Realm of Randomness ..

Selecting your contact number: An activity worth million dollars..

It was second incident in last 2 weeks when I had to select a mobile number for myself. Now this activity may sound simple and non-important. But I always find it an extremely confusing experience.

Think about it. In front of you are the numbers “available” for you to select as your contact number. Now first thing you have to make sure is the number should be at least easy enough to remember yourself so you do not have to open your contact list every time someone asks for your number.

Now I always find one which is easy enough to remember myself. But it so happens that the way I say the number is always different from how the person who listens to it utters.

To elaborate, I speak the number this way 4 2345 85 15. (Spaces are the pauses I take.) So simple right. Now this is how the other person repeats it 423 458 515. I am like what the hell. It takes me few seconds to realise both of them are the same.

So the aim is to, if possible, select a number which is easy to remember/recognise, whatever way one utters it. And I very rarely find one.

That’s not all. Lets move back to the initial situation. As I said, in front of you are the numbers “available” for you to select. Available. For you. Only these numbers.

So basically these are the numbers which no one, who has selected his contact number earlier, found easy enough to remember. And I have to select one from them. I could, till date, never prevent this thought from entering my mind.

In the end, I always end up selecting some number which neither I, nor someone else could fathom at the same time.

PS: Just received a compliment of my number being awesomely simple. So mission accomplished the second time.

2 ke 15million; a non-economist view of a ‘convinient’ money making deal..

Yesterday there was a buzz going along in my office. My colleague asked me if I would be interested in parting away $2 of mine to embrace a chance to win 15million. (Yeah you heard it right, that is the amount I was told. million as in 7 .. arrr 6 zeros.)

Now I am not those champu “1$ bole to (translation ‘equals’) 40 rupaya” kind of guy. But the confidence with which this $2 ke 15 million deal was sold to me made me enquire further. It turns out, my “hard earned” money was betted on a lottery ticket.

The concept is simple she said. Join a bunch of 10-15 guys and buy a lottery ticket together. One guy gets lucky, everyone gets benefited. Playing safe and sensible she called it.

Now I am no economist, but one thing I can tell you for sure is this “deal” is not going to work in long run. All it would take is one moderate win to break the group. Lucky guy will part, because he will think he could have won this money by himself. And group will shrink with each and every win.

Plus what amazes me is how much lucky a lucky guy would have to be to overcome lucklessness of 9-14 other unlucky suckers!

I always feel that an equilibrium can be attained to make sure that a person will never run bankrupt by any sensible spending; investment is the key. I aim to attain this equilibrium, which my current spending habits are making extremely difficult to.

I am sure these $2 spent today are as much an expenditure as they are an investment. Atleast as of today.

Switching Lives (Repost)

Prologue: I have been working on quite a lot of posts recently but could not finish them and bring them to any bloggable format. So finally decided I should repost some old post. Here goes one such post.

Yesterday i had quite a random dream. Random indeed it was. For the most part of it i was pretty happy about what i was experiencing. And suddenly i went blank. I would say the dream went blank. Making me befuddled. Completely perplexed. Full of queries, queries for myself to answer. But before i get into the dream itself, let me blabber my views on dreams in general.

Dreams are angels. Yes, they have the power to make you experience the bests and worsts of your life at the same time. Indeed we experience the dreams, not just see them. How else can you explain your turning, jumping, twisting, crawling, grawling in the sleep. We are experiencing the event, the dream. I myself have woken up thanking god for turning whatever i experienced into a dream. And then there are those times when i just put myself to sleep again, just to experience what remained incomplete, unexperienced.

Further, the dreams are mutable portkeys. I feel i change lives in dreams. Butterfly effect you can say. But there one can decide if he wants to change his life. Here i don’t. It all depends on my other self, the dreaming threaded me. If he wants me there, i go. Otherwise i just lay here, wake up and continue.

Details. Two threads, if dreaming together, show how the life each is experiencing. We exchange both the positives and negatives. Yes, if you notice, each dream comprises of both goods and bads. We experience some scenes of that life, both happened and yet to happen. Yucks and Wows. If both agree to switch, we switch.

