Observation Skills (5 things - Week 68)

You must have read a crime novel? A movie based on a crime novel perhaps? A TV series based on one? "Yes" to any one those?? Very good. That means that I won't have to explain too much about what I'm going to say next.

In a typical criminal investigation, you'll be paying close attention to all the minute details - just as any competent detective would. The thrill of going through the fictionalized account of any crime investigation is the quest to solve the case by yourself, before all is revealed. And for this a keen sense of observation is required.

But that is not the kind of observation I had in mind. In that scenario, the detective (as well as the you) knew that you had to observe. It was your duty to observe. But what of the eye witness, who in the fictionalized account, willingly provides a near accurate description of the convict?? Would you be able to do that in real life??

Would you be able to describe the person you met in the elevator today?? I set the date to today to make sure that it is recent. I set the location to an elevator to make sure that there aren't that many distractions. I set the number of people in the elevator other than you to be one to make sure that you would remember at least the gender of the person. If you didn't use an elevator today, you are welcome to change the situation to any you came across recently. Just try to visualize that person.

So, how well did you do? What will be your reply to "Can you describe him to a sketch artist?" ?

I don't know about you, but I would reply "NO". More often than not, I'm never paying any attention to such details. I would make a very bad eye witness (that is not an invitation for the criminals among you to take advantage of this trait of mine).

Thus we come to the topic for this week's 5 things - "Observational Skills". Here are the common and not so common observational skills that I've come across in my life.

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1. Vayinottam

If you know Malayalam, you would have understood where I'm going with this. "Vayinottam" [pronounced wa-yin-nno-ttam] is literally "looking at mouth" and it is anything but that. This is an art form which every guy (and even though they'll never accept it, every gal) knows - the art of appreciating the opposite sex. And what better way to appreciate than to observe. Observe them at the bus stop, at the park, at the movies, at any public place. If it goes beyond that though, it becomes the next thing I'm going to describe.

2. Stalking

When you extent your observation's focus into the private moments of an individual, it's called Stalking. But when we talk about stalking, we only think about the physical act of following a person around. In those circumstances, the stalked usually files a case and the court slaps the stalker with a restraining order, making it an arrestable offense to be within a certain distance of the victim. [I don't know if anything like this exists in India - the restraining order, not the stalking. Please let me know if you know something about it.]

In this digital age, there's another kind of stalking. This stalker will be at his portal to the internet, following whatever the stalked is doing in their online incarnations. Tell me how you stop that kind of stalking??

3. Songs

We automatically pick up the songs we like from the chaotic audio waves that reach our ear drums. That is one incredible ability to observe in all human beings.

4. Rear Recognition

How do you normally recognize a person? From their face, their voice, their body posture, their walking style, their fashion style or something unique to them, right? Such uniqueness leaves an imprint on our mind, which helps us to recognize them the next time we meet them. Well, I have a friend, who is as good at rear recognition as face recognition. If you don't get what i mean, then you are probably PG-13 rated.

5. My favorite thing

That would be football. I'm sure you have your own obsession too. And it would be no surprise to see us picking the subtle things that happen with relation to our obsession. I for one enjoy to observe, dissect and appreciate the delicate nuances that gifted footballers showcase on the pitch. I'm sure that you enjoy something similar with respect to your favorite thing.

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Are you wondering about the cause of this blog?? Well, I've been going to the temple in front of my house continuously for the past 146 days. Yet I failed to notice the new three foot picture of Ram, Sita & Lakshman. That was kept right at the entrance yesterday. But I noticed it only on my way out today. Apparently, my observational senses kick into action only in specific circumstances.

Well, I did some research online and found a few sites which try to help you to develop your skills of observation.

http://www.wikihow.com/Sharpen-Your-Powers-of-Observation

In case you are interested to become the famous sleuth from 221B Baker Street, visit the following site.

http://lifehacker.com/5960811/how-to-develop-sherlock-holmes-like-powers-of-observation-and-deduction

So, let's test your observations skills now shall we?? Look at the below picture and evaluate yourself. Hope you didn't have to read to observe properly. :P

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Well, that's all for this week.

