Fiftyone

If you drink alcohol, in the morning you will have the hangover. It is valid for mindless wasting of time. Whenever I spend hours on review sites of camera, lenses, automobiles and bike, I feel the same. Just like alcohol, time wasting is also an addiction. From many years I am trying to get out of this but failed. The only positive thing is I have never given up. I wish before I cross fifty I will spend time meaningfully. 

Fifty

I missed a week of blogging. I went to Bengaluru and family function, totally missed this. I am lazy today to write, forcing myself to write a few sentences. Hopefully, from tomorrow, I should be able to write more words. 

Forty nine

When you force yourself to write something, nothing pops up in the brain. The same thing happens when my daughter asks for a bedtime story. I would say I don't have a story, she would insist, I end up in telling the story from the internet. But she insists on original stories. I start very, but slowly I get into that and come up with an exciting story. 

Today I am getting late, I have to take a flight, but I have to write something. One of the most recurring thought for me is why I except some appreciation for the work or for the art? I wonder what does recognition would do? Nothing much for two mins I feel good and then life moves on. But I think the human brain is evolved to receive appreciation and it will complete the reward circle and thereby motivated to next thing. So let me not be so sad about expectation, it is all about the evolution of the brain. 

Forty eight

In the morning I watched a TED talk on artificial intelligence. Instead of the obvious question, my brain started thinking about my daughter's education. Yesterday I was called to school for a discussion about my daughter's poor performance. I went in with a very defensive mindset as any other parent " my kid is ok". But the problem was not about her intelligence but was about her spellings. I too have the same problem. Luckily now I am doing most of the writing on computer and spellings are taken care of. However, she has a tough time. I need to find out is it a genetic problem or a teaching problem.

Oh, I went elsewhere from AI. What I should teach my daughter for the future. I am sure that except the basic maths, rest of things taught in school are irrelevant for the future generation. They should explain about thinking and connecting dots. All the information they are teaching is on Wikipedia, students always can go and read. 

Forty seven

Lot of things to do. Canon has released a new camera and is very tempting. When you can't go to the next level in the skill set, you try to buy next level tools to compensate for your shortcomings. Like, I am supposed to go out and do cycling every day, I am not doing that. Instead, I am looking for a better cycle. This is true with the camera and lens too. When we can't achieve great things in life, we tend to buy big cars, big houses and other fancy stuff with money. Though money can be used on tools to achieve great things, However, you cant, buy an accomplishment with the money. 

Forty six

Against all odds that is a Youtube series by Olympic channel. From the age of 14, I have been reading all sort of positive thinking, motivational and inspiring books and stories. These pushed me to the next level in life. Though I did not achieve great things, I move out of mundane things. I keep losing focus, being lazy. These books, now these videos are like oxygen to keep me moving. I know this is a kind of addiction, but for me, it is an excellent addition. 

Forty five

My cousin has come to India from Switzerland after two and a half years. TIll now he has not ventured out. I am very curious to see his reaction about the changes happened here. Politics, Aadahar, mobile revolution and many more things.
I will update that soon. 

Forty four

India is moving ahead. Lot more to be done. Few observations. First, safety - we don't care about. Cleanliness we do not take pride in being clean. So what is in our priority list? Indians are trying to upgrade into the next level of living. Better phone, bike, car and home. Satey and cleanliness are sacrificed for the upgradation process. The family of 5 can afford a bike, all 5 will go on that bike. If you go late to work, you lose salary, and people work in multiple jobs for a better living. Time is money. So people cross the railway track, people die. The focus of the entire class of people to move ahead in life as fast as possible.

Aiming high

Forty three

Procrastination is fun. Often puts me in trouble. I find my productivity zooms in a tight schedule. So I  keep all the work piling up till the end. But in the end, procrastination hampered my education, money and fame. I make grand plans but never put into practice.

If you are in the fruit market in India, the seller will offer, sir, this is very tasty, have a bite. That is the end of bargaining from your side. You accepted the free drink, and you are morally obliged to buy from him. This happens all the time. Milkman, sir, don't worry, I will supply to your third-floor house, I accepted, now even though his service is terrible, I am a bit hesitant to discontinue his service. Now I am cautious about this and keep looking for danger signal of "free drink".

