A new world everyday
Most wonderful events in my life just 'happened' to me. Nothing really was planned or prepared for. It may be a coincidence that most of the things that had happened so far were so good, like getting a chance to act in a movie, appearing for a television ad, becoming an entrepreneur, working as the CEO of an IT firm and completing a university course in Yoga and Meditation. My travels also just happened. The only effort from my side was making sure that I never missed an opportunity to travel.
I am one of those people who would find it difficult to talk about themselves. I have interviewed hundreds of candidates for various job positions during my active working years. The interviews would usually begin with me asking the candidates to talk about themselves. In response, I have seen many of them, especially the techies, turn shy, lose their words, fumble and become uncomfortable to talk about themselves formally. Is it because of a general introvert personality seen in some people? Not really! -as the same people are capable of talking about technology or some other subjects for hours! May be this happens due to the general modest behavior of certain people or just because they never got trained or practiced to talk about themselves.
I happened to attend a few seminars and classes soon after moving to Canada. These classes were with the initiative of the Government of Canada to help new immigrants to settle down fast. In one of the sessions, I came across the 'elevator pitch' for the first time in life. The concept of the elevator pitch goes like this. You are a job aspirant entering an elevator and you meet someone who can offer you your dream job. At this point, you need to introduce yourself in 30-seconds. Why 30-seconds? - That is the average time an elevator takes to travel one floor. Your task is to talk about yourself in 30-seconds in the most impressive way. Now, the 30-second limitation is crucial because this is all the time you get to impress your prospective employer. What can you tell about yourself in this short time? Probably in 4 sentences! In this kind of situation, the 'WASP' concept has to be followed. 'W' is your work experience. 'A' stands for Academics, 'S' is your Skills, and the 'P' stands for your Personal interests - like hobbies.
Even after working in various capacities for so many years, I found making an elevator pitch for myself was not easy. With difficulties, I made one as follows.
" Hello, I am Bino Mathew and I am a freelance IT consultant with more than three decades of experience. I earned my Bachelor's degree with Physics as a major and I have studied a number of short-term IT courses. Over the years, I have been recognized for my technical expertise and for my business management skills. In my spare time, I love traveling to new places or studying a new subject."
Vancouver is known for its multi-cultural harmony . Seen with me are people from Korea, Trinidad and Russia.
I happened to study Psychology for my Masters. After completing the course, I did not have the courage to write the final exam. But the course made substantial changes in my outlook towards life. I found theories like ‘Personality Type’ of Myers-Briggs and 'Psychoanalysis' of Sigmund Freud very useful in real life... Btw I am 'INTJ' if that makes any sense to you.
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Apart from Traveling, the other subjects that fascinate me are TECHNOLOGY and NATURE
My Spirit
" Technology is the sum of techniques, skills, methods, and processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation."
Working in the Information Technology industry for three decades was both challenging and exciting. It may be the only industry where unending advancement happens at the fastest pace. New developments take place in so many verticals every day (rather -every second). A situation where one gets outdated if stayed away for a couple of days. Continuous learning is a must, and most of it happens as self-learning. It worked out well for a generally lazy person like me.
It also offered me opportunities to closely associate with many other fields as IT enablement is unavoidable for any organization. Working in several verticals at the same time provided multiple new learning every day. Doing projects for various local and international organizations like the Railways, Police Department, Space Research Organisation, Healthcare, and so on gave immense exposure and contacts. Software designing involved a lot of creativity, and I could enjoy it to the core. Software development was very demanding, and it is time-bound to seconds. But it was so much fun as well.
"Satisfaction is not always the fulfillment of what you want; it is the realisation of how lucky you are for what you have".
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My God
With a God’s particle in everything.
Nature contains everything that exists. It functions in a very systematic, scrupulous order. The design of the system and the harmony in which it works make it so beautiful. The rhythm continues for billions of years. Our prima-fascia knowledge about nature is limited. But with a little effort, observations and studies, it is not that difficult to understand the basics. Nature is neither just a large landscape nor the 'CharaAcharas' (meaning all moving and non-moving things on Earth). It is multi-dimensional. Though the system is simple, it functions in an unimaginable complexity. The more we look into it, the most complex it may appear.
Why does it appear so difficult to understand? That too in this modern world where all information is available at fingertips? Mainly because of our pre-convictions. We all started growing up listening to the stories and myths told by our parents and elders. We trusted and believed them blindly. Beliefs, assumptions, and stories got instilled in our minds as the ultimate truth.
I am not an Atheist. But at the same time, I am convinced that God is way beyond all the definitions and stories given by any human-being or religion. Look around carefully, and you will see the presence of God everywhere and in everything. Every aspect or element of the universe has a God's particle in it. It is in you, me, and in all systems, orders, and things. Searching for God is like searching for you in you.
Trying to understand nature should be the first step one should take to know what God is. The fundamental problem with us is that we want to know the "Creator" before understanding the "Creation"! Understanding the Creation in a better light will make some of the existing definition of the Creator incorrect. I know many people, especially those with religious convictions, will disagree with this. But pure logical thinking can make one believe that God is not that simple, as portrayed in books written 2000 or 5000 years ago. Though I like and respect many good teachings in those books on how to be a good human being, I have disagreements with many concepts and logic. At some point in my life, I realized the need for a fresh start with my beliefs and faith and began looking from the creation side. That triggered an unending flow of revelations for me!
One way to see a glimpse of the broader picture is looking from the tiniest thing of ‘Everything’ – the Atom. All that exists in this universe, including the human body, are made of nothing but 'atoms'. Atom has a nucleus in the center and a few electrons revolving around it in an orbital path. A collection of this combination in various proportions turns out to be different materials - be it metal, wood, mud, or flesh! The point to be noted here is that all the materials have countless motions within them. In other words, everything has a charge within them distributed in innumerable atoms. (An average human body is made up of 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms)!
Over the years we learned that the atom contains only three things- Protons, Nuetrons and Electrons. But recent studies show that there is one more unknown, invisible, and inseparable component present in every atom. A content or an unknown force - A God Particle?
It may be surprising to know that it is the same structure of the atom (a nucleus in the center and the electrons rotating around it) present in the Solar system, Milky Way, Galaxies, Cosmic web, and much beyond. A star is nothing but another Sun that has its planets and moons similar to our solar system. The structure is the same, and only the numbers differ like in an atom. The realization that how insignificant and tiny part is human in this bigger picture of nature, spread beyond 93 billion light-years, will enable one to see everything from a different perspective.
The above view is only about a tiny physical, material portion of nature. One human lifetime is not enough to understand even a minute fraction of whatever exists. Life also has so many other aspects like emotions, feelings, compassion, love ... How is that part explained?
To be continued.........
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"If you collect 100 black ants and 100 red ants and put them in a glass jar, nothing will happen. But if you take the jar and shake it violently and leave it on the table, the ants will start killing each other. Reds believe that black is the enemy, while blacks believe that red is the enemy when the real enemy is the person who shook the jar.
The same is true in society.
Muslim vs Christian
Hindu vs Muslim
Men vs Women
Left vs Right
Rich vs Poor
Faith vs Science
Blacks vs Whites
Gossip, Rumors, etc....
Before we fight each other, we must ask ourselves : Who or what rocked the Jar ?"