beautiful girls and gangster boys

Lets conduct an experiment. I’m an examiner and I sit you down a soundproof room and I ask you to solve 5 very difficult questions. No other information is given to you. Outside the room, all of your social media followers are gathered. The attendant tells them that you are in the room and are about to solve 5 very difficult questions. If you get any of them wrong, you die and all your followers die along with you. However, your followers have an option to unfollow you. If all your followers unfollow you, the moment your follower count hits zero, you die whether or not you answer all questions correctly or not. 

What do you think will happen? Will you die? Or will you survive? 

I, for one, can honestly say that even if I got all the questions correct, I would die and I am certain that you would die as well. There is literally nobody who trusts you with their lives. But this experiment is too extreme. Replace the the deaths by expulsion from school. Would you still survive? No. 

Replace the expulsion with being charged $100. Would you survive? no. 

See? You’re not that important. 

It’s crazy what people do for followers and likes. They put on these masks to disguise their boring and ordinary selves to look high and mighty. 
I attended several parties this month and saw people from several schools in Mumbai. All the girls looked pretty, on my phone. But when I saw them in reality, it was a sorry scene. All the boys looked gangster, on my phone. But when I saw them in reality, they just wanted to attract those “pretty online” girls. But of course, with a fake face, comes a need for attention, and the “pretty online” girls gave that to the “gangster online” boys. Every party I went to, it was a repeated scene of disappointment as if it had become a cycle. 

But when it boils down to the bare essentials, all of this is just a desperate grab for likes, followers and attention. Why show off your amazing body transformation in five months? Why show off your amazing figure 32 times in 32 pictures? If people I meet online were part of my experiment, I wonder how many of their gangster boyfriends or beautiful girlfriends would save them, when even parents hesitate to continue following their children. Whoever I’m writing about knows who they are.

I can go on and on with my edgy ideologies but I should stop before I get hate from people again. 

Conclusion: look for something genuine. It does not matter if you don’t have the most beautiful girlfriend or the most gangster boyfriend. As long as you can be walk around without feeling the need to hide them, its okay. It dos not matter what you like or hate, even if it goes against what everybody around you does. As long as you like it and can get lost in it for hours, it fine. I’m tired of people criticising things I like and do, so I just block their opinions out. Don’t try to put on a mask online. Its okay if you’re not beautiful or you’re not gangster.

My visit to the doctor before the accounts exam

I was sick before my accounts exam and had to visit the doctor. I was suffering from vomiting and fatigue. The doctor advised me to take a few pills and take rest. If anything continued, I was to take a blood test. My father also had a similar problem of a body ache and fatigue. Needless to say, nothing happened to us and we returned home happy. I found myself able to study for 6 hours more.

In hindsight, I was under a fallacy. 

To summarise how I realised:

1. I was sick
2. I went to the doctor at 5 pm
3. The doctor advised me stuff
4. I came back energised and happy without medicines

If you look harder, nothing really happened. The doctor did absolutely nothing to help me with my sickness. I just got the idea in my mind that the doctor helped me cure my sickness in a dramatic way. However, he was quite useless. I agree that the medicines later on helped, but after leaving the clinic, I immediately began feeling better and I hadn’t taken my medications until before dinner which was at 9:30 pm. 

Now, to speak in general:

Whenever we are under duress of any kind and we visit somebody who can help us with it. Our mind forms an idea that  no matter what happens, we will get better. often, the doctor does not need to do anything except prescribe medicines. Even with this, we will still feel better because our mind has come to believe that visiting the doctor’s clinic has helped us in recovery. This can also be applied to a shrink. Troubled people often visit shrinks who listens to their problems and asks them very basic questions. The fact that the patient is in the shrink’s clinic and is lying down forces the patient to think and come to conclusions on his own. 

however, even though psychiatrists and doctors may sound useless, it is obvious that they are essential to society.

Another fallacy I noticed in the doctor’s clinic was from my mother. The doctor told my family there there was a small chance that I had dengue. On the way back, my mother hyped up that ‘small’ chance so much that it seemed that I actually had dengue and took all possible precautions to treat me. This is obviously motherly love but I realised something

Small possibilities are severely overestimated.

Take an example. 

Let’s say that you are a test subject for a medical pill. You are offered an enormous sum of money for ingesting the pill. The pill has a 95% chance of of nothing happening and a 5% chance that you might die. I can guarantee that if you are not aware of this fallacy, you will not take part in the experiment. 

now, let’s break down the specifics:

The chance of you dying from the pill is equivalent to you getting killed by just walking on the road. At any given time, a persona has a 5% chance of dying on the road. This just goes to show how low the chances of your demise truly are. 

You will overestimate the 5% because it is something so important: your life. 5% will be illusion as 50% to you and even if you do undergo the experiment, you will always have that catch in your throat that you could die. 

Let me assert this: you cannot die.

so, we can learn from my mother, that whenever posed with a question of possibilities, we should always let go of personal fears or any other biases and look at the chance of failure from an objective point of view. This can help in clearing our thoughts and even win us a lot of gambling money.

