It is self explanatory. The prices have almost reversed. Of course, gold and silver have rallied exponentially in the last few years, so the comparison is dramatic. Still, you would have been able to buy your Blackberry and get your original investment back in these two years had you invested in equivalent amount of gold back then.

All I can see are dull drab gray clouds,
All I can see is slow-moving, unending traffic,
All I can see is three months of miserable commuting.

Where is the little boy who used to run out at the first sight of monsoons?
And stayed there till someone dragged him in by the ears!
Where is the excitement in building paper boats in a clear stream?
And where is the innocence of running after them?
To help them along their way or to watch them sink.

Where is the hope of looking at the rain out the windows,
Secretly wishing for a holiday tomorrow?
And that loud scream of joy when you get that wish fulfilled!

Where is the fun in stomping in potholes in over-sized gum-boots?
And the pain in getting your skin nicked in the muddy water?

And when everything used to be alright after
applying a Mickey Mouse band-aid and some hot chocolate.

The society has given the residents an option of limited timings of water supply or private water tankers. The latter options costs money. And the residents of the society have voted for that option.

So an important question to be asked is how should the payment be distributed? Should it be a flat amount for all flats or should it vary according to the number of residents in each flat? The justification of the latter option is a no-brainer. Larger families are likely to use more water than a family of two individuals.

Now comes the interesting game theory aspect into this problem. People with larger families would oppose the proportionate fee structure while smaller families would oppose a flat fee structure. In each case one of the parties would feel that they have been given a raw deal.

Now assume that the flat fee structure is adopted. This means that the smaller families will be disgruntled since they are paying a per capita higher rate than the larger families. Thus they will indulge in wasteful water usage to compensate for the higher fee. The larger families will use at least an amount minimum to their needs. However its more likely that they would be a little careless in using water as they are being subsidised by the smaller families. Overall this leads to wasteful water usage for the entire society.

Now let’s assume that the variable fee structure is imposed based on the number of residents in each flat. Here the reverse would happen. The larger families would be disgruntled and would spend water in a wasteful manner while the smaller families would use at least the minimum share of the water. Overall this option too leads to a wasteful usage of water.

Both these options seem to result in wastage of water. So what then is the optimal distribution of payment? Is there a better way of distributing water? The best option which comes to my mind is to implement a water meter system which tracks the actual usage of water (which may be of course more cumbersome and expensive to implement)

Let’s see what the society management comes up with. Till then out with the buckets and drums to store all the water.

Posted from my mobile: Please excuse grammar and typos.
UPDATE: Well, my society decided not to get into the nitty-gritties of Game Theory and adopted the first option instead! Limited water supply from now on. So much for trying to explain Game Theory to them.

There are a few individuals who have volunteered to steer the traffic and clear the jam but sadly no one listens to them. It is depressing when people are not willing to even make use of a service which is being offered for free.

What then is the solution? The solution given below is paradoxic and that’s why it is so difficult to accept.

“To reach faster, give way.”

This simple statement epitomises what the problem is and also what the solution could be. If everyone wants to be the first, no one eventually will. But if you let the other person make the first move, who knows you may be reaching home first.

But given the collective ‘wisdom’ of crowds, the status quo is probably the way its going to be. People will dismiss this suggestion as idealistic or too much to expect.

Strange are the minds of humans. Willing to overlook the simplest of solutions in search of more complex alternatives.

For instance, this is what the lady had to say while quoting her rates.

Rs 400 – Washing clothes (assuming 4 people)
Rs 600 – Washing utensils, drying them and placing them in the cupboard (400 for washing and 200 for drying)
Rs 400 -Jhaadu pocha.
Rs 400 – Dusting furniture (excluding windows)
Rs 200 – Cleaning windows.
Rs 200 – Cleaning bathrooms.

That works out to around Rs 2200 for a month’s worth of work. And oh yes, before I forget, here’s the clincher – the paid-leave clause. The lady is expected to take 2 days of leave per month. But if she doesn’t, you have to give her that two days’ worth of pay.

Wow, even I have never gone into such a level of detail during my salary negotiations. Maybe this is not a bad strategy to adopt. After this level of detail, you just don’t have any room left for negotiation. You pick what you want to get done, and do the rest yourself. Obviously the wife isn’t too thrilled about this.

Let’s see, hoping the previous maid resolves all her family problems and returns. Else it is time to tighten the purse strings and make some difficult choices.

Trivial but interesting. Read on. By people on the street, I’m excluding the hard core music buffs who use start of the art noise reducing beauties. Here I’m talking about the average person who uses it for listening to radio or hands free. I’m sure the average person doesn’t check the labels on the earphone before inserting it into a particular ear. But then chances of getting it wrong should be around 50% Evidently its much higher than that. Now if the wrong earphone feels right in the wrong ear, it must be that the earphone designers are doing a bad job of designing the earphones. Why don’t then earphone designers remove the label from earphones, or better still why don’t they reverse the labeling so at least the right earphone goes into the right ear, even if serendipitously?

This may seem to be an off hand remark about some esoteric zen philosophy but every time I say it out or think about it, I realize more and more how true it really is. Confusion results from a question. The question results from the desire to know something. The question results in the individual finding out the answer to the question. Finding out the answer to the question leads to enlightenment. And so you have it. Confusion is the first step to enlightenment. There, I’ve become a philosopher.

Dharma rocks, yo!

