vikas mittal

Earlier this month, I celebrated my birthday.  I am significantly closer to 50 than 40 and closer to 60 than 30, 70 than 20, etc.  I don't mind aging - both inevitable and not necessarily a factor in happiness. One of the things that I love about birthdays is the outreach done by acquaintances - friends from childhood, distant relatives, former co-workers, etc. - to wish you a happy birthday.  Many of those are done on social media given the birthday reminders.  Nonetheless, someone still takes a few seconds to wish you a happy birthday and, I think, are generally sincere.  I always pick a few that I will then call or email or message and re-acquaint with them. This year, as a little experiment, I removed my birthday from my social media accounts.  It did remain on LinkedIn by accident.  Just wanted to see who all were just using social media as reminders versus knew or had some other tracking mechanism for birthdays. The results were a significant , a...

I have spent the last few weeks visiting family in Kansas.  It is a bit of a different pace of life down there than New York City's midtown area.  Not bad, not better - just different.  It leads me to the point of this post - two things are not better or worse than the other one because they are different . Two people can view the world differently.  Does not mean one person is better than another.  Nor more accurate.  Nor less accurate.  Nor more optimistic.  Nor more pessimistic.  And if we were able to measure it, I bet the most accurate view would be somewhere in between.  If we were able to measure it... What about people.  Two people are inherently different.  If they seem the same, then we are not asking the right questions or acknowledging the uniqueness of each individual.  We should cherish what makes us unique, honor that what makes your fellow person standout.  Value differences.  We often need all ty...

This is a follow-up on an earlier post about Readers Digest .  One of the articles in the July issue was called The Story Behind the Story  (this is a link to the online article).   I have thought about this article often since reading it last month.  There are several things that I appreciate and value about the article. First, many media sources have taken an aggressive stance to defend their news-worthiness.  There are comments like 'we are professionals', 'we don't push opinions', 'we have fact finders', etc.  Instead of listening to concerns that people have, their tone and approach is to attack people for having those concerns.  The simple fact is that more and more people are questioning their news sources and thus feeds the saying 'perception is reality'. Instead of attacking, Readers Digest decided to dive into their process and what they do to present all sides of an article or news story.  They break it down into four sections - la...

Yesterday, I flew Southwest from New York to the Midwest.  Southwest Airlines is currently under a lot of scrutiny for making changes that aligns their operations and experiences to other airlines - seat selection and charging for bags. As an observation , it has been a while since Southwest has had low fare airlines.  It seems like on similar routes, they are almost always more expensive that American Airlines or United Airlines.  It is worth noting that the difference is often greater than the price of checking two bags.  However, the miles redemption is almost always lower on Southwest than other airlines.  And if you have a Companion Pass*, then it will definitely be cheaper than other airlines for two tickets.  This is my observation from looking at tickets over the past 3 years - I have not done research or seen statistics to support or counter this observation. One of the things which Southwest is undeniably better at is turning planes around at airp...

I recently received one of those offers to subscribe to a magazine for only $2 for a short period of time.  I like to use this as a chance to learn/see/understand an area or world different than my own.  For a couple of dollars and a short-time commitment, almost a no-brainer.  When I got the latest offer, I decided to subscribe to Readers Digest .  My family use to receive that when I was a child and would flip through it. I remember seeing the magazine in the mail and can picture them around the house, although I admit that I have little-to-no memories of reading the periodical. For those not familiar with Readers Digest, it is described on Wikipedia as a 'general interest family magazine'.  Each issue covers a variety of different topics and as short content sections as well that is standard in each issue.  While many people think of Readers Digest as being for an older generation, it is one of the most read periodicals in the United States year-after-ye...

Over the past weekend, I celebrated my birthday - my last year saying I am closer to 45 than to 50.  It was a blast with activities that don't happen that often.  Had yummy biscuits and gravy in the morning, followed by visiting the American Dream waterpark and then Medieval Times .  Yes, those activities are more likely targeted to people that are either 4 or 7, not 47.  But it is a birthday and time to celebrate and not worry about social norms. I continue to be blessed with a great family and friends.  Many kind wishes.  Intentionally, I removed my birthday from social media sources like Facebook and Instagram.  I somehow forgot to remove it from LinkedIn, so there were some nice messages there.  And then of course, text messages and phone calls and emails.   I am truly humbled by the outreach from folks and feel really blessed.  Life is tough and hard right now and for people to remember it and take time out of there day - mean...

Happy August 1st! This month, I am going to try some new things to help with physical and mental health .  Thought I would share a few of them with you all.  We can see how I did and what results were achieved over the course of the month.  Essentially, any reader of this blog (if there are any) are now my accountability partner . Social media is becoming vicious.  Even outside of politics, it is tough.  As an example...I posted on a DC Comics board about not wanting the James Gunn movies to go crazy with the multiverse.  There was only a couple of responses to my post but tons of DMs that told me I was wrong.  My political views are well known and I get equal amounts of love and hate for those.  So, I am going to limit social media to just a few times a day and only between 9am and 7pm .   Going to read and listen to more diverse news sources.  The goal is to listen to 10 new news sources at least for 5 days.   Let's see what ...