ATTENTION
Now I write most of my blogs here: http://fakhriworld.wordpress.com
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Reminiscing Eid: Back in my hometown.
It is my first Eid-ul-Adha outside of India. I look back in reminiscence. In India, a guy adjusts his Topi before going to the masjid, and a girl looks on. I think she likes the necklace.
More gloatings..
Here is another piece to gloat about me being an IITian : Scott Adam’s Blog
Thank you Scott Adams.
(There is more gloating here)
Give it a title.
(Untitled)
Cycling down the meadow show,
As my imaginations flow,
The past seems so here and now,
The heart feels at liberty.
In the past is beautiful even a crow,
The black crow and white snow.
And purple flower the winds blow,
The colorful dots of eternity.
An unknown lass sings and grows,
Blossoming youth,say to freedom hello.
She wants to cross yet her heart says no,
Cherishing her newfound sensuality.
The scented morning and an afterglow,
Inhaling the whole universe as I go,
To me lover nature did bestow,
-an intoxicating shot of cupidity.
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Kafka and IIT(old post)
Franz Kafka was a german writer who is known to have highlighted,nay, brought to light, no no, epitomised,immortalised a new language to bring about the irony of life. I am not talking about some new script or a new grammar, but the language within the language, a unique style which bears his imprint. I will not go on about Kafka ; there is enough material spread in the internet about his life and works.
I have read just one short story written by him– The Metamorphosis. And it has left a deep impact on my mind. Again I would not review his short story here for goodness sake. You can find it in the net. And it is highly recommended.
Well, that was the preface. Let me come to the real issue. I wanted to describe the grim,dark,punitive,highly demanding IIT[Indian Institute of Technology] system and was not getting the exact word to describe it until ‘Kafkaesque’ flashed into my mind (hence the long preface about Kafka). This is what the system is.And the professors? Well, I have a perfect expression to describe them–”wont to schadenfreude”. I will have to learn German to describe my institute, since it seems that the model for my institute was made keeping german language in view. Now, to all those who do not know IIT- and as a result I am highly offended that you do not know about my almamater, nay a brand, no no , an iconic brand, a name to be reckoned with, a brand that produced such great stalwarts in IT/VC world as Vinod Khosla[co-founder of Sun microsystem], Rajat Gupta[former MD of McKinsey & Co. worldwide],Neeraj Kayal[Godel Prize winner],Narendra Karmakar[who revolutionised computational LP], RaghuramRajan[Chief Economist IMF], Nandan Nilekani[co-founder of Infosys Technologies] and many many more, the list goes endless.
Since, they all come from the same institute[MY institute] first guess would be that it is the institute which will have something to contribute. Actually it does have something to contribute, but in a more convoluted way than you can imagine. First thing– even to enter IIT you need to pass a gruelling and highly competitive test,aka ’survival of the fittest’.Hence when you enter here you are already hardened up and by sheer effort[some call it talent] you have become creme de la creme of the country. Two– they put you under so much pressure, so much pressure that you either fool yourself into a delusion that you are having so much fun here(thats what most of the IITians boast of to others) or just get into a spiral of metaphysical pain(first option is better).And when you finally pass out( I do not mean ‘faint) you feel SO liberated and so confident after surviving such oppressive concentration camp that you think that the world is your oyester- you can survive anything, you can make anything work. And more often than not it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Add to that the load of expectation that you carry on your shoulders. You GOTTA do something big.
So where was I? Actually nowhere, I was just rambling(as usual).
PS: Actually I would say ‘fear’ and ‘laziness’ , and these are the key reasons why humanity is filled with so many zeroes in history.
PS: The cartoons above are our friend Scott Adams singing praise of IIT[hee hee, Narcissus anyone?] in his famous comic strip Dilbert.
PS: Kafkaesque–Marked by surreal distortion and often a sense of impending danger: “Kafkaesque fantasies of the impassive interrogation, the false trial, the confiscated passport… haunt his innocence” (New Yorker).
PS: Schadenfreude– Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.
Note: This was an old post written over here: link
Sparse matrix: Inside “Books”
Usually if you read a book it will talk about this and that which you already know. But its core points would be very few. For example I was reading “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Kiyosaki.It is a 266 page book which talks about financial intelligence. Basically what I learned from it were the basics of cashflow, how you should pay yourself first so that you work hard to pay others, some examples how financial intelligence is not rocket science, how you should read good books, invest in good life enhancing courses and tapes etc. Well, what was new to me was the cashflow concept. Except that I have known other things pretty well and in a more enriched manner: like the power of choice, having the guts to take calculated risk etc etc. He was just putting those on the financial intelligence concept that he expounds. What my point is , in books of descriptive nature there is always a room to compress it in a tailor made fashion for you. Imagine, I had a consultant who had every idea about my knowledge and conceptual content, he would be able to compress the “Rich Dad…” book from 266 pages to say 53 pages. Just the thing is that we have to be our own compression-consultant and compress the book for ourselves. Compression is not just a convenience but essential to get anything out from the book. Compression involves feature extraction, and getting rid of the useless or redundant information. Hence, after reading the book you have to compress it in your mind to get any meaningful lesson from it- otherwise it is a hodge-podge of this and that interspersed with some useful information.
