Extortion

School kids are an important mechanism to get donations for charity. I don’t really know the reasoning behind why kids are made to go collect money, but thinking out loud it may be – to create a sense of discipline about money early in their lives or to make them feel that they contributed to a noble cause.

Anyway, I think the intention has always been very clear – it’s the children who have to go and collect the funds. It’s their sweetness and innocence that makes the donor contribute her bit to their cause.

I remember my good old days going door to door collecting funds for some charity. Not only were people extremely stingy, but at most places, I got free things to eat but not a cent in my kitty. I mean, the amount of stuff that I got to eat could have easily been valued at more than 5 times the amount that I actually collected. I learnt an important lesson – people are ready to give away non-monetary things much more easily. But now that I look back, I might very well be eating stale left overs (somehow all I ever got was cold-stuff from the friendly neighbor’s fridge).

But these days, I have found a new trend going on. Parents, bring their kids’ donation card to the office and then make all co-workers contribute. Also to make sure that we don’t set a low bar, the parents put in their first donation which is like a huge number. Then to fit in and not look like a heartless soul, every single body in the office puts in the same amount as what the parent contributed.

In the last week itself, I have spent like a week of my salary donating money to kids whom I have neither seen nor do I know they exist. My only connection with them and the charity (which I know nothing of) is their parents! Sometimes its so bad, that I don’t even know what I am contributing for!

I could very well print a card and take it to office saying it is for my kid’s charity and put some insane figure as my contribution and make others do the same. Don’t get me wrong, I am completely for donations. And if I meet school kids on the street asking me to support their cause, I do put in spare change. But what these parents do is just plain extortion.

The extra-hot coffee

As long as I have been writing this blog, I have been a caffeine junkie. Not something I am proud of, but well also not something that I am trying to abstain from. I love my coffee and if anything, I love to learn and know more about coffees.

Now, the local coffee uncle from whom I get my daily dose of coffee makes his coffee piping hot. But every once in a while, I like to indulge myself and I go to a Starbucks or a local expensive pseudo-Italian/ American coffee shop. Not only are their coffees super expensive but also, they are fattening and not hot enough.

To put things in perspective a visit to a Starbucks costs me worth a week of my regular street-side uncle made coffee. And then how many calories does a Starbucks have? Well, my favorite coffee – the Vanilla Latte actually contributes to 12% of my RDA. You can see the nutrition content of all of Starbucks products here. Finally, my favorite uncle makes his coffee so hot, that if I am not careful enough I can actually burn my tongue. As for the expensive coffees they are hot enough to be used as ice-packs. Yeah I know, most of you won’t agree with my rant about the degree of hotness of coffee. But lately I have noticed that Indians have a tendency to drink very hot liquids as compared to the rest of the world that I know. So if you are an Indian reading this blog post you know what I mean.

So with all these issues, how do you still splurge and feel less guilty and more happy? Well, Starbucks allows you to customize your coffee. So my order these days is super customized. I ask for a tall Vanilla Latte, non-fat, sugar-free and extra-hot. And with my funny accent most of the times the baristas don't get it. Then I have to repeat again and again and again till the whole place knows. Anyway, trying to be shameless, I don’t care as long as I get my perfect coffee. And it is less sinful with almost half the calories of their original drink.

Lizard Brain

Most of us have heard and know of the “flight-or-fight” response, “amygdala hijacking” and associated behavior. Though I knew the scientific theory I was never that cognitive of its impact on my everyday life till I read Seth Godin’s Linchpin.

Before I write anymore about it, let me define the Lizard Brain the way Seth does it:

“The lizard is a physical part of your brain, the pre-historic lump near the brain stem that is responsible for fear and rage and reproductive drive.”

And…

“The resistance [sic] is the voice in the back of our head telling us to back off, be careful, go slow, compromise. The resistance is writer's block and putting jitters and every project that ever shipped late because people couldn't stay on the same page long enough to get something out the door”.

And for the visually motivated amongst us, there is a nice little video that someone put together to explain the lizard brain and its importance:

What is the Lizard Brain?

Okay, in simple words – I find my Lizard brain to be that part of my brain that is judgemental, scared and prevents me from trying or doing anything out of the ordinary. It is that part that keeps reminding me that – people are looking, you are not supposed to do that and I should be happy with whatever I have achieved and not look for more challenges.

The advantage of knowing of its existence now is – I can rationalize my fear. Each time that I am attempting to do something different and my brain prevents me from doing it, I can actually rationalize that its not me but a little part of my brain. Then I can consciously go and do it. So may it be public speaking, helping a stranger or just writing a blog post. Acknowledging its existence has now helped me become a little less shy and more disciplined with life in general. If you are like me, may be understanding this part of your brain might really help!

