What do you make out of this conversation?

Heres an incident narrated by someone which made a group of people laugh.

This guy was working in an old age home and he was talking about an 85 year old woman. She had an 88 year old husband and she was having an affair with an 84 year old man.


I know it sounds a mixture of cute and funny. And this is the fascinating similarity between old age and infancy. Things that seem totally inappropriate with adults are normal with superadults or toddlers. ITs like life gives you a second chance to just get away with things :)

The part that sucks is that you are not gauranteed to be taken care of as an 85 year old and so I dont know if i want to go there and take my second chance at being silly

Another reason why things are forgiven late in the stage of life is because with death nearing you, you tend to think more clearly about what is trivial and what is not. Importance of everything is relative. Compared to death a lot of other things are trivial. PErhaps you would behave in the same way with everyone if you knew the world was going to end in one year! You would see everything in perspective. Your job, the money you make, your relationships. I think people would live their life very differently if they knew their "expiry date" :)

Is the dumb ambitious person always paranoid?

Bill Gates once famously said "Only the paranoid survive" or something to that effect. I think i get the context of that statement. But the last couple of months has been a time when i am correlating paranoia and dumb+ ambition like never before.

Someone thinks you are scheming against him or her. Theres nothing real that has happened. But there is a suspicion from him that everyone is out to stop his promotion, the world wants to screw him. Theres paranoia from her that you are paying too much attention or ignoring her on purpose and so you are scheming against her (like you have all the time in the world to scheme against her).


I think the fear of the unknown essentially comes from the inability to process the known. Combine that with a strong ambition and you have the perfect recipe for paranoia.

PAranoid guy want to reach a particular point (ambition). He does not know how to reach it (dumb). And has faced failures constantly (cos he is basically not capable of achieving much) . So the only place to put the blame is the world. The world is bad and its always scheming against you.

Such a person may also becomes judgmental. Taking a decision based on information is something that everyone does. However the amount of information you can process and therefore the time you need to get that information and make that decision depends on how smart/dumb you are and how much you care about the decision.

So dont be surprised if you hear such a person saying "oh i saw him doing xyz, so he is definitely abc" And that opinion cannot change because there is an inability to process any more information than what is already there with this person.


So next time you see a paranoid person , give the benefit of doubt. Maybe hes just dumb and ambitious.

What was that about...?

When i came back home from work,i was wondering .. what exactly am i upto here? Was i actually scouting for a substitute to Jayesh since he was going back to India on oct 12? :)

Looks like I was. Well i never thought I would actively look out for guy friends the way i think i did. But admittedly, theres something about being able to go out with a guy (alone.. not with a girl) on hunting trip thats addictive and you begin missing it. Theres no outcome to the whole meaningless exercise except pure entertainment. Kind of like gambling in Las Vegas. The real idea there is to put some money and get a lot more, but what you generally end up doing is just spend a whole lot of time in a casino without anything real to do except just involve yourself in the meaningless activity of exhausting your cash at a burn rate such that it will make you maximize your time there. The idea here on a hunting trip is to practice your oratory skills with women of different varieties and accents (and quit during the moment of reckoning.. sort of like gambling in vegas.. do it for the sake of doing it.. but don't get involved)


So i called this guy out from work for the Wednesday "Drink for a cause" event. Hopefully he is a good Jayesh substitute and we become regular weekend "party like a rockstar" buddies

And so it begins again

Just my blogging career begins again :)

I was thinking about Twenty20 for this while. When India played Pak in the first game, i was convinced about one thing. Its a new game and the teams with natural talent will do well over teams with well thought out strategies. South Africa and Australia in that sense were clearly not the favorites here in that regard. And between SA and Australia i thought SA is likely to do better than Aus (I was wrong.. SA did worse)

So is an India Pakistan final really something surprising? The Aussies have not had any time to think about this game. They haven not worked out what is the best way to bowl, field and what is the best batting order. There seems to be some inefficiency in every victory.. the teams are not utilizing their batsmen completely. All losses have been with wickets to spare (like tonights loss of Australia to India). Very soon Australia will discover the optimal way , master it and in the next version they will blow everyone away.


