A Rotten Tomatoes Welcome To The Dark Knight

While everyone was busy bashing the fanboys of The Dark Knight Rises for posting negative and rather insulting comments on negative reviews of the movie, a lot of things went quietly unnoticed.

1. How bad the comments actully were - Nobody knows. Partially because some of the "extreme" comments have reportedly been deleted by the moderators but more importantly because I don't think anybody cared to go through the entire thread - not even the people who wrote long articles bashing TDKR fans. I am saying so because I can point to hundred other threads on all public forums (including RT) having comments 100 times more sexist, racist and threatening to the original posters or other commenters. And funnily enough nobody cares. I agree that I didn't get to see the comments that were deleted but the same is true for people writing articles on it too.
2. Who benefitted from this - Rotten Tomatoes, who else? Short term benefit - increased web-site traffic. Long term benefit - better branding and PR for the company for sending out a strong message
3. Who lost - Nobody except Eric Snider maybe. Even though he was trying to prove the same point the chief editor of Rotten Tomatoes was. Maybe his method was somewhat unethical. But in my opinion the main reason he was banned from RT was diverting traffic away from the site.

So what's the alternative? Well, do the same thing that you do with anything that doesn't function properly - fix it. The editor of RT has himself talked about a few options in that regard. Try them out. Even 8 year old kids try to fix their broken toys first before whining to their parents about it. If people at Rotten Tomatoes thought such things don't/won't happen in public forums, they were living in a fools paradise to say the least. And if the chief editor really thought asking people not to be a dick was the solution, maybe he should have tried telling Bin Laden that a long time ago. Would have saved us a lot of time and resources.

PS: I don't agree/disagree with the negative reviews as i haven't seen the movie yet and I hate internet trolls as much as anyone else does but again that's besides the point.

You look good, girl!!

Some girls somehow feel that looking good is their license to omnipotence. Being a guy, I don't like this idea but I understand why the girls who look good, feel that way. Hell, I even understand why some guys think it's normal. But when an average looking girl finds nothing wrong with this, I just don't get it.

A completely hypothetical situation:

A Random Guy: X is awesome. I think I like her.
His Average Looking Female Friend: Really?! I always thought you liked Y
RG: No I have always liked X. She is smart, intelligent,caring and most of all I just like spending time with her. You know what I mean?
ALFF: Hmm...yeaah
RG: By the way why did you think I like Y and not X?
ALFF: Because Y is so cute!

That's it. She thought that explained everything.

Hypothetical situation II:

RG: Ooo the new intern in the HotGirlsOnly team is ridiculously hot!!
ALFF: Whatever
RG: I know. Now you are going to tell me how dumb and selfish that bitch is.
ALFF: No. Why would I?! I'm just surprised that you find her attractive.
RG: What do you mean? All the guys are crazy about her
ALFF: You guys are so blind. She has such ugly feet. Ugh!!

Now the point is not whether we guys give a rat's ass about the toenails of a hot girl; everyone knows we don't. The point is girls have to bitch about physical features of the hottest girl around even when the girl has dozen other negatives. This reminds me of Navjot Sidhu who completely ignores the other team playing against India during his commentary. If India plays well, he praises the team and when it doesn't, he starts ridiculing them but he never acknowledges the presence of a second team on the field. Girls too, express their opinion about other girls (only) in units of hotness ignoring all other personality traits.

Hypothetical situation III:

Random Girl in Office: Babes can you help me make inputs in this file. It's so confusing.
The Girl In Next Cubicle: I have already made the inputs. It's saved inside your folder.
RGO: Thanks babes. By the way you look stunning today. That pink scarf really suits you.

RGO probably wanted to tell her friend that she is super efficient but she knew that it would be such a meaningless thing to say to a girl. Girls know that a compliment has to be about looks or it's not a compliment at all. If a girl likes another girl, she will say that the girl is hot and when she hates (or simply feels jealous of) a girl, she will say that the girl is ugly. It's as simple as that. You will never hear a girl say something like, "You're ugly but you're intelligent enough to win the Nobel prize" to a friend, even if that's the truth. Facts are for guys.