Unconventional sources of knowledge

Knowledge is acquired at school. Knowledge is acquired through books and knowledge is acquired through television. But these are not the only sources of knowledge. In this blog, I want to go through a few channels through which knowledge is acquired, at least for me

1. Music 

Music is an art. An art is the application of predetermined principles and theories. Playing music is hence an art and to some extent, even listening to music is. knowledge is not defined by any boundaries. Due to this, I believe that music can provide rich knowledge. It is true that we learn from others’ experiences and music does an excellent job in portraying others’s feelings. Of course, the kind of music does affect the gain. For example, music by artists like Logic, Nas, Nf and J Cole definitely improves one’s knowledge about the world. These artists speak about their lives and what their struggles were through life. They also speak about how they overcame these struggles and who motivated them. Logic speaks about social stigmas like suicide, racism and classism whereas Nf speaks about drug abuse and painful relationships. Even if you have not experienced these personally, you can always experience them through the eyes of artists like the aforementioned. conversely, if you listen to “artists” like 6ix9ine, NAV, Lil Uzi Vert and Lil Pump, you are bound to lose brain cells. 

2. Being alone 

Nobody likes to be alone. But, sometimes, one would rather be alone than be involved in something. Being alone has amazing benefits. However, it is very downcast by society as something nobody should do. But, if you are like me, you will eventually break norms. I have tried being alone voluntarily for long stretches of time. Being alone means not talking to friends outside school for a long time, not greeting too many people, not making conversation and even reading non fiction. So what can you learn? Being alone gives you a lot of free time. eventually, you will end up thinking about the world and slowly, you will start forming philosophies about yourself which you will stick to forever. It is in the adolescence when you really become who you will be for the future and it is essential to choose who you want to be. I feel like not a lot of people take time out to really ask themselves what they stand for and what is their deepest belief. I feel everybody should practice being lonely. But it is essential to end this practice in time just like I did.

3. ANIME

This year, anime has been the best source of knowledge for me. I can say that in 8 months, I’ve seen 52 anime shows and movies and i can proudly say that I’ve learnt something new from every show. My top 3 shows are shows from which I’ve learnt the most. 

3. Death Note- what happens when you have unlimited power? This story revolves around the smartest 17 year old in Japan who picks up a notebook on the ground in which, whoever’s name is written, that person dies within 40 seconds. Light Yagami decides to become the ruler of the world through this death note. however, the best Japanese detective, the mysterious L decided to play his game and probably the best cat and mouse chase begins. 

What I learnt- death note asks the question “what is justice?” It makes you ask what is good and bad and who decides whats good and bad. in the eyes of everybody, they believe that they are doing good but in others’ eyes, they may be wrong. The show also shows megalomania, where Light, decided to change the world killing every criminal in the world and the notebook actually manages to kill 259,000 people. It also shows how a person gets overly absorbed in power and how it causes his ruin. It is the smartest show I’ve ever seen and it was the second anime I ever saw. 

2. My teen romance comedy SNAFU/ oregairu 

Don’t let the title fool you. This anime is NOT about romance. It is about a loner. It is about a loner who chooses to be a loner and the whole show shows his ideology and his beliefs. In a strange way, the ideology is so perfect that it can be applied to any situation. But this is just the surface. If you dig deeper, the show shows that everybody has a facade which they put up. The whole show is about how Hachiman Hikigaya and his friends and peers break their facade. It is amazing how they do it and the whole show is a stereotype of teenage life, except Hachiman, who resembles a black swan. Oregairu is a must watch if you want a different perspective on life.

3. Shigatsu wa kimi no uso/ your lie in April

This is my favourite show of all time. I wrote the summary as an exam essay and got really good marks. The story is about the best Japanese child piano player who is dead accurate with his notes. He has a very very driven mother who is almost like an overlord governing his lessons until one day when she dies. Kosei Arima’s life changes and his life becomes grey. He becomes a loner with two friends. He stops piano and can no longer even hear his own notes, until he meets Kaori, a violin player. This is all I can  say about the story. It is the best story with the best animations, the best music, the best life lessons and the bets of everything. I’ve seen it 4 times in 3 months and the last episode is a masterpiece. 

I can never put in words what I’ve learnt from anime and I know that goes against the point of this blog but try watching a few and you will understand yourself. Your lie in April is available on Amazon Prime.

Weird choices which expose you weirdly

Consider a situation in which you have to choose one option- 

You have a sure chance of getting 900$ 

You have a 90% chance of getting 1000$

Which would you choose?

I tested this out on couple of friends and I found out that almost 80% of them would opt for the first choice. They would rather have a sure thing than risk a chance of gaining nothing. 

The problem I saw here was the people being very afraid of that 10% probability coming true. It is virtually impossible for it to happen and they would rather settler less than risk a higher gain. I feel like this is the kind of thinking I detest and this thinking will cause one to remain mediocre for the rest of their life. Another factor which led me to taking risk was that even if the 10% does come through, I am not losing money and I will remain the same. Sure there will be some regret, but a businessperson must learn to handle this.

Consider this situation- 

A sure loss of 900$ 

A 90% chance of losing a 1000$ 

Here, my friends opted for the risk of losing 1000$. 

This seemed weird to me. Why would they change their opinions on risk aversion and risk opting in the situations. Ideally, they should have chosen the same for both. 

The thing that irked me is that they answered without thinking. If you go to see, the chances of you not losing any money is only 10% and that is almost never possible. Even though the value of the loss is more for the second case, people still hang onto that ray of false hope that they will be the 10%. Everybody considers themselves different and they all try to think differently. But what they miss out in this journey is to think hard. They think with their automatic system, leaving nothing to common sense, which of course is hard to come by nowadays. Personally, when I looked up this experiment, I chose a sure loss and a risk for gaining.

