The Ugly Truth - Ego, the evil cousin of Knowledge

I recently saw the movie 'Revolver' by Guy Ritchie, and it instantly got promoted to the list of my favorites. The reality of ego and the exclusivity of 'I' were impossibly well shown. The movie is dramatic but the concept is even more profound. It is a must see if you haven't. But the real reason I'm so fond of this movie is because I found so many similarities in this movie to a good part of what the Vedanta teaches.

Have you ever come across a person who was good for a while, but then started acting superior? Who was that person? If your answer was anyone other than yourself, then trust me you have an Ego that is so deeply rooted inside of you that you think it's actually your own voice, your own self that's guiding you. It has succeeded in taking full control of you and your mind and now you don't even realize there's such a thing inside you. In computers parlance, it's like a rootkit installed on your system and of course your antivirus thinks your system is clean. If you're denying this right now, then can you guess why? :-)

Sometimes we learn something new and feel superior, sometimes we help another person and feel superior, sometimes we 'grow' and start feeling superior, sometimes we get rich and start feeling superior. There are a lot of reasons why we might act superior, but the root cause always remains same- it's our ego that makes us act that way. It's not the knowledge we gain or the act itself that makes us arrogant. It's when our ego gets to know we learned something new or did something new, it tells us, disguised as our own voice, that now we 'deserve' to be superior, that we 'deserve' the right to not only look up to ourselves but also look down upon others. And these emotions are the effect of only the outermost rings of our ego. If we dig deep, we'll be surprised as to how much of ourselves is truly us and how much is actually our ego projecting itself as us. Ego is what makes us arrogant, it is what makes us unhappy, it is this abysmal void in us that we struggle to fill in vain. Ego gives us this utterly false sense of control and seduces us with the promise of more power and abilities to conquer the external world.

Ego brings in this whole exclusivity of 'I' within us. It creates these artificial struggles such as identity crisis, mid-life crisis and many other personality craving crises. 'Why me?' is again because our ego creates this self-sympathy to make us feel that we are the victims. In truth, we are victims because we give up. We are, at the end of the day, only what we do and not what we think of ourselves to be. Many of us so desperately want to do something because we think we're wasting our life by not 'fitting in' or by not 'doing that cool thing'. Ego has made us grow by competing against each other when we should be growing by complementing each other. Ego has replaced self-preservation with self-satisfaction. We no longer act just to preserve ourselves, we go way beyond and struggle to satisfy our seemingly endless desires disguised as needs.

Our ego does all the things it does for one and only one reason- to keep us in check and to make sure we don't conquer it, to make sure we never get to a point where we realize that we are in fact much more superior than our ego can ever be. So now how do we conquer something so deeply rooted inside us that it makes it difficult for us to even accept it's existence?

Well, it turns out the answer is easy to understand, and more importantly, easier to implement-

• The first step is to challenge everything that we hear in our head- start getting self-conscious of our actions and seeing them and evaluating them from a neutral vantage point. This helps us identify our ego from our own self.
• Treat everything we do as our duty, as our rent that we pay for the life we live. Everything, from getting rich to becoming super intelligent to helping others generously, everything as a duty, like we're just repaying our loan. When we do this, we implicitly renounce the notion of 'owning' or 'gaining' something. This in turn will help us get rid of our need to feel superior, because when we are not gaining anything, how can we be superior?. We now start enjoying things, material or otherwise, with a true appreciation for them. We will slowly start doing things because of their real value and not for the subjective value our ego might show them at.
• Realize the truth that we are all from the same source of energy, and ergo, treat everyone just as we treat our own selves- with the same respect for all imperfections and the same love and dispassion for all actions. And by extension, realize that comparisons are fundamentally flawed because to compare we need two different things. So when we embrace singularity, the notion of comparisons falls apart. Also, comparisons are Ego's sole weapons, so we should depose them with such calm that it actually scares the bloody hell out of our ego. Once we start doing this, we will implicitly start inhibiting dispassionately any such comparisons that might come from anyone else. When we do this, we are truly insulated from our ego- now it is truly paralyzed; it cannot touch us.

