Life in bullet points...

Okay call me stuck up, but I seem to think that most things in life can be expressed in 3 simple bullet points. Anything more than that, has to be an attempt at humour; else it is so not worth it.

for example

• you are born
• you live
• you die

and the spaces in between; well they better be filled with humour...

Lets get to the point now...
I have a cosmic birthright that I refuse to give up.
I do not suffer fools gladly
And most things in life are simple; if you don't realize it, you are a fool

This brings us to our topic about having conversations:
Don't get me wrong, I love conversations: when they have a point.

The world is suffering from a conversational overdose. It seems that we all have collectively decided to speak out at the same time... and not every conversation is particularly aimed at someone; neither does every conversation have a point attached to it. Here are a few mundane facts:

Emails:

• Statistics, extrapolations and counting by Radicati Group from August 2008 estimate the number of emails sent per day (in 2008) to be around 210 billion. 183 billion messages per day means more than 2 million emails are sent every second. About 70% to 72% of them might be spam and viruses. The genuine emails are sent by around 1.3 billion email users.
• taking spam emails out, it still leaves 54.9 billion emails sent every day
• So on an average, each one out of 1.3 billion net savy people send out 42 emails a day

Facebook:
here are a few facts published by facebook
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

• More than 300 million active users; 50% of which log on to Facebook in any given day
• Average user has 130 friends on the site
• More than 6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide). This means each of 150 million users spends an average of 400 minutes on facebook daily...thats roughly 7 hours! a population equivalent to half the size of USA spends 7 hours daily on facebook...its GDP (if it were productive) would rank amongst the highest in the world!

This is just facebook... for the sake of conciseness, I am not going to mention the other social networks like orkut and myspace. Use your overactive imagination.

Twitter:
Some interesting facts were discovered by a sysomos study that can be found here: http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/

I shall make my conclusions after highlighting the stark contrast between social networks like facebook and social media sites like twitter.

• 85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update/day
• 21% of users have never posted a Tweet
• 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people and 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity

Now here is an intriguing question.

Looking at facebook statistics, one would think that every one has an amazing social experience online. but when you look at twitter statistics, the figures are pretty dismal. What could be the reason for this?
I will not try to qualify this rudimentary study as an exact science... so lets leave out the facts about the different types of business models they follow and the features they offer.

Here is the fundamental difference between the two: Twitter lets you know how many people are actually listening to (or reading) what you put out there. And thats where the reality sinks in...the answer is 'not a lot!'

So in conclusion:

• Sites like facebook thrive on the human misconception that their lives actually matter to a lot of people. In reality, they don't
• We are prone to thinking that social networking makes us great communicators. It doesn't: its just the equivalent of a group of langoor monkeys cackling to be heard
• And the last bullet point: Tweet less, live more!

Gimme a cup of hot coffee and stimulating conversation above facebook and twitter anyday!

Last in a series of three

Okay so its another morning, exactly 24 hours after my last post. I have been running on a total of 4 hours of sleep for the last 2 days. So this might be the most extreme vagueness that I will display for a long long time to come. Heres a few more things that came to mind.

Hypocrisy is a purely human trait. No other animal exhibits it. For all other species, behaviour is a predefined response where they display behaviour that they have been programmed to display. Either this behaviour is hardwired through generations of evolution (as in the case of migratory birds), or something learned through current life experience (like a mouse in a maze looking for cheese). However all the other species save the human are incapable of conveying feelings or emotions that are contrary to their behaviour. they react with almost planned precision and do not break stereotypes.

Humans however are a different story. We say things that we do not mean, we say something and do the exact opposite and when questioned about it, we forcefully defend the expression of an opinion contrary to our behaviour by blaming the circumstances.
There is a fundamental difference between the literal and the incidental. Humans have a tendency to stretch the difference very very thin. I have been guilty of this in the recent past. This I admit. I am learning. I am....
Things said at 6 am when staring at the computer screen, sitting next to a naked girl who's asleep are sacred

Attraction...

Okay so this post may start sounding very vague in about exactly 5 sentences from now.

Thats because this next installment comes at exactly 5:44 am...after a crazy afterparty (well there was a party before but we shall not mention it here for posterity's sake). While I did get molested a little bit, I reinforced a few old beliefs and created a few new ones. Lets talk about attraction.

