Part time student, full time dreamer

Posted on Sep 29, 2012 in Blog, Inspiration | No Comments

“Part time student, full time dreamer” is my online tagline. I have received some great feedback and occasionally, a bit of on the side of caution from a few friends from “Isn’t that a wrong statement since you are a full time student”, and if you are a “full time dreamer” wouldn’t it  imply that you are not a doer? Both are very valid statement and I hope to maybe clear some things in the post.

I briefly talk about one of my favorite quotes in my About page by the late Tamil poet, Avvaiyar which says “Katrathu Kai Mann Alavu, Kallathathu Ulagalavu”  which when translated says “What you have learned in this world is a mere handful but, what you have yet to learn is the size of the world itself”.

How much ever we learn in this world, there are limitless other things to be learned. In this aspect we are forever students, forever dreamers trying to attain a tiny bit of knowledge one at a time.  Learning in my opinion never ceases to stop, learning is a life long journey. Hence, I am referring to myself as a Part time student of the world.

Additionally, even though I am currently a full time student, I spend a lot of my time in extra curricular activities, than my core courses. I strongly believe that we learn a quite a bit outside the classroom than from inside. The inside of the classroom is a mere direction on how to learn, the rest we do it by ourselves. The biggest thing, one can learn in higher education is to figure things out by ourselves and, ultimately the goal is to figure out how to live a happy and content life. At least  it is for me and of course to build awesome things.

The second part of  my tagline says “full time dreamer”. What I am referring to here is my mind that is constantly thinking about what is right, what  is wrong and how to continue doing the right and think of ways to improve upon the wrong. I do not usually get involved with something, but, when I am, I am 100% into it.

Nothing explains this better than this tweet of mine that I made during TEDxUW.

So, in an essence I am a dreamer, who dreams about the problem, who sometimes dreams the solution,who dreams about the way things are and finally dreams up a way to do things even better. And I, finally wake up in morning to do it.

Hence the phrase – “Part time student, full time dreamer”

9 reasons why I fist-bump

Posted on Jun 21, 2012 in Blog, Inspiration | No Comments

Responses varying from “Thats cool – I love it” to “What’s that – Sure I will give a shot”  and the very occasional “That’s weird – I am not going to do that” are some of the things I hear when I go for a fist bump.

I recently met Asad at TEDxWaterloo, one of the lead organizers at TEDxQueens. Some of you may already know that I helped out with TEDxUW last year so, apart from having TEDx in common, I found out that we both fist bump when we meet people.

We started talking about why we do it and some of the people whom we have fist bumped and I thought I would make a slightly humorous post about it. So here we go:

1.    It’s cool, that’s why
2.    It’s much more sanitary than a handshake especially during winter and the flu seasons
3.    It is a great conversation starter
4.    It shows that you are friendly, bold and slightly crazy at the same time
5.    I tend to have sweaty palms
6.    Handshakes are so old school, time to stir things up for the newer generation
7.    Some famous people non- sports you might know – Obama and Dalai Lama love doing it
8.    Guess who people are going to remember?
9.    When you do it to old people, they feel part of your crowd. One elderly gentemen even told me that he feels a bit younger having done it.

Also, check out this hilarious video on fist bump etiquette

My 2011 Summer Adventures

Posted on May 20, 2012 in Blog, Inspiration | One Comment

Came across a list of things that I did last summer, when I was sifting through my old stuff. Some of the really cool things that I did for the Summer of 2011 – One of the best summers of my life!

1. Interned at Desire2Learn as a Product Designer in the User Experience team. Worked on 6 awesome projects, one of the projects, an accessibility focused Color Picker tool was even featured in a magazine

2. Donated blood for the first time

3. Sponsored a child via World Vision. Received a hand written letter from my Sponsee. Isn’t he awesome?

4. Attended 2 conferences
a. CUTC - Canadian Undegraduate technology Conference: This was the first real conference I had attended in my life. This quite important because, it eventually led me to join TEDxUW

b. SHEN - Spiritual conference: Surprisingly a very interesting conference where I learned a great deal about spirituality

5. Hiked in Tobermory, swam in 8 degrees water and canoed in Wiarton, Tubed in elora and chilled in sauble beach and fought in a real life war simulation

6. Ran 10km twice. My previous best run distance was 8 km, so I was really psyched about this milestone

7. Read five novels, two non fiction and wrote four blog posts

8. Chilled and vacationed in Florida with 20+ family and friends. My first time in the United States and one of the most intense vacations of my life

9. Ranked number 3 in  Desire2Learn’s ping pong company ladder. One of the things that I really loved about Desire2Learn!

10. Inspired 3 people. One of the reasons I started this blog was to inspire people and was really glad to hear from folks who read my blog and started doing awesome stuff themselves

11. Finally, the one that I was most excited and proud about – Joining TEDxUW as the Marketing Director, to bring the first ever TED like conference to the University of Waterloo

That’s my Summer of 2011, Imagine 2012!