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In office it's not rare to come across cubicles which are filled with family photos. Some of these pics are quite personal as well. All the hugging and cuddling. Wearing same coloured t-shirts on honeymoons, rowing a boat which can capsize any moment while you are trying to hold the oars in one hand, your wife in the other! I've never quite got the thought process that goes behind this kind of photo posting.

Is this the best way of making people uncomfortable and leave quickly when they're in your cubicle? Why not use the traditional way of just being rude!

If that isn't the reason then surely it's some kind of constant reminder that you have a family else who knows it might slip off your mind during work hours. So in a way it prevents you from doing something which... well you shouldn't be doing!

Recently I heard about a certain someone having posted her honeymoon pics on her Orkut profile. Someone else had posted "posed" couple pics on Orkut after his engagement. I don't know what to say... What a sad attempt to show that you're in love!! Yawn... Do they really think anyone cares! Such snaps are nothing more than the butt of every joke during reunions and phone calls.

There is only one thing that can be worse than seeing these special moments frozen on the 4x6 glossy paper - having to see these things... Live!

I feel like screaming out, "Please for heaven's sake... Leave the schmoopy-schmoochy, pinkoo-dinkoo and all the completely non-sensical baby-talk and this erotic show of caressing, kissing, touching, fiddling in your bloody bedroom. Don't behave as if you're Adam and Eve and there is no one around to see this freak show other than the trees in paradise!!"

Is this some testament to the fact that you're a happy couple?

I'm not a moral police. I don't have any complaints against those sitting on the Bandra BandStand under umbrellas and doing what pleases them. That's like a nationally recognized adda for doing stuff you can't do in your home because of whatever reasons. People know what to expect at such places. They have been fore-warned. But if they still pay no heed to the warning and end up witnessing such things then it's their fault. That case is significantly different from the one I'm focusing on.

It's those who are in this "excited" state all the time and choose to misbehave in public. They cause considerable mental anguish to innocent by-standers, at least expected places like restaurants, coffee shops, lectures, office, phone booths, public transports etc.

I sincerely believe that these miscreants should be recommended to psychiatric help. With the advance in modern medicine such abnormalities are curable. But till that happens I got just two words for them... "Getta room!"

Cheers!

The Long Shot

What are the odds that the size of the universe which is governed by a complex relation between several stars, planets and their gravitational and other forces would be of the size that it is now?

What are the odds that the Sun would be of the exact size and temperature in order to sustain life?

What are the odds that Earth would be at the precise distance so as to sustain life? And the odds of Earth lying within the band of distance which can actually keep water, an important component for life, at a liquid form?

Inspite of all the favourable planetary conditions and galatical settings it took 6 billion years for life to evolve. What about betting on the evolutionary cycle to be completed? Single-cell organisms... Multi-cellular... Fish... Amphibians... Reptiles... Dinosaurs... the meteorite blast... Mammals... Apes... Human...

Would you have even dreamt that Pan troglodytes would some day become Homo sapiens? That's Chimpanzees to Humans for the uninitiated.

Humans have now been in existence for thousands of years. But still what are the odds of two people meeting, mating and actually giving birth to a particular individual? The chances of even something as basic as this which happens everyday are more surprising than you can imagine.

For all that we know, God may actually exist! This may after all be a part of a major plan. The six-billion odd Earthlings may actually be just one piece of a huge jigsaw. I mean think about the entire cycle right from the formation of the universe to your own birth. It's not easy to attribute all these things to something like coincidence.

In the words of Agent K from MIB, "1500 years ago, Everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago, Everybody knew that the Earth was flat and 15 minutes ago, you knew that people were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll "know" tomorrow." So the existence of a divine power is a plausible possibility if we take into consideration the expanse of our knowledge and the set of coincidences that have led to our existence.

I can't seem to make up my mind which of the following has higher probability. Is life just a set of uncontrollable coincedences? (a scary thought) Or whether everything is happening as per a pre-set plan? (Also, a scary thought) Or is there a middle path (Being an optimist... I certainly hope so!)?

One thing I can say for sure... The probability of me dying is 1 but if I wasn't already born I would estimate the chances of my existence somewhere in the vicinity of zero. Long shot? Naah... Plain and simple lucky!

