It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are a lot of things about yourself that you didn’t know and may or may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren’t exactly the greatest people you have ever met and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you do not realize is that they are realizing that too and are not really cold or catty or mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You look at your job. It is not even close to what you thought you would be doing or maybe you are looking for one and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and are scared.

You miss the comforts of college, of groups, of socializing with the same people on a constant basis. But then you realize that maybe they weren’t so great after all.

You are beginning to understand yourself and what you want and do not want. Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging a bit more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and add things to your list of what is acceptable and what is not. You are insecure and then secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you or you lay in bed and wonder why you can’t meet anyone decent enough to get to know better. You love someone but maybe love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you are not a bad person.

One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap and getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision.

You worry about loans and money and the future and making a life for yourself and while wining the race would be great, right now you’d just like to be a contender!

What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.

Source: http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~shane/text/quarterlifecrisis.html

More on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis

]]> http://harshah.com/blog/2009/01/09/quarter-life-crises/feed/ 4 http://harshah.com/blog/2008/05/26/appraisal-curve/ http://harshah.com/blog/2008/05/26/appraisal-curve/#comments Mon, 26 May 2008 18:40:54 +0000 harsha http://yourharsha.com/?p=65 Appraisal !!! So how it happens, here is simple graph ( drawn by me ) that explains a bit

• Appraisal meeting starts with the Start point when your manager calls you in meeting room.
• So the process begins, with smile exchange, and then small two or three sentences friendly and smiley chit-chat. You are at Smile Camp 1 now. This is the base camp which prepares you to take to the peak of Mount Everest ( i.e. 13th floor ).
• Your manager says, “so this is your self rating.. ah?”. Your Smile Camp 1 dips a little lower now.
• Now, the plane takes off. You will be showered by lots of good things about you. Soon you will reach the peak of Mount Everest. You reached 13th floor now. You must be telling yourself, “How sweet he/she is ? “.
• You are bulls eye now. So what people will do with bulls eye? They hit it!!! Now, your manager opens his/her Haywards 2000 and 5000 deadly, lethal arrows and starts hitting you one by one. You are bulls eye, right? And Haywards arrows never miss bulls eye, you know.
• Soon you will reach the bottom of Mount Everest. Now, understanding the critical situation of yours, your manager does some first aid so that you don’t die before next cycle. You will get election promise of giving higher rating next time or something else as a compensation. You are at Smile Camp 2 now!
• Smiles exchanged again. Meeting over. You come back to your seat. Now you realize that you are at the same level where you started! That’s your Finish point. You finished your race of this season and as usual you are lost.

PS: NOM to anyone. This is Just for laugh post.

Several elections have come and gone. Politicians visit people every time during elections and make huge castle election promises. But no representative and no party has ever done any significant development for North Karnataka. It is still the forgotten and neglected part of the state even after 50 years.

Many awareness campaigns were raised to motivate people to come out of home and vote. Lead India, several other volunteer/ non profit organizations, several organizations including my employer tried to bring awareness by putting ads on TVs, newspapers, notice boards and by sending official mails in order to increase voter turnout. But will these be really effective when the people have lost total interest in state politics because of lack of stable govt, opportunist politicians and all burning issues which politicians are not even having a glance on them.

Coming back to North Karnataka, it has been severely lagging from all aspects. There is a backwardness in everything infrastructure, education, economy, government facilities, rail links, road transport, airports, tourism..etc

Every politician come and give huge promises and unrealistic plans. They will promise like anything.. this that. that this..all blah blah and bullshit. This time,for third phase, most national leaders have toured for campaign.. L K Advani, Susma Swaraj, Narendra Modi, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Lalu, Mayavati and many more. These are the people who build castle in the air. Someone has rightly said politicians build bridge even when there is no river. Let alone national leaders, even the politicians from North Karnataka like Dharam Singh / Kharge are doing nothing for NK and even after this they are winning continuously. Now whom to blame? NK people expected a lot when Dhram Singh became CM and unfortunately even he couldn’t do anything during his CMship.

Leaders of North Karnataka are good for nothing and they never fought for anything. All they know is earn(black or white doesn’t matter),  eat and sleep till next elections.  Inspite of number of agitations from people, nothing improved and nothing initiated.  Farmers of NK are dependent on rain for agriculture. Don’t politicians think irrigation projects are needed? The Kalasa Banduri Nala project for Hubli-Dharwad people, development of airports of NK region, new rail links for connecting various places of NK and several other projects are still a dream.

Myself being from North Karnataka, I feel shame to say that our leaders are useless. But fortunately decade by decade, there is gradual rise in mass agitation and also politicians started believing that they need to look into these long remaining issues.

We need to elect leaders who make difference to us. I know, these all have made us to lose interest in overall politics.  You may opt to choose not to vote thinking that no leader will do anything for us! But by your decision of not voting, worst leaders will be chosen and condition will be even more pathetic. Vote for good leader. If there is no good leader nominated, atleast vote for comparatively not so worse leader, thus by preventing worst leader to be chosen.

Exercise you vote today! Your vote will make a differnce!

First Impressions: “Don’t go by cover” is what that exactly applies to PX 100. If you show this headphone to people and ask them to guess the price, I am sure no one would guess its right price. I did this. I asked few of my friends to guess the price, all of them settled down to not more than 800 RS. Yes, it looks very cheap. A simple stainless headband and a very lightweight in hand makes it to look like that.

To know its worth, you have to hear to it.Before trying it, first listen to your favorite song on your headphone. And then listen to your same favorite song on PX 100. I bet, you will hear some sounds / instruments that you never heard before. You will hear each instrument so clear and crisp that, you won’t even miss single minute sound. If you are a music lover or a regular listener, you should listen to PX 100 atleast once, to feel what the music will be…

I bought it from Imagine, Forum Mall. I bought it mainly for my N73 to listen while traveling. I tested it with pc, ipod, tv, dvd player and with other mobiles. It works best with ipod. I also tested with various music.. from soft to hard rock. Bass is awesome. Bass is the best thing you can hear in PX 100. But treble makes trouble at extreme high frequencies . Except for that, it’s perfect. Music doesn’t distorts at full volume. Effect will be same even at lower volume levels.

There is one more disadvantage also. It is too audible to outside world at full volume. Person, sitting beside you, can easily judge what song are you listening to if you are at full volume.

It’s fold able and you can easily carry it. They will also give nice carrying case too.

Unlike, ear canal head phones, these are very comfortable and you can listen for longer hours without any tiredness or pain in your ears.