Epiphany #113 – Hard work & success

I remember watching an interview with Jay Leno a couple of years ago. What surprised me at that time was that he did not credit his luck or his talent for the success that he has achieved. He said it was sheer hard work. He said he stuck around for many nights in a row with his material (which he worked on constantly as well) outside nightclubs hoping to get an opening. He said he often got gigs not because he was the funniest, but simply because he was the guy who was there if the main act failed to show up for some reason. And he said he did that for more than a decade before he became a regular act at the well-known clubs. It was refreshing to hear that from someone so famous (esp in entertainment) because they usually prefer to say that they were discovered at a bar and the rest was history or some such similar drivel.

Over the last weekend when I finally managed to catch up with some of my old friends and it hit me that it works exactly the same in other professions too. You get promoted to manager, whatever, not only because you know what you’re doing, but also because you care enough to be there if needed or in some cases go back to school and get the next degree. Most of my friends (the women/girls) are consciously choosing to let their career take a back-seat  to support their families and their husbands’ careers.  Many of them were in two minds about making the next jump to go to b-school and I found out that eventually they decided not to pursue it actively, for now at least.

A few years ago I would have considered their decision very harshly given how smart they are and knowing how ambitious they were growing up. But ever since kiddo has come along, I completely understand. Speaking as someone working and raising a child outside India without extended family or hired help, everyday life is pretty stressful as it is, to say the least. So I understand when someone does not want to take on any more (stress, that is). And in any case, not everyone is driven by the same goals or rewards. But this leaves those around them with a great opportunity to race ahead of them in the career ladder at work.

Looking around I now see that many people(definitely NOT all) whom my peers and people in my parents generation would consider ‘successful’ such as those who are managers, directors, VP’s, etc. got there not just because they were the smartest, brightest minds ever, but mostly because they worked (the hardest) for longer than those around them. I suppose it is Darwinian in a sense – survival of the fittest.

Its the end of the world? Not really, I think

Today’s topic at our office water-cooler(or at our gigantic, old and rusty coffee-machine)  is the Large Hadron Collider(LHC). From the news articles I’ve been reading and from my costly undergrad and masters degrees in science related topics, I have come to understand that it is going to be ‘turned on’ (yes, I believe that’s the official term for it – ask Dubya if you don’t believe me ) this Wednesday. It seems like half the scientific community thinks of this as the ultimate Diwali (or Christmas) gift and are rubbing their hands in glee while the rest are busy reassuring the public that we are not going to disappear after Wednesday. And like any good science debate, death threats have been duly issued to the right people. If any of this hasn’t convinced you yet about how ‘cool’ this event is, you have to watch the rap video on YouTube about it. That’s when you know this thing is huge.

Talking about huge, going by the BBC website, it has taken hundreds or thousands (depending on whose counting I suppose )  scientists in over 40 countries working together for about 14 years to come up with this. Everything about this collider seems truly collossal like how long the tunnel is, how much cooling it needs – the temperature(-271 deg C) , amount of coolant, speed of the cameras that will capture what happens, its magnification factor etc..they are all impressive. What the LHC is essentially trying to do is this:

Inside the LHC vacuum pipe, two parallel beams of subatomic particles (protons or lead ions) would hurtle in opposite directions at record energies.

Crashing together at specially designated junctions, they would release unstable, high-energy particles – including, perhaps, the elusive Higgs Boson.

I am reminded of a joke about the Big Bang Theory – I’m not sure who said it first – it goes something like this – ‘First there was nothing and then it exploded’. But jokes apart, I’m excited to see what happens once it’s, erm… turned on. There is immense hope that what happens Wednesday will help scientists in understanding everything from cancer to climate research(link).  What I find most impressive is that all this effort is to basically find out what happened the first 7 seconds after the Big Bang happened. BTW, did the Big Bang happen before or after God said, ‘Let there be light’? Just curious.

This & that

The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy.

I recently came across this quote by John Galsworthy while generally browsing and I think it perfectly sums up all thats been going on in our household for the last few weeks.

The kiddo turned 3 over the weekend. I was going over her baby pictures yesterday and I was pleasantly surprised by how much she has grown, even over the last 6 months. I was gently reminded that 6 months is effectively 1/6th of her lifetime so its really not that unusual – her development, that is. What has me almost floored is the fact that instead of baby-fat, she now almost has a 6-pack on her lean stomach. I couldn’t help feeling a pang for the chubbier, less-coordinated bouncy bundle that she was just over a few months ago. She still runs into walls, has trouble getting her sentences out right or even pronouncing the right word at the right time and still believes I have the power to kiss her bruises away. But she now understands complex questions, you can almost see the wheels turning in her head as she tries to evaluate her options and she can eat by herself almost entirely. Hmmm..maybe the latter is what is causing the lean stomach. Note to self – Should look more carefully into it.