Cheers!

Clucked Clunked Clinked

It's been decided that the mechanical meters that have been donned by taxis and rickshaws since the time Nehru was the PM are to be phased out. I believe the main reason why the meters have not been replaced till now is quite basic and has a lot to do with human psychology.

When you sit in the taxi and the taxi driver extends his arm out of the window turns the meter thru 3 slots and brings it in the meter down position with that distinct clickud-clickud-clickud. That's what sets up the ride. That's when you feel... Oh yeah! I have hired this thing and now this machine runs as per my orders! It's just not the same when you have those push-button meters! You dont feel the same way. I'm saying this from personal experience.

Our life is almost filled with such instances where these weird and in most cases unnecessary mechanical sounds make us arrive at some seemingly logical conclusions to convince ourselves. Here's another example to prove my point!

ATMs. Have you noticed the sound that they make before they dispense the cash? Is that a really necessary thing? I mean... the modern day financial institutions have technology to transfer money from Bangalore to Glasgow via Brisbane in a matter of seconds and they cant make silent ATMs??

But it's again the thoughts that the person standing in front of the ATM has that have led to this in a way inefficient design. When the machine is making all those weird noises you just feel somoething is happening. The thud-thud-thud-thud noise goes a long way in convincing that now it's counting MY money! It just somehow makes you believe that you've got such a lot of money in your account that it actually takes time to count it.

Give me a break. What machine counts thud-thud-thud-thud.

But the banks have gone out of the way to think about their customers here. They dont want people standing in front of those machines like idiots & having some serious doubts about what is going on inside or is the machine even working. All the theatrics is like a big show that is put up especially for your entertainment and to ensure that you have that MY-money-takes-time-to-count feeling!

I wonder why this keyboard is creating such a racket. No complaints actually! It's really doing a good job of convincing those around that I'm doing some really important work... Hmmmm...

Cheers!

The Perfect Gift

What makes this entire gifting thing tough are the multiple aspects involved. A gift basically signifies to a person that you've invested time and thought to make the occasion special or that you're as happy in his achievement or... well you get the idea.

The value of any gift is overwhelmingly dependent on the nature of the relationship between gifter and giftee. It has to be a fine balance between something that shows how much you value a person, something that finds value/utility in his life and something that shows the material-value you're ready to spend for that person. It's very rare that people achieve this trinity!

So to make life simpler, we think of all the pseudo gifts. I believe pseudo gifts are something which say... I was so busy with my own life that I couldn't give enough thought to your gift so here I am gifting this 'thing' to you which is as useless to you as it would've been to me had anyone else given it to me!!

The favourite pseudo gift is a bouquet but for me they're really are a turn-off. Firstly, I'm not someone who really likes flowers, mainly because of the state in which they are the next day. So to prevent myself from being subjected to that dreadful sight I would rather prefer a dumb gift like a paperweight and this rule is applicable both ways!

I've been gifted in cash only by those close relatives who were incapable of connecting with me or understanding my choices or the reason behind them. So there are very few such relationships for which a cash gift is appropriate.

However, lot of time the attempt to hit the recipients’ preferences is so bad that it is likely that the gift will leave the recipient worse off than if he/she had made her own consumption choice with an equal amount of cash. Its not hard to guess that gift-giving actually destroys the value of gifts.

Gift certificates seem like a golden mean between avoiding a bad gift or a cash gift. They're in a way the perfect substitute for an item that you would've bought from that shop but I think they hold a hidden meaning. It's something like I wanted to give you something from that store but my budget was way too short of anything good. Besides, it wasn't really worth spending too much time thinking however instead of making you think I'm giving you cash, I've given you this gift certificate which would attribute the store brand to my in other ways empty gift! Not surprisingly most gift certificates go unused.

Ideally, you’d want to gift something the giftee might like but doesn’t know about, or some kind of guilty pleasure that he wouldn’t buy for himself. In either case, you are creating value for the recipient by giving him something that is actually worth more to him than the money you spent on it.

I must confess I'm not that good at gifting but I do traverse the oft-travelled road of trial and error. Though, The Perfect Gift may still remain a hypothetical concept since I've never been-there-done-that, a conversation with a friend concerning gifting a XBox 360 made me realise that it does exists. Hmmmm... Xbox 360... What could be more perfect...

