April Fools’ Day

A friend of mine KM, was born on Fool’s day. He is into his thirties and he still gets “You sure fooled your parents on Fools’ day.” Another friend VM was born on 2nd April and he still gets “You sure fooled your parents on Fools’ day.” I guess some jokes (?) never get old. Or maybe we just don’t get creative enough.

Speaking of creativity, here are a few prank ideas for tomorrow. And for the geek in you, (you know who you are) here are some geeky pranks. And check out this list of the top 100 pranks of all time by the Museum of Hoaxes.

Memento

And how is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive? - Homer Simpson

Homer’s quote was hilarious not so long ago. Today it is the sad reality of life. I have a tough time remembering things, shudder at the thought of learning something new, and frequently google “alzhiemers” (“Did you mean: Alzheimer’s?” Google asks condescendingly and I concur sheepishly.)

Recently, I’ve been flirting with the thought of getting a professional certification. One of the certifications I was interested in requires me to review about 4 different text books and a comprehensive 4 hour closed book exam. Text books. That sucked the fun out if it right there. And even if I did manage the text books, I need to remember things for a closed book exam. That's too much for me to handle.

I think I have reached a point where my brain is absolutely saturated with mindless memories (my favorite t-shirt when I was 4 yrs old – and no, I did not see it again in a photograph, the exact store I bought the lock for my bicycle from etc), junk I don’t need to remember (BEST bus numbers and their routes in Mumbai – why they call them “best” buses when they are anything but, is a mystery), phone numbers of my crushes in school (in alphabetical order), random conversations with random people I have met on the bus/train, all the conversations with my close friends and family, faces of people I met in a wedding ceremony in 1987, some clever repartee that I came up with (albeit a tad late and to myself), dreams from 15 years ago (okay, so the dreams were interesting), embarrassing moments I have been trying to forget all my life, the list goes on. Stuff I don’t remember: things to do around the house, paying bills, work related stuff. Heck, I remember my lessons (with chapters and page nos) from school and college, but barely recall my Masters’ coursework. I read somewhere; you remember stuff that you want to remember. If that’s the case, I really do want to pay my bills and would love to forget some embarrassing incidents from high school. Hasn’t worked so far.

Before googling Alzheimers, check: Memory Loss With Aging: What's Normal, What's Not. And for an inspirational story check out how Lack of Short-Term Memory Didn’t Stop New Grad. And while on memory loss, check out the absolutely terrific thriller Memento if you haven’t already.

Now that I remembered to write this down, I better post it before I forget.

Random Guy

Have you noticed, there are some people who just don't make sense when they speak? It's as if they randomly collect a bunch of words from their vocabulary, bundle them together, throw them at you, and then leave it to you to make sense of it. Invariably and unfortunately these folks just love to talk - which makes it a dangerous combination. A lot of times these people come across as 'deep' or 'profound' (at least initially) because we end up thinking, "Maybe. there is something I am not understanding... they obviously can't be that stupid" or "There is definitely more to this guy than meets the eye. Hmm interesting... "
I have a colleague who fits the description. Let's call him "random guy" - because he is random.

A random conversation with random guy:
A: Speaking of music, I saw Beyonce Knowles at the all star game. She sang the national anthem... she is an amazing singer!
B: Amazing singer... She is awesome! Love her.
Random guy: yeah, like Serena Williams.
Silence.
I can see the rest of the group racking their brains to figure out if this is 'profound' in any way or if they are missing something.
Finally and uncomfortably, A: Serena sings too?
B: You like Serena, like we like Beyonce?
A: You saw Serena at the all star?
Random guy: Beyonce looks exactly like Serena.
Silence. Rest of the group trying to spot similarities.. something they might have missed.
A: But, Beyonce is slim. Serena's a lot bigger...
Random guy: Right. Who is the slimmer of the Williams sisters?
B: Venus?
Random guys: She is exactly like Venus.
Silence.
B (trying to make sense): You mean she is an achiever? Has a lot of fighting spirit?
Random guy: Beyonce looks exactly like Venus.
Me: Apart from the fact that they are females, I don't...
Random guy: Are you kidding me? Have you seen "Fight Club"?
Silence.

