Life Purpose

 

In each area of life, give a score between 1-10, where 1 is low and 10 is high score, take the average and you will get an idea about your happiness quotient in life, and areas which need improvement.

How can we draw a visual picture of a person's life

 Drawing a visual picture of a person's life can be a deeply meaningful and creative process. There are many ways to represent a person's life visually, depending on the aspects you want to emphasize—such as milestones, experiences, relationships, personal growth, or challenges. Below are some ideas and methods to create a visual representation of someone's life:

1. Timeline or Life Path

A timeline is one of the most straightforward ways to illustrate someone's life journey.

• Basic Timeline: Draw a straight or curved line representing their life span. Place key events (birth, significant milestones, career moments, travel, relationships, achievements, losses, etc.) along the line, with dates or ages indicated.

• Life Path: For a more artistic approach, you could show a winding or branching path, with significant moments marked along the way. This can represent the unpredictability of life, showing how various decisions or events shaped their direction.

  Tools: You could create this visually with digital tools like Illustrator, Canva, or even on paper, adding icons or symbols to represent important life events (e.g., a book for education, a heart for love, etc.).

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2. Life Map or Story Map

A life map is a more detailed, spatial representation of someone's journey, often shown as a series of connected "stations" or "landmarks" in their life. These can be represented geographically, or more abstractly.

• Landmark Style: You can create a map where different areas represent phases in a person's life (e.g., childhood, adolescence, adulthood, etc.), with visual markers like mountains, rivers, or cities that symbolize major transitions.

• Journey Map: Illustrate a winding road that changes shape or direction, where each bend or fork represents a major decision or turning point in their life (e.g., choosing a career, meeting a life partner, moving to a new place).

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3. Infographic Style

An infographic allows you to convey complex information in a visually engaging format. You can represent various elements of a person's life—education, career, passions, relationships, challenges, etc.—using charts, symbols, and illustrations.

• Pie Chart of Interests: Create a pie chart where each segment represents a different passion or area of their life (e.g., family, hobbies, career, travel, health). You could use symbols within each section to represent specific details (e.g., a graduation cap for education, a plane for travel).
• Bar Chart of Achievements: Represent key accomplishments with bars showing the progression over time, or the height of bars representing the significance of achievements.
• Icons and Symbols: Instead of text, use icons that resonate with the person's personality and experiences (e.g., a guitar for musical interests, a suitcase for travel).
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4. Collage or Mood Board

A collage is a creative and often emotional way to represent a person's life. It allows for more abstract, emotional, and thematic expressions of their experiences.

• Photographic Collage: Collect photographs, images, or objects that symbolize key moments in their life, and arrange them in a collage form (either physically or digitally). This could include pictures of their childhood, family, friends, achievements, places they've been, etc.
• Thematic Collage: If you’re focusing on a theme, such as resilience or personal growth, you could use images that symbolize these themes (e.g., a seed growing into a tree, a storm followed by sunshine, or a road leading toward a distant mountain).
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5. Personal Growth Tree

A "growth tree" represents the person’s life as a tree with roots, trunk, branches, and leaves.

• Roots: Represent the person's origins, family background, and early life experiences.
• Trunk: The trunk symbolizes their core values, education, and formative experiences that shaped who they are.
• Branches: Each branch represents different phases of life (e.g., career, relationships, health, creativity, etc.).
• Leaves/Flowers: The leaves or flowers can symbolize specific achievements, people, or turning points in their life.
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6. Portrait with Symbolic Elements

A more personal and artistic approach involves creating a portrait of the individual, with symbolic elements incorporated into the image.

• Surrounding the Portrait: Surround the person’s face with images or symbols that represent major life events, dreams, and experiences. This could be things like their career tools, meaningful objects, or locations important to them.
• Metaphors in the Portrait: Instead of a realistic portrait, the image could be metaphorical—for example, showing the person as a tree, a mountain climber, or a wanderer on a road.

