Ashwin Upadhyaya's Blog

As act after act of terror strikes our country, it certainly feels that we are not safe anymore. Glorification of the acts by the media aggrevates the feeling. One cannot fail to notice the lapse in intelligence gathering. Misplaced priorities of the politicians makes the situation worse than it is already.

A few years back (2-3 years I guess), one of the national news channels had conducted a mock act of bringing in large shipments of ammunition via sea. They had large boxes which were painted in red “explosives”. They just sailed the raft undetected into a beach and showed how weakly defended the country was. Now, the whole story repeated itself claiming the life of hundreds. And a few minutes back, Headlines Today reports that “Sonia Gandhi is going to address the nation”!! Where is the prime minister? I just hope the political parties refrain themselves from starting blame games.

Sure, what has happened cannot be undone. However, its time to think of everything from a long term perspective. The first right of every citizen of a country would be the right to live safely and peacefully. Now, all we need to ask is, when will we/someone start a political party that recognize the rights of peaceful people and create a proper government for the people.

First of all, if you are not quite aware of the term bootstrapping, here’s a great explanation of the same. Now, when you are bootstrapping a business, you may not be able to gauge the exact office space requirements. So, what do you do? A few innovative ideas implemented by others are:

1. Mobile office. Example: There is this guy who tells every customer of his: “Why take the pain of coming this far, sir. I’ll come to your place itself and explain everything”
2. Coffee day office. Example: Another person who used this strategy a few years back but now has grown into a big office. He used to stay at Barista or Coffee day all day. Not even inside the office. Outside it just so that he could make use of its wi-fi. When a customer had to meet him, he would give the address of that same place. Posh place. Rent charges = coffee charges. Perks: Free internet.
3. Lakes, Hill etc. Used by us sometimes for board meetings

Some might think that these would look cheap. However, the point is not about how others think. The point is about making the best of the opportunities in the most efficient way.

Here’s my list:

1. Buy a guitar. Then, visit JustinGuitar.com. With the amount of knowledge at that site, you could well become a pro.
2. Write a blog. It hardly takes 10 minutes to setup a blog. I’d say wordpress.com is the best looking blog site.
3. Buy a cycle. Go long distance cycling.
4. Just run. No accessories required. Just a pair of legs. For the sake of a target, you could actually practice for a marathon.
5. Trek. Again, all you need is a pair of legs.
6. Build your own website like this one. Or maybe like this one.
7. Read a book like this one: Stay hungry, Stay foolish. This will give you even more ideas to make something out of your life.
8. Start a DIY project.
9. Write code for open source projects. Maybe, for a wordpress plugin.
10. Buy a camera.
11. Plant a tree and look after it. This IMO gives the most happiness of all.
12. And the best of all. Start a company

And yes, from experience I can say that all of them can be done at the same time as well