Spare me the Junk

Save upto 15% - Act now! (LCDs to coffee makers)
Rapid weightloss without a prescription (variations: your pharmacy order, order # etc)
Refinance your house at a low rate! (Need cash?, 0% APR through 2050, earn $10K per month working from home etc)
Supersize it! (variations: add 4 inches, Viagra, be better in bed, satisfy your partner etc.)
Pictures of hot singles (find a “partner”, horny singles etc)

Looks familiar? My “bulk” folder in Yahoo is driving me nuts. Hotmail aptly calls it the “Junk” folder. Apart from the annoyance of seeing hundreds of spam emails in my “bulk” folder, I have the added inconvenience of losing some personal email which ends up in that folder. I have wondered long and hard about who sends these spam emails! I am supposed to believe that the only heir to the king of Nigeria has emailed me and asked me for my bank account number so he could transfer $5 million immediately? Seriously, I have yet to meet a person who has refinanced his mortgage or added 4 inches by clicking on a spam email. Apparently there are thousands of scammers and phishers, hoping you click on their spam emails and links and do to you what you were hoping to do to those hot singles.

According to a survey, here are the different types of spam categories (in terms of % of total spam)
Products 25%
Financial 20%
Adult 19%
Scams 9%
Health 7%
Internet 7%
Leisure 6%
Spiritual 4%
Other 3%

Some more interesting statistics: there are 2.5 billion porn emails sent daily. 28% of people reply to spam email and 8% users purchase from spam email.

Timing is everything

Miss NJ Revealed Alleged Blackmail Photos showing her “not in a ladylike manner.” Poor girl was probably being haunted by her conscience. Or Donald Trump. In any case, the pictures were hardly obscene. Not that it matters, because you see, timing is everything. You get famous and then leak a sex tape.

The Wimbledon Final and the small matter of a shaving cream

We are fortunate enough to witness a terrific rivalry between Federer-Nadal which can only get more interesting in the days to come. Federer looked relieved after the match which could have gone either way. But then champions have this uncanny knack of stepping it up when it matters the most – which was exemplified by the way Federer fought back twice when down 15-40 on his own serve in the 5th set to elope with the trophy. But all was well as Bjon Borg pretended to be happy for Federer just like the Duke pretended to be genuinely interested in the private lives of the ball boys and girls.

But as far as I am concerned, Wimbledon 2007 will not be remembered for the high quality of tennis on display. It will be remembered for the Gillette ad featuring Tiger Woods, Thierry Henry and Roger Federer. Is it just me or was this commercial a little gay? (Not that there is anything wrong with it – Seinfeld). I think the media is getting carried away with this Woods-Federer friendship. I mean, here are two champions, dominating their sports like nobody’s business and instead of understanding and appreciating their friendship and respect towards each other, we have some interviewer asking Federer after the semifinals whether he bought Tiger a gift! WTF! It’s like they are lovers or something. Maybe in the next commercial we can have Federer shaving Tiger's head.

Shaving creams apart, I consider myself extremely lucky to have watched Sachin Tendulkar play cricket, Pete Sampras play tennis, Maradona play soccer, Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan play basketball, and Tiger Woods play golf. I think Roger Federer is well into this group now and I sincerely think he could be the best tennis player ever. Unless of course he decides to promote Gillette Venus.

Women don't talk more than men…

…just more often.
…just more nonsense.

…it just feels that way.

…they bitch more.
…but who is listening?

Oh, I could go on, but can’t really risk it with all the women in my life. Jokes apart, the verdict is in: Women don't really talk more.

Pennebaker and colleagues analyzed recorded conversations of 396 university students ages 18-29 in the USA and Mexico, including 210 women and 186 men. The study didn't look at vocabulary or word use, but rather word count via an electronically activated recorder that researchers developed and refined during the study, conducted between 1998 and 2004. He says two-thirds of participants spoke 11,000 to 25,000 words a day, with the average for both sexes about 16,000.

For the new research, study participants spent an average 17 waking hours wearing a lapel microphone attached to a cord linking it to the recording device, generally hidden underneath their clothes. Initial data collection used a tape recorder, then as technology progressed, a digital recorder, and finally a pocket PC no bigger than a cellphone. Participants typically wore the recorders for designated periods that lasted anywhere from two to 10 days. The recorder was programmed to record for 30 seconds every 12.5 minutes, so users didn't know when it was on or off and they could not control.

Quantifying love

So you think some things in life can’t be measured? Read “The price of loved one's death.” Here is the clincher though: Economists say they hope it will provide legal courts with a way to more fairly award damages.

I will have $100 worth of love this weekend please. And while we are at it, could we also serve $500 worth of shame to the BCCI?

