Sikh Girl And Mountbatten

I read this article today.

This is awful. Lahore is in Punjab. Pak occupied Punjab should have been part of Indian Punjab. We (India) should write to UK to meditate and get Pak occupied Punjab back to India and thus undo the holy mess (Britain's) Mountbatten did at the time of partition. Inshallah. All Punjabis belong to India. Its a shame how Pak is treating Punjabis."

Just trying to imitate Imran Khan.

Additional reading

• Imran Khan: The World Can’t Ignore Kashmir. We Are All in Danger.
• https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2019/08/love-thy-neighbors-wife.html

Difference Between N and S (As in MBTI)

A friend of mine told me that she, a school goer and her mom, a school teacher, were both out getting wet when it rained heavily. Apparently the principal of the school told her mom not to stand in the rain but her mom wouldn't listen. 

Seeing her mom, my friend also joined in the fun. 

When she recounted this to be, I said what her mom did (having fun and getting wet inside the school) wasn't ok, even if this was done after school hours. I explained further. Other students would be watching her and her mother. Those students might also do the same. And their parents might complain to the principal that the school allowed such behavior and that their wards got a cold or fever or cough.

All this because my friend's mom couldn't restrain herself. 

My friend was aghast. She said "no one had told her this." 

She is an "S". (Actually SF and likely SFJ.)

N's don't say that people never told them about such a "rule" which is basic common sense. Even if an N wasn't aware of the rule, he would introspect why he didn't figure it out. To an N common sense things are to be figured out for oneself. Not to be told by someone so one could memorize.

Pride And Jealousy

Pride and Jealousy (envy actually, not jealousy) are two interesting things we feel when someone has something very nice which we don't ourselves have. When that someone belongs to us, we feel pride. (Example: A mother feels pride about her son's accomplishment.)
When that someone does not belong to us we feel envy.

Ambani is extremely wealthy. He doesn't belong to me, I am envious of his money. His wife and Mom feel pride.

And I always thought pride was a positive trait and envy was negative. Seems like I was wrong.

The pride that we feel about what someone else possesses that we don't is not something I value. The moment that person doesn't belong to us the pride we have will change to envy. 

Can the pride that we feel, for what some other entity has, change because that entity is now estranged from us? 
I feel proud of my country, India. Would it change if I surrendered my citizenship and became a US citizen? If yes, what was my pride in India all about in the first place? That "pride" is a loyalty we have for something that is currently ours. Once the estrangement happens, that pride changes to envy or disgust.
Is this what pride is?

This also perhaps might explain why the things we we loved in someone initially are also the same things that we find disgusting later when we break up. 

The best pride is about the possession of what we ourselves have. Something that doesn't change because we moved to Boston.

What a revelation.

All this started because a friend said she is proud of me. And it didn't feel good to me. And I wondered why because it was said with goodwill. Then I worked out the pride and jealousy theme.

Math Puzzles - Exponentiation And Algebra

Solve for n

1 +2(2^n) + 2^(2n) = 81

Where ^ stands for exponentiation.

 Note:🐃

 2^(2n) means 2 raised to the power of (2n).

Cartoon Took A Left Turn At Albuquerque And Misses Greenland

My conversations with a friend from UK about a leading politician (not from UK).

My friend was visibly upset the politician trying to buy an island from a friendly country and when the letter refused, the politician cancelled a state visit. My reply to my friend:

You are judging him from "a normal person's point of view" - which suggests that 

1. you ought not bid for something that's definitely not for sale

2. You don't behave boorishly by cancelling a visit just because someone isn't interested in selling what you want to buy.

But then Trump is all about POSTURING. 

A. That he is a self made billionaire (he likely inherited billions which has squandered away to a billion). He has gone to enormous extremes to ensure that his tax returns aren't available to Congress (similar to your house of Commons/Lords i guess) 

B. That he doesn't like illegal aliens (aka immigrants) to be in USA but then his companies, golf courses / resorts employ such illegals in plenty.

This cancellation of Copenhagen trip is posturing. "I will take back my goodwill" if you don't give me what i want ( corleone godfather style).

He is indulging in his predilection for embarrassing people. I think we should understand his behavior for it is.

He is NOT a clumsy moron who doesnt know which of a horse and a cart comes first.

