It sure is an Art..!

 Ani speaks

Every time I resolve to be a regular blogger, I am met with incidents in my life that seem to draw me away from the task at hand. No, this isn't another post on procrastination and its effects. I have already done that two times (Do check my previous posts if you have missed it). This one is something different. It's about something that's mandatory in everyday life- the exact opposite to Algebra or calculus, for which I am yet to figure out their true purpose. This is about something that quite a lot of them are devoid of and a gifted few are born with it. It's not just a talent that develops along with the embryo during pregnancy. It grows along with the person and strengthens with practice. It's what I would call, an ART.

There are general questions that are yet to be given a definitive answer that cements their actual purpose of having been asked in the first place. What makes people tick? What makes people BE the way they are? What makes them different from the second guy? Well, if you ask me, at this point in my life, I would kindly request you to discard the above mentioned questions for the time being and focus on the actual problem at hand.

What makes people to fail miserably at managing stuff, at managing the task at hand? Now this may come as a bolt out of the blue for those "gifted" few who are yet to learn much of the outside world, having grown with the mainstream thought that humans have well evolved into perfectly managing things thrown at them, irrespective the order or the priority of the task. Well guess what, this isn't entirely true. So coming back to the question, is it a sheer lack of responsibility that makes them so vulnerable to fail at task management and prioritization? Maybe. Because being responsible is no easy feat, especially at a workplace where we represent a commanding position. It is alacrity towards the problem or situation being faced that is important, rather than a bankruptcy of responsibility in actions towards clients. One irresponsible behaviour towards a major client is enough to tarnish the name of the company and bring it to a downward spiral. But then, does it only occur at work places where values are highly regarded? If so, then is irresponsibility the only factor that causes a catastrophe such as the above mentioned? I fear not. If my past experiences with prioritizing things have taught me anything, it is to never believe your heart completely. Trust me. While faced with a situation wherein you are forced to decide on which task to do first and there lies among the list of tasks in front of you, your most loved and desirable task, never pick that task as the starting point. Keep parroting this yourself till it literally gets etched in your brains. Unfortunately, I found this the hard way. Failure to do this equals the perfect recipe to become your boss's least favorite- goodbye to that idea of learning golf just so that you can partner with your boss to defeat his rival (But again, that's not how pleasing your boss works. It's a complicated answer that has stumped men since the Stone Age!). 

So, if it's not responsibility that's the only root cause, then is it a sheer lethargic attitude? Of all the possible answers that I think is true, this might be my most favorite. Being a final year engineering student in India, I have come to the point of realization of the relation between lethargy and engineering. It's (lethargy) is more like an added bonus that one gets as one proceeds through the 8 semesters of engineering, progressively getting stronger at the passing of each semester. On a rather off note, it is here where I say my obligatory apologies to those staunch engineering bigots (zealots, fanatics) with a thought that I have hurt them in some way by those lines above- albeit I cannot come up with a single reason to have hurt them. 

Lethargy is something that is dissolved in our bloods since we were apes, scratching each other’s backs for a living. I am someone who does something only when I have the mood to do so and strive as I may, I would never be able to complete, nay begin the work when not in the mood. This naturally puts me in the category of "lethargic people"- I still wonder if the person who categorized this was lethargic. But is lethargy bad? I would say no, because despite this disorder (should I say?), I manage to complete the task completely. Slowly, yes, but completely and thoroughly. I suppose the tale of the hare and tortoise did after all prove to be useful- slow and steady wins the race. But as always, lethargy isn't always the "cool guy" in the room. He's not fun at all the parties and has to be kicked out by the bouncer. Imagine a deadline looming just around the corner, ready to pounce on you the minute you come into its vicinity, then a lethargic will take you places, I can assure you of that. Not to promotion, college or success, but to the worse end of the road- and hey, that's a place. 

