Variable Performance Happiness

I remember the joy I experienced when I found out that I had landed a job at Infineon. Some guy at the hostel came up to me and told me that two guys were through and I was one of them.
I was incredulous, and walked to the placement block in the hot afternoon. After searching the display boards for a while, I found it. There it was- the key to my happiness - my name in bold along with Saurabh's. The joy I felt that day I remember. I could even say that I was happy.

"The dissection of happiness"

I wonder what was it that made me feel that way, or what is it that makes me happy.
I wonder coz it would great help to know in which direction I should be headed towards.
Doing something extra-ordinary always has made me happy and so has doing something creative. But beyond that I am not sure. Winning makes me happy, so does eating exotic food.
Company makes me happy and so does intellectual debate. A full day of doing very diverse stuff makes me very happy. Like ...

"Hey Ori! Why dont we hit the ice skating rink after your performance at the wembley stadium?"

Or

"Hey Ori! I know flying around in a fighter jet can be tiring, but why dont we spend the rest of the day climbing all the stairs in the petronas towers?"

I am crazy right? perhaps, but these rising expectations of what is the minimum threshld to tickle me is very frustrating to keep up with...

Vae Victus

When Brennus the lord of the Gaul army threw his sword upon the scales, he claimed that in defeat people have no right to justice. The vanquished romans acquised. That was in the year 387 BC. Almost 2300 years later, when American politicians latched on to Rudyard Kipling's "White Man's Burden" as a noble pretext for imperialism, the context was perhaps the same. Only this time, the context had taken racial hue.

Racism, and the allied concepts of supremacism, propagates the "feeling" of superiority of one race over another. But for me, this is quite a difficult concept to grasp. For one thing, I don't quite understand the concept of race. For another, I am not sure in which field this "superiority" is being judged. My instinct tells me that it is, perhaps, technological or even cultural practices which creates the illusion of racial superiority. The statistics of asian student in american university is a sure indicator of the fact that technological knowledge cannot be owned by a race. A patent can be owned, but knowledge cannot be contained- or anti-piracy laws can always be circumvented in China.

I have always lamented the "subjugated" history of the nation I hail from. I am alarmed by how a small contingent of European troops conquered the nations and kingdoms comprising India. The british didn't even send their royal troops. We kinda got whacked by the "security troops" of a trading company? Where these europeans truely heroic giants, who smote my people hither and thither? Did they sit astride their magnificent golden steeds and strike fear into the heart of the nawabs and shahs and what-nots ( whose dynasties invaded India a few centuries ago. ) Or where they conniving balding men with gastric ulcer, kissing the feet of our Afghan/Arab/Mughal princes and then corrupting their minds with diplomacy and greed.
I honestly don't know.

But what I do know is that the fate of a conflict is decided by various parameters. And I am of the opinion that the dude with the biggest guns usually beats the crap out of the ethiopian militant with a machette. Unless the dude has been giving very ambiguous instructions by the UN. For e.g. "Seargant Big-Gun! You are a peace keeper. DO NOT open fire! I repeat DO NOT!! IGNORE THAT MAN HACKING YOU TO DEATH!!"

I am sure that there have been instances when the technologically weaker party to the conflict emerges victorious.. leading to many teary-eyed-happy-ending to those underdog war movies.
But, I am forced to ponder how that island the size of Tamil Nadu came up with that ridiculous concept of the perpetual shining sun and all! Industrial revolution, perhaps... or was it the age of exploration?

Genocide

For the longest time, I have been gripped by a need to understand people. Why they do what they do? There is so much to study to answer this question, that I am convinced that a person with my levels of motivation can never come to answer the question. Well, the truth could be that no one can answer these questions. It is the story of human suffering which I want to probe, the tale of greed, corruption, war and genocide - to chalk out the true character of man. I am 24, and I am somewhat inclined to believe that mankind is largely a deplorable species. I have had no dearth of wonders and miracles which I attribute to my kind, but yet I am convinced of the inherent wretchedness, selfishness and cruelty of man. I am commited to this belief, and try to hope that in the course of my journey, I will learn to think otherwise.

Many years ago, I dont quite recall well, perhaps when I was 10, I saw "Escape from Sobibor". I remember my father telling me that it was a movie worth watching. So I stayed up late, and watched it! It is the first time in my life I learnt about Nazism, concentration camps and genocide. Since then, I have travelled to europe and seen some of these concentration camps. I have seen countless documentaries, hollywood productions, browsed through wiki and even read some books on this topic. As I think back to these periods of learning about these atrocities, I am shocked about how I felt when I visited the concentration camps.

I was shocked by not what transpired there, but was shocked by the fact that I didn't react at all. I was unmoved. I was untouched by the tales of human tragedy. I was untouched by the pictures I saw of human corpses piled outside gas chambers. I was untouched when I saw the size of the bunk-beds and the tales of how many people were crammed into that little space. I merely blinked when I saw pictures of emacited men working away to death..."

"Arbeit macht frei"

"Work shall set you free" - These word greeted the newly arrived detainees at concentration camps. For me it was more like "Exposure to humanity will set you free", I realize that all those years of disturbing footage has desensitised me to the plight of humanity. I am free from the grief I should feel, but yet not free from a deep seated feeling that ignorance is a sin. Ignorance of what really happened and who it happened to? And who committed these crimes?

