How Do You Know If You Have It?

You're happy for who you are
You take on challenges
You accept mistakes and learn from them
You don't need to prove yourself to others
You don't feel happy when others fail

How to get it:

See the beauty in yourself
Learn to let go
Learn to stop comparing
Teach your inner voice (see - the design of the system - based off of one molecule that contains all the required information means that there are parts of the system that serve a greater purpose or something bigger than the individuals. That's what leads to the different centres of the brain. In the case of sociopaths and psychopaths, some of these vital neuro-centres have been suppressed during the growth-phase of the brain by the environment. No animal can commit suicide but man. That alone marks man out as a non-animal - notwithstanding the anatomical similarities with other life-forms - we just happen to use the same modules)

Know your strengths
Acknowledge areas for improvement
Don't take it personally. Avoid negative people and people with poor self-esteem.
Cultivate a logical view of things.
Control the controllable
Set goals (what I've learned personally over the last week of an intense work-life is that the brain's structure enables it to find paths from problems to solutions. A problem and a solution are just two points on a graph. The power of the neural networks of the brain enable the subconscious to chug away and find a route from the problem to the solution. For that to work, you must clearly visualize both the problem and the solution. Also, the path must exist - thus, in the case (my case) of an electronic-circuit problem, the elements of the problem and the solution - components and their characteristics need to be internalized - equations are useless at this point. Visualizations are very valuable here. When you have the components internalized and the solution does exist, as Einstein said, a problem cannot be solved at the level of consciousness in which it occurred - so you must sleep over the problem. That's why physicists wake up in the middle of the night and write down their new theories. Charles Townes, once he became a dad, used to wake up early so he could get ready before the kids started making a racket. The solution to the maser problem occurred to him one such early morning - because his brain had been chugging away all night - without his knowing it of course. Your own experience will be no different. That is what the brain does - and that is why the human species has evolved so much. Why not other animals? Good question. I really wish I could go back in time as an observer and see things being done for the first time. My guess is that none of the great things happened until people had the time to sit and think - well into the stone age or the bronze age - the first time someone prayed, or described his symptoms to someone else, or hoarded seeds and planted them, or celebrated an anniversary, or buried someone. Self-esteem is that internal entity that refines the human genome. Self-esteem serves the bigger cause - of perfecting the human race. If you have poor SE, your internal regulator cut you out of the flow. So find a way to defeat it)

If you need to adjust, do so.
Laugh!

Never apologize for a job well done!
Don't be a perfectionist.
Don't procrastinate!

SE is about attitude. Hence, your attitude determines your altitude!



Accept and ack compliments
Trust your instincts.

Celebrity Jeopardy - Good Ones

Barack: Pleased to be here Jay. I want to thank every one of these lovely people who have paid $28k to be here tonight.

Sarah: I'm so excited to be in a foreign country! (This is LA). What? How come no one speaks English?

Question: Burn After Reading; Bush: What do I do with the Constitution? (Right) I'm kidding Jay. I never actually read the c.

Question: Oil of Olay; Bush: What were we looking for when we invaded Olay?

Question: 700 billion; Bush: How many ppl knew Clay Aiken was g before that ppl mag article?

Live Longer with Pancreatic Cancer

This is a true "time-saver" post - even though it's not tech-savvy. Heard today about someone who was given 6 months to live with pancreatic cancer and lived about seven years. He did it by taking hot baths every day. If one didn't ease the pain, he would take another one. Apparently, it worked like an artificial fever and stimulated his immune system. He got the idea from a time when he felt the flu coming and fell asleep - next to the fire. Next morning, he was fine - no flu - and he put two and two together. 

Long life!

Celebrities who succumbed to pancreatic cancer : 

Alex Trebek, Steve Jobs, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Aretha Franklin, John Hurt, Luciano Pavarotti, Sharon Jones, Alan Rickman, Paul Kalanithi

Tom J, J Kennedy, B Clinton, E Spitzer, J Edwards,...

The dems haven't learnt their lesson yet.

Some good ones I heard on Jay:

John Mccain announced his choice for VP - Sara Palin. What do we know about her? Her name is Sara Palin. That's it.

The young lady who was Elliot Spitzer's call girl has been identified as Ashlee Dupree. She said she doesn't want to be thought of as a monster. She can also play a Catholic Schoolgirl, a nurse, a dominatrix, a number of things.

John Edwards now admits he had an affair. How do you like that? A personal injury lawyer who turns out to be a sleazeball. Who could have seen that one coming?

The escort service that put Spitzer's hooker on the train from NY to Washington told her that he might ask for something that wasn't safe. Yah! He put her on Amtrak - right there is something not safe!

