How was your weekend

As my biological clock was still running in daylight savings mode, I woke up an hour early this morning and reached work at 8:11 AM.
8:12 AM : Just peeped into my boss's office to show my face. Yep !! I AM EARLY BOSS!!.You better notice me now.I answered his question,"Hey,you are early today. How was your weekend?" with a "Great. Relaxing" and left his office with a big grin on my face. Mission accomplished. Now , I can leave at 5:00.
8:30AM: I bumped into Bob in the hallway. He greets me with a "Hi Shoba, Good morning !How was your weekend?". " Pretty good . How was yours?" and I had to listen to Bob's non-stop banter about how he tried to paint his house and sprained his ankle.All this with the customary "oh!! Too bad..Is that so..." on and on.Finally escaping ,I found shelter in my 6 foot cubicle and plopped into my chair.
9:00 AM: Had to attend nature's call and saw Ben walking towards me with a pleasant smile on his face. I like him .He is a nice and courteous guy.Hence, he had to ask the customary question.."Hey, How was your weekend?". I smiled back with a "Nice" and careful not to repeat the question. There...I made it without having to stop.
9:05 AM: On my way back from the restroom, I encountered Martha.Not that I like her, but still etiquette demands I greet her. I stopped with a simple "Hello Martha" and out comes "Hey Shoba !! How was your weekend?" accompanied with her own patented squeak.By now, I dont feel like answering that question any more, I just smile and answer it with an "Excuse me" ,run to find solace in my cubicle.
9:30 AM: Paul comes over to inform me that the tester is free and I can use it.Ofcourse, he starts with "How was your weekend,pal?".What do I answer ? I tried answering with all the regular answers that I could find.
What do people want to know about your weekend?. Will it interest him if I said that the most exciting moment of my weekend was trying to pick between peaches and apples while grocery shopping. Will it interest him if I said that I spent approximately 9 hours every day just watching TV ,lying on my couch with a bag of Murrukus(indian snack) on my lap.

I thought weekends are meant for resting.Its like people are waiting to pounce on you. I find it irksome. Mr.Jeeves would have said, "I think, Ma'm, the word you are looking for, is annoying".

Actually,this goes on through out the week. On Wednesdays, it is "Middle of the week, huh? ","Oh boy!It is wednesday ". On thursday, " Just two more days to go,buddy".On friday,we are back to " Any plans for weekend" . And ofcourse, you better give me an update on Monday how you spent your weekend.

Give me a break

YES!! I want a break from phones..There..I said it. It all started when I was young and mom asked me to book some train tickets . I went to the railway station full of vigour ,only to behold a long line,which I used to call a "queue" before. In the sweltering heat,sweating and standing behind another unfortunate being like self,my moods were shifting from moments of desperation to depression and finally exhilaration when I reached the counter after an hour.Did I say an hour .....NO! It felt like 5 hours and that feeling of happiness when you reach the counter and see the attendant asking for your form ,can never be explained.It has to be experienced. And just when I was basking in my glory of reaching the destination, a ring emanated from this black thing called a "pone"...I wanted to yell,"Hey !! I was in line first , not the damn phone" . How come, this little instrument which rang a minute ago gets the utmost priority when I have been standing in the line for hours ?
Have you ever thought about it? Why do we give so much of importance to this little instrument? How many times have we stopped our conversation in mid sentence to answer the phone? If there were a bunch of aliens looking at earth, there conversation will be like," All these earthlings are controlled by these minute creatures that they carry in their pockets . These creatures rule earth. They just stick on to their ears and dont let go.Earthlings really have to struggle especially when they are driving,eating or even attending nature's call.I am sure they are programming their brains."
Try not to pick up your phones the next few days if you are doing something important,which could be even sitting alone with your thoughts.See if you can make it...

Split-personality

Recently, I saw 2 movies that spawned my thought process about the split-personality disorder. One is a hilarious Tamil movie called “Chandramukhi”. And the other is a more serious one called “Hide and Seek”. For those who haven’t watched movies centering on this concept, this is a disorder where independent personalities or ego-states exist, with only one personality controlling the body at any time. The disorder itself is highly debated in the psychology/psychiatry world.

I don’t doubt that the phenomenon exists. However, I argue that this is not a disorder. I believe that most “normal” human beings exhibit different personalities at different times. Given that people have varying emotions, and varying circumstances in their daily lives, it is entirely expected that they react differently to situations at different times. One day I am a happy camper cheerfully going about my business and lifting people’s moods. Another I am a grump who is totally annoyed at other people for making silly jokes. One day I am ready to take on the world with all its challenges, and on another day, I can only cower anxiously in the solitude of my home. I have noticed this in other people too.