Consider this: a coin is tossed:

If heads, you win 200$

If tails, you lose 100$

Is this gamble attractive? 

To understand this, you must assess how you would feel for both cases and compare them. Most of the test subjects did not find this attractive at all because they were more afraid of losing the 100$ than winning the 100$. This is generally and automatic response.

However, if you change the value the winning to 2000$, then everybody will jump onto the deal. All of a sudden, the loss, which is the same in both cases, is forgotten about and everybody is happy to risk money. These are the same people who opted for a sure gain and risked a higher loss. 

here, the human greed component comes in where humans would forego the loss part and jump for the gain. The truth is still that you have a 50% chance of losing. But if that were to come true, they would not mind it in the second case but would get enraged in the first case. 

why you always guess the wrong number of beans in a jar

Have you ever played the carnival game where you have to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar? If you have, I’m pretty sure you got the number wrong. I am also sure that you were off by a large amount. I am also sure that the average of all the guesses made by the participants was dead close the the actual answer. 

That is the magic of averages. You are always wrong! 

But do not worry because everybody is wrong as well. The only reason an answer for the game can actually be correct is either you are lucky, or a large number of people guess different answers causing their average to be close to the answer. 

Averages are the deadliest things in economics. We use averages to decide important things like government policies, rationing, etc., but more than often, we go astray when we follow averages. 

The reason is that the average represents a number which is the middle number of a cumulation of all the possible answers or values. The problem arises when there is an outlier or a number which is and extremity. Lets consider this example: 

Marks in accounts for 5 children in a class are- 44, 48, 47, 46, 99. 

The average accounts marks of the class is 57. This makes sense but the problems arise when you are to assess how good the class is in accounts. If you are given the average without any more information, you would assume that the class is fairly decent with a 57. However, this is incorrect. Just because one person got 99/100, the whole average is skewed in its favour raising it to 57. This causes a massive standard deviation causing incorrect analysis of how good the accounts class is. 

This problem is pertinent in macroeconomics as well. While calculating the average per hectare wage, if a few areas in the country have a massive outlier value as compared to the other areas, grave errors can be made during assessment. 

So don’t believe in averages. Averages may seem nice for some people like a struggling batsman who has a poor strike rate the whole season. If in the last few matches, his rate explodes, the whole average changes in his favour. 

But this is just one case. Averages seem to be an easy way out in solving problems. One does not need to individually scan through all the data and can just make a judgement from the averages. But that is the easy way out, and as I always write- an easy way-out will never lead you anywhere. Look out for outliers, they will lose you lots of money on betting.

diplomacy and escaping remarks part 1

This blog is in two parts 

My commerce teacher keeps telling my classmates that they ‘butter her up’ or suck up to her. She is aware that they do this and often laughs it off. My friends often compliment her with a crooked smile, especially when they are on the verge of falling into trouble. Even if they do fall in trouble, they continue talking sweetly and smoothly to the teacher. I must admire their perseverance and their high success rate of escaping trouble by talking smoothly. 

Delving deeper into this idea, I asked myself what converted a normal conversation into a smooth or sweet talk. I soon concluded that the only reason that Rahil or Ishaan ever get away from trouble is because they frame their sentences in a particular way. 

Framing, or the way of saying things, is and essential part of society. Without framing, sales would never have existed, countries would be crushed due to the lack of diplomacy, and my friends would have probably been expelled. 

The way you frame sentences can have a huge effect on the next few moments or even the far future. Words are like bullets- once shot, they never return to your clip. So we must use them wisely. 

Consider the two statements-

Adolf Hitler was born in 1887.

Adolf Hitler was born in 1889.

If these two sentences were placed in two random places in a random essay, and I asked you to tell me when Adolf Hitler was born, you would most probably say 1887. This would, of course, be incorrect as he was born in 1889. The reason you were led to believe that he was born in 1887, was that the sentence is in bold. 

Consider the following example: your task is to say whether each word is lowercase or upper case-

upper

lower 

LOWER

Upper

UPPER

Lower

LOWER

Upper

I am sure that you were able to blitz past this exercise. Identifying the left column was very easy. But, the right column made you think for a bit and your immediate response could have been wrong. This activated the thinking part of your brain. 

We often get confused when we see something that is somewhat off. A written example can be- green yellow orange.

There is no particular solution to this problem but the best way to avoid this is to look real hard. We let the autonomous part or our brain work for most of the time. The brain works on autopilot. Ever so often, wee see something wrong and out thinking part turns on. We should aim to always have out thinking part of the brain working. 

A twist story

Warren was a boring man with a boring job. He always wanted more from life and a 9 to 5 job just did not seem to make the cut. 

He worked in the big apple in a big company as a supervisor. However, business was slow, so staring out of the window wistfully seemed to be a daily part of the job. 

It was a few days before Christmas and the office was let out early so that workers could be with their families for the holidays. Warren was neither married nor in a relationship. It seemed to be a lonely walk back home, up until he crashed into a dark figure. The dark figure turned out to be a tall man in a black trench coat. The handsome blonde face had crashed into warren causing his briefcase to break open, spilling out all the papers which it contained. The tall, blonde handsome man apologised and bent down to pick it up, wrinkling his very expensive shirt and trousers. It took a while finding some papers which conveniently flew away because of the wind. After the joint effort, the man apologised for his actions and asked warren to share dinner with him. Warren was to refuse but only takeout sat in his refrigerator back home, so he agreed to eat with the kind man.