And Bill Clinton was upset that Spitzer went to a hotel. He said, 'Come on! Get a desk!'

Geraldine F has quit the Hillary campaign after remarks she made that Barack was where he was because he was black. I think her new job is sidekick for Don Imus. I wonder if people can be more popular because they're black. Think about it - remember how popular MJ was when he was black? He was the biggest star in the world. The day he turned white, nothing - can't give it away.

Lest We Forget

Finished Elaine Landau's book. Wasn't very long - actually, it was a children's book: In Dec 1943, I was shipped from Plashow to a camp which supplied workers for an ammunition factory. Conditions were somewhat better there, as inmates were not generally killed unless they disobeyed. We worked from early morning until late afternoon. For sustenance, we were given a small bowl of clear soup and a cup of something that resembled coffee. Some of the men were so hungry that they'd lick drops of spilled soup from off the ground. We slept on the floor of a barracks that teemed with lice and rodents. One girl was badly bitten by a rat on her nose. (I remember Vladek Spiegelman in Maus - "if anyone spilled him even a drop, they fought until there was blood") 

The living conditions were abominable. Inmates slept so tightly packed together that you were forced to lie on your side. Every few hours, at the guard's command, we had to turn over, but it wasn't always easy to do so. If the person next to you died during the night, you had to turn his body over before turning yours. If you didn't act immediately on command, you might be beaten to death or taken outside and shot. (Basically, killing was only a means - it seems like they really wanted to strike terror into these people and humiliate them. My question - what lessons did the two sides learn after this experience. Germany today is the third most ethnically heterogenous country in the world (or second?). Is that through a deliberately enforced policy?

Atonement? Was it that there were no other scapegoats for hitler to pick on? The whole world was in a recession? Why should the Germans feel bad any more than the others?) At Auschwitz, I was assigned to work outside digging ditches. We dug in the freezing cold and rain, wearing only the thin striped dresses issued to us. The ditches werern't to be used for any particular purpose; the Nazis were merely trying to work us to death. And many did die of sickness, cold, exhaustion, and starvation. I wandered alone in the woods for several days. I had to eat grass and other forest vegetation to stay alive. But I knew liberation was near, and I was determined to survive. Yet I was still extremely aware of being an escaped Jew in enemy territory. I didn't dare allow any of the local people to see me. Now I had to live by my wits, and miscalculation could cost me my life. (Really? Grass and vegetation? Sounds like salad. I remember a Chaplin movie where he pulls out a handfull of grass and munches on the fresh stems) However, not everyone was immediately gassed. I was sent to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. There I spent five weeks on an outdoor work detail chopping down forest trees from six o'clock in the morning until dark. We couldn't stop to rest even for a moment as we were surrounded by armed guards and German shepherd dogs that were trained to kill. Those trees weren't being cut for any particular use. If I'd remained on that detail for another week, I don't think I'd have survived. (That's a common theme - gruelling physical labour that was not serving any purpose. This bit about trees is crazy. Why would the Germans want to spoil their own country?) We showered with cold water, and since we had no soap it was difficult to become really clean. After a few weeks, the guards realized that we were unable to function this way so they gave us soap. But when we saw what the soap was made of, we couldn't use it. 

It had been manufactured from the remains of Jewish bodies and bore a stamp which read, MADE FROM PURE JEWISH FAT. I had no way of knowing if the fat used in the soap was my father's, my brother's, or whose. We later learned that when Jews were gassed at some extermination camps such as Auschwitz, their bodies weren't always taken directly to the crematorium to be burned. Too many corpses were frequently produced to fuel the ovens simultaneously. Depending on the circumstances, one to three hundred people might die at once. Their freshly gassed bodies would be laid outside the ground and used as raw materials for German products. Their hair was stuffed into pillows and mattresses, their fat was used to make soap and their bones sent to German glue factories. The gold from their tooth fillings was extracted and used to help support the Nazi cause. (BTW, watching Connections a few months ago - I saw something similar. During the industrial revolution, England faced a food crisis - they needed fertilizer. Guess where the potash came from - they imported bones from cemetaries in Italy. Neat? Dead Italians go into living Brits - through the plants of course)

Pushed to the Edge

Any holocaust book has its share of hard-to-believe stuff. Landau's is no exception: 

We were shocked as we watched both storm troopers and local residents burning books by Jewish authors. We couldn't believe that this was happening in Germany, a country known for its advanced culture and outstanding achievements in music, art, and science. 