At this stage, when we are free of all our egos, oh boy, I cannot describe how delightful it feels! For me, it's the ultimate freedom, the ultimate peace of mind. It is like we're in this super soothing meditation all the time, like the frequencies of the world outside and the world inside have finally started to resonate and brought down the barriers between them, making us truly a part of what we were meant to be a part of.

But it all comes down to how serious we are about taking the challenge to our ego. As Morpheus said, 'I can only show you the door. You're the one who has to walk through it.', and now that we see the door, let's walk through and break free!

The Ugly Truth Series - Preface

I am a very strong proponent of Vedanta Philosophy, very. very. It's been just over two years that I started reading the Upanishads and their essence. Ever since I've realized the meaning they convey, it's been very hard for me to get upset about anything. Yes, I might get angry or upset for a minute, but then it simply vanishes, just like that. It's like my inner self has this eternal smile, and the best part is- I don't need anything to keep smiling. And I owe it all to the Upanishads. This series is my effort to spread this treasure trove, no matter how little that spread ends up to be :-)

So before I dive into the treasures that the Upanishads showers us with, there are three very important things I feel we need to understand to appreciate the beauty of the Vedanta.

• The first remarkable thing about the Upanishads is that they are not affiliated to any religion. Through-out this literature, there's no mention of any religion or a ritual. God is referred to as 'Knowledge/Truth' in here. Once you start reading them, you'll find that the notion of religion starts fading and you'll be dealing only with Truth. So you can read them like any other self-help books you find today.
• Everything taught is scientific and mathematical in nature. For the skeptical(like myself), this is really helpful because just as in Mathematics, the teachings are actually theorems- they start with a fundamental assumption, and then build an argument and prove it based on previously established statements.
• In today's practical science, strictly speaking, space and time(or spacetime as a continuum) are concepts- concepts that have been agreed upon and are used to define all other things in the known universe, and that this whole universe started from a single source of energy. Nobody can truly 'prove' space and time yet they are a part of the fundamental concepts in Physics and Mathematics. Vedanta too, uses the same concept in all it's teachings, that we are from a single source of energy. The difference between practical science and Vedanta is crucial- practical science deals with everything in this universe except our conscience where as Vedanta deals with nothing but our conscience.

P.S.: Observe that the whole basis of our logic(Physics and Mathematics) is a set of concepts that are arguably beyond our logic- which only reiterates that, to understand the fundamental truth, you have to assume(and by extension, believe in) something you don't truly understand.

How I Explained Adhwaitham To My Wife

Note: The title of the post has nothing to do with my wife's intellectual or spiritual aptitude :-) It was purely inspired by Ryan Tomayko's post "How I explained rest to my wife" which I thought was a really nice way to explain a concept. In reality, and to my wife's credit, she encourages spiritual growth and I've managed to spend a lot more time reading about spirituality and philosophy after marriage than what I did before. That doesn't necessarily mean she practices it with the same urge! ;-)

Wife: What is Adhwaitham?

Me: Adhwaitham in Sanskrit is derived from the words "Na dwaitham" meaning "No second thing".

Wife: Uh...

Me: In short it means that everything in this Universe is made of the same energy and what we see is only a manifestation of this energy in different forms.

Wife: And you believe that?

Me: Yes. Completely.

Wife: So, if I understand correctly, you're saying that God didn't create this Universe and that if I believe in God, I'm wrong?

Me: No. You're not wrong if you believe in God. You're wrong if you believe *only* in God and don't believe in the fact that He/She resides in each and everything in this Universe.

Me: In any religion that believes in God, how is He/She defined(in a general way)?

