spatial mobility our mobility is fundamentally social mobility. Nobody wants to move from North Delhi to South Delhi for geographical reasons. The dream movement of most starry-eyed management trainees from Malad to Malabar Hill in Mumbai is not rooted in travelling conven ience. One may argue that geographies have represented social strata in almost all societies across the globe, but in India the act of mobility itself ends up determining social order. One of the primary examples of the triumph of social mobility over physical mobility is the way cars are seen in India. Cars are definitely not a mode of travelling between two points. In most cases, in urban India, walking will possibly be a faster and better method to reach a destination than a car. Cars in India represent social destinations. Even if it is difficult to drive a larger vehicle in the congested roads of Mumbai, Bangalore or Delhi everyone invariably wants a bigger car. It's almost a sacrilege for the junior to have a bigger car than his boss. Even if car marketers try to segment the market accord ing to different need types it invariably falls into this social laddering. 4X4 off-roaders and sedans may appeal to different needs and mindsets, according to car marketing convention, but here they are compared and clubbed to form different strata of social destinations. Another interesting phenomenon around mobility is the ever-growing popularity of mobile phones and it's impact on the society. Like most modern societies, Indians are also forced to lead lives characterised by discrepancies between spatial and social distances. On one hand they have to tolerate spatial proximity with people very distant from them thanks to living in crowded cities, moving in crowded areas or using public transport. On the other hand, they have to accept spatial distance from the people who they feel close to. The significance of mobile phone lies in empowering them to engage in communication that frees them from the constraint of physical proximity and spatial mobility at the same time. When an anglicised executive starts using a mobile phone to connect with his buddies while waiting at a doctor's chamber, he is not only moving closer to the people he relates to, but most importantly moving away from the 'non-corporate types' who are waiting along with him in the same chamber. Mobile phones in India have helped create social proximity and distances. Another glaring example of that is the way mobile phones are being embraced by a class that has never heard a dial tone before. The mobile phone is giving them the freedom to get included. A plumber today doesn't need to give the address of his hutment. He uses his mobile number as his address. This allows him to transcend the psychological barriers that would have come with his address. Mobility itself allows the plumber to deny social exclusion. A stable dwelling place was the pre-requisite for creating social organizations. And that's why people had an emotional attachment to their 'own' house. It created the anchor point that started defining who they are. But in the life of the urban nomads today, this stability comes from social standings rather than the stability of the dwelling places. They buy a house today with the definitive plan to move out of it in a few years. The center of social organisation today is a moving point and thus mobility is a coveted virtue. But is this mobility akin to running fast to stay at the same place? Maybe true, may be not but one thing is true for sure: The nation is on the move.

Career Manifesto

ExecPundit's version, and I loved this:

The Career Manifesto

1. Unless you’re working in a coal mine, an emergency ward, or their equivalent, spare us the sad stories about your tough job. The biggest risk most of us face in the course of a day is a paper cut.

2. Yes, your boss is an idiot at times. So what? (Do you think your associates sit around and marvel at your deep thoughts?) If you cannot give your boss basic loyalty, either report the weasel to the proper authorities or be gone.

3. You are paid to take meaningful actions, not superficial ones. Don’t brag about that memo you sent out or how hard you work. Tell us what you achieved.

4. Although your title may be the same, the job that you were hired to do three years ago is probably not the job you have now. When you are just coasting and not thinking several steps ahead of your responsibilities, you are in dinosaur territory and a meteor is coming.

5. If you suspect that you’re working in a madhouse, you probably are. Even sociopaths have jobs. Don’t delude yourself by thinking you’ll change what the organization regards as a “turkey farm.” Flee.

6. Your technical skills may impress the other geeks, but if you can’t get along with your co-workers, you’re a litigation breeder. Don’t be surprised if management regards you as an expensive risk.

7. If you have a problem with co-workers, have the guts to tell them, preferably in words of one syllable.

8. Don’t believe what the organization says it does. Its practices are its real policies. Study what is rewarded and what is punished and you’ll have a better clue as to what’s going on.