Now you see this concept explains a lot of usualities. Take Deja Vu. Yes indeed it is that ‘yet-to-happen’ scene of the life. We experienced it in the dream before we made the shift. Those jerky wake ups. May be the other self just slapped me for spending such sucking life. Or may be i did it to him for his sucking life. Roaming with unknowns. Yes, you don’t afterall expect two me’s having the same set of friends. Those long nights can be the result of just a mismatch between timings of two threads. Same goes for the short nights.

I will stop. Remove your thinking caps and plunge into the dreamland with the view. You might find quite a few interesting answers.

Anyways back to my dream i dreamed yesterday. I dreamed i was a singer, i was singing well. (Ok, i never said the other me has to be “me”ish. He can indeed me quite contradictory to who i am right?) Audience were happy. I saw my struggle. I saw my first assignment. I was watching myself happy. I watched all the happy me’s. Nothing bad. No yucks. And suddenly it was blank. I don’t remember something like this happening earlier. The dreams changed. The places changed. I woke up suddenly. But it never happened that the dream turned blank, with me facing eternity full of whiteness.

Puzzled, I lay there, closed eyed and open minded, waiting for something to happen. But all in vain. Blank. Whiteness everywhere. Finally i woke up and tottered my way along … With mind full of questions. Unanswered question.

Thoughts on movie making (and reviewing)

Just finished watching “The Negotiator”. A tense drama between two negotiators that was . Well at least for three-fourth of the movie. After which I think the director fell prey for the behaviour which I am seeing a lot recently. However I have no intention here to post a review about the movie.

Actually these days I have lost belief that reviews actually hold any credibility. Not just do I find them monetarily inspired, but they are also dependent on many external factors. This makes it practically impossible for two viewers to watch a movie with same frame of mind and same expectations.

Well not to forget the reviews themselves rig their own viewpoint on the moviegoers. So a Taran Adarsh might make each Yash Raj Film an extreme must watch while Masand makes the same one the extreme bore of all time. Two thumps down he would scream. However what the movie ends up being is not any of those.

Not just is this case true for the actual critics whose bread and butter is film reviewing. Even friends that unwelcomely review a movie for me, make it difficult for me to watch any. One likes any movie he watches, another says “ah Bollywood sucks”.

So hardly is it possible for me to decide which movie to watch based on anyone’s comments. Ironically the most of the movies that I have loved recently are the ones where I had no clue about their plot or performances. So no reviews for me I say.

Anyway back to the pit that most of the directors fall in. I call it the “lets-make-it-goody-goody” pit. See when you have made a strong impression on audience by throwing at them what they least expected, you don’t take an unwanted faltu turn saying “Hehe buddy, there I fooled you.”

One most cliche scene I would like to mention. In a movie with 2 heroes, one kills other at the most unthinkable stage. Only is it revealed momentarily after that both were together in this and no one’s killed. That was part of the bigger plan. Villain is caught and yippie, everything is goody-goody.

Well, screw you Mr. Goody G. Goody. You could have made the movie hell lot better by killing that god damn hero, and making this gaddar friend fly away with villain and all the money. Why is there a mental block to show “achhe ki jeet aur bure ki haar” (good wins bad leans)? Well not that this is how the real world behaves, is it?

Anyway even extreme wonderful movies like The Departed could not dodge this pit. Only thing I can say is it takes guts to end movie with not so “goody-goody” a situation. I remember one movie which managed to do that. The Mist. I still fell saddened when I remember the ending there. Hats off to you Mr. Frank Darabont the director. You had managed to give a most unthinkable horror an horror movie can give its audience. Extreme unthinkable.

Image Credit: darpantheatregroup

Quick thoughts

These days i am going through some wonderful experiences. Major chunk for this: I have the routine in Bangalore broken. I was fed up with the same life style. Same road. Same bus. Same timings. Same place. Same updates. Same people. And even same dogs!

