Sweltering Summer Heat ...

It's that time of the year again - Summer.

Some years ago, while back in school, summers would bring with them unlimited joy and would be regarded as "My favourite season" in the so many essays we've had to write on the topic back then.
More than bringing with them longer days (the sun sets at around 7 p.m) - which meant more time to squeeze in another game of galli (road-side) cricket, summers would be so much fun because of the 2 month, blissfully long summer vacations which would stretch from April to the first week of June.

Back then, the temperatures would be moderate and going out to play even in the then hot sun at 4:00 pm would be a possibility.

Not any more though ...
For all those debating on whether global warming is for real, I have experienced first hand, temperatures of Pune rising steadily over the years to unbearable levels now.

Back then, winters would mean cuddling with a book under a warm blanket.
Winters nowadays can be easily seen through without the use of a single blanket.

The temperature right now in Pune is touching 42 degrees Celsius - something at which I remember, people died of heat stroke in Ahemdabad some years ago (Ahemdabad is one of the hotter Indian cities)

This is what my weather bar displays so frequently nowadays ...



I would blissfully sit in the comfort of my house the entire day, but I have to go to work.
We have completely flexible timings at my new company and we basically get to decide what time we should come and leave ...

We get to work between 9:30 and 10:00, then leave for lunch for an hour or so at around 2:00.
The company being close to home, I come home for lunch and then leave in 40 minutes.

The really sucky part is that once you are all well fed and stuff, going back to work in the extremely hot and dusty conditions on your two wheeler is extremely painful at 3:00 p.m.

We then supposedly work till 7:30 - 8:00 and head back home for a total of 8 to 9 (apparently) productive hours.

This schedule is turning out to be sort of difficult due to the excessive heat we have to face on two trips back and forth.
Any suggestions?

Summer basically ain't so great anymore ...
Can't wait for the first showers to hit ...

Yeah, and also - please stop polluting the earth!!!
And please go watch "An Inconvenient Truth"

It is one of the most hard hitting documentaries I have seen off late and is extremely well made.
Definitely deserved its Oscars I think ...

[ Min number of posts to go till Mar 17, 2008 : 87. Why am I counting? ]

Why do we Indians have to suck at providing quality service?

I have always realised, that we in India - don't give a damn about quality.
I don't exactly know why, but I am guessing it has something to do with the demand always exceeding the supply - considering, we're bursting at our seams with the large population.
So, as long as the goods keep coming, the manufacturer (and not the customer) is king - and they can keep dishing out crap - because there will always be someone to buy it.

I have a complete live example to give - hence this post.
This is about the Pune International Film Festival (PIFF website).

Last year, we guys from college had gone for the 4th Pune International Film Festival and it was tonnes of fun (even though the organisation had a lot to be desired).
So, when it came around this year - we went for it again (It is still going on - at the time of writing this).

This time around, the movies are pretty good and we're having lots of fun again - but nothing has changed organization side.
And considering it is an "International" film festival, the standards are far from it.

The schedule of movies was available extremely late - just a day before the festival and the catalogue (which has the synopsis of all the movies) - only a couple of days after the festival started.
The schedule is given only for the next 3 days (out of the total 7 days of the festival).
So, if I am working and need to really catch a movie and need to inform my boss about it, there are chances that I would be doing it only hours in advance

Quite a few movies had their running times mis-reported in the schedule - which caused a mix up of our plans.
Then, the schedule (or the catalogue) ends up having movies in the wrong category - so you never find the movie you're looking for (there is no index or a table of content).

In 3 days the festival has been running, the schedule has on been changed on 2 occasions , on the fly. They exchanged the timing of a couple of movies minutes before they started - which again threw all our plans out of the window.

Their website (which I think is one of the most important things) is totally un-updated and you have news from PIFF 2006 lying around.
It also has a schedule section - which lists movies which have already finished showing and a catalogue section which contains information on only 1/10th of the movies running.

But, the icing on the cake is this - which actually prompted me to write this blog.
I wrote the organizers, the following email:

Dear Sir / Madam,

This is a very humble request to the organising committee to please put up the complete schedule of films on the website (preferably in the document / excel / pdf format) which is also up to date.

Today (18th), the schedule for the remaining days became available at the venues (19th onwards), but the website still shows the schedule only till the 18th.

I request you to please update this - so that we can better plan which movies to go for.

Thank you and regards,

- Saurabh Jain

To this, I got the following reply from a Moti Irani:

Please stop visiting our website we are all far too busy collect the schedule from INOX or Esquare

Hah!
Hows that for providing shoddy service and having the audacity to tell your customers to F*** Off? A perfect case of demand more than supply.
I don't know, but if something is worth doing, its worth doing well.

In my opinion, if they have a website running, it should be updated - otherwise there is absolutely no point in having it in the first place.

[ Min number of posts to go till Mar 17, 2008 : 88. Why am I counting? ]

Awesome upsets ...

I woke up today, to the news that India lost to Bangladesh in their Cricket World Cup opening match by 5 wickets.
For those who do not follow cricket very much, or don't see the magnitude of the situation, here is a brief comparison.