Then if not lethargy either that's the root cause, then is it a display of disinterest towards the work? This is another of my favorites. A simple disinterest towards anything in life is sure to put me off then and there. Believe me, I have spent countless days of my "engineering life" completely disinterested in putting my bum to the chair and begin studying for the next day's test. It's quite a late realization, agreed, but it is as they, "it's never too late". What have I gained by doing this, you ask me? Well, it's mostly loss that I encountered, but the little gains that I had faced would last me a lifetime and maybe more. The moment I realized that all I have been competing for with my classmates was for a mere fraction written on a white piece of paper that gave value to my knowledge poured onto that paper, I wanted to make up my mind that a fraction with 100 as it's denominator shouldn't tell me who I was. At the end of that day, the 3 to 6 months time you spend locked up in your room, almost bereft of entertainment from the outside world and mugging away complex theorems and technical definitions only to end up pouring all that knowledge onto sheets of paper within 3 hours of time and getting it evaluated by some person irrespective of whether they are qualified in that subject or even qualified enough to evaluate a professional paper such as an engineering paper, disinterests me- and yes, this is the situation in India, this is how poor education is here. It's not that I don't like engineering; I just dislike the way things are here. But again, here I am, almost at the end of my engineering journey. Graduation is one project away and it is now that having said all of the above, I can say that despite my irresponsibility, lethargy and disinterest exhibited in certain parts of this "massive", "spiritually enlightening" voyage (not by sea or air though) through engineering, there isn't much that we can do now that this system has become a part and parcel of everyone's lives, so much so that I fear that babies born in the future might simply evolve with superhuman abilities to withstand high stress and tension and with the excellent ability to compete with their peers on all aspects of life. So what has this got to do with prioritizing and management you ask me? Well, in my opinion, a degree in medicine and engineering are the two toughest "ways of life" that a student can live through- Of course, I am pretty sure all the other streams are equally tougher too, but then, the amount of papers and workload that we encounter, surpasses human ability. I do respect other streams too, like CA. The amount of math that they do is godly- So naturally, when someone is put through such workload, there comes a point in everyone's lives where we have to start prioritizing our works to maximize efficiency and reduce time. But then again, despite all these, there are a few who are simply not capable of categorizing things. This doesn't mean that they are different from us-I don't want to send out wrong signals. This simply means that they have to buckle up, drop the clutch and press that throttle to the maximum. No pressure.

 As a concluding statement, I simply hope that I wasn't faffing about too much on mundane things. That never was the point in the first place. God..! Prioritizing and managing things is truly an ART..!

...And tomorrow never did come!

Yeah, you read it right. Tomorrow never did come. And it possibly never will (Or has it?). It is at times like these that I begin to doubt my sheer existence. The instant I decide to start doing something a minute later than the actual planned time, I end up with an unfinished task and a feeling of guilt in my mind- or is it my heart… I am not sure. I eventually feel the guilt dispersing throughout my body like an acrid gas filling an entire room within seconds of gaining its freedom from a container.  The task at hand, however, remains as such. A “minute later” turns to “fifteen minutes” that turns to “half an hour” and somehow reshapes to “an hour” and before I know it, voila! The starting time flies beyond reach.

This has happened one too many times.

Hey, come to think of it. You (not me) decided to blog this a week back didn’t you?

Ah, apparently, yes. And that time never came. That “task” never happened, thanks to you.

Oh! So now you fancy playing the blame game eh? How am I responsible for what happened-or what didn’t happen in this case?

Alright. Let me put this in a broader perspective for you. The moment I decided to put my bottom on the chair and finally blog the pending posts saved as draft, who was the one who diverted me into watching YouTube videos of drone technology?

Well, that was informative right? I was trying to educate you, broaden your knowledge!

If you had stayed on with that video, I would have gladly agreed to what you are saying. But then you HAD to jump to watching videos that showed how often cows farted. Seriously, how is that educational?

Next time you stand beside a cow, you will know when to move away.

Thank me later.

*Sigh*. It’s tough talking with that guy. I am pretty sure that I am not alone and the fact that a majority of the people suffer from something I call “habitual procrastination” puts a broad smile on my face that lasts for a full minute or two. It IS true. Admit it, you SHOULD have, nay MUST have put off some task for a later time and then got yourself completely engrossed in doing something completely unrelated to the task at hand.  There are some phrases that have such deep meanings, I often wonder if the person who first came up with that actually experienced it in real life. One such phrase is this- “Time and Tide wait for none”. Yes, I had used this in my previous post and as this is its continuation, I would love to stress upon this yet again. I wonder sometimes as to HOW LONG the particular person took to come up with a phrase such as this…

And now we interrupt this program to bring you something extremely enlightening-

Time and Tide wait for none

    That’s what they said in days of yore son,

               So complete your tasks and say that you are done

Even if they weigh a ton.

I know that it’s no fun,

     They are almost upon you, you can’t run!

Do that task and your future becomes bright as the sun,

       Japan’s currency is Yen… (What…?)

As you can see here, I am not trying to make a pun,

It should be pretty obvious,

           That I am running out of words to rhyme.

I should confess that I am no poet,

  If you observe I only try to make the last words rhyme.

By this point if you are still reading,

      You should have realized that these are just paragraphs,

Split in a “poetic” way.