7. Circle of Life or Wheel of Life

This method represents a person's life in a circular format, dividing their experiences into different categories or phases (e.g., childhood, adolescence, adulthood, etc.).

• Pie Chart Style: The circle can be divided into segments like a pie chart, where each slice represents a different aspect of life (family, work, travel, health, hobbies).
• Wheel of Life: The circle could be a representation of balance and fulfillment, with each segment showing a different area of focus (personal growth, relationships, finances, etc.).

8. Life as a Storybook or Comic Strip

This method is fun and allows for the incorporation of narrative storytelling.

• Storybook: You could create a visual "story" of the person's life, with illustrations for each major chapter. These could be like a series of book covers, or pages with short descriptions of life events.
• Comic Strip: You can represent key moments as a comic strip, using characters, scenes, and dialogues to show the person's life as a series of interconnected events or experiences.

9. Color Symbolism

Using color can evoke different emotions and themes that represent different phases or elements of life.

• Color Coding: Assign different colors to different aspects of life (e.g., blue for education, red for relationships, green for personal growth). A visual composition could use these colors in varying intensity or patterns to represent changes or periods of growth.
• Abstract Colors: If you prefer an abstract approach, use colors and shapes to represent key life events, transitions, or emotions (e.g., dark stormy colors for struggles, bright vibrant colors for moments of happiness or success).

10. Interactive Digital Visuals

If you're looking for a more dynamic and interactive approach, creating a digital representation (e.g., using an interactive map, a digital timeline, or a website) can allow the person to click through various stages or events in their life, revealing details, photos, and stories.

Conclusion:

When drawing a visual picture of someone's life, think about the aspects that matter most to the person or the story you want to tell. Whether it's through a timeline, map, symbolic representations, or abstract art, the key is to create something that feels true to their journey, capturing both the highs and lows, the growth, and the transformation they’ve experienced.

Perspective of vision

Why do parallel lines like the railway lines appear to converge when viewed from a distance?

The following answer is created using ChatGPT

 The phenomenon where railway lines appear to converge in the distance is an optical illusion caused by **perspective**. This effect occurs because of the way parallel lines appear to get closer together as they extend into the distance.

Here's a breakdown of why this happens:

1. **Perspective**: In visual perception, objects that are parallel to each other (like railway tracks) will appear to get closer together as they move further away from the observer. This is due to the way our brain interprets visual information in a 3D world. Objects further away are perceived as smaller, and the space between them appears to shrink.

2. **Vanishing Point**: The parallel lines of the railway tracks are actually not converging in reality—they remain equidistant throughout their entire length. However, because of perspective, they appear to meet at a point in the distance, known as the **vanishing point**. This is where the two tracks seem to merge when viewed from a long distance, such as when you're looking along a railway track or a straight road.

3. **Human Vision**: Our eyes interpret 3D space in a way that distorts our perception of depth. As objects get farther away, they appear smaller and closer together, leading to the illusion that the tracks are converging.

This same principle applies not just to railway lines, but to any set of parallel lines that recede into the distance, such as roads, rivers, or rows of trees.

Reading the subtle signs of the universe

 https://medium.com/@sandy49.c/reading-the-subtle-signs-of-the-universe-7cf29912ba85

Steps to take to be more environment conscious

 All of us have a duty to safeguard the environment so that our future generations can benefit from it. What are the steps that as an individual we must take to reduce CO2 emissions 

1. Always conserve water: use waste water from the RO water purifier to wash veggies & utensils

2. Use bucket for bathing instead of showers

3. Walk or cycle instead of using transport for short distances. This benefits by keeping us healthy as well

4. Recycle old clothes into furniture like padded chairs, sofas, bags etc

5. Recycle garbage peels into compost for plants if possible

6. Use electricity judiciously, switching off fans and ac's

7. Educate maids, servants in these aspects 

8. Use public transport like metros, buses, wherever possible

All these if practiced by more and more people should help us & help the planet

Googlish Narcissism

 Googlish narcissm refers to searching for oneself on google to check if at all one features anywhere on the search engines searches of 1 of maybe 20000 pages. It is a step to validate your existence on this polluted planet of 6 billion people. It reminds me of the very appropriate characterisation of one of Jane Austen's quintessential characters Lord Walter Elliot in her book Persuasion where the vain and narcissistic man resorts to his passtime of perusing Debrett's Baronetage where he delight's himself in finding validation of his title, his marriage and daughter's by reading the passage refering to himself

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed. This was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:

ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH HALL.

