The World Post Steve J.

I am too small a person to comment on SteveJ in any way, but I am big enough to comment on the world post his departure.

-- Some souls felt that changing their profile pics to SteveJ's would make them as great and awesome as him and would enable them to exhibit to the world how much their lives are influenced by him. Some are even considering fathering a child before marriage and making a spiritual trip to India. (I've booked tickets .. but for other reasons).

-- Poloneck makers' stocks sank to 52-week lows. 

-- God's inbox got inundated with requests for pancreatic cancer by apple fanboys. The reason they offered: "Although we keep pasting snippets from his speeches and videos endlessly, it's impossible to live those snippets. Yes we are only big noise-makers, but we want to die, the way he did" (and relieve the Social Network sites of noise pollution).

-- His death served as a good cover-up for the horrible iPhone-almost-5-but-4S and boosted sales. (Out of the fear that iPhone 5 might actually be worse, with Tim Cook in charge as chef).

-- Stories of him denying fatherhood to his first child suddenly became a "yeah whatever".

-- Every CEO thought they'd lost a mentor (or at least said so), who kept giving them a mouthful from time to time.

-- A few more people from developing nations now know about Apple. Although they may never get a bite of it ... 

-- Suddenly Richard Stallman (and Open Source) is a villain.

-- I shaved on Saturday as usual. No change there. I'm told Steve shaved on Saturdays too, irrespective of when the product-launches were.

Unforgivable - How BS can a life be!

Its the first day of Paryushan, the Jain festival of forgiving and I haven't been able to forgive myself since lunch!

I went to the food-court, that I usually go to, to satiate hunger and indulge my taste buds. They did not have anything exciting on the menu and apparently the queue wasn't worth the wait. So I hopped out and went to Subway for a foot-long. There was a lady ahead of me, who was customizing her 2 sandwiches with great care and patience, inquiring about the bread types and available cheese flavors, then mulling over whether or not to include Avocados. I was growing impatient, owing to hunger and owing to something that I wanted to quickly try out, once in office. 

Several thoughts passes my mind, including ones about obesity in this part of the world when the lady ordered extra cheese and also thoughts about how relaxed people here are, with no consideration for how long the queue behind them is. Finally, she was done with her endlessly customized sub. And consequently me too. I felt relaxed that I finally had lunch in my hand.

I left the shop, after her, and saw something that made me feel terrible about myself. She gave away the sub to a street side beggar outside Subway (Yes, we have beggars here, post recession). Here I was thinking about obesity and other stupid, irrelevant details. And she displayed qualities of a true humanitarian, selfless being. She put efforts in setting up the sub, much more efforts than I, ever, put in for setting up mine.

That moment completely shattered all the perceptions I had about myself. I hold a good position with a reputed employer in the beautiful state of California, which I was proud of.  But the truth is that I am just another human being, selfish, materialistic and indifferent to people starving and dying. What I hold is of no use to anyone else and probably not even me. I can forgive people, but there is no way I am going to be able to forgive myself and there is no reason why I should, unless I perform some deeds of benevolence with a kind heart. I hope this realization proves to be the first step towards doing what really needs to be done.

I needed a wake up call. I got one.

Timed Out

"Timed out" in the internet world means that your browser gave up on trying to connect to the shady web-site you requested. (I can already hear the  .. "it happened to me" murmurs ..and .. hands down please). Your favorite pink browser doesn't want you to be a moron staring at the screen endlessly. Also it doesn't really care about how desperate you are ... or probably it does ... and this is for your own good karma, that the browser is tracking, along with cookies.

But anyway, if the browser is intelligent enough to save its own and your time, why can't you be? Umm ... because we have an ego that the browser doesn't. Umm .. because mum told us when we were young, that we should persevere and never give up and then be a failure and then try to learn from that failure and then build hopes of success. Non-sense. Your time is not unlimited. You will be timed out too.

And before that happens, you want to save as much time, as possible, by avoiding working on things that are not going to work out anyway. But how do we know, without trying endlessly? Lets assume probably they would work out, but the amount of time required would make them unfeasible. We need timers. We need to time out our attempts. And we already do it in our small little way.

