Friday, February 29, 2008

Leap Year - The Significance of Feb 29th!

A Leap Year which is also know as intercalary year or bissextile year is an year containing one or more extra days in order to keep calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. The Earth's seasons repeat once every tropical year (the time it takes the Earth to complete an orbit around the Sun). This is about 365.2422 days long, so a consistent 365-day calendar year would over time cause the seasons to slowly drift. By occasionally inserting an additional day into the year, making it 366 days long instead of the usual 365, this can be corrected. In the Julian and Gregorian calendars, which is used by most of the world, this "intercalary" or "bissextile" day is added to February, making it 29 days long instead of the usual 28 days.

February 29 is a date that occurs only every four years, in years evenly divisible by 4, such as 1988, 1996, 2008 or 2016 (with the exception of century years not divisible by 400, such as 1900). This extra day of the year is also known as the Leap Day.The rule specified by the Gregorian calendar for leap years is as follows:
A year is a leap year if it is divisible by 4, unless it is divisible by 100 and not by 400.
Without leap years, the seasons would start one day earlier on the calendar every four years. After 360 years, the 21st of March (the usual start of spring) would come in winter, on what would otherwise be the 21st of December.

A number of countries use a lunar calendar (based on the moon). They have leap years when they add an extra lunar month. Different calendars add the extra month in different ways.

However, now you have an extra day in your year to add on to your New Year's Resolutions!, if any.




Friday, February 22, 2008

Responsibility - "The Power" "The Control"

Responsibility...Responsibility....Responsibility.....Hmmmm....Everyone has their own responsibility. The child has its own responsibility, the parents have their responsibility, the teacher has one, the student has one, the manager has one too, the developer too has responsibility. Its become more of a role-based. Somehow everyone on this planet has their own set of responsibilities defined within their boundary of limit.To feel confident to live and be worthy of happiness, you need to experience a sense of control over your life.

Well, then, what exactly is responsibility? Responsibility means "responding to our abilities". It also has other flavors like "I belong to you" and "Realization of self". Responsibility starts with giving 100% for everything in your life.

Responsibility is not given to you - Its taken by you. This leads to the self-realization. Whenever you tend to take responsibility you get more control and more power to execute what you want. Responsibility = Power = Control. Therefore there is a direct relationship between the amount of control you have and the amount of responsibility you accept.For example, in any industry, the CEO or the Chairperson has the more responsibility of their company's growth. With this responsibility, he has more power in his hands and gets the control to operate the company as per his decision. This implies, with responsibility you get more power to control.

Mother Theresa was not given any responsibility she choose to take her responsibility ministering the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying, while guiding the Missionaries of Charity's expansion, first throughout India and then in other countries.and became immortal to the services she delivered. Though she didn't intend, she eventually became internationally famed as a humanitarian and most influential person in the whole world. This shows how powerful and how much control she had with her responsibility.

Final tidbits on Responsibility:

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Sudarshan Kriya - Art Of Living

I have rejoined this Art Of Living - Part 1 course designed by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar guruji. Yesterday was my second day in the class and my teacher taught us the Sudarshan Kriya. This was a very phenomenal experience. The main key point in this course is to drink plenty of water - as plenty as possible since this Kriya does a complete deep inner cleansing and removes all the toxins. Another catch is to keep our eyes closed throughout the process and feel the eternity in self.