The above quote comes in when we decided to throw a birthday party for her at home. Due to gross over-estimation of the size of our living room, we ended up with a standing room only crowd. It was completely awesome that so many did care to show up even though it was just a kids birthday party. So what if I didn’t have time to put out the mini-quiches or mix the juice-concentrates into proper juice that could be consumed by humans. At least we all had some magnificent chocolate cake. If you are ever in Edinburgh, please stop at Choco-Latte. They make the most delicious, moist chocolate cake, perfectly sweetened with just the right amount of chocolaty bitterness that I have ever tasted this side of the Atlantic, so far.

On a slightly unrelated note, what was not untidy was the beginning and the closing of the Olympic games. I missed both and only caught the highlights, but was impressed even by the little I saw during the telecast of the highlights. I had a long post on the Olympics typed out but put off publishing it, because if you had been following it as closely as I did over the Internet, you’ve probably heard and seen every story,  every controversy and read every angle of it. So there is no point in me rehashing any of it.

But if you have missed any of the fun or even otherwise,  you must read Dave Barry’s version of his experience in Beijing.  You can find it here:

Bye-bye, Beijing
Want harmony? Try Forbidden City
Rolling with Beijing rock scene
Haggling should be an Olympic sport
Try scorpion on a stick, or chicken without sex life
Is this wall great or what?

I recommend him simply because he informs us that there were badminton players named Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarak, Poompat Sapkulchananart and Porntip Buranapraseatsuk (yes, Porntip!!)  and of course, because he comes up with stuff like this:

My travelling party included my wife, my daughter and my mother-in-law. (Marco Polo also took his mother-in-law to China. You should always travel with your mother-in-law, because you never know when you’re going to need unsolicited advice.)

You can read more of his stuff here. He’s now covering the Democratic National Convention in Denver, in case u’re interested.

Rajah Paati

I was reading this article today about the Ambani brothers and Reliance I was reminded of a neighbour we once grew up with.

Rajah Paati lived next door with her daughter and son and was one of the first people I knew who owned Reliance shares. Apart from a small house that looked ready to be torn down and rebuilt, the five hundred shares of Reliance Industries were the only savings her husband had left her when he passed away a few years ago. The dividends from the shares, her sole income, helped her keep her head above water and even put her daughter through a BA degree in Tamil. Paati regularly attended the local Reliance shareholder meetings even though she was barely literate and had just one good going-out saree which she had to share with her daughter.

With a daughter about to enter her twenties, Paati fretted constantly about finding the right groom. Her son was of no use to her and was more often a bane than boon. She had reconciled herself to the fact that she was on her own for the remainder of her life with no one else to depend on. She never spoke of it as a hardship though and was often matter of fact about what she needed to do to take care of her future. She often told my mother that she had to keep her eye on the shares and make sure she converted some of her shares to highway bonds in due time because otherwise she was going to die penniless and alone.Mummy tried to console her saying that her son and daughter would rally around her in time, when she needed it but Paati either dismissed it outright or just smiled and said nothing.

Rajah Paati had hardly any time for self-pity or sympathy.  Every summer she would be determined to make sure that our family(and a few others in our neighborhood, I suspect)  would not go without pickles. Paati would help mummy make several jars of mouth-wateringly delicious and spicy mango and lime pickles, showing her when and where to get the best limes, mangoes, red chillies, coriander seeds, etc. Paati even made sure mummy actually wrote down how much of everything was needed. She also gave detailed instructions as to how the limes and mangoes were to be washed, dried and made ready for pickling. Mummy faithfully made sure everything was done exactly as she had wanted.

We came to recognize December and Christmas by the fact that Rajah Paati would at our house making unholy amounts of laddoo, murrukku and adhirasam. Oh, how we kids adored her then.  Paati tried to teach mummy to make vadam and appalam as well, not to mention tons of other Tamil dishes. But between raising three kids under 10 and working full-time, I am not quite sure if my mother really wanted to be making all of these things herself.  But Rajah Paati’s enthusiasm won her over every time and she would be in yet another cooking project  with her the following week. As I watched them cleaning, prepping and then cooking, I often wondered how the frail body of Rajah Paati held so much energy.

Daddy helped her sometimes with her bank accounts and so on but Paati almost never asked for anything in return for all that she did for us.  The only thing she ever wanted from us was some tea and Eucalytpus oil when we returned from our summer holidays at our native place in the Nilgiris. Most of the time though, she just seemed happy to come over and have a  chat and a cup of tea with mummy. As a precocious pre-teen, I had no clue why my mother or any of us would be suitable company for anyone, leave alone her. Our families seemed to have nothing in common, or so I thought.