Lets take an example: Scene 1: A packed nightclub (could be either in North America or even India) What goes on in these places? The answer is obvious if you are around 5 years elder than the average age of the people in the nightclub. Which basically means 5 years ago, I wouldn't have noticed what I do now.
There are usually about 50 girls, some of them on the dance floor...and surrounding them will be roughly 300 guys, all waiting for a chance to align themselves to a girl's posterior. Once they successfully do that (and not all guys achieve this superhuman feat), a few minutes of ass grinding / dry humping follows. what happens then? the girl in question turns around, and depending on whether she likes what she sees, either a prolonged dry humping session or a disgusting look with a blow off follows. Another possible outcome is also that the girl's friends realize what's happening and pull her away.

What you realize in this sea of 20 somethings, is the fact that so few of the guys actually have a clue about how to interact with women (in most cases its the same cluelessness in interacting with other men as well). And not to mention, most women seem to suffer the same fate.

Now I am not an authority on communication or attraction and neither do I pretend to be one, but you somehow start getting the feeling that there is something wrong with this picture. A lot of guys, and some girls will continue doing this throughout their glory years and not realize that most times they will end up with the same result....failure!

Here's what I think is the key to interpersonal interaction... Social Status.

Before you start jumping to weird conclusions, let me tell you first off that when I say Social Status, I do not mean money, power, fame and the usual things that people perceive as social status. These things have translated to social status because of the simple fact that they are easily measurable. You can easily tell if a person is rich, successful, powerful or famous. These things will help you attract women, but not the kinds you want to have long lasting relationships with.

Social status actually is a far more complex determinant. It involves a lot of stuff that directly relates to your personality and your approach to life in general. It is the actual value that you as a person hold in any interaction.

Now if you were to quantify social status in an interaction, it would be in terms of the confidence you bring to it.

Let me try and be less vague and break it down in terms of actions: this should be the best way to explain my concept of social status.

1. Try this experiment. All men notice the women around them on a subconscious level. For a day, try and keep track of the women you notice (not in a way that would creep them out). The way men mostly perceive women as attractive is through their looks and then through their personality when they start interacting with them or watch them interact with someone else. So on an average you should probably notice about 4-5 (I'm being conservative)women that would catch your attention.
2. Now lets look at this from a woman's perspective. Women have a very different way of getting stimulated. This is not just based on looks, but as a complete package that the man is able to present to her. The other qualities are professional success (not phenomenal success, but just enough to let her know of the mans capability as a provider), attitude, confidence, behavior towards other women, capacity for fun and humour, comfort, intelligence, communication skills etc. A clarification here needs to be made that the term 'women' is not used in the generalized sense of the word. When I say women, I mean the women who have their life together and the kind of women you want to get involved with. If you are able to attract a woman who does not give importance to any or all of these qualities, you are headed for disaster (or a one night stand)
3. Okay the tough part is over. Now for the revelation... put your self in the girl's shoes and using the criteria mentioned above, estimate the number of guys she would meet who would have these qualities. She'll be lucky if she meets one in years, let alone 4-5 guys a day!

And within this lies the key to social status. You may or may not get the girl you like by buying her drinks (sometimes they say yes, just because they want a free drink!) or by showering her with gifts, but you are surely communicating your lack of social status! Its like telegraphing "please accept this drink/gift as a token of my desire for you, because I have no other way of getting you to like me"

So if you want to attract the girl / girls that you want to have fulfilling relationships with (psychological, emotional, physical, metaphysical or what ever 'al' of relationship there is), you need to get the qualities sorted out.
Get your life in order... get a life first, have things to do, places to be, people to meet.
Get a career
Be busy sometimes, get hobbies, learn how to dance and listen to good music
Appreciate good humour and learn how to use it.
Accept that having an attitude and not putting up with bullshit is a good thing.
Get creative with words, learn how to speak without having to refer to the dictionary and Stop using txt speech!
And most of all be different from the sea of people out there!

Get these things sorted out in life and everything else will fall into place...relationships are just a by product of a good life.

And the holy grail... You can understand the true value of a man by the way he treats people who are of absolutely no consequence to him.

Okay the sermon is done. And I hope the girl who hit on me last night does not read this. Go live your life, I'm going to sleep.

Relationships and Thoughts

I guess this must come as a bit of a surprise, but then again most things in life are that way. Yes it’s me here; again...

For years now, ever since I became of a marriageable age, I have had this question posed to me at every possible social occasion. Yes I am Indian, and yes most Indians find this a perfectly justified question to ask just about anyone they've known for longer than 20 seconds.

"So when are you getting married?"

For a rebel like me, that’s a particularly tough one to answer without offending the blatant in-sensibilities of the person asking such a stupid question. If I had an answer to that, wouldn't you already know? Or better yet, wouldn't I already be married?
Well most times I answer with an "I don't know", but this open ended answer only leaves space for the next logical question...

"So what kind of a girl do you want?"