They stopped by a very posh diner to eat the famous cheeseburger. Over dinner, the man introduced himself as a wealthy stock market broker by the name of John. Putting his hand on his mouth as if to cover his lips, John leaned over and told warren that his best friend has recently discovered an untapped gold reserve in borneo. To warren it seemed like nothing, but the best friend was a gold miner and John interpreted this only as a sign to get rich by investing in his friend’s company- “JONATHAN AND CO.” warren knew next to nothing about investing and share markets but John seemed to be a trustworthy person and money was tight at home, so he wanted in. 

John could only gladly agree and decided to settle the deal at his office the next day. 

The next day, John met up with warren and they headed to john’s office. It took a train ride to reach there as it was pretty far from where warren lived. Warren came to wonder why John was roaming around near warren’s office so late at night if he worked so far away. Nevertheless, it did not matter as warren would get rich soon. The office was a small building and looked far older for its age. It was only three years old and it looked as if it was part of the second world war. The interiors were even more bland with white walls and wooden desks and barely any furniture, just as one would expect a failing company to have. How could John afford such an expensive lifestyle?

As this thought crossed warren’s mind, he found himself seated on a table with John and two other men who seemed to be john’s colleagues.

Throughout the meeting, warren was hit with a library’s worth of business jargon and he finally agreed to invest a sum of $40,000 into this plan. 

Over lunch, John and one of the colleagues Abel began discussing boxing as they were enthusiasts. The discussion turned into an argument and ended in John betting Abel $1000 that he would beat Abel in a boxing match. The bet was accepted and both of them looked at warren to be an impartial referee.

That day, the deal was finalised and warren payed his investment amount in cheque to John and the four people went to a local boxing ring to have the bout. John was athletic and seemed to dominate the match. The ring was small and the room was also small with only one door leading outside which could be locked from inside and outside. Warren paid attention to the boxers. suddenly, Abel threw a clumsy punch which landed hard on john’s face. Blood spurted out as John fell on the mat. Warren began counting but John never woke up. He bent down and began shaking John which caused blood to stain on his shirt. John wasn’t breathing. Abel screamed in terror and ran towards the door. The other colleague called the police, and in the mayhem also ran out of the room. Warren could not leave the body and was momentarily surrounded by police who blamed him for murder because he had blood on his shirt and nobody else was around. 

Warren was given a life sentence. In all the mayhem, he had forgotten about the $40,000. He spent a week alone in prison until the jailer rang him and told him that he had a visitor. Slowly, he walked to the talking booth with the two policemen arrested him and saw a dark figure on the other side of the transparent wall. The figure wore a black trench coat and a hat. Removing his hat, a blonde John revealed his face and smiled. One policemen shook warren. In shock, warren turned, only to see Abel. Blood froze in Warren’s veins, refusing to flow. Everything was a scam. Warren’s life was over.

Syria or Zayn Malik?

There always comes a time in a writer's life when he or she asks herself a very certain question. This question came to mind as well and I asked my self- “Am I the same as a newspaper or am I my own writer?”

Let me start by saying that I consider myself very very different from your average media source. 

To me, the newspapers are very one sided or biased. They gather their information according to what the readers enjoy the most. For example, lets say that a large number of readers of newspaper X enjoy reading articles about celebrity doing absurd things over war and peace news. 

Then newspaper X would rather post many more articles of Britney meltdowns. 

We say that things today can be very personalised when we choose it to be. This is true for even media which adheres to the golden rule: “consumer is king.” However, though the consumer is king, it seems that there is a higher motivator than providing news to the king- money. Money is the reason you see more actor related news than Syria related news. Money is the reason you see sooooo many advertisements instead of relevant articles. Money is the reason these companies work. 

Its true that without money, media companies would go under and it is essential for any business to make money, but in the path of making money, the media companies have forgotten the true essence of journalism- to provide transparent news. 

Providing useless news can be traced back tot he incentive super response bias. The blame, on one side of the coin, is the consumer’s as well. Out generation of readers has become very lethargic and information about serious issues has seem to have taken the backseat behind entertainment news. The consumers put out a want for entertainment news. At that time the amount of entertainment news and serious news was balanced out. The news companies saw this want and capitalised aggressively on this and with time, we saw the massive showbiz takeover our regional news outlets. 

The donkey reacted intensively to the carrot dangling in front of it. 

Today, very few (if any) independent media outlets exist which are not driven by monetary desires and just want to project clear and true news.

I feel like small bloggers like me are one of them. I just want to tell you my mind and am not really interested in making gains from my blog. If I were, you’d see my blog filled with advertisements. I do give my opinion on topics, but that goes only as far as your first ear. To remove it from your other ear or not is your decision

MY FRIEND BOUGHT OFF-WHITES OMG OMG OMG OMG

Have you noticed the headline brands today? Off-White? Supreme? Or Yeezys and Nike Airmax? There is high chance that you must have on Instagram because every next post is somebody wearing them and flexing the clothes and shoes. It is as if wearing them is a social status symbol and anybody who cannot afford it. It seems as if one person bought a Supreme hoodie and everybody thought it was cool and a herd formed which overdosed on the brand as if it was a drug. A few people who were waiting in a queue at a supreme shop were interviewed and were asked why they liked supreme. Most people had no answer and a lot of them did not even know which collaboration was being released that day. This just goes too how the mindlessness of the herd. If everybody buys something, just to fit in, another person will.
The main reason behind herd formation is that people are afraid of social ostracism. We fear that if we do not buy these 'hype beast' items, them we will be looked down upon by our friends who will stop talking to us. As surprising as it sounds, it is true. Due to this, we see a bunch of kids in high school wasting their parents' hard earned money on these $1700 shoes.