People don’t react the same way to the same stimulus at different times. People’s behavior is a complex dependent variable affected by a multitude of tiny forces. So I conclude by saying that at some level, split-personality is the norm, rather than the exception. I wouldn't classify multiple personality as a disorder.

Erode

Yesterday, I got a mail from a newsgroup with the title "India's outsourcing edge to erode - Gartner" and immediately I thought of Erode (the city in south india where I went to college) and assumed all sorts of things. I clicked the website and to my dismay, I couldnt see any mention of my favourite city Erode. Later, it occured to me that the word was "erode" as in "to diminish" and also that I didnt quite notice the "'s" in the title. For lack of better work, I forwarded the same article to my wife Shoba and my close friend Sri who also happen to be my buddies from college and asked them if they saw anything weird. They were clueless. Its interesting how brain stores and retrieves information. Apparently, brain stores data in the form of an associative memory which means that information is accessed through a tag which could be a pointer to another information. The more information we accumulate, we form a nested list of various pointers, with each pointer pointing to some piece of information that we experienced/studied. What I experienced was a collision when the same piece of information pointed to 2 different pointers. This is where context comes into picture. Context is what differentiates any random piece of information that exists in this world. A same piece of art in an expensive store versus one sold in the roadside has different connotations, driven purely by context. The same reasoning can be applied to almost every conflict that exists.

Why would anyone name a city by name "Erode" is a different point for discussion (I think it transformed from the tamil word "Eerodai" meaning 2 streams)....:)

PS: This was one of my earlier blog that I wrote a couple of weeks back. So, Yesterday doesnt really mean Yesterday...:)

Dubious Etiquettes - 1

Many a times, I have been confused as to what etiquette should I apply in a lot of day to day events. For example, what do I do when I pass along a hallway and I see someone coming towards me. Should I look at them ? If they dont look back at me, should I still keep looking at them ? Sometimes, it is the battle between my mind and action and my heart beats more and more as the distance gets shorter and shorter. What if I looked at them and they didnt look at me initially, and I start looking elsewhere and now it could be that they are looking at me and I may seem like I am not looking at them though I actually did some seconds back. Should I periodically refresh my sight into looking at them. If they look back at me, should I smile. And there is always the distance factor. Sometimes, you look at someone who might be 10 ft away and do you smile at them then. In that case, should you keep a smily face till you cross over or should you smile and look elsewhere going about your own duty as if you have something else on your mind though there is nothing going on in your mind other than to think about the fact that the smile went well. There is a weird category of people who just look through you, and to them, even if you smile, it will look like they are looking at you and they wouldnt respond...It gets more awkward when you pass across a group of individuals out of which you identify some. Do you smile at the ones you know or give a group smile. The same is true when I am with a group of people and someone whom I know passes me by. If I am talking something seriously, should I take a quick break into giving a smile. The person to whom I am talking to, facing me will suddenly get this unrelated smile just to realise that someone passed us by. Sometimes, if the other person waves his hand, do you return it back by waving your hands while you are talking to someone. It so happens that sometimes, when people I know wave hands to someone behind me, I start waving my hands back to them assuming that they waved hands to me (inspite of the uncomfortable feeling that I go through, since I am already talking to someone) just to realise that they waved their hands to someone else. In the meanwhile, the person whom I am talking to might get an attention diversion just to be perplexed by the fact that I was waving my hands for no reason..:) The worst case is when you see someone whom you know in the hallway at a slightly far off distance and wave at them to realise that they didnt notice you. I try to look around to see if anyone saw me waving just to console myself that I avoided an embarassing moment.

Another place where I get confused about etiquette is when I am in the restroom. This probably happens mostly in the men's restroom. You are there side by side going about your own business when you find that the person standing next to you is someone whom you know, not very closely, but you share a smile and little chit-chat here and there. Do you talk to him then or wait till he gets to the taps. What if I finished earlier than him. Should I wait till he gets along the tap as well, or should I pretend that I am going about my business till he finishes or go out and wait for him outside or just dont care. What if he finishes earlier. Should I wrap up things quickly enough to join him near the tap, especially if they had smiled on their way into the restroom. Sometimes, it so happens that they start talking to you even when you are seriously going about your business. Do you talk to them? Or, do you ask them to hold on till you are done. I randomly react to such occurences since I am not sure how to react. Sometimes, I just give a smile back to them nodding or answering shortly saying "yes" or "no" or "hmm...hmm". Some people dont leave you till you give a descriptive answer. They ask you questions like "to what value should the register be set when you operate in xyz mode". I cant escape now....can I... The worst case is when you get a cell-phone call when you are inside the restroom. The uncomfortable feeling and the fumbling that you have to do in picking up the call is one thing. Do you speak normally or should you lower your voice, for no apparent reason... I dont know. Especially, when you go about business-2, what do you do? I once got a laugh from the other compartment and also a vocal exchange...."People dont leave you...do they?".... That was one of my most embarassing moments... If the cell-phone call is from someone you know, it is okay. If it is an official call and you just cant miss it, what do you do? What happens to people who listen to your conversation from outside if you chose to go ahead and take a cell-phone call. I dont know how others react. But, I really dont know how I should react...