Tricky 

Forty Two

Do you need to take a risk in life? Or play safe? We also talk about calculated risk, oh that is not a risk. I am not a risk taker. But can I take the chance? I should make a decision. What, where, how I need to think. Taking risk itself is a risk. I have gone into too deep in the comfort zone in life. How do I come out? I need to set some tough targets? What are they? I plan, dream and I never venture into reality. Till I go out and try out something new, my life will slip away.

The sunk cost fallacy; I spent enough time and energy in this endeavour, and I make it work even though it is not working. I moved to a new home, after a lot of contemplating, my computer table is placed in the master bedroom. Now I realise that it was not the right place. But I don't want to move it to another room, I have made electrical connections, too big a table to move and I have convinced about this table to my "the wife". So even it is uncomfortable I am not changing it. It is true with few stocks I hold, I spent enough research on those stocks, I can't sell them. It is right for my new pair of jeans also, bought online, I am not liking fitting, but I paid a lot of money I should use it though it is very uncomfortable.
Oh, I need to get out of this.

Keep an eye on TIME

Forty One

We are overconfident about digital data storage. I back up all the photos on PC and now Google photos. Earlier, I used to back up on Flickr. Last week one of my hard disks died. Most of my daughter's pictures were there on the disc. All of a sudden I realised nothing is safe. The hard drive is given to a professional data recovery centre, and he is charging an exorbitant price to recover it. Flickr is closing down and asking us to back up our photo or pay more. I should shoot fewer photos and delete unwanted images. Backup the most essential pictures in two places. Cloud back up for high-resolution DSLR photos may be an expensive option for me.

The answer seeking human mind- why we have so many theories about life after death or "why this happened only to me" or any unanswered questions. Our mind seeks a pattern or answer in everyday life. We never like any movie with an ending without a definitive answer. Once there is no answer, we make a response using all the resources and experiences of our life. This looks like, you are wearing red shirts, that's why more accidents happen with you. Or you shifted to that building, people stay there are more prone to make a financial loss. Or you can see someone finding the shape of Ganesha in a tree branch or a cross in the stone, this list is endless. It is all the manifestation of the answer-seeking the human brain.

Some meaning in this?

Forty

Two day weekend started. Already wasted one hour on the internet. Time to move ahead. I am sticking to this habit of blogging every day. But unable to stick to other habits planned so far.

Social proof or I would call five-star evidence. When I am shopping online, I often see the five-star rating and buy. Even in the shop, I would ask, which one is the famous model, or which product is the highest selling? As humans, we tend to follow the crowd. This is the reason why in all stock information, the volume is indicated. High volume means buying or selling. The sheep mentality of the following crowd is in genes. Because this trait has been selected during millions of years of evolution. Why? Because at least there is a 50 % chance that "the crowd "is right, so you are also correct. This behaviour evolved to escape the dangers of the African savannah. Fight or flight, the lion is not there, but still, you ran, the downside is minimum, but if the lion was there then that is death. I have one more observation on this. We follow the crowd on both directions up and down. Let us say, one product is good, first 10 people gave a 5-star rating, but the next three gave a one-star rating, then we follow in the opposite direction.

I am confused here. Sometimes society or crowd select most optimum conditions or products. But then, crowd select some stupid and list optimum conditions or products. Therefore, we need to be more rational and more thinking, since we are no more in African Savanna running away from the lion.

Ponder 

Thirty nine

I am lazy today and have a throat infection. Can't think much... watching random Youtube channels. 

Thirty eight

 You are free and drift into net surfing without any purpose. Once you are there, you try to find some meaning, some reviews, random pieces of news to follow. This could easily consume 2 hours are more. After that, how will be your mood? Well, my spirit will be very low. I keep all day to optimise the time, and in between, I lost 2 hours, I feel frustrated, cheated or kind of hangover.

I think I should make time slots for each activity. More than that I should have a list of things that I could read on the net.

The other topic is about top universities and schools. Are students admitted go to IITs are successful? Or is these are great learning places, that would make an ordinary student to extraordinary student? I don't think so. All top universities are top universities because they get the best students, in terms of intellect and hardworking. These students have a very high rate of peer learning than learning from a professor. Exceptions are there, but often it is peer learning. If you really want to learn something new, make friends who are good at that subject. 

Confused

Thirty seven

We often overestimate success. Success is all about being in the right place and the right time. Of course, all the ingredients like hard work, focus, good habits and many more which are listed in the winner's book are needed. But luck or coincidences play a significant role in success.

