Pranayama - The Control of the Life Force.

This is a very interesting topic that has caught my attention and has made me dwell deeper into this fascinating world....Some of the things that I read, have been abridged in the following paras.

The knowledge of Prana/Life Force is an inevitable wealth a person must gain irrespective of his caste, religion or language.

We know that man can survive for months without food and water but cannot live for more than 30secs (normally), if he is denied of his breath.

In our busy day to day lives, the last thing we care about is breathing. We just know that breathing in of oxygen is vital for our sustenance. Nothing more..We dont even care to understand the huge importance of breathing. As a result, our breathing is short, fast and shallow. We use only a little capacity of our lungs. This is indeed detrimental for our health in the long run.

Prana: Prana, the life force or vital energy, is the center of all Yoga Practices. It is in the air, but it is not in oxygen. It is a subtle form of energy carried by the air, food, water and sunlight, and animates all forms of matter. Through best breathing practices (in the form of Pranayama), more Prana is taken in and stored in the body bringing great vitality and strength. (defn. frm web sources).

Pranayama involves controlling the intake and giving out of oxygen in the form of a specialized, beneficial process that includes giving appropriate pauses b/w inhalation and exhalation. It is one among the 5 principles of Yoga.

Here comes some scientific facts that backs up the effects of Pranayama:
Did you know?? We use only 10% of our brains...There are hidden areas in the brain comprising of the other 90% that is capable of providing humans with great potential capacities like Clairvoyance, intuition etc...
Life force/ Prana is said to have been concentrated below our stomach region called the Kundalini.
By doing Pranayama heat energy is produced in this Kundalini region that travels upwards along the right side of our spinal cord and reaches a lower portion of the brain called the Ajna Chakra. When this is practised regularly, the amount of heat energy accumulates in Ajna Chakra that will then penetrate into the the Hidden areas of the brain, thus helping us see the life and the world around us in its true unique sense....

Thus effective utilization of our brain is possible that will lead to a higher level of living in this world of illusions or Maya.
Mental problems, depressions, diseases etc. can be kept at bay. A true sense of bliss can be achieved in life. It is the sole solution to unsolved mysteries of the world.

This must be the reason why people are now turning into Yoga and pranayama now a days. In spite of its origin in India, the other countries are making the best available uses of these techniques that keep them fit and healthy.

It is a good sign that in this chaotic world, people all over the world are turning into these to lead a more balanced life.

5th Semester starts

I still remember the 1st day at college....I feel like it was yesterday...The days have flown by, 2 years at college went in a flash. Time needs no rest. Now I have landed in classroom 410 of MEC for my 5th semester..

New Subjects, now digging deeper into core Computer science: Software Programming, Computer Graphics, System Programming, Engg.Maths-3,DBMS(Database Management Structures)etc...
Lot of activities and events in store, this year. Placements being the number one, to come in the early 6th sem. Hope everything goes fine for me and my friends in my class...

I cant imagine after 2 more years, I will be leaving my home, keeping behind all my freedom and wander elsewhere working for some company, adhering to their strict rules and taking up responsibilities...(bah!!)
No wonder people say childhood is the most sweetest part in your life...
I wish that the 2 more years to come in college will give me some of the most unforgettable and beautiful memories to cherish in my life...

Lopsided Educational System

Real Education

Education is a continuous process of learning new concepts, understanding the reason behind the evolution of these concepts and then applying these at proper situations/ places.
The Introduction of a new concept to a learning child creates many links in the child's brain. The ability to apply these concepts on different occasions depends on the strength of the link formed in the brain.
If the bond formed is pretty strong, it leads to the development of many other links which leads to the formation of what are called the "Ideas".
A tight and strong link is formed when somebody gets an elucidative and explicit introduction to a subject/topic. This can be achieved with the help of an experienced or interesting teacher. You would have often noticed how one becomes interested in a particular subject if the teacher of that particular subject makes a good and interesting introduction to the subject. Creativity and imagination emanate and dwell in the minds of such students..
A weak bond or link is formed when the child is either not interested in the subject or when the teachers fail to create a good impression about the subject.
This hinders the child from proper application of these concepts and he often finds himself devoid of any new ideas. The child can't certainly be blamed.

The Educational System plays a pivotal role in shaping up the future of a child. Right from his childhood, great importance must be given in the nurturing of the brain. The appropriate age for building a good solid foundation for brain development is from 7-16.

The present Educational system rightly does the opposite. It has more of the same (MOTS) type of learning. It rightly discourages the thinking process. A small child will have 100's of questions as he moves forward in his life and society. Those discouraging a questioning mind is suppressing the natural thinking abilities of the child.

Children mug up the contents to be studied because the question paper encourages mugging up; it involves few application question that demands thinking, as a result of which the brain gets rusted up.
When the students enter their Professional Courses, they understand their folly . This is also the reason why students find difficulty in coming out with flying colors in their entrance exams, where more application question make up the majority of the question paper. This is why many find IIT-JEE etc.. tough to crack...!!

The Paradigm Shift

CBSE has indeed done the right thing, now...Shifting to HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills) has atlast become a relief to the budding youngsters of the nation.
It is better late than never. I believe India will now produce great thinkers and scientist and the standard of living of our people would certainly improve.
It is sure that the dream of India to become the superpower lies within the hands of the upcoming generation.
MAY INDIA PROSPER!!

