A good friend has taken to asking people on their birthdays as to the 3 things they would like to do over the course of the next year. I thought it was a good idea, and would be good to put it on record.

So 3 things -

1. Work more intensely 

 Not in terms of time spent, but with high productivity. Once of the hardest things to do as a self employed person is to have a cut-off. It is so easy to keep working all day and then work becomes life. I need clearly defined baskets within which I work with full intensity on 1 thing.. I am starting to experiment with a bunch of ideas toward this goal, will keep a note of it here. 

I always wondered why I was seeing so many lactose intolerant people.. it seemed natural to me that humans should be able to drink milk. The thought of it being a mutation definitely crossed my mind. 

Looks like I was asking the wrong question! http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolution/2012/10/evolution_of_lactose_tolerance_why_do_humans_keep_drinking_milk.single.html

Here I am again after a nearly 4 month hiatus.

I generally come back to write if I have something to say.. there are usually many things, but 1 consolidated BIG idea stands out that compels me to share it. The idea has consolidated in my head over time and I know more or less what it is that I want to say. So its just a matter of writing it down, and it is not so hard. Once it is done, I go back to the world of fuzzy ideas and unclear thoughts. Occasionally I think of writing something but I need to consolidate first and the extra step creates enough inertia that I dont write anything till my next BIG idea moment. 

So, I had another of my bi-monthly urge to write a blog post (and I suspect I ll write a few more before I hibernate again)

Why? I woke up at 630 and I felt happy. Satisfied. At peace.

I had written before about being a producer in the morning, and I did follow up on it. I have been tracking my wake-up timings almost every day since November ‘11, and I have been steadily pushing them towards the 630 mark. It was very nice to see so many 6s and so little 8s.. I was exercising regularly in the morning, so I felt healthy. I occasionally took an afternoon nap,  but usually I got some momentum going before lunch and I was quite productive in early June.

I lead 2 lives these days.. It has been helping a lot with bringing structure and sanity into my days..

First life (lets call it “work life” or WL) is roughly between 10-6 every weekday. Responsibilities include working on my startup. Building website and other miscellaneous stuff that keep popping up.

The second life (we ll call it weekend life or.. oh that wont work, so we ll go with “Second life” or SL) happens every weekend and during evenings on weekdays. Weekends in particular, where 

It is funny how Apple can do anything they want and get away with it. They have stomped on my nerves twice in the last 2 days.. 

All I wanted to do was to test my iPhone app on a real phone.. because I heard there was a bug in the emulator where you might not be able to edit a TableView.

I had an iPhone 3GS updated to iOS 5.1, and I had the new-ish XCode (4.2) i had paid for sometime back. Should be no problem, right?

‘Variety may be the spice of life, but monotony provides the groceries.’

Thanks to Rohan @ http://www.alearningaday.com/

I have been struggling to wake up before 8am. The days I do wake up, I usually go jogging before I have time to think about going back to bed. Or I have important work to do, and I get right down to it.

I have tried going straight for my phone to check email to get my brain ticking. It has worked reasonably well, because once my brain starts ticking, it knows I must not go back to sleep. But then the days werent as motivating as the days when I went jogging early / did lots of work early.

You might have heard this story from the Panchatantra (Translates to “Five Principles”. It is a very insightful ancient Indian collection of inter-related animal fables) in one some form or the other. If you haven’t, here it is:

Three fish lived in a pond. Their names were Anagatavidhata (which in Sanskrit translates to “future maker”), Pratyutpannamati (translates to “ready minded”) and Yadbhavishya (translates to “whatever happens”). We ll call them Future , Ready and Whatever for simplicity and humour. ;) Anyway, back at the pond, some fishermen were passing by and wondered aloud, “Hey, we have never seen this pond. It seems to be full of fish. It is now evening. Let us come at dawn tomorrow and bag as many fish as we can.”

Be superstitious. I am no one to judge. But please dont spread wrong information about things you know nuts about to justify your superstition.

Today evening, there is a lunar eclipse and I am at my grandparents house. As will be the case in any typical south indian brahmin household, there are umpteen number of rituals associated with the lunar eclipse. Interestingly, today is also Karthigai, (one of) the supposed birthdays of Lord Muruga. He is important in south India. So, there are the usual sweets and rituals that also have to be performed.