Strategy, yoga and life

I have a very bad feeling that I am going to screw this one up. There are 2 reasons why i feel that way. The more important one is I always screw up (whenever I write something). The other reason is i'm going to write about strategy. Heck, after not getting mere sapno ki internship in asset management I'm not sure if I should say this but I am a finance guy; or maybe I should say definitely not a strategy guy. But that's not the point. The point is till now I have taken only one strategy class - yeah the mandatory one. And in this post I'm going to write about the only thing I know about strategy - its definition. In the 1st class itself we learnt that over emphasis on achieving operational efficiency is one of the few things that led to the demise of Japanese management techniques. And then we were introduced to the concept of strategy; a magical solution which transformed the competition from a situation where noone-could-win to a situation where everyone-was-a-winner. Once the companies understood that the race for getting more efficient is a never ending spiral, they started shifting their focus to developing a unique strategy for their firm which unlike operational efficiency, could not be easily copied. A unique strategy creates value for the firm, the industry(it operates in) and the firm's customers. Differentiation is the key. One should do things one is good at. It's the fundamental principle behind origin of international trade (produce what you're good at and trade it for higher opportunity cost products), derivative securities( customize your products according to the investor needs)and a lot of other things we would probably never associate it with.

Let's talk about a couple of those things. What about Yoga? Well I don't know much about yoga either but I was told that its ultimate goal is to produce resonance. And I think it is attained when the frequency of external source of energy becomes the same as that of your inner energy spots...or something like that. Very crudely put, the point of the matter(or energy?) is since every person has a unique set of internal frequencies, it does not matter if your frequencies are higher than mine if I have attained resonance at my own frequency. So what matters is getting close to the desired frequency and not the absolute value of frequency itself.

I know I am really stretching it, but it would be hard not to draw parallels with life now. Almost all the kids in my school wanted to do engineering/medical/MBA and honestly speaking, the only reason some of them did not end up doing it was they just couldn't make it. With such a variety of career options to choose from, it's tough to explain why everyone made the same choice. Maybe that can be attributed to the fact that kids are more likely to follow a herd mentality especially when it comes to making such big decisions, as they lack the experience and knowledge required to make such decisions at a young age. But as adults, are our decisions any better? Is trying to get more of everything, particularly money really worth it...is it even the right thing to do? At the risk of stating the obvious, every individual, I believe is different from others. Each one of us have unique capabilities(internal frequency), and we won't attain perfect happiness (resonance) unless we do something unique(external frequency) that we were meant to do. In fact I would go one step further and say that words like talent are completely meaningless when used in a generic context. Everyone is "talented". The ones who appear not to be, are the ones unaware of their unique but latent talent. You might want to argue by saying there are some people who seem to be pretty awesome at everything they do. But most of the time, it's just because our brain naturally wants to classify everyone as a star or dud. It makes things simple and exciting - it gives us something to gossip about. Noone wants to make an effort to understand what one could be good at because it's complicated and boring to think of everyone being at the same level. A lot of such "multi-talented" superstars of my college failed miserably in corporate life and an equal number of my super efficient colleagues told me they sucked at pretty much everything during their college life. Slightly modifying Jokerspeak, one wouldn't be wrong in saying that you either die a superstar or live long enough to see yourself turn into a lesser mortal. It's just a matter of time. Or in Taleb's words, playing Russian Roulette 10000 times will kill anyone.

All this doesn't mean you should start practicing peeing into the water closet from outside the bathroom just because you have a feeling that you would be good at it or a company should start selling something noone is willing to buy, just because they are uniquely equipped to produce it. Strategy, no matter how effective it is, doesn't make up for lack of common sense.

Heroes who like zeros

One of my cousins is a born story-teller. Ummm...no, that won't do. He is a story teller probably since the moment he was conceived. The special thing about his stories are, you will never be able to tell facts from fiction in those stories, if you don't know him well. But with experience, I learnt that there is a pattern to his lies. He lies when he is the protagonist of the story. So last night when he told me about a recent incident not involving himself, I knew I could reproduce it anywhere without the "all characters are fictional" disclaimer.

The story involved his gutless chicken-of-a-boss, one of his blatantly dishonest client and a couple of ^%$@&*! I-T officers. It started with the unscrupulous client making a hell lot of money in a transaction, also involving my cousin's boss. The I-T guys somehow smelt it and came to the client's office for further investigation. One of the officers asked the client("politely") to get up from his seat so that he could himself sit there and check if he was trying to hide any files in his desk. This infuriated the client and he yelled, "tumhaari aukaat nahi hai is chair pe baithne ki". The brief war of words that ensued later ended with the I-T officers shown the door by the security personnel. My cousin didn't tell me if the officers didn't have a proper search warrant but the story was building up so nicely, i didn't dare disturb the momentum.