J2EE at NIIT

Dunno what prompted me to join NIIT to study J2EE. It maybe because of my friends who joined course after course in various centres or because I got a scholarship through their All India NITAT exam which they had conducted......

Anyways, I had some work at hand during sundays after the 4th semester examinations. I was given around 12 books as the material for my J2EE course. I had some basic knowledge in java because we had our Data Stuctures based in Java in 4th sem.

I was told my first examination would be on 8th june.The topics for the exam were as follows:

1. Java Fundamentals
2. Programming in Java
3. Packages and Streams
4. JDBC and Java Beans
5. Remote method Invocation (RMI)

These subjects started interesting me once I started to really look into them. The JDBC and Java bean concepts were really interesting.
Finally the day arrived and I had the exam at 9 in the morning. The exam consisted of around 52 Questions(Multiple choice). The pass mark was 50%. If we couldn't pass, we had to write supplementary exams in order to get a Merit Certificate. the duration of the test was 80minutes. The result would come out 5 minutes after the exam. I got pretty ok questions and I managed to finally get 75%.
My J2EE classes shifted to weekdays.

Outsourcing Business Development

Its my vacation time now...after my 4th sem exams, we got 2 months of summer holidays...
I was very much interested in working at a call centre coz it would immensely help one in improving the following:

1. Communication Skills
2. Spontaneous Thought generations
3. Accent Neutralization.
4. Personality Development
5. Self-Confidence

It was at this time that , I decided to go for an interview at Spectrum Softtech Solutions Pvt.Ltd. (www.spectrum.co.in) Spectrum is an IT Company where they gave training in Software development (Linux and Windows System Applications) and Medical Transcription.

Medical Transcription, now known as Medical Analysis, is the process of converting voice dictation (typically either cassette or digital format) into a permanent written record utilizing word processing equipment and software.
Since the doctors in foreign countries donot have the time to write down prescriptions to patients, it will be difficult for patients to apply for Insurance facilities. Hence these doctors speak out the various medicines being prescribed to their patients and then it is recorded and sent to India. In India, there are many medical Transcriptionists or Analysts who decipher their voice and put them in hardcopy. these are then sent to the patients.

Why India? Because in India it is cost Effective and we are ahead of the United states by 11.5 hours.


The interview was pretty nice...I was asked to describe about my qualities and then they asked me if I was ready to work in the night coz my shift time was from 6pm to 2am...
After the interview, I had a Voice Test where they tested my listening ability of foriegn accent and I was made to write down a recorded voice tape. This too was pretty simple......
2 days later, I was informed that I had been shortlisted for the job . My post was "Outsourcing Business Development Executive" for a monthly salary of Rs.6000. My job was to make outbound calls to doctors in United States of America and enquire if they needed a medical transcription facility. If so, I had to fax them various schemes my company had in this aspect...

Outbound calls also have another common name called the "Cold Calls". The key to outbound sales is to never give up!

The trouble with making outbound sales calls is you usually have absolutely no idea of the level of interest of the recipient until you have called them. It may be that the first ten people you call are all interested in what you have to sell. Alternatively, it may be the last ten! You role is simply to find those people that are interested and temporarily eliminate those that are not.

I may have to make around 200-250 calls per day....

At the end of the day, when all the people on your prospect list have been called and you're just about ready to throw in the towel, there's still one more task to complete. You need to remember that an outbound campaign is just like any other business campaign - it needs to show a ROI (Return on Investment). Management need to be made aware of its success or its failures.

But there is an uncertainty in my continuation in the company coz the timings are extremely hectic. Work from 6pm to 2:30 am is not a child's play. I will have to sacrifice my sleep as well as my studies once my college reopens.

I guess the right time for somebody to do this is when he is free and seeking for a job. As a BTech student, I feel it would be extremely impossible to take both of them in hand.

Aha!!..I have not been posting for the past 4 months...
My 4th sem exams are over...Let me make a very quick synopsis of the events that made up my 4th semester.
In fact, classes started only in January. We had our exams in April.
Lot of happenings in this sem...January and February witnessed many events like LINUX WEEK, EXCEL 2008, ARTS - 2008, El-Jeugo (Inter college Football match), 1st Series etc...
Linux week was a memorable one...the 2nd years conducted Linux workshop for the 1st years, we had a Linux Distros exhibition exhibiting distros like Geexbox, Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux, GParted, Backtrack, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.... This got news coverage from the India Vision channel...
Special mention about Geexbox: An 8MB Linux distro, Made only to view multimedia files, eg. Images, Songs, Movies/Videos and I was the one exhibiting this distro in the exhibition.
In february, there was 3 days of Arts in our college...and then we had our 1st series exam too...

Ubuntu 7.10-Gutsy Gibbon

Finally, I found a linux distro that could be installed in my pc..Ubuntu-7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)
Since I had an Intel Motherboard with a 102GGC2 chipset (unfortunate), most of the distros (Debian 4.0 (Etch), Ubuntu 6.10 (Fiesty Fawn) etc..)that I had tried before hadn't worked...

With the Gutsy installed, I was now free to tailor my desktop environment. Few things I did were
install the KDE ("sudo apt-get install kde" in the terminal), enabled the compiz fusion effects
(installed the following packages in the Synaptic Package Manager:compiz-bcop, compizconfig-settings-manager, compiz-core, compiz-dev, compiz-fusion-plugins-extra compiz-fusion-plugins-main etc..
Compiz working fine..the rotating cube was just amazing...