10 observations for the month

1. the bus does not come when you keep looking at your watch, rice does not cook when you keep staring at the microwave, plates do not clean themselves by looking at the kitchen sink, problems do not get solved by sitting idle and whiling away your time.

2. the most sought after thing is opinion, but never trust opinions. "this movie is awesome" equals the movie blows, sucks, and i paid the terrible price of sitting through it on top of shelling out money, you have to too. "the movie blows" equals its for high brows who think it falls on them to make this place a better world by watching such movies.

3.money comes and goes, they say. it does not come, but yes it does go. so why do they say, it comes and goes? because it comes for all other people, goes for you.

corollary: you will get money, when you need it the least.

corollary to corollary: you will get those things that you dont want, but never get the ones that you need badly.

4. the winter winds are always early, severe, biting and 'this winter is always much more severe than the previous one.

5. problems are always easy in the classroom. its only the exams, they assume the form of  "top 10 mathematical problems that have perplexed the greatest minds of the planet". solutions are always wrong, but when a professor gets it wrong, it doesnt mean he is wrong. it means, there is more than one solution to the problem.

6. everything goes right until the professor steps into the lab. he is the initiator of the domino effect, the chaos theory. and he is the butterfly which causes that hurricane, but he is also the hurricane.

7. not all the people in the planet are entitled to luxuries. not all people are entitled to live a peaceful and a prosperous life.  not all people are entitled to lead a decent life. not all people are entitled to a two-room dwelling in a poor suburb. a 10*4 box in a slum in mumbai. space in the kolkata railway station. you see where i am going with this?

8. appetite is inversely proportional to the amount of money you have. if you are poor, chances are, you eat like a hungry hog, gobbling up anything that comes your way,run around for money. more money means, you are likely to eat slim, stay slim and run around for 'feeling good' .

9. the universe is a strange place, but the college is not. there are those noisy undergrads, noisy parties, noisy neighbors, noisy libraries, noisy lounges, noisy gymnasiums, and you, with that noisy brain.

10. the most important thing in life, is not success, not satisfaction, not peace. its only a little smile on your face, the only crease that is acceptable at large in public, the only sign of acknowledging that everything that is happening is just one big joke, and a very simple solution to life's complicated and unanswerable questions.

reflex

observation 1:

irritating jerk. 

by this, i do not mean the clumsy friend, who tries to get on your nerves inspite of himself. no, i am talking about the physics of the human body. just when you are about to cross the road, the mind plays a very clever game-the car is a good 75 metres away, and at the speed of 40km/hour, roughly 11 m/s, you assume that you have 7 seconds to cross the road. you dont exactly do the math standing in the middle of the road, or you would end up on the non-existent cow-catcher of the car, wondering why that happened when suddenly you see St. Peter at the pearly gates.

no, its impulsive. binary. cross, or dont. 1 or 0. hit, or miss. and your foot responds. but in a different way. can and cannot.or can. or cannot. 1 and -1.or 1, or -1. if only we could understand more of the human body.

observation 2:

genuine jockey?

you see a person jockeying, because the current queue is too long. the other one is short. what do you do? think? hardly. lets weigh the possibilities. the other line is short, so the only criteria is service time. say the people on the shorter queue are chatty-they start talking about their wedding plans to an equally avid listener on the other side of the counter...

what if it is not? what if they live by the value code and finish on time? the worst part, what if they finish early? arent you stranded on this queue for a much longer time than the person who just happily got served and is leaving home early to watch india kill pakistan in the final one day?

again, 1 and 0. i should probably read on involuntary actions.

(*i am sure you are aware, that jockey is, not the next best thing to being naked, but in this case, switching queues. it makes the modeling of stochastic systems even more complex, apparently.)

observation 3:

the bus conundrum

ever been on a bus ride to nowhere even though you had an idea that you should not have gotten on the bus? i lose myself very easily. because, i always take the wrong bus. every time i feel like asking the driver/conductor, i am afraid that he would snap-as much civility we expect from civil servants, they are not readily dispensed with. just at the cusp of getting in, i become aware. ok, i am definitely going to arumbakkam instead of kodambakkam today. impulse. zero this time; maybe one next time!