Last night

Tonight will be my last night at my Belltown condo. I really enjoyed living in this place for the last one and half years - will definitely miss it. Strangely enough this move has been symbolic of a lot of changes in my life recently. Will move to a new place tomorrow, to a new country in the months following, and hopefully, to newer opportunities in the years ahead. It’s not a walk in the park though. As any economist will tell you there is an opportunity cost associated all the choices we make in life. Choosing a new future often involves giving up something from the past. But most people find it difficult to trust a new future because until you unconditionally submit to it, future always is and will remain a "stranger". No wonder, good or bad (real or imagined), people would rather cling on to their pasts and drag it into their future because past after all is their "own".

As for me, this has never been a contest - I love "strangers" in my life.

Life at amazon.com

... can really suck sometimes. The distribution centers in Europe are currently down and they are missing almost 5K shipments per hour (major bleeding). I have been fire-fighting whole night. As is always the case, more than the technical problem it’s reassuring people from all over the world that our teams are 200% focused (100% each for day and night) on their issue, is what makes the job difficult. Thankfully I just had to talk with folks in London, Frankfort, Glasgow and Seattle tonight. At least we spoke the same language. (Tokyo is the worst and China is in the pipeline)

Although, I do see light at the end of the tunnel – I leave my job in a month :)

Love and Sorrow

Sometimes you love with nothing but hope, sometimes you cry with everything but tears. In the end that’s all there is. Love and its duty; sorrow and its pain.
-Shantaram

Imagine

Read this, probably by Douglas Adams, a long time back and saw it again today. Keeps getting more true with time.

"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for."

Packing

I HATE PACKING !!

93 blast: Memon family found guilty

Court has delivered it verdict; 3 brothers are found guilty and in all probability they will cool their heels behind bars for the rest of their lives. What a waste!
All it takes is an individual's moment of insanity to wreck the course of so many lives. Those who died probably were the luckier once, the once that are left behind continue to face the reality of the sorrow everyday. And haven't the perpetrators inflicted the greatest pain on themselves? The guilty will pay their dues but their children will continue to endure a life of shame long after the parents are wiped out of the history.

Good and bad deeds are part of everyone’s life, but behind every act lays a motive which often is overlooked. The problem with the criminal justice system is that it tries to determine how much crime is there in a wrong and not the other way around. Justice is done when both the defendant and the plaintiff are satisfied with the outcome. So will justice be ever done in this case? Probably not. For a guilty, it’s easier to find solace when he owes to a wrong committed with a wrong intention. But for these guys the path to salvation will be the steepest, for they genuinely believe that there’s was a just cause. Sure enough, as they see everything around them fall apart they will realize the futility of it all. And won’t that be their greatest punishment?