Lunch Conversations - Love Notes

A few days back i was having lunch with colleagues and we were discussing the topic of love, which got me thinking about it. 

How did it start? Well, two of my staff who had been in a relationship for more than 10 months had an argument about an iron and decided to physically hurt each other. Now these are two girls beating each other up. Sure there are differences in any relationship, but i believe, no matter how angry or hurt you are by your other half doesn't give you the right to get physical and beat each other up. 

How many times have you asked your self that question? Or better yet, how many times have we said, "Oh! She is the one for me", or even "He is the right guy" after dating someone for two weeks? The problem is, we really don't know what love is... what does it really mean! "Love" is used as a passing word in every sentence we use. 

How did you know that you love someone within two weeks of dating someone? Love needs time to grow. Love is full of compromise. Love isn't about mushy, romantic evenings, expensive gifts, romantic dinners with champagne everyday! Love is about adjusting, understanding and many more things which we might not think are exciting. 

If you say that the person you have dated for a few weeks is the one your going to marry, welcome back to reality. Give it one year and i can assure you that you will be re-evaluating that decision. In this day and age, humans have evolved. We require space and time. We are no longer interested in our partner's progress but our own. We focus on our goal more often than focusing on our relationship. 

Someone might come back to me and say that i am wrong, but i never asked for an opinion. All i need you to do is close your eyes and think about it, do you really love your partner? or is it more about the human needs for just a companion when they are down and when your happy, well you really don't need the person because everyone will share your happiness but only that someone special will be next to you during your tough times. 

Love doesn't always give immediate returns. When you plant a rose, it doesn't blossom the next day. Love doesn't ask perfection of us. In fact, it rejoices in our imperfections as much as our strengths. It's our imperfections that give us empathy with others who are in pain and struggling with life, and empathy is very much part of love. 

Well i guess enough of my lecture and back to some thinking. What do you think? Love is easy? NOPE! Love takes time, love takes patience, love takes some thinking, love takes adjusting!

Growing Up In Dubai

Living & growing up in Dubai in the olden era (well definitely after 1985) had me thinking about a lot of things happening here. The immigration building in Deira was once the longest building in the UAE... I could see World Trade Center all the way from my little one story villa in Jumeirah along the beach road (now known as the Jumeirah Road). Al Ghurair Center was one of the only malls around. 

Hanging out with friends from school meant only a few things, either play CS!! (Counter Strike) in some small internet shop with your friends, or go bowling on SZR or watch a movie! 

Unfortunately the luxuries of all those activities were attainable for only a few. For me, fun meant something different while growing up. It meant spending more time with my dad, helping around my mom and being a (quite literally) "home" boy. 

Life as you know it now in Dubai, was quite different then. I was quite different then, simply untouched by the materialism in those days, i would find pleasure in little things. I would be happy if i got a nice ink pen for my birthday from my parents. I would be happen when i got a nice book to read as a gift. I would be happy with a new pencil case. Things changed, upon getting into university at Penn State, i believed my future had changed for the better. Dubai had evolved, so had i. Dubai was on the verge of modernization, and i was leading to a more open-minded life. Accepting who i was, who i am because my only goal for that moment. 

Who knew that the decisions i make in life, would directly affect my future? Well now it seems all realistic and logical to think that decisions you make early in life affect your future, but in the age, when you are still maturing and trying to find yourself, you tend to make decisions unknowingly and blindly. I would never regret my decision, but I do think that i could have taken more wiser choices, if given a chance again. 

Who knew that a small dot in in the world map would one day become a world renown tourist destination?

That is the old SZR... miss the times when going from point A to point B in Dubai wasn't such a headache! Miss the times when making a personal decision wasn't such a task!!

Indian Television

Probably the worst thing to happen to India was their sitcoms. I wonder what the women (and some men) see in these never ending sagas that attaches them to the t.v. and that all their other work has to happen around the show timings, because once its on - no one can disturb them. I feel like the writers or the producers are probably from broken homes or families to think of such topics and issues which just go on and on and on....

Few of my biggest pet peeves of these Indian sitcoms is the un-Godly use of make up which just seems so "pretty". If this was real India, maybe 40% of the population wouldn't have the income source to own the amount of make up they use. It would probably amount to 90% of the month's average monthly income for a middle class employee.

Then you have the brightly colored silk sarees, which they seem to sleep in too! I truly applaud any Indian woman who would be fully "decked" up and in their bed! which includes the make up. I don't think it is possible to find anyone, or else i would probably give up writing these non-sense blogs. With the heat in India and the economic situation where a.c's are a thing of luxury, i am sure they would be sweating to their last bone if these sarees were worn around every single minute of the day, which includes while sleeping.

