I cannot seem to escape the retinue of updates from my Facebook friends sending me their points of views on what is happening in Ferguson. Actually, I look forward to my friends’ opinions. First, they are very smart. Second, I am always interested in views and counter views. Unfortunately for me though, my friends are not sending me their views / counter views after looking at a lot of data and then taking the time to write out their well formed opinions.

What I am getting is my friends sending me yet another link – with a line penned by them which basically says “Yeah – whatever he said”. Funny part is that if one puts all the so-called-facts from all my friends’ links together, it makes for a real self-contradictory hodge podge of a story.

I asked myself what might be driving this behavior. In my own analysis (admittedly, I am not the sharpest analyst around) this is a by product of three things. First, we have a “Big Data” problem. Second, we have the problem that we do not recognize “Bias” within ourselves. Third, technology platforms like FB, blogs etc give each one of us a big, faceless “Megaphone”.

First the big data problem: Given any event, it used to be that the sources of information were limited in number – you know there were a few newspapers and a few TV channels creating original content. Today, there are numerous blog sites, talking heads, expert columns and so on spewing out zillions and zillions of points of views / opinions / “facts”. As a consumer of information that is just way too much information to digest. You do not have time nor the ability to process all that. That is a true Big Data problem.

Then comes the Bias angle. Forget the biases of the creators of content. As a human being, faced with the Big Data problem, we narrow down our sources of information. And without exception, we choose sources that bolster our inherent belief (bias). There is a fascinating book that deals with this cognitive bias topic called Descartes’ Error. For whatever it is worth, cognitive bias was absolutely required for humankind to survive. In this case, though, it serves as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If one believes the police officer committed cold blooded murder, one always gravitates towards articles and blogs that quote “facts” making the above case. Similarly, for those who believe the police officer had to kill as a self defense. One has great doubts when reading “facts” suggesting the opposite of one’s inherent belief. It creates a conflict between the limbic part of our brain and the neo-cortex part of our brain that makes us very very uncomfortable.

As an example, none of my friends ever post two different links – one making the case and one negating the case. In fact, for most of my friends, based on their past posts, I can predict with pretty good accuracy which way their latest link is going to opine.

Finally, you have this great thing called social media, blogs and such. They are great platforms. But like every platforms, they are merely tools. They have their positives and their negatives. One of the feature of these platforms is that it lends its user a big megaphone. It allows the user to say anything. Usually without much “talk back”. When is the last time you have seen, in any blog, a comment has been as long as the post itself? Or the same person walking into a party and as freely opening up the topic of discussion by stating his and her points of views without solicitation?

The above three often interplay in very interesting ways. Have you noticed how most of the time the comments to posts are made by people who agree rather than disagree – especially on divisive topics like politics, religion etc? That is the Megaphone and Bias playing together. And guess what happens when people use the Megaphone to talk about how they so much agree with views that agree with their “Bias”. They create more “Big Data”!!!

My point is not that people should not express their points of views. They absolutely should. I look forward to those, hopefully, opposing views. But I would love the courtesy of somebody writing out their thoughts instead of sending me all those links. Usually, I do not follow those links.

Perfect would be if one could make the points, the counterpoints and then give his or her opinion on where her belief system is pointing to. Now, that would be a great post to read. Not like the boring ones I write 🙂

This morning, as I headed towards the airport, I called up my seventh thru tenth grade Geography teacher – Mrs. Bhowmic in India. We talked about those good old days – when I had a full head of hair (I know, it is difficult to believe it today, but trust me, I was not born this way 🙂 ). Evidently, she follows my random thoughts in my blog/Facebook. And she encouraged me to write a book some day. You know, many people have encouraged me multiple times to consider writing a book. One even gave me a book on how to publish your first book. Till date, while I often feel the urge to lend words to my thoughts, I have never felt the urge to publish a book. But I know things change and I change too. Maybe some day…

But here is how much things change. Back in seventh grade, if you ever told me that people actually will want to read what I write, I would have laughed as hearty a laugh a thin-rail constitution could cough up and come back with some smart Alec comment like “Yeah! And someday I will lose all my hair too!!” (I know, I know, I was gullible then).

However, every time somebody encourages me to write, my thoughts go back to my desk mate in ninth grade – Dibyendu Dutta. As I said, he sat next to me a whole year on the same bench. He was my hero when it came to composing in English. At that early age, he had mastered the art of writing just about anything in the most beautiful way possible. His command on the language English, his ability to stitch various thoughts together and his great ability to pun almost always produced essays that flowed like some mellifluous music.

