Imagine someone holding the above whistle and constantly whistling into one of your ears – day in and day out, month after month. That is Tinnitus for you.

Have been enjoying this since my child hood days – will get loud whenever I have cold or some fluid gets into my inner ear. Couple of days before new year some fluid entered the inner sanctum sanctorum in the middle of the night and all hell broke loose – accompanied by severe pain. I made my first visit to the doctor in 2010 – on Dec 30th – bummer.

You might be wondering – so how does this story end? Well – there is no end. Medical technology is only now figuring out slowly why this whistling happens – it seems there are 20,000 miniscule hair inside our inner ear. They respond to the tiniest of sounds and transmit it to the brain.

For some ( around 30 million Americans – no such statistics for India yet ) – some rogue hair “imagine” that they heard something and keep transmitting to the brain the sound – this is the shrill whistle noise I hear – Tinnitus. There is a famous personality who has this condition – Guy Kawasaki – he had mentioned it in Art of Start.

From my unscientific research – anti depressants are prescribed for Tinnitus – which is depressing to hear ( double pun !! ) . Best solution is to just get used to Tinnitus and enjoy the constant raaga.

If you know anyone in your network having Tinnitus – do connect me to them – would like to know how they cope with this.

1 & 2. Dune and Children of Dune by Frank Hebert

The first part – like all movies – is the best. Truly unputdownable – best science fiction I have ever read. Second part is little tiresome.

3. Flow – Psychology of Optimal Experience. How to find joy in everything you do. This book helped me in my running and car washing! Amazing book – will give a new perspective to how you view little chores to big tasks.

4. Outliers – By Malcolm Gladwell. Reasearch is boring – but reading the interpretation of such research is fun. The figure – 10,000 hours got drilled into my head.

5 & 6. Goal 1 & Goal 2 – By Dr.Eliyahu M.Goldratt. This book is a must read for everyone in any profession. It has got nothing to do with Agile or Lean – it will shake you up and make you think. I have heard multiple times about out-of-the-box thinking – this book has enough examples to trigger the out of box thinking process. Also it gives a whole different view point to dealing with constraints and inefficiencies – it is an opportunity waiting to be exploited.

7. My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. I picked this book because cover said Nobel Prize winning author. And what a ride it was – Traditionalist vs Modernism. I think I missed most of the deeper philosophies ingrained in it – but what I grasped it was intriguing. Highly recommend this one.

8. Viral Loop by Adam Penenberg. We live in a an interesting social networking era. This book will be defunct in another year or two ( Ning is already on a downward spiral – and this book glorifies Ning ). With MySpace going down the drain – Facebook is not far off. This book covers the journey of all these startups.

These are the 8 books I read in 2010. Just finished reading a mind blowing book this year already – but hey – to know about it you have to wait for my 2011 Books Roundup !