A Fairly Good Catch

Another exception to the Friday night rule: was thinking of writing this yesterday, but ended up doing so today.

Everyone has their share of troubles and joys.  Everyone sees life differently, and the joys of one may be the sorrows of another.  This story is about the sorrows of one group of people, described as the joy of another.  The settings are slightly embroidered due to lack of memory, the underlying events and mindset of the protagonist are simply one set of possibilities among many others.

The protagonist must have his own share of sorrows, besides needing a glass of liquor and dealing with a nagging wife, but here, he only remembers those two for the most part.  The kids must have felt swindled, but to my knowledge, they went on with life, not really much affected by the experience in terms of how things went on in their lives, except perhaps for an unpleasant memory or two.  The driver of course, did not gain much either, it was a ‘fairly good catch’ perhaps, but it was perhaps all part of a routine of dealing with different customers and making the most out of it when you could.

One of the kids, me, remembered this recently, and felt like writing it down.  I wasn’t too sure of what I should write however.  I didn’t want to spend much time on it, but still, wanted to give it a go.  Needs editing, like most of the stuff I publish on this blog, and was written in a single shot, but here goes anyways.

A Fairly Good Catch

It was a fairly hot day, and as I stood by my rickshaw, waiting for customers, I saw a young group that looked somewhat lost.  There were four or five young lads, barely twenty, and definitely new to traveling.  Things looked interesting all of a sudden.

I needed some more money for my liqor, and the my wife’s nagging had been more annonying recently, so I wouldn’t mind making a bit of money.  If I was lucky, 30 or 40 extra rupees, and that would make me happy for a week.

I pedalled my rickshaw hurriedly towards them.  It was a fierce world, lag behind, and the competition got the kill.  Luckily, they looked like they were from Kathmandu, and had been leading fairly sheltered lives.  I spoke Nepali well, while my competition seemed to be mostly Maithali and Hindi speaking, so I had a better chance of landing the kill.  I put on my best smile, and hurried towards them.  “Raxaul janey ho dai?” I asked them if they wanted to go to Raxaul, the Indian side of the border.  I guessed they wanted to board some train to some city in India, and the ride to the train station was around 15-20 minutes by rickshaw.

They seemed nervous, and not sure of whether they should take a rickshaw or not.  One of them, a short man who looked like he was in his mid-twenties, said, lets take a rickshaw, “Pawan dai and the rest always took them”.  They seemed to debate a bit, with some arguments as to the tangas (bigger carts with horses pulling them) being possibly better, since everyone could fit on one.

I knew they would take my rickshaw.  They argued for a bit, and they did decide on the rickshaw, someone experienced had recommended it, and they seemed to think it was the right choice.

Some other rickshaws had already gathered around, and if they had wanted to, they could have traveled one on a rickshaw each.  They did not want to of course.

They broke up into two groups: a group of three sat on another rickshaw:  one person taking a half sitting-half standing position between the other two.  The group of two chose my rickshaw.  “Where do you want to go to?” I asked.

“Laxmipur bus-station” answered the taller of the two.  I started pedaling, the effects of the heat slightly diluted by the little alcohol I had had in the morning.  I hated my job, but it did give me something to go by, and I did not have much of a choice.  I was sizing up the bunch mentally, trying to figure out how much they knew about the area.  From what I had seen so far, a spark of excitement was lighting up in my brain.  Not only did they seem new, they did not seem to be too used to bargaining: most likely “Mama’s boys” who had just been out of their houses alone for the first time.

“Do you have any electronic equipment with you?” the taller one asked.  The other answered “No, but why?  Does it make a difference?  I’ve got a calculator, but I guess thats fine right?”

The taller one answered “I heard that they like to get money off anyone who is carrying electronics equipment at the border”.

“Customs tax?” the other one asked.  He obviously did not know much about the area.

“No, they take bribes, and I’ve heard they make you lay out all your luggage on the street to check sometimes”.

“But we are students, so I think they should understand, right?”

“Idealistically of course” I thought to myself, smiling at the naivete of the two.

The shorter one continued “Do you have any electronic equipment?”

