Category: Mensa

Most Embarasing Moments

~ Pied Piper ~ Leave a comment

This topic, when I first heard, seemed to easy for me . I mean, I have been caught in a lot of embarrassing moments through my years of existence on earth.
but on further reflection, I realized that these were the moments which shaped my life into what it is today.
For instance, I had a crush school everyone does, nothing embarrassing there. Now, the time came when I was about to tell the lady in question how much I liked to be around her… and I did exactly that… to her similar looking younger sister.
Lesson learnt… always make sure the girl you are talking to, is the girl you want to talk to. It is foolish to stare at your feet during the conversation.

Another instance was when I cracked a joke on sardars… without realizing that the person I was reading out the joke to, was one himself.

One more …. always , always , always tell the parents that you are not feeling well enough for school, instead of simply going to the school and shoot a projectile of vomit right in the middle of the stairs for the entire school to admire.

Here is another one … Always use an LCD monitor, else you get caught using the computer when you have been expressively told not to.

By now you might realize that I had my fare share of embarrassing moments. But I am not yet done. I think the most embarrassing of the moments are those which might not be wrong per se, but might involve you being afraid to do that.

For instance, when your name is announced in the assembly for something you did which others find a thing to be proud of, but you have a stage fright and stumble on the stage like a lost puppy, the one thing on your mind is ” oh god, so many people… hope my pants don’t fall off”, or “I don’t stumble on these mic wires while on my way”, or ” Bloody hell, why am I here ?”

One more instance… I was being shouted at in front of lot many people. Suddenly the shouter realizes that the shoutee is not the person he was looking for. Now comes the embarrassing moment when the shouter’s face changes drastically and the shoutee now has to listen to the apologies in front of the same people… and the pressure of the mob helps in no way to make the transition from shoutee to shouter. All you can do is go red.

But most of my embarrassing moments are quite silly, and have absolutely very little to do with devoting an entire writeup for the topic. maybe this might also qualify as an embarrassing moment. I don’t know. Perhaps it would be best to ask the people listening to the meaning less chatter of the writer and forced to say “wow this is good”… and they might then be inclined to add this experience in their writeup under the section for embarrassing complements….

One thing is certain. These moments help forge or destroy bonds between people. Because you share such details only with people whom you might trust.

Do you want to be a Policeman ?

~ Pied Piper ~ Leave a comment

In India, almost everyone wants to be doctor or an engineer when they grow up.. Most of them do get a degree in engineering or medicine and few of them become engineers and doctors… but that is besides the point.
I always wanted to be Sherlock Holmes. No, I did not want to be a self loathing ,woman hating , drug abuser. I wanted to be a detective.

My detective skills bloomed when I was very young. My mom and dad used to work till late evening, so after school , I stayed with my grandparents. My grandfather is a very enthusiastic person … a military man himself, told me stories about the front line. This helped fuel the fire in my childish fantasy. So when he took me to see any kind of social gatherings or processions, especially palkhis, I would make it a point to follow the policeman. One day, with as much stern face as a 8 year old can make, I asked a policeman why he was following the palkhi. My grandfather, with sheepish smile, gently and firmly guided me away from that policeman. That was my first encounter with a cop.

Unfortunately, I started to grow up. Or at least , my age advanced in years, I realized the childish fantasy was not going to disappear soon. My encounters with the law, however, definitely were at bare minimum.

Once such incidents includes me taking money from the cop. Yeah, I know it was a bit weird, but I still managed that. Here is how :

I parked my vehicle in a “no Parking” zone. Of course the vehicle was towed away. After half an hour of cursing myself( mentally), and a bit of butt kicking(again , only mentally, it would be really funny and extremely hard to do it to yourself in the middle of a busy intersection), I found out where they stow away such towed away vehicles.
I went there… produced the necessary papers, haggled about the price to be paid and finally freed my vehicle. This was when I noticed , one of the levers for my bike’s brakes was broken. I was furious. Went back to the policeman and asked him about the damage to the vehicle.
He denied everything. I thought only the criminals did that. In fact it is their default answer to any type of question asked by the cops.

Anyways, back to the story. So, the cop denied everything. Then I told him that if he did not pay me back for the broken lever, I will press charges against the entire crew for purposeful damage to the vehicle. The cop was writing something n his note book. He continued to write in his notebook. without looking up, he suggested “The lever might be broken for along time. You are simply pinning the damages on us. What proof do you have that the lever was not broken? “. His point was valid. But I was in Sadashiv peth, The area notorious for debating Punekars. ” What proof do you have that the vehicle was parked in a no parking zone ?” , I asked.

He showed me exhibit no.1 . The photo of my vehicle being parked in a no parking zone.I zoomed the photo, and said” Se here office, the lever is perfectly healthy, ready to live for a few more years. Are you going to refund , or shall I lodge a complaint?.” I became richer by Rs. 70 that day.