I am not even sure if I can use “ ” in a poem,

        And now I have stalled and can’t think anymore.

Oh god! Save me from this wrath,

I seem to have been caught in a loop!

Roses are red,

Violets are red,

Grass is red, flowers are red,

Everything’s dead,

Oh god! My garden is on fire!

    I am going to have to end this now,

     Because this just doesn’t make any sense any more.

P.S- No. I haven’t watched videos of cows farting. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if there were videos that showed cows doing it, until I searched the net. Hmm… The results I got were pretty convincing. I also happened to find an article and a video embedded into it that showed how a cow farted and burned the entire barn down. I wouldn’t suggest you to watch that, because one thing is for sure. The internet is a weird place.

Tomorrow never comes...

"Time and tide wait for none...." - Anonymous

 That IS true right? Alright, I am going to have to ask you all to play ball with me. How many of you have completely wasted an entire day doing nothing and later regretted it? If not now, then you must have, back when you were in school (or college for the much older readers of my blog). I am going to be down right honest here and confess to doing that not once, twice nor thrice; Let's just say that I have lost count. All I am asking you all to do is to follow suite. Let me know in the comments below the different ways you managed to superbly waste an entire day.

Bonus combo:- Imagine that you have tons of work to do. The deadline is just round the corner. You can literally see it peeking at you every now and then, sniggering every time it does. The deadline is confident that you will definitely fail. You just proved it right. Now let me know your story in the comments below. 
Adding some spice to people's lives eh...? 
It's a little something to benefit the welfare of our community.

Well, I suppose it all boils down to this-
Procrastination. One word, 15 letters, one contextual meaning and one reason enough to make our higher officials (professors or teachers for the rest) lose their cool. One single word that has played havoc in the lives of many students and IT & Software technicians alike, still exists and will continue to do so as long as humanity thrives on the face of the Earth. With a smug smile across its face, it dances, gambols and definitely knows how to party hard in times of distress. Procrastination. It's not a word. It's an emotion.

Well, to be honest, we had planned on posting something related to this and then going off-topic for no reason, but hey.... Guess we will do it "tomorrow..."

P.S- Until then, take a look at this video from one of my most favorite channels in Youtube- Ted talks. Perfectly sums up what I want to say. 
Alright guys. Honesty is something that I like. It's something that has been molded into me right from my birth. So, I am going to be honest yet again and say that I was just too lazy to write what I wanted to say and hence, the video.
Love your honesty Rudha. Love it. 

 

A rather black week-2

Anirudh speaks

part two

Ever since the inception of the world's most feared militant group, things have been downhill for many. Countries are being rebuilt after an economic downfall, markets have lost huge shares, companies are drawing straws on whom to retrench unable to pay for the losses, employment is going for a toss, psychologists are in demand owing to an emotional break down for those having lived through what they say was a nightmare, governments are being questioned at every step they take and at every measure taken to curb the lack of safety and security.

Albeit the aftermath doesn't imitate a war-torn place- which is a very good thing- it has shown us how a country might look like when its government is at it's brink and clutching at the last threads of it's economy. Now explaining how terrorism and economy are related shouldn't be a difficult task owing to the fact that they indeed go hand in hand.

(Before I move on further, let me just confess that I am not bussiness-literate. So any ambiguities encountered while reading this post is due to my sheer lack of knowledge in the ''bussiness and markets studies''. Throughout this article, I survive solely beacause of the facts that are at my disposal, though scattered everywhere in the internet. Also, in a lot of instances while talking from an economic point of view, I would have explained the concepts involved by keeping the Indian Economy as my base because, it is after all, the biggest economy and as the old saying goes- "Indian economy is the best economy". So, if there are any corrections or ambuguities that catch your eye, kindly bring it to my notice via the comments below ). 

It has been estimated that the death toll from terrorism has risen from a meagre 3K to a staggering 32K in a span of a decade. Like I had said in part one of this post, the world IS falling apart, piece by piece. Every time a city is hit by terrorism, in addition to accounting for the losses in the precious and innocent lives, the government has to compensate for the loss in property and thus occurs an economic crisis when that government gasps out of lack of funds to repair the damages caused. If the country has a proven track record of a poor GDP, then in my opinion, it's close to 'game over' for that country unless drastic measures are taken. These can be in the form of inceasing the taxes levied on the commodities, in the prices of public trasportation and the like. It is a well known fact that markets detest uncertainty and when it comes to shares and stock, uncertainty may be your worst enemy. However, it has been observed that these markets, though experience an intial downward phase, have risen up from the depths quickly despite a glum economy. This is where effective advertsing comes into play. For example, post a terrorist attack, a certain brand of band-aids may experience an increase in the number of orders by hospitals, or a certain brand of packaged bottled water might begin selling with a promise that a majority of the money spent on this product goes to support the affected parties. So, that brand, in addition to selling their product, have managed to advertise for the cause with a minimal expense. Now this seems like what I would call- "opportunist marketing in a negative way"  (slick name, yes, but this is the best I could come up with). It may seem like taking advantage of a situation such as this, but I guess that is how markets work. On the other hand, effective advertising has some good to it too- it helps the affected through charities and donations- so hasn't this balanced out the negative?

