Subtle Aspirations

My dear friend Vabeez forwarded this email to me from work this evening. I think she’s carting vengeance on me with all the “Inspiration Peak” messages I’ve been sending to her over the last year or so :)

All said and done, this really struck a chord in my heart and I wanted to share it with anyone who stumbles upon it:

“There was once a wise woman traveling in the mountains who found a precious stone in a stream. The next day she met another traveler who was hungry, and she opened her bag to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked if she might give it to him. She did so without hesitation. The traveler left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime, but a few days later he came back to return the stone to the woman who had given it to him. ‘I’ve been thinking,” he said, “I know how valuable the stone is, but I’m giving it back in the hope that you can give me something much more precious. I want you to give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me the stone.’ ”
— Author Unknown

Sometimes in our continual drive to get ahead, we forget that the things we gather around us, no matter how precious they might seem, pale in comparison to the love and light we hold within.
May you always recognise that what is truly precious is not to be found in the outer world, but inside of you.

Early last week I was chatting with a long lost dear friend of mine. There used to be a time we knew exactly what the other was upto at any given point in a moment. Last week, we caught up after over a year or so.

We talked about almost everything under the sun – as much as we could.

Among other conversations, I expressed to her how lately I’ve just been feeling so disconnected with everything in life (I’m not getting into the reasons here).

To that she suggested trying out in maintaining a public journal/blog wherein, at the end of each day, I list out 5 things I’ve been greatful for each day.

I took up on her suggestion and created this: http://devesh.net/gratitudejournal :)

So far there have been 4 posts – since the last 4 days it’s been active.

I must say this is truly helpful! No matter how your day has been – just the simple act of actually spending a few minutes at the end of each day and wading through your thoughts, to pick up the postives, if nothing, most definitely helps you sleep better!

And as easy as you think it is, it’s not! It took me good 25 minutes or so to write my first 5 points – just made me realise that how much we tend to focus on the negatives rather than even appreciating really simple positives.

I challenge you to try it out yourself. You don’t have to create a blog or write about it anywhere (however if you choose to, believe me it’s way better) – simply, as you put your head down on your pillow, list out 5 things in the day you are thankful for :)

You’ll have moments when something negative linked to a good thing will flow out – simply acknowledge it and say to yourself that this exercise is not to focus on the negatives – and steer your mind to search for a positive.

As I mentioned above – if for nothing else, it’ll definately help you sleep better ;)

Don’t forget to drop a line with your experience if you do decide to do it ;)

Cheerio!

As busy of a week this is going to be at work, I literally didn’t have anything to do almost all day today (we were waiting on a few reports to finish running on the servers).

And having nothing to do I was randomly surfing around a few sites to catch up on some reading – anything interesting.

Now I landed on this blog which had a list of interesting uses of everyday items and chances are that you’ve probably never heard of em!

Here are a few of them which you may find useful :)

• Get a Shine with Banana Peels: If you are not eating bananas, you should be. In addition to the health benefits of the fruit itself, its skin is a built in shoe shine kit. A banana peel can shine your leather furniture and shoes. Just remove the stringy matter from inside and rub the inside of the peel on your shoes. Apparently: While you’re removing the stringy bits, you can dry them and “smoke” them as they contain enzymes which give a high when smoked. Don’t take my word for this, I haven’t done it (well yet LOL!) – A friend of mine at work replied back with this “tip” when I sent her the email of the other ones :D
• Remove price tag with peanut butter: Have you felt exasperated when you purchased a gift for a friend and before gift-wrapping, you tried to remove the price tag with no avail? Apply some peanut butter on the tag and rub it gently. You’ll be happy to see the price tag and its sticky residue gone.
• Deodorise the refrigerator: Is your refrigerator smelly despite the thorough cleaning and defrosting? Dampen a cotton ball with vanilla extract and leave on the shelf. After few hours, you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you open your refrigerator.
• Control your dandruff with baking soda: Do you feel low self-esteem due to dandruff that scares you every time you are on a date or other social gatherings? Well, create some homemade baking soda shampoo. Use this solution every time you shower and after a dry spell, you’ll find your hair free of flakes and softer.
• Deodorise your garbage disposal: Does your garbage disposal smell yucky? Pour 1/2 cup of salt into the bottom of the disposal and rinse it with warm water. The smell will go away quickly. Add a little lemon if you want to freshen things up even more.
• Remove car dents: Before paying a good bit to a body shop to fix the dents on your car, wet a plunger, push it over the dent and pull it out sharply. It may remove the dents at free of charge.
• Streak free glass with a newspaper: Before pitching old newspapers into the recycling bin, try cleaning your glass windows with glass cleaner or warm water and a piece of newspaper. You’ll see an absolutely streak-free glass surface as a result.
• Beer Hair Product: Want to keep your hair style in place but don’t want to buy hair spray/moose/etc.? Just comb a few tablespoons or so of beer into your hair and style away. It’ll stay put.

