Power of positive thinking

When I was bored at work, I was going through some files and unexpectedly I stumbled on a video which was named as “The Secret”. I have heard about this concept before but I never really bothered about doing any more research. So out of curiosity I took the video home and watched it. That was the most memorable and life changing one hour I’ve ever spent.

The video was a bit exaggerated but the underlying concept was so significant, it really opened up my eyes. I was the most pessimistic person anyone could ever come across with. I would imagine my life in terrible circumstances and imagine all the crazy ways my life would become a living hell. So that was my life. While watching “The Secret” I was slowly realizing what a horrible mistake I’ve done and how unfair I treated myself.

It took me a few days to really grasp the concept of positive thinking and gratitude but from the very next day I took baby steps in being an optimist. I found old magazines and made a “mood board” cutting and pasting all the pictures that would mean something to me. I pasted pictures on what I wanted and who I wanted to be. Then I made a journal for myself, to record my day to day lessons and things that I wanted to remember.

I started making objectives for myself and I would spend all my energy on focusing on only those. And this amazing thing happened. Little by little without my knowledge, the things I pasted on my mood board started to come true. They happened in the most unexpected ways and it takes a few days for you to realize that you have actually done them. For example I had a picture of a girl riding a bicycle and during the days of my unemployment I actually learnt to ride a bicycle with my relatives. After a few days while I was looking at my mood board I noticed the picture of the girl and then it dawned on me.

My life is and was a struggle. I had quite a few boyfriends but none of them worked out. I’m well qualified but it took months and months of struggle and pain to find a job. My friends are living their own life with their loved ones so the girls days outs only happens once a month or so. I spent all my energy focusing only on positive things and my objectives. Whenever I was losing faith or starting to doubt my own existence something good would happen that would remind me that I shouldn’t give up.

So to some up this simple yet powerful concept, is to stay positive. Focus only on the good things, make objectives for yourself, surround yourself among people with positive energy and believe it or not they will happen. To quote “The Secret” – “Whatever it is you are feeling is a perfect reflection of what is in the process of becoming”.  

My Most Influential Book List

There was a bucket challenge that was going viral on Facebook so I thought I would share my 10 most influential books.

Kite Runner – Really opened my eye to show that there are books other than Princess Diaries. Was shocked for the most part of the book coz it was just unbelievable. It’s shocking what guilt does to people.

The Handmaid’s Tale – read this with friend's recommendation. Shocking story about fertile women carrying children for other people and this specifically done with the particular couple’s husband itself!

The Atonement – read the full book recently only. I still cannot imagine why Briony did what she did. Is it out of jealousy or childishness?

The midnight’s children – I read this coz of best friend's constant reminder that it’s a superb book. After reading that, every book I read no matter how great it was, couldn’t come up to this standard.

The God of Small things – both of you wanted me to read this. It’s such a simple story from the outside but has a lot of meaning between the lines.

The Godfather – My first and probably my last underworld story. Don’t think anyone can write about the happenings of the underworld as better as this book.

Life of Pi – got this from the library a few weeks ago. Loved the part where he starts believing in all the religions. Goes to show how narrow minded people are when it comes to things like religion and being different.

Pride and Prejudice – started this coz I wanted to get a taste in classics. Found it to be really interesting and the olden traditions.

Rich dad, Poor dad – Awesomely simple way to understand the difference between making and wasting wealth.

The Pilot’s Wife – the first book I got from myLibrary. Gosh, the cheating and living a double life with two families is just shocking. Read the book within a day or two coz the suspension was too much.

Hopefully I'll be able to add more to this list in the time to come....

Sri Lankan Marriage Proposals

I live in the Capital city of Sri Lanka which is more westernized than other parts of the country. People are more educated and independent. With people focusing more on their studies and career the pressure on parents on finding a partner for their children heighten. However there are many who finds their own partners despite the constant rat race whereas there are some who still haven’t found their “soul mate” (whatever you can call it).

I am one of them. I was first pressurized to excel in education, find a job and now I am under tremendous pressure to get married. I find this very disturbing because I do not want to be forced into a marriage I really don’t like and I very well know that I’m not at all ready to be someone’s God damn wife. This doesn’t mean that I want to live the rest of my life single and lonely but I do have hope that someday I will find the right one for me. I have tried my very best in explaining to my parents that I’m not one of those girls who would do as they say and that I want to excel in my career first. However my parents being the dumb, typical, traditional parents they are, turns a blind eye for my arguments thinking that I’m naïve, stupid and stubborn.

I’ve been a rebellious kid my whole life because I constantly fight for what’s right and wrong and this factor itself has harmed my relationship with my parents. Our parents want to do what’s best for us, but what if the best they think is actually NOT the best thing for us? Does it mean that we have to satisfy every wish of them? At the moment my parents are putting pressure on me to be with a guy they found for me and that I should be married to him as soon as possible. But what if I DON’T WANT THAT? Don’t I get a say in what I want?

As far as options go to, I got two. One is to keep on fighting for my life and the other is to go abroad. I want to fight for myself but I’m worried in giving up. I don’t want to make their wishes come true, I want my dreams to come true.

My definition of dumb blonde women

I have a very few handpicked number of friends. Why’s that? Because I hate dumb, blonde women. Gosh, those insecure women who need constant reminders from their loved ones how pretty and beautiful they are and the regular selfie pictures, aren’t they the most irritating and useless to hang out with? I hate them. I really do. I cannot tolerate them.

