I have finally installed Windows on my MacBook as well and I’m happy that I can continue both operating systems very effectively With the Boot Camp and a little help from school, I can finally use many spreadsheet functions and financial database syncing available only for Windows on the very same machine!

I love how it all all integrate smoothly and yet i can have the choice of both! We should not be restricted to using just one operating system.

But of course, now i have to do a bit of fire-fighting with both the Mac and PC camp people. And I won’t stop here actually. I can’t wait to get my hands on Ubuntu soon

I truly believe that technology today is ultimately the manifestation of human imagination.

Man did think of flying in the past and look where we are now! We are living in an age where many of our pre-historic wild imagination of split second communication across thousand miles, knowing the billion year universe history and flying across the solar system nearer to the stars have come true. In essence, it’s utterly magical !

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
- Carl Sagan

And today, we are living in an exciting age where man has come to build many “magical” toys like the internet, the airplane or the laptop. We are at an age where fundamental physics have been discovered and we are spending many efforts into refining and integrating many technologies, digging deeper into space and the atomic world to create even more breath-taking imagination of our mind.

The next 50 years will define and create many such integrated devices with faster updates, connectivity and intuitive humane functions and most importantly, it will come be to available to the people world-wide. The 4 important trends that I believe will propel the future of technology are:

1. Human sense integration
2. Data
3. Connectivity
4. People

1. Human sense integration Today, will much of the technology and the way we interact with machines is done in a mechanical way. Tomorrow, the human senses will define the technology. We will use more of our gestures, touch and voice to interact and send messages all across the world. And these information will be readily understood by any culture and any language. That would be very humane.

2. Data Today data is very much stored in our home within the hard disks, DVDs and storage devices. Tomorrow, data will be accessible from anywhere with super fast upload and download capabilities. It will be secure for private access and yet, common knowledge will be available to all for us.

3. Connectivity Some pockets of the world is cut of from the world wide web and mobile connections. The next huge phenomenon will be to make this connectivity available to anywhere in the world and anybody cheaply. Yes, that lone ship out in the middle of Pacific ocean, that adventurer in the Antarctic or little boy from remote village of Africa will be able to access the mobile and internet connectivity cheaply and readily.

4. People People, people, people… regardless of location, affordability or education – all will be able to tap into the shared knowledge of the world through internet and affordable gadgets. This is more of a socio-tech trend and many of us do not want to leave anybody else behind!

All of the trends that I have described are already implementable. The next task of the tech world will be to integrate, make it sleek, intuitive and super fast. Are you excited? I am Are you having wild thoughts on the next tech machine? I am and I want to doodle them and share it out soon!

Doodle, doodle, doodle…

Inspired by lifehack’s lists of lists, i decided to share my list of things that i keep updated. I keep these 7 lists pretty updated:

1. To read, watch and listen … I’m a non-fiction junkie. Yep, Non-fiction. I read books from library and school mostly, backed by loads of feeds and podcasts. At the end of the day, many of the books will get reviewed and shared. This is my knowledge-hungry list.

2. Places to visit … The last time I have ventured out on my own was almost 2 years back. But that does not stop me from keep this list. I have a lot of the world to see and meet people and experience cultures. This is my adventure list.

3. Crazy things to do in life … Goals, bucket list, BHAG all combined into one just to make sure that I live out my imagination and truly hope these will come true. This is my life wishlist. In short, it reminds me of what Mark Twain once said:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
~ Mark Twain

4. Quotations … I have been gathering quotations that strike a chord with me. And every time I get setbacks, I will take a peek into this list. This is my re-energise list.

5. Blessings in my life! … I am lucky (and this warrants a post for itself). If I am not grateful for my life, I do not think I can help others and live life. This is my gratitude list.

6. List of people … Some time last month an idea came to my mind. I would never want to forget the people who gave me that first chance, that first break to discover and experience life! I will always have you in my mind. They might be friends, mentors or even strangers. But I would want to be grateful to you and keep thanking you!

7. Things to buy …  This is simply to quench my materialism. Vast majority of them are techy… not surprising.

What lists do you keep?

It’s a movie!!! And I love it Amir Khan never fails to make movie masterpieces and this is surely one of my fav!

Any student or a young adult will be able to relate to this movie. It tells us once again how we should be chasing our strengths and passions and not living a life getting all the grades and then end up getting a high paid, stable job, not knowing what we want! 3 idiots is a very humorous movie and coupled with my fav, Kareena Kapoor and Bollywood style, it did make my weekend a blast

I admit, I used to think that grades would give me money and societal prestige. Yes, it might give us that most of the time… but it does not guarantee that I would be living my life and having fun… you know that?

I wasn’t an idiot before. And now I wanna be an idiot.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish!
~ Steve Jobs

Friends always ask me how I manage work and school. Frankly, I did not manage them well so far.

But the new year and new semester surely gives me a reason to learn the art of completing tasks. The first week of the year has already given me a glimpse into many opportunities that I would love to commit other than work and school. Although I was fearful at first, I know if I do not take this chance to learn, I won’t never know if i can possibly do all of them really well.