Bangladesh is a small country to the north east of India with an area of 144,000 sq. kms and a population of 147,365,352 compared to India which has an area of 3,287,590 sq. kms and a population of 1.027 billion.
Bangladesh was given the status of a test playing nation only in 2000 as compared to India who is playing tests from 1932.
And out of the previous 14 encounters, Bangladesh has managed to beat India only once.
[ stats courtesy - Wikipedia.org ]

In all fairness, Bangladesh deserved to win the match yesterday.
They played an awesome game - did everything perfectly and I am really happy for them.

The other major, major upset was Ireland beating Pakistan which was such a shocker that the Indian upset match looks pale in comparison.

But this is not what the post is about.

This entire upset situation got me thinking about the difference in professionalism exhibited by professional cricket players playing in the Indian Cricket team and working professionals in other professions (software, automobiles, etc - you get the picture).

I did some research and found out that the Indian team is the highest paid sports team in the world in terms of sponsorships.
Moreover, even if you leave out the sponsorships and other things which contribute to the income of players, the top Indian players get a salary of about Rs. 5,000,000 (USD 113,324) which makes it a professional sport.
By professional sport, I mean - Indian players now, do not need to get other day jobs (like players from other countries like Scotland, UAE have to do) - they can make do by just playing the sport.

So the thought that comes to my mind is - shouldn't the players be made accountable if they lose a particular game - especially very pathetically?

I mean, how difficult is it to play cricket?
Every kid in the country can play cricket - so there is no extreme skill involved per se.
And when you're a professional player, all you are supposed to do is just practice, play and be good at what you do.
At the time of writing this, the Indian team ranks 6th out of the 11 test playing teams - not a very good stat considering the amounts they make and they come from a country of a billion people compared to higher ranked, much smaller countries like New Zealand (3rd), Pakistan (4th) and Sri Lanka (5th).

If cricket is like any other profession, why shouldn't you be penalized for screwing up?
If you're working in say, an automobile company, and make a major mistake - you'll not only get your salary docked, but may also lose your job.
So, why can't this be done to our cricketers?
If its a profession, why should there be different rules and points of views of judging performances?

Maybe losing marginally to a much stronger team very closely could be forgiven - after all its a sport, but then any major loss should be properly penalized and salaries should be docked.
I might be prejudiced and harsh and just talking through my head, but don't most of the people think that nowadays, its the "money" which is the biggest incentive for the men in blue?
So be it ...

What say?

[ Min number of posts to go till Mar 17, 2008 : 89. Why am I counting? ]

Coming soon ...

I always tend to do this ...
Take long blogging breaks - I dunno why - but it just stops all of a sudden, and I don't feel like writing, or just get too lazy to actually sit and type out a blog even if I do feel like ...

Writing makes you think, and helps you maintain your control over the language - so, I have decided to actually force myself to write once in every 4 days at least.

So, I should clock at least 90 good posts a year.
Now, that I have put this into writing, I will try to keep this up.

So starting from today, (this post is of course not counted), I plan to take my post count to a minimum of 240 posts by the 16th of Mar, 2008

Watch this space for more :)

Being emotional versus being logical ...

I've wondered about this a lot lately ...
Human beings are logical creatures (when they are in the right frame of mind) ...
Very, very logical creatures ...

And I feel (out of a lot of personal experiences), that any problem can be solved and worked out by being completely logical about it, thinking in a clear and concise manner.
Keeping emotions out of the equation ...

Emotions - always get in the way of things ...
But that cannot really be helped, can it? Human beings are also very emotional creatures ...

Sometimes, you take drastic steps - by just being emotional about the whole episode - without thinking things through - and later are happy about the fact that you did.
On some contemplation, you will realize, that you would have not taken those steps if you had sat and thought about the situation in a logical manner.

Which brings us to an interesting juncture - what is the right mix of logic and emotion that needs to go in making an important decision ...
This can actually be a dumb point, because when you're highly charged about and emotional about something - you're probably not thinking straight about it - no logic.

Whereas in many situations, if you actually sit and think about something through, the charged up feeling and emotions have probably drained off ...

I can probably enunciate with a couple of situations where this dilemma may arise ...

Say you're at work - and have probably been wronged in someway.
Maybe you got passed off for the promotion you were expecting, or probably someone (your boss) insulted you etc. etc. - and you're in a rage.
Very charged up, very emotional - you probably want to quit right then and there - throw your resignation on the guy's face and walk out of there ...
Maybe its a stupid thing to do - and maybe you'll regret it later. But you want to do it.
You'll probably regret NOT doing it at all ...
Thats the defining moment ...
If you take the plunge, you will probably be happy at the fact that you served just desserts.
You're ego will definitely have jumped a couple of notches ...

However, once you start thinking about it, you probably will NOT do it.
Maybe you will feel guilty of being tame and afraid of a confrontation. Things will probably go on as they were - without much change.

So, what would probably be a correct alternative to take?
I know I am generalizing this thing to a great deal and it depends from person to person ... But still, what according to a third party watching the proceedings, would be the right thing to do?
Listening to your heart or to your mind?

Another completely different situation can be as such ...

Say you like somebody a lot and want to ask him / her out.
You are pretty much at a point in which you cannot help but think about this person a lot.
Pure logic would suggest that you talk to the person concerned and find out whether he / she feels the same.
If they do, awesome. Otherwise, you will know for sure and you can move on.
When emotion kicks into the scene, things get pretty messed up.
You don't know whether you should ask, whether its the right thing to do, whether you will mess up his / her life, whether you will mess up your life, whether you will still be able to be friends, (and lots of such whether questions).