An earlier reply to my friend on the subject of the rationale for the intended purchase:

You make it sound that he is doing it for the sake of America (as in his "America first" initiative).
If I understand him well his patriotic fervor is as high as your interest in african tribal dance.
He has got 5 years more, assuming he gets reelected. He has to get much into his (and his family's /and those he in cahoots with) pockets during this time. And Greenland is a way to help HIMSELF.

When you said he wants to use Greenland against Russia and China, you assumed he represented America In his bid for purchase. Of course America will pay for it if the deal ever transpires. It's supposed to cost about a trillion dollars (based on how much alaska cost in the 1800s).
But the real reason for the purchase is to fill his own pockets. Anything America gains will just be a byproduct.

500 And A Frog

The other day I went out to a new Iranian your hotel and had some snacks. The water told me the bill was Rs 35. I handed over a Rs 500 note to the cashier. He apologized and said he couldn't change my 500. I asked him if he could find change for Rs 100. He nodded yes. So I gave him Rs 100 and he gave me back my change. I asked him if he could give me 5 hundreds for my 500. He said sure and changed my Rs500 note.

What's the moral of the story.

Giving Rs 500 for a Rs35 bill is too painful. Give a hundred for the bill and then getting a Rs 500 changed into hundreds is much more acceptable from the cashier's point of view. 

I don't know if you have heard the science experiment about boiling a frog. If you dropped a live frog into hot water it will jump out of the vessel immediately. But if you put a frog in a vessel with water at room temperature and then steadily increase the temperature, the frog will likely not jump out and boil to death.

It's the same about stressing people. Do it slowly, people will accept much more stress than if you give them a single big shock. 

Next time, I will make sure I always have a 100 apart from a 500. 

DAP - Daag Acche Hain!

While the world over, medical science tries to understand the cause and treatment of Dementia, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's (DAP) I raise a toast to those illnesses. A person seriously ill with DAP becomes like a 1 year old - with the same innocence and, well, if not goodness the person with DAP certainly does not exhibit any badness.

An innocence with no badness in a person is such a lovely state for others to experience that one wonders why pharma companies do not create a drug to induce Dementia / Parkinson's / Alzheimer's.

When one has dementia, one doesn't have much Executive Function (=S2) opera  It's hilarious to see them tell people they are very dark or obese or make other such personal comments which they would never have uttered in the absence of DAP. The interesting thing to note is that the comments are made without malice. It's very innocent, the way kids say awkward things.

For an intro into S1, S2 read https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/10/thinking-fast-and-slow-daniel-kahnemann.html

A person with DAP also needs a lot of attention just as babies do. And just as parasites do. Except it's far easier emotionally to cater to the needs of a baby or a person with DAP than a person who thinks that the raison d'etre of your existence is for their convenience.

It was when I heard about the experience of a friend whose relative (obnoxious prior to DAP) has DAP that I was convinced of mankind's need for a drug that induces DAP. 

People who live in close proximity to those having DAP understand that dementia isn't constant and that there are times that the patient's mind is clear. They dread those times.

Emotional Baggage and Accounting Principles

Many of us carry emotional baggage, perhaps from a previous relationship or maybe from a previous experience. The baggage is usually negative. Maybe when the baggage prevents us from making a fool of ourselves it could be positive.

Now what has emotional baggage (EB) got to do with accounting? 

I think quite a lot. EB is what we carry from what happened in the past which we have not yet resolved. And something in the present triggers our EB to wake up and we react (usually) nastily. The new event would not have deserved our response but for our EB. 

Our past experience that we have not resolved yet nor accounted for towards the appropriate person or thing is now channeled towards a new person or thing. 

It's like robbing Peter to pay Paul which again is an example of wrong accounting. 

If we had been able to categorize and deal with and account correctly for our previous (negative) experience we would not incorrectly channel our baggage towards someone / something now that didn't deserve it.

The wrong accounting is obviously disliked by the person who receives it from us and if we were at the receiving end we would find it objectionable.

And if we ourselves were to understand that it was our emotional baggage from the past that caused us to say or do something inappropriate in the present we would be horrified. 

I guess people who are introverted by nature or those who, for some reason, couldn't find an outlet for their problem in the past are more likely to carry emotional baggage (and then unleash it on someone who certainly didn't deserve it). 