The problem with us millennials is that we are too absorbed by others to remember who we are. there is absolutely no space for individuality and for personal exploration. We wan to be like each other and do everything everybody does, just so that we do not get ostracised. This is probably the same reason that you see a bunch of kids in any given school who nobody really talks to because they are very different from everybody. They do not go clubbing every weekend, they do not listen to noisy rap, they read plentiful books and do not drink alcohol or smoke herb. That is more or less every millennial in a nutshell. I salute those kids for being different and true to themselves
This leads me to ask: what are we missing?
The most important thing we miss is personal exploration. By this, I mean understanding oneself, one's strengths and weaknesses and how one can do well in life. Most people nowadays hesitate at what they will do in the future or who their idol is or what their favourite book is. Reading has no value anymore and those few who do read, read garbage. I mean no offence, but every teenage fiction is a recycled version of another novel. The essence of literature has truly lost its touch.

The only way to survive and be anything in life is to try to be different. this may seem easier said than done but it is essential. You'd could start this in small ways which will soon ingrain a certain mindset into you.
1) STOP BUYING GARBAGE.
2) Do not just do something because everybody is doing it because

If fifty million people do something wrong, it is still something wrong.

3) Try being different in everyday living too. Try dressing different, talking different, or even listening to different music

in conclusion, being different is very important today but is never spoken of. Everybody is a sheep and the herd is led by a foolish shepherd towards a wolf. A wolf here is the end of the world.
So, instead of wasting $10,000 on a pair of Human Races, you'd rather buy your mumma a cute purse or a yourself a new book

 

TOO LESS>TOO MUCH

Consider these two presumptions:

A man who owns one penny is poor.

A man who owns one penny more than a poor man is also poor.

And consider this conclusion: 

A man who owns a trillion pennies is poor.

Does this conclusion make sense? 

Logically, it does not make any sense. Any man who owns a trillion pennies is very very rich. But, if you were to see the situation considering the two presumptions and with a mathematical mind, you will realise that the conclusion makes sense. A poor man is a man who also owns one more penny than the first. A man who has one more than the second poor man is also poor. A man who owns one more penny than the third poor man is also poor, and so on...

In this view, a man with any amount of pennies is poor. 

But this does not make any sense! If I have a trillion pennies, I'm very rich! But I'm also not!

This situation is called a paradox 

A paradox is a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement which when researched actually proves to be true?

A paradox can also be a contradiction in the general belief and a proven statement. For example, 2+2/2 is two but if you were to use BODMAS, then the answer will come to three. 

another very famous example is the paradox off choice.

we are often led to believe that the more options you have, the better your choice can be. Your career counsellor tells you to keep maximum options available while choosing a college. You prefer a plethora of mobile phones when buying a new phone. But what if I told you that your choice would be better if there would be 5 phones to choose from than 50?

This is true.

Lets say a shoe shop sells 500 pairs of shoes.You walk in and decide to buy one pair and begin choosing. You over over a few shoes among the sea of shoes on display. Most of the times, you will get confused and walk out of the shop empty handed. Have you ever been in such a situation?

Selection is the yardstick to progress and it is what differentiates us from planned economies and the Stone Age. But there is a limit of choices and when the limit is surpassed, the surfeit can often destroy the quality of life. 

A large number of choices ruin our decision making and make us choose an option which is not the best. This gets worse when the best option is actually hidden among a number of bad options. This was the case in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when the villain was elated by the best decorated chalice and drank from it. There were a hundred chalices and the holy grail was hidden in the back. Had there been only ten, the chances of one finding the grail would have been better. Maybe not for the villain, but any other rational person. 

Think about what you want before making a choice. Inspect all the choices and preferably write your aim down. Never choose with the idea of choosing the best choice. There is no such choice as a perfect choice or best choice. Set your mind to settle for the good choice. Yes, even in the case of partners. Only the best will do? In this world of unlimited choices, a good choice is the new sexy.

Why a free meal is a SCAM

Have you ever been given a chocolate or a pen for free by a shopkeeper or a friend or a free dish at a restaurant? If yes, then chances are tat you must have immediately formed a soft spot for the other party and in a while did something for them like visited them again or bought a pen from them.
This is called reciprocity. Reciprocity essentially means that if somebody does something for you, you are inclined to do something for them in return, by conscience. It is more or less a favour for a favour.
Here's another example: a person offers to help you with your homework and you gladly agree. a few weeks later, he asks you for your research on the upcoming project which is not supposed to be shared. Chances are that you will, even unwillingly, share your information with that person. this is because you brain will sting up the memory of the person helping you in a time of need. SO, you helping him does not seem so much.

