Thursday, June 29, 2006

The Hobbit

Finally I read one of the J.R.R.Tolkein's books "The Hobbit". It is the first book in the series of "The Lord of the Rings" where he has created his own world of MiddleEarth. I liked the book for it is a kind of adventure where you would be interested to know what happens next, i.e. he has maintained a sound amount of thrill throught the book. At regular intervals in the book the author introduces new characters (new races, in fact): elves, humans, wolves, goblins which makes the story more interesting. Each race has its own strengths and weaknesses and hence are interesting beings. The sudden turn of events on unexpected time seems to be the key to success to this story.

One the negative side, I felt that it would have been better if author had described each race in more detail like, what are their professions, what excites them and why they are friends / enemies of each other. Who are wizards and why they are so powerful. Maybe JRR has taken this into account in his subsequent books. One more thing, adventure doesn't seems like a diffcult journey where you get help from wizard and hobbit on a regular basis. Oops I just revealed some events from the book. For now I feel like I will be reading all trilogy of LOTR series.

Rating: 3.5 / 5.0

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

A coffee story

I usually avoid posting forwarded emails on my personal blog but this (Akshay Pandit's email) one is really interesting and thought-provoking.

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said:
"If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.

What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and were eyeing each other's cups.

Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change. Some times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it."

So, don't let the cups drive you... Enjoy the coffee instead.