Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Why not!

A guy went to an interview. He was questioned for an hour. The interviewers were impressed with his technical stuff. Then came the final question. They showed him a painting and asked him what it meant. The painting was about a scene on the river bank. A very pleasant river bank with green trees everywhere. In the middle of the river, stood an old man with half his body inside the water and both his hands raised above his head. He was trying to say to something. Seeing that, the candidate thought for a minute and then said, the man was drowning in the river and was trying to get some help. He was immediately rejected. The justification given by the interviewers was that the candidate was too pessimistic. They had expected him to say something like, the old man was performing some kind of a ritual saying some mantra aloud or something of that sort. Probably that would have meant that the candidate could take things optimistically and could think optimistically.

Why should someone be always wrong in think something pessimistically. Everything in this world has two sides. Where there is a positive, there must be a negative. A negative alone can balance a positive. If you are going to look only at the positive side, without bothering about the negative side saying that you are optimistic, what will you do if something negative happens accidentally? Its always good to be well prepared to face the bad things, rather than taking it all too unexpectedly.

If everyone should think optimistically, then we wont have all the things that we have now. Some guy made the aircraft. Probably he is a very nice optimistic guy. But someone else must have thought about it pessimistically, what happens if the aircraft runs into some problem in mid-air? He came out with parachute! If car manufacturers were over optimistic that their car will never meet with an accident, then they wouldn't have put any bumber or airbag in the car. Even in case of a software, we expect it to fail at some point or the other. Thats why companies spends millions of dollars in maintaining a testing team.

So why not go out and think a bit differently about things, never mind about pessimism or optimism. Probably we can come out with new stuffs that we never knew of.

Answer THAT question

When I dont have any work to do, I get bored. I dont try and find something useful to do. But when I have something seriously worth doing, I try to find some crappy thing to do instead. I believe this blog is one such crappy stuff. If you still want to continue, its your fate. Go ahead. After all, who am i to stop you!

I have come across this question a lot of times. But i have never cared to give it any thought. Basically, my idea is why should I be so stupid to give it so much thought. But now,I think this thing is of utmost importance. This thing holds the meaning for the very existence of our life.

There are thousands of questions that remain unanswered. Mysteries waiting to be solved. Mysteries bigger than Holy Grail itself, waiting to be solved.Why are we here? May be we were kicked outta THAT place. How did we get here? May be we didnt have enough money in THAT place, ultimately sent to this place - a place for downtrodden ! Why do we exist,after all? May be to get our revenge on the people of THAT place, for sending us here. Is there a life after death? probably we should ask the people of THAT place!If so, where do we go after we die? Where else! we go back to THAT place again. Why do we die, after all? probably a chance to get back to THAT place.

Probably, the above things are only few of my unanswered questions. A lot of them still remains locked in my heart! Well now to the ultimate question that faces us. This one question should answer all our other questions. Probably should answer every question that everyone of us have. By the way, what is "THAT" place! where the hell is that! I have been working all day trying to figure out where to find the solution. Finally I start realising something. How can we find out where THAT place is , without going to THAT place! Now i get it!

This situation looks something like - Who came first - Egg or Chicken? Egg must have come from chicken. But Chicken must have come from Egg. Dont bother about the rooster(By the way,who cares about the male!). I have had egg a few thousand times and chicken also a few thousand times. But never did i get any realisation about who came first! Probably i should try something different other than eating, to find the solution! If it had been that easy, the question would have been answered long ago by my ancestor, who were voracious chicken and egg lovers, to the best of my belief.

Probably this chicken and egg stuff seems too complex, so to bring down the complexity, I will take up another simple thing to answer our ultimate question. We need an axe to make an axe. So how did the first axe come? Well , in theory, it could be like the first axe was a rough simulation of the evolved and more stable latest beta version that we have today. Using this rough simulation, the second axe should have been made. Using this more refined prototype, the others were made. But in the course of time, we have lost the first and original axe. This leaves us with no other option than to simulate that original scenario to bring back our original axe. We should probably gather all the axe, put it in some deep sea. Now the situation is we dont have any axe left with us. So we have to create the first original axe again. But why should we do all this! I dont know. It was fun, writing this blog. Good to waste your time!