A (Good) Story (?)

He looked around him.  He was surrounded by around seven or eight soldiers with their AK-47’s aimed straight at him.  He had been to the country on a visit, and he was not a martial arts expert or a political figure: he was just an ordinary employee of an IT firm based in California.

His heart was pounding, he was sweating like anything, and he wondered where he was going to land up next.  If this was real life, he knew he was in deep, deep trouble.  He still was in deep trouble, but he was cool, and could afford to look it, because he had faith.

Faith in the writer—he knew that the ending would turn out to be great and in his favor, and that he would look like a hero, nevermind the pounding heart, the screaming emotions, the feeling of complete bewilderment.  He knew things would turn out all right, that nothing would happen to him.

And they didn’t.  He was in a fictional setting, being nothing but a fragment of imagination.  He was indeed, the protagonist of the fiction, but the piece of fiction itself was just a fragment that was designed to illustrate some small fact that anyone knows about, but that had re-asserted itself in the writer’s mind in a brief instant of realization, and that writer, who had not written for quite some time, decided to write down something in a whim.

He had been created, in a tight situation, and he could have potentially gone far in his adventures.  Unluckily, he was destined to be stuck in it till he disappeared from the minds of his readers, and the way the piece was written, his initially scary situation had turned out to look somewhat comical, somewhat nonsensical.  However, he still was the protagonist, in a piece that was unique if nothing else.

Thats all folks .  I had started writing to illustrate one point, but somewhere at around 60% of the piece, I just went with the flow, and ended up writing it completely differently—I somehow liked the ending, but I’m not sure if anyone else did—hope so though!   My original intent can be guessed from the initial part of this entry, just in case you are curious.  Hope you enjoyed it, even if it was just a little .  BTW, its not Friday or early Saturday, but I thought this much was allowable after a long break, since I felt like writing on a whim all of a sudden .

An Unwilling Composition

I think I missed a deadline by a few hours this week: the about section says: “Friday evening or Saturday morning”, but its a bit past morning this Saturday.   However, I have an excuse .. I was sleeping all morning, well into the day today, and wrote this quite early when you consider when I woke up, so here goes!

Note: Make sure you do read to the end: Its not as pointless as it seems (or is it… :S)

An Unwilling Composition

Unwilling,

or perhaps unable,

to weave new words

into a fabric

that they call

a composition,

but driven to write,

out of a sense

of duty,

and restricted in choices

by a need

for originality,

I write down something

that looks like a poem

when viewed from afar,

though my words,

may actually be

no more than a sentence

broken down into lines

to form a pattern

that looks like a poem.

Who knows?

You are what you eat!

I do not see how this post could offend anyone, but just in case it does, please remember that this is meant in jest!  I just remembered that some people told me that you become like what you eat, and an observation made the whole statement sound somewhat difficult to assert .  Here goes the main post:

I’ve heard this time and again, in different places, from different people from different backgrounds.  Not so often, but still, enough to make me notice, though the strange assertion is perhaps enough to make one remember it even if heard once.

I remember someone acting like a chicken (or turkey.. I forget now) in front of an audience in order to demonstrate that if you ate too much chicken, you would become like chicken….. semi-humorously, but I think, still believing in the statement that “you are what you eat”.

That assertion has been a tiny bother in the back of my mind for a long time: “why do so many people think it is true?  What observations did they make that led them to believe in something like that?  Is it true, at least to some extent?”

Then today, as I was eating rice with cauliflowers and ‘Kimchi’ (a korean dish made of fermented cabbage and shrimp), the statement came to mind again… “If people are what they eat, I am eating fermented cabbage and shrimp… what might that make me ”

Within a few milliseconds, I came across a proof that the statement is false, and was proud of myself.  Until of course, I realized that the statement could still hold true in the sense of Hindu philosophy (and I think Buddhist philosophy too).  In that sense, characteristics being transferred would simply be “Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas”, and inherent in food itself, much more than whatever became the food.  Excluding that slightly different interpretation (which I am still perhaps pondering over in the back of my mind), here is my disproof:

If you eat much chicken, you become more like a chicken.