Reciprocity may seem like no big deal, but in the world, it can have a lot of consequences.
A small example is the Hare Krishna Society. Members of the Hare Krishna Society (HKS from now) often need donations. So, they roam around crowded places like airports, railway stations, parks and city squares looking for potential donors. They carry around small flowers and whenever they see anybody, they walk up to them, greet them and then give them the flower. They tell the person that the flower is a "gift from God" and that they should keep the flower. after a few minutes of talking to the person, they pitch their donation. More than often, it pays off and the person donates to HKC.
As you can see, the member of HKC first greets the prison and gives him a flower as a gift from God and then begins to chat with him. This is the favour. The flower is the gift given which triggers your conscience and makes you sympathetic to the HKC member. The member then talks to you for a while to embed the feeling of reciprocating the gift in you. Lastly, he asks you for a donation and your embedded conscience stirs and you remember his gift to you. Even, it may seem like a small gift which he gave you, it is still enough to donate a substantial amount of money to the HKC.

We are never able to judge the value a gift or a favour which leads us to reciprocate a larger amount. Here, the HKC member is wise and gave you something of a small monetary value but a large emotional value which in turn made you want to give him something of higher monetary value than something with a high emotional value because you don't really carry family heirlooms to give out at a railway station. The HKC member played his cards perfectly while your deck fell out of your hands.

The world is full of people like the HKC members. The best way to help yourself is to realise when your conscience acts up. From there you have to be able to differentiate it with emotion and your current position. Not returning a favour is fine. it is called "favour" for a reason.
So, if anybody does decide to give you a free meal or a drink, its best to avoid it, or even better, take it and run away.

If somebody points a gun at you, run towards it

Imagine this: You're an American agent in a German standoff in a shady back alley of Darmstadt. A German soldier is pointing a gun at you and your frozen still looking at him. Your gun is on the floor. What can you do? You can run away, but that will have the obvious result in him pulling the trigger. You can also surrender but it would lead only to the electric chair. It seems that you're in a fix. There has to be a third option but everything seems to lead to death. Without thinking you run towards the soldier.
One of three things can happen- He shoots you in the shoulder, he misses his shot or he just does not shoot. You have opened two more options for yourself.
But why should you care about this? You are probably reading this on your mobile at home, lazing on a sofa.
The importance of this anecdote is how it can apply to our lives. Often we find ourselves in situations where we are helpless and are at our wit's end. We consider our two options of doing something and choose the one which an have the least consequences. However, there is always a third option. It is never thought of and often very very risky, but fruit it bears is very worth taking it.

Why can't we see the third option?
The biggest emotion barring our finding the third option is fear. We are afraid of consequences and often tend to avoid to squelch the idea of succumbing to our fear. Often, we are put in situations which are very time bound and the risk of going wrong is very high and the consequence is severe. Our fear, in these situations, increases exponentially and we panic.
The best way to deal with this is to take a break for a minute and take a breather. Take a washroom break and wash your face. It will clear your mind.
If the teacher is coming around to check your homework, and you have done only half of it, you are stuck with either showing it or not showing it. In this case, your mind goes into hyper speed and you try thinking of solutions. But it doesn't work like that. our mind is not a warp tunnel and it cannot function super fast very efficiently.
A friend of mine was stuck in this situation and he considered his options- Owe up and take the incomplete sign or complain that he didn't know how to do a sum. Instead, he sae a third option and swiftly turned his pages to a few uncorrected practice sums. The type of sums were the same as those of the homework. The teacher came, saw it and went. I got an incomplete for not completing a graph but he walked away scot free.

Another excellent way of finding a third option is to eliminate your other two options. Burning your bridges is very helpful, but again very dangerous.
General Xiang Yu sent his army across the Yangtze River to take on the Qin dynasty, in the third century B.C. However, his troops were not very confident and he had two options- Inevitably lose because of a army with a weak morale or call off the invasion. Instead, he decided something unexpected. While his troops slept, he ordered some to set all the ships on fire. The next day he told them that they had two options- win or die trying. By removing his first two options and forcing himself to think, he came to this conclusion. He won the battle.

In conclusion, a third option is a godsend but only believers can see it. You have to want to find a third option to actually see it. If you stay in the lane and go with the usual two options, you won't get anywhere. So go ahead and try your hand at the third option. So what if you get shot? It's better dying a hero than at the laughter of a bunch of Germans.

Can Aanjaneya be a black Japanese boy?

An adventurist father named his two twin sons Winner and Loser Lane. They both were raised together, went to the same school, took the same subjects, attended the same tuition and did more or less everything similar.

Loser Lane succeeded in life. He went to Lafayette college in Pennsylvania and joined the police department. He never hid his name but it was often very uncomfortable for others to call him "Loser". They used nicknames like "Lou" or "Losier" or sometimes just gave him a different name. 

As for his brother Winner, became a criminal with a very long record: nearly three dozen arrests for burglary, domestic violence, trespassing, resisting arrest and arson.

This example shows that naming your child does not matter on what he or she ends up becoming. We make our own destinies and superstitious names like "Kulakesara" will not make your son famous, or even a famed pundit. 

We often associate a lot of personalities with names. fFor example, we often associate Arjun to be an idiot's name or a common person who has nothing special. We associate Paris to be a name of a party animal. we address Charity as a stripper's name. in general, we associate names with personalities and jobs.

Worse than this, we often associate names with castes or how rich a person is.

You would normally associate a Chotu or Mukesh to a servant or a lower person, while you would address a name like Richmond or "warren" to a rich man or a top class person.