Hope you have a great weekend.

'til next week.

Football !!! - Week 3

So I didn't write much this week. Fortunately, a glance through the drafts section gave me what's below. Written during July 2014, it describes my life long passion.

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My affair with her is the classic illicit story. Even though it was short lived, what we had was spicy, lusty, beautiful and more, up until the last moment, when the roof fell over our heads, reminding us both that we were never meant to be together, at least in a physical sense. That doesn't mean that we are not flirting anymore.

To avoid any unnecessary assumptions or presumptions from your part as to who she is, I would like to let you know that "she" here means FOOTBALL - the one true love I have now (then).

My legs zombie walk towards a football on seeing one; I still watch from the sidelines as those more fortunate than me knock around the ball, and show some skill for a good measure; I FOLLOW a football team to the little bits of news that come out from it. To say the least, I still wish I hadn't done that simple turn on that fateful day - then maybe, I could have still played today.

That was just the trailer. Let us now begin the show. From the begining.

I was never a sports fan. I never had the stamina/desire to play any game, in which you have to run around the place over and over again. That meant badminton doubles and cricket were the only games - here games means those "fun" activities in which you have to stand - I even tried to play. This is on top of the customary basketball matches I had to take part in because of my height factor. Oh!!! How I loathed having to play in my school days, and how I wish I had the sense then to not to.

I still remember the first time I "played" football. I put played in quotes because it was not actually a match, but a training session, and the Physical Education Sir, Mr.Vincent chose me as the sacrificial lamb for that particular day. The task before me was pretty simple. Put the football a yard or two in front of you, roll it back using the tip of your foot, and as it rolls towards you, use your foot to flick it up. Simple, right??

Well, that day, to the 12 year old me, it was the single most, physically challenging task that I had to complete. Sadly, no matter how much I tried, in my attempts to flick the ball, all I could achieve was to kick it further away. Thus ended my first tryst with the football, which can be termed as nothing, but a failure.

Now, when it came to following football, I was like any other blue-blooded Indian - only Cricket. Football is a leap year-ish tradition here, wherein the FIFA World Cup is watched with much awe and passion, which fizzles out at the final whistle of the final game, only to come back again in four years.

And so we arrive at the summer of 2004, when I had finished my 10th grade, and was idling at home. I happened to come across the football game FIFA, and that changed the way I thought about football.

Like a misguided missile reaching its target, a few simple push at the "Enter" button in the starting menus of that game left me with ARSENAL FC as my chosen football club. It wasn't a concisous choice, but one I thank myself for making anyways. I started playing football on the computer with a dedication I always showed only in lazing around. And I came to like the team, I was playing with - Arsenal FC. The team had pace, power and flair, I unconciously started following the team.

And thus did Football reappear in my life. It was a slow start - it took over 6 years for it to grow into something significant. The grip that the game of cricket had on me waned, and I was becoming a football addict. And the transistion from an addict to a fanatic was complete when I started playing football, in real life, again.

I will never claim I was any good at it. I was too sloopy to be a keeper; was clumsy in tackles to be a defender; lacked any skill to take on a defender like a midfielder; and didn't have enough power in my legs to frighten the opposite keeper with my shots as a striker. I could go all melodramatic, and say what I had was love for the game, and all that crap. Even though the said crap is true, it wasn't just that.

I, like most of the other people like me, had a knack to pick the incapability of the street football players to apply the offside rule properly in our matches. We would hang around in the opposition half, mostly close to their goalkeeper, in search of long balls from our team, or stray back passes from the other. We wont finish off every chance that came our way, but our inability in other aspects of the game forces our teams to play us so.

And so in the winter of 2010 did my footballing days begin again. I was just settling into my life at Delhi, and football became my addiction and my passion. But the rest of the story is for another post.

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Until next week.

NOT THAT 50 shades of Grey(5 things - Week 67)

The book, and the upcoming film with the same title, '50 shades of Grey'  has become synonymous with erotic literature. It has given the license to many an innocent nerd claiming to have read "porn". Well, it's not. Like a dear friend of mine had put it to me so nicely, "In matters with regards these, because of their uninhibited urge to perform, the amateurs always churn out the better stuff."