JAWS - Snack Attack

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are. - Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (French Lawyer, Politician and Writer, 1755-1826)

Aren’t midnight snacks fun? I generally tend to pick the sweetest, fattiest, greasiest, cheesiest, most unhealthy snack possible. Come midnight, and I think I like to “weigh” my options more carefully than I would normally do. Ice cream/Pizza is good. Anything loaded with saturated fat and a million calories is better. Question to ponder about while finishing your bag-o-chips: When exactly did food stop being food and become “calories”?

Anyway, I used to get pretty creative and adventurous around midnight. The spicy French toast (is it still French?) was invented one such night. In recent times though I have tended to give into the microwaveable quick fixes – the only problem being, they aren't unhealthy enough. As I ‘grow’ into my recliner with a built-in crapper and get more comfortable by the day, I can only thank the wonderful people at Pepsico Inc. for making my life easier. Enter any supermarket, grocery store, gas station or a general hospital and the choices I have are mind-boggling. I am like a kid lost in a Frito-Lay store. Not only do I have a thousand different varieties of chips to choose from, I have hundreds of dips and salsas to go with them. What I admire about Frito-Lay is that not only do they make great products (Cheetos – my personal favorite), but they also have a great sense of humor. Every bag has “nutritional” information at the back and they have recommended “serving sizes” which if you take seriously would mean you could have 3 chips a week. Hilarious.

On a side note - what's the deal with opening a near empty refrigerator in the middle of the night and generally staring blankly for a few minutes expecting food to magically appear out of nowhere?

Losing my chain of thought... Gotta eat... Lift… arm... to… open… bag…

Early to bed…

Early to bed and early to rise
Makes you healthy, wealthy, and wise.

I tried to follow this pretty assiduously as a kid. But cut to Engineering college (and the infinite wisdom that comes with teenage years) and I found this hard to digest. I mean, my friends and I used to be up all night chatting, partying and generally enjoying life. In fact, our hostel used to come alive after midnight. We had heated discussions about cricket, politics (inter-group, college level, regional, national, international, and everything in between), girls, sex, movies (not in this order) – basically everything under the sun except studies and course work. Playing under-arm cricket in the hostel lobby at 2 am wasn’t uncommon. So I slept at about 3-4 am and got up at 10-10:30 am on a good day to make it to class. The more I thought about my lifestyle, the less this adage made sense to me. The basic flaw in the above saying is the underlying assumption that by rising early you get time to exercise, study and make excellent financial decisions like 401K, social security and investing in Enron. What if I wake up at 5am every morning and spend my time eating junk and playing solitaire? Come to think of it, isn’t the world designed for the late-nighters? Why do we end up chatting and debating in the middle of the night? Never once have I heard of an impromptu fruitful (read meaningless) discussion at 5am in the morning. Why do we make always plans for Friday/Saturday nights? I haven’t heard anyone say – “Let’s meet up and paint the town red this Saturday morning. 7 am good for you?” Last time I checked, we had ‘night’-clubs, not a single ‘day club’ in the yellow pages. Restaurants have hoardings screaming “open late.” All the games are scheduled in the evenings. Most of the tv channels play all night but try switching the tv on in the morning and all you have is Chuck Norris promoting a miracle machine that will miraculously make you muscular and fit - all for the small matter of a gazillion payments of $29.99 per month.

Conclusion: The wise old man who wrote this adage didn’t come from a big city with night-life and I am sure had no social life whatsoever.

Conclusion – 2: Even with my nocturnal lifestyle, I am pretty healthy (touchwood). Wealth? Ah, it is such a relative term. And as far as wisdom is concerned, astute readers can make their own judgments based on the smart conclusion drawn above.

Stay Focused

The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you're willing to work. - Oprah Winfrey

I was never much of a runner. Even at my peak fitness as an Engineering student (several years and pounds ago), 3 miles was the best I did and preferred weight training over cardio. Running for more than 30 minutes was boring and I looked at it as something to get out of the way before starting my “real” workout. I played cricket and didn’t care much for soccer (which involves a lot more running that I could have bargained for). I could run if I wanted to – I told myself – but never really got around to it. Running was non-glamorous, monotonous, and too tiring I decided as I silently dreamed of playing for the Indian cricket team regardless of talent (or rather the lack of it).

