Sakura...

It is a time of Sakura - Cherry Blossom in Japan. I had the privilege of enjoying this awesome visual treat in 2009 and 2010! Sakura season is back in Japan and hopefully it brings lot of joy in the lives of people there! All these photos were clicked during the Sakura season of 2009

Sometimes our experiences limit us...

A few months ago I read a wonderful story shared by a colleague which was a fable conveying how we often limit ourselves based on our past experiences and our mindset. It was about elephants tied by a thin string which they can easily break but they won't, because they were tied by similar string since their childhood to hold them from running away. On a similar theme, I found an interesting blog - It's all how you look at it

Amazing thought, isn't it?

I used to have a poster in my home that had an image of Swami Vivekanand with this message

All power is within you.
You can do anything and everything.
Believe in that.

It is easy to accept our limitations and stay confined within them, creating a comfort zone which will eventually define our pseudo-potential, but if challenge these limits we may achieve the unachievable.

Interesting quotes from "The Kite Runner"

Read a novel after a long time - "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini
Sharing a few interesting quotes from the book -

"For you, a thousand times over"

"One time, when I was very little, I climbed a tree and ate these green, sour apples. My stomach swelled and became hard like a drum, it hurt a lot. Mother said that if I'd just waited for the apples to ripen, I wouldn't have become sick. So now, whenever I really want something, I try to remember what she said about the apples."

"Zendagi Migzara. Life goes on."

"Better to be hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie"

"It always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place"

"And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too"

"A man who has no conscience, no goodness, does not suffer"

"Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it."

કોઈના હૃદયને આઘાત ન આપવો...

કોઈના અંત:કારણને દુઃખ પહોચાડવું કે કોઈના હૃદયને આઘાત આપવો એટલે એમાં રહેલા ઈશ્વરને દુઃખ આપવા બરાબર છે.

Source: Book અમૃતવાણી

Leap Year!

I never really studied the logic of Leap Year calculation. Never even encountered it during my programming assignments. Ever since I was born, any year that was divisible by 4 was a leap year. And so became my logic. Until I came across this very informative article on Wikipedia -

In the Gregorian calendar, the current standard calendar in most of the world, most years that are evenly divisible by 4 are leap years. In each leap year, the month of February has 29 days instead of 28. Adding an extra day to the calendar every four years compensates for the fact that a period of 365 days is shorter than a solar year by almost 6 hours.

Some exceptions to this rule are required since the duration of a solar year is slightly less than 365.25 days. Years that are evenly divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they are also evenly divisible by 400, in which case they are leap years. For example, 1600 and 2000 were leap years, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not. Similarly, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2500, 2600, 2700, 2900 and 3000 will not be leap years, but 2400 and 2800 will be. Therefore, in a duration of two millennia, there will be 485 leap years. By this rule, the average number of days per year will be 365 + 1/4 − 1/100 + 1/400 = 365.2425, which is 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 12 seconds. The Gregorian calendar was designed to keep the vernal equinox on or close to March 21, so that the date of Easter (celebrated on the Sunday after the 14th day of the Moon—i.e. a full moon—that falls on or after March 21) remains correct with respect to the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox year is about 365.242374 days long (and increasing).