Bored!

Getting bored is one of the most difficult things in the world getting used to, so much so that one would rather restart a dead blog (which is not anymore now) than bearing a pretty inevitable phase in one’s life. To think of it, the very intent of starting this blog a year back, almost to the very day, was to dig out of this unpleasant hole. Hence, in hindsight, it does make perfect sense restarting it for the same reasons.

The basic reason as to why someone gets bored is the sudden lack of activity or sudden lack of interest in activities around you. Probably in my case (and I am sure for most of my DD friends as well) it’s a combination of both. Common ways off staving it off like watching movies and past episodes of Family Guy, chatting, banner bashing, watching IPL, going out, overeating, stumbling, more stumbling have failed to remove it. This has forced me to turn to random stuffs like going to lab, shaving once in every 3 days and re-trying out reggae & hiphop. Going to lab did seem to be interesting for a whhhhile (Stewie style);  shaving does take it away, but that’s again 20 mins of activity in 3 days; however the latter turned out to be a disappointing affair again. No matter how much I try, I simply can’t appreciate those genres of music. So here it is, my last resort, my last attempt to free myself from the chains of boredom.

P.S: The above post may be a yawn inducing one, but I promise better ones once I get over this transient and perennial (well they are oxymorons, but what the hell!!!I am bored!) phase.

Angrez Rajni

I am referring to Chuck Norris here. Just like we ridicule Rajni here, the westerners do so to Chuck “Walker” Norris. Just like Rajni, he manages to defy all conventional principles and a whole site is dedicated to these exaggerated facts (read farts). Some of my personal favorites are the following;

• If you have five dollars and Chuck Norris has five dollars, Chuck Norris has more money than you.
• Chuck Norris can eat just one Lay’s potato chip.( Remember the Lay’s jingle “No one can eat just one”?)
• Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door.
• Chuck Norris can divide by zero.
• It takes Chuck Norris 20 minutes to watch 60 Minutes.
• Chuck Norris is currently suing myspace for taking the name of what he calls everything around you.
• There is no such thing as global warming. Chuck Norris was cold, so he turned the sun up.
• Chuck Norris did in fact, build Rome in a day.
• Chuck Norris recently had the idea to sell his urine as a canned beverage. We know this beverage as Red Bull.
• Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table, because Chuck Norris only recognizes the element of surprise.
• Chuck Norris smells what the Rock is cooking… because the Rock is Chuck Norris’ personal chef.
• When Bruce Banner gets mad, he turns into the Hulk. When the Hulk gets mad, he turns into Chuck Norris.
• The original title for Alien vs. Predator was Alien and Predator vs Chuck Norris. The film was cancelled shortly after going into preproduction. No one would pay nine dollars to see a movie fourteen seconds long.

P.S: Yeah, it is one of those filler posts bloggers write when you are getting bored to death and there is nothing else to write on.

The Butterfly Effect

I am writing a post after 14 long days. This hiatus was pretty unintended though. Anyway, I was watching this movie “The butterfly effect” the other day. It’s a psychological thriller dealing with two of the most interesting and less understood metaphysical topics, namely time travel and chaos theory. Although the movie’s excellent, the name appears a bit out of place considering the changes the protagonist brings about in his past so as to alter his future are not exactly “minor” as suggested by the chaos theory. Run Lola Run illustrates this principle beautifully and much more accurately.

For starters, butterfly effect refers to the great sensitivity the final results can have over the initial conditions and the great difference that can be brought upon by a miniscule change in initial conditions. The concept is related to the work of famous American meteorologist Edward Lorenz. In 1961, Lorenz was using a numerical computer model to rerun a weather prediction, when, as a shortcut on a number in the sequence, he entered the decimal .506 instead of entering the full .506127 the computer would hold. The result was a completely different weather scenario. Lorenz published his findings in a 1963 paper for the New York Academy of Sciences noting that “One meteorologist remarked that if the theory were correct, one flap of a seagull’s wings could change the course of weather forever.” Later speeches and papers by Lorenz used the more poetic butterfly.