As the years rolled on Paati relied more and more heavily on her shares to tide her over. She sold some of her shares to get her daughter married and her son eventually found himself a job. However Paati’s responsibilities just seemed to increase. Her daughter faced a lot of trouble from her in-laws and constantly need more money. Her son disappeared after a few years (not sure what exactly happened there). Paati grew more frail and eventually she stopped coming over to help us with sweets and pickles. Gradually Ananda Bhavan and Grand Sweets replaced what Paati would help us with at Christmas. She still continued to come over occasionally for tea with mummy but the visits became less and less frequent and eventually we saw her only if there was a holiday or festival.

We eventually moved out of our house to another one in a very different part of the city. My parents kept in touch with her through friends and other neighbours, from time to time. We heard that her son came back after a few years and later, that her children demanded she sell the house and split the proceeds with them. She, apparently,split the entire proceeds of the house between them, but refused to part with the remaining shares. Her children eventually did abandon her just as she predicted and she moved to a different house in the same locality and lived on her own with just the dividends from her shares. A couple of years later, we heard the news that Paati had died.

Thoreau once said,

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names.

Rajah Paati epitomised this for me. She lived an enthusiastic,  useful life, and more importantly, with complete honesty.

random epiphany – hairstyles

There are some people who look good. Such people can change their hairstyle to suit the latest trend, keep it long, cut it short or colour it any weird way and will continue to look good. The others should find a hairstyle (and hair color) they like and just go with it.

Out of the mouth of babes

Kiddo and I have a nighttime routine that we follow most nights of the week. After dinner and a bath, we sing all her favourite rhymes and unless I’m too entirely exhausted, we go over one or two of her favorite books as well and usually that is enough to put her to sleep. Last night, I felt like reading something myself and didn’t entirely want to read rhymes or kiddie books. So I pretended to read out Sein Language by Seinfeld in the best kiddie book voice that I could muster. She didn’t buy it one bit, so I gave it up and she decided that we should sing songs instead.

We went over her usuals – Twinkle twinkle little star, Baa Baa black sheep, etc, etc.. She then wanted to sing ‘The wheels on on the bus go round and round‘ – with actions, and I indulged her in that as well. Then she said she wanted Daddy to come and sing with her. I gently told her that Daddy was reading and would join her later. Suddenly, she started singing,

‘Daddy on the bus go read, read, read
Read, read, read
Read, read, read
Daddy on the bus go read, read, read
All the day long’

She looked at me smiling after she sang this and I was just gobsmacked. I was both shocked and amused but  I didn’t want to burst out laughing(although I badly wanted to) because I was curious to see what else she could come up with. So I asked her in my best controlled encouraging tone,’ And, what does mommy do, sweetie?’. She went,

‘Mummy on the bus go chatter, chatter, chatter,
Chatter, chatter, chatter
Chatter, chatter, chatter
Mummy on the bus go chatter, chatter, chatter
All the day long’

Sung perfectly in tune and without a moment’s hesitation. Again, I was almost speechless.  Then I asked her, ‘So what does baby(she calls herself that) do?’, and she went,

‘Baby on the bus go cry, cry, cry
Cry, cry, cry
Cry, cry, cry
Baby on the bus go cry, cry, cry
All the day long’

I only hope the last verse is not entirely true.

al-Bashir Bush?

I love reading Google News – more than even checking my email. So, this morning as I was looking at World news, I almost gagged on my mouthful of water (trying to cut down on caffeine at work) when I came across this headline, ‘First al-Bashir, next….Bush?’ on aljazeera.net. Yes, I know, Al Jazeera is not exactly known for its accurate and unbiased reporting, but sometimes it is good to know whats out there. This article is written by Mark Levine, a professor of Middle East History at the University of California, Irvine.

He writes,

While the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis – for which Bush, and along with him, the American people who twice elected him, are responsible – is tragic, it should not be understated that the invasion itself was a crime against humanity.

The war and invasion were in clear breach of the UN charter, which prohibits invading other countries except when an attack on one’s sovereign territory is about to occur or has just occurred.

Add to that US torturing of prisoners, illegal secret renditions, and a host of other human rights abuses, and you have a long list of actions that are prohibited and outlawed by US federal law.

Read the entire article here. It does make one stop and think.

so you think you can dance?

I am normally not a fan of reality shows. There are a few exceptions though. I love all versions of the dancing reality shows -  from Strictly Come Dancing on BBC to So you think you can dance? on Fox.

‘So you think…’ had a new category of dancing recently called ‘Bollywood’. Take a look at the video.. They killed it.  Absolutely brilliant. Hrithik Roshan and Aishwary Rai better watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUfsXsDlLhw

Note: WordPress will not let me embed the Youtube video for this post. Dang it! Please click on the link above.

why so many?