Show Off

Dont we all show off, either in the transitive* or the intransitive* sense or both ? If someone says "no", then, wouldnt the answer by itself mean that they are showing off..:)... A lot of times I have wondered if telling others about what you know or what you have accomplished is a bad thing. I've met people who are top-notch people in their own area and not talk about it. Being humble or being embarassed about talking about oneself is one thing. But, some believe that talking about ones own achievement is rude and ill-mannered. I for one think that it is not true. I think people should talk, not necessarily to those who dont want to hear you, but to those to whom you can induce passion. As a listener, when I get into the talker's shoe and if I realise how much it meant to him/her, I not only feel really happy about it, but on occasions, emotionally inspired as well. I believe inspiration and passion keeps us going. I heard this note somewhere and it just registered onto me. If you are passionate about what you do, it doesnt matter if you succeed or not, you will almost always enjoy the journey...

One commonality that I have observed uniformly is that, most of us dont do one or both of the following 2 things. Firstly, we dont tend to appreciate ourselves on our accomplishments and take pride in it and Secondly, we dont talk about it for all the above said reasons of being humble and blah blah blah. If we dont appreciate ourselves, who would appreciate us...:)...

For those of you who are meticulously orthogonal and have questions about why we need appreciation in the first place, the answer is Appreciation induces inspiration, which in turn will induce passion. I am a believer of passion. If I have strong passion to pursue something, I just go nuts about it. I dont limit myself based on statistics or other people's generally perceived notions. In statistics, one thing to realise is that there is no "0" or "1". Usually, it is about majority or minority. I think, generally perceived notions of individuals about impossibility is just a glorified wrapper to their incapability. So, once you pursue something with passion and achieve something, what is wrong about telling it to others. Again, statistically, some people may not like it. But, why do I care. I categorize my audience into 3 categories. The first category are those who are thrilled about the achievement and are highly motivated to achieve something similar, the second category who think that it is not a significant achievement and the usual reply will be one where you hear, "I always wanted to do that.. I even started going to blah blah" OR "Why didnt you choose to blah blah", meaning one of 2 things, either they can do it, but they just didnt find time or some lame excuse like that OR that you chose the wrong path, the third category either keep quiet or reply back with a completely different accomplishment/topic of theirs, totally dismissing what you were saying. Even if I get a single cateogory 1 listener out of the numerous category 2 and category 3 listeners, I am happy. I get frustrated with category 2 and category 3 listeners, but then, I cant be an anomaly by not complying to statistical variance.

Now that I wrote about appreciating ourselves, the even more interesting and important thing is to acknowledge achievements of others when we hear it. I find a high correlation between whom we appreciate and the age group they belong and also if we can physically see them or not. I think, we feel a sense of inferiority when someone belonging to the same age as us accomplishes something. We praise about Ramanuja (mathematician) and as most of you know, he died at the age of 31. If Ramanuja stayed next door, how many of us would have really recognized him as much as the world does today (You can choose to substitute Ramanuja with Einstein, Hawkins and others...in the lines of adding Maane, Thene, Ponmane to the song in Guna..:)). It is interesting however that we are okay to hear old people or very young kids talk about their accomplishments... Sometimes, we even slip out people who talk about their accomplishment in a different field than ours. But, if it comes to our domain and if we can physically see someone, we rarely admit that they are any better than us. Especially, the ones who are intellectually egoistic and highly opinionated, like me...:)... Not that I dont acknowledge other's achievements. But, I usually set a high threshold for something to deserve my appreciation...how rude..isnt it?....:)... I dont know if it is bad. Sometimes, I think appreciating someone for very trivial things is no good either. But, thats just me. My point is that, one doesnt have to be a category 1 listener all the time. But, one should definitely be proud and proclaim to the world and to yourself on things that you strived hard to accomplish. Because my friend, not everyone going into a tunnel come out the other side to share a success story. If you re-live the moment of your accomplishments, I believe that you can sustain your passion into achieving greater things. So, show off and sometimes, let others show off too...:)

* - Refer to Merriam Webster's meaning for show off...