So here are my first 5 steps towards learning to manage my stuff well:

1. Identify the first priority: This is an easy one for me. It is school. The rest of the priorities will have to work around it.

2. Understand my own time span for concentration: It is a fact that pseudo work does not equal to work and neither does long hours guarantee performance. So, I would like to work at my optimum concentration time and i take that as 2 hours, with one break in between.

3. Schedule fixed times every week: I came across this idea of fixed scheduled productivity, with uninterrupted focus. I have chosen the early morning hours of 5:30am to 7:30am before I get to go for work. I think this is an excellent time because not only do i get the benefits of waking up early, I will get to do uninterrupted work in the peace and quiet of my room. Also, I do not have to worry about not getting my school work done in the evening, just in case I need to stay back late for my work.

4. Discipline myself to stick to this schedule: Performance is always exponential. The more I do it, the better I will become – or at least I believe in this. So, just start! In order to stick to this schedule, I will also have to ensure I sleep early by 10:30pm every night.

5. Form a habit: Instead of doing a new year’s resolution, I have set myself to form 6 habits for 2010. The fixed scheduled habit shall be my first one and that’s for the next 2 months.

I have no idea how I will do in 2 months time, but I know I will be in an improved position with this method. I am willing to go for it Do you have any other methods for juggling rigorous work and demanding school curriculum?

I would love to know as well!

It’s been 4 and a half years since my first post.

Other than writing about myself, I had no idea what i would write about when i first started. So I had categories that basically depicted how i spent my time like in Boliao Banter or Outside Observations. Through the years of inconsistent blogging and recounting my experiences, I am changing and I am evolving. Thankfully, I am finding my way through towards a focus.

And I thought, I would write more about this focus. I have thus created 4 categories as shown in the side bar… they are simply:

1. Technology
2. Ideas
3. Productivity
4. Strategy

As i go into this year, I am also getting involved in a few interesting projects as i continue with my Neoteny Venture 2010. Through these ideas and explorations, in the web-sphere you can also find me at…

This post is about my journey in the Art of Public Speaking… and how i once forgot to keep learning.

When I was 4 years old, my mom made me first enter a poetry reading competition. Since then, every year during Durga Puja festivals, she would drill me to speak out the Tagore or Sukumar Ray’s Abol Tabol Bengali poetry poems and I used to recite it out during the competitions. She would train me in throwing out my voice, in expressions, pronunciations and even pauses. I would be very nervous speaking in the public, but every time I always won these competitions. That was my childhood.

During my adolescence, I was again very frequently asked to enter oratorical contests in primary and secondary schools. I can remember winning contests within my schools. But something happened when i reached the university… either because of laziness or my self-ego, I decided not to do anything. I was quiet, passive and the skill was becoming forgotten… almost forgotten until i entered my post-grad studies and I had to deliver 3 speeches within a span of 1 week. I spoke for the Speaking skills workshop, the Business case workshop and also for the Creative Crew meeting. The experience was great and I had loads of encouragements.

And then it finally hit me that no matter what skill you once had, there’s nothing more inspiring and interesting than to keep up with it. I need to keep learning, unlearning and re-learning and meeting people who inspire me in that skill.

So, a couple of days back, I finally decided to go for my first Toastmasters meeting in school. It was simply euphoric. I loved the people there, I loved the speeches and evaluations given. And I decided to re-learn everything about public speaking and start with the Competent Communicator project. I truly hope, i would be able to deliver my first speech for Project 1: Ice Breaker by this year and when that happens, you will know And if you also want to learn/re-learn public speaking, do find a club near near you and start having fun!

I would want to end with 2 compelling thought / questions in my mind right now:

When was the last time you did something for the first time?

When was the last time you unlearned something to re-learn it?

I just did Thank you mom.

Because it is the first day of the new year,

because i just love the theme,

because i want to shoot one pic a day,

I  just created picaday.sweska.net

I hope it’ll get really colourful

Happy New Year everyone!!

While all of us are busy doing the yearly reflections and resolutions, the thought of coming up with a “mission statement” for the next year suddenly popped into my mind. It shall be Neoteny Venture 2010.

I first heard the word neoteny through the Singapore Camp conferences. Although it is a biological word, I very much loved the concept – retaining childlike attributes into the adulthood. And coupled with the word venture, I combined them to mean playful adventures and experimentation throughout the next year.

That sounds fun! Have a great time in the countdown parties I’m off to to begin my ventures as well…

People do not grow old no matter how long we live. We never cease to stand like curious children before the great Mystery into which we were born.

~ Albert Einstein

Ok! Here it goes… after a few months of secrecy and setting up, I have finally decided to say that my new project in partnership with a friend is online now!

Project Cubic is about capturing moments with a little Haiku.

Each post will have 2 pictures from 2 corners of the world, but they will always say the same message… can you decipher it? :p

And we would love to hear your comments and ideas!

For now, let me start you off with a lovely picture of silver balls from 2 faraway places – that sure signals gorgeousness, festivity and brilliance for the next year coming for us. Enjoy exploring project Cubic, by Chinnee!