My Insights

This is something to think about-

The people who scream ‘free press’ could actually be hurting the public under the pretense of ‘the public needs to know’. This is quite interesting and here is how this happens-

Everybody knows that for a democratic govt. to be successful and righteous, it must constantly be scrutinized by the masses because if there is something wrong, the masses possess the power to change the leadership.

However, for a good govt. to be effective and for it to safeguard national security, we must also agree that there must be some activities that MUST be kept classified and as a secret. The reason for doing so is because if such information is made public, the information is inevitably going to fall into the wrong hands. In other words, we as a nation can never keep a secret from other nations; at least not in todays IT world.

Now if these ‘free press’ journalists are allowed to publish this information under the pretense of ‘the public deserves to know’, then information that is deliberately hidden from the public, by their own representatives will be made public and thus would lead to the failure of the govt.

However, who decides what is to be kep classified and what not? If there were alien UFO crashes and the govt. knew about them, does the public deserve to know? Or if there were Anthrax traces unaccounted for roaming the country, does the public deserve to know? The feds might try to keep these things classified because they might not want to risk mass panic.

Isn’t the whole point of a democracy - “of the people, By the people, for the people”? If it is by the people then shouldn’t the people get to decide what they get to know and don’t get to know? That sounds like a paradox to me.

In any case, I think journalists are struggling to expose it all while the Feds are trying to cover it all. The people, they just sit and watch.

We arrived in MD this morning around 8am. After much debate, we decided to leave South Carolina last night at 11:30 pm. We drove through the entire night. It was definitely a good idea because we would’ve hit lots of traffic coming home today. In either case, I relieved my brother from driving between 2-5 in the morning while he took a power nap. It is really easy to doze off behind the wheel at night when everybody else in the car is sleeping. So as a prevention mechanism, I decided to play some upbeat songs. That worked … for 2 songs. Then, I decided to sing along with the songs and I probably sang ‘Breathless’ at least 4 times. That didn’t last long either. Then I decided to take my mind off the fact that I might fall asleep and decided to concentrate on something else that would keep me engaged.

Surprisingly, the only thing I could concentrate on and that kept me engrossed for more than an hour was thinking about Sears. My thoughts revolved around Black Friday - the most important day in retail. I thought about everything from planning the merchandise to training my team to be the most efficient during that day. I know that to many this might be a sad admission and I am glad I am phasing out this chapter of my life. However, it led me back to a question - ‘What am I really happy doing?’ Some of you are out in the working world and get up every Monday to go to work. Are you really psyched by the prospect of going to your monotonous job everyday?

Whatever I end up doing in life, I know that working at Sears was one of the best things I could have done with my life. It taught me a lot about life and I will cherish my experiencese for the rest of my life. I think all of us should ask ourselves what it is that we are happy doing. It gives us a destination to aim for in life and makes it easier for us to choose the path we will take there.

For Thanksgiving weekend, my family and I came down to South Carolina to spend time with our family.

On our journey down here, we stopped in Virginia to grab some dinner and I got ID’d for the first time since I turned 21. However, since we travelled through the night, the journey was for the most part uneventful. We did watch ‘Dil Chahata Hai’ on Ritu’s request for the first few hours. Then Ritu and Rashi went to sleep and I decided to catch up on some lecture notes from one of my classes. But it was late and I just didn’t feel like studying. So away went the laptop and the final lap of the journey went staring down at I-95 for a few hours.

After we got here, I went to sleep after about an hour of staying up and woke up around 2pm the following morning. The rest of the day was spent playing pool and then finally, the Thanksgiving Dinner.

Before Dinner, we lighted some fireworks - they are legal down here compared to MD where it is illegal. After Dinner were a few more games of pool and when I realized that I was playing alone, I decided it was time to call it quits.

Pictures are up on the website. Just click the My Pictures section on the right.

A much needed update. I think the people who used to pester me to update have also given up. However, here is an update to bring everybody up to speed -
I resigned my position at Sears about 3 weeks ago and have been taking some much needed rest after that. I also was amazed by how much studying I had to catch up on. I ended up dropping one of my classes during the process also. However, after I found myself with all of this free time, I amazingly didn’t spend it all on studying. In any case, I’ve been going out much more and it’s great to experience the college life without having to go to work. So, expect more updates and more pictures (from all the places I go out to) and expect to see me more.