These women does not have any depth in them, doesn’t know how many people in this world suffer even from the basic things like food. The only thing that matters to them is their boyfriends! I’m not against falling in love, I mean something totally different.  If they have a phone and an internet connection (why I’m highlighting only internet? Coz whatsapp, facebook and viber have replaced all other things) they can survive. Even without Food!

Why can’t they grow up for once? Why cant they learn that there’s more to life than wasting time in digital things? They are too dumb to even realize that. As soon as they upload a facebook photo they need to know how many likes they get, how many comments? The more the better. Their self-confidence depends on the number of likes and comments they get. For example:

• ·         0 likes – my God! I’m ugly, no one likes me, no one cares about me
• ·         10 likes – is this all my friends can do? Aren’t I looking sexy enough?
• ·         50 likes- I’m feeling good and pretty
• ·         More than 100 likes – Oh my Gawd!!! I’m so damn sexy, everyone likes me.

So this is the story of most of the girls. It’s pathetic and sad to see people in my same gender suffer from this “selfie obsession”. I’m not against them but I definitely don’t want to be with them. Its torture to see people taking selfies in every damn place they go to. They take pictures with their towels, panties and what not and this attract all the perverts. And then they finally blame the guys who come after them telling that they are actually perverts?? I mean, isn’t it the same girl who posted those pictures? We shouldn’t blame the guys; it’s not their fault for being attracted to makeup, boobs and asses.

I found this article randomly from which I have taken this quote “American Psychiatric Association (a real body) had classified “selfitis” as “the obsessive compulsive desire to take photos of one’s self and post them on social media”, further defining three strands of ‘selfitis’: ‘borderline’, ‘acute’ and ‘chronic’ - depending on the frequency with which individuals’ indulged.” There are no proof as to which this is actually true or whether they have actually done this research. But I believe that is true. 

What do you guys think?

Interesting facts about M2M

For people who have read about M2M or for who haven’t, this post will give an idea as to what the future holds when it comes to technology. M2M is a simple concept where two machines communicate to each other to achieve a common objective. The communication is done through complicated sensors that are installed in the machines. Here are some interesting user cases of M2m I found;

Entertainment
iLuminate essentially takes a simple M2M concept and turns it into art: dancers wear bodysuit and costumes that light up wirelessly to match the music and choreography. The difference with the iLuminate platform is that performers wear illuminated costumes that can be controlled without having to keep pressing buttons. Based on the sources they further said that, “the software's accuracy means cues can fire every 5 milliseconds, which is 1000 times faster than a human hand clicking a button.”

Home appliances
I think we’ve all seen this part of technology in future oriented movies where the entire household can be controlled by a click of a button. However in reality this kind of technology is coming true bit by bit. The introduction of Smart TV’s is one example. At a recent Consumer Electronics Show, LG has showcased a "Smart Refrigerator" prototype demonstrating various M2M-based "smart home technologies". One unique feature was a food management which allows consumers to check food items stored inside the fridge such as location and expiry dates via their smartphones or its built-in LCD panel. The appliance even recommends dishes that can be cooked using the ingredients that it happens to be storing. How convenient!! 

Big Data and the Telecom Industry

Mobile phones are already well on their way to replacing cameras, cash, tickets, calculators, maps, notepads and many more and they are becoming ubiquitous. Within the next five years smart phones are going to become the center of our world. The smart phone will start the car, make phone calls, check bank account balances, make payments and track locations. Literally people will not have to carry anything else but the smart phone. 

In the mobile network there are more than 6 billion mobile subscriptions in the world, and every day, 10 billion text messages are sent. Thus to facilitate great customer relationships, enterprises will want near real-time information on every kind of data emanating from consumer mobile devices in order to sharpen their understanding of consumer demographics and buying patterns. Not only enterprises, mobile operators can use these real time analytics in delivering a superior customer service. 

Based on a new IBM study on how telcos are using Big Data “85 percent of the respondents indicate that the use of information and analytics is creating a competitive advantage for them – a 124 percent increase in the last two years.” 

For example one of US major mobile operators is combining its customer record data with sentiment analysis where they are able to determine what type of people pass by a billboard at a particular time of day and what products they are interested in. This allows them to precisely target its billboard advertisements to the demographics.

What's so Big in Big Data?

Organizational leaders require analytics to exploit their growing data and computational power to be smart and get innovative in ways they never could before. Consider retailing for example. Physical bookstores could track which books they sold and which did not. They could tie some of those purchases to individual customers if they had a loyalty program. These bookstores had limited information and thus could not make informed decisions. Then the online shopping and e-commerce gained popularity moving transactions to the internet. This transformation resulted in businesses gaining better insights of who their customers are and their behavior. Now online retailers can not only track what they bought, but can gain information about what other items they looked at, how they were influenced by promotions and reviews. 

Every day business and consumer life creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: posts to social media sites, sensors used to gather climate information, purchase transaction records, and cell phone GPS signals to name a few. This data is called big data. 

Big data is more than gathering data; it is about finding useful insights that can be used by organizations in making decisions. Leaders across countries consider big data as a management revolution where enterprises analyze massive amounts of data to identify valuable information. Senior executives now prefer to run businesses on data-driven decisions. They require scenarios and simulations that will provide guidance on the best actions to take.