A friend of mine, KR, ran the half marathon in Bangalore in 2005 in spite of a bad knee. He posted his experience on his blog and it made a good read. Heck, it was inspiring and almost made me want to run a half marathon. Well KR is a natural athlete. I would never be able to do it…

Read it again a couple of months ago and decided I wanted to be fit enough to run a half marathon – not because it sounded exciting, but to show myself I could. Since I was nowhere close to my desired levels of fitness, I chalked out a 12 wk program – thanks to the www. Starting this program was tough – I barely ran a mile the first day and I was puffing and panting. In the first week itself, I had several thoughts of quitting. But quitting is easy, staying focused is tough… I don’t want to sound like I am making a big deal out of this, but different individuals require different levels of effort for the same damn thing. An ‘effort’ might be physical/ emotional/mental. For instance, the mental effort required by a smoker to cut down their smoking by half might be the same as the physical effort required by a mason to work twice as hard.
In my case, it was a matter of convincing myself that I needed to do it and then sticking to the plan!

I am currently in week 5 and I ran 7 miles last night. I am hoping to stretch it to 13 miles in the next 8 weeks. Let’s see how it goes. All I have to do is stay focused.

We shave our head.

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein

To her credit, Britney Spears is a decent singer (I think she is. Although I can’t really say in this techno world where everybody sounds the same) who has given us a few hits. But to call her the ‘America’s youth icon’ etc is stretching it a bit. But for some reason everything she does is news. To my utter amazement CNN has a front page article screaming “Britney goes bald.” Like we care - I thought. While the world is struggling with issues like global warming, bearded terrorists and Virendra Sehwag’s form, we have all the newspapers in the world talking about (of all things) Britneys hair or rather the lack of it.
However, today I saw another “hair raising” piece on the web which made me rethink the existence of the human brain. So while the world’s (read America’s) obsession with Britney continues, I quietly think: Human stupidity has scaled new heights. But who is stupid? Is it Britney who can’t seem to control her life? Is it the media who wastes time, resources, personnel, valuable printing space publishing this crap? Maybe not. The media can only print crap as long as people read it… Then maybe it’s the masses that are to blame. But who? The ones who read this crap? Or the ones who are stupid enough to sell Britney’s hair on ebay and call it a ‘piece of history’? Or the ones who actually buy the hair?

Or maybe it s just me. It's definitely me.

Winners and those who didn’t win..

The thing about players like Kobe (and there aren’t many walking this planet) is the fierce competitiveness in everything they do. Maybe that’s what makes them the best in their business.

I remember Ravi Shastri talking about the fierce competitiveness that Tendulkar possesses. Apparently SRT and Shastri were on a vacation in the US and were playing a ‘leisurely’ game of tennis. But SRT kept score and made sure he ‘won’ that game. Yuvraj Singh says SRT can’t bear losing even at table tennis and the intensity with which he plays might make you think he is playing for his life.

Makes you think, in this politically correct world, we talk about ‘winners’ and ‘those who didn’t win’ (apparently there are no losers). We say ‘”Winning isn’t everything. It’s all about participation, competing and doing the best you can.” Isn’t that a load of bull? I mean, its great to console a 5 yr old, but the day we start believing in it, wouldn’t that kill our ability to improve and evolve? Isnt the thought of winning that motivates us to put in that extra effort? Isnt it the desire to win that fuels the curiosity of our ‘child scientists’ to be creative and excel in their science projects? I wonder if there is a single sportsperson in the world who goes through rigorous training day in day out aiming for the silver medal in the olympics!

Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing. It’s a different thing that mere mortals like us can’t ‘win’ in everything we do – although we would love to. But does that mean we quit trying?

My weighing scale

I don’t think I am as fit as I used to be. (Read: I have put on weight). Every morning at work I get the feeling its taking longer for the elevator to reach up to the 7th floor than it used to.

KISS

Keep It Simple Stupid.
I mean what’s the point in complicating stuff? Every damn thing has a simple logical explanation. Simple common sense and logic could solve so many problems. Unfortunately, common sense is not that common and logic somehow doesn’t make sense to a lot of people! Arguing with them is an experience! I mean, you could use all the logic in the world but they baffle you with complete ignorance and baloney.

Read a bumper sticker the other day:

“Do not argue with fools. First, they bring you down to their level and then they beat you with sheer experience.”

Choices galore

I think we always have a choice.
Be optimists or pessimists. Either be happy about life or crib and cry. Be proactive or reactive. Either adjust or squabble. Be far sighted and eliminate problems or be near sighted and create more problems in the long run. Spend your life enjoying money or spend your money enjoying life. Pick your fights and win or lose every other one. Support someone when they are down or “I told you so!” Make others happy or make them miserable. Understand or misunderstand. Be proud of what you are or keep sulking you are not something else. And the obvious one: End this list while it is still readable or go on and on and bore your readers to death