Lets talk about feminism and feminist writers here, I respect women, but seriously how can you believe that the men do NOTHING at all, stand around the house behind one strong female figure who dictates what is to be done and how she's plotting her next obsticel against her "daughter-in-law". So out of this world but for people who have not seen it, you have to see the sitcoms to believe what i am saying.

Most marriages on these sitcoms have either broken up due to "mother-in-law" influence or some "evil" sister in law or some sort of woman who plots against all of this. Then you have the ideal daughter in law who does everything in her power to stop any evil things happening in her house. I am sure some of you by now have gotten confused with my sentence, but trust me, nothing beats the story line of these sitcom, where the daughter in law is being plotted against, but then she is so darn good that the plotter turns supporter.

No prominent masculine figures are obviously present, well partly due the fact that most of them are either watching cricket or drinking or probably messing around with some other girl. But then who cares, because the women of the house are so powerful that they solve all the problems. I wonder where the money comes from to plot all of this out.

As the Indian population keeps on watching these melo-dramatic, out of the world sitcoms i guess more and more writers who write rubbish like this will be born. We, as Indians, need to move on to changing that, well as some might say the "educated" ones at least because the story itself promotes domestic violence and disturbance.

Ok done ranting about it for now. I wonder how many feel the same way? 

Because society said so....

"I feel like slowly sinking into a bottomless pool where no one can pull me out." - Well this sounds depressing, doesn't it? At some point or another we have all felt it. We have all felt like creeping under a rock in hopes of never being found by anyone. Even i have been though it or maybe am going through it?

Sometimes life should be taken under control. You control your own life, and the decisions you make either are right or wrong. But don't have regrets if the decision was wrong. Just like in school, where you learn from your mistakes, in real life you get to learn from your wrong. Most of us come around showing everyone that we are happy and life is well, but only you know your self what is going on deep within. Some of us do live a lie and this needs to change – well that’s also what I keep on saying.

Confused and frustrated, some tend to chose the easy way out of committing suicide. Is this the only way out? Surely there has to be another way around it. Life throws a challenge and you just go ahead and take the easy way out? Life is not perfect, but nothing is. Again I would like to say – Life is what you make of it.

Indian culture has a lot to do with what the society would think and what your relatives think, and most of the depression cases or even suicide cases comes from there. Parents might be as supportive as possible, but then ultimately they think about what the neighbors and the family and the society think. But speaking of which, does it really matter? Does it matter to you as a person what the neighbor’s son or daughter are doing? How they fared in their exams? Or they got married to their girlfriend or boyfriend? Or God forbid – an inter-religious marriage?

This might root from the fact that people in India really don’t have much to do but worry about others around them. See the progress of India could have been at a much higher rate, even surpassed the US if we just stopped worrying about our neighbors or farfetched relatives. And let me specially mention the idiot box showing sitcoms on “Star Plus” , “Sony” and the likes. These need to change. I wonder how people even take them seriously. Its made for pure entertainment, leave it at that.

It is sad that you see more and more suicidal cases in India when they haven to scored the “99%” in their board exams, or didn’t get into the number 1 college of their choice or even the stupidest thing of not getting into their “parent’s” dream degree course of doctor or engineering. I wonder, being a doctor or an engineer is that important? I guess so, but it doesn’t reflect in the progress of India, does it? If everyone started becoming a doctor or engineer I wonder where India would be? Everyone would be treating each other? Or a good line in “Goodness Gracious Me” – a sitcom that used to air on BBC – “ you wouldn’t have to wait in lines for hospitals if the whole world became India, cause you would be a doctor yourself”

Lets be more positive towards people who have chosen fields other than doctor or engineer. I mean, the arts, hospitality and many more all have respectable jobs and in some cases even higher paying jobs. I don’t see too many doctors or engineers doing too well for themselves.

Why should we care two hoots of what the society thinks of us? Why don’t we do what is good for us? What we care about? What we love? Why do we force our children to do what the society has “approved”? Lets move on. 

Childishness

After a long break i'm back to bother my mind to think and write :) What could i think of - Childishness. This comes to my mind because yesterday, one of my friend mentioned in passing that my blog is much more mature than what i am in real life. He does have a point. I am childish at times but this is the only part that keeps me sane in the stress of the daily chores. 