In course of watching this movie, I realized how well this theory adheres to my philosophy as to how people tend to interpret events as chance, even though most of them are not (see Laws of Luck for more). Harlan Ellison once said-there is no such thing as chance, but only patterns we do not understand. If we understand this philosophy, we will cease to believe in phony religions, astrology, numerology, ghosts and other factors which prevent us from clear thinking. For example, in the movie, Evan (the protagonist), in order to alter the future, goes back in time to save the mother-child from the dynamite he and his friends had planted in front of their house as a prank. Although Evan’s friend manages to save them, Evan finds himself very close to the dynamite resulting in loss of his hands and limbs, leading to another grim future. Had he been thinking logically and been aware of the situation, the scene would have turned out completely differently. There is no chance, only chaos. And Chaos is nothing but entropy misunderstood. It’s our inability to understand the true nature of this randomness that leads us to explain certain events from a pretty unscientific perspective.

Complete understanding of its intricacies may be impossible, but chaos can work to one’s benefit provided one is well- prepared. Life teaches us to pay attention. Whether in Chaos or Entropy, the more we know, the cleverer and more well-informed we are. It becomes easier to ride the tide of chaos and achieve success. As Louis Pasteur said “Chance favors the prepared mind”.

P.S: The last line may appear contradictory to the statement made in the earlier paragraph, but they back the same philosophy, albeit from different viewpoints.

BREAKING NEWS

It refers to the story of the moment. Something of national importance, something of wide public interest. Be it the results of a much awaited event or something very sensational. It literally breaks the melancholy of regular news and has become a very important part of journalism today. Journalists can now provide aankhon dekha haal through this segment and thus give moment by moment updates on the topic of interest. It has added an altogether new dimension to news delivery and modern journalism has hugely benefitted from this. Some examples of this outstanding form of journalism are shown below

Pics courtesy Rajat ( read my previous post to know more about him).

Weird combinations

The inspiration behind this post is the lunch I had today and my arbit nature.

The lunch here is provided by vendors selected by the food committee (formed by the Stryker employees themselves). The food initially was really below par, with almost half the employees rejecting the vendor. Since then, the standard has definitely improved. However, the menu is decided by the food committee. And since the food committee consists of a Haryanvi, Punjabi and a South Indian, the food combination sometimes turns out to be quite imaginative. Today the menu consisted of Alu paratha, chicken, Idli-vada-sambar and Raita. It took me back to my childhood days, when once I mixed hot water with amchur, chyawanprash, milk, horlicks, sugar and mixed-veg. pickle. No prizes for guessing how it tasted. However, some combinations may seem weird, but are a big hit. Chicken Samosa, Chicken Utthappa to name a few. I was discussing this topic with Rajat(this incredibly good-looking, intelligent, talented, outspoken and amazingly eligible guy from Hostel 13) and he told me how he loves having Rice mixed with banana and milk (aaarghh…).

It was a pretty nice discussion and I decided it was time to wake the child in me. How about chocolate with tomato sauce? I got a bourbon biscuit from the cupboard and put some ketchup in between them over the cream. It was good, adding a chatpatta taste to it. Next was banana in pickle. It was as if you have replaced all the glucose and fructose by NaCl. Nothing special. Bread soaked in Pepsi. That was nice too. However, the results I obtained from the next combination was strong enough a signal for me to stop. I had Nestea mixed with Pepsi! It did smell like rotten food, but I decided to ignore the warning signals my olfactory senses were sending and decided to have the whole stuff at one go. It took me less than 5 minutes to realize what a mistake it was. As I am writing this, I still feel nauseated; my stomach’s paining and may vomit anytime.

P.S 1: Rajat forced me to give that description of his. Personally speaking, he is a smelly asshole

P.S 2: Try this at home only, lest you fall sick.

P.S 3: The child in me is a devil.

P.S 4: Please do comment if you have had similar weird ones.

Office Office

It’s been more than a month here at Gurgaon. The weather’s been amazing most of the time and if newspaper reports are to be believed, the rainfall has been the highest ever recorded in May, more than 10 times the average!! In general, humidity levels aren’t also that high, something that suits me (since I tend to sweat a lot). It’s been a nice experience interacting with a variety of people, both at my workplace and the place where I am staying as a PG. Most of these people are young and have been working only since the past 2-3 years.