“I’ve just got an emergency light, I guess that will not make much of a difference”.

and their conversation went on for a while, slightly apprehensive, slightly hopeful that nobody would harass them, till they decided to go silent.

I had of course, heard all that I wanted to.  We passed the border, where the customs officers behaved nicely to them.  I could feel their relief as the officers smiled and wished them luck.  My heart of course, was pounding faster.  I looked around for a familiar face in the crowd, and as I saw it, I nodded to him slightly.  He moved towards the gate of the building that had something with the word “thana”, which is jail in hindi, written in it.

He made the motion of beckoning to me, and I drove my rickshaw to where he was.  A well played out dialogue ensued “Open the seats of your rickshaw, I’m going to put you all in jail”.

Two bewildered faces looked at him, then me, then each other.  I could imagine that they must be quite frightened at the moment.  They did not even try to question why someone not wearing uniform was commanding them, they simply tried to defend themselves.

“But sir, we have nothing with us, we are students going to study engineering”.  One of them said.

The good part began.  Of course they had nothing.  The point was that they did not: they were in a place where they did not know the customs, and they had heard of, but did not know the details of, local rules that superseded government rules: rules that helped feed an ecosystem built out of fear, corruption, and greed.  It was all a game, and all that was needed was to hitch on to something that would make them afraid, then cash their fear into money.

The electronic light came out, in words, an admission of the only thing they feared might not be allowed.  Then, the cashing began.  Give me a hundred bucks, and I’ll let you go on your way.

Bewildered faces looking at each other again: it seems they did not carry that much money on them.  The ‘agent’ of course, would not hear of it.  Eventually, all the cash they had in their pockets, which amounted to around 60 Indian Rupees, was all emptied out, and we set out again.

After another 10 minutes of riding, we reached the bus station.  Their friends of course, had already reached the place, and were waiting.  “How much did you pay them?”  One of them asked.

10 rupees was standard.  I of course, had different plans.  “I’m a Nepali too, and you paid those Indian rickshaw drivers that much.  I carried so much in the heat, and still, you are giving me just 10?”  Emotions can be cashed too, as can nationality.  Even if you did something wrong, if you don’t admit it, and claim you helped someone out, that can be cashed too.  I played out my cards, making sure to play on the well-sheltered strings of self-righteousness and emotional sensitivity within them.

The protest came, as was natural.  I did get 5 rupees extra of course, and as I joined the other rickshaw drivers to wait for arriving customers, I started calculating: 25 rupees from the ‘policeman’, 5 rupees from the boys, and the 10 rupees I was supposed to get anyways.  Today perhaps, was going to be a lucky day.  I looked forward to drinking today, and when my wife nagged at me, I would have that extra bit of self-respect as the breadwinner of the house.  I hoped that it would be a good day indeed.

Dreams

A few years ago, a colleague at work recommended a book called The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho to me.  He had been very impressed with the book, and thought I would enjoy it too.

I am generally skeptical of claims that I will enjoy a book, a movie, or anything else.  If its that good, I should be interested just by hearing about it, without someone saying that I’ll like it.  Further, the more people say something is good, for some reason, I tend to grow more skeptical and to avoid the object of recommendation (unless the recommendations come from someone who’s already recommended good stuff to me before).

However, that day, I was in a mood to be distracted, and when I got back home, I decided to go through the first few pages.  I’d been told the book was about a boy who dreamt of buried treasure in a far away land, and who eventually set off to find it.  It definitely had not sounded too interesting to me.

As I went through the first few pages, I surprisingly found myself drawn into the story.  It was a simple story about a shepherd who loved his sheep and a local girl, and who had dreams that kept repeating.  He went off to find the treasure he dreamt of, and eventually did, and found himself in the process.  Before I knew it, within the next few hours, I had finished the book, and I was a changed man.

Perhaps I exaggerate.  But then again, perhaps not.  There had been a decision I had been mulling over for a long time, and while reading the book, the message I got was that chasing a treasure that might not even exist is sometimes good for its own sake, even if you might have better options in hand.  That was just what the books message was—not a pushy kind of message that said “I am right, and you must believe me”, but just a simple message that said– “here is a make-believe story about a boy who decided to follow his dreams”.