Sometimes, when i look at my niece and nephew who are 6 and 1 respectively, i wonder what it would be like to go back to that age. Troubles of the world seem to be the lest bit of your worries. Your more concentrated on how to break something or annoy someone :-)

Children normally fear nothing unless its their parents. They may be scared of something, but that is a different kind of fear. They look at things differently from us adults. This is something unique and something us adults forget to do. They see something unique and new every time, we see "been there, done that" kinda views. 

Being a child, you have the innocence that says everything has yet to be discovered. They don't really care about the safe, boring things. They need something exciting and fresh everyday to keep them entertain. We need to learn from them! As we become adults, we tend to take the same path over and over again because we feel comfortable. Sometimes we could take risk, but we chose not too!

Kids see the world through the eyes of someone that doesn't know the meaning of the words, "too far" or "some other time" While we grow up, we lose some of this innocence and somewhere we lose our unique identity to look at things with a different prospective. I agree that as adults we shouldn't act like kids, but hey, no one asked us to act as adults all the time. 

Without some childishness, life becomes mundane and boring on a daily basis. Shouldn't we all be able to act like children sometimes? In life; in love; in business? Does our fear of real life stop us from overcoming everything that's holding back our true success?

Do you remember the last time you thought, let me have honey smacks for breakfast without milk? Let me go into a toy store and check out the new toys they have for kids? When's the last tine you bought something that kids would use? When's the last time you acted like a child? 

Respect

Respect is a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities or achievements. Much of the universal values and virtues that contribute to the good of the individual and society and affirm our human dignity are derived from the value of respect and the value of responsibility.

Sometimes I wonder if in today’s world there is any respect left in the human being. Now some of us have different views on respect. As an Indian, I was tough that you have to treat your elders and the like with respect. You probably end up calling everyone either uncle or aunty who are older to you. Maybe closer to your age you’d call them brother or sister. This leads me to a funny thought, if I were to start calling everyone uncle and aunty or brother or sister this would be one big incestuous world.

Moving on, talking about respect I think that the basic human feelings are involved. You choose who to respect and who not to. If someone is wrong, they are wrong, be it your boss, your elders (uncle or aunt) or even someone who is younger than you. You might chose to not respect them. Nothing wrong in that. But sometimes we don’t make it clear enough that we do not respect the person and for what reason. We fail to explain to the other person that their one mistake made you dis-respect (well, for the lack of a better word) them.

Money, power, stature does not really bring in respect. Now I’m not writing a moral lesson here which I hope to teach to my kids. But I do think that you should not be forcing someone to respect you or respect someone else just because they are older, more powerful or at a higher stature of society. Let your kids chose for themselves who they want to respect. They are humans too, not robots that you would teach them every lesson in life. Let them learn.

I did read somewhere that “education will bring respect to everyone”, which is also untrue according to me. Respect in my opinion doesn’t come with education, it comes with your life experiences and the actions of the other person.

In today’s world we often hear so much news about different people groups, races, religions, sexes, and ages. Somebody is always being offended and somebody is always being discriminated against. Is our world truly such a terrible place that human beings cannot respect each other and treat one another with kindness and dignity?

So many times groups are pitted against one another over trivial matters, petty excuses, and even insignificant issues. So what is the real problem? It is a lack of communication. We have lost the ability to talk to one another, to empathize with others, and to sympathize with those less fortunate than ourselves. As we explore these different groups and their issues, problems, backgrounds, and lifestyles we should all keep an open mind, open hearts, and remember that the people we are talking about are just that, they are people. It is someone’s father, mother, sister, brother, daughter, or son. These are people who are loved and valued and they should be treated that way.

Well before I go on about this moral integrity (which I should write another one page about) I think that each human/person thinks on his own and its up to them to make a conscientious decision on what they can do and what they can not do. Who to respect and who not to respect. Its their own values. We fight over abortion, homosexuality, war, poverty, wealth, debt, government, sex, drugs, immigration, and religion. The one thing we never fight about is promotion of self. There is no respect for others left; it is about self promotion and one’s own cause at the cost of anyone else and their beliefs or feelings. Tolerance is a word that is thrown around a great deal, but very rarely practiced.

Bankruptcy - Airlines.

The airline industry consistently breaks the number one rule of business: The job of the company is to make money.

Planes are expensive. Fuel prices jump around a lot. It's hard to predict how many people will want to fly next year. But all airlines face these challenges and only some file for bankruptcy.

Legacy airlines date back to the days when interstate airlines were heavily regulated by the government. And it does seem like they've had a particularly hard time. American Airlines declared bankruptcy last month, following in the footsteps of Delta, Northwest, United, US Airways and Continental. Some of them have gone through bankruptcy twice.

