I was at Port Stanley roaming around with my camera to take some interesting shots. Suddenly, one of my friends called me. We were talking over the phone and at the same time I was trying to capture this bee, which was hovering around the flower. After struggling for some time, I told her how it would have been a perfect picture if only the bee cooperates with me. Then she replied something, which made me think and triggered me to write this blog.

She said, if the bee is going to help me out, then the picture might not look perfect and special in my head, as it will be, when it is taken out of my natural “skill” with some struggle.

I found it amusing initially and later I had to agree with her. Sometimes, even though, we are all focused in the goal and think it as the most important entity, the journey plays a crucial role in deciding whether we are happy with what we are doing are not. The struggle using which we achieve the goals, most of the time define the degree of happiness and confidence we get when we actually achieve our goal.

Then I wonder and ask myself, why is that, struggling for something doesn’t give me the momentary happiness, when it actually defines my overall satisfaction at the end of the day.

Niagara in the night!, originally uploaded by R Karthick.

One of the most satisfying pics, I have ever taken

I love playing in the rain.

Yesterday, I played in rain after a pretty long time. There is something about rain and cricket combination that makes you forget everything else in the life. It has been some while, I had got into that kind of state, till the last snow.

I sometimes wonder why is that the extreme climates get me excited than the normal one? May be there is always some part of me which wants me experience something different than what I am currently experiencing. I think that is the basis behind the growth of each individual. However, is there any time, in which we have to call it a day and just start “accepting” things?!

I have always thought that eternal happiness is the ultimate thing in life. Everyday the choices we make, the things we do all is either directly or indirectly is attributed to happiness.

In that case, when I see so much unhappiness around me and in me, I sometimes wonder, are we judging the things which will give us happiness well?

With this question in mind, I would like to share this inference I had with my life over the last six months.

I was once the biggest advocate of freedom. I have always believed that in my life to have total happiness I should have freedom. My life should be without any rules. My current mood should decide what I want to do now.

I am in that kinda situation these days, where I can really do what I want to. I gave my freedom a free run for the last 6 months. With time, I kinda figured out that somewhere something is wrong. When life is driven by your current state of mind, most of the time, it is wayward and erratic.

So I decided to introduce some simple rules, some really basic ones which are not very hard to follow. Surprise, Surprise. For the first time since six months, I feel happy, I feel satisfied. I can tell you, if you know me, I don’t get happy that easily.

So the moral of the story is two fold

1. If you have thought that you know what will make you happy. Hang on! May be you are not right?! I am not saying that just because I am wrong, so you will be also wrong.. I am saying give it a second thought.

2. Is freedom the ultimate goal for happiness? As gandhi rightly said, with freedom, comes great responsibilities. I guess with freedom, we will have more responsibilities over life and we remain answerable to us more than ever before.

have fun!

Freedom, originally uploaded by R Karthick.

Even though this is not the technically the best pic I have taken, this is one of my most favorite pics! Just takes me to a different world everytime I see this :).

How can I not upload this video? This is simply awe-inspiring. Nowadays I am uploading all the videos, I like in orkut. However, this one is special really special :). Definitely deserves a separate post!

My end of the year post and also the new year post

This year it is going to be a bit different. I am going to pin down the experiences of my toronto trip. This one was special as this was treat I gave to myself for my “persistence” of 2007. :-). Lets get on with it.

The mission was to visit the important places in toronto in 24 hours. We have to start from London, 2 hours of drive away from Toronto.

The challenges
   1. Filtering out places out of the variety of ones
   2. Our Energy Levels
   3. Money

The Crew
   1. Himanshu
   2. Nithy and
   3. My Camera kit
   4. Me

London is 191 Kms away from Toronto. As we are not yet ready to afford a car, and none of us have ontario state driving licenses, Greyhound was a only means of communication. We scheduled our departure on 03:20 am, December 31st 2007 and our arrival on Jan 1st 2008 01:00 am from Toronto.

Traveling in Toronto, might be very tricky if you are not aware of the sub-way aka the metro trains. They beautifully connect most of the important parts of the city and with a supporting bus and tram network, you can comfortably travel in Toronto.

We got ourselves a Toronto day visit pass worth 59 CAD, which allows us to travel to 6 important places in Toronto. We used the map provided by www.ttc.ca at the counter.

HarbourFront
06:15: Greyhound Terminal to Harbor Front [Union Station]

After sipping coffee from Tim Hortons at HarbourFront, we headed towards HarbourFront. None of us knew about what it was. I just read from the web that is is at the shore of Ontario lake and it will make a nice place to be for sunrise. I can tell you it did’nt disappoint us at all.

The place was beautiful and it turned gorgeous during sunrise. The boats, toys and playground for kids, the snow and of course the lake shore were all adding to the beauty.

Ontario Science Center
08:45: Union Station to Eglington. Eglington to Ontario Science Center [Route:34]

The walk to the Ontario Science center from the bus station was pretty nice. And not to mention, we all tried our modeling and photographic skills there.

Ontario Science center is ideal for kids, to help them generate enthusiasm in science. It had lot of toys kinda things along with some pretty cool exhibits.

