Random is Good!

“One of the most beneficial and valuable gifts we can give to ourselves in this life: is allowing ourselves to be surprised! It is okay if life surprises you. Its a good thing!”
- C. JoyBell C.

Life brings surprises because of its random nature. Randomness is one of the best attributes of life, so live it that way! If you knew what is going to happen next, you could perhaps control the situation better; but it would definitely be monotonous and dull. I am not asking you to take it to the extreme, as The Dice Man, but sensibly.

Random Act I:  Read a random article on Wikipedia
You may have noticed a link on the left pane of Wikipedia which leads to a 'random article'. It would lead you to one of the 4.1 million English articles. I visit few random pages every day; and even have this link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random) bookmarked on my browser. You come across different and interesting articles from the huge collection of the free encyclopedia.

Random Wiki Page

Display a random: Article Talk User Talk Wikipedia Talk File Talk MediaWiki Talk Template Talk Help Talk Category Talk Portal Talk Book Talk

Unpredictability, too, can become monotonous. 
- Eric Hoffer

Ofcourse, if you keep doing the same random act, it gets monotonous even if the outcome is not known to you. So you need to keep shuffling it up. Try different things each time. I have listed few more things you could try. 

Random Act II: Random trip

Pay a visit to a random place. For it to be random, the only condition is that you do not pick it. You may have to use public transport for this one, so that "you are taken" somewhere. So go to a bus/railway station and get into a bus or train without knowing the destination and get off say the 10th stop. Every city/town has a history, has a story to tell, has places to visit. This is something I have wanted to do for a few months now and I plan to do when I get a long weekend. The first two days could be spent boarding different buses and getting to unknown places and then the last day travelling back. You will find it on my white list soon. :-)

Random Act III: Listen to random songs: 

 Stop listening to the same old playlist. Explore! Tune into any of your favourite radio stations, that you have never visited before, or listen to any new artist. Try listening to songs in a different language! You may still have not found your favorite genre!

Random Act IV: Watch movies in different languages: 

 Watch dubbed movies, or movies with subtitles. There are wonderful movies made in every language, so don't be biased by few movies you may have heard about. People who arent from the southern states of India think that the South Indian movies are all about a fat hero in lungi singing with a pretty damsel and fighting a hundred fatter and uglier guys alone. But they forget the actors and filmmakers from the south who have made beautiful and sensible movies which have been critically acclaimed. Many people rate the Academy award winning movie, The Departed as one of the best crime thrillers they have watched. I too liked the movie; but I found the original film Cantonese film, Infernal Affairs far better. The prequel to the movie, Infernal Affairs II is also equally good. To make it random pick the language first, then search for good movies made in that language. Sites like films101 could help you.

Random Act V: Sites bringing you random pages:

 Of course you have sites like StumbleUpon, which introduces you to different web pages. Most of these sites allow you to mark your preferences, and then show you pages related to the ones you have "liked", given "thumbs up", "digged" etc. This is a good feature, but at the same time you may lose many interesting things out there. So it is good to keep checking pages outside the "Recommended for you" section. Reddit even has a link for showing you a list of articles on a random topic (http://www.reddit.com/r/random/).

Other Random Acts: 

The above mentioned are just a few things I could think of. There are innumerable things for you to pick from. Eg. Pick a random letter and then choose an author or a book starting with that letter for reading. Or pick an adventure sport starting with the letter for your next trip. Options are limitless; you just need to play the game. 

Explore, Explore, Explore, Learn!
- Unknown.

Links: 
The Dice Man
Biscuit Tin
Random Good Stuff
Wikipedia: Random
StumbleUpon, Digg, Technorati, Reddit, Delicious

Other posts you may be interested in:

Sendai Earthquake
Dzongri Trek - Days 4, 5 - The Ascent
Duke's nose trek and valley crossing
Rappelling at Naneghat

White List II

Life is getting a little monotonous! And sometimes I need directions and deadlines to keep me going. So its time I created my next white list. Like the previous one, this too should push me into doing something...



So here is is; the list of my targets for the next 50 days:

1. Run for a marathon! I have always wanted to do this, but never did!The 'Running and Living Pune' group is organizing a marathon on the 3rd of July, Sunday. I have decided to run for the quarter marathon which would cover 10.5 kms. I know I can keep walking for a long time, but I am not sure how far I can run. Lets see how it goes.

2. Workshop! Learning never stops! I had been quite busy with the theatre acting classes and then with practices for the play 'Tale Danda' during the last couple of months. Now its time to learn something new, different and interesting during the weekends. Let me see what I can find on the net or in the papers!

3. Leh-Ladakh! A plan that was made a year back and got washed away in the cloudburst! We are planning to go for in a month.
Fingers crossed.



4. I haven't trekked for a long long time now! Many people often ask me about my treks as I used to frequently go on treks the last year. I just realized that my last trek was over 6 months back during last Christmas, when I had gone on a 4 day trek to the Alang-Madan forts. I did go to Mt. Takao during my Tokyo trip, but I would  not call it a trek. It was more of a hike. I therefore have to end this dormant period. Fourth in the list: a trek!

5. Donate blood! Another item that has always been on my will-do-tomorrow-list. High time I put it on the White List.

So those are the 5 things I need do! Today is the 2nd of July. So the deadline to finish off the tasks would be August 21st (50 days later; like White List I).

I will keep you updated as I finish each item on the list.