The boy finds another treasure, and in the process of looking for the treasure, he finds himself and a happy life, perhaps the greatest treasure of all.

Which brings me to my question: are our dreams worth chasing after?  All of us must have dreamt of becoming millionaires or the president or something else equally fantastic as young children.  As we grew older, our dreams must have gotten toned down, becoming somewhat more practical in their reach.  Eventually, we might have reached a stage where we might have forgotten what our dreams were, or if we ever had any.

Childhood dreams, just like the dreams we have at night—if we don’t hold on to them, we forget they ever existed.  The thing I sometimes wonder about, and the question I want to raise to you today is: for those of us who choose to chase our dreams and for those of us who choose not to, what difference do you think it has made in your life: whether you chose to follow your dreams, or to follow what circumstances dictated—in the end, does it make any difference at all?

I think it does make a difference, but then, what is your opinion ?

Note:  I think this topic is too complicated to be the topic of a cursory blog-post, but since I didn’t have much else to write about at the moment, and this thought fleeted through my mind, I thought it was interesting enough to spend a few moments on:).

Tweeports

First off, I start with an apology. I need to put in some time to get back on track with the Bathroom Singer story, so it is suspended for now. I promise not to write to-be-continued posts without a better plan from next time.

Now on to the main topic. It is nothing but an idea this week. And a bit of an autobiography.

Weekly work reports were not my favorite tasks at work, especially when I was under a lot of work-load. I would have to compile all the tasks I had done in the week, the progress of each, what I expected to achieve, and what-not.

I could have conversations with my supervisor, but they would not be documented, and hence not ‘official’ in case of an unexpected emergency. I could send emails and call them documentation and proof of my work, but not all work would be email-able, and emails only outline the process, not the actual specifics of why I had to spend so much time on this or that. I could write detailed documentation, but that would be… too detailed.. worse than my weekly reports.

And now, thanks to twitter, I think I have found a solution (if only this culture actually caught on ).

We could use ‘tweeports’. A company could host their own internal microblogging service (similar to twitter, see http://identi.ca/ for one example).  And trust me, it should not be hard, to any system-administrator who has done email server administration.

A supervisor and his underlings, as well as relevant people, would be ‘following’ each other, as well as some of the company notification accounts.  They would not have to go about composing emails for every small task to be done (think: @boss @webmaster #s1reboot I need to reboot s1 at estimated 15:30PM: any problems?).   Every task done could be updated easily (think: @cdweeklyreport flashed ipmi card, where cdweeklyreport is the account that takes weekly reports for the computer dept).

When weekly reports are required, someone could look at the cdweeklyreport account and update the reports accordingly, or better, the process could be automated.

Further, twitter could offer private services to companies, offering them private twitter services internal to just their company, with various features: a good and innovative source of revenue, kind of like google offering private email services for clients.

Oh well… anyways, I do see potential in ‘tweeports’ and who knows.. one day, I might be giving some to my boss or clients .

The Sleep Eater

Ever woken up all night watching something that you wanted to see till the end?  I have, several times!  The sleep eater: a wonderful servant, and a terrible influence (at times!).

The Sleep Eater

Beautiful stories
come to life
in flowing colors
and lifelike sound,
and make me forget
myself
as I gaze
into a crystal screen
hypnotized
throughout the night
until morning comes
and I realize
that the sleep eater
has once again
eaten my dreams
leaving in their stead
a throbbing headache
and reality!

Note: I might re-edit this sometime in the future: this was just an effort once again, to write something at the last moment!

In Appreciation of Appreciation

A long time back, in class 7, we were standing in line to go inside class.  Unexpectedly, one of my english teachers called me aside, and gave me a hard-covered red diary with a design of small flowers on the cover.  She was going to be leaving soon: she was one among many teachers of mine who was a volunteer: they came for terms of two years to both my high school, and later, my college, to teach, and went back after their term was over.

The diary was blank, and on the first page, she had written that it was a gift to someone, who she hoped, would be able to fill those pages with wonderful poems someday.  She had written more, but that is perhaps the most important line for me, and the feeling that came with it of course.