Caveman to Human to Intelli-Blob

I always wondered what is going to happen to "Humans" in the future. Are we going to evolve or are we going to be "Humans" always. I was convinced that since humanity can express and think there will be changes but there will not be any major change. But I had this interesting discussion which proposed a possibility of future species, I called, Intelli-Blobs. (It has to be little derogatory because how can they can be better than US)

I had this discussion with my colleague. It started like any other engineering talk, first about work and then about technology. Then we entered into the topic of IP-TV. For those who haven't heard this term, it is providing TV channels through DSL/telephone lines. Ultimate idea was to provide on-demand TV (watch exactly what you want and when you want).

For those who are yawning by now, I want to let you know that this discussion turned into social issue rather than technical, so read along.

Well, my friend's (let us call him J from now on) argument was, with human race getting what they want and when they want, they may demand the same kind with other relationships and other services and which may cause big (and bad) impact on society.

I counter argued that saying, Society have always been that way. I told him our parents would have said same thing about cable TV spoiling people. He came back with argument that may be we are slowly crossing the threshold and on-demand may tip the balance and make people unproductive. He quoted how badly TV and Video games affects society. Accepted and Agreed.

But again I said, don't you think you are being too pessimistic to say this will spoil the world. It could cause little harm but society will be self regulating. Example: Me watching an addictive show called 24 and realizing it and getting out of it before 2nd episode. I was self regulating.

But, by now I realized that my friend had a point, even this show made me less productive next day because of fatigue. And I could get only 2 discs from Netflix a week.

What if, if I could get 24 hours of it in one shot, won't I watch the entire episode in one shot?
If so, wouldn't it affect my work or my family life?
What if, I had all the channels that I want and like at my disposition?
Will I be interested in going to real world and face real people and real occasions where I have only 50% chance of fun opposed to 100% guaranteed "fun".

Well I am not going to give up so easily, so, I said, but we will be bored soon and get back to our routine or our family and friends will drag us out of our homes.

Note: We both agreed and redefined the premises. Taking me or him as an example is not correct. We are not TV buffs. But same cannot be said about millions of Americans (now that I think about it, millions of Indians too). We should consider average Joe here (no no.. I am not talking about the reality show :) )

Anyway moving on, J said, there are reports about families get irritated with each other for spending too much time on TV even now. Well, that is true. How many times I got irritated because my mom doesn't want to come out of the house during "Metti Oli" time?

And to my "getting bored after a while" point, the program makers understands the psyche of customers/viewers and make programs more and more addictive (or interesting) to not let you go. May be there are some devil psychologists helping them to come up with innovative or more perilous idea. And that can make us addict for ever. You may be bored with Sitcom and switch to Thrillers to Romance to Porn (yeah! - now I have your attention huh?) to ...(well you get the idea right).

We also talked about 2 way role playing games which are very popular these days and I read somewhere that in Korea people buy online homes. No! Not buying homes online but buying virtual homes and buying furniture for that online home with real money. (Beats me too)

This proves people may lose human interaction and socialization because of getting all they want and where/when they want.

(Our discussion meandered more around this area)

I then turned the table and asked, what is wrong with that. Meaning, what if, Caveman comes to us and asks why are not you not killing with your own hands and eating them raw with your appendix? Are you not weak in getting every meat you want and when you want (thanks to 24 hours stores)? Isn't it the same kind of question we are asking the future-ites. (On-demand-technology using, socializing-through-computer people)

Then we started visualizing how they will look. Since they don't need legs and they need more brain to think and innovate (More and more on-demand things of course), they may look like big blobs who can think well. So, I christened them Intelli-blobs. (Now you know where I got the title from)

I know this is not going to happen in near future, but it certainly opened a new possibility how the technology we create today can change human (?) race in the future.

Now that I thought too much about it and typed this whole thing without moving from my place, my legs are shrinking and my hands and brain is swelling. I got to get up and walk a bit to become normal. :)

P.S: I wish I had a recorder to capture the content and open it for another debate among us.

Life Insurance

I enrolled myself to a life insurance plan today. And then, I was wondering, did I assign myself with a value in dollars that could be replaced for my absence. Not that I assigned myself a cheap value. But, the concept by itself is rather an irony.