There was this weekend homework our English teacher – Mrs. Biswas had given us to write an essay on. The subject was “Sound”. As you can imagine, I approached the topic with clinical and yet scientifically sound approach. I was not much of an English writer, but I knew a thing or two about Math and Physics and all that. So, my output was extremely dry but unchallengeable. It started something like “Sound is a form of energy….”. If my memory serves me right, I immediately followed up my impactful first statement with “It travels at the speed of 330 m/s in air” 🙂 or something like that. Again, any Physics teacher would be proud of me. An English teacher? Not so much!!!

Our teacher had talked about Dibyendu’s essay and how well written it was. In fact, she made him read out his essay to the whole class. He got up and started ” ‘Waaah’ wailed the baby as soon as it came out to this world. And what a beautiful sound it was to everybody present around the baby”…. and so on. And of course, I was like “Dude! what has that got to do with writing about Sound? You forgot to mention that it is a transversal wave form of energy. Remember last year, our teacher told us sound cannot travel in vacuum? Man, I need to talk to our Physics teacher about you”… 🙂

What an idiot I was!!

Dibyendu Dutta, if you ever read this blog in the future, I just wanted to give a big shout out to you. You were not only outstanding, you certainly have served as a great inspiration to me till this date. I fervently hope that some of your talent eventually rubbed off on me. After all, we sat only a few inches apart!!

I have a certain routine in the morning in those days that I do not travel. I usually get up in the morning, remind myself that this might be the last day of my life (I know it is not exactly the most upbeat thought but certainly good for me since it makes me to pause for a second and remind myself who and what around my life are truly important – as I feverishly brush down my teeth 🙂 ) and then before I go for my run, coffee and quiet time, I usually volunteer to drop one of the girls to school.

The journey to school is not exactly the most conversation-filled trip you will experience. Usually they are half asleep (Niki) or have their ears plugged with some music (Tasha). Regardless, it is good to be just next to them for a few early minutes of the morning. As Tasha has started driving, it has quickly dawned on me that driving them around is a privilege that is soon going to be taken away from me. In my house, therefore, I am almost always the one to volunteer first to ferry the kids around if I am at home.

Every single day when I take one of them to school, there are the familiar scenes on the road – which, no doubt, you experience too. The long queues of cars at the intersections, the impatient parents speeding up and cutting off – they are late for class, I presume and the serene beauty of the early morning – harshly interrupted by the occasional car with high beams on your eyes coming from the other side.

And there is that massive traffic jam in front of one of the schools that we cross on our way. There is no traffic light there but usually there is a local policeman or policewoman who is there to direct traffic. The concentrated rush of people wanting to go in or come out can back up traffic for some time. In any case, my usual habit is to lower my window as I approach that point and wave at the police(wo)man as I drive by (as I said, that one is not our school). I readily get pulled up by my daughters that it is weird to wave at strangers and that anyways it is too cold outside to pull the windows down 🙂

Today, in that dark early morning, as I was passing that gentleman, as usual I waved. Most of the days, they do not notice it – or notice it too late – they are so focused on the oncoming traffic. I am sure those screaming headlights do not make it any easier either. (In my defense, I do have my neon color running shirts on to make it a little easier for them to spot me 🙂 ). But, something different happened today.

Imagine the gentleman in the middle of the road. He has his left arm raised to stop traffic from the other side taking a turn into the school and his right arm was constantly making that “keep moving” gesture to tell us to continue on while frantically looking left and right to make sure that he was aware of all the vehicles coming from all directions. And then for a split second, he saw me waving at me. With his hands completely occupied with his traffic duties, he instinctively bowed as I sped past him.

That was very powerful. He had all the reason to keep focusing on his work. He certainly had no ability to wave back. He obviously did not have much of a time to react. His instincts took over and he simply bowed.

For some reason, I felt unbelievably good. And the rest of the drive to my starting point for running, I kept on trying to understand why was I feeling so good. And I concluded that it was because of his simple gesture to acknowledge my presence. It was like “Hey, I do not know who you are. I do not know if I will ever see you or get to know you ever. But you know what? You are a human being. As am I. Life is beautiful because the paths of strangers cross each other and create opportunities to enrich each other’s lives. Let me enrich yours by acknowledging your presence!!”

The rest of the run, it bothered me that so many times I simply forget that sometimes the best gifts in life can be given without much cost, time or even thought. How often I get lost in my own stuff and forget to acknowledge the presence of all those around me. How often I forget that this might be the last day of my life.