I list below some genocides that have occured in the past ( source: wikipedia )
Place : year: people killed: people displaced
1. Sudan (darfur conflict) : 1983 : 2,000,000 : 4,000,000
2. Rwanda : 1994 :900,000
3. Bosnia : 1992-95: 8,000
4. East Timor:1975-1999: 150,000
5. Cambodia:1975-1979:1,700,000
6. Burundi:1972: 150,000
7. Bangladesh : 1971 : 1,500,000
8. China : Communist Era : ???
9. Armenia: 1915-1923 : 1,500,000
10. Germany : WW-II : 6,000,000
11. Congo: 1880-1920 : 10,000,000

Flex your Mussels

Mangalore Pearla!!
After all this racism talk on tv, I hope my habit of ending all words with the trademarka aaa wont get me into troublaa ... Anyways, all thats besides the point.. My long running boredom and unhappiness was abruptly brought to an end....by mussels... more accurately by a combinaion of prawns, chicken, squid and mussels. Not to mention today was month number 7 for me and tina...yeah!!

I loved the dinner!! I haven't eaten this much in a while...

I am hungry again...damn...gotto go

This feeling

Of late, I have been gripped by this feeling. I cant explain it, but its one of the worst feelings I have ever had. I am constantly controlled by it. Its a feeling of hopelessness. Its a feeling that all that was exciting and all that was new is now over. A voice in my head constantly reminds me of the fact that I will not experience anything novel again.

I am surprised by the lack of any true meaning or direction to my life... and this bothers me. Perhaps, this is the culmination of years of cynicism. Or, maybe, it's just my inner conflict causing me great grief. For many months , I have not been dedicated towards work. Have not really put myself into it. The scary thing is that I feel that I never will. What exasperates e even more is that there is nothing else that I would rather do. If I had not been really depressed in the past, I would be inclined to believe that I am depressed now.

I wonder, what is it, beyond the context of work, that defines me? What am I? I feel this questions are no entwined with the remainder of my life. I was at a crossroads sometime back. A crossroad of career choices, and now that I have made my choice, I am scared whether this is the right road for me.

Its an effort for me to write... for I am just not driven enough to do anything more than, eat ...work... sleep...

Children of the damned!!

Belief! Unconditional infallible belief! The boon of humanity. The panacea to all suffering. That which bestows grace in adversity. The belief that one is an extension of something larger than themselves. Where does it come from? It comes from within. Why do we need it? Because we feel helpless. Why do we deify it? Because we need idelogical totems to look up to, to fall back on, and to provide us with courage, hope and strength, and, most importantly, to provide us salvation eternal.

The question of belief and the answer it provides, in my humble observation, are to do with death and beyond, and, life and its obvious inequities and suffering. The fact that "we" or the collective "I" cease to exist when the circulation to the brain is cut off is still a horrifying thought to most of us. I am sure there are plenty of other ways to cease existing, but I shall not be listing them here for the fear of making this rather morbid topic downright macabre. But I will reveal my thoughts on the afterlife later. For now, let me tell you a story.

In the town of Bambaboor, they had a peculiar economy. Since eons, the only commodity in the town was "phood". People stored it, grew it, sold it, decorated it, put it in banks, invested it, and even ate it!! There was a simple classification of people in the town. The minority was the phood-rich class. Such was there affluence, that they even build houses with it. The majority was the phood-poor class. They were so poor, that they worked for phood, but those were the lucky ones. As with all economies, the minority could not generate enough service-demand to employ all the poor people. So many people had no phood. So they started starving.

The kinder rich people gave away some phood! But couldnt decide how much to give away. Surely they couldn't give away the million-strong phood stock in the banks. So they were very disatisfied with the continuing equity and its conflict with their own continued well-being. One day a stranger came to town, and was quite surprised to see the rich hoarding phood of all kinds, and others dying from the lack of it. He said to the poor people, "This is not right, I come from a town much mightier than Bambaboor, and its called Thae-Ven. And there everyone has "phood". To go there you need a key. And I am the ONLY one who has this key." He took pictures of himself with the key and distributed it to everyone as proof. He also laid down some rules for those who wished to attain this key. The poor were happy, they now lived there lives in the same misery but were hopeful, rumors abounded about the beauty and the abundance of Thae-Ven. And people spoke of it with great joy.

The leader of the rich was preplexed, and wanted to know how they could get to Thae-Ven, surely it would be a place which would rid them of their guilt and the conundrum of plenty among poverty. The stranger told them the same thing as he had told the poor. The rich were delighted and took the instructions and the picture of the key and went back to their lives, few even gave away all their phood! But the poverty continued...some grew hopeless again...

A few years later, another stranger came to town. And spoke thus... "This is not right, I come from a town much mightier than Bambaboor, and its called Yawee. And there everyone has "phood" and then some. To go there you need a key. And I am the ONLY one who has this key."

The aspirants for Thae-Ven were quite un-happy with this imposter! Some spoke of throwing him out of the town. So they confronted him about his lies. He said he was the chosen one, the only one. And he produced a parchment to prove it. Some rich folks had a change of heart, some went home, some poor people were convinced, some continued dying. The rest is history...

The art of getting lost in exotic european locations

Today, we shal be discusing in detail the sheer brilliance of the act of "getting lost in semi-rural france". Although this work has been attributed some serious critic appreciation, it still has a few aspects worth pondering about. Let us start with the first question, "How the fuck do you get lost in the first place?". To the uninitiated, the answer might be quite simple, something like, "You have to be a complete idiot". Well, although, the above answer explains part of this elusive act, it still does not explain how a complete idiot could get lost in a country where pretty much everything (time tables and routes) is published and clearly written out.

Let me give you a hint, the french dont like english much!!! And all those brilliant signs and information boards are all in, you guessed it, French!!!