9. Don’t expect to be perfect. Focus on doing right instead of being right. It will simplify the world enormously.

10.If you plan on showing them what you’re capable of only after you get promoted, you need to reverse your thinking.

From Gapin Void

As technologists, we have two choices:

One is to provide the customer a better experience, the freedom to select what he wants, a differentiation based on service quality against a backdrop of abundance.

The second is to create artificial scarcities around the things that are abundant, create new inconveniences for the customer, new lock-ins, new irritants. Irritants like Region Coding on DVDs. Lock-ins like we see in digital music.

For the last thirty years, too many of us in IT have focussed on creating these artificial scarcities, often without even knowing it. First we paid to bury the data in vendor stacks, then we paid to try and dig it out. We've been doing this for years. And we're in danger of doing it again.

Time for a change.

Time to focus on ways of delivering service where the customer wants, when the customer wants, how the customer wants. Time to focus on open platforms, open protocols, open software, open ways of doing business.

That's what the economics of abundance is really about. Making money because of what you do, and not with what you do. Having customers who stay with you because they want to, not because they have to.

Just another day at work

Caught these guys helping keep C Naidu's Cyberabad Squeaky Clean. Thats the glass walls of "Cyber Gateway". The walls provide a nice view of the clouds and the odd plane flying by, Nice!:)

World Usability Day & Social Networks

SUMMARY:
Social Networks: Evolution and Impact On Society
Tags: Social Networks, orkut, web 2.0, social impact of media


Vox Populi today: Don't Make Me Think! and it applies to everything. Starting tomorrow, I am going to start putting pictures of designs that I hate. That is to celebrate Usability Day!(You can send me your pet peeves as well)

And about social networks, a question was raised about blogging/orkut/ with reference to whether they are a fad/ and what is the impact on society/culture. As much as I think I don't belong to the why talk about this topic brigade , I still keyed my thoughts and here's part one:
Blogging is just one of the varied aspects of social computing:

Before we conclude whether it’ a hype or a change agent; we must try and understand what lead to it, what’s happening today and hence where it might go. Since it’s very hard to predict where things go, but when you look at them in retrospect, they seem so obvoius

A Brief History of the Phenomena: (I promise its brief)

Cheap Technology available to everyone, so youngsters used it to their advantage and elderly to theirs. Think Bit Torrent, Skype, Kazaa and SMS, MMS, Chat, XML/RSS.

What does the trend indicate: Networks erode institutional power.

Why: People love right to freedom, are more independent and less trusting. These technologies/platforms just fuelled that.

Now what happened:

Explosion of social networks like:

Orkut/my Space/friendster/Linkedin

RSS- I want the Internet my way:
Yahoo/FeedBurner/Bloglines

My Free Open Source Software
OPen Office/MySQL

Search Engines and now my own search engines
Yahoo, Google>>Rollyo

User Reviewed portals
Cnet/Tripadvisor

My Music/Files free
Kazaa/emule/Gnutella

C2c Commerce
eBay/Craigslist/ubid

Comparison Shopping
Froogle/Shopzilla

POdcasts
Odeo/Juice

Wikis/Collaboration Software
Jotspot/Basecamp

Tagging
Flickr/digg/delicious

Now coming to the sub topic of Blogs, Here’s a fact: There are about 59.5 Million Blogs today that they are being tracked by technorati. So whether it’s a phenomenon or a passing fad remains to be seem. But if you look at he growth of Blogs, it’s certainly reached a plateau-ed growth as seen here http://google.com/trends?q=blogs.

Blogging has given everyone a right to express there thoughts on whatever they feel like, from recipes to travelogues.

Companies that have used this concept, have taken the first mover advantage, now every company including Google has a web log that talks to its consumers in a seemingly informal way. Every newspaper website has weblogs, every job site has weblogs, every technology has a weblog, almost every corporate has a web log. So the face of blogging has changed from being perceived as rebellious to now a contributor to the society.

