Do you have the cool new iPhone or the iPod Touch? Do you have anything that is a little expensive and attractive? Hide it right now and do not use it in front of other people. Though you genuinely like it and have no evil intentions whatsoever, you hear everyone around you say you are trying to "show off".
It did not strike me till recently when I got my new iPod Touch. I also have a Blackberry 8830 World Edition and that also grabs a lot of people's attention. Everyone exclaims that it is an expensive phone and is curious to know how much my plan costs. How do they know that I have this phone/PDA? Well, they see it when I use it. This is my phone for god's sake and I use it when I have to. It has nothing to do with showing off, my friends. Say, I'm playing pool with my buddies and all of a sudden my phone rings. What do you want me to do? Run out into my car, close the doors and then try to whisper so that no one notices me? I should also bend down or else someone can see me through the window and say I'm trying to show off. The whole reason I have this device with a data plan is so that I can use it to check my e-mails when I'm on the go or access the Internet when needed. It is a convenience. Now one day, a couple of friends and I went to a sports complex to check out their membership details. Unfortunately they were closing for the day and there was no one to help us out. They just gave us their website information and asked us to try contacting them the next day. On the way to the car, I started to check out the website for membership details and got almost all the information I needed. What do I hear my friends say when they saw me do this? Show off! After that night, no one ever tried to either check out the website or call them. Everyday they keep asking one another if they contacted the the place but the unanimous answer is "no". "We got to check out their website today" would immediately follow. It has been a month and no one ever did anything about it. The five minutes I spent as soon as we came out of the complex was to avoid this forgetfulness and procrastination. No sir, it is nothing to do with showing off.
Coming to my iPod. I did not even buy it. I recently won it for a blog of mine. I love it and it is great. Now that I have it, of course I will use it. But whenever someone sees me listening to music on it, their immediate reaction is "show off". "What the hell!", I think to myself. "I'm trying to just enjoy what I have got. I don't want to hide it and use it in secrecy just because people like you think I'm showing off". But surprisingly it did have some affect on me. Even if I want to listen to music while I'm working, I'm thinking twice before I plug the phones into my ears as I'm afraid I will make my colleagues think I'm "showing off".
Check out the video "Battle at Kruger" below, if you haven't already done so. It is from YouTube and can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM it is almost an eight and a half minute video. So have patience and watch the full video. There are unexpected twists and turns and a happy ending (well... happy for who?).
I guess you will agree that it is a pretty interesting video revealing one of nature's amazing spectacles. This reminds us of Charles Darwin's theories about 'struggle for existence' and 'survival of the fittest*'.
The lions chasing the buffalo, the crocodiles trying to steal and the comeback of the herd kicking the shit out of the lion pack, were all interesting but they did not grab my attention as much as the background voices did. One could find quite a few such chases and hunts on National Geographic or Discovery but the curiosity, excitement and concern of the people who shot this video raised a lot of questions in my tiny little mind.
You could feel the sadness and concern in the voices when the lion grabbed the calf. Now take a step back and think. What is veal? Where is it coming from? I'm sure most of you out there know how the calves are abused before they are magically transformed into that expensive mouthwatering dish on your plate in the restaurant. One doesn't mind paying big bucks for this piece of meat but feels sorry when a lion tries to catch it's prey, which is what nature made it for. You can hear one voice say "come on buffalo, go" almost at the end of the video clearly indicating the person's support for the buffalo and hatred towards the lion. It surprised me. I'm sorry but I don't think we can take sides here. It's the freaking nature and that's what animals do. If you don't want the lion to kill the calf and eat it, would you then mind being it's food? Come on now, the lion should survive as well. But no. You would rather kill the lion and make a blanket or coat out of it's skin and pendants out of it's finger nails.
By now you might have concluded that I'm a meat-eater hating vegetarian. You are correct on the vegetarian part but I have nothing against non-vegetarians. As a matter of fact, I don't call myself a vegetarian as everyone wants to get into argument as for the definition of the term. So I very clearly indicate I'm not a meat-eater. All I want to point out here is the human approach to packaged meat versus the raw flesh. We don't mind abusing animals to satisfy our palate but feel terribly sorry when animal hunts it's prey. In this context, let me also bring up the recent tiger attack in the San Francisco zoo. I feel really sorry for the kid who the tiger picked. But regarding the discussions after the incident whether to put the tiger down and if he is a threat to others and stuff were ridiculous. Of course damn it! He is going to be threat to others as he is a freaking tiger. He is wild, supposed to be wild and not made to be sitting in a hole or behind bars. Why the hell does everyone think of "putting him down" and to leave in the middle of a forest or something where he actually belongs?
* survival of the fittest is actually a term coined by Herbert Spencer motivated by the Origin of Species by Darwin.