Anyways, I mentioned that specimen of fiction because over the course of the next few paragraphs I'll be trying to bore you with some recent philosophical tinglings I've felt. And I don't want you people to jolt out of your slumber when you see the words "50 shades of Grey" in between. My mention of the phrase has nothing to do with the book.

So, what is this tingling I've had that is currently labouring to be introduced to you? It's something that has been discussed and dissected by people far wiser than us. What I intend to do is channel some of my own personal experience and inferences before quoting what they had to tell us.

The basic premise was laid out when I was torn between deciding whether what I was going to do to be right or wrong? This question of morality lead me to forging the following statement,

"What is morality, but the guilty feeling you get when you are truly enjoying yourself..."

The concept of duality has always fascinated me. We tend to always think in terms of black and white, right and wrong. Everything is fine as long as the elements in our environment stick to these mutually exclusive zones. But when there are transgressions, and there are always transgressions, it is like throwing a spanner into the mechanized machine that is our thought process. We don't know what to do.

To give an example, I was unsure of what to do. The act I was about to perform was always banished into the "wrong" zone by me. So, if I did it, I would either have to accept that it has been shifted into the "right" zone or that I was about to move into the "bad" category of people - both options which I found rather depressing to pursue.

It was then that I came into another branch of thought process, which reminded me of the 50 shades of Grey. Between the demarcated zones of black and white, lies the various shades of Grey. Anything is a combination of black and white, just in different proportions. So, what I was about to do could be termed both as right and wrong, and that would save me a lot of mental burden.

But in the deepest recesses of my mind, I knew that was a weak excuse given to facilitate doing such things. That was when I finally settled into this school of thought - the thought process which does away with the concept of duality and preaches non-duality. And that is where I found peace of mind - in knowing that there's right and wrong, but both are the same.

As someone put it, "The though process of a successful serial killer and a successful detective are the same."

With that, we shall proceed on to the "5 things" for this week.

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1. Anthon St. Maarten, Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny

“If we never experience the chill of a dark winter, it is very unlikely that we will ever cherish the warmth of a bright summer’s day. Nothing stimulates our appetite for the simple joys of life more than the starvation caused by sadness or desperation. In order to complete our amazing life journey successfully, it is vital that we turn each and every dark tear into a pearl of wisdom, and find the blessing in every curse.” 

2. Ramana Maharshi

"There are neither good nor bad qualities in the Self. The Self is free from all qualities. Qualities pertain to the mind only. It is beyond quality. If there is unity, there will also be duality. The numerical one gives rise to other numbers. The truth is neither one nor two. It is as it is."

3. Sutta Nipata (a Buddhist Scripture)

"Develop the mind of equilibrium.

You will always be getting praise and blame,

but do not let either affect the poise of the mind:

follow the calmness, the absence of pride."

4. Eric Micha'el Leventhal

“To see through the illusion of duality, remember that fear and darkness have no substance in themselves, for they do not indicate the presence of a second universal force, but are only names given to the one Light unperceived.” 

5. The Bhagavad Gita

Yada bhuta-prthag-bhavam

ekastham anupasyati;

Tata eva ca vistaram

Brahma sampadyate tada.

It is when one realizes that all beings and things which are existing separately are living in ‘It’and are ‘It’, and are expanding with ‘It’, then only one attains Brahman [Non Duality].

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In the above quotes, we have been taught the concept of duality as two polar opposites; the reason why we feel a need for duality in all things - to represent the struggle we call as life; how to break away from the concept of duality - by realizing that we perceive things as dual and that that perception is wrong; and what we shall achieve by embracing non-dualism - Brahman.

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Since time immemorial people have been chasing the shadows of non-duality in search of salvation. In my search for wise quotes on non-duality, I came across this gem of a message. Read it thrice and start living in the moments.

"Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future; Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life." - Thich Nhat Hahn

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Well, that's all for this week.

Hope you have a great weekend.

'til next week.

