Puzzles And Maths - Sum

 A friend sent me this

Maths And Puzzles - Password

 A friend sent me this.

👍Solve This:

A man locked his personal computer with a password and wrote some words in the hint box.

One day his wife tries to login in his absence using the hints which contained the following:

4 grapes 🍇🍇🍇🍇

1 apple 🍎

7 bananas 🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌

7 mangoes 🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋🍋

2 pineapples 🍍🍍

1 orange 🍊

8 pomegranates 🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑

What is the password ?

Edelweiss And Emotional Intelligence

A friend of mine told me today that I was her only friend whom she could laugh with, with no pretensions. 

I have been told by many friends that they could just be themselves with me. (Of course I have also been told by one friend that talking to me was like talking to a piece of furniture! And hence she could share anything with me while she would be cagey about sharing stuff with others.) 

That brings the question: what's so special or unique in me that people can be themselves with me? Do I not judge people? Of course I do, all the time and my friends are quite aware of my tendency to judge. So why me? Why no pretensions? 

I had to scratch my hair, what little there is of it. 

Conversation is like a dance.

If you can think of a dance: a ballroom dance (like the Edelweiss in Sound of Music) and compare it to a brisk walk. You will see the difference. Most of us would be very wary of dancing in a ballroom than a walk

The former requires elegance, you have to dance nicely. While walking, on the other hand, there are no strict rules to be followed. You can be yourself. 

I am a person with little emotional intelligence unlike others. Talking to me is like taking a brisk walk. Talking to others is like dancing in a ballroom.

An environment of inelegance lets you relax. You don't have to dress up, you don't have to follow protocols. Though, it's quite likely that elegant people may not prefer inelegance all the time. 

That perhaps explains why many people tell me that they can be themselves with me.

Boohoo, I will only be a walk and never a ballroom. Bye bye, Edelweiss.

But then I am easier to talk to and nice, as a change. Emotional unintelligence does have its use!

Anil Ambani And Me

As per this article, lockdown is supposed to be lifted because our cases are relatively low now, about 114,000 per day.

Reuters India: India to ease lockdown rules as coronavirus case numbers decline.

This is my Corona tracker - shows the new cases, deaths, recoveries every day from April 2020. 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mrcYiTOuwGjqUomO9vsUQLuY-5DwlgPs7nY8RhmyuPw/edit?usp=drivesdk

In the 1st wave, the highest number of cases was on Sep 16, 2020 and it was about 100,000. The number that was highest (new cases per day) in the 1st wave happens to be the lowest in the 2nd wave and the same number is almost a cause for celebration now.

I am reminded of the time College graduates in the US celebrated spring break because the temperature rose to 10C and all students would be out in shorts whereas in Calcutta the same 10C temperature would be the coldest day all winter and people would be dressed indoors in wollens and socks and shawl.

Take another example. Anil Ambani and I are about equally wealthy - marginally above bankruptcy. I see my wealth as high because I came from a zero. Anil sees his as zero because he came from billions.

As a friend of mine would say it's all about "nazariya ka farq" (difference in point of view). After seeing 400,000 new cases per day 114,000 seems like nothing. How you see a number depends on where you are coming from.

Puzzle - Sarita

My question: is it Sarita South Indian or North Indian?

Read the story below:

Sarita is a very good teacher in the school ... 

*Sarita*: - Tell me where is the Taj Mahal .... 🕌

*Students*:  Agra ...  

*Sarita* : Wrong ... It's in Bengaluru...

The students all got into thinking .. and were confused

😮😲

The students told this thing to their parents.   

The very next day, all the parents reached the school and started complaining to Sarita teacher that why are you teaching the children wrong ..

*Sarita to all the parents:* 👇🏽👇🏽

First of all you should deposit the fees of the last six months 💰

Till the fees are deposited Taj Mahal will remain in *Bengaluru*.

🤣😂

Emotions Deny Facts

We react to others' statements in two ways.

1. Detect if the statement is true or not.

2. See if the statement is in good taste or not. Then we respond that their statement hurt us or that they were being judgmental. In this case, we don't look at the veracity of the statement but at whether it was in good taste. By focusing on the "good taste" we take the discussion away from facts to one of emotions.

In the second category, facts are allowed admission only if they're presented in good taste or in a good tone.

Putting it another way, a class of behaviour denies facts based on lack of taste.

Extrapolating this, if we sense that a person is going to say something that puts us in poor light, it's a good tactic to anger them so that they say that they wanted to in a way that lacks taste and then we can use the lack of taste as an excuse to shut out the essence of what they are saying to us. I wonder whether people use this as a strategy.

Be Safe

 I came this forward in social media today.

It is sensible though not completely correct.

It's like saying "if you want to be safe, dress conservatively or stay home." 

Men tend to think that the safety of women has to be addressed solely by women.

Women tend to think their own safety is the sole responsibility of men (that men have to be restrained). Neither belief is right in isolation.

Safety has to be ensured by both parties. One party by playing safe and the other party by ensuring safety. 

Here is another:

NDTV reporter's clever question to a Doctor at a Govt hospital:

"There are so many COVID patients and the government does not provide beds,ICUs and Oxygen for all? Do you think Modi Govt has failed?”

Answered the pragmatic and hardworking doctor:

"Suppose you people are 10 members in the house and what to do if all 10 out of 10 get diarrhea at the same time? Will it have arrangement of 10 toilets in your house ????? Will you say the architect is a lousy professional?”

The Reporter Disappeared......

😂😂😂😂

Staying safe is our duty too!!!

No country can handle a pandemic well does not imply that India and Western countries are equally good in providing healthcare.

Women And Pain Are Synonymous

I read this article and I was like wowow.