I think I should brush my teeth more often!!

“There was a man who wanted to transcend his suffering so he went to a Buddhist temple to find a Master to help him. He went to the Master and asked, “Master, if I meditate four hours a day, how long will it take me to transcend?”
The Master looked at him and said, “If you meditate four hours a day, perhaps you will transcend in ten years.”
Thinking he could do better, the man then said, “Oh, Master, what if I meditated eight hours a day, how long will it take me to transcend?”
The Master looked at him and said, “If you meditate eight hours a day, perhaps you will transcend in twenty years.”
“But why will it take me longer if I meditate more?” the man asked.
The Master replied, “You are not here to sacrifice your joy or your life. You are here to live, to be happy, and to love. If you can do your best in two hours of meditation, but you spend eight hours instead, you will only grow tired, miss the point, and you won’t enjoy your life. Do your best, and perhaps you will learn that no matter how long you meditate, you can live, love, and be happy.”

Excerpt From: Don Miguel Ruiz. “The Four Agreements.”

These days, everytime I open up Facebook, there seems to be a new wave that is sweeping the FB-world. Sometimes, it is “I am a banana (or whatever), what fruit are you?”, sometimes it is “ALS ice bucket challenge” and so on.

Recently, my good friends Priya and Antara (may their tribe increase) pulled me into one more of those FB-waves. I think it is about the Top Ten books that I have liked. Or something like that. Much to their dismay, I have not written down any of the names of the books I have liked.

There certainly is an element of “If everybody else is doing it, then I am not going to do it” contrarianism that I revel in (btw, “contrarianism” is just a sophisticated word to give some respect to what can be referred to – and as my wife once famously did in a public forum – as “weird”). However, there is probably deeper reasons why I have never published my Top 10 books. And for the same reasons. I marvel at other people’s reading habits.

1. First and foremost, I do not read fiction. Much to my wife’s dismay, I do not watch movies either, for the same reason. I lost all interest in reading fiction about 25 years back. Which is when I probably voluntary saw a movie. Not sure why, but it simply does not interest me. Therefore, I am always intrigued by how everybody else can get them totally immersed in essentially completely made up stories.

2. So, that has narrowed me down to about 0.01% of all books published, I guess 🙂 Here again, I have no common themes – but I go thru “interest areas” during phases of my life. And I read up as much as I can for that period of time (usually lasts about two years) on that topic. Most of those topics are of little interest to my friends.

My current interest is around understanding “minimalist living”. I am early in this stage. Before this it was about “cocktails” (coinciding with my goal to work at a bar as a mixologist).

My previous interest before that was mostly around understanding “happiness”. There are books that most people have never heard of like “Wherever you go, there you are” that have deeply influenced me. As has “Stumbling upon Happiness”.

I remember, previous to that, I was deeply interested in understanding how our brains process logic. This was after my mom became a psychiatric patient and I wanted to understand how the brain processes data to conclusion. From “Story of the Human Body” to “Descarte’s Error” to “Predictably Irrational”, I must have devoured close to ten books on this topic alone.

3. Here is an interesting reading habit difference. Most of my friends, when I ask, say they have read their favorite book once. Maybe twice. I think most of my friends can absorb from one reading far far more than I can. It might have to do with the content (maybe our brains need a few data points in a fiction and it can “join the dots” in between). I tend to read my books many many times. I have probably read “The Power of Now” seven times. And the reason is, when I read these books, I think I get about 1% of what the author is trying to say. And most of it is because I can relate to recent events that I have experienced. Resulting in me picking up very different learnings and messages, everytime I read the same book!!!

4. Again, unless all my friends, I have seldom finished any book. I can get to about 70% and then I skim the rest. The good news is that most authors can get the core of their message out in ten pages. And you can usually get most of the ten pages in the first 10% of the book. The only reason they put in the other 90% is because their publishers advise them that nobody will pay 20 bucks for their book otherwise 🙂 Again, this might be a reflection on fiction versus non-fiction. The fiction, logic dictates, reaches the culmination at the end of the book and therefore, unless it is a very boring book, every reader is enthused to read till the end.

5. I also read a lot of business books. Just to give you an example, when I became a first time CEO, I must have read at least five books on “Common mistakes that first time CEOs make”. Usually, you get one or two “aha” moments from each of these books. But I have to, unfortunately, go thru the whole book often to get to those moments. Some books that reflect on businesses of the past – “A better pencil” or “Better by Mistake” have given me much more than a few such “aha” moments….