What started out as a moment of boldness by Muntadhar al-Zaidi, the journalist who threw his size 10 shoes at George dubya Bush as a farewell gift is all set to metamorphosis into a national phenomenon. And luckily the targets have been well-chosen. Politicians. Now that is a group disliked and hated by members of all communities. And with the general elections coming up, the emotions of the public are likely to be on the edge. And that is why I fear we could have a tipping point very soon. Iraq is already training the next generation of shoe throwers who can aim better and harder. If the politicians don’t get their act right, the day is not far when the audience will let out a shower of dirty muddy shoes on the local neta when he comes out the next time promising bijli, sadak, and pani or asking for votes.

And as usual the MBA part of my mind strategises how I can make money out of it. I’m wondering whether it would be a good idea to buy shares in footwear companies. If the demand for such shoe hurling increases, then companies will have to ramp up production and I will make some serious capital gains. Or should I start a shoe polishing shack near the venues of election rallies. I can encourage people to shine their shoes before they let their anger out on the netas. For 5 Rs more, you can get a premium shine with extra polish to get some extra shine (on the neta‘s face).

However you can count on the cunning politician to convert even this ridicule into a thing of pride. They’re most likely to say, “People have thrown shoes at me and at my opponents too. I respect them for that. But what I am here to proclaim is that I have been hit by your shoes for the most number of times. That shoes shows how much you love me. If you elect me, I promise to open new shoe shops in your town. We can have annual shoe flinging competitions where the best thrower will get a chance to campaign for me in the next election. So I ask you to please vote for me.”  Remember to press the right button. Our election symbol is shoe polish. You provide the shoe, we provide the polish.”

To paraphrase the whole trend, I will borrow a dialogue from Frank Miller’s 300

Common Man – A thousand billion citizens of the Indian Republic descend upon you. Our shoes will blot out the sun
Politician – Then we will fight with your soles (souls?)

The surprising thing about email forwards is that no one is immune to sending them, even if the person has decades of experience in an IT company. Indeed most of the forwards are sent by techies having nothing better to do than to keep checking their inbox every 10 minutes. If only they would be so proactive in their coding.

The logic used by the people who chain-forward is that it is better to be safe than sorry, or why take chances when it is free of cost. Agreed, that forwarding an email doesn’t cost a dime, but no one keeps track of the time wasted on forwards and checking such emails. But the problem is that people (at least here in India) are gullible about most things on the Internet and most of them fail to do a simple background check before clicking that Forward button and spamming contacts with unwanted emails. Combine that by inserting a religious theme – Lord Ganesha will be furious, or Shani maharaj will do unwanted stuff to you in the future etc. and you have all the elements of a blockbuster chain email. I have yet to see what the situation is in more ‘developed’ countries. Still I’ve seen such chain messages even in YouTube comments so I’m not too confident about the situation being otherwise there too.

I divide email forwards into three categories:-

1) Totally useless/harmful – These are the kind of mails which do not provide any value add whatsoever. Most of them include a scary warning about relatives dying, or god cursing the receiver of the email if he or she doesn’t forward the email to 25 people in the next 4 hours or so.

2) Well intentioned but inaccurate – Out of the three types, these seem to be the largest group of email forwards which make the rounds. They consist of a seemingly useful piece of information which has been twisted, turned, exaggerated to make it seem more dangerous and urgent to act upon. Most of the time, it is all the handiwork of an idle person. These would include the rumours of plastics in Kurkure (read the clarification here), or the Coke-mentos story. Probably the Kurkure email was started by some over enthusiastic parent wanting to dissuade children from eating junk food. One of the most famous series of this category is the ones where Microsoft or Yahoo claims to donate 1$ every time a particular email is forwarded. Agreed, Bill Gates is philantrophic but if he decides to donate his money based on chain emails, his net worth would plummet to zero before you can say sub-prime.

3) Useful forwards - These are the very rare emails which pop up in your inbox once in a blue moon. One such example I saw was the ICE campaign where people were encouraged to store a particular contact number under the universal name ICE (In Case of Emergency). If nothing else, this could prove useful at times. Another types would include email forwards exhorting people to vote etc. But such forwards are very rare and you would consider yourself lucky if your contacts send you forwards of this category more than others.

I’ve purposely excluded spam mails from this classification because they are sent directly by the spammers and to a certain extent you can block them from sending such mails again. Email forwards on the other hand are sent by people in your contact books and there is no foolproof way to block such emails from them without affecting the flow of normal mails (if they send any)

All in all, chain mails are a source of humour for me and a quick test of the sender’s intelligence and common sense. Previously I used to reply to such mails and indirectly let the sender know that all he is doing is clogging other people’s inbox. But I realized that this won’t stop people from sending chain mails anyway, so why try. Now I just smile and delete such emails while praying for the sender to get some more self-control in sending such mails.

PS. Forward this link to 25 people in the next 30 minutes or else the following will happen:-

1) The ghost of the sub-prime crisis will haunt you forever

2) Your gmail account will be deleted as Google’s servers are getting very slow

3) There will be an attack of aliens from outerspace who will get into your brain and eat all your grey matter (if they find any left).

4) North Korea will attack South Korea which will prove to be the precursor to WW III.

Useful links

• Snopes – Rumour checker
• Using gmail to fight chain mails

I say, even with using only 1% of the mind, humankind has wrecked so much havoc in the world. To what heights would one go if one were able to use 100% of the mind?