Wednesday, May 30, 2007

38. Have questions, and need answers?

Do you identify yourself with the guy shown in the poster? Ya, he has a nice physique, but that's not I am talking about. It's about the questions that he is trying to find answers to.

Do you have any of these thoughts running through your mind:

    • Why is that person always healthy, but not me?
    • I miss those happy days! Why don't they recur?
    • How I love these happy moments! Will I lose them anytime soon?
    • S/he doesn't deserve half as much as s/he earns!
    • Nobody listens to me... Nobody talks to me either!
    • I need a new spouse, a new maid,... another drink... and a smoke too!
    • Why do my employers keep firing me?
    • Is life before death a myth?
    • What is the next personal development course I should be doing?
    • What should be my next blog posting?
If you do at times ponder over such thoughts, then you are in luck! Just click on the poster for your answers!

Monday, May 28, 2007

37. The Elusive Second Rank

Have you ever tried to deliberately score a rank in a competition which is other than your usually attained rank? I tell you, I have, and this is my story.

[This piece has been written for a narrator of the caliber of Morgan Freeman or Amitabh Bachchan. Hear that voice?]

Disclaimer: Any resemblance to any real person -- living, hospitalised, or dead -- is purely by God's own will, and I couldn't write it any other way.

In my good old school days, academics came natural to me. I happened to top the class, and get that coveted 1st Rank. Soon I felt a monotony to it, and then the fun started -- to deliberately try coming in second.

There was this girl in my class who would always come in second, and I would always hopelessly be ranked one above her, how-much-so-ever I tried not to! Of course, she wasn't trying to come second deliberately, but had she known about my intentions, she would have loved to help me.

In those days, betting wasn't a commonplace. I, however, had the good fortune of getting acquainted with a classmate, who was born to be a bookie and in the future, make his presence felt in the best known arena of all -- the Shaharjah Cricket Tournament. Let me call him, Aamir Bahaauddin Tyaagi, Aamir for short, which mind you, is a name from my imagination not Google-able, lest I reveal his true identity.

Aamir knew that it was easy for me to secure the first rank, and hence would make it all the more interesting by raising the bets for the second rank, while keeping the odds at 1/1 for the first. Whenever I was confident that I have done so well in my class exams, or should I say so badly that I deserved nothing more than the coveted second rank, I would bet heavily. The currency involved for betting were in marbles, and I had to part with a lot of those. But that didn't stop me in trying for one final time, and then once more, and so it went on.

You might think that for someone who can come first, how difficult it would be to come in second for once. Well, let me try to explain to you the problem with coming in second deliberately, as compared to coming in first. The first rank holder's score only has a lower limit, and no higher limit. On the other hand, to come in second, you have to determine the highest score amongst others in the class, and score just about enough to not exceed that score, while ensuring that you score more than the rest. A lot of number crunching is involved. You might even get a Doctrate just for making an attempt in finding a sound mathematical formula, containing weird Greek alphabets, for coming in second.

Now, I wouldn't say I always stood first in these attempts, while it's true that I didn't come in second either. After the initial monotony of firsts, I have scored a fifth once, and a tenth too! Well, it's not that I lost my ability for coming in first, but that the parameters involved used to change every four years or less with new students rolling in my class, which made my calculations go wrong all the time. In the 6th Grade, you had to opt for a third language, and I took Sanskrit, which resulted in a new class, and a different batch of pupils. In the 9th Grade, we had to go to a new school for, the old school only had classes upto 8th, and thus put up with another new batch of students. You can consider yourself lucky if you have mastered the art of coming in second after 10 years of analysis on a static population with only a few controlled parameters changing (refer: ANOVA / DOE statistical analysis techniques), and I had to either come up with a solution in less than four years or incorporate the rules behind dynamically changing population in my calculations!

Now I have grown up and am not involved with academics, professionally speaking. But mind never stops working, especially on an unsolved Mathematical mystery. The other day, I came across on the internet a puzzle about an Arab sheikh and how he thought of distributing his wealth. Here it goes:
There was once an Arab sheikh who had two sons who were not the sharpest scimitars in the palace armory, as it were. He loved playing jokes on them to watch their reaction.