Life at Australia has given me that chance to break the shackles with usuality. The life has changed and so have people, places around me. I am not a pleasure freak. The only thing I ask for is the change. For that matter I do not even mind spending my days at a village as long as I get a break from usual casualties of life.

Casualties they are. Each moment each day life throws loads and loads of experiences at you. Some are feather soft. Providing you with the feel-good comfort in its zone. And then there are those emotion laden heavy experiences trying to crush you under it’s weight. Casualties to your mind is what they can leave behind. And casualties is what they leave behind.

So the break was indeed welcome. It has indeed been welcome. For the better part of this change is the feeling of differentness. But this same “differentness” is what pops up in between; a small compartment in mind still calls out for those same buses. Those same roads. Those same people. And those same dogs. In between some times a thought does crawl in the mind; a thought calling out for those “usualities“. Calling out loud for the sameness in the life.

Contemplating my present days..

Another day spent with hardly any interesting updates in life. Truly speaking many things happen. Mind wanders around, surfs over various topics instead of diving deep into a single significant job at hand. Result is i am unable to get attached to any of the things happening around me.

The question arises what really does one need to make the mind notice what is happening around? Interest in what we do should be the first and most important thing. But what I don’t understand is why do i suddenly take raw interest in the same work which i wasn’t enjoying earlier. It must rather be something else .

According to me, they are the things that happen around me that actually decide if i notice what is happening around or not. If my mind feels they are worth noticing, it will notice them. Else it temporarily captures the images just to wipe it off the mind’s canvas, sooner rather than later. The problem is this “sooner” comes too soon for me to make even a slight impact.

Does this mean things around me are insignificant? I don’t thing so. Rather the things around me these days are like the monotonic long silences in Oscar winning movies; they are no way insignificant, however they hardly make any sense to me. I would rather prefer the insignificant, but joyous jabbers of Adam Sandler than Leone’s blunt eye shots. And i need to soon find these jabbers around me!

Update: Just watched this wonderful village lady, Susan Boyle, nailing another awesome of her performance. This lady has provided some thirlls and excitement in waise monotonous life.

Witness yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLLIIb_jA9Y

The useless “S” word!!!

As i was tottering along the floor today, i reached the door of the washroom whose door, thanks to the awesomely random designs, opens inside. So a person standing in the washroom is bound to get a hit for just boasting to his mirror self on how handsome he really is. Anyway so today as i reached the door, a person came out and we just had a eye to eye contact. There was no collision nor even a touch involved. But the first thing i spoke was “Oh, I am sorry”. I was like dude, this is too much. Why do i have to blabber out this senseless “S” word first thing, irrespective of what the situation is?

Few worse situations do come in my mind. I have never been in the “outside washroom door opener” category. I always get hit. Now even if i do get hit, the first thing that comes out of my mouth is “Am sorry”. I always think why do i have to be so passive when it is me who is hurt. However it is not like i always am passive about the things when i speak the “S” word. Even are the situation when i go sorry with a tone of “you ba**ard“. May be i have developed a way to swear by not really swearing. You know that cute little silence maintained when someone is boasting about himself, just to convey “go to hell. am least interested.” I guess this is something on similar lines.

Moreover its not just about the “S” word. He has got an equally senseless stepbrother which goes something like “Thank you”, the “T” word. Now this too is used in a similar context free manner. I remember a time when i thanked a guy who actually was helped out by me from a critical situation.

These situation make me think, is there really any use of the words like sorry and thank you when they are used so freely without really giving a second thought on why am sorry about or what am thanking about. Leave aside the crap that it helps in conveying some feelings. Com’on, there are better ways to communicate the same feelings. After all words are not everything. An expression like below can surely make anyone forgive others. Silence is golden as they say. Rather i feel silence, bundled with perfect expression, speaks a thousand words!

Why do I even try?