5 things to do before the new year

I bet all of you are now geared up for 2013. Your resolutions in place and party plans in order, you are just waiting for the the clock to strike 12 to take on 2013 with a bang. But as you wait for the new year to come there are still a few hours of 2012 that can be put to some productive use. So here is the list of 5 things that I am planning to do before 1.1.2013.

1. Clean-up – Regular readers of my blog are aware of my obsession with frugal living. Today is a good time to go through your wardrobe and look at all the clothes that you have not used for the entire of 2012 (I bet you have some). Now take all these clothes and classify them into two groups – To donate or To Use. The ones marked “to donate” go drop off the clothes at your local charity today. And the ones marked “to use” line them up to be used in the first week of January. That way you have a pseudo-new wardrobe without buying new clothes!
2. Donate – I know we all wish to donate. We are very charitable human beings at heart. But when it comes to going through the process of donation, it’s a hassle. So now that you have time, go donate to your favorite charity or open source project. If you need help, here is a short list of projects you may wish to help:
• Firefox
• Gnucash
• Keepass
• TrueCrypt
• VLC Media Player
• Wikipedia
3. Contact that person – Everyone of us has a long lost friend, colleague or relative who we have been wanting to call, email or drop a message for a long time now. Today is a good time to do that. Go pick up the call and wish that person a happy new year, you might just end up making someone’s day!
4. Buy – Today is 31st December. For most businesses today is a Financial year end (or at least a quarter end). Everyone wants to close their books in the black and show profits. You may wanna try your luck at bargaining and get a good deal on the car, house, laptop, bed, wardrobe that you have been eyeing!
5. Change your passwords – Finally, today is a good day to logout off all the websites that you are perennially logged in (yeah your Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Foursquare account). Clear all your internet history (yeah all the delicious cookies have been tracking every move of yours on the internet, good idea to get rid of them once a while!). Finally, set new passwords for all your frequently used accounts.

Bye bye doomsday

Okay. Its past 12 and we are on the other side of the Mayan doomsday. Yeah some parts of the world are still not, but being self-centric, I will give that a go. I waited and waited and waited. But the world never ended. All the prophesies and Hollywood movies and tonnes of conspiracy theories passed by in a whimper.

Luckily, after the Y2K problem more than 12 years ago, I have learnt to ignore such prophesies. So I didn’t really prepare for this day to be any different. Imagine, had I taken the Mayan’s seriously, I would have partied like there was no tomorrow, spent all my money and had a gala time, only to realize that I have to live another day. My theory of living life like a project with a definite end-date and all scheduled backwards would have gone haywire.

Anyway, now we start living our mundane life till the next doomsday passes us by. NASA was so sure that nothing is gonna happen today that they made a video about it and released it on YouTube more than 2 weeks ago!

Why the world didn’t end yesterday?

Pre-meet spying

My current job requires me to go meet strangers all the while. I end up collecting a lot of name cards and haven't yet figured out what to do with them. Whoever thought (including me) that plain old name-cards are dead trees and a relic of the past hasn't really done business in Asia. In this part of the world, we still completely rely on exchanging name cards to introduce ourselves.

Anyway, over the past several months I have figured out that it pays to do your homework on the person you are going to meet. Generally before a meeting, I have the name of the person and many times the company that he/she works for. There are two distinct aspects of research that "need" to be done before that meeting. (And I am not discounting the work that you need to put in for the content of the meeting (yeah - presentations, demos, proposals etc.)).

1. Research the Organization
   Unfortunately for me, most organizations that I work with are small and medium businesses. So I got no access to quality annual reports. But still, most companies have trails of their digital footprints lying around all over the internet. Besides the company website (that you have to completely devour - yeah, search the sitemap and go through each and every link however mundane it looks!), I get valuable information about the company in the news, conference websites, software company success stories, vendor websites etc. Though it sounds lame - a quick and dirty 5 forces of the industry that the organization works in actually helps!
2. Research the person
   Its amazing how much we share online these days. Most of the times, I have access to surprising amount of information about the person I am going to meet. Besides, if I engage in certain amount of tactical background searching it goes a long way in carrying out a meaningful conversation with the person. All of us have had our 15 seconds of fame in our past life and internet with its long memory, manages to really store it well. I have discovered people’s academic achievements, marathon timings, sports medals, their non-profit associations and on one occasion even a criminal record. And this is besides the tonnes of professional and personal information which is almost readily available on Facebook and LinkedIn.

I do not know if all this research really pays off. The only way it helps is - I have a fairly good understanding of the organization that I am working with and of the person that I am meeting.