As Dennis Hopper would say (from Speed): What do you do Jack? What - do - you - do?

It is a very interesting situation actually - and probably millions of people find themselves in it every day of the year.

Basically, I feel - the underlying principal in all such scenarios is "change" - and how much people are afraid of it.
Or maybe, I am just generalizing again and may be completely off the topic.

If you read the book "Who Moved My Cheese" - there is an interesting question:

"What would you do if you were not afraid?"

I think the answer to this probably would help a bit in such situations ...

Umm ... How bout a few billions?

This post comes as a result of some musing after watching the movie - Notting Hill recently.
Apart from being an extremely well made, highly entertaining romantic comedy which I thoroughly enjoyed - an incident from the movie struck me ...

If you have seen the film, it's at the dinner (William's (Hugh Grant's) sister's birthday party) at which Bernie (Hugh Bonneville) asks Anna (Julia Roberts) how much she made in the last film she worked - and she says "15 million dollars".

Hmm ...
So I pondered ...
How did it all start? I mean - how did movie stars start getting paid so much.

If you think about it, every job comes with an upper and lower limits of payment - which are pretty much well defined for a period of time.

Like, for example, it is an accepted fact that most of the bigger movie stars make millions of dollars for a film. If you think about this a bit more - you can say that this is justified as the distributors of the film eventually rake in enough money which justifies them being able to pay their actors.
This finally brings us to how much we end up paying for a movie ticket.
Here in Pune - a night show in a decent enough hall costs anywhere from 150 bucks - 200 bucks ($3 - $4) a ticket which even though is kinda on the higher side by Indian standards - I don't think people seem to mind paying it nowadays (by the number of shows running housefull even on weekdays).
And finally again, people don't seem to mind because the standards of living have gone up.
So indirectly, the more money we tend to make, the more money those actors tend to make :).
I know this is a dumb metaphor - but there is a definitely connection there (I can sense it :)).

In the end if you think about it, (even though I haven't got the faintest idea about acting) - does it warrant a sum of 15 million dollars to be paid for a film?

I will consider the next case - that of a software developer which I can more relate to.
Again, in India - it is a well known fact that software developers (or Computer Science / Engineering graduates) tend to make more money than most of the other faculties when they start off.
Even further down the line (couple of years), a software developer is likely to make more money than a similarly skilled mechanical engineer working in an automobile company.

And if you think about it - all software developers do is sit in front of a monitor all day long and type code. You don't actually need to be a genius to do it - just about any human being with a normal level of IQ and will power can do it.
Furthermore, in most of the projects - major parts of the code which you need, can be found somewhere on the internet by careful searching - which makes it more of a jigsaw puzzle assembling job than actual, smart work.

So what do software developers do - which results in them getting higher salaries, air conditioned offices and the like?

Where did all this trend start?
And how do we go about accelerating it ... ? :)

Just a small heads up ...

Yes. I am still alive and kicking.
This post comes almost a month after my last one - and though I have been pretty lazy in not blogging as much as I would like to, I will still go ahead and blame the weather ...

Somehow, even though the colder months bring with them the promise of sitting by a nice fire in the garden, curling up on the couch under a blanket with a nice book - and many such activities that one can indulge in when the weather is so cold generally, the winters have always brought a lot of stress and difficult decisions to make for me ...

One way or the other, I manage to get myself into these really cascading depressing situations which takes the bright and warm (nowadays exceedingly hot) summers to get out off ...

In the meantime, I have read this book - Freakonomics - which I will recommend.
Even if you don't agree with many of the controversial topics of debate that the authors have chosen (I somehow agreed to 99% of them), you will find yourself looking at things from a more economist's point of view once you have gone through all the pages.

The other very interesting book that I am going through right now is - Games People Play - a book which deals with transactional analysis and social psychology in general. Though it makes for a pretty interesting read, it does tend to get technical at places ...

Does cheering actually help?

We're having a table tennis tourney going on in the company with lots of people participating in both the singles and doubles matches.
This is directly proportional to the reduction in the amount of work done by the people - those who are participating and those who come to watch the matches and cheer their friends.

In table tennis, unlike outdoor sports, you are not allowed to cheer / jeer while the game is in progress. Therefore, except the occasional "wooos" and "ahhs", there is nothing going on during the game play.
However, when a point is won, people do come out and encourage their friends.
The more popular you are, the more support you have during the games.

However, even though we are a very small company (the numbers in the range of 40 - 50), we do not know everyone well.
It's more or less like a typical office.
You have a few close chums, some people good friends and others acquaintances whom you share a very casual greeting relationship.

Anyways, the point I am trying to make here is that you don't know everyone decently well.
During one of the matches in which a friend of mine was playing, it got pretty close - even though she had just learned to play recently and the other guy played decently, but looked somewhat nervous.

At that point, I wondered, that if we all got behind our friend and cheered her (she had more support definitely), it would break the other guy down and she might win the last round - and thus the game.
However, the cheering actually never happened and thus we will never know - but this sparked a debate between me and my team mate whether cheering actually makes any difference.