So, there you go, Priya and Antara. I think you were hoping for a simple ten bullet point list. Instead, you got an essay. Hopefully you got an idea about my reading habits and what I like….Curious about whether you two or any of my other friends can relate to what I am trying to say….

Trying to fix this nagging issue I have that my FB comments are not getting pulled into my blogsite, I became over-adventurous today. Forgot the good old mantra – if it is not hurting you, leave it alone. Deleted a cross posting app and voila – all my old Facebook posts are gone!!! And it comes with a helpful feature – you cannot undelete! Arrgh! I manually reposted about 20 latest ones back.

If anyone of you care to see my old posts, you can always see it in my blog http://www.rajibroy.com. I have put in a calendar widget and an Archives widget that should help you navigate chronologically. Also, if you want to get to know of my updates, feel free to put in your email id on my blog – you will be notified whenever I put in a new entry.

Meanwhile, I am going to put a stiff drink in my glass and swear off my computer for some time 🙁 Maybe, I will start filling up those hospital and insurance forms with paper and pen 🙂

Updated the look and feel of my blogsite: www.rajibroy.com

Feedback to improve (or what is working) is welcome…

Yesterday I installed one of those counter plugins in my blogsite to see what the global distribution of people coming to my blogsite www.rajibroy.com (“The History of my Future! (First Draft!!) was. If you see my updates on Facebook or Google+ or Twitter or Tumblr or Linkedin, I actually do not write on any of those sites. I write on my blogsite which is then syndicated out to these social media sites. I was looking only at the analysis of people coming to my blogsite directly.

My guess was that the highest hits would be from USA and then India. Instead, I found out that out of 800 odd visitors in one day, half are from China!! Given the stereotype in this country of the Chinese snooping on us, I got curious and started looking into the details of which posts were the Chinese reading. I was totally floored to see that almost all the hits from China are visiting my Puzzle pages. Hmmmm!!! Now, I am really curious!! Which also reminds me that I have not posted a new puzzle in a long time.

Netherlands being third also surprised me. On the flip side, I was expecting much more from India. Also noticed there were no visitors from Africa or South America!!

Long day. Meetings with customers all over the DC area. And then I had to be in Philly for tomorrow’s meetings. I just drove up for a clean three hours. All thru the day, I have been worried about my father in law who is going thru the rehabilitation process at home after his hip surgery. I probably have called up Sharmila to check on them to a point that she is irritated.

I walked into downtown Philly Marriott completely tired and sleepy and as I was checking in, I noticed that the whole hotel was buzzing with activities. Not too uncommon for a downtown big Marriott. What was uncommon is the number of people milling around in wheelchairs.

I was not too sure what to make of it. But as I went into the elevator to take me to my floor, I ran into one more of the wheelchair folks. So I asked him if he was there an event. I learnt that he was there for the Annual Disabled Veterans’ sporting event. First, I had no idea there was such an event. Second, I was not going to bed then and there. I needed to learn more.

So, I changed into my casuals and came down. And started interviewing all the folks in wheelchairs. And asked them if it was okay to put their pictures on my blogsite. To the person, they all said Yes. But more importantly, they asked after my family, my daughters and my life story.

Some of the life stories I heard from these Iraq, Afghanistan and even Vietnam and Korean War Veterans are to truly die for. For example, take the two guys in the top picture. They found out a few events back that they grew up in the same neighborhood in Arkansas. As they put it “we knew common folks when we were still walking”. WOW!!! “Still Walking” can be a phase in life….. That is the thought that was going thru my mind.

Going back to them again, ever since, every event they make it a point to find each other and spend some endless hours together. It is not always easy. A trip like this costs them $2100 per person. They rely a lot on VA and private sponsorship. Next year this event is in Dallas. Which is where my daughters were born. I owe a lot of my happiness in life to that place and this country. So, I figured, I might as well sponsor both of them for next year to meet in Dallas.

Some of the words people spoke were to be heard to be believed. That Steelers fan in yellow shirt in the bottom picture? He was the most talkative of them all. We debated NFL for some time. But the best thing he told me – “I look at many people and they are in worse shape than me. I am doing good compared to them”. And I am like “Oh! God! And here I am. Worried about what I am not. Than being happy about what I am”….

And so on… For the next forty five minutes I went around talking to people and taking their pictures. Finally, I plonked down at the bar ordered a drink and started to think about what I learnt today. And write it up before I forget it….

Can’t wait to go back home tomorrow night and tell this story to my father in law…

Life is never about “what you have”. But what you “make of whatever little you have”. And yet we spend so much of our time and money to “have more”….