How I end up having less time

Wherever I go and whatever I do, I have an urgent surge for taking pictures. I don’t know why. I don’t even know what’s this problem or disease or phobia is called. Not that I share each and every activity I do on the social media. Nor do I have a target of reporting to someone who will review my daily tasks. I still end up taking a lot of pictures.

And then comes the bigger problem. Too many albums on the phone. All of them get uploaded to Onedrive. I clean up my phone memory once in a while. Sometimes I’m scared if I would need some pictures to show people and hence I continue to keep them for years. But I hardly open my archive to share pictures with anyone. Once I spent a whole 2 hour journey from Guangzhou to Taipei cleaning up my phone, deleting only 50% of the albums.

There is an even bigger problem I haven’t talked about. Among the retained pictures on phone and Onedrive, I don’t know how to organize/store. I wonder what will enable for an easy search in the future.

Amidst all this mess, there are too many folders – sorted alphabetically, timely, categorically, artistically, etc. And whenever someone asks me, I remember from my memory that it does exist somewhere but hunting for the right folder or the photograph at least takes 10 mins.

Moral of the story: Technology is making me really dumb.

Life changes

Events happen. For the good. For the bad. Without making much of an impact. Sometimes causing a large impact both in terms of reasoning and thought process. People can be very pretentious.

The real-self comes out at different moments. More often than not at very unsuspected times. It doesn’t come out in the form of harsh words, generalizations or curt remarks. That would have been much more easier. More easy to judge. They come out quite subtly. And then.

People apologize. Forgiveness happens. People move away from each other. People continue to stay together. When they do, they become more cautious.  Everything looks the same. At least from outside. But something changes. Life changes. The meaning of it too. The respect for people too.

Cooking the Chinese way

And slowly I’m building the confidence to cook vegetables the Chinese way. It’s quite a simple preparation – we just have to boil the vegetables in a pan with sesame, garlic, oil and water. As people tell me, ‘you get to know the real taste of things when it is cooked this way’.

Some things are just perfect to eat with Chopsticks like dumplings, like green vegetables, like cut carrots and cucumber and many more. This video highlights the sentiments that I’m trying to understand.

I like Calcutta the way it is

Nothing happens to this city. Nothing can ever happen. It’s a lousy city. On top of everything, we have a foolish Government running the state. All the intellectual capital has flown out and no one wishes to come back.

The above are the points I repeatedly hear from people who are either born/brought-up in Calcutta or who have a deep [Emotional and Spiritual] connection like I do. But maybe I like the way it is. The narrow dark roads which make me nostalgic. The Ghats which make me poetic. The bridges which make me romantic. The vintage shops and coffee houses that keep me cheerful. I have a Chromosome from Calcutta running somewhere inside me which keeps the charm of the city always alive within me no matter what Critics say.

And when the universe loves you..

I was walking back from office today. There are actually many trees around my office. I must have walked some 200m when I felt leaves falling from trees and a few of them on my head and shoulders. This is definitely that time of the year [Autumn that is] when trees shed their leaves.

I saw people around, there were leaves falling here and there and mostly people didn’t bother and some of them who did were shrugging their shoulders. I personally think these are some of the many ways the universe makes you happy and I wonder how amazing it is.

Let’s not remember anything

Because everything that you can imagine is on the internet. The other day I couldn’t recall the name of a movie. All I knew was one of the HIMYM  [This popular sitcom called How I Met Your Mother] stars was an actor in the movie. I went to Wikipedia and searched for ‘HIMYM’ and the first actor on the list was ‘Josh Radson’. I clicked on his name and another Wikipedia page opened. I looked at the films he has acted and Bingo – I found the movie I was hunting for – Liberal Arts. In this age, all one needs to know is how to use the technology.

As if Internet was not sufficient, I have Cortana, a personal assistant on Windows10 to search things on my system. I can ask her anything – file, folder, music, app and she is ready with an answer. Are we making a fool out of ourselves? I’m not sure.