Wife: Umm, God is the Almighty, omni-present and the creator of this Universe. He protects us from Evil and helps us from cleansing our sins. Not even a leaf can move without him knowing about it. Everything about him is sacred and holy and pure.

Me: Good. Now let me explain what God means for me as a believer in Adhwaitham- It is the source of all energy in this universe. It has no form, no shape, it is neither good or bad, it has no virtues, no name, and it is present everywhere- within us, outside us, in the air we breathe, in this world we live in.

Wife: Again, you're saying that He is within us. How?

Me: Okay, you said God knows everything, right? So, if I sit in a room, close all the doors and windows, and I steal something from that room, He will know about it right? Which means he's there in that room.

Wife: Yes of course.

Me: Good. Now, what if I am sitting in that room, and *thinking* about stealing it all the time? God would know about that too right? So, it means that God is in my mind too- to know what I'm thinking about. So, he's in this house, in this room and in my mind too. And by extension, he's in every room, every house, everyone's mind, keeping a tab on what each and everyone is thinking or doing- so He's in all of us, right?

Wife: Hmm, yeah, that makes sense now. But how can you say he's got no form?

Me: Well, that should be easy to explain now that you know He's everywhere, including within ourselves. It's akin to how water takes the shape of everything it is poured into- because it's shapeless. He takes the shape of our mind when He's in our mind, takes the shape of the room when He's in the room and so on.

Wife: Yeah! Now it's making even more sense.

Wife: But how does He protect us from Evil and help us cleanse our sins?

Me: What you're saying is in fact contradictory to your own definition of God. Do you intend to say that He's partial to those who worship him? Can I make a mistake and go worship him and expect him to wipe that mistake out? If that's the case, then He's definitely no God. :)

Wife: True. I don't think God would be partial that way.

Me: Yeah. Like I said, He's got no virtues. He doesn't *choose*. We make all the choices. He only provides the fuel for our actions. You can use that fuel to burn down your house or to light up your way. The choice is *ours*.

Wife: So....we can do whatever we want and He won't do anything about it?

Me: Yes. We can do whatever we want, and He *doesn't* need to do anything about it. Because, the moment you do something, you can rest assured that the consequences of that action are well on their way- some you see immediately, some may take a while. But see them you will. You will get what your actions and the intent deserve.(Pay attention: I'm not saying what *you* deserve, but rather what your actions and intent deserve.) That is to say, an action with a good intent is always going to generate a favorable consequence, and one done in bad intent, will obviously result in an unfavorable consequence. Simple logic.

Wife: Very true! Now I can see the real truth. Now I don't need to go to any temples! ;-)

Me: Haha. I never said you shouldn't go to temples or any other places of worship. You are right in every way to go to your place of worship and pray. But you'll not be right if you simply stop there, and don't see Him inside you. Give Him a form if you like, but don't start believing He's only that. He's a lot more- He's everything and He's nothing too.

Me: Remember- God is in everything we see, everything we do, both inside and outside us.

Wife: Umm, all this is good, but tell me, if we all know that we have the divine energy within us, why isn't this world as just as it should be? And why do we, as individuals, still have things like hatred, anger, pride and jealousy?

Me: Ah yes, very good point that. Well, that is the actual purpose of the journey of our lives! To learn, understand, realize and live this fact! The sad part is that we are born in a world that blinds us with all the glitter and glamour and all things material, so to even accept the things we've discussed, you'll need a great deal of courage and determination to unlearn all the things you have so far and start living in harmony with everything around you and everything within you.

One small step...

I moved to the U.S. recently and as with any major 'transition', the move presented me an opportunity to leave behind all the unnecessary, unwanted and junk in my life and bring with me only those things that really mattered to me and my work and the things that I'm really passionate about.