The Kriya starts with closing our eyes for the 3-stage yoga sitting in Vajrasana and doing in Ujjayai breath(the breath experienced in the throat & not in the nostrils) followed by Bhastrika in normal breath. After these paranayama(breathing excerises), we chanted OM thrice which invoked vibrations in abdomen, chest area and as well in the face-head area. As the OM chants finishes, will begin the Guruji's tape which has a recorded voice of Guruji himself chanting SoHam in a particular rhythm which again contains Long-Medium-Fast paced rhythms (It goes like this So--------Ham So--------Ham So--------Ham - So----Ham So----Ham So----Ham - SoHam SoHam SoHam) to breathe in-&-out in normal breaths. This cycle of Long-medium-fast SoHams are almost repeated for about 8 or 9 cycles followed by complete body relaxation in Shavasana. During this stage I had lots of vibrations throughout my body. Also, I had all sorts of mixed thoughts flowing - sad, happy, good, etc for which my emotions were just frozen to accept all the thoughts as they were. I felt my emotions were so controlled and eventually felt as light as a feather. The whole kriya lasted somewhere slightly less than a hour & a half.

As I opened my eyes I was so relaxed and energized at the same time so joyful, I felt complete and was fully charged up for yet another round of Kriya which in fact didn't happen. Since you are not supposed to do this kriya twice in a day. Also, the class was almost over, it was quarter to nine in the night and my buddy along with other classmates were hungry for their dinner. Actually, yesterday was the total lunar eclipse which I missed watching for which I don't regret though! At the end, we called it a day and signed off with yet another homework which I am working on it right now to discuss my opinions in the class. I should bring to your notice that these homeworks will not only wake-up your thinking level but also makes you re-discover yourself with the answers you hear from your inner voice.In total, it’s a bliss!

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Books I read @ a glance in 2007

Though I had a different resolution for the year 2007, I was impressed with my husband's resolution - "Reading 20 books". I happen to take up on his resolution and reach the goal partly inspite of my 3 months vacation to India. This was a small effort from my side to start towards investing time in reading and avoid my procrastination as well. Here is the listing along with their author names and also containing my small personal notes outlining the book:

1.Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus - Author John Gray
-Talks about differences between men and women. Compares men to elastic and women to waves

2. The Monk who sold his Ferrari - Author Robin S Sharma
-10 Steps to radiant living -NEWSTART

3. Siddhartha - Author Hermann Hesse
-Never have your ego dominate you. Have thirst for learning new things continuously. Learn to think, wait and fast.

4. Aesop's Stories - Indian moral stories
5. Chandamama - Indian moral stories
6. Akbar and Birbal Stories - Indian moral stories

7. Deception Point - Author Dan Brown
-Suspense thriller. Its all about the NASA, president and the politics

8. Interpreter of Maladies - Author Jhumpa Lahiri
-The Indo-american life storeis

9. Freakonomics - Author Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
-The hidden side of everything

10. The Four Hour Workweek - Author Timothy Ferriss
-Escape 9-5. Live anywhere and join the new rich

11. Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Author Richard Bach
-Self perfection and self sacrifice through continuous learning to achieve higher plane of existence.

12. One Minute Manager - Author Ph.D. Kenneth Blanchard, M. D. Spencer Johnson
-One minute goals, one minute praising and one minute reprimand are the basic secrets of one minute management

13. Memories of Midnight - Author Sidney Sheldon
-Suspense murder thriller

14. The Mystery of Lord Ganesh - Author (Translation of Satyajit Ray's Feluda collection)
-Suspense detective containing 3 stories in this book

To add to the above list, I already finished reading two books for this year -

1. Warren Buffett Speaks:Wit and Wisdom fromt he World's Greatest Investor - Author Janet Lowe
-This book is a library of notes and quotes collection revealing the many aspects of the World's Greatest Investor--his wit, personality, and wisdom.

2. From Midnight to Millennium - Author Shashi Tharoor
-The book describes about Gandhi, Nehru, Indira & about other successful Politicians along with other historical events about the Indian politics from the midnight of our Independence until to the millennium year, describing a full analysis of the accomplishments and failures of the past 50 years" that will be "useful to anyone interested in modern India.

I hope you would pick any of these books and enjoy reading!

Monday, February 18, 2008

Welcome Back

Welcome Back!! I know its been a year and a month I started off with this blog. I happen to stop blogging for a while due to my procrastination along with my other time management issues. From now on, stay tuned for more blogs.