One day he told his two sons to race their camels to a distant city to see who would inherit his fortune. The rules stated that the one whose camel was slowest would be the winner.

The brothers, after wandering aimlessly for days, going slower and slower, finally ran across a wise man in the desert whom they ask for advice. After hearing the advice they jumped on their beasts and raced as fast as they could to the city. What did the wise man say to them?
I had always thought that Shaharjah, the land of the Arabs and the camels, had answers to these types of mysteries. How rightly so! If you are still wondering what the wise man said to the boys, let me not keep it from you for long. He said, "Switch your camels and try to reach the city first, thus making the others' camel which you are riding on, faster than yours!" So neat. So beautiful. So clever. Is it not?

How do we apply this wise man's logic to my problem of coming in second? For that, I would need the help of the girl who always stood second in class, whenever I stood first. Even though this is not a camel race, if you note, writing exams is no different. Switching the camels would mean switching the answersheets! Got it? Let me explain further. If I write her student roll number on my answer paper while she writes mine, we have effectively switched the camels! Now both of us would answer the exam based on our abilities, without deliberately trying to make mistakes, and ensure that she makes me get the elusive second rank, while she boasts the first! Perfecto, isnt it? So clever, yet so profoundly simple. Had I known this earlier, I would have won a lot of marbles, by Jove!

These days, whenever I attend prize distribution functions, I clap, cheer, whistle, and what not, whenever they announce for the second prize winner, while booing the first comer. People might think that I am related to the second comer, but now you know the real reason behind my actions.

[ If someone does go ahead and makes this movie, of course, after buying the credits from me, following text would now roll on the screen... ]

The Second Rank girl is now a qualified Medical Doctor, and is some big shot with a corner office in WHO headquarters at Geneva.

Aamir is now not making as much money as he used to when there were India v/s Pakistan cricket fixtures all year round in his current home location. India's decision to not send their cricket team to Shaharjah after the betting scam broke out, has not only put some breaks to his burgeoning bank balance, but also made him borrow from others in order to meet with his wives' shopping expenses. (Note the location of the apostrophe.)

As for me, I am at home, sitting in my lavish mansion on a private island in the Pacific, writing a new movie script to get another nomination for an Academy Award! Yup, I still aim for the 2nd place!

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

36. The Holy Debates

There are times in life when you face an adamant mind to whom you want to put forth your viewpoint, and who, for all holy reasons is not concurring with you! Lets say that you too are adamant to not give way to the other person! After all, its a Holy Debate!

Now how you face this situation, is based on your personality. Let me share my experiences.

Yesterday, while watching the news on TV, my roomie (nope, not the one who messed up my pressure cooker, and ya, there are more roomies in my house than birds in the bush,) suddenly blurted out a generalized statement as soon as he heard some news piece on a Baba (Hindu Monk), "All Babas are corrupt... Behind our backs they act *unholy* with girls..." (A few words have been modified so as to conform to the blog's censor board.)

Now if you are against making generalized statements, but wouldn't want to mess it with a long drawn debate, how will you deal with this remark? It really helps when you have some information about the person you are dealing with. Then you can put in relevant examples to bring home your point.

In my case, I knew this roomie had just bought a 2nd hand car and was driving it illegally (ya, *illegally*, you read it right the first time) on the roads of the United States of America with neither a US state driving license/permit nor an auto insurance, nor the legal paper which says "I am the registered owner of the vehicle I am currently driving"! He had his Indian license and the experience of driving on Indian roads... but, that's besides the point.

So, to make him understand the issue with his viewpoint -- I am talking of his generalized Baba-remark and not his qualifications for a visit to the Shawshank prison -- I just put one counter argument: "Tomorrow you will say all those driving on the US roads are driving without a valid license or an auto insurance!" and there was a smirk on his face.

So, it was quite easy to argue with a known person. But, when you deal with creepy characters online, you are left with only their written words to understand their psyche. It gets more challenging to even make them understand what you are saying, leave alone make them agree with you!