Stock has always been a form to gauge a country's economy. However, attacks by lone-wolves (a single person executing an act of terror under no one's orders or command but by a sheer personal thought to cause harm to others) have not proven to literally bring down the stock and eventually the economy- they merely cause a dent or at the least, a scratch that is quite easily recoverable. But consider a well coordinated attack by a jihadist militant group, like the 26/11 in India or the 9/11 in the US. The following are the most plausible steps that would be taken post the attack-

Exchanges would be closed  for the next forthcming days post a curfew being instated resulting in a quick loss for a lot of companies. The worst affected would be the emerging companies and the start-ups. The giants in the bussiness would encounter a loss of a few billion dollars. Many of them would begin playing the safe game by selling the majority of their stock holdings and seeking safe haven. The shares on sale might hit a dead-end when no one is willing to take the risk. The curfew instated would result in thousands of workers refusing to leave the safety of their homes eventually causing a massive decline in product manufacturing. Thus, that company encounters a loss because of the raw materials bought that are now stored for an uncertain time period. The company would have probably bought them on loan from banks, but without a ''demand ad supply", their revenue goes down and they re consider paying off the debt to the bank. In addition to this, they have to shell out money to merely store the raw materials and protect them from destruction, as purchase of fresh materials seems next to impossible. Banks would face a huge crisis what with the companies refusing to pay off their debts, because of a looming economic slow down and  the insurers, concern on the insurance claims. But all is not gloomy. With companies selling their stocks in an attempt to save themselves from sinking into the abyss, the national treasury would prove to be the ultimate safe haven and their appeal simply increases. If this economy spirals further downward, then that country's currency banks down and begins losing it's value, thus affecting the imports and exports. Allies would refuse to export their products citing low profits. The general economy of the country would however depend on the scale and magnitude of the attack. The sectors that would be the worst affected would be the entertainent, restaurants (food & dining), travel and tourism, airlines and the automobile sectors. The general consumer staples and pharma industries would observe a good increase in their profits and their "demand and supply" would sky-rocket. In the end, the worst case scenario would lead to an eventual, impending global recession. This in turn affects the education and employment sector too.

Wow! One act of terror! One... the result is a Domino effect. It is things like these which initially caught my attention. While trying to find a pattern in the attacks of the now famous jihadist militant group, I could come up with just one possible pattern and it seems a bit too obvious. They specialised in attacking only those places that are most crowded. That is enough to make it to the internationl headlines. It was at this moment that it hit me, What if they wanted just this? What if all they wanted was to be known? Everyone wants to be seen, to be heard. What if their plan to excecute their caliphate ideology was by first making themselves well known to the people and second by striking fear into their hearts? A fear so deep and chilling, it brings thoughts of an impending death when encountered first hand. What if their method to excecute this plan was by bringing down a government first and then turning the people against themselves and the governments? Maybe the only method with a high success rate to collapse a government is by creating an economic famine! It all sounds a bit too cinematic, agreed. The attack in Paris however, did not fit this pattern. That seemed more like an attack of vengeance. You see, when you turn back the pages of Paris's history, you will find that France used to appease a few jihadist groups much to everyone's shock. This however did not last long and France soon realised the true face of these militant groups and paid the price of their stupidity. It was at this moment when they were backstabbed or rather, betrayed, did France resolve to have one of the most powerful army and defence forces. And they did just that. However, the society at that time was against expressing the jihadist religion in public and this also included an aversion to women's clothing (as per their religion). Thus, this attack in Paris on Nov 2015, seemed more like an act of vengeance for creating a society as mentioned. Nothing has been completely proved, however, and these are just theories.

Well, these are just my thoughts, my opinions and my take on this topic. Feel free to comment on what you think, in the comments below. As a closing statement, I would like to say that I am not against any religion or country for the society that they have. I have merely used the facts already found in the internet and added my take rearding this theme. Seriously, hell was literally unleashed on Earth in the Paris attack and in other instances around the world. No one would want the Devil to walk the Earth again...