I got more wonderful gifts from teachers and friends along the way.  The most wonderful thing about them was not the material that came as the actual gift, so much as the appreciation that came along with it.  I’ve had wonderful gifts that have been no larger than a slip of paper, which made not just me, but even other members of my family very happy.  Even just praise, sincerely given, with heartfelt words, can make a large difference in your life: one such incident still makes me strive to make myself better than what I am often when I remember it.

And then again, more expensive gifts, while they may have made me happy, might not last so long as the gifts of true appreciation and encouragement.

I’m sure all of us have received such gifts in one form or another at different times in our lives.  The only regret that I might have about the gift of appreciation, is that I might not have been able to give as many as I have received, sometimes even when I have thought I should.  Expressing yourself is really something that requires a lot of courage if you are not used to it!

I think appreciation from others sometimes shows you aspects of yourself that you might not even have noticed.  Sincere appreciation, in contrast to flattery, helps you to see those aspects, and to take what you already have, and develop it to its full potential.

So from my side, heres to appreciation, and to more opportunities to both give and receive sincere  appreciation in the future!

To memorize or not to um…. what was I saying?

I used to look at memorization as if it was something that was not fit for people really interested in learning.

That was in the past.  Nowadays, I look at it in a different light.

Long ago, I preferred to derive formulae for mathematics rather than try to remember them, even in exams.  I believed that what was important was understanding the concepts, and being able to do things yourself.  I still believe this though.

But then, I’ve also begun seeing things from another angle: the fact that a man with the right tools can achieve more results than a man without those tools, though the one without tools may be a very good worker.  What does that have to do with memorization?

Its pretty obvious that memorization serves as a tool for various purposes.  Students cramming their way through exams is one purpose it serves quite well.  However, providing a framework of readily accessible facts in your mind when you need them is another very important use it has.  Think of two people: with the same level of understanding of a subject.  One understands all the concepts, but he needs to refer to his books, the internet, or whatever he has at his disposal to remember hard facts.  The other knows all of the facts in his mind.

Let me take an aside from the scenario above for a while, and go to the world of Buddhist monks in Tibet, where I read once (in a book called The Third Eye by T. Lobsang Rampa) that the monks were supposed to memorize numerous thick volumes of books, and were able to remember anything in any of the pages using a memory system.  “The feat might be incredible, but what is the point?”, you might ask .  Anyways, that was one of the questions that had come to my mind.

I am not sure.  One thing though, is that they have two advantages: i. they can refer to, and mix and merge any number of concepts in the books at will, and they have a reference that is always at their disposal (thus, helping them gain a deeper understanding in the long run); ii. the discipline that it took to memorize those volumes forced them to concentrate, and I believe that, the density of the time you put in is much more important than just the raw length of time you put in. By density, I mean the amount of concentration you put in.

Jumping back to the first scenario:  the second person has the facts he needs in his head all the time, which means that he can refer to these facts anytime– something I seem to frequently do (since it seems my unconscious mind keeps working on problems even when I am doing something else– something I have noticed frequently when I try to solve brain-teasers and other problems).  In other words, he has a framework in his mind, which he can customize as he wishes to.  That is a very valuable tool for learning.

The second advantage he has is in self confidence.  Both people might be experts, but the one who can easily answer any questions fired at him instead of having to refer to notes gives the ‘feel of an expert’ to a random observer.  And being able to convince random people that you are an expert is part of the art of selling yourself, something that is quite important in competitive times.

As a final observation that I found quite interesting:  after you work for years in a field, you find you know certain things by heart, i.e. you have the knowledge/skills at your fingertips.  If you are a person used to memorizing+practicing things well in the beginning itself, you thus gain significant comparable expertise much sooner.

The subject of course, deserves much more detail than what I have covered above (my customary apology– this is a blog, not an essay ).  However, the aspects I mentioned above are quite important (at least to me), and are part of the reason of why I am beginning to find a newfound respect for memorization.

Lack of time?

Or is it just lack of concentration?

I’ve found that working on concentration helps me manage time a bit better nowadays.  Turns out that the longer my attention span is — the faster I get things done, i.e. a span of 15 minutes before letting my mind wander is much better than letting other thoughts creep in every 2-3 minutes.