 (I have to contrast that with what a professor once said about Germany - Germany has no culture - in the office the boss will definitely try to take advantage of his secretary. You have to pity the secretaries. Of their salary, they have to spend so much on lippenschtift and such. I'm not making this up. Of course, he's talking about a specific aspect of culture. If they hadn't any kultur at all, he wouldn't have dedicated his whole life to studying them.) 

The Nazis also forced my mother to work in an electronics factory. Something hideous must have happened to her there. She was crying when she returned from her first day of work. She looked at me and said that she was tired and needed to rest. She went into the bedroom to lie down and said that she didn't want to be disturbed. When my father came home later, he was unable to wake her. It was then that we realized she'd taken an overdose of sleeping pills and committed suicide.

'This is your last opportunity to give us whatever you have. If you don't, and it's found on you, you'll be immediately shot.' I knew my father had taken both money and diamonds along, so I begged him to go to the rest room and flush it all down the toilet. He did so, because even throwing our money away was preferable to giving it to the Nazis.

There were four hundred young women at the camp and we were given nearly nothing to eat. We were starving and desperate. One day, a horse dropped dead in the yard behind our factory building. We were so famished that we cut ourselves pieces of the animal, which we ate raw.
This may sound strange, but in a way Kristallnacht was like a godsend because it warned us of things to come. (I guess so. There was international outrage and the Nazis calmed down a bit. Most people who were able to, left. But, the whole world was already in an economic recession, so it was hard to emigrate) To my amazement, I saw some parents actually push their own children away. I guess they knew they couldn't save them, so they tried to save themselves. It was hard for me to believe that a mother would run from her child, but evidently the fear of death can be overwhelming. Our train ride ended at Theresienstadt. After being there only a week, I came down with scarlet fever. I was quarantined for six weeks, but no medication was available. After I began to recover, I did farm work in the fields with a group of other young people. We'd get up early in the morning and stand on line for roll call. On one occasion, the entire camp was made to stand for forty-eight hours for roll call. We weren't permitted to eat or sleep during those days. (Two days I can understand. Was it Elie Wiesel or Vladek Spiegelman who said about being transported in the cattle car? It stopped at one place for weeks. For weeks!! Can you imagine people being trapped in that kind of space for weeks? No food, no bowel movement? It's a miracle anyone survived at all)

Deutsche Disziplin

From Elaine Landau's book: After a while I, along with a number of others, was taken from Theresienstadt to a site near Berlin where we worked on a construction crew building lodgings for Gestapo officers. I remained on the project for about a year. We did hard physical labour daily for at least fifteen-hour shifts. At night we slept on a wooden board. At times, the guards' treatment of us was extremely harsh. Once when a guard felt I wasn't working fast enough, he hit me in the mouth with a large steel pipe, knocking out all my teeth. I also acquired a number of scars from the frequent beatings.

Pass the MIc (Montreal)

A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken rolls over and lights a cigarette and say "Well, I guess that answers that question."

Why do Canadians always do it doggie style? So they can both watch the ice-hockey game.

A man walks into a doc's office with a huge piece of carrot coming out of one ear and a huge chunk of broccoli sticking out of another ear and a potato on his nose and says "Doc I don't feel well." Doc says "You haven't been eating right."

Why do seagulls fly over the sea? Coz if they flow over the bay, they'd be bagels.

The First Seven Years

July 11 was the day I landed on this continent - seven years ago. Before arriving, I had corresponded with a friend who had done a stint at Tech and was in NY at the time. "Which you must visit". Who would guess that I would have exactly two months before the skyline would change forever? Anyhow, I've met more than one Rachel and Leah - not an important fact, but I just mention that because of my choice of title.

Would I have done anything differently? Plenty. First, my approach was wrong. When I got here, I expected a wholehearted reception into something I felt deprived off in India - wireless systems. I felt I could leave the analog stuff behind. What I've since learned - you enjoy what you you're good at. I should have built on my knowledge and kept my eyes open for opportunities. Then, don't gamble. When I had saved up $10k of my own money in 2003, I went into stocks and lost a whole bunch. At that time I realized how well spent it would have been on trying to acquire hard to find knowledge by attending specialized courses. And, what about the vacations I could have taken. No, what I should have done was immediately sharpen my saws and practise what I already knew. In my profession, numbers are everything - knowing how to extract the numbers that matter is a big deal. That's the "tools" part. You can be a great architect, but, without someone who knows the tools - to do the building, you're never leaving the desk. In my profession, architect and mason are one. I should have set up my tool suite as soon as I could, and the ideas would have come for the designs. Then, I could have published my way to greener pastures in no time.

