Monday, March 13, 2006

Some of the most irritating/annoying things in life according to me!

I just decided to put on a list of qualities( behaviorial predominantly) in people that irritate me the most:

1. Hypocritical People: I mean people who do not follow what they preach. The truth lot of us tend to forget is what we advise others and we forget that we have to set an example for others to follow. Sometimes I admit I dont follow what I preach to everyone 100% but following what you preach 90% of the time is great. An example : I met a doctor and asked him about maintaining low cholesterol and he asked me to cut down on fatty foods, avoid junk foods especially and then I saw him in the corridor with a Snickers bar in his hand after I was out of the room. I have seen lot of doctors comment about exercising to live a healthy lifestyle when they never exercise or follow a diet control mechanism on their own. Isn't this what we call "RIDICULOUS" ???

2. Hotch-Potchers: I know some pals who talk so much trash and are so much BS that it irritates the hell out of me. The most annoying thing is because of the fact that they do not know the topic under discussion well but just pretend to know.

For example, Let me narrate an incident:

I have a friend who is an Electrical Engineer and knows hotch-potch( a term i use if someone has half-baked or little knowledge if anything at all)about Computer Security but he went on arguing at dinner about how Windows is the worst in terms of Security and when I told him to take a look at Motorola Q and said that Microsoft has done a decent job in terms of security and explained to him the certification concept they have used for signing.He was adamant and replied "Dude...Are you nuts!! Microsoft means vulnerable". I gave up and just realised that there is no point in arguing with people who claim they are right even though they are 100% wrong. Sometimes people are not ready to say " I dont know" or " I am not sure" even though they mentally know that these are one of the answers they honestly have to answer.

3. Gossip Mongers and Commenters: We all love some gossip whether it is human or celebrity or sports or movies. I think its very human to gossip, but there is a fine line between necessary gossip and mindless gossiping. The fine line has to be drawn by the individual himself. If the individiual does not, everyone around starts talking about him/her the same way he/she talks about everyone else. Don't people realize that we spend too much time dissecting into someone else's life than our own? I admit I make comments about others myself but I dont cross the fine line of just gossiping crap. So do the necessary gossip to enjoy your social life but never cross the line!

4. Complainers: I hate people who complain that the whole world is wrong except themselves. There are so many instances when we need to introspect our own actions but we believe bad circumstances or bad karma caused a particular unpleasant incident/occurence. It is easy to point fingers to anyone and everyone but oneself. When something goes wrong, the first thing we look at is to blame someone else...and people who show these qualities are the ones you must avoid being with or even socializing with. How unfair is it that when there is success, we want self-credit (not even share it with someone who deserves equal credit) but when there is failure, we never blame one-self??

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Maturity is Overrated

Sometimes I keep wondering, when in the course of history of human growth does a human mature. Every phase of life is a sort of "Maturity Phase" according to me. When you are born, you want to mature to the next phase which is speech and recognition. Once we are done with that or even parallely a new challenge is set- to make the child ambulatory. So we all mature slowly to 18 year old adults and that is the phase of life where you need the most help to prevent you from going astray. Lot of people use the term "juvenile pleasures" or even "jawani ki josh" sometimes to refer to an immature act. So my question is "What is Maturity? How does one attain it?". Dictionary.com defines it as

a) The state or quality of being fully grown or developed
b) The state or quality of being mature

The other meanings of the word Mature refer to Bonds( like when the Bond is due) and Geology which are not relevant. Another definition states that : Maturity is the period of time in your life after your physical growth has stopped and you are fully developed.

I think most of us who are 20+ agree maturity is something of a mental thing. We all think that maturity is something which shows ability of a person to shoulder responsibility and handle it successfully. The complexity of the responsibility is also crucial here.I think "Maturity" is a term that is overrated primarily due to the fact mental growth happens when a man/woman is in his/her 20s, 30s, 40s and even when he/she is in the 80s and is learning something new. Life teaches you so many new things and everyone has limited short term and long term memory that none of us can remember we learnt in the past X years where X is a number larger than 10. So Maturity is a phase of life that every human may/may not achieve before his/her death. Maturity should be defined as a phase of life where individual can manage daily activities independently and also handle the ability to handle not-so-mundane tasks without much fuss. The definition of the "not-so-mundane" tasks is relative here.

Monday, January 09, 2006

Perfect Vacation, Airport Security and my latest read

Its been quite a while since i wrote some thoughts and actions i have been upto lately. I have been off work from New Years Eve till now and it has been an enriching experience. I cancelled my trip to India...and that was sad for multiple reasons....it depleted my chance of a perfect vacation and also depleted my pocket of $250. Sometime i wonder, why we have to pay to cancel a ticket? These Airline companies will surely find another person flying to India in no time. If they dont..the travel agencies will be waiting for it to happen so that they can coax a client with higher prices. I understand the cancellation charges for a domestic airline(since i experienced my flight from Omaha to Denver was close to empty and so was my flight from denver to sacramento), but its absurd to charge 1/5 the price of the ticket as cancellation charges.

This was my first New Year since the Millenium that I spent with family and I admit it was a welcome change. I love hanging out with friends and paartying but internally i am family guy per se. I think living in USA makes you appreciate your family that much more( esp if they are in another country) and since i havent seen my parents for 3 years, it was a pleasure to be with them and spend my New Year with them. I would have loved to spend the New Year with family in India but spending it in USA gave my dad some joy as he had a dream to spend the New Year here atleast once.

My idea of a perfect vacation is where you have the following:
1) A bed which permits you to sleep for 12 hrs atleast
2) A great TV and have bountiful of movies and food.
3) Family or Friends.
4) Dont do too much( I recently went to Orlando to meet my best buddies and we were in the hotel or in Daytona beach or a dance club just hanging out. As much as i wished to see Universal Studios etc etc..i did not see it since i would lose time spent with my pals.)

Airport Security in USA is probably the most under-discussed topics of the year. People talk a lot about security officers being racial and some of the reports i hear about racial profiling maybe true but the fact remains that you wont know till you are a victim. I have been almost never been subject to special security screening and since security officers usually base it on computer generated "SSS" on the boarding pass, it is easy to know when you are selected. I got pulled this time in Omaha airport and I observed 10-20 people behind me or ahead of me in the line did not have the "SSS" screening done. I lazed around a little after my screening was done, slowing down the process of me getting up and leaving to my boarding gate and realised that so far nobody in front or behind me had gotten the "SSS" which begs me to the question: Is the "SSS" generated in the boarding pass truly random or is it monitored by people or is it monitored by an AI program that scans First and Last Names generated and matches it to the common English names? I might sound far-fetched and too much opinionated but as soon as they pulled me over I noticed the eyes of the security officers to each other saying " check him ". Technically i was not a victim of profiling but i wondered why non-whites get "SSS" tagged most often?. Another incident in the airport prompted me to say this- One of my relatives had an "SSS" on her kid's boarding pass and the kind was 4 year old. My question to the airport authorities is this: How can a 4 year old kid know anything to jeopardize the security of an airplane or airport for that matter?

I am currently reading Michael Crichton's "State of Fear" which debunks the theory of global warming with some eye-popping facts. Lot of critics recognize this book as a fast paced thriller but many are unsure of believing that the world is not affected by the greenhouse gases. I will discuss more on this topic sometime soon.