Varun Nair’s Personal Blog

• @jhquest Where are you off to? in reply to jhquest #
• Discovered that Twitter is experimenting with "verified" accounts. Good move Twitter! – http://twitter.com/help/verified #

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• Some interesting health stats from GE – http://www.ge.com/visualization/health_visualizer/ #
• @tanushreet What was? in reply to tanushreet #
• Disclaimers are weird are’t they? Well you cannot find one funnier than this – http://attrition.org/misc/disclaimer.html #

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If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

– Rudyard Kipling

(from http://www.swarthmore.edu/~apreset1/docs/if.html)

I severely dislike self-help books. They usually state the obvious, do it in an uninspiring way and do not sway me an inch into doing whatever they want people to do.

Since quite some time I have been trying to procrastinate less and do more with my time. A few weeks back when I was in a Crossword bookstore I picked up the book Eat that frog by Brian Tracy. It was a small book and the blurb on the back cover sounded very helpful and sensible.

In fact the blurb on the back cover was probably only one of the 2 useful things in the entire book. Or to be more accurate the only useful thing till about three-fourths into the book which is when I stopped reading it. The author makes a 4-page chapters out of the  most obvious advice under the sun.

By the way in case you are wondering what the title means then let me tell you that a frog (looks ugly, probably tastes terrible as well but the author does not know that frog’s legs are a delicacy in Kerala ) is used as a metaphor for that task or project in your life that is important but difficult or uninteresting and thus most susceptible to being ignored.

Now this is the thing about procrastination… most people who get away with it are smart people. They survive even though they procrastinate. They usually know what they are doing wrong… they just need some motivation to do the right thing and some specific actionable tactics to do better. Including me. And that is the one thing this book absolutely does not have.

The only 2 pieces of useful advice are – (1) Start with the most important thing and not the easiest (2) Make a list of short-term, medium-term and long-term goals, WRITE them down and make plans around it.

Well (2) is still quite obvious but I liked the way the author elaborated on it.

So my advice to you is – Eat that frog but don’t buy this book. It is not worth the Rs. 175 you will have to spend to buy it or the 3-4 hours you will have to spend reading it.

I started blogging exactly 4 years back My first post.

• Version 2 of all the documents I prepare tend to be much better than version 1… #
• Hello World! #

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(Guest post by Vineet V Nair)

It’s been ages since I have posted something here..sorry brother I haven’t been a regular guest blogger. I am just plain lazy most of the time and how much ever you coax me into starting my own blog, I love being a guest blogger here. It gives me a choice, an option.

A small introduction to all those who know me and for those who don’t . I am varun’s younger brother… right now in London training (u can read trying also) to be a chef(someday for sure). I was in Vishakapatnam for nearly a year working with The Park Hotel managing their beachside restaurant called Bamboo Bay. I was also in Navi Mumbai for 6 months undergoing training with The Park, Belapur. Navi Mumbai is one of the best places I have lived so far, obviously apart from aapnu Ahmedabad. It was majorly because I was just 2 hours from Mumbai where Varun lived and I loved the hustle bustle than came with living in Mumbai . Even though Mumbai is one of the most crowded cities in the world, Navi Mumbai is so just the opposite. Calm and quiet with just enough shopping malls, cheap eateries etc. I lived in an awesome 2 bedroom flat which I shared with another guy called Azhar. A balcony as big as 2 10 by 10 bedrooms put together and bedrooms with huge sliding windows. I have had one of my craziest birthdays here.  I loved local trains. The journeys from borivili to belapur were always the time to think..so many things… Navi Mumbai is the place where I met one of my closest friends …the wink is necessary…Rains were always amazing here. Me and Azhar moved into this flat by chance but both of us loved living here. We were a small group of friends who would rent a car and travel to Mumbai every weekend or atleast every fortnight to party, wake up at 3 in the afternoon and talk about the party for the rest of week.. I would always love to work in Mumbai or Navi Mumbai but never settle down here (just like varun).

more to come….

• I have said it a zillion times before but I will say it once again – Bank of America customer care is the BEST! #
• Gerard is saved – http://bit.ly/Z1UWG #
• is trying to move back to Ubuntu Linux (from Windows Vista) for daily use… #
• is beginning to warm up to Prism apps on Linux. Though some bugs and quirks remains. He still likes it on the whole though… #

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• Another morning, another Monday, another week! Time to put on some invigorating and inspiring music… #
• I resumed my black tea drinking habit today… got some nice teas from HypperCity, taking some to work too #
• Sreesanth probably deserved that Harbhajan slap – http://bit.ly/11VunD #
• I wonder if Mozilla Prism is similar to Chrome application shortcuts… http://prism.mozilla.com/ #
• YES! Mozilla prism==Chrome app shortcuts…in fact better coz its more customizable and due to Firefox extns. Way to go Mozilla Labs! #
• Is it just me or has pulpy orange really become less pulpy than before? (+1 year ago)… #
• @kartikmistry am trying 2 b a little healthier in diet so substituting cola wid pulpy orange. Liked it more when it was pulpier tho… in reply to kartikmistry #
• Moved frm Avast to Avira AV for personal laptop… Avira seems more polished & gives less false positives… but occasionally it nags… #
• How do I receive my Twitter stream as individual or digest email? Any tips people? #
• @isecom And what would that be in simple English or even normal geekspeak? You are kidding aren’t you? #
• @isecom I disagree on AV comment. They arent perfect but are good first line of defense like firewalls. Defense in layers, that’s d key… #

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Because exams impose habits on you that parents have been trying to enforce for years. Mystery solved.