PS:

July 3rd: Woke up at 4:15am after a 3.5 hour nap and reached Pune University at 6am. The marathon started on time. There were around 25 people running. The pleasant climate, more than 20 people running along and half a bottle of gatorade helped me complete the marathon in around 70 minutes.

Certificate of 'completion'(Click to enlarge).

It was my first time, but I can tell you there are many more to follow!

#1 on the list, completed!

July 9th: Today, I went for a workshop on... making cookies and cakes! :-)
I had found Rajul's Cookery Classes on the net; and I thought this would be an interesting workshop. So I registered immediately. The workshop was conducted by Rajul Sanghvi at her residence, near Shivaji Nagar. She conducts a cookery workshop every Saturday from 1 to 4PM. Today she taught us to make chocolate muffins, shrewsbury biscuits, coconut cookies, banana cookies, pinwheel cookies, chocolate chip cookies, egg-less sponge cake with pineapple icing and chocolate sponge cake with cherry icing. Yeah, lot of good stuff; not all of it is in my head right now; but its there in the handout given to us there along with some 'tips from the expert'.
At the end of the workshop, we had the cakes and cookies that were made. The sponge cake was nice, soft and quite juicy, and I loved the shrewsbury cookies and the banana cookies! They were awesome! I hope when I try my hand, they turn out to be atleast half as good!


#2 completed! Three to go...

July 17th: At Sadhu Vaswani Mission in Pune, a blood donation camp was organized on the 17th of July. Being a Sunday, it was convenient for me to go there. After a quick blood test, I found myself on a cot with a needle sucking blood out of my vein. I was given a stress ball, squeezing which helps hasten the process.

July last week: Bharath, Vipin, Murali, Arjun and I set out to Leh for a trip of a lifetime! One of the most beautiful places I have seen. A must visit for all travel enthusiasts!

Aug 6:  During the trip to Leh, we had gone rafting on river Zanskar. If that doesn't count as a trek, I had gone on a trek to the Panvel waterfall along with a trekking club here, Offbeat Sahyadri, followed by rappelling down the waterfall.

And this completes my second White List! Many more to follow!

My White List

I watched "The Bucket List" again a couple of months back. The movie is about two terminal patients, played by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, who make a list of 10 things they want to do before they 'kick the bucket'.

I tried making a bucket list, but wasn't able to write more than 4-5 items that i really wanted to do. So keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that there's time left before i cash in my chips, i decided to make a shorter short-term-list. This would consist of 5 things to do in the next 50 days. I call it the white list. You can use your wild imagination and creative mind to figure out why. ;) So heres the first white list.

1. Watch an IPL match. The third edition of the Indian Premier League will begin on March 12th in Mumbai. I am yet to witness a live match in a stadium. So being in Pune, this could be a great chance.

2. Rappelling on a waterfall! I have been wanting to do this for a long long time! Another test for my fear of heights! There is scope for rappelling and lot of other activities in places in and around Pune. That is another reason I prefer staying in Pune over cities like B'lore, Chennai or Kolkata.



3. Join some vocational classes for weekends ;). I haven't yet decided what classes to join. Will need to decide soon. :)

4. Considering the present situation, i feel watching 'My Name is Khan' in Maharashtra amidst all the hullabaloo, could have a place in the white list. :P

5. We have been procrastinating the visit to the paintball arena in Kalyani Nagar for quite some time now. Moreover, spending a lot of time playing counter-strike back in the college, I'm craving to shoot someone down. :P

That completes the list. Today is 13th Feb. So a time frame of 50 days would make the deadline for the above white list, 6 weekends later, the 4th of Apr. Will update the space as I finish each item in the list.

Post Scripts:

15/02 I had gone home last weekend. 'My Name is Khan' was released there; but again with a lot of opposition. It wasn't Shiv Sena there but their cousins Bajrang Dal causing problems. The theatres didnt screen the movie on friday, but they did start from the second day. The theatre didn't display any poster of the movie and you could also see a lot of policemen on duty outside. The screens were obviously running houseful; two of them were screening only this movie. Thought not in Maharashtra, I feel thats good enough to strike #4 off. :P

20/02 There were many guys from college in pune today. Yadu, Hari, Sharath, Padmanisha, Tisa, and Aruna were in Pune for the weekend. The number was good, so this was the best chance to play paintball. It is fun only when you have a lot of guys. So along with them and TP, nishana and chitra, I reached the paintball arena at 5pm. As Padmanisha wasn't feeling very good, the remaining 9 of us went on to play. Chitra, TP, Aruna and I were on one side; the rest on the other. We were given some safety instructions in the beginning after which, we had 5 rounds of absolute fun. If you haven't done this, get around 10 of your friends and rush to the nearest paintball zone! That completes #5.

21/02 I was quite tired after yesterday's paintball. But could I have missed today's rappelling because of that?! ;) #2 done. Check the post here .

13/03 The 3rd edition of IPL began yesterday in the DY Patil stadium, with a grand opening ceremony. With Pancily, I witnessed it and a great match between KKR and DC, that followed. Its a totally different feeling when you watch a game live in the stadium. You need to watch a match in a stadium atleast once; and you would probably enjoy it more if its a IPL. #1 is also done now. 1 more to go!

03/04 This one took couple of weeks. I had a hard time deciding which classes to go for. Finally I made up my mind. Its kickboxing every Saturday and Sunday morning! That completes #3 and my first White List is finished successfully; in time.