Before 1978, life for the legacy airlines was pretty sweet. The government set ticket prices. If regulators didn't think airlines were making enough money, ticket prices would be allowed to rise. Instead of competing to offer the lowest ticket prices, the airlines offered more and more amenities things like bigger seats. Some 747s even had piano bars.

All that changed with deregulation in 1978. Bob Crandall was working at American Airlines at the time, and he remembers what it was like.

"Somebody decides to start a new airline and they come into the business and decide that they are only going to charge $29 for a seat," says Crandall. "Then I don't have any choice, I have to charge $29 for my seats too, even if a seat cost me $100."

Those new, low-cost carriers — such as AirTran, Southwest, and JetBlue — have a key advantage over the legacy airlines. "They get much more productivity out of their workers," he says. "The jobs are defined more broadly and their workers tend to be able to cover more of the work load."

Airlines keep on forgetting that these days consumers are more price conscious. Airlines have to adjust to it. Airline travel is no longer a luxury like it used to be in 1978. Airplanes are flying everywhere now, and in some cases for a cheaper price for a seat.

The number one golden rule applied here is, what hotels do. You have a plane, its flying from say, Mumbai to Dubai - the airline will try to fill in every last seat available on the flight because once the flight has closed, that seat will make no money at all. Pretty much the same rule applies to hotels, once the night has passed an empty room makes no money at all. This all seems easy enough to understand but it is a bit more complicated to apply.

Full service airlines have to account for number of meals on board, luggage (especially with the free baggage allowance), number of babies on board, number of premium passengers on board for the extra services they have to provide, so they can not just go on selling seats until the last minute like the low cost carriers. Everyone from catering to maintenance to refueling team is involved.

To examine the middle east market, as i have mentioned before, you have a wide variety of carriers operating in the middle east. Notable low cost carriers would be FlyDubai and Air Arabia, then you have, albeit on a smaller scale, Nas Air, Gulf Traveler (which seems to have disappeared), Jazeera Airways (which has drastically scaled back on operations).

These players know how to use their aircraft optimally. Running from airports that are operational 24hrs a day, giving the flexibility of aircraft staying in the air for a longer period of time - as the say goes - aircraft make money only when they are flying. Staff are utilized to their fullest potential and well sometimes over because there is no rules regulating staff rights and other benefits as the American market. Since they are relatively new the aircraft are younger and more efficient, then there is the pricing of Jet Fuel which is better priced in this part of the world. 

London Olympics - India

As the London Olympics comes to an end, i was thinking about how India produced results. Quiet frankly, its disappointing and shameful to find out that a populations of over 1billion and we could not produce proper athletes to earn even one gold meal? I know, sitting here writing about it might not help, as some would say, if you want to pass the blame, why don't you do something about it? Why don't you join the teams competing. Well that's understandable, but just my view is we should have managed to win atleast one gold?

Congratulations to the Indian athletes that did perform and for wining us the silver and bronze medals. Shooting, boxing, badminton and wrestling are the sports where India has won medals. What i am comparing here is the sheer size of the population.

India's close rival China - 38 gold, 27 silver and 22 bronze. Countries with smaller population like Germany, Italy, France, Greece, Japan etc, have all done much better at collecting medals than a densely populated country like India. Indians are crazy about one sport - Cricket, and that's where everything else stops. I don't  say that it's a wrong thing but seriously speaking - our national game is Hockey and i don't see anyone stopping their daily lives just to watch Hockey. Neither do we fare well in the game. Why is that?

India is placed number 56 in the Olympics this year. Not that we've done extraordinarily well in any year, but hey who's to blame? India does have its own set of achievements but for a young nation not enough.

In a country of one billion people, it would be highly improbable that we cannot find sportsmen of the same or better caliber / potential than existing in the games. Hence I feel it is more to do with lack of infrastructure than genetic reasons. Also sports (and for that matter art, music as well) as a career is almost never encouraged and is unacceptable to Indian parents - there is an obsession with science / engineering / management i.e the more academic careers. I think both these factors reinforce each other leading to the scenario that we have now.  

India, after attaining freedom from the British rule, has been stricken with so many developmental problems that putting money  into the sports scene of the country has never been deemed to be as important. With the relatively better economy that we have had recently, I would then attribute the reasons to the obsession with Cricket.

Additionally there are factors such as corruption, bureaucracy that I cannot get into because I don't consider myself knowledgeable in that domain. I guess more factual stuff needs to be added to this answer but this is my overall understanding of the Indian sports scenario. Improvement of infrastructure at the grass-root level is essential to the improvement of sports in India.