I keep giving advice to students and my daughter about how to be successful. But when I see my own life, there were so many incidents that could have changed the course of my life. Example, I reached late for my post graduation admission by 10 mins, if the bus got delayed by another 5 min, I would have ended up in my village as a farmer instead of being a scientist. There are many this kind of incidents led me to present day job. Yes, I worked hard, focused and pushed myself beyond limits.

Still, success is all about chance. If you keep your mind open and alert the probability of happy coincidences would increase. If you are proactive and seek the opportunity, there is more likely that you would do better.

Success

Thirty six

Dieting is a strange phenomenon only for our species. All organisms from bacteria to Homo sapiens are evolved to eat better and divide. A twist in the gene changed a few things for us. We were able to imagine the things, and thereby we are now typing blogs along with other things. However, the twist in the gene did not change everything suitable to present day living. Rest of the brain and body metabolism stayed back in the last millennium. Ancient brain and body together searched for scarce food all day; the energy spent to seek the food and food that is consumed were balanced out. However, now the brain and body are searching for food all day, and the food is everywhere — minimum energy spent on a portion of high-calorie food. Unfortunately, we have no control over this ancient machine, often gives us an illusion that we are in control of everything.

The only way to escape this just keeping minimum food at home and not venturing into any environment very high-calorie surplus food is around. 

Melting self-control 

Thirty five

Today is Monday. Two meetings are there. Sometimes I wonder about meetings. People give so many opinions which are not necessary. Why they talk so much nonsense? Is it because they have a valid point or they want their presence felt? I often find most of the 2-hour meetings could be quickly finished in 30 mins. Wait, people may be thinking about me also same way? Could be. I guess I even should talk if my point is very valid and contributing to the matter. What I found about myself is just like how often it is so difficult to resist a sweet or to buy a gadget, similarly to talk is an urge (like itching) difficult to control.

Dance and destroy bad thoughts

Thirty four

Building a new PC for photo editing. My friend gave his PC build configuration. But as usual, I wanted to explore the basics of each component. From the last 2 weeks, I am going through reviews, technical articles. I found that there are much faster hard drives than SSD. I learnt about graphics cards and processors.
Finally, I found out that, more cores are needed for better photo and video editing. This is gross summary out of too many technical stuff I read and understood.
The first PC, I bought a used one for Rs. 2000 ($28) with 512 MB ram. My next upgrade including monitor was around Rs 20 000 ($285) with an AMD processor 4 GB ram. The processor busted after 5 years of use. Next upgrade was without monitor and hard disc as I was already had them from the previous PC.  This PC was built with Intel i3, 3.3 GHz entry-level processor with 16 GB ram but the relatively future proof motherboard (Rs 20 000 - $285). This PC is running from past 8 years. Recently power supply died, and I replaced with a new one. This PC is working perfectly fine for web browsing or word or excel. But terribly slow for photo editing and dead slow for video editing. Bootup time, it takes 10 min.
Now I want to get a good future proof (relatively) PC build. This is costing me Rs 70000 ($ 1000).
Till now I haven't pulled the trigger, read the pros and cons, value for money etc. 

Complicated but elegant 

Thirty-three

In a Tagore's novel, Gora, the protagonist makes one statement when he was asked why you are so rigid and follow so many rules in life. He said "rules hold life, if I relax one knot, another knot will relax and this will leads to ultimate chaos. The same thing happens on weekends. On weekdays you have to go to the office, drop your kids to school and your timeline is fixed. The day is streamlined. On a weekend day, you will relax, and your habits go haywire. On Monday morning you are sad and tired to go to the office. It is not because office work is tedious, maybe because you wasted two days doing nonsense.

I wanted to write on one topic for a month. I have decided to write on "bias". Writing a random content vs some quality stuff - plenty of effort and time is needed to write on a specific subject.

Step by step

Thirty two

Beyond one month. Beyond thirty-one day month. Not bad. Let me review what I logged from past thirty-one days. Most of the entries were just the sketches of incidents happened in everyday life. Few were introspect kind of posts. I haven't created good content, which someone would spend their time on.

This month, I am planning to write on one theme. I haven't thought about which subject, I will take one more day to decide. I am terrified to commit to this.

Come on....