PS: Dont think it was a cut and paste problem... Thats all I wanted to say about life insurance...:)

Travel Maps

I love maps. I can keep looking at maps for ever and not get tired of it. Its just fascinating how such a wide landscape is accessible through such an easy interface. Sometimes, I just feel like visiting places when I trace them in a map.

Recently, I came across the software from Google through which you can download the 3D map of the earth. It is simply amazing. You can just view the earth in 3D and zoom in or out of any location in earth. Most of the big cities can be seen at an altitude of up 1000 ft. It is as if you fly to this new place on earth in no time. How does Grand Canyon look? Well, you can just click on one of their tags and it will land you right in between the canyon onto colorado river. It is just amazing. So, now I can rotate the earth and see the connections between the different continents. It was interesting to see that, one can travel north of inda and cross china and enter Russia and turn right and go all the way till you reach a point where Pacific ocean seperates Alaska by couple of hundred miles. Do you know that Alaska was bought in 1867 by US from Russia for a mere 7 million dollars.

Yesterday, I visited Paris and saw Eiffel Tower up close and personal. I have a lot of travelling to do....:)

Back to the future

A topic that comes up often in my house is the uncertainties in life. Many in my family have approached astrologers to learn about the future (both their own and quite selflessly about other's future). Most have enormous belief in the horoscope (or horror-scope). Whether or not they are bold enough to admit that in my presence, their actions always speak to that effect.

My question is this; If you could, would you want to know your future (as p;redicted by an astrologer)? My answer; I don't think so. Of course, there is a huge assumption here; the prediction of the future is accurate!

Considering that ones actions (internal attribution) determine the consequence, is it possible to predict the future accurately. For instance, if someone were to predict that I'd be crippled in a car wreak by rolling off the hillside, I would most certainly drive cautiously on hills or avoid hills all together! So then the future predicted is not necessarily going to happen, is it? That means, the future is not immutable. Then how can the future be accurately predicted?

If you believe that the future can somehow be predicted accurately and is immutable, then does your desire to know your future change? It depends on the nature of the person. The person could react positively making a list of things to do before something happens preparing himself and others around him. Or the person could wallow in self pity and drag himself and others down to the pit of despair even before the event actually happens.

I am not sure which category I fall in? But numerous books in this topic tell me that people go through a cycle of emotions till they make peace with the eventuality. I am wondering what some others think in this regard.

Sound of Music

I have always been a great listener of songs and music, like most other people..:).. Recently, I tried to venture into learning piano which was something that I always wanted to do and didnt pursue, for no apparent reason. My wife Shoba presented me with a piano for my last birthday and thus triggered me to cherish my favourite interest. As a general principle, I think all of us should pursue our interests without just "thinking" about it. There is no "good time" than "now"...

It is interesting to see how immensely complex things in nature have a simplified underlying element. Same is true with music. There are only 7 tones with different octaves and apparently any music can be explained using just those. It is like a language, only played through fingers...

Music is interesting... If you think about it, nobody taught you about how to hum a music, whereas you really learn languages all through your school and still it takes a lot of time to represent our thoughts (atleast me...)... It is an inherent ability to reproduce the sound that you hear with the same connotations without having to learn...think about it....

It is simply amazing how great composers like mozart, bach and beethoven could visualise all the musical instruments in mind and write notes for the everlasting symphonies that still lives in our minds. In order to appreciate classical music, I would recommend you to do this. When you hear a classical music next time, try to differentiate the different instruments involved in it. On top of it, think about the composer who should have visualised the entire music played by all those instruments even before it was played. Having thought about the imaginations and complexities involved in writing symphonies, I think of great composers to be some of the smartest people in their own accord. Whether my effort to learn piano will be fruitful or not, is another topic for discussion..:).. But, I am sure the whole experience has opened up my eye to a whole new world.

I like to learn new stuffs. Even a delta-improvement from zero on a stuff that you have never learnt makes your incremental knowledge in the topic to be infinite. Who wouldnt want to make an infinite leap of achievement with just a delta improvement in learning something new. It is all about visualisation....

Nourished n Cherished(1) - Intriguing observations

Things I like to read vary from time to time, but all that I remember for long time has one underlying quality, it should evoke a feeling, "Ah Aha, why did I not read this before or why did nobody write this till now?".

For that same reason, I loved the very first article on this blog.

In similar vien (not similar content :)), here are some other observerations whichI missed or thought insignifcant to discuss till I read/heard about them.

What are those string like (RNA/DNA like for biologist among us) you see very close to your eyes (esp. during day time)?