An interesting twist is when we unleash our negative emotion on someone, for something rather trivial that they did, against whom we have some baggage from the past. The twist is that Rob and Peter are the same person in this case. When we unleash our rage at Rob, he is taken by surprise because our reaction is disproportionate to what they did. They do not realize that we have carried forward some old "balance" that we had with him. How is Rob to know about our old baggage? So he thinks we are being irrational. 

Few days back an emotionally intelligent friend of mine told me that she had stopped talking with her aunt. She explained to me that her aunt had used my friend's time rather unnecessarily and that the aunt had seemed rather insouciant or unrepentant. The aunt had asked my friend to do something for her and when the thing was almost done the aunt had told her it wasn't important and she could abort the effort. When my friend asked her aunt why she, the aunt, had earlier had impressed upon my friend that the issue was urgent only up abort it later her aunt replied that she had never told my friend that it was urgent.
My friend told me she was furious with her aunt for lying to her and for having thus wasted her time. This was the incident that started me thinking about baggage.

Now my friend is hardly a person who would get upset because someone aborted an endeavor which caused my friend's effort to go waste. She herself does it to others. And as to "lying" she herself lies about trivial things as all emotionally intelligent people do. For my friend, disturbance of her inner peace is completely unacceptable while lying to her or use of her efforts is hardly an issue with her. Or so I think.

Why, I thought to myself, would my friend react so badly to her aunt's behavior which was somewhat like her own? And I realized, or felt, that there was some baggage between my friend and her aunt. The right account got debited but for the wrong reason and at the wrong time.

How does one probe this baggage? How does one ensure that one doesn't rob Peter unnecessarily? Or that the debit happens at the right time for the right reason.
Does a good accounting brain help?

Socially Correct But Insensitive

Socially correct but insensitive behavior is what differentiates a survivor from a non survivor.

When you mention a tough problem you are facing, a friend might express that it must be very difficult for you and then gracefully switch to topic to the issues she has in life - her teenage son cut himself while shaving.

That's socially correct behavior expressing empathy. And little else in the nature of useful contribution.

And there are other friends who might drop everything to be with you but then they may but have learned the socially appropriate things to say. These people don't survive as well as the first set. And this is unfortunate. Just as unfortunate as good nature is considered more important than good character.

It's the continuous "feminization" that we are undergoing that has resulted in social nature triumphing character.

Think And Feel

What is life when you can't much think and feel? When you just breathe and when only involuntary biological functions happen?

How lonely it must be to not be able to think and feel? To barely be able to reach out to others.

To not be able to understand what's happening around you, to not be able to catch on to what's happening in your favorite program you are watching on TV?

What do you look forward to each day? What can you look forward do when you can't think and feel? 

Do we effectively stop living when we cease to think and feel, even if the heart is still breathing? 

Were the rishis living and alive when they did penance and didn't think or feel?

What is being alive?

On a different note, I think there are two types of pain that are expressed (this is my belief).
One is the involuntary pain that cannot be suppressed. The other is the pain that is consciously expressed and is not involuntary. When our ability to think is impaired, we no more consciously and deliberately express that pain, which in other circumstances we might.

A friend raised the question of whether the non-expression of pain is due to the non-recognition of such pain by the brain. 

So the issue was one of non recognition by the brain vis-a-vis absence of conscious of expression of the pain. 

If some expression of pain continues to happen while other usual expression of pain is absent, then is it not likely that the non-expression is more likely due to lack of desire / ability to express pain than to the lack of brain's ability to recognize pain? 

If my belief, about there being two kinds of expressions of pain - one involuntary and one thought out and expressed, is true then I wonder about the utility and reason for the consciously expressed pain.

This conscious expression is a survival technique and it is learned. It serves the purpose of eliciting empathy, hence reducing stress on oneself. People tend to render assistance to the person who has consciously expressed such pain and reduce their expectation of help from the person who has expressed pain. 

"I have suffered so much" is socially seen as synonymous to "I have achieved so much". If one wanted to boost one's achievement one just has to express suffering adequately!

I postulate, hence, that voluntary (as against involuntary) expression of pain is a survival strategy in the social arena.

