Egypt: An Uprising or a Short-Lived Hangover

Time will tell if the Egyptian people are in a historical pursuit or a geographically-induced hangover. It is encouraging to see that the peoples' anti-government ramblings have sustained for over a week and are not showing any signs of slowdown despite strong resistance and pressure from government-supported police, thugs, and animal-riding goons. President Mubarak was forced to respond to this crisis by issuing a statement that he would not seek a re-election and would step down as early as September 2011. However, it didn't diminish peoples' frustrations that had been repressed for years. They wanted more. They didn't hear what they wanted to from the government. People of Egypt, especially the youth of Egypt, want to bid a quick farewell (the bitter, the better...if they have a choice) to Mubarak and anything associated with him. This has been refreshing, yet unusual development in where, who, and how it started.

The hope is it brings change (of any kind would be welcome!!) to Egypt and becomes a catalyst for changes to similar regimes in other parts of the world (this is the time to wake up North Koreans...!!!...do it for god's sake!!!)

Hard to keep your sanity intact

If you assume that the world is full of sane people, you get a clear indication of something opposite. If you assume the opposite, you feel right at home more often than not. In recent months I have had moments when I felt I was the lone crusader in a world full of laid-back, self-centered, mindless, gutless, and non-ballsy people. At times I felt like I was losing it. It made me realize that the majority of people are here for a purposeless existence, and if you questioned them about it they would take their best shot at making your life...lifeless. The lesson learned! If you have an inkling about someone with an ill-adjusted mindset, just stay away and if you can't...keep your conversations pretty short to keep your blood vessels in shape...The bottomline...you can't fight them with sanity...so why try it?...and insanity has its own price...

Thoughts after a recent visit to my beloved India

Hi readers!!...I am back for good after what seems like the longest hiatus in the history of blogging...:)...which is not very long by the way...let's get right into it...Recently I took a trip to my joy, pride, and at times pain...my country India...I traversed Western, Southern, Eastern, and Northern parts in one go...It was fun!!...I could only touch North...didn't have time to stay and experience the changes...I have been out of India for past 8 years...and in this visit I witnessed changes of both positive and negative kinds...positive being the confidence, cockiness, and carefree attitude of people...and negative being the confidence, cockiness, and carefree attitude of people...why I am saying this is based on my conversations with several people from various backgrounds and places I bumped into (on purpose and otherwise...) in this visit...majority of them were nonchalant and took their status for granted...as if they were born to be riding this wave of good fortune and great economy...(which by the way has slid a bit in recent months)...when I tried putting it in perspective for them they looked indifferent and defiant...I felt like a moron trying to convince them that they were exactly taking a path which US people took NOT very long ago with similar catastrophic results...which by the way US is still trying to recover from...and God knows how they will accomplish it and in what time...there is no sure-fire way to set the ship right if the ship was designed for sinking...ala Titanic...the point is to be extra careful when the going is good to stay afloat when something goes wrong and one has to cut down on the things they take for granted...yeah go ahead and name me names like cynic, fun-buster, killjoy, conservative, and whatever...but for God's sakes please pay heed to what I have to say...and I am not asking you to thank me later...

Kinks in the blog

Hey viewers!

Trying to iron out some technical kinks....plz. be patient..will be back with some of the fantastic mental garbage....soon

Only names, and names r all they have to smother our minds

Hi viewers,

One of the most intriguing things to me is the name-changing of places in India. You may find this piece a little outdated, nonetheless worthy of pondering at any time.

The name-changing of cities (especially the mega cities) has found its niche in this dynamic country of ours. Bombay has snowballed into Mumbai to the dismay of the Bombay-ites and others who love the city for being Bombay not MMMMMM....Mumbai. Madras is transitioning into Chennai. Delhi is raring to embrace Hastinapur. Calcutta is still getting a hang of the newly acquired prefix "Kol". IITB has become IITM. IITM got whacked to IITC, and sooner or later IITD will join the ranks with its own alter ego IITH. However, there is a little chance in hell that IITK (as in Kanpur) and other IITK (as in Kharagpur) will obtain this privilege. The reason can be attributed to Kanpur and Kharagpur being kinda low-key in comparison with the above juggernauts, and thus holding little to no political wherewithal to affect the psyche of the biggest democracy in the world we have come to have a love-hate (more love, less hate as always) relation with.

It begs a question: Why in the world would someone even suggest changing names of the places with illustrious history and huge following? This is beyond realm of my thinking and understanding. I would like to entertain a plausible explanation to this frequently-occurring phenomenon unique to our country, if there is one, from anyone that cares.

See u sometime soon.

About me

Hi,

This is Prashant. I am working towards Ph.D. in Industrial Engg. at UT-Arlington. Being heavily left-brained, I am fascinated by the power of human thinking. This blog is a modest attempt on my part to share a tiny part of my ever-imaginative mind (gosh!! that sounds preposterous). I would like to develop blogging as a hobby to channelize those random thoughts of mine that pose major distractions (sometimes pleasant ones, but mostly unwarranted and iffy ones) in my life. Blogging is a good way to mitigate crazy inveterate chatterboxes by diverting them to cyberspace instead of living space. I conveniently assume myself out of this category, however my inner circle of friends think otherwise. I hope those of you who happen to browse through these blogs would prove them wrong for their crazy ideas about me.

Having broken the ice, I will be back soon with an interesting read for u guys.

Ciao