Of those things, one is particularly important and close to my heart, and one that gives me immense happiness and peace of mind. It's the number one thing on my "10 things I want to do before..." list. Yes, I'm talking about helping others help themselves. At the risk of sounding ostentatious, I want to tell as many people as I can that I finally resumed my philanthropic responsibilities and have started sponsoring food, medicine and education for a few children. Along with donating to some charities and the relief fund for the floods in Pakistan, I have started sponsoring three kids(two in the African continent, one in Dominican Republic) and I hope to continue helping these three kids until they come to a stage where they start leading a decent life on their own.

"That's good, but why do you want to tell others?" you ask, eh? Well the answer is simple, and the reason is the number five thing on that same list again. So, it's that time for me to 'inspire'(read: plead) you to Do The Right Thing and start sponsoring at least one kid. May be the kid you sponsor turns out to be the next Bill Gates or start the next Google and decides to reward his guardian angel! Hey who knows what the future holds for us! Didn't Forrest Gump teach us that "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get"?

"Okay, I'm excited! How do I sponsor the next Bill Gates and how much is the minimum amount for sponsoring a child?" you ponder. Worry not dear friend, there are many organizations that help you sponsor a child for under a meager 35 USD to 45 USD per month. The organizations I sponsored through are World Vision and Children.org. I encourage you to go through both of those organizations' charters and Take That Step, NOW. Besides, this is the only thing that makes you look good and save money at the same time(tax savings)!

If at least one person out of the ten who read this post ends up sponsoring a child, it would make me mighty happy even if the other nine find this post as an egotistical attempt to brag about my actions. A few cold shoulders and snubs are totally fine with me as long as this helps a child get his education and food he deserves in this world.

And, unlike our mission to the moon, when you take this one small step, it is indeed a giant leap for mankind. So, do it now!

P.S.: I know that a lot of you already donate to charities and take up social responsibilities way more that what I do, but I still wanted to spread the word.

An Open Letter to KCR

Dear Mr. KCR,

I'm writing this letter in a hope that it will instill some much needed decency and responsibility in your behavior and speech.

Before I start, let me make myself crystal clear here- fighting for a cause, even a personal one, is something that is your fundamental right and I'm not talking about that here. What I want to talk about is _how_ you are fighting for it. I am pretty sure that a great politician of your stature remembers not only our constitutional rights and responsibilities, but also our fundamental rights and the fundamental duties that every citizen of India has. However, I am still willing to give you the benefit of doubt and assume that you are doing nothing intentionally. Unless you feel that the rules that apply to a citizen of India somehow do not apply to a person like you, I'd like to highlight the following cases where you have either hurt the fundamental rights of your fellow citizens or you have violated our constitutional laws:

• You publicly threaten everyone who oppose the creation of Telangana by saying that you will cut off their tongues. If you are wondering what is wrong with that, consider these:
• You have effectively hurt the fundamental right to the freedom of speech of all those who oppose you.
• You have in a way, indulged yourself in hate speech.
• You publicly threaten that there will be a bloodbath if a separate state of Telangana is not created. If you are still wondering(and I won't be surprised) as to what is wrong with this one too:
• Apart from obviously violating your fundamental responsibility of upholding our constitution and your responsibility to help maintain peace, by directly and indirectly threating the Government of India, you have made yourself punishable under Section 121A, Section 153A and Section 166 of the Indian Penal Code.
• You publicly and in a very indecent language asked forced everyone in Telangana to support your cause.
• You got yourself a free booking under Section 503 of the Indian Penal Code for Criminal Intimidation.
• You publicly threaten that you wont allow Telugu films to be screened(although you don't mind Hindi/English/Tamil/etc., movies to be screened).
• You've potentially made yourself punishable under Sections 504 and 505.

These and many other statements you made that violate my civil and fundamental rights have in effect made a citizen of India afraid of going out with his family in public in the fear of putting his family's health and wealth, both mental and physical, at a risk of getting damaged.

Please, for the sake of humanity and for your own benefit, stop these hate speeches and instill some decency in your addresses to the common man.

Finally, as an epilogue, I'd like to remind you that keeping quiet and being powerless are two different things.