And the hardest one, planning is everything - one hour of planning is worth three hours of execution. EXPECT THE BEST ALWAYS - because that decides your attitude. BUT, always plan for the worst. And, you'll be the more confident knowing that you have every scenario covered. Offer to work for free - with the intention of learning. When you're scouting new opportunities, don't make the approach looking for what they can give you - first think about what you can offer. YOu're obviously doing it to learn something new. If you're in the university trying to earn income - you better have a serious talk with someone. If you play your cards right, you have a chance to meet great people in a laid back setting, have a great gym, look at cute girls all the time and learn. Do it wrong and you'll be running from pillar to post wondering why it's all happening to you.

Plan, plan, plan. Know that you have a hard time getting to an 8 O'clock class and plan for that. SAving is important. But, if you can get extra value from an extra $100 a month invested smartly, consider that money well spent. If you start off $5k extra when you leave school, who's going to dispute the couple of grand you invested in being more productive?

Plan, plan, plan. Visualize scenarios ahead of time - that way, you will be able to seize opportunities when they arise. If you don't, you'll realize hours or days later what the person actually had in mind. For example, if you have a meeting with a professor whose research interests you, spend some time the evening before thinking about what you plan to ask and what his responses might be.

Make use of your mentors and advisors. I just realize now that it's not a pleasant prospect for me to sit down and think about how the next couple of years might turn out. But, that's what I must do. And, quite honestly, I've never done that before in my life. But, if I had done that 7 years ago.... foooh.

Use tools! Who said laptops are for geeks? Maybe you don't need one. Maybe you can keep your data online in your email account or on your blog. But, find out what's available and how it can benefit you. The return I've got from the $1k I invested in my desktop has been atleast 10x if not more. Same for my car which cost me $3.4k. One tool that I didn't know about was dashboarding - which I've recently started using. Know how comforting it is to have vital information available readily on the dashboard of your car? Likewise, you should use tools - wall planner, Excel spreadsheet, whatever works for you to keep an eye on the important goings-on in your life. Is there going to be an important meeting on Wednesday? How about you try to get ready on Monday and, while trying to get ready find the ten key questions that you can try to get answered on Tuesday? I used to be a huge fan of text-journaling, but now I'm into spreadsheets.

Summing up very quickly my advice to the next generation of grad students : manage your energy religiously - spend what you need to - if you need a parking permit, think about it, good food, energy drinks, carry a bottle of cold water always,...
Start looking for jobs and internships from day one! Things happen in cycles and it's a good idea to be ready when the tide turns. There are easily 30 companies out there, each one doing something that you'll find interesting. Keep your eyes open, read Yahoo and watch for press releases. When you see a name, try first.last@company.com and say you like what they're doing; are they looking for people? I once got an all-expenses paid trip to California this way. They later said I wasn't a close enough match, but they folded up a year later anyway:)

Above all, be grateful. You live in a time of unbelievable opportunity. This has come about because of the organized effort of great people, and great vision. Realize that and resolve to always play by the rules. You count on other people. Make sure that you will always be someone who can be counted on. Volunteer your time and skills - think of it as sacred. Appreciate the love and help you give and receive. The best to you all and god bless all of you.

A Fireside Chat

Maj. Gen. Mary L. Saunders

Incredible wit and pace that delivers a knockout punch. Here's a true leader. Ambition, mental toughness, priorities, all there. She started off talking about obstacles in her early life - why couldn't I have been born rich instead of just beautiful. Because if you're only beautiful, then you have to think about how to use it. And the thing about beauty is that it fades. Now, looking at her at 60, I don't know if she was beautiful as a young woman or not, but let's give her the benefit of doubt:)

Life is not fair. It just is.

Learn about culture. That helps working effectively.

Have goals. If you want a certain lifestyle, know what you're going to have to do to get it.

• Mentors are important in helping you achieve your goals. 
• Your mentor doesn't have to love you. 
• It's important to be in a job with metrics - that way, when you meet expectations, you can expect a reward - promotion, raise, etc. Otherwise, disappointment awaits.

I am an introvert - INTJ. I had to learn to succeed in spite of that. Someone told me - this is the USofA. You can't be a black female and be an introvert.

I can't not read. My teacher gave me 100 books to read in the summer. I did that and more.

Recommended reading

• Shifting
• Power of Focus
• The Alpha Male Syndrome
• Blue Ocean Strategy

Inspired by the life of Bessie Coleman. Black girl born to sharecroppers in the south. Wants to be a figher pilot. Good luck. But, learns just enough French to move to Europe and train in Europe. Now!

If she had to do it over - she would still have gone into the military, but she would have gotten out earlier and gone into the stock market. (that part, I confess, did come across as shallow)