I also watched the movie “HURRICANE ON THE BAYOU” in the imax theatre. That was an awesome experience. Anyone who haven’t watched a movie in imax theature i will highly recommend it. It is a mind-boggling experience. The movie in itself was good, on how life is changed by the Katrina disaster.

Royal Ontario Museum
12:45: Eglington Station to Museum Station

This must be one of the best modern architectures I have ever seen. Simply fantastic. I guess the big queue over here was really justified given the artifacts in this place. The queue kinda threw us out of our plan. But hey we had contingency plans to fit any unanticipated delays like this one :-).

Museum was huge. It had lot of interesting stuff. Dinosaur skeletons, World Culture and History galleries and so much more. We had too little time to do a detailed visit. We just skimmed through the things.

CASOLOMA
03:30: Museum Station to Dupont Station

We were running 30 minutes late by this time. The long walk from Dupont to Casoloma didnt help at all. But hey, the castle was really big. It was under reconstruction, so we were not able to visit all the rooms. After taking few pics there, we headed right to the most anticipated place, Gerrald Street aka Little India :).

Little India
05:30: DUPont to St. George -> transfer to green line east -> Donlands -> 83 to Gerrald Street

We got the wrong bus to this place. We had to walk for around 20 minutes to reach the actual place. Have to say, we were disappointed when we got down here. I was expecting something like, Little India in Singapore. However, it had the Indian restaurants we were looking for. So no complaints, none at all :). I had some tasty dinner in an Udupi restaurant. Wow the south indian coffee….!!!!

CN Tower ~ At the top of the world
07:00: Route 506[West] to College Station -> Union Station

The walk from Union station to the CN tower was amazing. We were virtually walking for 2 or 3 kilometers in a heated tunnel kinda infrastructure. It was so cool.

CN tower should be the place of our trip. It is the current highest building in the world. Dubai is building a tower higher than this. It has a visibility range of 169 KMS and in a clear day, it seems that even niagara will be visible. This is pretty incredible.

The glass floor, sky pod everything over there was quite exceptional. After spending some time there we headed to the Nathan Philips Square

Nathan Philips Square
20 Minutes Walk from CN Tower

We were in for a surprise at Nathan Phillips square. We never knew that it is going to be that big. There were around 40,000 people according to the City news report. We went there just to witness the fireworks. After going there came to know that, there is this concert. Wow the atmosphere was really electrifying. I heard the song “Hey There Delilah” for the first time. Beautiful song. Took a lot of snaps both using SLR and my mobile camera.

Overall a pretty happening trip. An amazing finish to an amazing year.

Btw, happy new year to you all.

There is one part of you, which wants to climb Mt. Everest. There is another part of you that reminds you of the heavy breaths you take after climbing 100 stairs. If we get stuck to the reality, we can never achieve our dreams and when we are just stuck to our dreams without waking up, we forget who we are and our *limitations*.

According to me, our whole life is a struggle to close the gap between who we are and what we want to be. When the latter fades away and the gap starts narrowing down, somewhere down the line, we start feeling, dissatisfied with things again. The only thing which sometimes gets us going is, what we want changes with time. That gives us the new reason to close the gap, a new reason for living.

Maybe, tat is wat we call as growing!

I really dont know, Why I have opened this interface at this point of hour. I should be doing a lot of other things than writing a blog now. But hey, I dont know why, I really miss writing.

The last three months in Canada, has been pretty different. Coming directly from my previous company, I am still getting used to **academic** environment here. Have to say, this is a very unique experience of its kind.

Happiness is a tricky thing. According to me, whatever we do directly or indirectly attribute to that single goal of life, “happiness”. I have been thinking about happiness a lot these days. Came across this book, “Stumbling on Happiness“, by Daniel Gilbert. Awesome! Will be writing my review on it soon. Trust me, I will. ;-)!

I am in a position of thinking, “What do I want exactly from life, so that I can be happy?”. This is a tricky question, for all these days, I didn’t have the courage to ask myself this question. Now when I get the opportunity and confidence to ask myself the same question, I am blinking… “What exactly do I **want**?”

I had two presentations to give this week. Just two hours before, I was done with the final presentation. Amit and Me decided to go to the nearest Pizza hut and collect some pizzas.

While coming back, something happened.

It started snowing. I got so excited and enthused by that. This is for something I have been waiting for the last 24 years of my life. Yeah, I can listen you saying, no big deal or you will get bored with it by time, but its just that, “first time is always special”.

Then after some time, it started snowing **heavily**. I gradually started shivering. Suddenly, my feeling of enthusiasm and excitement got transformed into a feeling of pain. We were not able to bear with the snow and got into a shelter.

While looking through the glass window, the whole world looked beautiful. Covered with white layers of snow, Wow it was so pure. I was surprised that I didn’t notice that when I was walking. Maybe it is just that pain, which made to oversee the beauty. I don’t know.

In a span of 15 minutes, the same thing which gave me pleasure, transformed in to a source of pain and then finally it gave me a state of bliss.

I start to think, Did the snow change or my feelings about the snow?