I was up at 4:00am this morning due to an unrelenting sore throat. Unfortunately there was no Paracetamol or Ibuprofen around at hand and finally out of sheer exhaustion, I took a big swig out of my daughters Childrens’ Motrin – it did say that for kids around 95 lbs range, you could take 3 tsps of the stuff. I mean, I am a bit heavier but it was a desperate time and it called for a desperate measure. That and a cup of green tea sort of made me feel like a human again. But I didn’t feel like going back to sleep again and so I did what I usually do when I feel this way – I started surfing.

The homepage on my browser is set to the Google UK News page and right away I was struck by the news of two young Imperial college exchange students who were brutally stabbed in their apartment. They were stabbed over 240 times in total and were probably tortured as well. Since moving to the UK last year I am struck by how many of these knife attacks seem to happen here. Almost every week there is at least one report of a teenager/young man/middle-aged father-of-two/senior citizen, stabbed or knifed and most of those times, fatally.

The level of this type of crime seems pretty high for a developed country with the 5th highest economy in the world. It is very likely that some of this is sensationalism by the media which seems to want to report the most gory of the attacks. However not all of it is just sensationalism.  Apparently a knife crime occurs every 52 mintues in the UK and last year alone there were over 10,000 knife attacks.

Apparently young men between the ages of 14-24 are most likely to carry a knife and also at a much higher risk of being a victim. A survey done by the police last year showed that 46% of boys between the ages of 15-17 have carried a knife at some point or the other and the percentage rose to 62% if they were not in school. Most kids who carried knives said they did it in self-defence against bullies.

I was watching BBC Parliament the other day and was listening to a debate in the House of Lords over this issue. The main focus there seemed to be stricter laws and greater punishment for perpetrators of knife crimes. It was interesting to learn that if you stab someone to death you get a far lesser sentence that if you shoot them to death. Apparently, gun crimes are considered ‘more violent’ even if in both cases the victim ends up dead!

What I did not see in the debate was any talk of creating any programs to engage these young people in activities that might actually enrich their life. There was talk of zero-tolerance policies, increased CCTV coverage and metal detectors at schools but no one seemed interested (or atleast it was not brought up all the while I watched the debate) in funding or running programs to try and keep these kids at school during school-hours and engaging them in productive after-school activities or in providing them with technical or other skills to get jobs or in teaching them how to handle bullying – which they said was a big reason why they were going around with knives in the first place.

These politicians, who have voted yesterday to not cut down on their own funding in running their first and second households, seemed to be more focussed on the punishment rather than in offerring them other positive choices which would encourage them to give up crime on their own. I do keep hearing of programs in the news of ‘engaging the youth’, so I know that there are atleast some people who are trying other approaches. I wish them all the best in helping these kids and the rest of us too.

I stumbled upon a few sites that have more info on knife crimes here in the UK:

http://www.insight-security.com/facts-knife-crime-stats.htm

http://www.knifecrimes.org/uk-knife-crime-victims.html

[As a clarification, the second household that I mentioned above does not refer to the politicians mistress(es), although that may be part of it - no one is keeping track of accounts anyway. It is a second residence for those who need to buy a flat in London for when they come to town on official business. Yeah, right!]

Best British Film

Virgin media recently conducted a poll and apparently the top British Film is Four Weddings and a Funeral. Monty Python’s classic Life of Brian, Trainspotting, Casino Royale and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels round up the top 5.  I am not sure if this is a list of the all-time best British movies, but given that Lawrence of Arabia made in 1962 made it to the top 10 of the list along with Atonement released last year, it does seem to be that way.

As much as I like Hugh Grant and his mop of unruly hair, I have a hard time agreeing with the list. I do agree that all of those movies are good, esp. Life of Brian. But how could the list not include other great ones like Dr.Zhivago, Bridge on the River Kwai or Goodbye Mr.Chips. Then of course, there is Alfie and The Italian Job – the original versions and what list is complete without  Chariots of Fire ? What about the movies of actors such as Daniel-Day Lewis (My Left Foot, The English Patient – made unforgettable by Seinfeld ) and Sir Anthony Hopkins(Remains of the Day, Howards End)? Not to movies featuring Emma Thompson, Sean Connery, Judi Dench, Ben Kingsley(Gandhi, anyone!!).

I suppose, as most polls do, the list says more about those who took the poll than the movies themselves. I could not find the actual details of how many were polled( I think it might have been about 2000 or so people) or the demographics of those polled. To me, it seems more a like a list of the most popular than the best British films

In any case, I found a much more comprehensive list of top 100 British movies here. Its much closer to what I would consider the top 100. I also noticed a few good ones I’ve missed so far. Time to update that LoveFilm list.

p.s. A special shout-out to Bridget Jones’ Diary (the first one) and all movies starring Colin Firth, Stephen Fry and Rowan Atkinson.