I was of the opinion that it always definitely helps and he was of the opinion that it doesn't - and sometimes even is detrimental to the player.
After countless minutes of debate, we finally agreed on two points - which I definitely feel does not do complete justice to the entire topic of "Does cheering actually help?"

One point was thus:

I'd like to refer to my previous post here "That moment of giving up" in which my boxer friend told me that he gives up sometimes when he's fighting it out in a god forsaken place where no one cares about the result of the game - he wonders whether getting all beat is really worth it.
Thus, the point here is - that when you are down by a few points, having no support whatsoever, makes you wonder whether it is worth it - and you end up not fighting back as best as you could.
On the other hand, if you have people behind you egging you on - no matter what the result, you atleast fight till the end - which is a good thing!

The other point made was:

This takes the case of Indian cricketers who enjoy the status of demi-gods in the country.
Many of them comment that playing a game in India, draws huge crowds, and thus an awesome support which can create quite a lot of pressure to perform. Many players feel that they enjoy and play a more natural game when they are abroad as they don't feel the heat of the pressure the crowds bring in. So in this case, all the cheering and support is a bad thing.

So, in what conditions is cheering a good thing or a bad thing?
Is it always good? Always bad?
Does it always depend on the individual in question? Does it depend on the way the crowd is cheering you?

Do players who are trying to be something they are not, fear the pressure that crowd support brings? And do underdog players thrive on cheering and perform that extra bit because of it?

A very open ended debate and I'd really like to hear your thoughts on it!

CampusCombine ...

http://www.campuscombine.com

Hey!

We (The ActiveCiti Team) just wanted to inform you about the new initiative we just started - CampusCombine.

How many times have you felt the need to know what was going on in other colleges - from which questions were asked by the external examiner during the viva to which companies are coming for campus placements to when that inter collegiate event is going to take place. How do you know if the college/stream you are entering is the right one for you?

How many times have you felt frustrated while completing an assignment which even the staff members had no idea about? Wouldn't it be awesome if you could ask people from other colleges for help - those who had completed the assignments you wanted...

How many times have you got stuck due to lack of ideas and guidance while working on a project and had no one to take help from or turn to...

Well, trying to provide a solution to all these problems and thousands more - which students face, we give you "CampusCombine".
CampusCombine aims to bring students, ex-students, companies and interested mentors - all together on a common platform so that they can help each other out.

So, if you are a student and the next time you are wondering how a particular problem can be solved, or what questions were asked by the external examiner in other colleges, all you need to do is log on to CampusCombine for your particular city and get your doubts and queries cleared.

And if you are someone who has gone through the rigors of the Indian education system and wants to lend a helping hand to people still stuck there, you can log on to CampusCombine and help out the students and make their lives a little easier.

So, please head on to http://www.campuscombine.com and be a part of this revolution that we're trying to start.

Aao banaye education behtar :)

- The ActiveCiti Team

PS: As we are very short on our advertising budget, please could you forward this email to all the people you know who you think could use this service?
Thanks :)

What you just read up there was the pitch to a new site that we started a day before called CampusCombine.
As this is a non profit venture, with no revenues whatsoever and no venture capitalists or angel investors backing us up, it gets kinda difficult to sometimes spread the word.

So we have to resort to emailing friends, asking them to forward the link and hoping that they will do. We had already done this for ActiveCiti - and the initial response was great - but once you run out of people to email, the number of people signing up everyday slowly dwindles down.

The important thing then, becomes to get as many people as you can email to actually join the site and hope that you did a good job with the site - so that people can refer people and so on ...

The very difficult and thus quite interesting part of this job becomes to word the email.
You have to keep it somewhat short and get all your ideas in place - worded properly so that your readers can empathize with what you're doing.

However, this time I think we're working with a more serious problem than we were with ActiveCiti - coz the response has been fairly decent.
Not to mention these are very early days and the student population of Pune is monstrous.
So only time will tell ... :)

Observing people ...

Its 2:30 am in the morning and I have gotten back (a while ago) from a friend from work's surprise birthday party.
It was lots of fun and I for one, had a good time.

Anyways, I realised something about myself and people in general today.
Most of the party, (actually for all part of it), we were just sitting around in a living room and talking (there were 16 of us and her folks).
Maximum of the conversations that took place involved the entire group with one or the other person narrating a joke or an incident.
At one particular point of time, we were made to go in order and narrate one joke, incident or just amuse the large gathering of people.

Anyways, firstly, what I noticed about people was that listening to what people have to say (or not) at a party or a social discussion tells a lot about them - if you notice that is.
The second thing that I realized (about myself) is that I tend to observe people a lot and am sub consciously analyzing them.
I dug a little deeper (into my conscience) and this is what happens.

When a person is going to speak or narrate something or do anything at all, you form a sort of prediction of what he is going to do or how he is going to do it - depending on all the knowledge you have of the person.
Depending on how much the person sways from your prediction, you assess them and fine tune your understanding of the person.
If your prediction was spot on, you kinda know that you know the person decently well.

I probably haven't even gotten close to the level at which I can be dead on right about a person, but I feel that I am getting there slowly - but steadily.
Just observing how people behave in a social group, what they say things, how they say it, how much effort they are applying, how conscious they are tells loads about a person - and I just felt that I got to know almost all of the people present there - a lot more even though I hardly spoke to many of them.

