I PUBLISH, THEREFORE I AM

They say, you have not lost until you have accepted defeat. True. But, this is what some of us hear: You haven't lost if you did not accept the defeat, that is, if you did not care about the defeat and got satisfied with something else that offers you a somewhat similar feeling of having won. Basically, you moved on to something that looks like winning. We get settled for something other than what we truly want, thinking that the alternative is going to be as good; but, it hardly ever does...by the way, if you know what you truly want, you are one of the privileged, coz a lot of us don't really know what we truly want. And, if you don't know what you want, great! you can be exploring all the time. But anyways, choosing an alternative is not always a good thing to do. It's like having a map and knowing that we have to go STRAIGHT, but still we take a LEFT for some reason.  Sad news! we'll have to take a U-TURN somewhere down the line to be able to come to the pat...

Chimps and humans are one at the same, 99% of the DNA matches. I was thinking, if 99% of a chimp is human, or if we are 99% chimps; how are we so different from chimps? Actually, we claim that chimps are so much less intelligent than humans because of this 1% difference in DNA. Such a huge difference is credited to that 1% difference . Extrapolating the proven science to a general world (in a really freaky way): the super-intelligent humans are 99% the same as the not-so-intelligent/normal humans, and it tells me that the last 1% gain pretty much changes the whole paradigm. That's probably why people say that they need great people on the job (the keyword is 'great'). We cannot differentiate what's mediocre from what's good (unless we keenly look for the difference), but we can easily differentiate what's good from what's truly great. For instance, say you and I listen to music for entertainment . We won't be able to tell the d...

I see some parents talking about their kid not doing well in academics. And the worst part is that they try to find solutions from others in the society without understanding the real problem at hand. As usual, the society has a very generic answer for this. The answer to this is not generic, it is very specific to every child and that's what people need to realize. Here is an example to help you understand this better: Case: A boy doesn't study well, and does really bad in his tests. Problem: Did not study well. Solution:  Tell him to put more hours. Make a strict schedule for the kid and make him follow that. Result: Still doesn't get good marks in the tests. (he probably got nervous during the exams or he was not able to retain all that he supposedly learnt) This is why! The *real* problem (maybe): the kid doesn't want to study, that is, he is simply not interested in academics Solution (maybe):  Make studies interesting for the...

A nice chair. Yes! a really nice chair is one of the best investments at home. We sit all the times and our back is always on some stress  because our chair isn’t ergonomically good. A really nice chair feels comfortable and corrects your poster through your 20s and if you see, most of us start getting old during our 20s. I have never seen people worry about where they sit and how comfortable the chair is. We are really used to giving stress to our back, and anything that accommodates our ass is considered as a good chair. We are used to mediocrity and to mediocre devices (not just chairs). So, it’s a no brainer...you spend most of your day sitting on your chair, you should spend thousands of rupees (if you earn decent) to get a really nice chair. You will thank me when you are 40, when your friends who-did-not-buy-a-nice-chair have terrible back-aches and you don’t. It seems like a long shot but definitely a done deal. PS: I learnt it the hard way. Bu...

We get asked “what do you do” a lot of times (assuming we meet new people every now and then). And if you notice, we all have a template-answer for this (usually, a boring or a dry one). I am not really sure if people are just being nice by asking “what do you do”, maybe it’s just a small talk. But when someone asks me such a question, I take it seriously and I try to tell them exactly what I do in a way they’ll best understand. Also, I never ask people “what do they do” unless I am really interested…so, I expect a good answer for this question. Whether or not “what do you do” is just a small talk, in this networked world we meet a lot of new people and having a good reply to “what do you do” can make you the guy who people genuinely remember (I am bad with names…so, I tag what a person does to his/her name. That’s the best way I remember names). I think, a good answer to ...

Actually, not just kids, even adults. It's a universal protocol for a mom to ask her kids what they would like to eat before preparing the meal. But, (sometimes) mom's have already made up their mind on what-to-prepare even before asking their kids what they'd like to eat. If you (mom/dad) want your kid to eat what you plan to prepare (usually, a healthy dish that your kid hates) then keep the following in mind: Don't ask your kid what he'd like to eat, something like " Do you want iddly for breakfast? " (assuming your kid hates iddly , he is definitely going to say "no" to iddly and probably would ask for maggi ). Instead give him options and ask him what he'd like to eat. You'll see that once you give him options, he will decide what he wants based only-on-those options and not based on his likes. Now that you have narrowed down his choices; if you want him to eat iddly , figure-out what is worse than iddly in your kid's m...