The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

"It is an ancient Mariner,

And he stoppeth one of three.

'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,

Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,

And I am next of kin;

The guests are met, the feast is set:

May'st hear the merry din.'

He holds him with his skinny hand,

'There was a ship,' quoth he.

'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'

Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

He holds him with his glittering eye—

The Wedding-Guest stood still,

And listens like a three years' child:

The Mariner hath his will."

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I like the beginning of this poem. Us humans need to tell our stories. We need to be heard. A few years ago, I went to Union Bank with my father to take care of some paperwork. Union Bank is one of those government banks where pensioners get their pensions. So, the bank is largely visited by elderly uncle and aunts, many of who have been left behind to rot and wither away. 

I borrowed a pen from an uncle. The uncle gave me the pen but asked, "why did you hesitate?". While I was taking care of my father's forms, the uncle started chatting with him. He was telling how his family members robbed him of everything he had. Now he is fending for himself with whatever pension he gets. 

I got done with the paperwork and wanted to leave. But the uncle insisted that he finished his story to this unknown listener who he will likely never again meet. And I saw him as that ancient mariner, who did this arduous journey of life, navigated through troubled times, and there he was - seeking an audience, someone who would care to spare some minutes to listen. 

Why one should ignore the experts

The first human flight on a motorized plane was accomplished by bicycle shop owners, Wright brothers, in a sleepy town called Dayton, Ohio. This was 1903. The so-called experts in MITs and Princetons of this World, swimming in resources, could not do so. There is a penalty of being experts. You see so many failures on a difficult task that you start believing that it cannot be done. Then, you no longer remain scientists or engineers. You become accountants. You keep a clear account of how and why the previous attempts failed. You belittle young scientists who dream to undertake that task. Wright brothers were far away from these experts. That is what worked for them. 

At Intel, we had quarterly meetings on the state of our technology development. Those used to be  quite remarkable meetings because the head of R&D would give us the big picture on where we failed, where we succeeded and how we succeeded and what challenges lie ahead in the technology that we were stiving to develop. He made an interesting statement once, "Experts are people who tell us why something cannot be done". And then he went on to give numerous examples of how technology faced a seemingly brick wall and how that was eventually overcome. 

So, do not get bogged down by the so-called experts. Many of them have gone senile because of their own failures. 

A chidhood memory and how not to raise your kids

 My cousin came running towards me, "I got 90% in the my exams!", he exclaimed. "For the next set of exams, we will provide a medical certificate, and so my percentage of these exams will carry forward". My cousin was in grade 2, I was in grade 6. This was a few decades back in India. I congratulated him and asked him again about the medical certificate thing. Yeap, the plan was to get a false medical certificate so that the exam percentage is carried forward. I was aghast to hear this. Luckily, my parents never cared much about my grades in elementary and middle school. Even in high school, they were not too focused on them. They would never think of devising such strategies to pull me out of exams. I was on my own to navigate through them. That's the time when your brain is developing the most. You learn by struggling yourself, not only the course material, but also the principles by which you live your life. I am sure my cousin topped his class in grade 2. I never topped my class. The closest I came was rank 2 in grade 10th, when one student who always used to score better than me got conjectivitis, and skipped an exam. 

I got a wonderful and happy childhood, thanks to my parents who never pressured me to study. They did not pressure me to do any extracurricular activities as well. I had the freedom to choose what I do with my time. A happy and carefree childhood is the best gift that parents can give to their children. They get to explore nature, human behavior that way, and have the time to brood over everything around them. 

Ask your doctor what stress does to your vitals. As an adult, if you get a few seconds of anger 30 minutes before a medical check-up, you will register high glucose levels in your blood. Imagine what constant stress would do to a young kid. Imagine what moral standards a kid will grow up with if you tell them that it is okay to fake a medical certificate. 

P.S. I have decided to not use AI to polish my writings on this blog. I want my writings to be my own. 

Karaoke Therapy

I had terrible nasal congestion and knew it was going to be a difficult night. But it was also our last night in Singapore, and I had been really looking forward to going out for karaoke. Despite not being in the best of health, I convinced my wife that we should go anyway.

We took a pleasant 20-minute walk from our hotel to the nearest karaoke bar. The next 50 minutes were spent singing and dancing to our favorite songs, after which we walked back to the hotel, nicely rounding off our Singapore trip.

To my surprise, by the time we returned, my nasal congestion was completely gone. No medicine I know of could have worked that fast. Singing and dancing made us happy—and when we are happy, our bodies respond. Hormones are released, biochemical changes occur, and somehow everything starts working better than any pill.

I’m sharing this experience in case anyone suffering from nasal congestion wants to try what I now call karaoke therapy. Of course, pharmaceutical companies would never recommend it—they’d lose business. And no doctor would suggest it either. Imagine going to a clinic with nasal congestion and being told, “Go sing and dance at a karaoke bar.” You’d probably think the doctor was a quack.

When medicine doesn’t work, we go back to the doctor for a new treatment. But imagine karaoke didn’t work for you. Would you go back to the doctor? And would the doctor ask, “Did you sing joyfully? Did you dance? Were you happy?” These, after all, would be the prerequisites for getting better. If you didn’t do them properly, you’d be told to go back and try again. Of course, no doctor would ever say this.

A karaoke bar wouldn’t fund a clinical study either. There’s a classic free-rider problem: why would one bar spend a million dollars on research when every karaoke bar would benefit for free?

So this blog post may be the only way to spread this newly discovered knowledge.