Averaging it well

Our toilet doors need a bit of sound proofing as one can hear too much. This morning one could hear people counting, I guess everyone is interested in knowing their average......

Tke Kokkum race

The summer vacation that ended quite abruptly a few weeks ago was enjoyed in so many ways that one could almost forget the debilitating heat and the meltdown inducing visits to the passport office. And still, in spite of all the joy I am increasingly becoming aware of the fact that slowly but surely I am getting sucked into the kokkum race, and unless I dig in my heels it will end just the same way it ended many years ago. I know, must explain in more detail. Another time.

Paarpatra ki kahani humari zubani

The business of reissue of my passport has become very much like a soap opera: lot of drama but the story doesn't move forward. And of course with every ongoing episode one gets the feeling that this is going to last the longest of times. The theme music is the background score of 'rahee manwa dukh kee chinta kyon statee hai dukh to apna sathee hai." 

Although at the moment it seems that the world is conspiring against us but there is this glimmer of hope that me and the reincarnation of my passport are going to reunite soon and sing 'tere mere sapne ab ek rang hain, ho jahan bhee le jayen rahen hum sang hain' with THE END.

The idea of fun

It was funny to see me being tagged in a picture in FB, involved in giving birthday-bums to one of my batchmates during my days as an undergrad. It was funny because it was so uncharacteristic of me. I am and have always been (at least that is what I thought until the picture appeared) so not into the concept of birthday-bums, in fact I am quite anti it and my reaction to such events has typically been to stay clear of people who find it fun. In turn I used to be easily impressed by people who did not want to join the party and could resist the idea of holding someone they like on their birthday by their fours and raising them in the air just to kick their butt. Uurrrghh...

The other concept of fun that I have always found a tad difficult to appreciate is laughing at someone who was not trying to be funny,  that too in their presence. I am amazed how people do it and how many do it!

Anyhow being such a dadi-amma types, who has never known how to have fun, has been great. Really it has been, for one, I have never been spoilt for choices for who I want to hang out with..... And of course as the age tends to near the dadi-amma age at a rapid rate, I can take solace in the fact that my behaviour can only approach the age-appropriate limit!

  

Auto-complete

This article made me try a few half filled searches to check google's auto-complete suggestions. The results are pretty interesting.

 I wonder how much these results is influenced by my geographical location, my personal tastes reflected in the searches I do and of course the collective psyche of google users. But, please note men in pink saree is not my idea of elegant dressing!

Anagram-fun

Did you know Leonardo da Vinci's Indian connection: his name is anagram of vindaloo and rice! I can't figure out though why I found it so funny.....

Life ka formula

I had a bit of a jolt last month when I had to visit the doctor after a week long dull headache. Thankfully the doctors didn't find anything serious but the fact that they thought that it was a stress headache and prescribed some stress-medication has caused much anguish and perhaps even more stress ever since. Who me? And that too now? I feel so sane, so content and so insanely happy, surely the internal stress meter had it got all wrong or perhaps not.

Just today, the theme of discussion in the class was fatigue in metals and how people over the years have tried to characterise it by identifying the key parameters and coming up with expressions which describe the experiments reasonably well. The key parameters were words we use in day-to-day life, like stress, strain, fatigue, endurance limit, life etc. etc.  As it was about time to wrap up the class I thought it was about time I did a dimensional analysis of life and arrive at the formula for stress in life that would be simple enough and yet captures the essential features of the phenomenon. So right after the class, on a sheet of paper some serious rocket science was done to identify the key parameters that affect the stress level, and I came up with these:

1. f: the fraction of ideal that meets one's approval. So if there is an ideal ice-cream. If one is happy with something that is just 10% of the ideal, f=0.1. If it takes only the ideal to satisfy, f=1.0. I feel as a kid one's f is usually low, and rapidly increases with age.
2. n: number of people one feel responsible for. It includes every one for whom one feels one can do something to improve their situation, be it immediate family, team members at workplace, or the person living in some part of the world who is dying of starvation while you are throwing away some food to empty the fridge.
3. m: the number of people who appreciate your efforts in general.
4. p: the level of details that your plans have in a scale of 0 to 10. The more you want to control the more you feel stressed.

 After some more rocket science, the final expression was narrowed down to

The more picky you are (high f), the more people you feel responsible for (high n), the more you want to control (high p) all lead to higher stress. And after all that if no one appreciates your efforts, no matter what you do the stress tends to infinity!  Ouch!

So does my formula work for you? What are your controlling parameters? Tell me and become part of m!

Keep it boxed

Little wary of perpetually-out-of-box thinkers, more often than not they sound like they are out of their mind.