Escaping Flatland

For all my loyal readers out there, here is a chance to "save" some money over the Thanksgiving weekend - or rather, on Black Friday, the day retailers finally start making a profit each year (i.e. head into the Black). Retailers typically offer selective product discounts on their in-store product offerings, and they advertise these on in-store posters, FSIs (Free Standing Inserts - those printed ads you see in newspapers) or junk mailed ads. Since all those media involve middlemen outside the company's control (e.g. printers, store employees etc), some of this information tends to get leaked onto the web. Or, at least, that's what this NY Times article would have me believe. 

Anyway, three websites are currently offering Black Friday deal details: www.bf2005.com, www.gottadeal.com, and www.BlackFridayAds.com. I plan to go through the Best Buy, Comp USA, IKEA, Linens N Things, Radio Shack, Target and Wal*Mart ads for sure!

One of the books I received for my BDay this year was "the curious incident of the dog in the night time". Like the Joey Pigza series, this is (a) a first-person narrative about a child impaired with a mental disorder (b) living with a single parent, trying to search for the other (c) Very dark. Very enlightening. Very humorous.


Unlike the Joey Pigza series, though, the author (Mark Haddon) does not dwell on his particular disorder. In fact, one needs to piece together that the protagonist is autistic (or does he have Aspergers? who knows?) based upon clues Mark sprinkles throughout.

The novel opens with Christopher (the 15 year, 3 month, 3 day old austistic) discovering the neighbour's poodle lying dead in the her front lawn. Emulating his logically-inclined fictional hero Sherlock Holmes (I'm glad he didn't pick Dr Spock!), Chris decides to solve the mystery of the dead dog, leading to some startling secrets (no spoilers here, don't worry).

The novel is peppered with illustrations, puzzles and math problems, breaking the textual monotony. Though I found errors in the author's explanation of the Parade Magazine puzzle and weakness in his explanation of animal population propagation. The Parade puzzle is more interesting, so I'm quoting it here:

You are on a game show on television. On this game show the idea is to win a car as a prize. The game show host shows you three doors. He says that there is a car behind one of the doors and goats behind the other two. He asks you to pick a door. You pick a door but it is not opened. Then the game show host opens on of the doors you didn't pick to show a goat (he knows what is behind each door). He then gives you a final chance to change your mind before the doors are opened. What should you do - should you keep the door you chose or pick the unopened one instead?

According to Mark (or Marilyn vos Savant - who had "the highest IQ in the world"), you should always change and pick the final door, because chances are 2 in 3 that there will be a car behind that door. She shows this by using an event tree with 3 events: choose door with goat, choose door with goat, or choose door with car. Then she shows that if you change, 2 tree leafs lead to getting a car while 1 leads to getting a goat. The fault, in my opinion, lies in the fact that this is a conditional probability. Since we know that one door with a goat has been eliminated, the only two feasible leafs are: choose door with goat and choose door with car. Thus the probability of finding a car is 1 in 2 (50%), not 2 in 3 (66%).

That aside: overall, the book is intelligent, which makes it an engrossing and entertaining read, more so than Joey Pigza. If they make this one a series, I'm in line for the next one...

A typical Saturday afternoon. I was supposed to review some process templates for work; instead, I spent the entire do-paher surfing the Google Video. Those of you who haven't been initiated to GV yet - it's an egalitarian collection of personal and (some) broadcast videos. This includes "funny" movies passed around in emails, "cool" commercials submitted by fans (or advertisers themselves), and even personal videos of weddings or bored teenagers with digital camcorders. As you can guess, I was in prime procrastination form today!
Some stuff I saw: An indian wedding [link], Aamir Khan's cross-dressing act for Coke [link], A Jewish Duracell commerical [link], A mushy Nokia commerical [link], even a condom commerical [link]. And some homemade commercials - good [link] and not-so-good [link]. (Update: Nov 16: Russell Peters' desi standup routine [link]).
It reminded me of Carnegie Mellon, when I used to "surf" the internal network of student's publically shared hard drives. They had similar videos (especially the guys in the Film/Animation departments), awesome freeware, and a whole bunch of movies and MP3s. This was before big, bad RIAA came to campus, forced everyone to remove the movies/songs, took away their network access for a semester, and forced them to attend property-rights training classes (I'm not kidding)!

Like a Rushdie novel, events in my life are conspiring. Different spheres of ordinarily orthogonal experiences are colluding. And these incident-orbs are painting a picture for me. They are teaching me a life-lesson about The importance of Time. Or rather, Timing. This lesson in relativity and sequence illustrates the randomness of the dice falling a certain way.

First, Work. In my company, tens or hundreds of people exist with skills and experience similar to mine (sad thought, isn't that? Just another Brick in the Wall...). Yet, when my project manager was looking for people to staff in a London project, the Timing was such that every one of those people was busy while I was free. Through sheer Availability, I got to work across the Pond on the company's dime. Test drive working life in London.

Then, Relationships. Many months ago, I spoke to N on the phone. I was supposed to meet her, but the Timing was such that I met another girl first. Things did not work out with the other girl, I called up N, and the Timing was such that she had become Available recently as well. We got together and spent Time with each other. But the Timing was such that it did not work out. If we'd met a few years earlier, or a few months later, things could have been different...

And then, Career. My company is planning to expand in India and is looking for people to staff there. I knew about this earlier, but didn't care much about it. Now, the Timing is such that I could do with a change. So when they reached out to me last Friday, I might consider moving. But it would depend upon other factors like my relationships, parents, friends/financial ties - all related to Timing.

And finally, Vacation. I was planning to take Time off and visit Europe with my sister. But I was not staffed on a project yet, and could not take a break just 2 weeks within joining a project. Surprise - a project in London came along, starting at just the right Time. I planned it so that I could synchronize my customary US trip back with my Europe trips, and managed to kill two birds with one stone.

If the omniscient, omnipotent universe is hinting at something, I'm getting the subtle message. Events are random, information is imperfect, dependancies complex and unknown. If one wants a desired outcome, one should simply change the Timing, and try again.

As the great contemporary philosopher Aaliyah once carooned: "If at first you don't succeed, Dust yourself off and try again". Personally, I prefer Dilbert: "If at first you don't succeed, then destroy all evidence that you tried".

I just finished "Single Men" by Dave Hill. Somehow, I expected a book with the title "Single Men" to be written by a woman, and was disappointed that it was a male expounding on his own kind.

The book wasn't terribly intelligent, or brilliantly witty, or shockingly insightful. Yet, it was a page turner. A breezy, casual, gripping story of a housekeeper with a screwed-up life working for three blokes with even more screwed up lives. She's a single mom living in London with a non-existent love life, a mother who's living in the past and a friend who makes terrible dating decisions.

One keeps turning pages not necessarily because one can relate to the characters, but more so out of a morbid interest in their melancholy.

Like a typical Hollywood/Bollywood story, all characters emerge blissful, all stories have their ends tied up in neat bows, and they live happily ever after. It was a good on-the-plane book for my 9-hour flight from London, and I would recommend it for that purpose only.