How long has it been since you actually picked up a book and started to read with an intention of completing it? I'm not talking about your text books in case you are attending a school to attach more suffixes and/or prefixes to your name with an anticipation of earning more bucks. I'm referring to a fiction/non-fiction novel, a (auto)biography or you know what I mean. I should say it hasn't been that long in my case (something like an year if I'm not wrong) but the trend is soon changing. Last year, namely '07, I hardly could steal any time at all to read a book. Both, pressure and responsibilities at work and other activities kept me really busy. The only book I could do justice to was Calvin and Hobbes. I have tree sets of the entire collection in three different form factors and I absolutely love it. I'm so attracted to Calvin and Hobbes that I can go on talking about it forever. So let me stop right now continue from where I stopped. I'm sure you are already lost as to where I digressed. To drive you back to the point, I had no time to read any book in the last one year. As the saying goes "everything is for one's own good", this situation gave me an opportunity to dive into the world of 'audio books'.
Lucky enough, my town library is one of the best I have seen and has a mind boggling collection of digital media. Also, a colleague of mine introduced me to audible and the concept looked very interesting. I'm not sure what audio book I first borrowed from my library but the whole idea definitely influenced a lot of things in my everyday life. As soon as I stepped out of the library with my first audio book and got into my car, I slid the first CD into the MP3 player. Within minutes, I was in a totally different world. It was as if there was a storyteller in the passenger seat devoting all his time to narrate a beautiful story to me. He was my personal story teller. Someone who does not get tired of speaking. Someone who does not take a gulp of water to wet his throat even after hours of continuous speaking. The guy never gets pissed off when I ask him to repeat whatever I missed, how many ever times I wish. I could control my storytellers voice according to my preference. This was perfect. Now for someone reading this and thinking it is dangerous to drive while listening, I'm sorry but there ain't no problem. Lord almighty put a lot of time and effort in designing this magnificent brain. There is something called multitasking and this kind of multitasking is far more safer than talking on the phone while driving with a coffee cup in one hand and lipstick in the other.
Finally I found a way to get back in touch with reading (or listening?). 'course, this can't be a solution for someone who wants to feel the book, smell the ink and turn the pages while reading but sure enough filled in the void created by not reading, for someone like me. Earlier, did I say I did not have enough time to read a book? Well, I devoured Two Lives, The Glass Castle, The Little Book That Beats The Market, The Lemon Tree, State of Denial, When Genius Failed and now I'm in the middle of The World is Flat.
Apart from getting back in touch with books, this storyteller of mine made another really big, remarkable and never thought of difference in me. I started to drive slowly (slowly does not mean below speed limit), be more patient with other idiot snail-pace drivers in the left lane, not take off from red lights even before the cars in the cross-street stopped and control the urge to jump thirty odd traffic lights on my way that always decide to turn red when they see me. I never really figured out if they turn red from blushing at my appearance or with anger. The bottom line is I turned into a more careful driver. I know it is difficult to imagine a "careful driver" in New York. The two terms can not go together.
This 21st century storyteller does not stop at CDs in the car, he sits in the iPod, on the hard drive of your laptop and soon, on a memory chip that will be embedded into your brain.
First of all... wish you all a very Happy New Year! I'm sure almost everyone's head is spinning as fast as the days, months and years are flying. 2008??? What the hell! It's as if everyone was getting hysterical about the Y2K bug just two days ago and it's already 8 years past. In any case if I go on cribbing about the speed at which I'm growing old, that will be a pretty damn big book on its own and that is not the intention of this blog entry.
"Hey. What's up for the new year?" I got a call from a friend of mine who lives in Jersey. "Nothing special. Just planning to go to the temple". I said. "Not a bad idea. I think I will join you". This conversation lead me into planning to drive to my buddy's place sometime in the afternoon on the 31st. Then the idea was to go to the temple around midnight and drive back home the next year. Also, there was a plan to go and pick up the car, my friend recently bought, from the dealer.
"Any special plans? Want to join us for a private party for the new year?" I got another call. "Not really. planning to move into the new year with a peace of mind contemplating everything I haven't done this past year." I replied. 'mon, I was just kidding.
"When is your flight?" I asked another very good friend of mine. I knew her from Rutgers and she moved to Europe recently. She was visiting her family here and I definitely wanted to take this opportunity to see her off at least at the airport. "I'm flying on the 31st." She said. Here I go. Another addition to the plan. So now I decided to see her off at JFK and drive directly to my friend's place in Jersey.
"Going to the temple tonight?" Another pal and another call. "Yes". I reply. "You will cut across the city and pass Holland Tunnel right? Can you give me a ride to the temple? My girlfriend also wants to join us." This friend of mine lives in Jersey City and works in the big apple and his girlfriend both lives and works in Manhattan. So obviously neither of them own a car. It was not a big deal for me to give them a ride but I already made a commitment. Now I tried to do all the calculations to see how I can manage it all. It was not an easy task. Driving all the way to my first friend's house and driving back to pick the other and then go to the temple was a little too much to do. After breaking my head and burning a million calories, I decided to drive to the temple directly while I pickup my friend and his girlfriend on my way. My other buddy decided to meet me at the temple.
After all these complications and indecisive nature of mine, I made myself a flip-flop like Mr. Kerry during the '04 presidential elections. My friend who was supposed to meet me at the temple (whose house I was initially planning to go to) dropped the idea. As I couldn't (rather didn't) make it to his place, his new car spent the first day of the new year at the dealer's instead of it's loving new owner. Neither did I see my other friend off at the airport as I had to get my car inspection done and it took longer than expected. What can I do. I'm sorry. Sometimes things get really complicated. Or do I make them complicated?