A lot of this is because of context switch overhead in my case– I need to gather my thoughts again, which takes up time, and when I am facing difficult things, it is easier to phase out temporarily again, in contrast to sitting it through for longer blocks, no matter how difficult the problem is.

Just phased out long enough… so I wrote this post!  Have to concentrate, have to concentrate, have to concentrate…….

Whats in a song?

Some songs make old feelings well up, amplified.  And not just romatic feelings.  I have a set of songs that always seem to remind of the time when I was just learning how to program, and the thrill I was getting out of it.

Then, some songs just seem to make you feel a certain way…. just through their music.  “Chariots of Fire” by Vangelis makes me feel very motivated for example. Here is one I bumped into today: I did not care much about the lyrics (I was not too impressed, so did not pay much attention to them (and didn’t even glance at the video– was doing some other work with the music in the background), but I really liked the music, that seemed to make me somehow feel more relaxed and happier

The Circle of Influence: Are we aware of ours? (context: positive change in Nepal)

In the past years, many people I know who hail from my country, Nepal, have expressed their dissatisfaction with what is going on, with worry about what is going to happen.  When I read the news, I get very worried myself at times.

However, I have always believed that change is possible, and that the change does not have to necessarily come from the government. Awareness is change.  A positive action and the right timing is a very positive change: a small slide can cause an avalanche (not verified, but I believe it to be true, or ‘approximately true’ anyways ).

If we look at the problematic situation as a tree, then there might be many branches and leaves, a huge trunk, and deep-growing roots.  However, can we actually discern between which is which?  That is absolutely necessary in my opinion.

Another thing that we need to think about is: even if we see the components of the problem, what can we do?

I often remember a few basic principles I read in a book called “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People“: I did not read the whole book thoroughly, but I had read the first chapters intending to bring about a change in my life, back in 1998, and when I look back at how things have developed, I do believe that I have been able to to some extent.  The reason I bring this up is because of one basic concept the author brings up: the concept of a Circle of Influence.

Everyone has a certain circle of influence, the amount of change they can actually bring about in their surroundings (their world) if they actually want to.  They also have a Circle of Concern, usually much larger than their circle of influence (unless you are very powerful and very irresponsible.. citing one possibility!).  Focussing on the circle of concern, if it is outside of our circle of influence, serves to feed worry in our heart, possibly not helping much.  Focussing on the circle of influence on the other hand, produces results, no matter how small.

Which brings me to my question.  What is our circle of influence?  Ours would mean the different people who are concerned about what is happening in Nepal.  What changes would we like to see?  How much change can we ourselves introduce?  How?

Why do I bring this up?  I have my own daily work, my own agendas, and the way I have prioritized things in my life, I will perhaps not spend much time on actually getting directly involved with things to change the situation of my country immediately, unless……

Unless there is a smaller subset that can be helpful, that can be done by not only me, but possibly other people who are interested as well, to bring about a change. A change that I would actually believe would be helpful, change that does not simply follow the ‘development agency’ model of focussing on a particular aspect, and doing a certain thing, without explaining the whole picture to me.  They are doing great jobs, and I have not done enough homework on them, but that is simply something I feel about my involvement: I need more persuasion to get involved that simply accept someone’s agendas without seeing how it will help in the long term, given the current circumstances.

And talking of the circle of influence, that is the whole point of this entry, not the background material posted above. I am definitely worried about things in Nepal, but I am not writing this post out of frustration (or at least I do not think so), but out of curiosity, to explore an idea that came into my mind.  It is more of a question than an idea though:

What tools and resources do we have at our disposal to improve the situation in Nepal without letting go of our individual lives (i.e. the path we have defined for ourselves in life), and how can we use them effectively?  Some tools I know of are: contacts, web (and web 2.0), more purchasing power (perhaps), more awareness (perhaps ), a desire to see positive change. What else?

Awkward non-disclosures

Ever have a situation where the only way to clarify things is by saying stuff that you should not? Stuff that for your own reasons, you prefer not to bring up?

You could have avoided the situation by looking far enough ahead, but conversation is easy to just follow, and when you do that, you end up in awkward situations sometimes!

I do.. sometimes… !