explore

This is a ridiculously funny prank to be played on people. Imagine the frustration when you are stuck in a foreign land and you have to go to your room and the elevator starts talking to you and send you to another place altogether. Arggghhh. It’s so bloody irritating.

The last time I was abroad was I went to Sanghai. Luckily I wasn’t diagnosed as lactose intolerant before I went there or else I would have had the worst time of my life. If vegetarian isn’t enough in China being lactose intolerant would have completely killed me.

This was a guided tour along with a conference. We had a day of sightseeing. I normally hate that sightseeing and the whole shepherding in a bus but I also see no option for the organisers. So it’s best to carry on. But I hate the part where the take you to a tourist shopping destination designed to scam the tourist by showing them an “original “ place to buy something exotic. Something like a jade workshop or in this instance a pearl palace. I hate it. I always fight and wonder what the hell is going on. But most others seem to be happy to go and buy some ridiculous junk for their wives or girlfriends. So while the crowd went in, a few happy friends and I went out for a walk in the cold city. We kept roaming pretty aimlessly. I am always a sucker for new culture and new stuff but in china its always difficult to do anything new. We saw a juice bar and went there. There was almost nothing I could make out. So I just pointed out to something interesting that was being made for another customer. Now I don’t remember how I figured it was vegetarian but I finally had it – and it was warm lemon juice with one more interesting additive like a litchi or something. Wow. That was cool. I never knew warm sherbet was this fun.

Travelling anywhere is always a great thing. You have to go outside the confines of your city or routine and visit new places, do new things and learn more. You have to have plenty of exposure to stuff around you. Exposure is the key. You go out, you meet new people, you experience new things. That is life. There is post that’s gone viral on why travelling or having a gap year and seeing the world is a great thing and they give some 17 odd reasons. Hah! Sure. Travel is something jasmine and I discovered is critical for ourselves. At first we would wonder where to go and how to go and what to see. We would wonder and think about the places to go. We would ask someone for helping us make an itinery and places to stay etc. Till once we had to go on our own once. I think the first big one was directly Singapore. I had been there on an official tour and then had vowed to take the family there.

The stress was pretty high. I searched and researched and did a lot of stuff online. I was under severe stress on what to do and where all to go. Plus we had Jasmine’s mom and dad coming along with us. but that was a fun trip and then the next time we planned a vacation to Rajasthan using guide books /internet and some references. Post which we did kumaon and now we were truly hooked on. Searching online for stuff, searching guidebooks and internet for places to go to and places to see and search for undiscovered places or hang out popular tourist spots. We were truly independent. The journey was as interesting or I dare say as important as the destination.

The bug had truly bit us. Then like seasoned travelers we went with a little less research all the time. As in you know what you are going to do and the places you are going to see but you aren’t completely prepared. You are ready to take it on one day at a time. You see and wonder and take calls and think a bit while you are there. You miss a few you spend time at a few. From a fairly fixed route plan you allow for chaos and spontaneity. Then it gets all the more interesting.

Who needs 17 or 18 excuses to travel. You need only one EXPLORE and if that doesn’t excite you – nothing will.

Why so serious?

Nah… if you see this I don’t like you to think of it as inspirational. Nopes. It doesn’t inspire me. It’s not that if you have cerebral palsy or any such thing you can still defeat the odds and come out trumps. That is something I take for granted. You can defeat all odds and come out trumps. The question is simply what sacrifices you want to make and how much will power you have.

The big thing in this I see is simply a little bit of me. This chic doesn’t need your sympathy or special treatment; she has accepted what wrong and moved on. She accepted what’s not there and moved on in life. It’s a freaking joke. Have fun. Now can you move on?

I have sick many numbers of times. I have been a sickly kid all my childhood. I would fall sick every year and most of the time more than three times a year. I was pretty frustrated. All my college life I was weighing around 58 kgs. I would look at weighing scale and hope it inches upwards. In variably there was a pattern – I move up to 60 and boom – I would fall sick. Back to eth dreaded 58. So when people tell me that today I look lean – I wonder – I am 73 kgs now. imagine me with 15 kgs less! Wow. That is LEAN. But I have always been sick so being sick is pretty cool with me. I moved on from being sick and grumpy to being sick and funny. I mean who the hell cares – its fun. I don’t want to be seen as a dumb grumpy guy with an issue. I want to be as a fun guy who is fun not because he is healthy but is fun because he is. Sick or not.