The point I am trying to make here is that its is sometimes more interesting in observing the reactions of people to a particular interesting situation than observing the situation itself.
Like for example, I have caught myself (and am very disturbed by the fact) that many a times, I actually observe how people react when say, a very pretty girl walks into the room instead of looking at her.

Very disturbing, I know.
But right now, at 2:45 a.m - I am pretty much at my twilight zone and really cannot say that I am talking sense ...
So you cannot hold anything said on this particular post against me.
So there! :)

That moment of giving up ...

I was watching the Australia, West Indies match tonight in which West Indies actually pulled a surprise when it beat Australia.
I was favouring Australia to win till the last minutes of the match, when the wicket of Clarke fell and I knew then, that the Aussies had given up on the match.

It's a very funny feeling this ... giving up on something.
Knowing that no matter what you try, what you do, you aren't going to make it.
The thought of it is actually very depressing - who would ever want to give up on someone or something that they want real bad, but life is ruthless and more often than you'd like, you end up 'giving up' on the thing that you were chasing.

I have faced this situation a lot while playing basketball back in school and junior college.
We had one of the best teams while in school and we lost very rarely, so I was not hit by this feeling that often.

However, once we moved into junior college, people went in different directions, our team shrunk, and the 10 good players who'd play the 40 minutes shrunk to 4 or 5.
More often than not, we'd lose closely contested games in the dying minutes due to the sheer exhaustion that we'd experience towards the end of playing time.

I am guilty of giving up on many occasions, but all of them, as much as I can remember were due to physical (and fitness) reasons.
The series of events would be such ...

You've been playing for 35 minutes continuously and you don't have the stamina you had back in school. You are barely just able to run.
The other team is leading by 2 points. There are 5 minutes left in the game and you can easily win it.
At precisely this time, some random guy from the other team comes around, takes a three and makes it. Your heart sinks with the ball and you trail by 5 points now.
You are completely exhausted, panting, and want nothing more than to crash on the ground and lie there for eternity.
You are pushing yourself to run all the way across court to get in position for the pass. Somehow your team loses the ball, the opponents are on a fast break and you are chasing them.
At precisely this moment, a couple of thoughts will flash in your mind.

1. That you can't take this anymore and you are going to die soon.
2. That this is just a game ... is it really worth it?

I think the entire game turns around depending on the answer each player gives himself.
If everyone (or the majority) push themselves harder, your chances of winning increase a lot. Any rational person would definitely say that people need to push themselves ... and stick with it – giving themselves a good chance.

However, nothing seems rational at that particular point of time. When you can hear your heartbeats distinctively, but not the voices of those around you nor the crowds cheering insanely.
More often than not, people give in ... and the rest is history!

I was speaking to a friend of mine who recently took up boxing and did exceptionally well at it (he represented the state in his first tournament).

I asked him what made him give up sometimes, while he was boxing.
He thought for a while and said that boxing is a very tiring sport (and painful and very risky too). So while you are out there, fighting this random guy from another never heard of city, in some small town where nobody cares, you come to a point where you ask yourself whether it is worth it ...
And there you get your answer ...

I feel the trick here is to postpone the "Is it worth it" question as much as possible ...
Every human being has a break-in point - and so, everyone can be broken ... the question is to find that point and somehow avoid, postpone or hasten it depending on which side you are on.

Anyways, experience tells me that once you give up, there is no way even a miracle can save you ... What I'd really like to know is why people give up in other life scenarios and what drives them to it ...

The difference between understanding and thinking that you do ...

This is one more of those grey area posts - where I am myself not so certain about anything - and in the end it turns out to be - just some sort of general loud musing actually ...

The story begins with my brother (with no prior computer programming experience whatsoever) turning up to me two days before his IT exam and asking me to teach him javascript programming.
The task was pretty much uphill from the beginning itself, as he had no experience at all - and he gave me so much little time to teach him in.

So anyways, I thought of giving it a shot and got down to teaching him.
After a couple of hours of tutoring and assignments, he told me that he had understood whatever I had taught him and seeing that he was getting the hang of things and actually doing the assignments right, I thought he had too.
So, I left it at that and decided to continue with much more advance topics the next day.

However, when I did start the next day, I realised that he had not understood a thing - had got all his concepts wrong, but still somehow, was able to do the assignments that I had given him.
He had found some vague similarity and a coincidental method by which he was able to solve the assignments. His method, though not entirely incorrect, was a one off thing and actually ended up being a series of (coincidental) flukes which made him think that what he had understood was correct.

Hence, in short, what had actually happened was that he "thought" he had understood, whereas he clearly hadn't.

Which brings me back to the post ... the difference between "actually understanding something" and "thinking" that you understood something ...
This boils down to some sort of a paradox, because how can you say you understand something unless you "think" you do, and vice versa ...

Also, even though you think you understood something because your application worked using the principles that you applied (which you thought were correct), how will you know for sure whether what you "think" you have understood was the exact same thing the author / teacher was supposed to make you understand?

You can probably run a larger number of test cases but then again, there is no limit to how many different cases there could be and for how many your theories would fail ...
Which kinda brings us to the thought that nothing in this world is absolute - and everything is relative ...

Or then maybe, we just need to invent some higher means (or forms) of communication by which we could eliminate all these paradoxes and come to absolute conclusions ...
Here is me again wandering off into the oblivion ... :p

The acid test ...