For long period I thought it is just me who is seeing this and not everyone and it is not even worth talking about. When I read it is caused by liquid in our eye more than anything, I felt like that the author (in this case, Sujatha) knows exactly how I think and that gave me a sense of being among a group of similar people.
(I am sure more scientific details are easy to find with google and howstuff works etc)

Why do I get lint in my navel?

I am not sure whether this happens only for guys. I know.. I know you don't want to hear more :)

Again, I kept wondering but never tried to explore or discuss. Writer Sujatha again came to rescue. In one of his musings in Anandha vikatan, he mentioned that he also wondered and found that it is collected from our cloths similar to what happens in dryer.

Well, now I am not alone, am I?

Deja Vu

I read/heard this word for long time but understood the real meaning only few years back. Ever since I understood, this word has a magical quality. What a wonderful way to express that sense of seeing same thing again in just one word (or is it two in French too?)

Think about how many times in our life we found exactly similar thing happening again. And when we try to predict what is going to happen next, it is always wrong.

Matrix gave a good visulaization effect for Deja Vu (where the cat comes again due to matrix glitch)

Well that is all for now.

Elevated Insights

I guess this happens to most of us who get to ride in elevators atleast twice a day. Its a statistical problem and no one seems to understand it and it is always a battle between being nice and doing the right thing. If I get into an elevator to reach the 4th floor (my company has only 4 floors), I would like to have the least amount of people travelling with me. The more people there are in the elevator, the more probability that it should stop at more than 1 floor. So, when the elevator is about to take off, and there is someone coming towards the elevator from a distance, I usually dont care about stopping to pick them up. It is not just the waiting time for them to get into the elevator, but, there is also an additional 2/3 probability for them to get into one of the other floors than the one where I am heading. Consider the plight when the number of floors become too large. The ride time in the elevator grows with every new passenger. If there are fewer elevators, then you dont have a choice, especially in very high rised buildings. But, if there are ample elevators, why not just go ahead without waiting for the other person to join. Its going to be what, a few seconds before they get their next ride. One could argue that I would have the same impact admitting them. But then, the window of new comers to elevator increases, which invariably would end up with me having to wait for some more. I have consistently seen people displaying a major act of kindness and caring when it comes to picking one more person up on the elevator. I just dont understand it.

If the above paragraph is about going up the elevator, this is about coming down. The same statistical theory applies here as well. On top of it, there is a new problem now. In my office, on the exit path from the elevators, there are 2 hard glass doors and they are quite difficult to open on a windy day. One has to come out of the elevator and the first door leads to the lobby and the second door leads you out of the building. When I travel alone on the elevator, things are just normal.. so to say. Whenever I have someone else travelling with me, I always end up with this big confusion, which I havent resolved yet. When the elevator stops and dings you to get out of it, I wonder if I should be the person to exit first or let the other person out. If I get out first, it might seem a little rude at the beginning, but then, I end up opening the other 2 doors for the other person(s) and bag myself with a couple of "thank you"s. If I wait and let the other person go, then, they have to do the same to me and I will be obliged to say couple of half-hearted and half-pronounced "thank you"s. My challenge lies in looking at the person and deciding quickly if I am going to go first or let them go out first. Sometimes, though I decide to go first, especially, if the other person looks a little weak, the other person gets out first, sort of forcibly. I smile to myself and then wait for them to open the doors for me...:)... Interestingly enough, in both cases, if the other person is hot, it somehow seems to override all the rules of rationality and only caring and kindness remain...

PS: For those of you interested in the math behind the observation:

Time Risk (to reach floor n at floor 0) = Start Time + (P1+P2+....PJ)*((n-1)/n)*(UL_TIME) + (P1+P2+...PJ-1)*(n-2)/(n-1)*(UL_TIME) + .....+ (P1+P2...PJ-n-1)*(UL_TIME)

(Not adding any wait-times to show caring and kindness)

UL_TIME = Unload and Load Time, J=number of passengers, n = number of floors to travel

A recent question to me in an interview – what stresses me? In my mind, I was framing my own question. Are you serious, do you have 2 days to spare? It takes me almost a day to figure out where to start, unless, of course I get stressed about thinking, then it takes a little while longer…

Sometimes, everything stresses me and sometimes strangely nothing does. As I was driving, I tried to analyze what stressed me most. I realized, that mostly, it is people who talk too much, without really achieving any communication.

Top on this list are people who are so engrossed in their monologue and prey good listeners, and never for a minute stop to wonder if the audience is the least bit interested in the topic. When people engage in these talk-athons that seem to last for ever, I am overwhelmed with the minutest of details in a subject I have absolutely no interest in. The feeling I must bottle in to keep myself from crying out aloud is almost enough to drive me over the edge.