If you are gregarious and friendly probably this entire piece of advice is useless for you. You can probably strike a conversation with a cow standing on the road. But for a person like me who all his life has only courted computers, knowing a person before meeting him/her really helps. Most of the times, I can at least try break the ice cause I already know a lot about the person I am speaking with. I just need to be careful not to freak the person out.

12.12.12

Yeah. The next time we get that is 01.01.01. That is 01st January 2101. 88 years from now. This blog will not exist (Well, now that I think of it - data storage should be so cheap by then that we would have archived all the garbage we have ever generated on the internet!) I won't exist. Most of my current readers (you guys) would have got really busy with living your geriatric life to the fullest.

I thought it would be really cool to get a blog post up today to commemorate this occasion. I am sure its trite and meaningless, but well that's the way I am! Hope you guys try to make this day memorable.

Women’s KPI

Women in general and moms in particular are born with a KPI wired into them. The KPI simply put is – “Feed Men”. So sons, nephews, husbands, uncles and every other relation get fed till they burst at their seams. When we were poor and food was scarce, I am sure this was a nice survival strategy. So men were fed a lot when there was abundance of food so that they could go hunt and bring more food for the family. Or if the men were farmers they would go toil hard in the sun so that they had a good crop – to feed their families.

Nowadays with the abundance of food (at least in the supermarkets), this KPI no longer makes sense. However someone has to still rewire the women. Men no longer toil. I mean the last time a man like me toiled was when I changed my car tire! And that was like more than a year ago! The average guy who “toils” in front of his computer for like 10-12 hours a day should not only be starved, but women should make them run around at home so that they at least burn a few calories.

Feeding men with abundance of good food not only makes them fat, but also makes them unhealthy. I know this post sounds a bit like stereotyping women. Well, in my experience – I have never fed someone “a lot” however good food I made or bought. For men, its like – this is food – this is the plate – you want, you eat, else I put in my refrigerator and eat that same stuff for the next one week. No love KPI here.

Waste Size

I never bought a pair of Levi’s jeans. Not because they are expensive (yeah, by my standards they are!) but simply because the label above the back pocket prominently displays not only the length of my legs, but also the size of my waist.

No man my size in the right frame of his mind will ever want to show off his waist size! I mean 135 years ago may be, men thought discussing about their waist size was cool. I can imagine old saloons, in which a macho man would walk in and announce his waist size and the bartender would give him a seat and all. But these days, the only thing I might proudly announce is the memory size of my smartphone. And announcing that too wont get me anywhere.

Brad Pitt Levi’s Commercial - 1991

It’s one thing to be Brad Pitt and flaunting your well toned abs in a Levi’s 501. But its totally uncool to be Girish and showing off your waist size while you desperately try to suck your breathe in so that your stomach doesn’t rollover the top of the jeans and fold them awkwardly.

Anyway, I think I waited enough for Levi’s to change their labelling. They are sticking to their tradition. I got one today, and I am gonna strategically cover my butt with a t-shirt so that you can’t see my size. I might pretend to be cool and all, but now you know why I don't tuck in.

Bargained

If there is one life skill that I seriously lack is – bargaining. Well, not that I am very good at other skills, but I have always got the raw end of a price negotiation whether I am a buyer or a seller.

This one time, when I tried to get rid of my furniture while moving countries, I not only gave away my almost new and absolutely well maintained table for peanuts, but also the new owner made me ship (drive) it to his place. And then each time I try bargaining the only discount that I have ever gotten is – pennies. Its generally so  bad, that I might have as well not bargained to save face.

Anyway, over the years I have become increasingly weary of bargaining so much so that, I just plain avoid places where I might have to get into a verbal tussle and haggle on price. However yesterday I was caught in an unfortunate situation where the only option I had was to bargain and buy a product.

In my quest to live a healthier life, there is this vest that I have been eyeing for a while. Yesterday I happened to see it being sold at a Tradeshow. The difficult bit was – it was being sold by a Chinese lady.

Russell Peters–Indians vs Chinese

However hard I try, I can’t hide my looks and my accent. So boldly I approached her and asked for the price. Having had a very nice conversation with a Chinese lady before, I was sure I could pull this bargain off.

Now, I have heard from other seasoned shoppers that the trick to bargaining is to stick to your base and not be perturbed by any antics that the seller pulls off on you. To compensate for our ridiculous accents and our inability to understand each other, she pulled out a calculator and started typing numbers to indicate the offer price. Then I took over and I gave my number. This went on for a while and I could see that she was visually very upset. Finally after what seemed eternity, I successfully managed to get the price down by 10%. Imagine 10 whole percentage points! I was very happy and walked away grinning with my prized vest.

Today I wore it to the office. One of my colleagues asked me the price I got it for. Then he showed me a website which lists its original price. I am never ever gonna ever bargain again.