The truth is that this is just a continuous bias towards these names. just because all the Mukeshs you hear about are servants, doesn't mean that its a lowly name, as there is a billionaire after that name. 

When it comes to names, we jump to conclusions very fast. We take names to be the end all of a person's religion or race. We always assume a Ram is a Hindu or an Ali is a Muslim or John is a Christian. The truth is that a name does not define you. Ram could be a muslim if he wants and Ali could be a Buddhist, John could be a Jew and Sohinki could be a Taoist. 

A very common herd mentality is to name children after typical names. For example black people name boys DeShawn or DeBravo and girls Aliyah or Kiara.

white people name boys Cody or Anthony and girls Ashley or Jessica.

Asians name boys Yamamoto or nobita and girls Shizuka or Midori 

Spanish people name boys Juan or Javier and girls Juanita or Camilla 

These are the most common racial names and are also the lowest performing or the least successful people with these name. 

But what if these people want to change their names? what if Anthony wants to change his name to Benjamin (the most high end white boy name), or, more importantly, what if DeShawn wants to change his name to Connor (the second most popular white boy name)? 

Will this change affect who they are? now that they have new and successful names, will the thread of destiny change for them? 

The answer: NO

Anybody who bothers to change their name in the name of economic success is at least highly motivated, and motivation is probably a stronger indicator of success than, well, a name. - Steven Levitt 

At one point in the 1990s, the most famous girl's name was Nevaeh. The reason behind this girl's name was that if you were to spell it backwards, it would spell to heaven. Some superstitious parent mustve thought that if he or she would have named their child that, it would signify prosperity.

In india, their a common mentality to name your cild after gods or children of gods. That is why there are so many Ganeshs, Rams, Radhas, and Mohammeds roaming around. the truth is that several of these people commit crimes and "taint their God's name". All of this is baloney and a pretence to blame people for something that does not affect them.
It doesn't matter what your name is, you can be a Mohandas and commit crimes and be a Dawood and be a philanthropist

BRIBERY FOR DUMMIES

Have you ever slipped some cash under the table or called for a quick fix for your problem?
The world is a dark place and around a trillion dollars are exchanged in bribes every year and India alone suffered a loss of 364 billion rupees in a year due to 2G scams, the commonwealth games and mining.
However, on a personal level, have YOU ever bribed anybody? Personally, I have never had the opportunity and this leads me to ask- "How do you bribe somebody?"

Step 1: Learn about who you are bribing 
Understanding your target is an important factor in bribing somebody. You do not want to end up in a position where you offer the target some money and he says no. What will you do then? It will be awkward as hell! What if he calls the police?
So, you must know the person in and out and find out if he is susceptible to the dark arts and has ever committed the offence before. Also find out how much he normally would take for a bribe and how much power and authority he has. For example, if he is a teacher, he really cannot help you become the head boy  of the school or admit you back into school for higher studies if you have failed or misbehaved gravely in the past. That is the job of the principal, who probably is not as easy as the teacher and will often expect a greater "donation to the school."
One key thing to remember is that EVERYBODY IS CORRUPTIBLE. Everybody can be bribed and even the so called "un-corruptible" are very susceptible to bribes.
In fact, Red Sea Scandal had over 50 "un-corruptible" government employees.

Step 2: Work up on you approach 
There are two ways to approach a person for a bribe, clothing wise. If the person is a high authority, like the principal, then dress up formally, but if the target is a clerk or a lower member of the corporate hierarchy, then you can dress up semi formally. Never walk up to bribe somebody in sweatpants.
You have to be able to play on your words while approaching your target. You cannot be blunt and tell the target that you are offering a bribe or a large sum of money in exchange of something. A universally accepted phrase is "I'm sure we can work something out." In india, it is much easier to bribe somebody: you can mention the code word for a bribe- "Chai pani" and the target, if used to the ways of the dark arts, will understand and comply.
Sometimes, if you are lucky, you may not even have to approach the target and can make a generous "donation" in the name of the target or organisation. Such is the case in schools and non profits

Step 3: Do not act desperate
An important part of the deal is your posture an the way you behave. You must behave in a calm and chilled out manner. You must not portray yourself to be desperate because then you leave openings for the target to exploit you or sweeten the pot for him. do not directly jump into the deal. Start talking about something you know he likes and slowly change the topic to the deal. Begin your negotiable terms at a low value so that you can feel the target out and know how much he may actually want. This may help you save some money for a bribe for another day. If you start high, then you might reach the limit of what you can afford and he may demand more.

Step 4: Try not to get rejected
The last thing you want is to get rejected for the bribe.
Have you ever thought what happens immediately after your target says no? You look at him and he looks back at you in an awkward tension and nobody talks. He will call security and report you. If he has recording cameras in his room, you may get locked up and your days in bribing and even business will be over, unless you can, of course, bribe the judge.
So try not to get rejected.

Bribery is terrible and bribing anybody is not recommended at all. But, you gotta do what you gotta do. So, if you do have to bribe somebody, then it is best you keep low and do it. Inversely you could also be the target for somebody. In this case, you should ideally carry out the deal, but if you feel extra pesky, you can always accept the cash and not carry out the deal. The briber can in no way complain to the authorities. What will he say? "He took my bribe money and didn't carry out his end!" Most bribes are given in the form of gifts and hence you won't have to even pay taxes, so all your money will remain clean. But be careful! Know who you are dealing with because if you do that to a gangster, you will literally get waterboarded in a back room, or worse, get your brains blown out.