A close second - the newsreaders in CNN and Fox channels who feel we find their own personal lives immensely interesting. Not to mention their opinions on each subject matter they are paid to only announce. I could care less how warm or cold they felt when the woke up that morning how the rising gas prices affected them personally. However, they don’t care that I don’t care! Their job satisfaction seems to lie in publishing their views and opinions and trivial matters that satisfy no goal. Will somebody ever stop them?

Next I thought of the ways I could relieve my stress, apart from disabling the source of the unwanted noise. And I strongly recommend the following the 2-step technique for people like me. The first step involves going away into your room and banging the door behind you. Then you pick a 3-ply Kleenex. Now without tearing the individual ply, separate the three individual layers. You can also do this with many candy wrappers that usually have 2 layers of paper in them. There is a glow of satisfaction that you haven’t experienced before and it totally takes you away from your current concerns….

I AGREE

I was registering online yesterday for my 401K plan, when there popped up this document of about 5 pages asking for my compliance with their privacy statements. I was given an option of either to "Accept" or "Not Accept" .Hmmm...time to start thinking "Do I accept or not accept?". Well..ahem, actually, I didn't have a choice, I clicked "I Accept". Tell me, frankly, have you ever read any of these documents where you mostly "Agree" to whatever they write. I think it would be apt to have buttons saying " I read it and Agree" , " I didnot read it but hey! I trust you" ," I read it and disagree" , " I dont have the time and I dont care" ,"I cannot read more than one page", " I didnot read it but still Agree" .
I dont know how these guys come up with such huge documents . For example, lets assume it is an airline , the guy preparing the compliance doc goes,"Hey, Bob!! What happens if the flight gets cancelled at the last moment? Do we give the money back to the passenger?"
Bob - "Nah!! Ofcourse not ! Just add it in the compliance doc.They all agree to it anyway".
Or if Bob had been working in some software firm,it would have been" Just add the statement that we have the right to send them updates and hog their memory ".
For me , my perusal of such documents goes like this,"first line....blah,blah...last line"
I accept or Agree depending on the first and last line. No..who am I fooling? I always AGREE.
Hey! I want to install the software now !! Its a no brainer. We always AGREE.
Next time, when you read such a document, think about it guys!!. We have a choice to DISAGREE as well..

Income Tax

I wanted to take a shot at an orthogonal topic where I recently did some reading on.. We always wonder about the jargons used in filing taxes. Every year, though I replenish some information that I need to know about taxes, I forget it faithfully the next year. This blog is an attempt to capture some of the information that I learnt. Hopefully, it will be helpful, atleast to me...:)

Most of what I talk about in this blog is extracted from the IRS document http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p17.pdf for those who are excited about reading more on taxes. Also, for the most part, I am assuming a simple case (either single or married and filing jointly). So, dont expect advanced technical information. This is just a very simple tutorial to understand the basic terminologies.

I will start with the basic equation. You pay tax on the income that you earned...a no brainer..:).. You can choose to Deduct portions of the income if you spent it on certain qualified expenses. This is called the Itemized Deduction. By default, the government gives you a standard amount that you can deduct for which you dont have to pay tax. That, my friend, is the standard deduction. Clear so far...

Tax = (Income - Deductions)*Tax Rate [Tax Rate % determined by tax bracket]

Income ==> Salary, Stock Options, Employee Stock Purchase Plan etc.,

Deductions ==> Standard Deductions OR Itemized Deductions

Standard Deductions => $4850 for single and $9700 for married filing jointly

Itemized Deductions => Medical & Dental Expenses, Home Mortgage Interest Expense, Home Mortgage Points, Charitable Contributions, Casuality, Theft & Disaster Losses, Business Entertainment/Travel/Car/Use of Home expenses, Educational Expenses, 401k/IRA contributions, Property Tax.

I hope the equation is very clear now. You can only claim standard OR itemized deduction and not both. You will claim one vs other based on which one is higher...obviously... As you can see from the data above, if your itemized deductions is lesser than $9700 (mfj)/$4850 (single), you will choose to file standard deductions. With turbo tax software, you dont have to make a decision in the above cases.

The next immediate question is how much of itemized deductions can I claim. Right now, the IRS has limits on each items categorized under itemized deductions. But, they dont have a single number for the entire category. However, since wealthy people made use of the loopholes in itemizing more to claim more money from being taxed, there comes the rule of AMT (Alternate Minimum Tax).

