I want to be real

A few days back i sent a note to my facebook friends.
Hi friends,
I just wanted to drop a note to all my friends on face book that I have deactivated my facebook account. In-case you wonder where I have disappeared and need to get in touch with me or invite me for a party:). I am still available on email or on my hand phone or would love the friendly tap on my back from office mates and friends. At a risk of sounding like an old uncle I just found that I was spending way too much time and gray matter on something very trivial and childish. And sometimes I felt guilty not responding to actions of close friends as there were so many. I rather spend that amount of time in real interaction with people and giving good friends a real hug, a real poke or well deserved round of drinks. In this world of technology sometimes we forget that there is nothing that replaces real personal interaction. I really don’t want to be reduced to a level where I feel lazy to wish my close friends ‘happy birthday’ the old traditional way by calling or meeting them. So for now its going be goodbye ‘facebook’ which gets replaced with more personal chats and time with my friends. Cheers …’did anyone say they wanted a real round of drinks with me? Call me’

Jamshed

I just found some similar point of view on this from others on the net

- "I may be lonely but at-least i am real"
- "Facebook labelled a $5b waste of time"
- "Facebook" a waste of time - get used to it"
- "Facebook a waste of time"

Some Additions made (13/02/08)

- How Sticky Is Membership on Facebook? Just Try Breaking Free

Read Later Post after reading this

Things Mom was right about and I was wrong about

I never anticipated that i would ever admit to this. :)) Thanks to Chris

- In the end your success and happiness in life is not determined by the degrees and education you may have but is determined by your attitude and hunger to do well in life.
- If you don’t know the answers don’t be shy to ask.
- You never know, you may make a friend for life if you initiate a conversation with a stranger. Better still they may be able to help you with what you currently need.
- Use every occasion possible to look and dress your best.
- Prayers make a difference and it gives you that extra edge that you may need in addition to being well prepared.
- Be nice to domestic help and treat them as family and they will give in their extra bit to make you more comfortable.
- Be friendly and mix around in social gatherings you never know what you learn from a conversation.
- Keeping personal relationships with friends and close family is important.
- One must enjoy their food.

Everyone needs a Plan

For quite awhile i was a drifter untill i learned the hard way. I learnt that we must not expect much achievement in our life if we constantly catch ourselves using these answers. What do you want to eat? Anything. Where do you want to go out? Anywhere. What is your plan for tomorrow? Not sure. When do you plan to start chasing that dream you have? The time is not right. Not knowing what you want is a luxury we can no longer afford in this highly competitive world, unless we prefer taking the backseat always. If we don’t have a plan for our life and we are constantly indecisive and be at the mercy of other people’s plans. We always seem to love status quo where nothing ever changes and we get comfortable with our circumstances. We just get these many chances in life and if we are saying ‘pass’ too often then we are surely loosing out.

Bad boys - What ya gonna do when they come for you?

It’s no great secret that a substantial part of the women population is attracted to the bad boys. You will find tons of information in books and on the internet pointing towards this trend. Talk to all the nice guys out there trying to hook a woman and they will surely nod their heads in disappointment agreeing with this fact. Many women also admit that they just have a soft corner for this specific category of men. Watching this phenomenon closely over past couple of years I can think of some reasons that contributes to this fatal attraction. Some women find these men exciting to be with and feel that there is a constant thrill that they get by being in their presence. Some of these men exuberate a great deal of confidence and cockiness which just gets the so called love chemistry going in a woman. Some woman love the challenge that comes with a man like that, “I want to change him for the better” she says. And some women are just in that phase of life where they feel it’s better to be with Mr. Wrong till they find their Mr. Right. Anyway my post is not to analysis why women fall for bad guys but just to give a heads up to women who constantly fall for the wrong men. The problem with these women is that the things that get them interested in a man in the first place are seldom the things they look for in their prospective future partners. It is as if these two are separate things and for some reason their expectation is that the naughty bad guy will soon transform into this loving, committed and stable man. I am not saying it never happens but chances are very slim. What makes the situation worse is that most of these guys know the effect they have on women and use it to their advantage. They have this great ability to dramatize their life and make you feel that you are a part of a movie. They know exactly who their target is and how to lay the bait. The sad part is that the moment you loose his attention and he gets what he wants he is off onto his next prey leaving his victim feeling used and further away from their long term goal of a stable relationship. Ask him for a commitment and that’s the probably the last time you will see him. I have seen many examples of woman not able to recover from a fall like this and they just get trapped in the vicious circle of one bad boy after another. The fact of the matter is most men know exactly what they want out of a relationship and their intensions vary from casual to serious. If you’re not happy about where you stand in his life and his intension index at a given point in time then the best advice I can give you is “Move on”. And what should the nice guys do? Move their lazy butts and garner the courage to go and win the woman's heart, cause if it wasn’t for their cowardice we would never have the problem of bad boys in the first place.

Feeling more centered

Some simple and interesting thoughts went through my head this evening, mainly inspired by a much younger friend of mine. BTW this vindicates my stand that there is more to learn from young and smart people than some older folks who we assume are more knowledgeable because of their age. I feel a lot of old folks are jaded and biased towards a lot of things that may be good for younger generations to explore. Anyway it goes like this.
I have always been struggling with issues related to managing my expectations from friends, relatives & coworkers. And these expectations have always lead to disappointment and some degree of cynicisms in me. So I decided that I would make a list of all my dependencies both professional and personal on a piece of paper and figure out which one I can move immediately and gradually away from people and more focused on me. For example how much did the success of my weekend depend on others or did lack of company restrict my wish of experiencing new cuisine or did my good mood constantly depend on external gratification. To my shock I realized that there were very few sustaining activities that I could do without involvement of others. And that my need for pursuing hobbies, activities and a better life were putting pressure of expectations on my friendships and colleagues. But this doesn’t mean that I am suggesting we become loner’s and self-centered, it’s just that I have realized that all the important expectations should be fulfilled within oneself and it’s quite a manageable task. And if at all you want to increase dependencies on some people do it in the proportion equal to their dependencies on you and do it gradually. Also don’t spread yourself too thin.
Secondly what I thought was maybe humoring our loved ones too often is a bad thing. Well that may mean that we may be portraying an insensitive nature. But after a point in a relationship or friendship we all reach that level of sensitivity or in sensitivity whatever you may call it. Why not set the baseline from the start itself and take a balanced approach rather than starting really high on sensitivity curve and dropping down later and causing disappointment. Maybe the thought that people want someone who is caring about them 24 X 7 is just a bad assumption. Do we really want someone or need someone like that? If answer is No then stop being that person for someone else, you’re probably pushing that person away even further. I think its just insecurity that makes us want to make the other person more dependent on us. Maybe a friend or lover may feel liberated being with us if they knew there dependencies on us are minimal. At least we know they are sticking with us for the right reasons.