Some key points from my experience with the invisible minds:
  1. Start your argument with "I agree with you on ...", say some good thing about their comment which will at least make them receptive to what you will say next. And then add a "However," to follow up with what you really want to say!
  2. Elaborate your point by way of examples, usually the witty ones. Since you can't make out who is at the other end, use relevant jokes which aren't racist or offensive to a particular group/sect, or else you will start a debate within a debate! Oh Boy! God save you, if that happens!
  3. If you are still not able to make things clear, then there is the Ogden Nash poem which you can use to put an end to the debate and get on with your life:
When people reject a truth or an untruth it is not
because it is a truth or an untruth that they reject it.
No, if it isn't in accord with their beliefs in the
first place they simply say, "Nothing doing,"
and refuse to inspect it.

Likewise when they embrace a truth or an untruth it
is not for either its truth or its mendacity,
But simply because they have believed it all along
and therefore regard the embrace as a tribute to
their own fair-mindedness and sagacity.
Enjoy one such duel of the minds at: Antarananda's Blog.

Note: At this point of writing this blog posting, I have gotten the news that my Shawshank-qualified roomie has just passed his DMV written test for a driving permit, and is well underway to get the other two mandatory things done.

Friday, May 18, 2007

35. A Page from my Pressure Cooker's diary

Today, May 18 2007, is the last day when I would have served my beloved Master as a pressure cooker, after some 5 years of pleasure-cooking. I say this, with a sense of contentment for, even in my end, my unselfishness shone, and my altruism has now been immortalised with His Holiness' blog posting!

Master's roomie, who I have seen helping out my Master and His more accomplished cooking roommates in their cooking, has been very good at doing just that. I had thought that he might, by now, would have graduated to a better position in the cooking hierarchy, but it was not meant to be.

Master was having His shower, and if my imaginative mind serves me, would have been shampooing His radiant head when the apartment's fire alarm went off all of a sudden! I heard Him turn off the shower and yell from inside the bathroom asking His roomie outside to clear the air and put an end to the deafening alarm. After some windows and doors were opened, the alarm was finally silenced.

Out came my Master after a well-deserved bath, eager to check the state of the kitchen. The air had a burning smell to it.

Master was quite suspicious of the understudy's cookery skills, and first checked the electric rice cooker by my side. It was working fine. Then He came to me, and saw me still facing the heat on top of a burning heating coil. Master asked the roommate if he had added water to the dal (lentil) in the cooker, and got the reply in negative. I think I saw a bulb light in the understudy's head, who all this while had felt that he had accomplished a remarkable task by silencing the alarm and was busy browsing the net on his laptop unaware of the implications of his incomplete cooking knowledge on my future.

If you had asked me earlier to choose between destiny and free-will, I would have answered free-will, for I had felt that I chose my Master, when I was back in India in an utensil shop, helping my Master with His choice of a cooker by showing my happy face. Now I don't know if it is fate, which rules. In either case, I am happy to have come to the service of my Master.

I hope Master doesn't dispose me, but instead makes use of me as a vessel for His cooking needs. One thing is for sure: with my sacrifice, the understudy would have learnt his lesson in the fine art of cooking with a pressure cooker!

Saturday, May 12, 2007

34. Making a Cocktail out of H2O

An excerpt from a chat I had with my friend on GoogleTalk.
Note:
1. This chat has been edited to fit your browser window.
2. Viewer discretion advised.
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He: how r u..?
me: great. how about u?
He: i am fine
me: where are you now?
He: i am at connecticut.. working with Nestle
me: wow! lots of chocolates, i guess
He: but i am working for nestle waters
me: oh... then taste those waters too
He: here i will get every day free water...
me: but then, how much can a man drink?
He: as much as possible.... still in control...
me: hahaha... i was talking about ur free water supply... but then, u answered the best only u can :)
He: ya.. :) i am talking about my drink... so funny..
me: yup! one thinks of others the way one is :) lol!
He: :) u r right.. in real life same thing happens..
me: yup

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This chat was brought to you by Smirnoff Vodka.
[Link to the Commercial]