AMT is very simple to understand. If you earn more than $58000 (joint filers)/ $40250 (single), then for every extra dollar of income, the tax rate is 26% for first $175,000 and 28% on the excess (mfj). IRS picks the tax that you owe by taking the bigger of the 2 numbers (number computed with AMT and with standard/itemized deductions). This is to prevent people from claiming too much of itemized deductions. AMT does not have any deductions. However, AMT is not adjusted for inflation. As housing prices and property taxes go up by a bigger fraction than income and the average income also being high, more people get affected by AMT. Also, AMT considers buying stock-options from your employer to be a capital gain. If your employer gave you a bunch of stocks for $1 and while quitting the company, you chose to buy those options at the set price and if the current price then was $100, even if you dont really realise the gain by selling the stocks, the $99 of un-realized income is counted as a capital gain. There is a proposal to take out AMT from the equation in the future and constrain the itemized deductions (especially mortgage interest rates exemption).

That is all there is to know about taxes in general. The easiest ways of using up the itemized deductions are 401K/IRA contributions (since the return on those investments is also tax deferred) and companies usually pitch in an amount, mortgage interest rates and charitable contributions. Especially, since there are different tax brackets for different income, if you are close to getting into a higher bracket*, you might be better off by contributing more to 401K ($14000 annual limit) or to charity than keeping quiet.

Hopefully, you learnt something ...

Thats all folks !!


*TAX Bracket information:
Joint return Single taxpayer Tax Rate (%)
$0-$14,600 $0-$7,300 10.0
14,601-59,400 7,301-29,700 15.0
59,401-119,950 29,701-71,950 25.0
119,951-182,800 71,951-150,150 28.0
182,801-326,450 150,151-326,450 33.0
326,451 and up 326,451 and up 35.0

Random Thought...

Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle states that you cannot find the velocity and position of the electron at the same time. This would, in a more abstract sense, mean that you cannot unroll time to a point and exactly predict what would happen next or what exactly happened in the past. One can only make a probabilistic guess. If we can accurately predict it, then we would be able to predict the entire sequence of events that would follow, in terms of which atom would combine and form which element and so on, to evolution of life forms and humans, all the way till our present being and future outcomes.

It is interesting to note that, given that the entire universe follows a random path. We still dont know how to create randomness quantitatively. Every random generator humanly created has a regular sequence and thus not really "random" (pseudo-random) while the entire universe is random... I read in a book recently that psychiatrists cannot analyse themselves. The reason being analysing ones own self is similar to making one's own brain to think about itself. A function calling itself...recursion. Unless there is no termination case, it will go on for ever without arriving at a decision, which is logical as well. So, may be creating randomness is a similar issue ?

'bu-g&r'

Wondering what this is ? According to Mariam Webster, this is how we are supposed to pronounce "booger" . Want to know the definition -- "a piece of dried nasal mucus". I have always been intrigued by this little piece of dried mucus(for a lack of better word) ...hmm..actually, sometimes it is a piece of wet mucus as well, maybe then we should call it wet booger as technically it is meant to be dry.
It has helped me through many moments in my life. As a child, when I was crying really bad after getting a strong beating from mom, just licking a bit of my booger( though it was the wet kind then) had soothed me more than the words of my sisters trying to console me. Slowly, it changed into the dry variety as I started growing up. Ha! At school, it has helped me in taking revenge against my harassers by rubbing just a little bit of my booger on their desks , notebooks, bags etc.
I think its the same for everyone. Just think about it. When you are in deep thinking, have you noticed how your hand involuntarily takes a bit of booger and starts rubbing it slowly or vigorously( depends on what you are thinking). Though you might be ashamed to admit it, it is soothing and helps in your thinking process . It gives a good exercise for your fingers too.. That is the only time you will ever rub your fingers ( I mean the thumb and the forefinger) , though there might be people who might involve all their fingers, just for making it even .
Next time when you are waiting at a traffic light, just look across at all the other cars, you will notice atleast one person seriously digging into their nose trying to take out every last bit of booger out. Maybe, it somehow helps in driving safe too.
Its just that when you are in a car, you think u r alone and no one is watching you.
Well, thats a topic for another discussion.
Its a pity that we are all ashamed and afraid of getting noticed for taking out and playing with our boogers.I think we should be proud of something that we can call our own and which serves so many purposes....Go BOOGERS !!

Hmmm... Here I am sitting in front of my computer trying to put my
grey cells to work , wondering how to start a blog, when the rationale
behind the whole blog thing stuck me.Yep !!I dont need to think too much for writing a blog. And that is something I can do.... Wow!! not thinking
is something so nice and relaxing. Actually, thinking about "not thinking",
I think that I can "not think" very well. Time to start posting blogs.