A good point noted by Ponting (although it comes across as a whine) is that "There is luck involved mostly". Its true that a player who can produce brilliance in a short span will do well over an above average highly consistent player. I think as the format of the game becomes smaller, brilliance wins over consistency. We already see that difference between test cricket and ODIs. The difference is even more apparent in Twenty20


So... if its the team with more natural talent who wins, should it not be Pak who will win the Twenty20 world cup? I dont know. I think the only thing that will keep Pak away from winning is the fear of failure against India. Otherwise if they play without any fear (like Dhoni and his team will be doing) then they should win.

Personally, I'd rather see us losing to Pak than losing to Australia. So i am already happy here. If India bat first and get 160 on board then i am going to stick my neck out and say we win. Anything below 140 we lose. Between 140 and 160 is going to be the "exciting zone"

So..

.. i have officially given up on aloopyaaz for the time being. Everyone seems to be majorly pissed off at me as of now and i am just not a part of the Great San Franciscan Desi Social Structure. My network is.. as they famously say.. temporarily down. Not totally out I hope, but just down.

I feel like one of those Godfather movie characters that has just been ostracized from the Family because I was not a loyal Paisano. The lastest and the last straw in the coffin was apparently the fact that I went out for dinner on the night of friend's bday and reached home only 20 minutes before everyone else. A paisano has to be more involved in family .. sorry.. Family matters than that.

This is pretty much of a regular pattern with me since i started mingling with a typical desi group since my Ahmedabad days.

A mixed social group of desis is interesting. It has one or two queen bees (females) and a lot of drones (males). The drones hardly have any social activity with each other without the queen bees involved. Now there is one drone in the group of drones that is a rogue drone (me). He behaves more or less like the regular drone, but he is often open to having friends outside the group. Which is fine ... but this is what happens once in a while..

The rogue drone once in a while decides to go and make friends with a queen bee outside the group who is more or less isolated and an introvert. What happens next is interesting. The rogue drone decides to spend time with the other queen bee to an equal proportion and is not always avaliable for last minute plans for his old group. He often ends up taking "an extra step" to fulfill his social commitments in the two separate social groups that he has just formed and what the group sees is only the extra step taken for the "new friend".

The queen bee of the old group disapproves of this in a subtle manner and thinks of this as betrayal for the family.. er.. Family. This disapproval passes on to the drones subconciously, since the drones have a soft corner for the queen bee anyways and tend to agree with the queen bee for no fault of their own brains.

And then this whole ostracizing happens

The first time it happened to me was when I asked everyone about going to Mount Abu and only the new queen bee said "yes" and the old queen bee/queen bees said "well lets see". And when I went alone with her that came to be regarded as "you ditched us for her???? how could you Malad.. kitna bhagta hai ladki ke peeche?" and it manifested itself in the secret Goa trip in April which I was not informed about because I "always ditch"

The latest was the last minute withdrawal from my LA trip and going to Vegas (not with the new queen bee, but then these things are never logical). This is definitely seen in the same light as ditching the old group for the new queen bee.

But history says that all this gets sorted out quickly. So I am going to wait, watch and apologize to the Family

The FAmily structure will break down (as history proves) when the queen bee/queen bees find a mate either in the drones or outside. Like a real mate who is local and available. And then everything will be normal.

Remembered this oen for some reason..

Dates back to the placecom days in IIM A when every member except one used to be in placecom meetings.

Sing to the tune of "Rabba rabba rabba..."

Saara placecom meeting mein... tu akela.. jhumka jhumka jhumka jhumka..."

I guess the kind of work I am doing these days reminds me of the cold calls days in wimwi. The ego massaging, the sucking up, the rejections and the joy of breaking a deal. That is something I used to enjoy and that is something i enjoy even now.

Aha.. i am already nostalgic. I'd love to work with that group any day. Easily the most fun and the most professional group I have ever worked with.

And while we are on the topic..

.. heres Peter Griffins tips on attracting men.