lets say for example take the first page of the book- Rich Dad Poor Dad.In the first page there is NOTHING which you can take home as a lesson. The writer is just weaving a web to tell his story. There are no lessons in there. Likewise, most of the paragraphs are sparse in new information for you to process. Mostly they give a background or say something which you already know. That’s why I have impatience reading each and every page of a book(unless, of-course, it is technical in nature).
Apart from new concepts the book may throw in some names ,terms or jargon for you to google.For example I came to know about the term financial intelligence from the book to google and also Peter Lynch.
Other writings are just the same, except for this blog which is packed with new information for you puny brain and each and every word is golden.
Endless Zeroes.
Ever wondered why there are endless zeroes in the pages of history. Hardly you would find any real heroes. It is simply because mankind is lazy and afraid. Infact, most of your failures to be great can be attributed to either fear or laziness, or both.
So what exactly you plan to do? As for me- I plan to first do:
1)What I haven’t done yet.
And then do:
2) What no one has done yet.
Hmm…now that sounds good!
Link only blog:Copenhagen Sharia Conference Celebrates “Heresy”
Usually I don’t post links for blogs. But this one is too good not to.
Love-hate blogs.The best blog award.
Ok. Tell me. Which kind of blogs are the best? The ones which say good things about things you value? Or ones which give you new ideas? Ones which are deep? Ones which make you remember the simple joys of life? Philosophical blogs? tech blogs?
All of them have their value. But just now I am rooting for a blog which can be categorised into something like-” blogs which you love to hate but can’t exactly pinpoint why”. Now, that is something. It is the same blog which might call you a pig or a retard. Things which should theoretically offend you. But interestingly you find those interesting. And you come again and again to the blog even though you know that the blogger is a big brag and is going to call you a retard in some way or the other; in-fact you are very much expecting it in bubbling anticipation .
It won’t take much time to figure out which blog I am referring to and who is the blogger I am talking about. If you can’t figure out then me in my all wise knowledge would enlighten your puny intellect in my next post.
You look like me.
“Hi there! You look like me”-how often do you hear this phrase? Well, I actually said this to a person I met the first time. Infact, we were not even planning to meet, but I broke the ice just to tell this. Fortunately, he is not a serial killer or a habitual rapist, otherwise I would run the risk of getting surprisingly arrested in Turkey and some policeman getting a promotion for catching one of the most dreaded criminal in the region. Ah, well , he is Turkish.On the other hand he is lucky too, infact terribly lucky that I am such a gentleman;-) . But , still, to be on the safe side he better not come to India.
Some of you may wonder, how me an Indian and he a Turkish might look alike. Well, it is a bit irksome to explain each time that India has got the most varied gene pool in the world. Hence, Indians can look like ANYBODY. Africans, Caucasians, Arabs, and yes Turkish. Not that I look Turkish, but I may look like someone who is Turkish.What exactly that means? Think about it.
When you think about a typical Indian guy for example, what do you picture? Well, you picture ONE individual[or a small bunch of individuals] whom YOU think might pass as Indians. Human brain can’t process so many faces at once, hence inevitably you think about one , two or at max 3 individuals in some hazy detail. And if a sample is presented to you you may pass him on as an Indian or NOT an Indian[ although it might be easy to tell who is an Indian, it is very difficult to say who is NOT an Indian(figure that out what it means)]. Ok, now let us begin the exercise, take an African an a French. What do they have in common? Both of them have a nose, two eyes, two ears,a pair of lips etc. I mean you can see enough similarity in them to class them in one group say against a group of pigs or hens. Now, there are some differences like skin colour, eye colour, shape of the nose, texture of hair[or absence of it]. Those subtle differences are what make them different. Now take two Africans, of course you can distinguish between the two Africans, even though they lie in the same class as Africans. But now, if you take a group of Africans against a group of French, the differences become even more subtle[an abstract quality in facial features arises if you take groups]. The more varied groups you club together, the features become more and more abstract and diluted. Say you can take an African , and say Africans have flat noses. Now, if there is an African who has a straight nose then is he not an African?
Complexity increases to another level if you take a person who is racially mixed. And the complexity increases even more rapidly if you take a bunch of people with a large gene pool . Here come the Indians. Now someone like me who is not only a member of a large community with a large gene pool, but who is also ethnically mixed down the line- theoretically he can look like ANYONE.
Ok, so there you get the hint. I can look like someone who is a Turk.;-)
There you go.