We have this thing called the alarm-clock, or a smart-phone with an inbuilt alarm functionality, with the ability to choose from various melodious tones, that wake us up from our Penelope Cruz (replace with your favorite chick) dreams. Timed out. Call someone and after 4 or so rings, if still unanswered, you reach her voice-mailbox. Timed out. So the point is, try and then try more, but set a deadline and discontinue once it is past that.

Lets say, you want to woo this girl, who you think, won't even give you a tiny rat's ass. Try pushing the envelope down her throat (deep). Maybe like 3 times. And if that doesn't work, cheat yourself and increase the deadline to 5 times and push harder. And if that doesn't work either then visit this post again and don't forget to set a limit on how many times you visit this post. Move on!

On a serious note, surprisingly, such timing out strategies work really well with stocks and other such instruments. I don't know why, but there is data that proves that such strategies are better than any other such.

(Please don't try this at home). Starting a gig? Give yourself a fixed number of years to make it work. If it does, all good, if it doesn't, move on. Want to make kids? ... stop reading this post and go back to making kids.

Timed out!

To-Do

This isn't about one of those to-do lists, that is painfully boring, and from which I reluctantly try to check items off (laundry, shaving, groceries). This is an incredibly awesome to-do list.  One of the only kinds I have. And one that is all the more important than ever before. (If you expect having Vegas and the sins on the list, stop reading, grow up and get a life).

1) Run 10 miles in a go or 50 Surya-namaskars non-stop or bike 20 miles, each day.

2) Spend a month in country side NZ / India / Europe once a year (depending on how much money I have). Hiking, staring at the world from a mountain-top. And NO FB uploads!

3) Learn Sanskrit and get access to super-awesome, ancient philosophical books like the "Karma Grantha"

4) Make a 500% return in the stock markets in any 12 continuous months.

5) Give away a major chunk of that money to philanthropic causes. Mainly those dealing with hunger and disease.

6) Keep only a few clothes, a shelter and a laptop. Get rid of all other materials in life as much as possible.

7) Die peacefully, without disease, while praying or sleeping.

#1 is out of my guilt of not having biked in the last couple of months and also the fact that I'm aging.

#2 Have done this partly before in Rajasthan and Gujarat. It was bliss. Never had so much of peace.

#3 Started on this in my engineering days but gave up after a month or so. Bad time to begin, then.

#4 Have figured how to, and did a pilot, took 4 years of research. Actual target results will require some favorable winds. I can wait.

#5 Did this for 2 years in the past, but limited to 10%. Don't know why I stopped. I'm stupid.

#6 Living this already \m/ (well almost).

#7 Haven't quite tried doing this before. Maybe Life can share this item on its own to-do list for me :)

Simple list. Additions allowed. Subtractions aren't! Suggestions, criticism welcome. With some effort I'll make the top 6 possible, my 2 cents :P. And have my fingers crossed for #7.

I'm a very enthu rat-race participant and might forget about this altogether, come Monday. But we'll see.

The *REAL* Disease

When faced with symptoms, never seen before, there is a natural tendency to try and cure the symptom rather than going into the pains of finding and treating the REAL disease. There is one such disease, which has produced numerous social symptoms over the past decades. But dumb-asses back in India are busy treating the symptoms. Good news is that the disease and cure are known, the co-relation with symptoms isn't!

Symptom - Corruption (at grass root levels, not national level).

Ongoing treatment - Rallies, bills for stricter laws, lectures about India's cultural heritage, general grumbling about the nation being dishonest.

Disease - Population. Excess population causes low-per-capita, makes people poorer. They can't even satisfy their basic needs. Policemen are forced into accepting bribes. Everyone needs enough of food, clothing and shelter.

Symptom - Crime rate growth. Indifference to everyday killing and death.

Ongoing treatment - None. (Knock on all doors only when its related to you).

Disease - Population. Laws in economics clearly state that the thing that is in excess supply, loses value. Excess supply of human beings reduces the value of human life. That is why people in IT in India get paid 1/15 of what they get paid in USA (adjusted for the crazy work hours).

Symptom - Parental pressure.

