Being unproductively productive

Yesterday, I was subject to some friendly ribbing by a colleague for watching too many videos online. The videos he was referring to are from TED. I tried explaining to him that watching TEDTalks and listening to brilliant thinkers do not constitute a waste of time.

Perhaps, you can be the best judge of it.

The Power of Speech

Yesterday, I completed my third consecutive assignment as the Grammarian and Wordmaster of the local Toastmasters club. Through my role as the G & W, I’ve had the opportunity to tremendously improve upon my listening skills as it is incumbent on me to note down on a piece of paper the notable quotes, similes, metaphors and more importantly, the egregious errors that speakers may inadvertently make during the course of their speeches. I later use these notes to present my evaluation report towards the end of the meeting. This process of actively listening and writing down what the speakers have to say, however, has resulted in some of the speakers’ themes resonating with me long after the conclusion of the meeting.

For example, one speaker, yesterday, spoke on the folly of prejudgement. The essence of the speech is that we often make assumptions about people based on incomplete information. This ties in with the overriding negative emotion detailed in Dr. John Gottman’s study of marital relationships. Yours truly has been especially guilty of prejudging people and treating them harshly only to later discover that malice is not the reason for even the best laid plans of mice and men to oft go astray. Another speaker spoke on the topic “Desire and Will are Power”. He used a brilliant metaphor wherein he referred to desire and will as the front wheel and the gear and pedal assembly of a bicycle respectively. Yet another speaker spoke on the phenomenon of weekend parenting and eloquently put his point across to the audience.

Perhaps the best speech of the day was an extemporaneous talk delivered by a guest in the “Table Topics” round. He spoke on the topic, “Will India be a Superpower by 2015?”. Not only did he quote President Kalam in his talk, but he also ended his impromptu speech with a poignant story about the two faces of India. He compared two groups of people running: one group that is competing in a running race and another group that is trying to flee a burning building. He said that the leaders of the group participating in a race are not expected to turn back and help the laggards. “But in the case of a fire”, he thundered, “those who are ahead need to turn back and help those who are left behind. And that is the kind of race, we, as Indians, should be running as we progress towards 2015.”

Truer words hath ne’er been spoken.

I’m rich, baby!

Recently, PocketChangeNYC conducted a “Natural Selection Speed Date” event at the Big Apple. Male participants aged over 30 were required to have an annual salary in excess of $500K. There was also a nominal discount provided for guys in their twenties though. Additionally, the men were required to have invested assets of over $1 million and/or a trust fund worth over $4 million. On the other hand, women who wished to participate in the event would have to first submit themselves to scrutiny by providing photographic evidence of their looks. The objective of this event was simply to pair up rich guys with hot women.

If you are yearning to look at the kind of sugar-daddies and floozies that this event attracted, do head out to this brilliant undercover expose by RadarOnline.

That said, here’s my standing on the Global Rich List (based on my current annual salary, of course). Women who are interested in mating, oops, meeting-with-moi, based on this datapoint alone, can initiate the process by leaving a comment in this post .

I’m loaded. It’s official. I’m the 5,780,722,892 richest person on earth! How rich are you? >>

The Art Of BS

David Sacks is a PayPal alumnus and a founder of geni.com. Sandwiched between co-founding and/or working at these two companies, his career graph briefly veers towards Hollywood, wherein he managed to produce a delightful movie called “Thank You For Smoking”. As much as I’ve watched a lot of movies lately, I’ve somehow managed to skip the comedic genre. Thank heavens I found TYFS before overdosing on a plethora of drama and action.

TYFS narrates the story of a lobbyist for an American tobacco research institute who does what he does to pay the mortgage. There is an amazing scene in the movie where our hero Nick Naylor teaches the art of BS to his son. In response to his son’s question, the protagonist replies that in order to be perceived right, one just has to prove the other person wrong instead of proving his or her own position. In many respects, this movie is an amazing parody on the madness of our daily lives and manages to portray many of its characters in their true colours of gray.

Many of the tongue-in-cheek dialogues in this movie are quite memorable. Towards the end of the movie, the principal character is asked to appear in front of a Senate hearing committee. When questioned by a scheming Senator as to how the actions of the tobacco research institute are not influenced by the very cigarette companies that fund them, our spokesman glibly replies (paraphrasing here): “The same way your campaign contributions do not affect your actions as a Senator”.

Watch this movie for some lessons in the art of BS.