If you have seen the movie "Finding Nemo", there is a scene in the aquarium (at the dentists) in which the aquarium fish put Nemo through a test of courage - at the great Volcano (or something) before they induct him into their group ...

Maybe what I am talking about here is not exactly the same thing, but the above example is the closest reference I could find.
I again don't know whether this happens between different cultures, age groups, genders (with respect to groups of friends) or maybe we are just a plain weird bunch of people, but here is something I have noticed that happens in my group of friends ...

I shall hence call it the acid test and this phenomenon is very peculiar because it performs a function completely different to what it would seem to many (in fact most) of the people witnessing the events ...
I must admit, I realized the significance of it just sometime ago, and so have decided to put it in writing ...

Here goes ...

When we are with our own groups of friends, we put on a show for everybody.
We don’t behave in the same way when we are all alone, or are with our families (or a different group of friends) ...
Everybody, has a persona which he or she tries to maintain - something which gives the person substance and more importantly, (probably) a reason why the person was admitted to the group in the first place.

We start relating to each person in our friends circle by their default behaviour.
For example, one of my good friends plays the part of a completely indifferent, 'couldn't care less', 'don't give a rat's ass about anything' non conformist very well.
To someone meeting him for the first few times, he will come across as a person who couldn't care less about anything or anybody - and you could not for the life of you extract any sympathy or help from the individual no matter what you try ...
Over a period of years that we have gotten to know him well, we have learnt what a nice guy he is and no matter how much he will abuse you and make fun of you and act all haughty when somebody asks for help, he will eventually help the person - sometimes even going way out of his way to help them.

So, here is the acid test then.
When someone from a group, actually tries to do something good for a change - basically try to change an age old bad habit into something radically different, he is made fun off - by his good friends.
They will go to the extent of bugging you for days about it -

For e.g: "What happened to the I don't care, I will not wake up before 11:00 am attitude?"
Or
"Weren't you the one who said, reading is for nerds?"

Anyways, basically what happens is that when you are trying to do something good to yourself for your own sake (or possibly someone else's), its your friends who come in your way and try to dissuade you from it - making fun of you and basically embarrassing you till you've had enough.

Now, if you are thinking that this is a really sorry thing to happen, and that the person with such friends has something wrong with his taste ... you won't be very wrong ...

But then again, if you look closer, you will realize, that even though it is happening sub consciously, what your friends are achieving here is that they are making sure that whatever you are really doing, is something that you really want to do.
Going ahead and changing your character (or habits) is a difficult thing to do - not to mention majorly huge.

With all the nagging and laughing, you tend to think about the situation a bit more - and then you make up your mind.
Once you realize that this is exactly what you want to do, your friends automatically seem to shut up and nobody else's opinion matters much anyways - so you go ahead and do it. And more often than not, you are successful.

If on the other hand, you succumb to your friends' taunts and fun insults, you were not going to do the thing anyways (cause you were not enough mentally prepared) - and in the process save a lot of time by not going ahead with this ...

So there !

However, the downside of this is that if you have a really bad group of friends, and either they always get the better of you or vice versa, the probability of you succeeding in changing a habit or yourself reduces drastically ...

So basically, the moral of the story here is that it is always good to have good friends.
And no matter how much your friends taunt you, make fun of you or use your self consciousness to their advantage, its always a good thing to have friends who do all this :)

-----------------
As an end note would like to mention that this is just something that I thought about ...
Don't know how much of it is psychologically correct, but would love to hear other opinions on the issue...

Two donkeys ...

I received this story via email recently and would like to share my musings on it ...
Please excuse the english, because it has been a percolating forward ....

Anyways, here goes

A good story for all of us to follow in our careers and social life............ very true
Once upon a time a Washerman was bringing up two donkeys.

Let us say Donkey-A and Donkey-B.

Donkey-A felt it was very energetic and could do better than the other. It always tried to pull the washerman's attraction over it by taking more load and walking fast in front of him.

Innocent Donkey-B is normal, so it will walk normal, irrespective of the washerman's presence. After a period of time, Washerman started pressurising Donkey-B to be like Donkey-A. But Donkey-B unable to walk fast, got continuous punishment from washerman. It was crying and told personally to Donkey-A "Dear friend, only we two are here, why to compete with each other?
We can carry equal load at normal speed ".

That made Donkey-A all the more energetic and next day it told to washerman that it can carry more load and even it can run fast also.

Obviously happier washerman looked at Donkey-B.., his BP raised and he started kicking Donkey-B. Next day with smile, Donkey-A carried more load and started running fast. But it was breathtaking for Donkey-B and it couldn't act that way....But the washerman was frustrated, so he harassed Donkey-B terribly, and finally it fell down hopelessly.

Then Donkey-A felt itself as a supremo and happily started carrying more load with great speed. But now the Load of the Donkey-B is also being carried by Donkey-A., and still it has to run fast. For some period it did, finally due to fatigue it got tired and started feeling the pain. But washerman expected more from Donkey-A. It also
tried best, but couldn't cope up with his owners demand. The Washerman got angry with Donkey-A also and started harassing to take more load... Donkey-A was crying for long time and then tried its best...

But it couldn't meet the owner's satisfaction.