Ongoing treatment - Awareness through innovative concepts in schools. Public lectures by psychologists and blogs and presentations by people who have a lot of money and just want to shit (read "lessons") to prove their value and how they made it "big".

Disease - Population. There are just too many kids and too few opportunities. Parents don't want their kids to lose out. No parent can imagine their kid dying of hunger. Becoming a cricketer is difficult. Lets all become engineers. Tired of seeing shit engineers everywhere, who don't even have the balls to write their own code. But they're innocent, I'll blame it on population.

Symptom - Inflation

Ongoing treatment - increase in interest rates, thereby stunting growth and forcing poverty anyway. So inflation or no inflation, thou shallst be poor.

Disease - Population. When the hungry middle-class gains buying power, they shop like crazy, thus shooting up prices and making themselves poorer, even with their new high incomes.

Symptom - Brain-drain
Treatment - Cribbing about it, sitting back in India. Organizing debates.
Disease - Population. Most want to leave for the less populated, more per-capita nations. It's just that it is easier for those with qualifications!. And stupid people think, those with brains are migrating. There is no such thing as "brain-drain". It's just a "we-have-a-visa-drain".

Symptom - Population. (This recursive thingie is my personal fav).

Ongoing treatment - none.

Disease - No prizes for guesses. The growing population, "invented" technology to make their lives comfortable and increased life expectancy, thus unknowingly screwing themselves on the deal. Less people are dying!

In theory, I could write a fat book on symptoms and then be categorized as a moron, since I'd digress from the disease. So lets stick to the disease. Population. A lot of people, my age, are getting married. My only request would be:

1) Don't make love. But again, that's against evolution.

2) Don't make kids. But again, that's against social pressures.

3) Have just 1 kid. Chhota parivar sukhi parivar.

To people from past generations: You screwed our lives! Stop reading this blog and spread the word.

Happiness Density

In my efforts to sum up what happiness and happy people are like, I figured this nice concept, which could come pretty close to defining happy people. I call it the "Happiness Density".

It is "The number of times you laugh or smile over a period DIVIDED BY the number of days in that period".

Laughter or smiling has been considered because, that is the time, I think, when you are fully happy. When you laugh, you just really only laugh, physically and mentally. And that immediately creates a memory. The days which are most memorable are, mostly, the days when you laughed or smiled A LOT, be it with friends, family or some other occasion involving philanthropy, benevolence etc.

People cherish memories of their college days, probably, because of the same reason. The Happiness Density is very high over that period! So the whole point is to maximize the density. And some ways of doing that could be staying close to students, producing and raising kids, having a bunch of closely-knit friends and family.

And just in case you've forgotten what laughing is, watch this high density video :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3r61hlyyto&feature=related

Horizon

Imagine yourself on a serene beach, walking, setting feet gently over soft sand, as the breeze plays around you. You are totally enjoying the moment, with your mind at a perfect equilibrium. Could anything be better than what it is now? Perhaps, not.

You stroll for a while, listening to the waves, looking at the skies, with a smile on your face. Then you set sight on the colorful and calm horizon far away. You think, if this is so good, then the place where the horizon is, must be even more beautiful. You start staring at the horizon, with a desire to be at the horizon, slowly building up. And, even before you realize, your mind is completely clouded with an intense desire to set foot on the horizon. You are no longer "in the moment". You start packing, setup sails and set out for your horizon-dream.

You go through the journey, not with the same pleasure, but an impatience to reach the horizon. After a while you get pretty far off from the beach and are completely convinced that you are at the horizon. Or are you? You can still see a horizon from where you are and this is the point where total confusion comes into being!

Am I really at the horizon? Is the horizon still far away? Is it within my reach? Should I embark upon another journey to the true horizon? But what if a similar thing happens when I try to reach there? Does a place called horizon even exist? Should I just go back to my beautiful beach and forget about the horizon? But what about the pains I've taken to reach here? so on and so forth .... a list of endless questions, which only you have an answer to!

At this point some people carry on with their journey to the non-existent "perfect horizon". Some get back to where they came from, with a joy greater than reaching the horizon and some blog about this whole thing, still in confusion.