“Walter Elliot, born March 1, 1760, married, July 15, 1784, Elizabeth, daughter of James Stevenson, Esq. of South Park, in the county of Gloucester, by which lady (who died 1800) he has issue Elizabeth, born June 1, 1785; Anne, born August 9, 1787; a still-born son, November 5, 1789; Mary, born November 20, 1791.”

Although this act of his was ridiculed by the author in her book, I often find myself doing the same just to get an outside view of myself and am gratified when I find myself in the following pages of google's images

21st row of images- 5th image paper published

42nd row of images - 2nd image

53rd row of images - 4th image

and so on 

I rather like to believe that in this case instead of highlighting my narcissistic tendencies google search helps me to give an insight into what I am to the outside world- the 3rd view of the Johari window. It gives me an aim and purpose in life to try and achieve to get to number one on google's searches when I give it in the search engine. For that of course one has to become what is a catchword in today's instagram generation - an influencer, a person of note or repute , one who has achieved something notable in life like acted in a number of blockbuster movies, been a head of state, or played some sport professionally, or written a book which has been read by a wide audience. 

 

On the downside you could also land up in the top of google's searches if you have achieved notoriety in a particular field like commited a particularly grotesque murder or stolen a few billion dollars from a bank or committed a financial fraud of a few trillion like Bernie Madoff. The average Joe or Jane though who leaves a plodding nondescript life - going to work, having a family, paying taxes , doing household chores though has to be satisfied with a small innocuous corner of the google search on the umteenth page if at all. That of course does not in any way diminish her contribution to the human race. I would like to think that every person has the same impact as any other person whether famous or notorius 

The Art and Science of Making a Perfect Chapati

 

A  perfect chapati should have the following three specifications

1. It should be round in shape with a radius of pi  3.14 inches. 

2.  It should be fully air filled by the time it is done resembling our own planet earth.

3. Its colour is also required to be a light golden brown when it is made of wheat.

Then and only then will it qualify to be a perfect chapati and rest assured that when it meets the above specifications it is bound to meet the criterion of taste and smell perfectly.

Somehow such rotis can only be made over an open fire like that of a gas oven or chulha. It cannot be ensured on an electric oven or induction. This is the problem for Sona that she rues the fact that used to mostly round chappatis she tried her hand at making ragi chappati over the induction with miserable results and so is ever bemoaning the fact that rotis are not the same away from home.  

Why does a roti not become air inflated ever so often? 

Let's look at this step-by-step:

• Wheat flour consists of two major proteins—glutenin and gliadin
• When you add water to the flour and knead it, it leads to the formation of an a continuous network of the protein Gluten, which lends the dough elasticity and makes it stretchable.
• The strong gluten network is also capable of trapping gas bubbles within the bread (roti in our case)
• When we flatten and cook the roti on the girdle, the steam produced inside the roti causes it to puff up as the pressure from the steam pushes the gluten network outward.

In short, well-kneaded dough (so that a long protein network is formed), reasonable moisture and a reasonably high cooking temperature combine to make your rotis puff. If the dough isn't well kneaded or if the rotis are cooked on low heat, they'll most likely not puff well. It is also advised to let the dough rest for 5-10 mins just after kneading to let the gluten form properly. Also the rotis have to be heated properly on both sides say around 30secs on the tava before they are transferred to the fire over a griddle to protect the hands from getting scalded by a stream of escaping heated gas from the rotis.