Oh no, not again!!

over 2 years ago | Surbhi Bhati: Clean Desk, Jammed drawers

I think politicians in our country have not just got anything better to do, except from dragging the poor cheergirls (ok, I admit they might not be that poor though, its just a figurative expression.) into controversy and trying to snatch their job, or telling Shah Rukh Khan or Amitabh Bacchan or some other celebrity every other day, that something he did sometime in his films was wrong in some way. Please give us a break!!!

For instance our health minister Mr. Ramdoss said, SRK spread alcoholism (I wonder if this is the right word, anyway I hope you'd be able to get the sense anyway!) in OSO by doing a scene which shows him badly drunk. I'd like to tell Mr. Ramdoss that people in our country are old enough (pity. The same can't be said on education front), to see what's good for them and what's not. I mean for this matter, youngsters do not even listen to their parents when it comes to their likes and dislikes, so how will it be that they will be so moved by just a scene in a film, which can not even be called excellent!!
Please mister Health Minister, you have enough pressing health issues in our country to last you a lifetime, without you requiring turning your head to what or what not the filmstars are representing in their movies. Please try to make some sense when you speakl next time in public.

Who is a Sahajayogi?

over 2 years ago | Riju Kansal: Riju's Thoughts Captured...

One -
1. Who loves truth.
2. Evaluates all his/her actions based on truth.
3. Is able to maintain balance every moment and is trying to think of ways to achieve it.
4. Has 0% ego.
5. Believes in giving.
6. Accepts the fact that one needs to exhale whatever he/she inhales.
7. Has won over anger.
8. Is forgiving.
9. Is able to take care of his/her health.

As per my personal experience & understanding, all the above seem very idealistic and unachievable qualities for a human being leading a normal life. But the only hope is as explained by SahajaYoga -- Be Connected To Divine. How? Only through meditation.

Only meditation gives the opportunity to calm the mind and get connected to divine power. And only with this power one can achieve balance. Balance is the key. Excitement and depression are the two extreme sides of balance. The most difficult thing to decide is what exactly is the center line of balance? You can understand it only in a state of meditation. Which comes by practice.

Just try not to lie to yourself each day and each minute and you can attain the state of meditation. And you'll get the strength for this by meditation. Both of these ideas go hand in hand and help each other.

IBN 7 & CNN-IBN salute the 'real heroes' of our nation

over 2 years ago | Riju Kansal: Riju's Thoughts Captured...

http://www.indiantelevision.com/release/y2k7/aug/augrel72.php

A precious gift on my marriage

over 2 years ago | Riju Kansal: Riju's Thoughts Captured...

Following poem written by my Babaji(Grandpa) :

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Strength of Gandhiji's ideas

over 2 years ago | Riju Kansal: Riju's Thoughts Captured...

I recently learnt or understood, why Gandhiji's ideas became successful and helped us acheive freedom. People say that there were many other revolutionists who deserve the credit. But what I have learnt is, historically it is proven that things happening in large numbers are more visible and have larger impact.

This is the basic idea I believe behind Gandhiji's movement. He thought of common man. What can be possible for every person easily. What is relatively easy to trigger inside a common man who doesnt know anything about Gun or Bullets? It was easy to make them realize the power of truth. The power of masses. The power of unity. Just by burning clothes. Making Salt. The people came together. And the British got afraid.

So the idea is what is easy for masses to understand?
Is there a way people of India realize the importance of education?
Is there a way that everybody thinks it is the most important thing?

Education is most important

over 2 years ago | Riju Kansal: Riju's Thoughts Captured...

Indian industry is autonomous. In competing for customers it has been expanding supply at breakneck speed. In March, India achieved a miraculous 300 million mobile phone customers in a country of 200 million households. Before liberalization, we had five million phones in 1990. No one talks about quotas for telephones any more because the market has raised both supply and quality. The same thing could happen to education. Prosperity doesn't trickle down; it goes down like a flood.

Who'd take it from here?

over 2 years ago | Surbhi Bhati: Clean Desk, Jammed drawers

Yesterday night, we went to a restaurant for dinner. It was a pretty decent place, in a posh area, and all the crowd consisted of sophisticated looking families. As we were deciding on our dishes, I got to see a young boy cleaning tables there and picking up plates. He must be aging somewhere in between 11 to 14 years. He looked quite out of place, you know, means all the other staff there was adult, except this little boy.
I mean, not that, its very uncommon in our country, I mean, yeah, we have adapted ourselves quite well with the daily sightseeing of children bagging, or selling small goodies at traffic signals, or working as a Chhotu, in roadside dhabas. But still, I don't know why, that boy strike me as different, I called him to our table, tried to ask him, "Do you work here all day long?" You know, thinking that he sight be working part time, and going school in day time. But he did not care answering my question properly, murmured something and went away.
Clearly, he understood, what I was trying to ask, and did not want to answer it. Talking to me in details about his personal life might have caused him his job, and he knew it. So he also knew perfectly well, that he is supposed to be studying and not working in hotels, and that this is not only illegal but also a crime. So he refrained himself from talking out of it.
It was like; mind your own business madam!! You do not need to do social service where it is not desired.
What I realize is, we Indians, do not make our choices based on what we want, but we make them on the basis of what we are supposed to be. So the kid might have wanted to study, he knew if he made some effort he might've succeeded in it (government is making some effort for such children), but he was not doing it. the reasons behind which, should not be a problem for us to think of. So this poor, illiterate population is not there only because they are not getting proper facilities or whatsoever. It is also because; they don't see education making drastic changes to their living standard. It's because they have completely lost faith in the government, and in the fact that country's progress depends upon them and vice-versa. It's because this wave of economical growth, globalization and rupee getting stronger, is doing nothing for them, except making rich even richer, and poor getting poorer.Now can somebody take it form here???