Best regards,

An Indian Citizen.

References

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
2. http://www.vakilno1.com/bareacts/IndianPenalCode/indianpenalcode.htm
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_Rights_in_India

My Wedding Invitation(read: Calling all Philanthropists and Sponsors)

Yeah, that's right. I've decided that happiness is not the only thing in life. Marriage, as they say, is the triumph of imagination and hope over intelligence and logic. I'll assert the relevance of that statement in a short while(although my sixth sense, in a very oh-don't-tell-me-you-don't-know tone confirms the truth in that statement).

The girl who gets to eat me in full is Lakshmi, a good friend whom I know for the last seven or eight years. She works at Polaris in Hyderabad, and she's pretty good at her work(hint/read: ask for her resume). She is a sweet girl, very innocent and charming(you know I have to say all these things about her, right?). 'Nuff said.

Don't ask me how we met. Okay, you ended up asking that question anyway.
I used Google Search to find my better half:


<WARNING: Boring material ahead. Skip to the all-important How to sponsor section if you're not interested in the answer to the question above>

<Boring section, a.k.a. How I Met The Mother(of my imaginary child)>
The narcissist that I was, I had to advertise the latest hotness on the internet during my college days- my first website, and how do I get to do that? CHAIN MAILS!(bwahaha). I would scavenge on those chain mails my innocent friends would forward, extract all the email ids and then send a mass mail out to those folks asking them to checkout the new hotness, and being the perfectionist I am, I would follow up with people who showed on-line after I sent those mails!(again, bwahaha). Out of those innocent prey, there was this girl, who pinged back saying that my site sucks!! gggrrrrrrr!!! and then she started appreciating the creativity and the content....you see where it was going, right? We then decided to meet and we did, we became friends, and we continued that way.
<End of Boring Section>

I used to feel that she fell prey to all my tricks, my "self-dabba", my charm, and my self-proclamation of my good nature(read: you-won't-find-a-slave-like-me nature). Fast forward a few years, I realized that the hunter was the actual hunted and the seemingly innocent prey was a predator in disguise, with an accuracy that would put a dragon-fly to shame! sigh. I lost. She won.

Anyway, past is past. The bright side is that my future will look exactly(best case scenario) like my past- so now I already know what to do! :-)

The way I'm seeing it all, I feel like I'm taking a free fall- jumping into an act with blind faith, with the confidence that others have done this and are still alive.

<IMPORTANT SECTION: PLEASE READ>
The good news I have for you is that YOU can be one of the sponsors for my wedding! yes YOU! Your name will live forever, and you will have your way through St. Peter's! And knowing that different people have different levels of commitment, I have come up with the following events that you can choose to sponsor:
GOLD SPONSORS: Marriage Hall, Decor, Food(catering), Gold Jewelery... (ANY ONE of these)
SILVER SPONSORS: Live Music, Bachelors Party (BOTH of these)
PLATINUM SPONSORS: Marriage Hall, Decor, Food and Gold! <== RECOMMENDED Hurry up, this is a once in a life-time opportunity to serve yours truly! RSVP for sponsorship through comments, mail, phone. I will ensure that you get enough advertisement and will also have banners and placards to show my gratitude. <End of Important Section. Please feel free to re-read or forward this section to your friends> GROUND ZERO: Sri Agrasen Bhavan, 149, Brig Syed Road, Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India.(For the hypertext-ically challenged, please click on that link to see a map).

TIME: T - zero, where T = 27th July 2009, 12:12am. Dinner starts Sunday 26th July 2009, 7p.m. onwards.

Come, feast on me. Laugh at me. Console me. But please do come.

But all jokes apart, I'm happy that I'm getting married to her. I have had my share of joys and sorrows with her, and I look forward to a lifetime's worth of some wonderful and memorable moments with her. She's a wonderful person, and I take it upon me to give her nothing but happiness till my last breath, not because I love her, but because she deserves it. I sincerely feel that she's the best for me for what I am.