If you eat much pork, you become more like a pig.

Which would imply:

If you eat many humans, you become more like a human…

Hmmm…. in a radical sense, this kind of promotes cannibalism, don’t you think?  In a less radical sense, aren’t the mosquitoes that are perhaps the ones that get to feast on humans the most, more human than humans who feed on animals?

Perhaps, perhaps not.  After all this post is but an idle reflection, and not meant to give you any deep insight as such, and I leave the rest up to you to decide!

Don’t Make Fun of Me!

“Hahaha… your shirt looks so faded… did it belong to your great grandfather?”

Startled, I looked at the person saying this, and I could see an impish young face, perhaps around my age, laughing at me as if I was extremely stupid to be wearing the shirt, and a fool in general.  My ears reddened, as they usually do when I get very nervous or flustered, and I was conscious of the boy noticing that too.

I was aware myself that my shirt was faded compared to that of most other boys in my school, but my parents told me I would have to make do– the cloth used to make the shirts had lost color in one or two washings it seems, and they did not want to buy me new uniforms twice in the same year.  I was not happy, but I did not go around telling anyone that.  I did feel a bit conscious of the shirt though, and when someone said that to my face, and made fun of me, it made me very self-conscious indeed.

“Whats your problem?” I asked.  The boy just didn’t seem to notice.  He kept on laughing, enjoying himself thoroughly.  I didn’t know what to do… I could pick a fight… but then, I would end up getting my clothes dirty, and ending up late to school.  I made up some lame joke about his appearance, pretended to smirk, and headed towards school.

That was the beginning.  Not just for me though.

It turns out that that was the day this strange apparition had somehow landed in that particular spot, deciding to make fun of any passer-bys who chanced through.  I could see other faces, normally much happier, seem somewhat more guilty, somewhat more self-conscious, that day in school.  Even quite a few of the teachers seemed to look around at times, adjust their hair or their clothes, or whatever else kids used to make fun of them about behind their backs, very self consciously.

The stories slowly started to come through.  First, we heard of the boy making fun of Ram Bahadur– one of the strongest boys in class.  No one messed around with Ram Bahadur, or so it had been.  The boy just could not be caught…. no matter how much you planned to catch him up and beat him to pulp when you were somewhere else, when you reached that point in the road and made fun of you, for some reason, you would just get embarrased to the core, and walk along your way, deeply ashamed of yourself, and hoping no-one noticed, but never sure at heart.

We named him Chirkhe, for some reason I seem to have forgotten about.  He would not even be visible, or you would not notice him, until you were startled by that impish laughter which always made fun of exactly what would make you feel completely insecure.  Some of the girls would come crying to school, and would be sullen for almost half the day, just because Chirkhe had made fun of them.

Everybody started walking in groups to school, but then, after a while, everybody preferred to walk alone again.  The reason?  We thought groups would be able to take care of the kid, but it turns out that he made even more fun of people in groups.  First, he would single out one or two in the group, and make fun of something that the others could not help laughing about.  After isolating those guys, he would proceed to embarass the life out of the remaining people in the group in a similar manner.

The worst part was: no matter how many people there were, he would manage to make fun of each and everyone of them, and the road, or maybe even time, seemed to be long enough to allow him to do all that!

We thought he was a ghost or spirit of some kind.  Even tantriks and jhankris (think exorcists and shamans) were called to take care of him.  Their mantras (spells) apparently did not work, and instead, we would end up learning interesting facts about the poor fellows that made them look somewhat ridiculous instead of powerful to us too!  And of course, not just the ones who tried to remove the boy/spirit, but the onlookers would be made fun of too, after the main actor in the scene was taken care of!

There was only that one way to our school.  Other roads could not be built, as the land around belonged to people who wanted to grow crops, and who were not willing to donate land to build roads.  Even selling was not something they wanted to do– in part for personal reasons, and perhaps in part, because they were afraid that then, Chirkhe would show up near their lands too.

