How to define success?

A person finishes his engineering from some xyz college of engineering which is affiliated to one of the best universities in India. He then went on to apply for a software job through campus interview, got selected and have been offered posting in IT hub at bangalore. After few months of training, he was offered to go abroad (typically to US) for a period of few years to work on client’s side, allowing him to earn in dollars. After completing his tenure abroad, he comes back to India with a “US return” tag which enables him to automatically get a priority while looking for a suitable match. Fortunately, his horoscope matches with one of the beautiful girl in his community.

He marries the beautiful girl, takes her abroad for honeymoon either to Europe or US, buy a car, a home, spends his weekend trip with his wife on trekking and other activities, organizes party every week with his “close” friends, becomes father, read books to his kid and bring him up in rich atmosphere, provide him/her the education from one of the best (also the richest) school in India, and on and on and on.

There is this another person, who manages to finish his under graduation from abc college of engineering, not happy with what he had learnt, went on to pursue masters, still not convinced he has done anything, went on to struggle himself day and night, spent lots of sleepless nights arguing with his peers and colleagues, make a small but significant leap which enables him to get a Ph.D, still not satisfied, takes up a teaching post in a research based institute, does research with help from his grad students, spends lot of times with his students than with his family (if at all he gets one), make a startling discovery of something which nobody in this world is interested on. In pursuit of his dreams, he realizes that he doesn’ t have time to socialize with his friends, can’t afford to spend time with a girl in cafeteria unless she is his colleague and talks about research but not sex, felt bad because he couldn’t get priority in looking for a suitable match, even worse when he was told that beautiful girl’s horoscope does not match with his own, can’t stand questions from his relatives/friends who keeps asking him “what you do for your living?” and on and on and on.

Who among the two persons you see here has a successful life?

Inspired from Peer cruelty.

Right and Wrong!

It can be right. It can be wrong. But can something be right and wrong at the same time?

I was having my usual small allegro at sweet sinuations at Lory Student Center (LSC)  when I read this strange article. Well, my routine is to grab a cup (mug?) of coffee from the counter, add sugar and cream and mix it together, spot a chair just outside the cafeteria and have the drink. But there was a change in the usual seating area which makes me to look for an alternate space to rest my ass till I finish my cup of coffee. On the chair was placed an "USA today" daily magazine, neatly folded and was very inviting to read.

I browsed through the first page which talks about the sudden flash flood due to heavy rain in camping areas and about missing and dead people. When I flipped the daily to its fourth page, a news article about new birth certificate rule on Puerto Rico grabbed my attention. It was only a week ago that a friend of mine who is doing his Ph.D at CSU told me that Puerto Rico is an US territory and people who are born at Puerto Rico are US citizens by default.

Well, its not about what my friend told me about the territory, or the new rule that has been discussed in the article that I wanted to talk about here. The interesting thing comes at the end of the article which talks about some problem with the new law. A 78 year old Puerto Rican have applied for new birth certificate as per the rule, got his fee waived because he is over 60, but got his age printed on his new birth certificate as 33! Is there a mistake on waiving his fee, or on his age? One is correct, other is wrong. We know which is what, but does the Puerto Rico government knows about it?