I got a lovely yellow rose this year, so I decided to capture it and share the friendship…

This yellow flower is for all my online friendships that I have made/continued over the past year! Whether they are twitter peeps or the tech 65 gang or the creative crew bunch or Challenge:Future and many many more… Living at this age with Social media, Skype, iPhone, live streaming and constant 24 hours connectivity, no matter where you are, it’s always so near!

Thank you for the wonderful friendship around the world!

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…

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

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!

Merry Christmas friends!!

I caught this white Christmas decoration at Novena Square today morning while coming back from gym. So i thought of capturing it right here. Christmas never fails to remind me of all the Christmas trees i used to decorate and all the nativity plays of my childhood.

Oh! the year is almost ending.. hold on and 2010 will be here soon!

I was browsing through tonnes of my unprocessed photos and i realised i have so many cloud pics!! I’m surely obsessed with clouds and the skies… there are never any photo albums without a sky picture!

Have you been looking up at the skies?

I just read this in the Free eBook by Seth Godin… the last entry on Gumption.

Most of us settle in, and settle for what we have. Rather than pursue, we accept. Our lives become unwitting celebrations of passivity: we undervalue our work and perceive ourselves as wage slaves (and so we phone it in at the day gig), we consume compulsively (but not create), we pine for better lives (but live vicariously through our televisions). These corners we paint ourselves into, it’s no way to live. There’s no adventure here, no passion, no hunger for change. Remember that relentless optimism you once had? The goals you wished to achieve, before settling in? They’re still there. You need a nudge to find them; a little gumption.

…

Declare war on passivity. Hush the inner voice that insists you’re over the hill, past your prime, unworthy of attaining those dreams. Disbelief is now the enemy, as is the notion of settling. Get hungry — hyena hungry. Get fired up. Find your backbone, and your wings. Flap ‘em. It’s the only way you’ll be able to fly.

~ by J.C. Hutchins @ at JCHutchins.net.

I think I know my motto for 2010: Declare war on passivity