Life in Balance: Amit Chaudhary’s Blog
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For some good conferences, these were the conferences with most talks in the top 500 talks, the number of talks & video link to top talk from that conference.

TEDxTokyo,24

TEDxBuenosAires,18

TEDxCairo,17

TEDxParis,17

TEDxDubai,14

TEDxCaltech,12

TEDxNYED,10

TEDxEast,7

TEDxLahore,7

TEDxTaipei,7

I wrote couple of Python (programming language) scripts that used YouTube API. The approach, find TEDx conference with a larger number of high quality talks, the quality measured by view count.

Some additional notes:
-A check in top 200, brings in TEDxBerlin, TEDxCMU, TEDxNASA & TEDxToronto
-A check in top 1000 brings in TEDxSF, TEDxAmsterdam & TEDxAcademy
-The code is bunch of small Python scripts and is in github at https://github.com/amitch/ytube-tedx

Three years I posted a list about 100 life things to do, I noticed some changes have happened since then.

bold are done since 2011 and underlined are worth a try in the future.

2. Slept under the stars

5. Watched a meteor shower

11. Bungee jumped

12. Visited Paris

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty

22. Hitch hiked

27. Run a Marathon

28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice

29. Seen a total eclipse

32. Been on a cruise

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied

43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling

53. Played in the mud

57. Started a business

58. Taken a martial arts class

60. Served at a soup kitchen

65. Gone sky diving

68. Flown in a helicopter

74. Toured the Everglades

86. Visited the White House

89. Saved someone’s life

Summary:

Done: 4/26

Worth doing someday: 18/26

I came across a speech by Martin Luther King, first an excerpt at Charity Focus and the complete speech\sermon called Unfulfilled Dreams at Stanford’s King Institute.

If you prefer to listen to it, you can download an mp3 from CharityFocus or as a part of an audio book called A Knock at Midnight.

It is sign of a great teacher that he took a verse from Bible to this Sermon.

Some parts specially touched me and I thought of sharing them here. See the complete sermon to find what touches you.

• Civil war within us

And in every one of us this morning, there’s a war going on. It’s a civil war. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care where you live, there is a civil war going on in your life.  And every time you set out to be good, there’s something pulling on you, telling you to be evil. It’s going on in your life. Every time you set out to love, something keeps pulling on you, trying to get you to hate.  [...] There’s a tension at the heart of human nature.  And whenever we set out to dream our dreams and to build our temples, we must be honest enough to recognize it.

• Total bent of our lives

In the final analysis, God does not judge us by the separate incidents or the separate mistakes that we make, but by the total bent of our lives. In the final analysis, God knows that his children are weak and they are frail. In the final analysis, what God requires is that your heart is right.  Salvation isn’t reaching the destination of absolute morality, but it’s being in the process and on the right road.

• Trying

And the question I want to raise this morning with you: is your heart right?  If your heart isn’t right, fix it up today.  Get somebody to be able to say about you, “He may not have reached the highest height, he may not have realized all of his dreams, but he tried.”  Isn’t that a wonderful thing for somebody to say about you? “He tried to be a good man.  He tried to be a just man. He tried to be an honest man.  His heart was in the right place.”  And I can hear a voice saying, crying out through the eternities, “I accept you. You are a recipient of my grace because it was in your heart.  And it is so well that it was within thine heart.”

Complete Photo album: Paris Dec 2009

We visited Paris in Dec 2009 for a short stay, about 4 days on the way to India. We absolutely loved it, it is a beautiful place, nice people and a city with history visible everywhere.

These are Notes, Memories and Tips from the trip.

Staying in an apartment.

Traveling as a family of four including a 1 year old, we found the hotel rooms to be too small or expensive, $400-500 per night kind. Instead, we rented an apartment in Latin Quarters\Old Paris through http://www.nyhabitat.com/

It was a great decision, we got the live as Parisians, had a kitchen with a refrigerator and microwave. The fabulous and large Park, Parc Luxemborg was close by.

It is a different kind of dealing as trust is involved, communication takes longer and do confirm there is a local phone for taxis, etc.

Tour Eiffel

Is beautiful as expected. Worth going to the top, specially to the simple Cafe on level one. And to watch from the river after the sun sets.
Cruise along Seine River

Definitely the highlight for us, much better than the river shuttle, the last one in the night allowed seeing paris in the night lights. Goes beyond Notre Dame.
Church Notre Dame de Paris

Was very beautiful. We went at the most crowded moment, so it was jam packed. A nice location with another church near by and along the river Seine.
Louvre Museum

Louvre was my wife’s idea, we have to see Mona Lisa and it turned out to be a great one. We did go and enjoyed it. Because we went early, 9 am on a weekend I think, we got in free.

Champs Elysees & Arc de Triomphe

A upscale shopping area with many designer shops, how you pronounce it shows for most non-French if you have been there.
The Arc at the end was beautiful, reminding me of Delhi’s India Gate.

Weather

Was cold, Fleece jacket kind and the days were shorter. But it was still worth it.
Bus & Subway

Use the bus in addition to the subway, though slower and more expensive, it made us see Paris life & people up close.

Food

The pastries were very good, beyond that, not too many options for a non-meat eater.

People

The people of Paris are very nice, polite which was not what the general idea seems to be. Many of them tend to be well dressed too.

In closing, definitely a place to visit and see and we joined many who love it.