Cheers!

Game Theory & The Mumbai Floods!

Rains and the subsequent flooding in Mumbai has clearly started losing it's seriousness. Let's be realistic if something happens once in a few years or even once a year then it'll be a topic of some interest to read/write/solve. The flood like situation has now become a weekly thing. So doesn't evoke anything more than a 'ho-hum' reaction from those who don't experience it.

Things in the not-so-distant future are going to be so bad that people will be scared even to flush the toilets in their homes as it may flood the surrounding area. Then as usual instead of treating the disease, we'll be busy treating the symptoms. We may have a fixed time-schedule for toilet flushes depending on the area in which you live. If you're in the western suburbs then 5-6am. If in the central suburbs then 6-7am. But if you're in the town area, no regulations for you... since we already have an well-accepted electric load-shedding model to lead us by example!

A few centuries from now when then ruins of Mumbai would be excavated like Mohenjo-Daro and Harrapa, I'm sure areas like Milan subway, Sion, King's Circle etc would be classified as being part of rivers or oceans!

The jury would be out till the end of the world to determine the reasons for this entire scenario. But from my very basic understanding of the Mumbai landscape and some even more basic logic and science the answer is pretty clear. Complete lack of respect for ecology. Mumbai, with it's peninsular geography is very different from most cities and hence needs to be planned even more carefully. A complete overhauling needs to be undertaken instead of just tinkering around with some issues which hardly are going to make a difference or like in many cases they're going to worsen the situation.

The amount of immigration into Mumbai and the ever-increasing constructions are the reasons and it's practically a no-brainer to identify them. To solve the problem of inadequacy of residential property what do we do? Authorize more slums which double up as convenient vote banks & grant FSI without having second thoughts.

The slums, illegal encroachments etc may be the sin that is destroying Mumbai but the middle/upper middle class are no saints. If areas with infrastructure facilities built for 30 rooms of size 15'x15' are now forced to serve 60 storied towers with 250 apartments and 1000+ occupants, it's anyone's guess how things are going to shape up. The skyline of Central Mumbai which was once dotted by chimneys is now being replaced by 40+ storied towers. Areas like Kalbadevi, Tardeo etc are being adored with 60+ storied towers.

Where the hell is the infrastructure to support this kind of development? Where are these people getting water from? Where is their sewage being disposed off? Where are they getting electricity from? The solution is not to cut these basic necessities from villages/towns just to cover up for some pathetic planning and complete lack of vision and disrespect for nature.

Are the various reclamation projects which are eating into the Arabian Sea and the nearby creeks in harmony with the ecology? The water logging problems are a direct result of these activities. The water which earlier had many exit channels now is blocked with no way out. The irregularity of rainfall is something which is going to baffle the experts for years to come. Are the reasons for a shift from consistent, season-long rainfall to an erratic and concentrated-in-an-hour type of a quickie natural? I have no doubts about it in my mind but due to lack of any scientific explanation I'm not making any claims.

The emulation of high-rise buldings and other 'visible' attributes that characterise every other city in the world is useless untill efforts are made to emulate the 'invisible' attributes of those cities. Garbage disposal, sewage water treatment, electricity, fresh water, green spaces, rainfall arrestment... Do we have enough for the crores that live in Mumbai? I’m not anti-development but the fact of the matter remains that there are just two ways about it... Make the structure sufficient to carry the load or Cut down the load to a level which is sustainable. And this should be done across the cross section and not just unleashing the wrath on the 60%+ staying in slums and shanties!

Having disaster recovery centres, cleaning up nallas, Mithi river and other BMC theatrics is like going to McDonald's insisting for Diet Coke when you've already got a Extra Cheese burger in your tray.

This is a classic case of Game Theory. If everyone collectively sets aside their own interests or are ready to sacrifice a small part then it can result in a greater good for all involved. But then each one goes after the holy grail to keep it all for himself which ultimately results into no one getting anything!

We should really start distinguishing between luxuries and necessities from a long term and collective point of view. Why am I even writing all this? Even a catastrophe is not enough to wake us from our deep slumber because it's not possible to wake up someone whose pretending to be asleep!

Cheers!