Initially, I was a bit apprehensive, since I didn’t know anyone in the office (with the exception of CEO and HR head, who obviously are busy, least of all entertain my whims). However my guide introduced me to the whole office, and soon I made a few acquaintances. Since it’s been only about 20 months since the office’s inception, most of the employees are young, and easy to mix with. For the uninitiated, I am interning at Stryker, a medical equipments company. It’s a Global Technology Center, where the work is off-shored from the main offices present at the US, Europe and Singapore. I hear they will be starting to work on Indian markets soon. The office broadly consists of three divisions, namely Mechanical, Software and HR. I have come to know somewhat about the way they work, and the projects they have been working on, courtesy the frequent change of my working space. Initially I was placed in the HR section, which I had to shift to the software one to accommodate a new employee. Same fate awaited me there as well. I was shifted to the Mechanical division, promised that it won’t be changed again as the guy (to whom the desk belonged to) had been sent to the US on an official visit and wasn’t supposed to be back for atleast another month. Seems the HR guys got it all wrong as he managed to show up two days later! Right now I am sitting in the navigation section (a subdivision of software), pretty sure of my place since the desk is that of a lady on maternity leave (God forbid a twist here).

The working culture’s pretty cool here, not as professional as maybe back in Mumbai. There are no restrictions on working hours. You may come and leave office at anytime of the day you want, as long as you are meeting the deadlines for your projects. And no need to wear formals as well . The cupboards are stacked with fruits and biscuits, and the fridge with cold-drinks and other eatables, making it much more pleasurable for me There’s also a TT room here, which I frequent often since I am mostly jobless. This has also acted as an excellent source for increasing my acquaintance circle.

Overall, it’s been a nice learning experience observing the office culture till now. Working in teams, frequent meetings, meeting deadlines, not very different from the way we used to work at Techfest. Seems 9-5 job isn’t as boring as I thought it to be.

Talk

It’s a beautiful song by Coldplay. It says how much you need a brother, especially when things start going awry. Though I don’t find much of a correlation with the music video.

Oh brother I can’t, I can’t get through
I’ve been trying hard to reach you, cause I don’t know what to do
Oh brother I can’t believe it’s true
I’m so scared about the future and I wanna talk to you
Oh I wanna talk to you
You can take a picture of something you see
In the future where will I be?
You can climb a ladder up to the sun
Or write a song nobody has sung
Or do something that’s never been done

Are you lost or incomplete?
Do you feel like a puzzle, you can’t find your missing piece?
Tell me how do you feel?
Well I feel like they’re talking in a language I don’t speak
And they’re talking it to me

So you take a picture of something you see
In the future where will I be?
You can climb a ladder up to the sun
Or a write a song nobody has sung
Or do something that’s never been done
Do something that’s never been done

So you don’t know were you’re going, and you wanna talk
And you feel like you’re going where you’ve been before
You tell anyone who’ll listen but you feel ignored
Nothing’s really making any sense at all
Let’s talk, let’s talk
Let’s talk, let’s talk

Process vs Result

I was going through 2D’s blog one of these days and came across a pretty interesting post as to what is more important, process or result. The views were pretty interesting, favoring result and many people are expected to have this kind of a view in this cut-throat professional age (my previous post gives a pretty good example). However, according to me, the whole thinking should be situation dependant.

Let’s compare the following cases

Case 1: You haven’t tried as much and not really put in the necessary amount of efforts. The results obtained are dismal

Case 2: You obtain the necessary results without going through the right process and doing the necessary hard work. In short, you succeed by fluke.

Case 3: You work hard and smart, plan things well and still fall short of your targets, possibly due to some small flaw in your course of action.

Case 4: You follow the right process and get the right results.

From the above, Case 1 and 4 seem to be fair outcomes. Case 2 and 3 seem to defy conventional correlations. Given a choice between the two cases, a result oriented guy would go for the 2^nd and a process oriented for the 3^rd. What would I go for? Well, it depends upon the gravity of the result desired. If it’s something on which one’s life depends on, then I don’t think any practical person would opt for Case 3. However, the possibility of such situations arising are rare (except when may be you are a terrorist). Hence considering a normal situation, I would opt for Case 3. This is because even if you don’t succeed, the learning experience you gather while working hard towards your goal can be immense. Hence, you can still learn from your mistakes and make sure you don’t repeat them again. And these things would help in various other areas of one’s life as well, paving the way for eventual all-round success. Focusing on process may not give the desired results initially, but when they start paying, they do so big-time.