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/women-and-pain/2021/05/14/

This was my formula.

"For the same amount of issue women feel/express more pain than men."

Actually my formula is more comprehensive.

There are two kinds of pain

One is the pain you feel when someone hits you with a rod or a bus hits you resulting in immense physical pain. This is involuntary.

There is a second pain which is calculated, processed, thought about and then expressed. 

"If this, this, and this happened, (which did to me), then I must be feeling a lot of pain. Go ahead and express it.

Aaah aaaaaaah OMG ayyo."

This is a quote from https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/26/hundreds-uk-women-demand-formal-apology-forced-adoptions?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other - 

“I was never asked whether I wanted to go ahead with the adoption. It was a fait accompli.” She became pregnant in 1967 at the age of 16. Her baby Liam was taken from her nine days after she gave birth. “I was expected to just go on with my life as though nothing had happened … I’m certain it has had an impact on my life. There’s a cycle of grief and anger. A kind of melancholy is always there in the back of your mind.”

The part in italics (italicized by me) comes rather close to what I am talking about. A pain that isn't intrinsic but thought about processed and then created.

The lady's feelings are interesting by the way. She gets pregnant at the age of 16 or 17, she expected to be asked whether she wanted to give up her baby for adoption. And if she had said no to the request, then how would she plan to bring up her child? Did she think through the problem? 

Is this how this kind of a pain happens?

"I am not feeling good. I, hence, must be in pain. So, someone else must have done something wrong."

Additional reading 

• https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2021/05/high-fi-enf.html
• News18: New Zealand Cricketer Tim Seifert Breaks Down in Tears While Recounting His Covid-19 Ordeal in India. - A good example of feminine behaviour with exaggerated emotions
  
• https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/28/sufferers-of-chronic-pain-have-long-been-told-its-all-in-their-head-we-now-know-thats-wrong?utm_source=eml&utm_medium=emlf&utm_campaign=MK_SU_SOINewsletterCanvas&utm_term=Email_RC_ROW&utm_content=variantA
  

High Fi (ENF)

A kind of people interest me immensely. They are extremely emotional, expressive (I am not sure if they are all extroverted but they are definitely very expressive). A common pattern I have found in them is that they are highly competitive in emotions. Lemme explain that. You are not going to ever be able to establish with them that your pain, your suffering was higher. 

The first time I realised something strange was when a cousin of mine said "I wouldn't wish this [her sister, who was in her late 40s, had died that day] on my worst enemy". This was about 10 to 15 years ago. What my cousin said kept playing back in my head in the days and years to come and I often wondered about her phraseology. It's the equivalent of arrogating to oneself the gold medal for having suffered.

We come to the next incident. My friend's uncle had died, around the same time as the previous incident. My friend was totally distraught and she couldn't think of anything else. It took her couple of weeks to recover, while I went about my life. In the same period, my cousin mentioned earlier had died, another cousin had had her second leg also amputated. I was at the hospital prior to the surgery. The previous night my aunt had died and had spent the previous day attending the cremation. But then my friend's pain was much more. Pain isn't like weight or height which are objective. If your height is 170cm and mine is 175cm, I can claim rightfully that I am taller than you. But with pain or any emotion there is no comparison possible. Emotions can't even be objectively measured. You get a measure of the emotion by the intensity of self declaration. For example, "I am hurting", "I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy" or beating yourself on your tummy with your palms - each of these indicate differing levels of pains. 

And today I met a cousin after a long time. His wife had died last year of Covid. His father had died towards the end of 2019 out of natural causes, having been in a bad shape and in coma in the hospital for a week prior to his death. His wife had gone through terrible pain because of comorbidities before finally catching Covid. We spoke for about 20 minutes. My cousin was feeling very bad and about his wife and his father, both of whom he had lost in the last one and a half years.

And like the two women I mentioned earlier, he was expressing "my pain is too horrible". But this time around I was processing his pain in real time. And I thought of all the people i know who had suffered worse but wouldn't express as much. 

I believe they are all NF (as in MBTI). They don't do it for effect. They do it naturally. Their "exaggeration of their pain" is completely natural. The only thing is when I have slotted them into this group, I become wary of their pain and almost wait for their "pain" to be expressed. 

These are not one off incidents. With each of the three people mentioned I have had multiple incidents of confession of high pain. 

Amazing. 

It is again very interesting that emotional people judge a work based not on how effective it was but on how much pain was undergone while doing it. So if you don't express pain while or after doing a difficult job, you don't get much credit for it. Hence emotional expression is important. When your wife chides you for the lack of it, pay heed.

Additional reading

1. https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-cousins.html
2. https://vbala99.blogspot.com/2018/02/vikram-or-vetaal.html
   
3. https://www.thelily.com/i-sacrificed-my-career-to-care-for-my-kids-in-the-pandemic-never-again/ : here is one more
   

Is It Your Turn?

The way things are right now in the country, the question "Is it my turn?" often pops up in my mind. My turn to get vaccinated, my turn to get hospitalized or to get the Covid virus, or to get an Oxygen cylinder or to get buried.

I have become more morbid reading news and more news. 

But is this the way to be? There are other ways I could use my time (apart from doing my daily chores). Many people do volunteer work, they try to arrange for food, medicines, cylinders for people that need them.

Others learn new languages, attend online courses, take up new hobbies, teach online. 

None of this seemed to be my cup of tea. I have always been an avid reader. Now in the past few months I have been reading novels almost every night on my Kindle. Is it useful? I don't know. But it definitely provides relaxation and diversion from the non-fiction (news, other articles) that I read extensively.

My genre is legal thrillers, action, thriller etc. I download free novels identified by bookbub.com and read them every night.

And then I forget all about Covid.