As if I just got back from the supermarket and didn't find anything I liked.
But while thinking up ways to elude this natural progression of questions, I did actually get to wondering about the kind of girl I wanted. To prime my knowledge about the kind of girls there are in the world, I promptly went to one of the matrimony sites. Yes whiteys, this is one of the places Indians go to get married... it’s called an arranged marriage, now go laugh yourselves to sleep.

Coming back to the point, I looked at the profiles that parents had put up for their daughters and in some cases the daughters themselves did it. Here are a few sample self-descriptions used freely by most:
• Down to earth (the rest of us are apparently on Jupiter),
• Homely (compared to what? homeless?),
• Fair (yes we are the most racist people on the planet and we might as well admit it)
• Decent (I thank them for specifying this most important criteria, leaves less space for doubt now that you specifically mention it)
• Convent Educated (Apparently that makes them purer?)
• And the one that takes the cake “Simple living, High thinking”. I always wonder if this means that you want the world but are also ready to live in a 2x2 hut.

Here are my thoughts on the kind of girl I want: none of the above!

I believe that with 6 billion of us on this planet uniqueness was the first to go out the window. So although I do believe in soulmates, I also believe that there is possibly more than one person that exactly fits the bill.

I want someone that’s human. I want the words ‘I goofed up!’ to be part of her vocabulary.
That brings us to the next point; I’d like her to have a vocabulary, both verbal and non verbal. I want to know the quirks that are uniquely hers, the sounds she makes when she likes my ideas

I want her to get uncomfortable when people ask her if she can cook. But I also want awesome food fights in the kitchen.

And I want her to laugh uncontrollably at times, with such ferocity that her whole body shudders with orgasmic relief.

I want her to not keep me grounded. I want her to fly with me to the highs and dive with me into the lows. I’m like that professional diver who goes for a walk on the seafloor with a very very loose rope tied to his hips. The rope doesn’t pull him back but it’s there to remind him of home with a little tug in case he ventures too far from the mothership. Also think spacewalks!

But more than the person that I want to spend the rest of my life with, I continually keep coming to the kind of relationship I want to have with her. Because I seem to think that’s the essence of life and yes you can call me corny for thinking that.

Now before we start talking relationships, we need to set right a few facts about me. These are probably the reasons I am writing about relationships and not the kind of women I want in my life.
• I do not get particularly attracted to girls for their looks. I know this sounds clichéd but the connection I make with women very rarely has anything to do with physical appearance. Now I confess that in my previous life, I have tried to behave like a jerk and thought I could get the hottest girls around; but there was a little problem with that theory. I realized there wasn’t much I wanted to do with those girls once I did get them. You can’t have a quiet cup of coffee or stimulating conversation with them once you do what you set out to do in the first place (yes you know what I mean)

• I know how to create attraction. I am familiar with all the tricks of the trade and can give mystery and style a run for their money. But unlike them, I realized early that manipulating girls into bed isn’t a particularly great achievement. I play the game now, but it’s only to create the spark. The rest is my personality. Few girls ever believe it, but it’s true. Many people call this being dishonest and devious. Well if you really want something, is preparing to get it called being dishonest? How about your graduation exam then? Did you prepare for it?

Okay so here’s how I think my ideal relationship would be:
1. I don’t believe that a relationship merges two people into one entity. I think it’s very important to have individualistic traits in the relationship. This keeps balance. Yin-yang etc. So I would appreciate it if my partner retained all the trademark stuff that makes her, her.

2. All my life I have heard people saying that there always has to be some sort of a compromise in every relationship. I refuse to accept a compromise. I value myself highly and so should my partner. Every difficult situation has a work around and not every work around culminates in someone having to compromise. There are win-win solutions; we just need to find them.

3. Every individual in a relationship needs his own space to grow. People think that this makes the relationship weak. But on the contrary, this is the only reason relationships endure. It’s only when you know what to do with yourself when you are alone, can you invest value into a relationship. How many relationships have been wrecked because of a needy or an insecure partner? I would love to learn that my partner decided to spend a night out on the town with her friends. This isn’t a very Indian trait but I promise to fight the system for her right to do this.

4. Time does not have to adversely affect a relationship. Relationships, like everything else in life, need work. Just because you have achieved a relationship with someone doesn’t mean the job is done. With a little care and attention, I believe that a relationship can stay fresh and exciting enough to endure the banalities of life.

5. And lastly the relationship has to be built on strong foundations of all four pillars equally: love, lust, trust and respect. Even if a relationship is casual and you don’t know where it is leading, the very fact that you are in a relationship is enough to merit these four things. Without these, there is very little basis for a relationship to exist.