Finally the day came when due to frustration the washerman killed Donkey-A and went for searching some other Donkeys.

Its an endless story..........

But the moral of the Story in Corporate and social life is......

"Think all colleagues are same and that everyone is capable.... Always Share the Load equally..... Don't ever act smart in front of your Boss and never try for getting over-credit. ..

Don't feel happy when ur colleague is under pressure.. "

It doesn't matter if u r A or B, for the Boss u shall be always DONKEY

I don't know who really started this email - I have heard this kind of story before - something that encourages you to be average (or even below average) so as to not get killed by your boss - or more importantly, give your weaker colleagues at work, a chance to survive.

Somehow, I have never been able to relate this story to actual human beings.
The first impression that you'd get after finishing the story is ... "how true" ... and ... "yeah ! this is what happens to people who act smart ... "

But if I'd permit myself to be a little cynical, I'd say - that what we are talking about here - are donkeys - and not humans.
Donkey's don't get paid by the amount of work that they do - nor do they ever get promoted for doing better or efficient work.

I guess what I am trying to say here is that - if you are doing the work of a donkey, then:
1. You are a fool to be doing it anyways
2. You should probably not try to show off - coz its basically not worth it

However, if you are working in a 'REAL' company - where your intelligence, talent, ethics and determination (and dedication) are merit to success, the earlier story is just pointless and baseless and I for one, cannot try to get into the mind of the person who must have created it.

Trying to be average - and just flow with the crowd is probably the most dangerous thought that one can get - and yet people do it - day in and day out - diminishing the difference between people and sheep.

This is in short, how a similar situation would go with 'REAL' people - and not donkeys

There are two employees - Employee A and Employee B
Employee A is always energetic while Employee B is just another average guy who is happy to get on with his work.

Employee A being the more enthusiastic and energetic of the two, finishes his work much before time and hence has time to take up some other initiatives.
He does his work to the best of his abilities.

Now, after a period of time, two things could happen.

1. The boss is extremely happy with Employee A.
He gives him a promotion and a big fat raise.
Both the employees A and B work the same hours, however, employee A makes 1.5 times the same amount as Employee B - even though they both started at the same time with the same qualifications.

2. The boss thinks he can take advantage of Employee A and starts loading him with extra work.
Now because Employee A is human (and not a donkey) and because he is not tied to a rope around his neck - and also because he very well knows his worth ...
He tells his boss to kiss his ass, quits the job and gets a better one (because he is good and can get another job)

Either way, the better employee wins.
In the end, I guess, its the attitude which makes all the difference - no matter how talented you are or whether you were born with an IQ of 220. Unless you have the attitude and actually want to go ahead and do something, nothing is gonna get done.

This might be only slightly related to the original story, but I'd like to end with some very powerful lines that I came across in "Atlas Shrugged"

It goes something like this ...

"I swear by my life and the love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine"

Comments ...

I am very fortunate to have a very good set of readers who contribute a lot to my blogs by way of comments and discussions ... so much so, that it ends up adding more value to the blog than the blog itself ...

Of late, I have been receiving some really good comments which throw more light on the topic and just prove how you can never analyse a situation or a particular event from all angles and how it is so important to do so ...

I have been so happily made to eat my own words on my blog by people who look at things from an entirely different (and better) point of view ...

Thank you all so much for teaching me something new everytime ...

As blogger lacks a feature by which a person cannot choose to receive an email indication after someone last left comments after his, and just because many people do not generally read the comments, I have decided to put down a list of my previous posts in which the comments have really added a lot of value to the blog.
Thank you once again ...

The links are as follows (in reverse chronological order)

1. Indian Movies ...
In which Rishi and Shantesh gave more dimension to my view of why Indian movies suck in some respect compared to Hollywood flicks.

2. Choice, the problem is choice ...
In which Rishi and Ashwin point out that everything to do with choice is connected to your Karma in some way or the other (sorry, my knowledge about this is very poor) and then Id tops it off with one of his brilliant poems ...

3. Being Prejudiced ...
I feel, all the comments added a lot of value to this post - and especially the brilliant one by eshuneutics which hit the nail, right on the head ...

4. Remember Remember ...
This post had some really nice comments from Rishi, Id and Yuvi with totally different points of view ...

This may have sounded somewhat like a "Comments" Oscar award, but it really isn't.
I guess what I am trying to say here is - that its always good to know someone else's point of view (We all have only 1 brain .. right?)
And reading a comment always feels nice, you know that people are reading the stuff that you are writing and always encouranges you to write more ...
Not to mention the richness it adds to a particular post.

So, if you do have anything to say on anything written here, please feel free to do so ...
A small investment of time ends up serving a lot of purposes ...
As a matter of fact, lot of people's blog that I check out often, have been the result of comment following ...
So more the reason ... eheheh ;)

Voices in my head ...

I really don't know whether this happens to a lot of people, but I have been noticing that there is a constant monologue running through my head ...
Either I have flipped the lid, or have been watching lots of Scrubs lately, actually a bit of both, coz only a crazy person would watch 5 seasons of scrubs within the span of a month !

Anyways, getting back to the voices in my head ...
Actually, for all you know, the voices are typing this blog out ...
As a matter of fact, they are ...

