Concentration

I find it somewhat amazing that for academic achievements just concentration alone matters the most. In my early childhood I could perform well (relatively) without needing to concentrate. Later when I was in college it appeared that I worked better under pressure. I considered this realization as my inherent nature throughout my studies and it probably even let me choose more "challenging" tasks in places where I would have to struggle a little.

It was difficult to find happiness with belief in working-under-pressure. In reality pressure had worked better for me only because I could concentrate only when I was under pressure - by eliminating all distractions. It was not easy to eliminate distractions in my adolescence without a pressure of some sort. It is probably only natural to experience this in adolescence. However, social withdrawal meant that my prolonged hours of studying literature, history and philosophy, although for fun but were always just "wanderings" of the mind. I could never think of making a career out what I enjoyed only because I could never concentrate on what I could give to others and thus make a career out of.

Polishing

There is just one word, so far, that defines business school for me - "polishing". It is polishing all around - you polish your resumé, you polish your speech and of course you need to keep your shoes polished at all times.

There are not many rules in business but the basic rules which exist cannot be broken. You cannot break the rules of smalltalk, you cannot discuss politics, you don't talk about ethnic or cultural backgrounds or worse - how they might matter in the global environment. The gleam of money and status knows no prejudice or boundaries. It is seductive and draws everyone in. The businessmanship that you are meant to develop is upward mobile by definition - at least always mobile anyways.

So this necessary phase of polishing by itself what would make you forget for once where you have came from and let you build this polished image which can take you anywhere.

abstract reasoning

In studying physics and in mathematics, what fascinated me most was abstract reasoning. There was a sense of comfort in avoiding equations or free-body diagrams and using logic to rule out inelegant solutions. That is what I loved physics for.

When asked why does a cord hanging between two ends sags only in the middle, I could provide the answer with free-body diagrams but I am far more likely to explain the solution with symmetry. Since the state of the cord must be same to all observers (within relativistic limits I guess) I could argue that the cord has nowhere else to sag.
In retrospect, such reasoning is why I appreciated physics. I wasn't motivated to solve problems of n-ended chords or asymmetric chords as much I was interested in the abstract reasoning and moving on to seeking symmetry in other places.

News not views

In a blog entry, Neha Paliwal points out that food prices after all have not been so much of a trigger for Arab Spring. Earlier Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed had declared food price volatility a fundamental trigger for political instability. Neha points out that inflation-adjusted prices have in fact not gone up in the middle-east – so it's difficult to assert that food prices had a big role to play in the Arab Spring.

It just goes to show that we lack the standards which can let us measure the accuracy of political analyses. Some scrutiny is needed before fiction can make it to the public masquerading as analysis. The conclusions which journalists and writers often draw on economy and politics are subjective – even fictional. Although our institutions – law and governments - don't run on subjective grounds yet somehow a wide gap seems to exist between law and media when it comes to ed-pieces and commentary on economics or politics. It's not just that media stories read a lot different from documents of law. It's that what media offers as analysis is often a selective medlee of laws and data.

Such gaps won't be a problem if entertainment is all that media was offering. But unfortunately truth is claimed to be offered in those sweeping conclusions drawn on politics and news. The interpretation of data – whether it be that of Mr Ahmed, Paul Krugman or Jim Cramer - seldom receives scrutiny. We assume the truth in extrapolation of data judging by the repoutation of the author or the journal.  Stating the extrapolation or adding scatter plots often don't sell the story - so what we're sold instead are prose of doom or self-appraisal written by people who we trust. This may not offer us consistency or semlbance of a truth but allows us to choose our news the way we swtich channels on TV.

Empire State of Mind

While reading Amit Chaudhari's Afternoon raag today some distant memories of my own childhood were evoked. Growing up in Northern India, it seems strange that some of us lived with our minds placed outside our vast country. We had been colony for such a long time that being a colony was ingrained in our society. I was too young at the time to have understood the post-colonial context of my surroundings but I can clearly remember of my English teacher and my grand-dad having an unexplained respect for the British. My dad on the other hand - a rebellious believer of Indian self-dependence – did not pay much respect to the West. He seemed conscious of the Western might and he was proud of having studied at an early Victorian college but somehow managed to fight the tendencies to fall in love with the West – as if having learned the futility of such romance from the previous generation.

The West existed in such unspoken subjects in my childhood. My grand-dad had taken British for granted and at school and without realizing I too was a part of this same system. We all had a tendency to assume British supremacy in all matters. We spoke local tongues but whenever someone had to make a strong argument, switching to English seemed natural. It gave it that official touch. All disagreements over anything in fact came to an end if someone could quote from a book published in English. The possibility of publishing something in English ourselves was so distant that nothing in our world could have possibly questioned the authenticity of a book written in English. In a strange way therefore the Empire was still in our minds even if in reality it was long gone.

resigning from the act

As I try writing finishing up my article I find a pattern that has recurred in my life - I wrap up and move to something purportedly more productive. As a kid this was the math assignment - which would always take longer and which I would always be late for.

My interest in math was always and had always been only a philosophical one. I never liked numbers even though I was moderately good at it. I enjoyed Math only after I had discovered algebra and coordinate geometry; I enjoyed it more when I found they were one and the same. I would've loved to give some more time thinking or writing about it but as I grew up, becoming a lecturer in philosophy seemed as bad as resigning from life. It probably appeared much worse to my dad. In the end, I had to wrap up my act, attending the classes for a more commonplace and a more mundane profession.

Writing Course in London

To inspect some major defects in my writing I enrolled myself into a course for journalistic writing. I knew that I have nothing to lose - I have been writing only for myself (other than long boring investigative emails that I have to write at work) - so it was to be a nice experience finding out what real journalism is about.

I am amazed so far - discovering what some of my peers have set themselves to write about. One student who has been published multiple times wants to write from her own experience about recovering from loss of hearing. Another student, a farmer's daughter, is pitching a story about eating only from local produce grown in a small Scotland village. I esp loved the last idea. The student is also a documentary producer and I certainly believe this is worth a documentary. 

I myself have not been able to write anything substantial - I have been thinking of two articles - one about bullying and the other about mobile-apps for weight- loss. But I am in an environment where I am inspired to write.