Foreign land... Minneapolis!!

Visit to Foreign land... Minneapolis!!

Have you packed everything! Do you need snacks! Call me once you reach there! Do no go out alone! Do not go to water places! There were no pause for me to say anything; I wondered if my mom was even expecting any response. In spite of all panic around me, i kept my calm and packed things for my 8 day stay in Minneapolis (mnpls). Since it was my first time to travel abroad, I had to check with friends on what goes in cabin bag and what goes in check in, ah! Packing is such a pain. After all the talks and preparations finally i reached airport.

En route we had flight change at Paris, for which we were very excited about. Oh yeah! I was not alone; we were 8 colleagues travelling to same destination. We peeped through plane windows to locate Eiffel tower but sadly we did not find :( We had transit time of 2 hours in Paris, which allowed us to roam around a bit in the airport. Oh man what a beautiful and expensive airport that is, ended up paying 7 euros for two bottles of water, Wonder what was in that water! We reached mnpls at 6 pm CST and was waiting to hit the bed as for a record I hadn't slept in 30 hours straight, wish I could have been awake like this during exams:P 

At the end of the day, you need a good place to crash is what I believe. The accommodation made me happy as the hotel had huge room, cozy bed, two Televisions, fridge and yeah bath tub of course. It was no less than a luxurious home!

Apart from work and lot of dance practice hours, I managed to make some time for sight-seeing. Infrastructure of the city is very well planned; two to three generations can live by just maintaining it.

True belief never fails!

Since childhood i always fantasized about travelling on air and visiting other countries. As I'm from a small town in India, being a foreign return was a big deal in family and society around, and it was stuck in my head. Whenever my friends use to come back from their international trips, i would be all ears to listen to their experience. Even though i knew i couldn't afford the trip, I always dreamt of travelling overseas. But once my corporate life started, I realized it is very common for employees going on site for different country visits. Call it my bad luck, unfortunately my company was not one of those who send employees on site easily. But that never made me give up on my hopes, i knew i would go abroad either to study, work or for a trip.

Visit to happy world :)

Every one has a soft side which wants to do something in society they live in, but everyone gets tired and busy with their own life that they give least priority to do anything. But if we get an opportunity in our routine life to do something little for society, i'm sure each one of us would love to. Few organizations makes sure to give back something to society in their own way, and i'm so glad to be working for a company which does a lot of community services.

As a community services event i have visited to NGO called Yuvalok for four times now through my company. Few colleagues involve in such event to please managers or to have a break from work. But it is amazingly true that what ever your reason maybe you would end up having "feel good moment" with kids. Me being a person who actively involves in social activities outside my work place, never like to miss any visits to NGO's through company.

Unlike teaching them computers or Mathematics or Science as we had done previously, this time concept was "Fun while learning". We had to come up with ideas on what we should present to kids which will be fun as well as they learn something. We all came up with few fun science experiments/ Geometric symbols/Identifying famous personalities. Made all logistics ready before reaching the venue.

The enthusiasm in those kids is higher each item i have met them; this time was no less. The eagerness in each of them to learn something new and happiness to see people who have come to spend time with them is simply outstanding. Kids were brighter than we expected. They solved Sudoku( which had geometric symbols) with ease, they had surprised look on face when we showed invisible ink experiment. Explained about what are the environmental hazardous wastes and asked them to make paper bags.


Even though it was a one hour session, we tried our best to leave them with positive thoughts and few learning. More than we help kids, we will be helping ourselves relieve our stress and have satisfaction.
oh well i titled this blog "Visit to Happy World" because at the end of day all you have is a big smile on your face :)

Document about Documentary!

We all feel that Visual effect on human brain is stronger compare to Verbal. How many of us love watching cartoon instead of reading a comic book, Majority right? So whenever we want to convey message to large audience in an effective way, we should consider visual medium as Social media is used so extensively across the globe it makes us easier to connect with many people. If you also feel the same but are not sure how to make a short movie/Documentary read along.

If you have passion to do something, nothing can stop you. I’m sure you would have heard it from many people many times. So let’s get to the practicality of making a documentary. I was always inclined towards working for social cause, but never thought making short films could be an impact. It was around a year and half ago I got a chance to work in short film with a creative group of people who wanted to add value to the life of those underprivileged through art forms such as theater and motion picture.

Trust me I had no experience or have idea on how to make short films. It was after we started I learnt things slowly. Even though I had no background with acting skills, I just blindly trusted the team and started working. To deliver a documentary which makes impact on audience, you should always have a strong baseline/Story/Theme. After you know this, all other aspects like camera for shooting, editing, casting come into picture. A good story will be sold without having a lot of effects in it, says the director I worked with. So stop worrying too much about what kind of camera will be best, any basic model is good enough to shoot. As long as you know how to hold it still and to move it to capture motion.

As having good story/ Idea/Direction is important, good editor is equally important. When I say editor, don’t compare it to editing for big movies. If you know to use windows movie maker, you can learn basic editing skills which is enough for editing the documentary. But if you feel your camera/shooting/Direction did not go well and want best editing, you can always get it edited by external resource. But in my personal opinion it is best to have all the resources within the team to get the best output in lower budget.

I Sure can’t teach you how to make documentary in this one article for sure, it will be come to you when you start doing it. But here are few tips I can share,

•  Pen down your script or idea and the ways you want to go about it before starting.
•  Make sure all the resources are ready, before you start your shooting.
•  Record all the voices separately, this will help during editing.

If you have interest in making documentaries and never started it due to some reasons, remember this quote from Seth Godin - The only thing worse than starting something and failing is not starting something.

Do I get to choose CM/PM?

I guess this is the right time to put forth my thoughts on politics, elections are coming up you see. I don't really understand this politics or maybe I'm not very keen to follow it. As a normal citizen of this country i always wonder if my voting does matter in electing the chief minister or prime minister. As they are the main ones responsible for the growth of me, my city and my country.

When these voting do happen, it is for the MLA of the particular area I stay in. Let us say I vote for a person in "X" party, election of CM happens by number of wins a particular party gets. When it isn't "X" party, how am I electing the Chief minister who has the control over state?

World Inspiration Day- As simple as that!

Everyday we wake up with the hope to reach one step closer to our dreams or goals. Just imagine you had no dreams, do you think life would've been interesting? You would have had no reason to wake up and push yourself a little harder to achieve something big in life.

With our daily routine and busy work schedules, we tend to lose hope or stay lazy to come out of comfort-zone and start working towards the goals. That's why we need inspiration to keep us going. Motivation from someone or something might last few hours or days, but inspiration stays longer with us. It is not only important to get inspiration and keep ourselves going ahead in life  but to inspire others around us so that they can move forward.

When inspiration is such a big part in our life, doesn't it deserve to have a day of celebration? That's when MR.Sujit Lalwani came up with idea to coin a day as world inspiration day. As April 23rd was the day Inspiration unlimited idea was conceived we celebrate World Inspiration Day(WID) on 23rd April from this year.

Here's a video of people from 23 plus countries wishing for World Inspiration day:
http://youtu.be/zvGsT9uF9qI

I would just like to say, i aspire to inspire others around me. Do you?

Choice is Yours!

We keep hearing from every source possible that we get what we deserve. But most of us aren't happy the way our lives is. All that we do is complain about how things are going on in life. How many times have we not compared our life with others and thought "man i deserved that"?  I'm Sure many at times.