Here's me saying "I do". Amen.

Sri Agrasen Bhavan - View Larger Map

Frustrations of a Common Man - Part 1

Democracy - The Real Matrix

"Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people." - Abraham Lincoln.

That was the caption in one of the chapters from my Civics course back when I was in my IX standard. That was what my teacher taught us about Democracy. That was what I grew up thinking Democracy to be. And that democracy is good because people's opinions are valued and considered before the government takes any decision.

It's been around 11 years since my first rendezvous with Democracy as a subject, and after these 11 long, directionless, yet somehow rewarding years, it's but oh-so-obvious to me that everything my teacher taught me was all a big lie. Yep, the whole part, all the way.

Every time I think of Democracy, I'm reminded of the movie The Matrix, more specifically, of what Morpheus says about the matrix in that movie- "It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth- That you are a slave. Like everyone else you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind...." and I'll say that these machines built this huge computer program because they in deed had no other way to survive, unlike the parasites that plague our real societies here. Every time I see these politicians using the law for running their family businesses and every time I see them overpower the few that wake up from their social slumber, this scary similarity only grows stronger.

Democracy, as it stands today, is an illusion created by the people with power and money to blind the other kind of people- the poor/powerless/scared/helpless kind from seeing the obvious, that they are being devoured by these parasites who are sucking the guts out of these poor people with no mercy and with absolutely no social responsibility what-so-ever. All this blood just to fill their pockets green.

The sad part about this whole déjà vu is the fact that just as there were some people hopelessly tied to the matrix for their survival, and how some people accepted it as the real truth, some even fighting for the machines, I've seen people who are hopelessly dependent on these parasites for their livelihood. They fail to realize that the blood sucking leeches they support will not spare anyone- including their supporters and their families. However, unlike the movie, and very unfortunately, the Morpheus of this real world is yet to free himself from this illusion, let alone finding Neo.

Democracy today is no longer about the good of the common man, rather it has been reduced to a tool for exploiting the common man by manipulating the law. As long as the very people who are supposed to prevent corruption and crime(our police and justice departments) are themselves corrupt, these parasites will continue to feed on us, bribing their way out of every crime they commit and buying every judgment that should have gone against them.

MySQL-python 1.2.2 for python 2.4 on Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard)

There are a few posts around which have bits of what was needed for getting mysql-python working on my leopard, but they missed out the prerequisites for 10.5. So here's the complete deal for getting mysql-python up and running on your Mac OS box.

Pop your Mac OS Disk 1 in, go to Optional Installs->Xcode Tools->Packages and install the following(if you don't have them installed already):
a. gcc4.0.pkg
b. MacOSX10.4.Universal.pkg
c. DeveloperToolsSystemSupport.pkg
d. DeveloperToolsCLI.pkg
After you install these packages, run the following command to create a symlink:

   $ sudo ln -s /SDKs /Developer/SDKs

Now you're leopard install is ready for setting up mysql-python. Proceed with the following steps:

1. Download MySQL-python-1.2.2.
2. Extract the source and set it up:

   $ tar zxf MySQL-python-1.2.2.tar.gz
  $ cd MySQL-python-1.2.2
  $ sudo ln -s /usr/local/mysql/lib /usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql

3a. Edit the _mysql.c file and make the following changes:

   $ vim _mysql.c

3b. In this file, delete or comment out the following lines:

#ifndef uint
#define uint unsigned int
#endif

3c. And change the following:

uint port = MYSQL_PORT;
uint client_flag = 0;

to

unsigned int port = MYSQL_PORT;
unsigned int client_flag = 0;

4. If you get an error like

    #error "LONG_BIT definition appears wrong for platform
           (bad gcc/glibc config?)."

then:

    $ sudo vim /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.4/include \
     /python2.4/pyport.h

and comment out the line that raises the error(line 616, which reads exactly as the error message that was spit.)
5. Now add the mysql bin directory to your path:

   $ export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/mysql/bin

6. Clean and install the extension:

   $ python setup.py clean
  $ python setup.py install

NOTE: YOU MUST HAVE THE SAME BINARY ARCHITECTURE FOR BOTH PYTHON AND MYSQL. WHAT IT MEANS IS THAT IF YOU HAVE A 32-BIT VERSION OF PYTHON INSTALLED ON YOUR SYSTEM, THEN YOU NEED TO HAVE A 32-BIT VERSION OF MYSQL INSTALLED. YOU CANNOT MIX 32-BIT WITH 64-BIT OR 64-BIT WITH 32-BIT APPLICATIONS. AT THE VERY LEAST, YOU WILL END UP GETTING ERRORS LIKE THE FOLLOWING:

ImportError: dynamic module does not define init function (init_mysql)

Or

ImportError: Loaded module does not contain symbol _init_mysql

References:
MangoOrange
Red Elephants

The Beauty of Life

It's Sunday morning and I know I can't see my life any more balanced than what it was when I woke up today. Things have been good at work lately, and they have been good on my personal front too. I also finally managed not to postpone the appointment with my doc and saw him yesterday. So, as I sat down to enjoy my morning tea I felt my head was lighter than yesterday, lighter without the tensions or stress from so many yesterdays. It felt real good, that feeling, and after a very long time. I started to think about how I managed to get here, the things I did right and how did I do them right.

For me, life has always been about learning from experiences. I can't think of a time that I did something with a good deal of thought and planning. Many, many a time I've jumped first and blind-fold, trusting that the ones I'm jumping for truly understand me and will save me from getting hurt. But I ended up getting hurt on several occasions. There were times when I was wrong in trusting those people, and then there were times when it was purely my mistake that I jumped without knowing that there was no one there, and in fact that it was me who had made them walk away, made them lose their trust in me. Yet, I never stopped jumping for them. I, for some reason, learn things the hard way- after I injure myself, after I burn my fingers. But I never regret about this. I am an emotional person and I feel this allows me to be free from judging people until they, in deed, prove themselves worthy or unworthy of my trust , and that happens only after giving the other person the right to explain themselves and the right to try again, so that I never have to take the guilt trip.

My life(so far) has been just as wonderful as it has been painful. When I look back at it, and go as far as my consciousness allows me to, I see each day I lived as a collection of unforgettable memories- fond and lovely, scary and regretful, sweet and funny, sour and real bad; with everyone of them teaching me something new. And I've realized the fundamental theme of my life to be this- I had good times and then I had better times :-). Good times were the lighter, fond, lovely, sweet and beautiful ones. The better times were the ones that have been really tough on me, the ones that helped me get stronger and helped me become what I am today.

I feel grateful for this new morning, for the real beauty of life is its balancing act- taking me far far away from everything and everyone I know, detaching itself from me. I feel that every new Today gives me yet another chance to right my wrongs of Yesterday, it gives me yet another chance to do something about the issues that concern me, yet another chance to show the people I care about that I in deed do.

PyXMPP on Windows

I searched around a bit for this module on windows, and I couldn't find any. But, yes. You can use it now. I recently had a need and I downloaded the tar ball, customized it, and built a windows binary using mingw32 from cygwin, and it works.

Here's the process:
-- install dnspython, or use Easy Install for Python on Windows, which I personally prefer.
-- install M2Crypto or again, use easy_install if you're lazy like me.
-- install the libxml2 python package for windows.
-- get the pyxmpp package for Windows.(Note: I created this package on my vista box, with a python 2.5.2 install, so ensure you have python 2.5.x to work with this.)
-- pyxmpp's api docs, to jabber your way to g(l)ory from windows!

P.S: let me know if you're interested in building one yourself and you need some expert advise ;-) j/k.