Source: “Dumb Little Man Tips for life” Blog

So you’ve upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007 but have the urge to modify your HTML signature in your Outlook?

Unfortunately you cannot seem to find any option in the editor tools to be able to “hand-modify” your signature. All that’s available is just the default signature creator :(

Well, there’s a solution handy :)

Create a dummy signature using the signature editor available in Outlook. Once done, hit save and simply browse to:
C:\Documents & settings\[your username]\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures

(In Vista business your can find it under: C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures)

and voila – you can see your signature file there ;)

Fire up your favourite HTML editor and modify it.

Save it, shut it, fire up your Outlook, create a new email message and adore your new, custom signature you just created.

:)

A friend of mine forwarded this email this arvo. I’m sure you’ll have a good laugh and gain some “insight” (especially if you’re married) on saying the right thing ;)

Jack wakes up with a huge hangover after the night at a business
function. He forces himself to open his eyes and the first thing he sees is a couple of aspirins next to a glass of water on the side table. And, next to them, a single red rose!

Jack sees his clothing in front of him, all clean and pressed. He looks around the room and sees that it is in perfect order, spotlessly clean. So is the rest of the house. He takes the aspirins and cringes when he sees a huge black eye staring back at him in the bathroom mirror and notices a note on the table:

“Honey, breakfast is on the stove, I left early to go shopping – Love you!”

He stumbles to the kitchen and sure enough, there is hot breakfast and the morning newspaper. His son is also at the table. Jack asks, “Son, what happened last night?”

Well, you came home after 3 am, drunk out of your mind. You broke the coffee table, puked in the hallway and got that black eye when you ran into the door.”

So, why is everything in such perfect order, so clean, I have a rose and breakfast is on the table waiting for me?”

His son replies, “Oh, THAT! Mom dragged you to the bedroom and when she tried to take your pants off, you screamed, “Leave me alone, bitch, I’m married!”.

When was the last time you caught yourself “staring” at your desktop wallpaper?

Have you realised, despite the numerous “desktop wallpaper” websites that are out there, we hardly spend any time looking at the desktop while we are on the PC!

Well, if you have a knack for eye-candy, I assure you, you’ll get addicted to this nifty lil application that aspires to bring you by far the best designed wallpapers – yes, the ones that make you go “whoaaa… look at that!”

Enter “Desktoptopia”!

This small application sits in your system tray and refreshes your desktop on demand (or automatically if you set it to).

Quoting them:

Let Desktoptopia automatically update your monitor with fresh designer desktops like this one from our ever-growing master collection.

Why?

Because who has time to keep up with emerging design trends and fresh illustration styles? Let us do the work, and deliver inspiring desktops to you, as often as you wish. Go on, get inspired.

All you have to do to be amazed for a minute is right click on the icon, and hit “next background” and voila! You will be amazed :)

One of my all time favourite desktops from their library is this one:

Try it! You won’t regret it, trust me. And yes it’s free!

Head over to http://desktoptopia.com and start “loving” your desktop again :)

Here’s what my current desktop looks like: