The English countryside on a cold spring day. 

The M31 Andromeda Galaxy. Amazing isnt it? 

A line I hate...

I dont know about anyone else.. but I hate it when I read somewhere '... and I never saw him/her again'.
These words are so true sometimes.. you never know when you are meeting someone face to face for the last time. When they drop out of contact, move away or just die.
Ofcourse it is not possible to know everyone you ever came in touch with all through your years on this fine planet. But still the very fact that 'you never know when you are meeting someone face to face for the last time' should make everyone of us cherish each and every hello.
Extending this line of thinking a bit we can see a hello is like a birth, a start of a relationship... a relationship often based on simple things like standing in the same line or travelling on the same plane. The birth, the beginning is the most difficult time. When we say hello we initiate something which has to terminate with a goodbye. Thus great responsibility lies on the person who initiates this birth.
In simple words the responsibility for the relationship and the main burden of pain on its ending (i.e. the goodbye) lies on the person who initiates it.. the person who says hello first.

But when we think of practical relations it is the law of percentages... very few relations (<1%) that we start so happily, actually make us sad when they end. These are often basic relations like love which is most strange and complicated itself. It has no beginning and no ending. It is the one true relation that can be maintained across physical distances. Thus the relation of love has the power to remain unaffected by all kinds of 'goodbyes' including Death. Infact strangely enough Death makes it stronger sometimes.

Some Lucid Thoughts...

The Twin forces which guide a career path:
1) Skill Set
2) Domain Knowledge

Any career path is a delicate balance between the two. The 'ideal' career path is a compact yet flexible skill set targeting several interrelated domains. The two extremes are a narrow skill set with narrow domain knowledge which is often seen in engineering fields. The other end is a flexible wide (if not well developed) skill set and overall domain knowledge across various domains.

Thus the main aim of designing a career path is to find a balance between Skill set development and acquiring Domain knowledge. The depth and width of both being important factors.

Poem

Mariana in the Moated Grange
Alfred Lord Tennyson

With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary
I would that I were dead!"

And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then said she, "I am very dreary,
He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,

Oh God, that I were dead!"