True. I try like hell not to listen to him. He goes on bumping my head. But i remain focused. He bribes me with what i like. He threatens me to run away and never return. I try not to fall for his tactics. But finally i do. I pretend i will shoo him away, but that’s the whole problem. I pretend…

Just a scenario, perfectly captured by Dilbert:

Anyways this bloody culprit in Internet just doesn’t allow me to work my plans. I plan not to plan any plan, so that i don’t feel bad when this plan of not to plan goes helter-skelter, unplanned. Thanks a lot internet.

Let me explain a bit. I reach home with a plan to read my novel, just to find the internet ‘psst’ing at me. Calls me out to check my mails, read some scraps, check out some news on tech n all. And everyday i do fall for something or the other. I unknowingly, or that’s what i pretend, plug the cable on and surf through the net.

Actually i did well in between to overcome this weakness of mine. I never fell for anything of sorts. But again somehow he has caught another of my nerve. He actually works stepwise now. Makes me switch on the powerplug spike for charging my mobile. He knows i am pretending to be just charging the mobile and i will turn on the laptop next. And everytime he turns out to be right. I pretend to turn the laptop on just for a bit to work something out and shut it down. But he knows that is not going to happen. Once the laptop starts he reminds me of something i need to do on net. I again pretend not to be surfing the net but just using it for a moment. But in fact, thats what i turn out to be doing. Surfing the internet.

Sometimes i ask myself why do i even try. I know i am failing to boggle my mind away from this culprit. But somehow i think this is that cunning but wonderous buddy with whom you can neither subsist nor part. Yes, that’s what he is. Cunning, but wonderous.

Switching lives…

Yesterday i had quite a random dream. Random indeed it was. For the most part of it i was pretty happy about what i was experiencing. And suddenly i went blank. I would say the dream went blank. Making me befuddled. Completely perplexed. Full of queries, queries for myself to answer. But before i get into the dream itself, let me blabber my views on dreams in general.

Dreams are angels. Yes, they have the power to make you experience the bests and worsts of your life at the same time. Indeed we experience the dreams, not just see them. How else can you explain your turning, jumping, twisting, crawling, grawling in the sleep. We are experiencing the event, the dream. I myself have woken up thanking god for turning whatever i experienced into a dream. And then there are those times when i just put myself to sleep again, just to experience what remained incomplete, unexperienced.

Further, the dreams are mutable portkeys. I feel i change lives in dreams. Butterfly effect you can say. But there one can decide if he wants to change his life. Here i don’t. It all depends on my other self, the dreaming threaded me. If he wants me there, i go. Otherwise i just lay here, wake up and continue.

Details. Two threads, if dreaming together, show how the life each is experiencing. We exchange both the positives and negatives. Yes, if you notice, each dream comprises of both goods and bads. We experience some scenes of that life, both happened and yet to happen. Yucks and Wows. If both agree to switch, we switch.

Now you see this concept explains a lot of usualities. Take Deja Vu. Yes indeed it is that ‘yet-to-happen’ scene of the life. We experienced it in the dream before we made the shift. Those jerky wake ups. May be the other self just slapped me for spending such sucking life. Or may be i did it to him for his sucking life. Roaming with unknowns. Yes, you don’t afterall expect two me’s having the same set of friends. Those long nights can be the result of just a mismatch between timings of two threads. Same goes for the short nights.

I will stop. Remove your thinking caps and plunge into the dreamland with the view. You might find quite a few interesting answers.

Anyways back to my dream i dreamed yesterday. I dreamed i was a singer, i was singing well. (Ok, i never said the other me has to be “me”ish. He can indeed me quite contradictory to who i am right?) Audience were happy. I saw my struggle. I saw my first assignment. I was watching myself happy. I watched all the happy me’s. Nothing bad. No yucks. And suddenly it was blank. I don’t remember something like this happening earlier. The dreams changed. The places changed. I woke up suddenly. But it never happened that the dream turned blank, with me facing eternity full of whiteness.

Puzzled, I lay there, closed eyed and open minded, waiting for something to happen. But all in vain. Blank. Whiteness everywhere. Finally i woke up and tottered my way along … With mind full of questions. Unanswered question.

IPL should end …