I am not complaining though, most of the wise cracks that come out of my mouth, are via these voices and they keep me amused (and sane??) for most parts of the day.
My co-workers would beg to differ though ...

Nothing much to write now, I guess the voices have stopped !
OMG ... I've lost it :p

(PS: Sorry for making you read this ... I thought I'd go crazy for once ... If you want to use explicit words in the comments, I'd rather you email me your comments.
This is a family blog and rated PG-13)

Indian Movies ...

Today being Saturday, I sat and watched a movie in the afternoon - Silent Hill - which is a game inspired movie. And me having played (and loved) the game earlier and having seen brilliant promos of the movie, I was pretty excited to watch this.
However, expectations were not that high - considering how other games related movie turn up (Tomb Raider, Resident Evil)

However, when I started watching the movie, I was shocked and astonished at the level of details which the director had taken care of very painstakingly.
The sets and creatures were right out of the video game and even the shops on the streets of Silent Hill had names from the game.

It felt like playing the game itself.

The two hours that I spent watching the movie, made me feel squirmish, eerie, sad, confused, grossed out and lots of other things which you generally don't go through during your normal life (and thank God for that!)

Anyways, that made me wonder, why no such movies EVER get made here in India.
Mind you, India makes the maximum number of movies in a year (compared to any other country), but if you ponder over the number of gold medals a country of a billion produce at the olympics, the fate of most of the movies is very cliche'd.

Here, most of the directors rarely give any attention to details and if you were to start writing goof ups on movies made here, you could end up writing books on a single movie.
Basically the order of priority of Bollywood movies is:

1. Have good songs
2. Dress all women in such short clothes that they qualify as belts (almost anyways ;))
3. Raise a lot of hype
4. Get the best stars
5.
6.
.
.
.
.
1354. Write a good story
1355. Make sure everything is technically and logically correct.

Very few people here, make movies out of passion - most of the movies are made to just make money and they dont care what crap they put into it as long as the general populous buys it.
The 'chalta hai' attitude of most of the people is highly annoying ...
This fact can be affirmed by a statement which a popular producer of commercial (gaudy) films made.

He said, "If you make movies for Rickshawalas (people who drive Rickshaws), you will travel in cars, but if you make movies for people who drive (and hence can afford) cars, you will have to travel by rickshaws"

The general quality of production and acting of the movies is so pathetic that most of the times, I would not even consider spending that much time watching the movie.
Actually buying tickets and spending money on it is out of the question!

I have never seen any 'out of track' movie ever become hugely successful.
There have been a recent spurt of movies which have swayed a wee bit off track and become hits, but they too have lots of content which is downright impossible.

This entire revolution may still take a million years to come, until more and more of the masses get educated (and stop buying crap) or we get more passionate and talented film makers inside ...

However, till that happens, it is three cheers for Hollywood :)
The biggest plus point of a hollywood flick (a carefully chosen one) is that at the end of it all, you don't regret the time you spent watching it.

*Update - My review of Silent Hill is up and can be read here.

Choice, the problem is choice ...

If you are wondering where you have heard the above statement before, it is from the movie "Matrix Reloaded".

The movie, apart from being a huge treat for the eyes with the brilliant special effects, action sequences and acting, delved deeply into yet another very intriguing subject - that of choice.

I have tried many times writing on this topic, but it has turned out to be so complicated (more often that not) that I have had to delete the post everytime - even before I got midway.
But if you are reading this, I was successful in putting my thoughts into words (not very well, but it should be just good enough ...)

Anyways, this entire film revolves around the concept of choice and whether we have a choice - if at all.
The very interesting character of Merovingian has this to say during the movie:

Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.

And then, there have been so many situations in my life which have made me feel exactly the same way.

For instance, how can one know whether something that he or she did was a result of a choice - they had taken, things happening beyond their control or just plain fate?
How do you know - that once you have taken an option, that you were not meant to take the other one anyways. Either way, how would you ever know ?
It forms a huge paradox.

"But if YOU already know, how can I make a choice?"
"Because you didn't come here to make the choice, you've already made it. You're here to try to understand *why* you made it."

Whatever we do in our lives, is because of the choices we make, and (I feel that) every little event that happens around us, is responsible in some way for the events to happen in the future. Its like a domino effect.

However, I have seen people make choices which have doomed their lives and I have known about it and the moment of them making their choice. So many times have I advised people against it, but to no avail.

Like, I have this friend of mine who took up the branch of ENTC (Electronics and Telecommunications) in Engineering against my better judgement and is suffering for it now.
But then this is pushes it more towards the argument of fate, doesn't it?

However, though we may never know whether we actually have a choice or whether Merovingian was right - what we should probably make sure is to *really* think about what path we choose at the cross roads and make up our minds, never to regret it later in life - come what may...

Umm .. blogging !

A non - blogger friend of mine, specifically sent me this cartoon a while ago.
And as I have nothing to blog about today, or maybe I am just tired and suffering the after effects of playing a whole day of basketball yesterday (I realised that I am getting older ...), I could not agree more with my good chum ! :)

[Please click on the image to see the actual size]

Why nerds are unpopular ...

I generally don't link to other posts, but really couldn't help myself on this one.

Its by Paul Graham and the title reads "Why Nerds and Unpopular"
It IS definitely a long essay but is very, very insightful and well written.

The links here : http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html