India Pakistan Border Video

Mast video in Kashmir. River separating the 2 countries. Religion is probably a bigger idealogy than politics. Maybe that's why Checkpoint Charlie came down 30 years back while the border between the 2 countries keeps getting stronger.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT1mYy3P2A8
• https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UxdxycwNzqY Karachi - Munnabao - Bhagat Ki Kothi

Note:
Video links may not always work, they may be removed.

Additional reading

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT1mYy3P2A8
• https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6D6qQjDZFok A Pakistani lady visits India (not a travelogue)
• https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cBCpV9jHum8 What do Pakistani's like about India
• 
  

Love Thy Neighbor's (35A) Wife

If you are in love with your neighbor's wife and if you feel that your neighbor has put her under house arrest, you would tend to feel that you personally have been affronted. And you break off relations with your neighbor not because he isn't treating his wife well but because you feel he isn't treating your wife well.

At the end of the day one wonders which is a bigger issue. That the neighbor didn't treat his wife well (assuming this to be a fact) or that you think of his wife as yours.

Do things change if the neighbor wasn't legally married to the woman but only cohabiting with her and then decided to make the arrangement legal?

Of course the woman's decision is crucial. Even if the neighbors "wife" is unwilling to go thru the marriage, what is your locus standi especially if she is an "adult over the age of 18". 

All this hoopla is only because the neighbor's woman and you belong to the same faith!!

Any resemblance of this issue to the current Kashmir issue is purely intentional. Well, if one is displeased with the behavior of men across the border, let's not forget our Biradari in our own side https://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/eyeing-the-girls-of-j-k-119080901476_1.html

A sweet forward in the same spirit: 

I changed my JIO WiFi password. Now my neighbour is not happy. He is shouting that he will go to Vodafone and complain about this.. And also in anger, He swiched off his own electricity light to show his protest.. 

Funny Neighbour....

Additional reading:

• https://kishkat.blogspot.com/2019/08/real-reason-why-pakistan-is-rattled-to.html
• Economic Times: J&K bifurcation: Pakistan's double standards exposed.
• https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2019/08/kashmir-370.html
• https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/538907-china-irks-india-over-kashmir-two-days-before-summit Quote: "China thundered in August that India had "continued to undermine China´s territorial sovereignty by unilaterally changing its domestic law"."

Kashmir 370

J&K is a surprise here in India.

Of course Modi is capable of giving shocks as he has done in the past. As to whether the shocks resulted in a positive outcome, well that's debatable.

Coming to the Kashmir issue, it's likely to provoke religious sentiments in Muslims both sides of the border. 

And Muslims, like Catholics, wear their religion on their sleeves. Their religion comes first, ahead of nationality, ethics, morality etc. As a gentleman once pointed out, too much religion is correlated with a lower IQ and lower wealth / character. 

To prove the latter, he showed the example of countries in the south and east of europe vis-a-vis those in the NW. 

When we come to religion vs Character, about 90% of the death row inmates of prisons are religious as against 10% atheists / agnostics. 

Having thus provided an overview of the nature of extremely religious people (obviously doesn't apply to each person in the sample but generally applies to the population) and noting that the Kashmir issue is largely one that will kindle religious sentiments of the Muslims. I am glad that we already have 
1.  A China US Trade war,  
2. the long term debt yield is less than than short term yield (as I understand this points out to an imminent recession) - read Business Insider India: The market's favorite recession indicator just flashed its starkest warning since 2007.  
3. Do/Die Brexit expected in 2 months. 

We have enough bad news already that the religious wrath arising out of Kashmir would hopefully be so much piss in a thunderstorm or so I hope. With Imran Khan already passing his hat out to IMF for alms and with one leg in FATF's list, Pakistani outburst is likely to remain just a rhetoric. (https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/509414-from-indian-action-to-imf-s-caution-us-reaction-situationer)

WYSIWYG

What I like in a person

Being authentic meaning nothing shallow - what some people loosely call "genuine".

What I mean is WYSIWYG. 

WYSIWYG translates in turn to a few characteristics:

• Honesty, integrity
• Innocence with a lack of maturity
• In addition to WYSIWYG, intelligence and depth and passion and an ability to take stress
• And a nature that tends to give more than to take.
• And someone who is committed, not wont to keeping multiple options open