It had been 25 years since the boy had first appeared.  Houses had been built, roads were made of concrete, but the area around which the boy would appear was still somewhat roughly done: you can imagine that no-one would want to be made fun of for the time it took to do the job well.

People still walked to the school: though the boy did make fun of people, teachers got used to it: they would be extra careful of their appearance, and in general, they just grew thicker skin.  They would still be deeply embarassed every day the kid made fun of them, but they learned to live with it.  The teachers and other adults coping with it, and the school being a very good school in general, made students still get enrolled, and in fact, the exposure to the ‘making fun’ by the boy, was slowly enmeshed in the general psyche as kind of a ‘character building’ training.

Now though, I know not just one, but two impish characters.  One is the daughter of my cousin: Ritu.  She is a very mischevious kid, and I have never seen her cry.  When she was little (around 3-4 years old I think), she used to greet newcomers by slapping them on their face and laughing at them.  Nowadays she is not as severe.

My cousin lives around the same general area, and he wanted to enroll Ritu in the same school.  We all went there, and we are kind of used to Chirkhe anyways, to mind him that much.  Thats maybe because we no longer have to deal with him everyday, but he is an interesting reminiscence of our school days.

The three of us: my cousin, his daughter, and me: we walked along, the road to the school.  Its not a long road– actually just around 5-10 minutes from the bus stop, and it has no parking, so everyone has to walk there anyways.  It just seems a lot longer because Chirkhe is around and very effective. As the place around where he would pop up drew near, both of us must have felt a pang of the old fear in our hearts, and we looked at each other at once, and shrugged in a “I wonder whats going to happen next” kind of way.

Not a moment too soon.  There was the kid, laughing out loud.  Before he could say anything though, there was the sound of another kid laughing, and as I looked down, I could see Ritu tugging her father’s hand, and laughing out loud, saying “Papa, kasto fori fucche” (meaning: hey dad, thats such a dirty kid).

I looked at Chirkhe.  For the first time perhaps, I noticed it too.  The kid looked really dirty.  His pants had soil stains all over them, his clothes were ragged, he had snot on his face, which looked unwashed for perhaps, months if not years!  I even thought I could detect the faint smell of the effect of not taking a shower for years.  For the first time in my life, I burst out laughing, when I saw Chirkhe, genuinely amused laughter, from the bottom of my heart.

My cousin seemed to be somewhat caught off balance at first, but in a few seconds, I could see the laughter break across his face too, genuine amusement, as his daughter was just overall excited and amused to see such a dirty kid.  (Don’t ask me why she found a dirty kid amusing… she just did.. she is a kid whose amusement I find difficult to understand so often anyways!)

And as we burst out laughing, genuinely enjoying looking at the dirty and bemused little Chirkhe, we could see his initially impishly amused face slowly turn very sullen, changing very rapidly all of a sudden to contorted facial muscles that did not look anything like the Chirkhe of our school-day mis-adventures.

And then, I heard the kid bawl out loud.  Just as the first tear was about to drop down his face, he covered his face in his hands, and ran away from us.  We of course, were extremely jubilant…I found myself filled to the brim with happiness, and slowly, as my mood got more down-to-earth, I was discovering a great new-found respect and admiration for the impishness of my young niece.

That was the last anyone heard of by Chirkhe, or so they say.

(So ends the modern version of the story.  Actually, Chirkhe had turned into a handsome young prince, instead of running away, as I narrated above.  He had  then got on his knees and kissed the hand of my niece, and thanked her from the bottom of his heart for freeing him from his curse.  It turns out that a sage had cursed the prince (who had mischeviously made fun of him back then) to appear in this time and age to make fun of everyone who passed along his way till someone freed him from the curse by genuinely making fun of him instead.  He then faded away into light, saying “I am finally free.  I will go for now, but I will be there if you need me, just think of my name “Chiranjibi” three times”. I know you wont believe me when I tell you this, so I leave the story ended as it was in the paragraph above!)