H-A-B-I-T (5 things - Week 66)

Once in high school, I was taught about that wonderful thing people like to call HABIT. I was taught that you should always try to develop good habits and try to avoid from cultivating bad habits. The main reason against the latter statement was the obvious persistent nature of Habits. She explained that nature as follows..

"HABIT.

Remove the first letter from it. A-BIT remains..

Remove the first letter from it. BIT remains..

Remove the first letter from it. IT remains.."

As you can see, it's very hard to get rid of an habit, and it such a situation all football lovers find themselves in right now.

The usual national leagues shut up shop for the season in the middle of May. In most summers, that means three months of no football as the next season starts only by August. But this summer, we've had the World Cup to bring us footy junkies some much needed action. But the rest days they have given between the rounds are making the withdrawal symptoms prominent.

Counting the time to the next kick-off (2 hours, 35 minutes), watching the replays, fighting online over what has been the moment of the tournament so far, or worse, indulging in transfer gossip (if you don't know what that means, you are one lucky $*^@&).

The only good thing about the rest days is that it prepares us for the next one month of no football following the final whistle at the Maracana on July 13th. There will be the occasional warm up matches for the clubs, but until the season begins in the middle of August, we'll never be satisfied.

And that's the thing about habits. It starts of as something small, a cue - a moment of weakness, a moment of indulgence or a moment of imagination. If the result entraps you to perform it again and again, then it becomes a routine. The result or the reward that you get depends on what you are actually doing. But it reinforces in you the need to keep going. These are not my words, but a widely accepted fact. See they even have got flow charts on it.

Anyways, for the five things for this week, we'll be looking at five such habits that I seem to have developed over the years.

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1. First thing I do on opening my eyes

Check my phone. This must be true for most of us, I guess. While our forefathers checked the direction to face while getting up, we now grope around our bed trying to find the phone, and then continue on to check the notifications in all our social networks. I got a mobile phone in the 18th year of my life, and this is a habit of mine only since. The reason for this habit must be the urge to keep up-to-date with all that's "happening".

2. Charm

My house is right behind a temple, which I visit often. There's a banyan tree at the temple. If you have to reach the banyan tree, you've to climb three steps. And I always touch the topmost step at the exact same point with the index finger of my right hand. Why? I haven't figured that out myself. But I can tell you that I'm afraid of not doing it for the consequences. It's my charm.

3. Double Checking

If you were to stalk me, and I know some of you do that quite religiously, you would find me parking my bike, locking my bike, walking away from my bike, come back to my bike, check if I locked my bike, and walk away again from my bike. I know the reason for this one. I wouldn't call me absent minded, but I do "zone out" a lot and start thinking about stuff unrelated to what I'm doing. Hence, I end up double checking.

4. Matchday Colors

If you didn't know, most clubs and countries have a minimum of two, a normal of three matchday colors. That is they have two or three kits to choose from on what to wear for a particular match. And whenever Arsenal play, I wear the kit top that they are wearing for that match.

This started off a scathing comment from a friend who noticed that I was wearing the same thing as the team on the tele. At that time, it was just cos of the fact that I tend to have a lot of Arsenal tops and I tend to love wearing them. But something changed that day, and wearing matchday colors became a good luck charm for me and my team.

5. THIS!!!

If this isn't a habit, what else is?? I've been here, every Friday for the past 65 weeks, making these posts. There was a cue, there was a routine and there has been a reward. Thank you all.

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P.S. This is the 100th post on this site. I write around 1000 words per post. That puts the number of words sown over here to be an estimated 1,00,000. Over two years before, I decided that I would think about writing a book only if I can hit that number. Well, I think I should start dusting off my "celebrated author" dreams.

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Well, last week's matches were a drag. More often than not, I was praying for the match to get over within the regulation time. We've eight more matches before they pack up everything at Brazil. I sincerely hope that those are better than what we got in the first knockout stages.

In a few hours, the two teams I support at this tournament will kick off, trying to kick each other out of the tournament. Germany vs France. Whichever way it goes, it's heartbreak for me. But I guess a German victory would hurt a little less.