Reality shows!!

over 2 years ago | Surbhi Bhati: Clean Desk, Jammed drawers

Sometimes it so happens that you know so much, and you just don't know how to put it precisely. Yup, that's what my problem is, I know everything but, how to be more assertive and present it firmly to the other person, and ther are many moments in a day, where I feel, the lack of it is killing me!!!
Anyways, let's talk about a few social issues, my favorite stream, (sometimes I feel I would have been doing better as a Sociologist!! I mean what am I doing here in IT, you know IT!!! Anyways, the rapid way, that we are changing with now, I don't think, even those big sociologist are doing their job.) For instance, what is with these reality shows!! I mean, I hardly find anything real about them. First they are (almost all of them) celebrity oriented, and don't give chances to the common people. Second, the drama quotient is such shows is so high, you start wondering, whether they are judged on the basis of their performance, or the drama that they show up there!! And finally, man!!, I find them so senseless, I mean what do we gain by constantly producing these good for nothing singers, dancers and all these so called entertainers???
When you come to think of it (if at all you care to put some thought, when you watch them) the quantities of such shows has reached so high, that they've even started kind of recycling them. Shows where, the performers of all other shows turn up, and compete once again!!And to top it all, we again have celebrities who judge them. So far I have not been able to recognize their credibility in these shows. Because, at the end, it's only the so called audience voting that decides the winner!!And you still do not know what happens at the backstage. Sometimes I think, can we take any rubbish, if it comes in from of entertainment? And does entertainment only mean senseless time pass like this? I wonder how long would it take before we come out of this intellectual drought!!

I am back!!!

over 2 years ago | Surbhi Bhati: Clean Desk, Jammed drawers

Yeah..One day, I got up, inspired by a good friend, my boyfriend and my own self, and started writing bolgs. THinking to turn the world upside down by the fire within ;->> but nothing much happened and the bubble burst, like it was never tehre!! But I am back now, with a promise that I will prove to be a regular this time. I hopw with this bolg writing, I will be able to define myself some day..and yes..also achieve Selfactualization (Got it from Pricess DIaries, my recent read!!).
By the way, can someone tell me how to make your blog visited by many people(apart from writing it very intelligent and interestingly, which I dont think I am doing at present.) But please, if someone knows, let me know, how you make most poeple read your bolg..

Actually, I want more inspiration, that there is at least someone, who is listening to this undefined soul. You know, it can be a way for me to define myself!! really..

Enabling/disabling observers for testing

over 2 years ago | Ryan Kinderman: kinderman.net :

If you use ActiveRecord observers in your application and are concerned about the isolation of your model unit tests, you probably want some way to disable/enable observers. Unfortunately, Rails doesn't provide an easy way to do this. So, here's some code I threw together a while ago to do just that.

module ObserverTestHelperMethods
  def observer_instances
    ActiveRecord::Base.observers.collect do |observer|
      observer_klass = \
        if observer.respond_to?(:to_sym)
          observer.to_s.camelize.constantize
        elsif observer.respond_to?(:instance)
          observer
        end
      observer_klass.instance
    end
  end

  def observed_classes(observer=nil)
    observed = Set.new
    (observer.nil? ? observer_instances : [observer]).each do |observer|
      observed += (observer.send(:observed_classes) + observer.send(:observed_subclasses))
    end
    observed
  end

  def observed_classes_and_their_observers
    observers_by_observed_class = {}
    observer_instances.each do |observer|
      observed_classes(observer).each do |observed_class|
        observers_by_observed_class[observed_class] ||= Set.new
        observers_by_observed_class[observed_class] << observer
      end
    end
    observers_by_observed_class
  end

  def disable_observers(options={})
    except = options[:except]
    observed_classes_and_their_observers.each do |observed_class, observers|
      observers.each do |observer|
        unless observer.class == except
          observed_class.delete_observer(observer)
        end
      end
    end
  end

  def enable_observers(options={})
    except = options[:except]
    observer_instances.each do |observer|
      unless observer.class == except
        observed_classes(observer).each do |observed_class|
          observer.send :add_observer!, observed_class
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

Include this in a Test::Unit::TestCase or 'include' in your RSpec configuration, whatever rocks your boat. Here's a stupid example:

class SomethingCoolTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  include ObserverTestHelperMethods

  def setup
    disable_observers
  end

  def teardown
    enable_observers
  end

  def test_without_observers
    # ...
  end

end

When you go to test the behavior of the observer itself, simply disable/enable like the following to disable/enable all observers except the one you're testing:

class DispassionateObserverTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  include ObserverTestHelperMethods

  def setup
    disable_observers :except => DispassionateObserver
  end

  def teardown
    enable_observers :except => DispassionateObserver
  end

  def test_without_observers_except_dispassionate_observer
    # ...
  end

end