The officer's ego was so badly hurt by the incident, he swore that he will bring that businessman to his knees very soon. The I-T people started visiting my cousin's office frequently after that incident, looking for incriminating evidence against the client. For "obvious"(?) reasons, my cousin's boss chose to hide all the details regarding the transaction. He was summoned to the I-T office(the HQ) a couple of days later. Over there, the same I-T officer who had unfinished business ( and balance sheets ) to take care of, very amiably asked him if that was the first time he had come to an I-T headquarter. He offered to show him around and took him to the "recording room". There they played a recording of the cell-phone conversation where he(the boss) was found telling the client how efficiently they had kept his secret from the I-T dept, asking for more business at the end of conversation. For the next few hours the officer made him sing like a canary.

A week or so later, armed with all the information and documentation the officer called up the businessman and,...... *beep* ...... and this was when my khufia cell phone chose to konk off. Like a madman I ran to the other room and put it on charge. My voice quivering with excitement, I called him back immediately to know what happened next. "Nothing", my brother said. "They agreed to settle it for 35000000. The files were burnt."

Ek option ka premium tum kya jaano, Ramesh Babu

28 years of my existence on this planet has made me, among other things, sure of two facts. Succinctly put, they are 1. God loves me and 2. He doesn't trust my judgement. I feel so confident about it because of a fabulous analogy that exists here. I remember my parents used to explicitly tell me what to do and what not to, even when I was in college. I used to do things not because I wanted to, but because I was told or rather ordered to. My parents had faith in my abilities but not in the choices I made. So they finally stopped presenting me with any options. If they ever did, I always picked the wrong one.

Sometime in the last 10-12 years, I believe, God took up this job (of keeping me optionless) Himself. Must have been the result of my mom's countless no of prayers.
And I tell you what. God is doing a helluva great job.

I keep seeing people abusing their right to choose, all around me. Since they've always had it, they don't understand its importance. I do. Today I met this friend of mine who told me how fucked up she gets in the head with every relationship that doesn't work out. What really intrigued me was the fact that all of those relationships looked shaky at the very onset. I was about to ask this to her, when it suddenly hit me. There are some people who live their life like an intra day trader. Going long on something which seems profitable at that moment, even if its future looks gloomy.

But unfortunately, this is where the similarities end. While an intra day trader starts every day afresh, having closed out all his previous positions, it's diffcult forr a person to start a relationship with a clean slate. Also, most of the day traders refrain from trading when there aren't enough profit-making opportunities in the market, but when it comes to relationships, most of the people seldom wait for the right person to arrive. They simply go for the best one available and move on. What I mean is, even if you present them with three negative numbers, they would still consider the one closest to 0 as a "good choice".

What people normally fail to understand is, an option is a right and not an obligation to act. Not just in Financial Markets, but in real life too. And not choosing to exercise that right is also an option available to you. In fact, not choosing could sometimes be the smartest choice. The best thing of course would be to have someone filter away all the bad options available to you, but lets face it, God may not as fond of you as He is of me.


So don't let the illusion of choice fool you. Lack of options is sometimes way better than having a lot of options. In fact that's the biggest proof that God loves you. So next time it happens, instead of bitterly saying, "I have noooooo choice!!!!", look up, smile one of your widest smiles, say thanks and get yourself ready. Ready to return the favor one day.

Cold you

You were so cold while you lived, you're so cold when you're dead,
If only I knew sooner that it was all in my head....

The loss of the second basket

Why do all the bollywood movies(of today) made on youth have a confused, directionless soul playing the lead, at least in the first half? No, I have not seen "Wake up Sid" yet but I've heard that it's no different. Our generation might look a little lost when compared to the earlier generations' but are they really to be blamed for this?

Everything in the next paragraph is completely figurative and a little personal(basically personal, hence figurative) so I would suggest you to skip this part if you don't know me well.

Well, last week I went to the market and bought some eggs. Since I was carrying only one basket, and I had heard it's not a good thing to have "put all your eggs in one basket", I decided to buy another one. When the handle of the first basket came off because of the astronomical no of eggs I have put inside, I coolly started looking for the second one. To my horror I realised the basket was stolen. Our parents faced such problems of having to carry all the eggs in only one(that too broken) basket so often that they never got confused when faced with such a situation. But we do, because we know that there is always another basket available: sometimes found, sometimes undiscovered, sometimes found and then lost again(like my stolen basket).

We, the youth of today are dangerously used to having options in our life, at every point of it. The loss of the second basket did not make my choice easier, even though it looks so. Repair the basket? Throw the eggs? Throw myself down from some hilltop? The more I try to convince myself to simply carry the eggs in the broken basket, the more weird options I see available.

PS: While asking for directions at life's important stages, can't we have someone similar to a traffic policeman, who can simply point in the right direction and say "signal se left and then the next right"? Just a thought.