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Well, that's all for this week.

Hope you have a great weekend.

'til next week.

It's shaving Cream (5 things - Week 65)

Well, I used to think it’s shaving cream. But apparently, it's called, rather imaginatively, the "Vanishing Foam".

Just in case you missed out on the question (from last week’s blog), it was “What is the foamy stuff the referees at the World Cup are using to mark the location of the ball and the human wall during freekicks??”

It is good that it ain't any shaving cream brand on the market. I've found that these said markings on the pitch disappear in a minute or two. Not the best advertisement for any brand. Before we leave the subject, and I know the following is highly sexist, but it's really funny.

And just in case you had a doubt, the topic for this week will also be Football, specifically the FIFA World Cup that is being held in Brazil (see pic below).

I had remarked last week that I’ll be milking the imaginary teats (no pun intended) of this World cup cow. Well, if I had to compare this imaginary cow to another imaginary cow, it would be the ‘Kamadhenu’, the mythical sacred Indian cow. Like its mythical counterpart, this World Cup is turning out to be a gift that keeps on giving.

Last week, we talked about the spectacular goals, the really stupid red cards, the improbable results and the last gasp finishes. It was more of the same, and some more this week. As the first round drew to an end yesterday, and as half the teams got on the flight back home, we'll look at five major incidents from the first round.

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1. The goal of the tournament so far

Okay, there can never be an unanimous decision on this. So, I’m just going to punt for a personal favourite – THAT Tim Cahill goal against the Netherlands. Though Australia must have already left Brazil after their exit, they did themselves no harm with some spectacular, albeit unsuccessful, performances.

Many contenders have already put their names in the hat for the goal of the tournament, and you can expect more as the competition progresses into the latter stages.

2, The save of the tournament so far

Talking about hats, how’s this for one??

The Brazilians must have really felt that such a hat was blocking their path to the inside of the Mexican goalpost. Frustrating is never a compliment, unless you are associating it with a goalkeeper. And the Mexican Goalkeeper, Guillermo Ochoa earned his frustration badge, as he helped his side to a 0-0 draw with Brazil.

3. The pass of the tournament so far

If I’ve to be totally honest with you, neither did I watch the match, nor did I see this pass until like one minute before. From the match reports and post-match discussions on the social forums, I knew this pass was good. But deep within, I just felt that it was hype. But it ain’t.

This pass from Joel Campbell of Costa Rica to set up his teammate Marco Ureña score against Uruguay was, for a better word, AWESOME. And the Costa Ricans have been the story of the tournament so far. Drawn in Group D with three Top 10 FIFA ranked teams, a group the media was quick to term the “Group of Death”, the minnows Costa Ricans have come out of the group in the first place, without tasting defeat at the hands of the giants.

A “David vs Goliath” story is always an attractive preposition and the story continues as they take on Greece in the next stage of the World Cup.

4. The best defensive unit so far

Again, if I’ve to be honest with you, I like to watch games where both teams are attacking – it gives the match an edge we all like to see. And when I sat down to watch the Argentina vs Iran match, it was basically to see the Argentine attacking quartet of Messi, Aguero, Higuain and Di Maria, take apart the minnows from Asia. Well, it was not to be.

Even though they fell to a brilliant Messi strike in the added minutes of the second half, the Iranians held their fort against the Argentines and was more than a handful when they counter attacked. Another team which left the World Cup with pride in my opinion.

5. The ‘Oh my GOD!! How can he be so stupid?” moment

There was this stupid headbutt from Pepe on a Muller sitting on the floor.

There was then this punch from Song on Mandzukic on his back. (graphics might be exaggerated).

But, like you must have heard, Suarez bit Chelini. Again. For the third time in his career in fact. That's right, Ladies and Gentlemen. A grown man, a professional, playing under the watchful eyes of the entire world biting a fellow professional.

That takes the cake (again, no pun intended).

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Well, there wasn't any match today. So hope this would have sated your football hunger. I know this ain't no World Cup, but at least I tried..:D ;)

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Well, that's all for this week.

Hope you have a great weekend.

'til next week.