P.S: I am open to more thoughts regarding this.

Indian Paisa League

After 44 days of action and 59 matches, one may safely say IPL has been a success. Not since the Packer revolution, which fast-tracked cricket into the professional age, has an event challenged the status quo as much the IPL has. However, unlike the Packer one, it has ICC’s (grudging) blessings too. Be it entertainment, globalization of the game or unearthing a new set of star players, it seems to be have achieved most of objectives. But the real revelation has been the amount of money that has been splashed around.

The 1^st edition has already been placed in the top 5 leagues around the world (behind a couple of European football leagues and the NBA). This may increase the next year given the talks of removing the 5 million USD cap. The BCCI has already made a staggering US$ 1.75 billion solely from the sale of TV rights ($908 million), promotion ($108 million) and franchises (approximately $700 million). The costliest franchise is that of Mumbai Indians brought by Mukesh Ambani (no surprise there eh..) for 111.9 million USD and the costliest player being MSD for an astronomical 1.5 million USD, making him on par with some of the costliest footballers in the world. And the infamous slap-gate affair cost bhajji a whopping INR 3 crore, making it easily the costliest slap in the history of sports.

But is the money wisely spent? Many people have been wondering this, especially the owners of losing franchise. The franchise owners operate under market conditions. Unlike the BCCI, which is answerable to no one (and doesn’t answer even when it is required to), the men who own the eight teams are accountable. One of them, N Srinivasan – vice-chairman and CEO of India Cements – had to explain in detail to the company’s investors why he spent $91 million buying the Chennai franchise, in far greater detail than he has been known to at press conferences of the BCCI, of which he is treasurer. Involvement of such huge amounts also implies that defeat is something that isn’t taken kindly. This multi-million dollar world is ruled by the bottom-line “winning is everything”. The sacking of Charu Sharma as CEO of the Bangalore franchise less than halfway into the first season, after a string of poor results more due to cricketing issues than those under an administrator’s care, is nothing but a move to protect that bottom-line. Is all this money really worth it? For six weeks of IPL work, Dhoni has earned $1.5 million, marginally more than Gerrard makes in the same period. Now compare this. Gerrard plays more than 60 matches in a season that lasts ten months, pitting his skills against Arsenal and Manchester United in games of the greatest possible intensity. And all Dhoni has to do is play 16 games of this hit and miss format. Doesn’t sound good enough eh?

However, from a viewer’s perspective, it certainly has been a Paisa vasool experience. The audiences flocking to the stadiums to watch their favorite cricketers have certainly not been disappointed. The team spirit and commitment shown by the players gathering from different parts of the world has been amazing, especially considering the last such endeavor (Super series cricket in Australia) was a complete failure from a team building perspective. Money not only talks, it bonds too. Waiting in anticipation for the next edition.

Recycling ideas

Creativity and originality are in short supply it seems. The land which has given the world wonderful treatises on mathematics and medicine and love making (euphemism for sex) seems to be harboring pretty unimaginative people. And nothing epitomizes this copy-paste attitude more than our own Bollywood.

Watching Bollywood movies nowadays invariably gives you sense of déjà-vu, only that the experience this time around is worse. I mean, just compare Usual suspects and its Hindi remake Chocolate. You can’t help notice the difference in quality, it’s almost as if they are an oxymoron! The movies of yesteryears were endearing as they either drew from the issues around them or were an adaptation of novels. However, down the years, Bollywood has become notorious for its human photocopying machines. Our composers and directors are borrowing not merely from Hollywood, but from European cinema, Korean movies and Turkish and Latino bands. And when these sources for intercontinental copying are exhausted, they borrow from one another on the pretext of getting “inspired” to do so (à la Farhan Akhtar). And amazingly, quite a few of them turn out to be hits. Exceptions are there though. Ram Gopal Verma Ki Aag-the very title reflecting the predicament of a director running short of ideas- was booed down by an audience that couldn’t bear the sacrilege of their beloved Sholay.

Perhaps one can argue that we live in a society strictly adhering to conformism, and given the rate at which film-makers are required to spin out one, it’s not exactly a bad idea. As Einstein said, “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” Recycling is here to stay.