It’s certainly going to stabilize, like a lot of other phenomenon, but what amazes me is that it took just a decade from when usenet appeared to when this debate started. That in itself speaks about how entrenched this has become in our society, especially in certain quartets, because of it were a passing phenomenon, it would have eroded by now.

Its certainly speaks about what our world wants, a right to basic freedom of thought, speech and experession!

But are most blogs really monologues? Will explore in part two, the impact on society and whether they are leading to more complex human behaviors.

Also, You feel iam left out something, please leave your feedback.

Departed and Open Season

The madness of Scorsese and the magic of Pixar!

Two movies in two days is not so much, but these are perhaps the best movies I have
seen this year.

Departed is all about cursing, and just to mention what my esteemed friend remarked" There's only two languages in which cursing soundS effective, and he has used both(english and panjabi)". And it's got great plot, amazing storytelling, a splendid cast, the Janus Jack Nicholson, Mark Whalburg, Matt Damon and should have been excluded Leo Caprio. Vera Farmiga Impresses too.

Open Season(In 3-D, which was a nice surprise) is just phenomenal graphics rendering. I mean I have seen tons of animation, but the combined effect of three dimensional projection and cutting edge animation was surreal!

Kudos to Hollywood! Some movies just, make sense.


Oh and I found a list of all makes by Martin Scorsese.

What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? • It's Not Just You, Murray! • The Big Shave • Who's That Knocking at My Door • Street Scenes • Boxcar Bertha • Mean Streets • Italianamerican • Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore • Taxi Driver • New York, New York • American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince • The Last Waltz • Raging Bull • The King of Comedy • After Hours • The Color of Money • The Last Temptation of Christ • New York Stories • Goodfellas • Cape Fear • The Age of Innocence • Casino • Kundun • My Voyage to Italy • Bringing Out the Dead • Gangs of New York • The Aviator • No Direction Home • The Departed

Invictus

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance 5
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade, 10
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate: 15
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley. 1849–1903

And coming to the point of the post, Raid it seems has got some decent media attention with a four page article in the November issue of autocar and a half an hour capsule on cnn ibn. Here's the Link to the videos, will try and scan and put the articles here for your reading pleasure.

http://www.ibnlive.com/videos/24627/raiddehimalayas-tests-driving-skills.html

Note: The video is in three parts, so be careful while navigating.(Requires flash)

Please try this at Home!!!

Tiff needle shows how to lay more rubber on the road than Malaysia's annual supply.

Happy Riding.

Presenting : Burn More Rubber 101

Most relevant to us: Front Wheel Drives



Z3M Roadster Rear Wheel techniques



4 Wheel Drive, gets Even better-1




4 Wheel Drive, gets Even better-2

Got an Idea: Get Up And Go

For all the people I read , no one inspires Like Scott Adams.

Wha!!! Scott Adams, you would exclaim. But read this piece and get inspired.

I usually would restrain from doling out inspiritaional stuff, this is not a Guru or geek blog(pun intended), but couldnt resist this gyaan wartaan exercise. Catch the link below:

In over My Head

Here's an attemt to make the post look more interesting



Dilberts Financial planner!

-Make a will
-Pay off your credit cards
-Get term life insurance if you have a family to support
-Fund your 401k to the maximum
-Fund your IRA to the maximum
-Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it
-Put six months worth of expenses in a money-market account
-Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement
-If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio


So if you have a idea, go for it, worst case it wont work. but it would be fun trying to make it work, wont it?

I lost my BIG IDEA to an advertising firm :I

Raid De Himalaya 2006

Hi Folks,

Ive uploaded the pics on flickr.

Heres the link: flickr.com/photos/amansandhu

Please come back and leave a comment. Also, was hoping to post somethin about my experiences, but realise the post went way too long.

Its under the guillotine and will publish it when I am happy with it.

In the meantime, enjoy the pics, and from what i have heard, people seem to be liking them(they are just too nice:)).

The Nawabi Pursuits

The thing I love and hate about our lifestyle in Bharat is the total disregard for time.
Take for example, my current road trip .

