Her birthday

Attention world!
It’s my best friend’s birthday today.
Currently, we both are miles apart, with four continents, five oceans separating us, yet she is close to my heart. These days, I look forward to having as many video calls with her as possible. One video call with you a day, keeps doctor away. As a birthday gift, I am writing you a letter. (I am so old school! )

Dear Si,

I will not exchange any kind of pleasantries. I hate it when you ask me how I am doing, whenever I call you, I still didn’t accept the fact that you went away to some other country and you are not constantly with me to know what I am up to.
As I recall the innumerable fun times we had makes me sentimental. I intend to keep this letter funny, but don’t scold me for getting all emotional in the end.
We have known each other for 6 years, yet you never fail to surprise me. Thanks for keeping up the spark in our relationship. (Laughing aloud!). Firstly, I need to confess that I apologise for being the reason behind your fall. (multiple). To elaborate, I feel sorry that you fell (literally) on all your arms many times, while I was around you. Out of those many times, you fell, I was the first one to laugh aloud, but that one(last) time you fell, it hurt me the most.

I have tried hard to celebrate your birthdays in the best way possible but failed. So, I decided to make this one special by keeping it simple. You can even expect not to expect my phone call. Just remember it’s all part of the plan. I hope you celebrate well your first birthday away from home with your Asian friends. Wherever you went (Read Blore) I followed you all these years, it would be great if it happened again with the Big Apple. I won’t be disappointed if it doesn’t happen, I just have a gut feeling that our friendship is bound to last for the longest time.

Another confession, I hid a pair of shoes of yours on purpose. I took it from you and never returned. I don’t why but I never wanted to return them. Just a small piece of advice from my side, call me whenever in any need and me make part of your decisions.

Thanks for keeping me sane all these years. Take good care of yourself.

Here’s a small poem about you.

She learnt to fly with broken wings.

She learnt to smile with a thwarted spirit.

She learnt to eat alone in the company of memories.

She learnt to satisfy her insatiable curiosity.

She learnt to calm the ocean inside her.

She regretted for growing up hastily.

Myths Busted

I have exams approaching , but I am still in “jolly good” mood. My professor just announced an open book exam for a subject and we were all freaking out. I had written an open-book exam previously and I was quite happy with my results. I concluded that secret to open-book exam’s success is intuitive thinking. But my prof today busted this myth. He gave a task. He would ask us a question based on basic arithmetic and we need to answer it in less than 2 seconds

Question: Boy purchased a pen and eraser for Rs. 11 and the difference between their costs are Rs.10. What is the cost of the eraser?
While I was still thinking the answer, one of my classmates answers Rs.1 in less than a second. For a tiny moment, we all thought the answer is right.
This all happened in a matter of few seconds.

Then immediately, he asked us the same question but this time, he gave us sufficient time to think about the answer. And eventually, we came up with the correct answer. ( Rs 0.5 is the cost of the eraser).

So, our initial answer was based on intuition, which may or not be correct always. But it looks correct most of the times (Trap !). So in open book exams, one needs to think deeper and solve rather than surfing superficially for an approximate answer.

I hope I do well in my Friday’s exam. Friday 22nd marks the end of exams.
I am counting days for my travel to home.

 

 

 

 

 

Monkey Bussiness

The title is a trap for the dirty-minded as the post is going to be something else. (Sorry!).

I was reading “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman. I have just reached to 6% of the book. (Yes, I am a proud owner of a Kindle). In the book, he talks about two systems of thinking: System 1 operates automatically, intuitively. System 2 requires slowing down, deliberating thinking not jumping to quick conclusions. Till now, I found the book interesting, I hope to finish it.
In the intro of the book, the author discusses an illusion, “The Invisible Gorilla”.
Watch this video before you proceed to read.
1:41 seconds – NOP (Bear with the jargon. I am an assembly language girl !)
I hope you have watched the video.
Almost everyone misses out watching the gorilla. And even few argue that there was no such gorilla. (We cannot help but ignore this kind).
Failure to spot the gorilla is quite common as we were focusing on counting the number of passes.
Kahneman explains saying

We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.

Now that you know the happening of gorilla event.
Please watch this.
Now while watching the video, you succeeded at noticing the gorilla.
But did you notice any other unexpected events?  No right!
There were two other unexpected events: Curtain changing the color and a player leaving the game. Even though you tried to focus on unexpected results, you might have failed to notice the other peculiar events.

Moral of the story is:
Firstly, if we pay attention to the obvious, we lose out on unexpected things.
Secondly, even if pay attention to the unexpected event we can’t succeed in noticing other unexpected events.

So why even bother paying attention in the first case! (half-suppressed laughing).

The worst part is one of my profs keeps on repeating these words while teaching,
“Don’t miss the gorilla” and am puzzled each time.(Face Palm!)

There are loads of such videos based on illusions on YouTube to make you look stupid. Check’em out.

 

Secret Admirer

Imagine for a second, what it feels to have a secret admirer.
1 sec- NOP
Okay, now get back to reality. (Phew !)
So, I was fortunate enough to find out that I had a secret admirer. I must admit at least here, that he/she wasn’t only admiring me but my whole team.

I am a part of one the most important committees at my college and we do some good work and I love working with my team. I was initially not part of this team, but made a wild card entry later and till now haven’t regretted at all for my decision.

So, this admirer of ours sent us a letter of “appreciation for the great work” (No kidding !) we do and small gift. The gift had a photo collage of my whole team. So, this came as a surprise and we tried a lot to find who this was.
According to the letter, we could deduce a little about the person and our search was on.

Later the person was found and she was little shy enough to say to us to keep it as a secret. So, now that we know our secret admirer, we cannot tell anyone. I haven’t met her till now. I am not trying to meet or talk to her. I would love to respect her privacy.

So, I am choosing this medium to say thanks to her.