Get great results (almost) without working at all!

Yeah, we’ve heard it time and again… time is money.  But how many of you have heard of the Pareto principle or of recursion?  I’ll use those two to show you why you don’t really need to work that hard to get really good results.

First, lets think of the number of hours per day you would have to put in to get the results you want.  Assuming you sleep 6 hours a day, that would be, say 15 (3 hours for this and that).  If you could actually work that much, you would really get great results, and if you could quantify those results, lets call that quantity E (short for Excellent).

However, the Pareto principle, which seems to be true a lot, states (from Wikipedia):

“For many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes”

That means that 80% of those great results you got (i.e. 0.8E) come from approximately 20% of the time you put in (0.2×15 hrs=3 hrs).

Now, lets say you are a really talented guy, capable of spotting these crucial 3 hours.  You can still pull off 0.8E with 3 hours a day (instead of 15).  However, you are a lazy guy, and you don’t want to put in those 3 hours, and decide to do another tradeoff (which is where recursion kicks in).  So now, instead of working 3 hours, you decide to work for 3hrsx0.2=36 minutes, and still manage to pull off 0.8*0.8E=0.64E.  Taking this one step further, if you worked 0.2x36minutes=7.2 minutes, you would still be able to pull off 0.512E=50% of what you could have pulled of working 15 hours a day.

Hence, you decide to work 7.2 minutes a day, and manage to produce fairly good results– 50% of the results a hardworking guy working 15 hours a day would get.  On top of that, if you do that every day consistently (which the poor 15 hr guy couldn’t possibly do due to health reasons), your results would perhaps be better in the long run.  Hence, you get great results, and don’t really have to work that much at all.

Catch is: you need the ‘eye’ to spot the exact 20% that you need to put in.  No wonder some managers get paid so much without seeming to work at all!

Note: For those in technical professions such as doctors and engineers, I am sorry to say that this great scheme of things might not help you.  To explain why, I will take the help of another quote: “half right is all wrong“.  So if you put in your 7.2 minutes, you would get 0.5E, but unfortunately, you are just half right, and when you need exact results, you need to get E, not 0.5E.  So, you can either slog on, or switch to a more reasonable profession, like management .

Remembering the “Bikram Sambat”

Today, I was momentarily happy because I remembered that a new Facebook app I had added lets me remember the Nepali date.. but then, I also remembered a moment later that Bikram Sambat is apparently no longer the official Nepali Calendar, or so they say.

Oh well, just as I was getting hope… hehe.. I wonder what they will change next.  Development would be nice, but perhaps that might be asking too much of them if they are busy squabbling over the small things. Perhaps, someday… when we are no longer worried about language and calendars and whatnot… it is difficult though it seems!

P.S. : perhaps, I do not understand their rationale fully, which is why doing such things when there are things that actually matter seems a bit absurd to me.  Anyone care to explain (without flames and rants and attacks if you actually happen to write down your words, please).

One thing a grad student should always do

Assumption: ‘grad student’ implies that the arrival of deadlines tends to be bursty in nature, and far greater than the service rate at times of pressure.

Result: high delays, packet loss increase

Let us equate packets with sleep.

Whenever you can, wherever you can, get some sleep… granted that assumption 1 holds true, and you can means that you still fulfill your other duties..

as you may have guessed, queueing theory floating around in my head in a sleepless night.. nothing else

A piece of bedtime advice

To be taken literally, unlike many of my other posts! (Its up to you I guess)

If a problem is driving you nuts, take it to bed.. you might wake up knowing it better!

Changing a Light Bulb

I saw, I liked, I posted:

(source: dharma the cat)
Q: How many Zen masters does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two “ one to change the bulb, and one to not change the bulb.
Q: How many Taoists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: No takers. The idea that the bulb needs changing is merely a human mental formulation. It is not the Tao.
Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One, but the bulb must want to change.
Q: How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: (with mournful Yiddish accent) Don’t worry about me; I’ll just sit here in the -dark.
Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
Q A: How many can you afford?