Well as it goes, it was supposed to start yesterday, that is saturday early morning, but thanks to the changing weather, some colds, unavailable and delayed spares, a typical lack of organizational trait and also, a troublesome engine which coughs up a complaint at its whim(road worthy or raid worthy:P), and other inexplicable reasons, we stand delayed by a day and a half.

To put things into better perspective, I am typing this on sunday at 1:30PM and I am still home :D.

This is turning into a road trip which I made without knowing the route I was taking, how long would it take, how much fuel would we burn, and when would we hit home turf: Simla/Chandigarh.

Will we cover the distance in two and a half day, three days, three and a half days... well my guess is as good as anyone else's.

Personally, being the navigator in the team, I should take it a little more personally since i m supposed to be the brains behind this maths, but this is different.

And then again, the silver lining here is that this is the most unplanned and uncertain I have ever felt, and I m enjoying every moment of this insane feeling of losing control.

Maybe all trips should begin once you hit the road!



P.S. "Grow Up Aman! !"

Evil Grin

D Day

Well the preparations are in full swing and I am getting ready for the road trip of my life,

in the Next two weeks I'm planning to travel 6000 kilometers across India, 4000 out of those would be by road and the rest by air.
reality check: Earths circumference is 40000 kilometers. its definitely the craziest thing I have ever attempted to do.

For the readers of this blog here is a summary of the itenerary:(It's still sketchy)


Sep 23

Hyderabad Shimla road trip

Sep 28 Scrutiny begins

Sep 30 Raid Begins

Oct 7 Raid Ends

Oct 9 Hopefully back to work and normal life

Distance 2000kms(Depending on the highways taken about 2000)

Estimated time: 3 days(Again, I cant really say)

Here's a map that sheds some light on the highways in India, a long ignored topic.

I would love to take the road west(we always wanna take the highway westwards innit) to End day one in Daman And Diu.

Day two would Destination Udaipur and Day three Destination Chandigarh/Shimla.


However to reflect the sanity in us and to make good time, and under the pressure from some "friendly advice", we might(and the probability of this happening is more) make a saner trip down the middle of India to reach Delhi.(See map)

This would still be a crazy trip, nonetheless.

Will keep the story of my survival through the centre of India as a topic for my next post.


Please excuse the lack of exciting language in the post. Its been written in a hurry and does not reflect the emotions in their true form, or so I would say.

The long tail

Heard about the book? Here's a Nice video:)

Wake Up Sleepy Head

Things to do to keep from getting bored

Read subjects you are least close to: cognitive psychology, javascript,
Genres of Photography: (my favorite: lomography)
Aesthetics ergonomics
Common Rail Diesels

Play a sport

Watch constructive tv

Go for a jog

Exercise-hit the gym

Swim

Learn a language

Larn to play the guitar

Walk

Learn to Empathize

Learn to be charming

Participate in raid de himalaya

Dun have the dough try mtb himachal(tour de himachal)

Own a bullet, you can try and participate in the royal enfield trip to leh, and hopefully get featured on ndtv as well

Wanna be good at stocks, play moneybhai, real stocks with fake mone

CrossWords

Su Do ku

Martial arts classes, tai chi, taibo

Hit the kitchen, try a new cuisine: heard about googling leftovers in the fridge for a new recipe?

Learn to red 12 digit bar codes and ISBN nos

Lucid dreams

Astral projections

Out Of Body experiences

Altered state of consciousness

Order your synklini

ESP

Travel with a partner, you will know urself better, so will your partner. Also, your tolerance will surely increase

Take a hike, I mean a hike across a track

Learn to DJ if you think you have a sense of music

Prepare for CAT

Take your GRE/GMAT

Prepare and take the Mensa Test

Really Bored: how about the IAS

Really really bored: keep reading this blog :P

I am kidding about the last one, Anyways I am open to suggestions on how readers spend their time?

Disclaimer:(This is in no way a complete list, and is not an endorsement fo what i may do , plan to do or may be doing)