A few days later, I was at a traffic signal. There were a lot of copy on the other side of the signal. They were stopping everyone, so there was a lot of crowd on the other side of intersection.
We know there is an association between a crush and your heart beats, but the same hold true in case of cops. Even if you are innocent, the heart still starts beating faster.
The cops stopped me in the middle of the road. They handed me sweets wished me good health and proceeded to the next fast beating heart.

Faith in cops, restored.

These are just a couple of encounters I had with the community that is underpaid , over worked and stereotyped for being corrupt. But seldom are they appreciated.
I know off a few of the modern cops who are not at all technology ignorant, obese or rude. But just because of a few bad apples, there is a threat of the entire basket being spoiled.
#cops #humanity #corruption #stereotypes #hashtagsingeneral

Depression

~ Pied Piper ~ Leave a comment

This is another article that I wrote for a Mensa meet. Apparently, I am depressed.

What is depression?

Excessive sadness, perhaps?

So let’s remove sadness from life. By-product : no happiness. As it happens, you can’t feel true happiness unless you know what the absence of happiness means and the absence of happiness is sadness. Like darkness is just an absence of light, or chaos is just an absence of order.

But, Just like, a small beam of light can cause a dark room to brighten, a small act of shouting and cutting queue (chaos) when filling up the graduation forms in college can cause a small and exciting riot, conclusion : a small shock of sadness can actually break the depression.

No this is not a typo. I agree, that small bout of joy can also help with depression, but that is just for a particular moment. For long-term effects, you need a small shock of sadness. This will look at life from a different perspective. It gives the feeling that God just gave a smack on your bum and asked you to “man up” to life. He says life isn’t cruel, just mischievously sadistic.

How do you spot a depressed person ?
He is definitely not the one shouting “I am so depressed, that I can no longer work.” This is simply a lazy guy who wants others to do his work for him.

He is definitely not the person sitting quietly in the corner… staring blankly at a wall. He might just be admiring the colour or texture of the wall. Or perhaps he might be absent minded. Or perhaps he might think himself to be John Forbes Nash and thinks staring at walls may just win him a Nobel prize and he might get a beautiful mind.

He is definitely not the one who refuses to take baths, has long and dirty fingernails. He might be a gardener or he might have just buried someone,preferably not alive.
( I should stop watching police procedural dramas )

No these are not the depressed beings.

Notice the guy who keeps smiling, no matter what the situation ? Yes, the guy who is laughing all the time, cheerful, pleasant, cool to hang out with. Look at him closely. There might just be a hint of sadness hiding in those eyes.
The eyes, always trying to find something. Something they don’t know how to explain, something that’s missing. A spark in their life, maybe… ? or a purpose to live , perhaps …?

Have you tried to talk to him ? He might just speak for hours and you might gain a lot of general knowledge and absolutely no personal insight into this person. He has shut himself off, emotionally. He might put on weight, or loose some within a short span. He might claim to get plenty of sleep, almost 12 hours, and claim he needs it.

These are just some symptoms of depression. There might be more.
So next time you spot such a person, try to look into him, rather than at him. You might just learn a lot about him

Reading People

~ Pied Piper ~ Leave a comment

So, this is what I wrote for a Mensa project. This isn’t much, but I am a secretive person after all.

The article was all about reading people.

It is said that it is common knowledge that reading people is easy enough.
And yet many people find it difficult to judge how their bosses will react or if the boy/girl you like like you back. There are jokes flying around about people not being able to understand what women want.
So, maybe it is not so common. Maybe, it becomes more difficult to read people as they get older,as they learn to hide their emotions.

Look at babies. It is easy to know when they are happy , sad, want their mom, want to pull hair, want to spit… all the things babies do. Admittedly, babies most eat , sleep or poop, but that is not the point. The point is, people learn to hide their emotions behind a mask. As the Japanese saying goes ” every person has three layers of faces behind which he hides.

So how do you read a person ? I am no expert, but here are some things that I have noticed or heard.
Eye contact : If people maintain eye contact, most of the time they are telling the truth.
Pitch : If the person you are talking to suddenly changes the pitch of their voice, you asked the wrong kid of question. This will be followed by a slight restlessness.
Look at the body language : crossing of hands in mid conversation usually means I need to stop talking right away. If this is followed by a frown, I should probably start running in the opposite direction. It might mean, I offended them in some way, which is very probable.
The evil Smile: cartoon have it almost correct. If a person smiles, look for a slight twitching at the corners. If there is a twitch…. a definite evil mastermind.
Handshakes : See if a handshake is firm, Hard or soft. If hard, don’t trust the guy. He might want to dominate you. If firm, he might sell you a boat in a desert, if soft, just push him around. He won’t mind it, and even if he did he won’t do anything about it.

And this is the limit of what little knowledge I gained while learning to be a human being.