Things beyond control

Studying and wishing your fake ID works, running and hoping McDonald's new burger is tasty, going advice and hoping your friend follows your advice. 

These are opposites with the main idea of things we can control and things we cannot control.

Things that we cannot control outnumber the number of things we can control by an exponential amount and reasonably, we spend considerable more time on those things. It is completely normal and acceptable. Just because everybody does it but that does not mean that it is correct to spend time on the things that you cannot control.

One of the biggest things we cannot control is 'worry'. Worrying about something will not change how it will happen. Worrying if your exam will be difficult won't make it difficult or easy but you will be wasting a lot of time worrying which could be used to study. In the realm of worry, time goes slowly but while you are lost in it, time, in reality, flows fast. It is as if every minute spent worrying is two minutes actually spent. 

Worrying is a problem which only you face. this means that you worrying will not affect others. for example, if you worry that your friend will do better than you in exam, the anxiety only affects you and your friend is not afflicted by the worry, lest he even knows it is happening. Your time is being wasted. While worrying, the mind becomes weak and often brings in the worst possible situations. 

we cannot control what fortune holds out for us but we can work now and now worry to make out future better. Worrying will never take us anywhere.

Another important thing which we cannot control is the 'what if'. While studying or working, our mind often wanders and we pop up hypothetical situations on the most meaningless and baseless things. For example, if you keep thinking different scenarios of asking a celebrity out in your mind, or the probable things you would do on mars, you're wasting your time. This is rarely a possibility and time should be spent on better things.

We are fighting an unwindable battle with things we cannot control. We must learn to recognise the things we can control and cannot control and phase out the uncontrollable things. This will be good for us as we will save time and our brains. 

Validate my parking and my actions plz

We do a lot of crazy and dishonourable things. We may cheat in tests, insult people, backstab people, amongst others but we always seem to want people to agree with our actions and our thought processes behind why we committed those actions. We constantly seek validation to absolve our actions, no matter how grave they turn out to be. It is as if we always want to be justified for our actions and be in the right. What we do not seem to realise is that majority people do not agree with our thinking and our reasoning. 
Our brain has this strange and humane quality called a conscience. It keeps us down to earth and emotionally attached to our actions. every action we do affects our conscience. Most actions are very very harmless and do not really affect our conscience in a big way but actions such as stealing, cursing or even arguing with elders and friends can trigger a feeling of guilt in our minds. Our conscience does not let us forget our actions and makes us repent.
Conscience could be metaphorically described as a nagging wife who nags her husband for every action he does even though it is sometimes for their benefit. 
We constantly seek ways to satisfy this guilty feeling. We use words and phrases like "sorry", "I had no other choice", "it wasn't my fault" or "I didn't do it on purpose" to cover up on their actions. 

There is nothing wrong in seeking validation. To me, this idea of the brain is very intriguing. However, if there is a way we can storm past ahead of seeing validation for our actions, we can definitely become better people. if we are smart, all our actions wont require validation but since we are not, let us work towards it.

cheating

Jean was a three year old girl who did not like going all the way to the bathroom to do her business in the morning. Her father, an economist, told her that if she woke up and went to the bathroom to clean up, he would give her a bag of M&Ms. "Really?" asked Jean. Her father took out a bag of candy and showed it to her. Immediately jean went to the bathroom and came out to receive the goody bag. This system worked well for the first three mornings. Every time she went to the bathroom in the morning she would receive bag of M&Ms. On the fourth day, jean woke up and went to the bathroom at 7:20 and got a candy bag. sSe went again at 7:30 and got another bag. She received a third bag at 7:45 when she went to the bathroom for the third time. Her father realised that no matter how old you are, you can be a cheater.

Humans are born to cheat and it is in our blood. We try to find ways to shorten any kind of work we do, be it completing our homework or inspecting restaurants for rats.
Although cheating is wrong and unethical, we should never leave its side and use it to help ourselves and others around us.

Cheating is fine if there are no future consequences 
Although this can be interpreted in many ways, the best way to express this is that if James Jonah Jameson asks Green Goblin for pictures of Spiderman for money. for the first few days, Green Goblin takes pictures of Spiderman while fighting him, but after a while, buys a halloween Spiderman  costume and sells a bunch of selfies. There is virtually no consequences to cheating in this case.
Your act of cheating, if you should, must be very mild. Cheating should not involve anybody catching onto you for anything in the future. Your actions in the present define your future. Just like how Pablo Escobar's smiling mugshot shot him down from becoming president of Columbia.
Also, never cheat repeatedly. Cheating repeatedly can leave space for mistakes and the risk of getting caught which leads to-
THE END
Every magician knows that if he gets caught, his whole act is over, his name is tarnished, and he is the laughing stock of the audience. Although its possibility can be easily reduced, it is yet very possible to be caught. In a previous example, if Green Goblin got caught cheating, he would most likely be fired. He committed to taking cheated photos as there is no negative future consequences but if he gets caught, its over.
Do not be a moron while cheating
If you really want to get away with cheating, do it properly. Do not leave space for any errors or moronic mistakes. For example, if Green Goblin was to take selfies dressed as Spiderman, it would be a dumb idea to let his ears show or use his trademark bombs in a picture. One must, therefore, be perfect in his methods of cheating.