Life, Laughter and Everything Else

Social sciences books seem to have an excellent track record of testing my patience. Recently, I borrowed a highly rated book, The Paradox of Choice : Why More is Less. The fundamental concept explored by the book was that having more choices usually resulted in more disappointment. Well, My Barry Shwartz(author of the book), I kind of knew that. I was hoping you would tell me how to get around it. Instead you go around for 200 pages saying again and again why more choice equals to more disappointment. You throw in all kinds of studies done by psychologists, employed perhaps for the sole purpose of creating employment. All your studies point to the one ultimate truth that is the title of your book, which makes me wonder why they did not stop at one study but kept doing more to prove something that had already been proven? You state 'We get catalogs for clothes, luggage, housewares, furniture, kitchen appliances, gourmet food, athletic gear, computer equipment, linens, bathroom fu...

I was rolling up the sleeve of my uniform, preparing for a call up that might never come, when I realised that somehow I was overcome by a strange sense of pride, a pride that wanted the length of my sleeve to be precise as I have always pictured in my mind. Any longer, I would look shabby. Any shorter, I would look amateur. Then I donned the green, tightened the velcro around my waist and looked in the mirror. It was just like before and the memories started flooding me. I never really liked it when I donned it for 2 years in a row. Then I was in a place where I detested the culture, the harsh discipline, the unreasonable demands and the lack of purpose in everything I did. But now that it was over, when I look back, it was perhaps the greatest time of my life. The suffering, the digging, the starving, the cold, the banter, the rowdiness, the jungle, the marches,the mountains, the food, the stories, the friendships, it was all worth the 2 years. A girl friend of mine once asked...

Recently, I had the opportunity to be part of an interview selection process for a scholarship, in which I was grouped together with a bunch of other scholarship applicants and the group was given a topic to work. At the same time, a couple of the the HR people closely watched us with a rather big scoresheet in their hands, attempting to evaluate the performance of every member in the team, picking out each person's strength and weakness. And the subsequent discussion went pretty much as I expected. Everyone wanted to make their voice heard and ideas and opinions were thrown from all directions. And some of the ideas were undoubtedly brilliant, but some were not and when they were followed up with a one minute justification, it was a pure waste of limited time. The biggest problem though was that this form of disorganised brainstorming lacked focus on the end goal and went on till somebody said '5 minutes left'. I realised that people tended to forget that quite a bit o...

No, this is not a story about me, but about a dog that my family adopted when I was a kid running around half naked on the house lawn with a broken stick. Adopted because he was the neighbour's dog that the neighbour fed but did not shelter, for Blacky never really liked to stay in one place. He would wander around the streets and come back in time for the customary breakfast and dinner. But for a dog of no special pedigree, a fair stature and physique and an extremely loud personality, Blacky was a very protective dog, a quality that convinced my uncle that he could be tamed. When I first saw him, it was on my way back from school, chained to the pillar near the front porch. It was quite a joyous moment, my first pet.  Though, I never really dared to stand around when he was unleashed. He was jumpy and I was timid. I would pat him when he laid down bored or when he put his head through the window. I still remember the time he caught four rats scampering around the lawn. He bit a...