Sudarshan Gaikaiwari

I have been intending to write this post for a while. Kept putting it of as it might seem to corny but …

A few months ago I read this blog post by Joshua Allen. I have seen many unhappy relationship and could not but think that it boiled down to low self esteem among the people involved. Since some of you might be too lazy to read the comments on that post here is what Allen thinks as high self esteem

Let’s roughly define “high self-esteem” as, someone who is optimistic and positive about his/her own ability to have a positive influence on the world; who has internal locus of control versus external (that is, doesn’t blame others or ‘luck” for failure, and doesn’t take failure personally but sees it as learning). And finally, someone who sees that this attitude reflects the intrinsic worth of all people.

Among all the couples that I have seen only Tieming and Bo Ding seem to have a great relationship and I guess it is because of how good they feel about themselves and how they make others around them also feel good.

“Love is a Bitch” is a great movie by Alejandro González Iñárritu. I have seen his 21 grams and I am looking forward to Babel. I really like the way he makes his movies. I guess he is one of the few people more cynical than I am and his potrayl of human nature closely matches my beleifs about it. Technically the movie is just brilliant, the cinematography and the soundtrack are about as good as it gets. I really liked “La visa es un carnaval” and the beats were really apt for the scenes they were used in. The movie talks about the struggles we endure in our quest for love. It links up three different stories showing this struggle in its different phases and somehow manages to have a coherent structure. The story of Octavio deals with his love for his brother Romario’s wife. Daniel’s story deals with his love for a top model who will soon be tragically disfigured in an accident. The story of EL Chivo, a vagrant hitman, talks about his love for his daughter whom he left when she was 2 years old to become a guerilla. In all the cases the quest for love is futile and tragic.

I like movies like Amoresperros that cross the borders of language and culture and make such bold statements about universal themes such as love.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2081652.ece

Well this thumb rule obviously does not apply to people admited to the top programs. But if you are scrapping the bottom of the barrel with your choices here is what you can do -

1. Go to the library catalog of the Universities that have admitted you.
2. Search for books by Knuth.
3. Select the University that has the largest number of different titles by Knuth.
4. Break ties in favor of the University which has the larger number of such books checked out

Regardless of where you go your time will be extremely well spent reading Knuth. If more of your peers are doing the same you will also have some interesting conversations

Today I was reading Richard Dawkin’s book “The God Delusion”. In the preface he talks about the song Imagine by John Lennon. Since I have high speed internet I just listened to the song and read the lyrics as soon as I found the mention of this song.

Now imagine a world without the current restrictive copyright regimes. People could build much richer experiences by connecting books, movies and music together. Imagine every book with an online version which not only contains the contents of the book but links it to news articles, music and movies. An online version which is live and vibrant, a wiki tended to by the many readers of the book.

By the way the book refers to the song for the verse

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace

Atheism in Hinduism.

So for what it is worth I can still call myself a Hindu and an atheist. Hnduism really fascinates me from the philosophy of the Gita, to it’s willingness to embrace multiple opposing thought streams. Check out the quote from Amartya Sen at the bottom of the page

Sanskrit had a larger atheistic literature than exists in any other classical language

http://differentstrokes.blogspot.com/2006/09/caste-communities-on-orkut.html

I just came back from a trip to India after 3.5 years. The media keeps talking about “New India”, home to expressways and malls, where the select few can enjoy everything available in the West as well as luxuries of the East such as house hold help. Now the really sad and disheartening part is that on a website frequented by these “select tech sayv few” you still see them organising themselves along caste lines. For me India has really not changed at all. All the things I dislike about it are still just as strong. The only difference is that now just like in the US where I am the only guy wearing slippers in a mall, I stand out like a sore thumb in an Indian mall too .

Most companies have an Inside sales department whose job is to call up prospective customers and pitch them the product. Now when a sales rep calls a customer if the customer has never heard of the company or the product then it is a cold lead. Such calls are really difficult. They are no different from the calls you get from a credit card company offering you credit cards. Remember how you slam the telephone on those. Sales reps need to do these calls day in day out. What they are really looking for is a customer who has heard or recollects something about you company. This is a warm lead. Warm leads are much easier to convert to the next stage or at least willing to have a conversation about the product. Now it is the job of marketing to ensure that calls results in warm leads. So if you are investigating poor sales one of the important statistics is the warm call to cold call ratio. If this ratio is really low then the problem might be with marketing not with sales.

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (attributed)

Recently I met my brother in law’s grandfather (affectionately called Anna). I was surprised that this 88 year old chess enthusiast was so fit at his age. He runs a chess club in Sangli and organizes a National level chess tournament every year. During chatting with him I discovered the secret of his good health. As a young 14 year old growing up in a village near Sangli he was fascinated by chess. The best chess player he knew was the local Brahmin priest. The priest had been undefeated for ages and demanded a rupee as a wager for every game. Now a rupee at that time in India (early 1930s) was a lot of money. An entire sack of rice was available for only 3 paisa. Anna found that local wrestling matches (kusti) would pay him quarter rupee per match. So he signed up at the local gym and trained to be a wrestler. Every morning he would do close to 1000 squats and 1000 push ups. Very soon he became one of the renowned wrestlers in the area winning up to 200 rupees in a match. However he kept spending most of his money on chess as he kept losing to the said priest.

I was really fascinated when I heard this story. What I found truly inspirational was Anna’s love for the game of chess. Many of us give up if we are not good at something. However to truly love something (be it a sport, a career or even a woman) there is a sense of self –abnegation. It is more about what you do for your love not what you get from it.