Me Vs. Them

I often compare myself with others. I think most of us compare, for good or bad. Recently I caught myself doing this. I was silent for sometime then wondered what others must be thinking about this. Within a few minutes, I was reading this excellent post: why we should not compare ourselves with others. Especially these words:

A fourth reason to stop comparing ourselves is that the one who compares him/herself with others is judging........ Nobody knows the internal reality of the other; nobody knows his/her story and his/her most deep intentions.....

How true! The more we compare with someone, the less we know about the true internal reality of other person and his her/story.

The last but most important reason to avoid comparing ourselves with others is that when we do, we can be tempted to copy them, to do the same things, and to act and think like them. The problem with this is that if we copy someone, we will never know who we really are and what we really want, and then we will never grow spiritually.

Yes, I think we lose our originality/uniqueness when we compare. Each one of us have their own pace of development or improvement, no matter how slow that seems to be. If we realize this we can be happy.

What do you think? Do you have an antidote for comparison? Feel free to comment!

Information is free, but food is not

Instead of giving the same boring title like Travel to Bangkok, for a change I decided to strike it different (at least in the title!). The hotel where I stayed said they have a deal with my company and as per that the Internet access at the room is complimentary, but not the breakfast! But that is a blessing in disguise, because being one of those minority people in the world (vegetarian) and somewhat picky about other tastes, I doubt I would have enjoyed the breakfast anyway.

This is my first Bangkok visit and the flight landed in state-of-the-art Suvarnabhumi Airport. When I arrived, I had a feeling that I was entering a big shopping mall, not an airport. It was so posh and so efficient that I took only 10 mins to finish immigration, collect my baggage and clear my customs (In fact I did not even talk to the man at the immigration checkpoint). Now, it took me more time to take a free shuttle bus to Public Transportation Center (which is a couple of miles away from the airport and is really a bus-cum-metered taxi stand). Those people who can pay more can get a ticket and board a limousine at the airport itself. There were a few people at the airport pestering me to take their taxi service, but I politely refused them.

Contrary to what I expected there was no fight among the taxi drivers to get a passenger. Rather the taxis were neatly parked in a row and I got the first available one to the hotel.

Now, a few quick facts about the Suvarnabhumi. It is the most modern in the world, covering an area of about 200,000 square meters. It can handle around 9000 people and around 80 flights per hour, has the tallest control tower in the world (132 meters), has two parallel runways each running about 4 km. They are aiming to build two more runaways by 2020 and then it can handle 100 million people per year, amazing!

I enjoyed the Expressway to Bangkok and it all cost me 300 Baht at the end (actual meter + service charge of 50 Baht charged from airport + toll tax of 40 Baht).

(Next: Skytrain: The easy way to commute in Bangkok)

Bangalore to Jakarta - 3

Indonesia is a big country (there are thousands of Islands and three timezones. We have only one timezone in India). It can easily take months to tour the whole country. Jakarta itself has so many attractions and with my work commitments I could not play a tourist. So just sampled the city.

When I asked my local manager to take me to a single place which will embody the country's culture, I thought he would take me to some museum. I was very pleasantly surprised when he took me to not one museum, but a handful of them. "Taman Mini Indonesia Indah" (Literally, Park Mini Indonesia Beauty) is actually a theme park, a wonderful attempt to showcase everything from a single country. I have never seen anything like this. This place has got at least a dozen museums (each on various themes: culture, energy, post [mail], transportation etc.) and different kind of dwellings and structures replicating various regions of the country (Personally I liked the ones from Bali & Java). Some photos are available at my flickr page along with the captions.

We first visited "Museum of Indonesia". Two things interested me the most here. (1) Statues wearing variety of ethnic wedding attire (There were hundreds of them!) (2) Influence of Indian culture through the early Hindu Kingdoms. The most noted one is the shadow puppet theater called Wayang. Incidentally, we still have it in India, though restricted to our villages.

After wandering a bit, we took a cable car which offered us a bird's eye view of all museums and structures. From the cable car, we could see an exact replica of the Indonesian archipelago.

While this trip was only a glimpse of Jakarta, it only made me wish for more in the next trip! Till then, Terima kasih (Thank you), Indonesia!