Today I live with two big issues. The first one is my right knee. It simply dislocates time and again. Ya. Any side strain on it and – pop, it dislocates. I have learnt to play with the issue. No extra stress on the right knee. Short steps and less long strides that put outward pressure. And when it pops, I go through some pain – straighten it till it pops back in. those around me go “oh shit, I heard the click when it popped in”. So there. It popped back in and I stand up and say, come on, lets continue. And I SMILE. I never fail to smile. Hopefully I crack a joke or two at myself. Good fun.

The second affliction I now have to live with my entire life – lactose intolerant. That too is fun. Jopke about it and move on. What’s the big deal. Move on.

Surely I don’t have anything as severe as this lady has. She obviously has fought much more. But I am only inspired not by what she has achieved. People who work hard will achieve, but I am inspired by her being able to joke at it. I too want to go on a lactose intolerant stand-up comedy show and talk about the various shit I face when I talk about being lactose intolerant. I went to Punjab recently and people there wondered if I had lost it completely and what kind of quack I must have met. Who the hell doesn’t have lassi or butter? I already have decent ammo for this. I think in some time I will be a stand up comic joking about lactose intolerance. My best retort is simply – well – all humans are lactose intolerant but a lot of us have developed a mutation that helps us manage and digest lactose. Don’t believe me? Well you are a mutant according to Wikipedia : “Most mammals normally cease to produce lactase, becoming lactose intolerant, after weaning, but some human populations have developed lactase persistence, in which lactase production continues into adulthood. It is estimated that 75% of adults worldwide show some decrease in lactase activity during adulthood. The frequency of decreased lactase activity ranges from 5% in northern Europe through 71% for Sicily to more than 90% in some African and Asian countries. This distribution is now thought to have been caused by recent natural selection favoring lactase-persistent individuals in cultures in which dairy products are available as a food source. While it was first thought that this would mean that populations in Europe, India, Arabia and Africa had high frequencies of lactase persistence because of a particular mutation, it was later shown that lactase persistence is caused by several independently occurring mutations”

So you are the mutant Ninja turtle, not me. See your pic…

Ok ok… I guess you prefer Wolverine:

See you wished for super powers – you did not know it but you were actually part of the Mutant project and soon enough you will be called to join the mutant force to protect Planet Earth.

Ok fine – it sounds much more funnier when I say it than when I write it. But you get the drift. I surely hope that I don’t go through much more pain in life. But I surely don’t want to be the guy who would sulk over it. I want to be the fun guy who went down laughing – laughing my gut out. Why so serious?

all time great lines

We were discussing something strategic in a major meeting today. Some words like Venn diagram were being bandied about. Venn diagram is when you show two or more sets represented as circles and you show the intersection between the two in order to understand the overlap. A website that uses this to show relationships between seemingly disparate sets can be accessed here.

So this guy (sweet guy, slightly senior to me) took the marker and drew something where he drew a circle and then another circle inside it and some thing outside it in his effort to explain his point, which for the record wasnt too bad. Just a bit confusing.

I couldn’t help remarking “this is not a Venn diagram, it is a Vent diagram. A lot of hot gas passes through it”

The laughter lasted for a few minutes afterwards.

dam!

Probably because it was on my mind, or probably because it genuinely fits, but this post today from one of my favourite websites http://www.xkcd.com/ to mind works best to illustrate the point I was trying to make on yesterdays blog.

After posting yesterdays blog I was not so comfortable with it. Something inside of me kept rankling. What was it about that post? Is my postulate wrong? Was I in error? Are there too many outliers to this that I have missed out? The more I thought the more I seem convinced that balanced and erudite minds often tend to be open about their conclusions. Of course you have the instances of scientists going mad because no body listened to them and they kept repeating their thesis to disbelieving audiences. Probably that’s a caricature we have from the media creations we see. Most smart guys I know are secure about their knowledge and are keen to hear relevant arguments on their findings or knowledge.
It took some soul searching to figure that the reason I was uncomfortable is that I was pissed at the world for this. This was the stupid thing. How can I preach equanimity if I get angry at the world for not being balanced and for being one sided? Relax. People need not follow all your values, no matter how right they seem to you. Getting agitated is one thing; the fact that it affects itself is an issue. Will have to learn to let go. I will have to learn to keep quite. I can change knowledge, add to it, debate it but it’s probably too much of a task to change attitude. Will have to learn to pick fights.

One random stupid joke comes to mind.
While swimming, two fish hit a wall. The first fish told the other “Dam!”