Category Archives: Personal

Fiona

People, places, things, and I’m continuing to find people the most interesting of all, maybe because we’re all beautifully imperfect creatures. People are interesting mainly because of the untold stories. Everyone homes great stories that are different than others’.

Through a series of events, I came to know Fiona. Her intelligence portrays itself in form of her acquaintance to scientific mysteries, silence, and humor. She is selectively kind and exudes perfection, but you know there are untold stories around the innate waves and flares. She gives the impression that she is daughter of nobody, but there are maternal instincts and clues in her words and traits. She reflects sturdiness, and an enticing version of vulnerability –both at the same time.

I die to know about her untold stories, but they have to come on their own rhythm and tune to stay pure and personal…

Strawberry Leaves

For some idiosyncratic reason, people often remind me of fruits in the character they signify. Potato, Cucumber, Apple, Olive, Grape to name a few, and of course Strawberry. Potato has minimal nutritional value but shows no specific character. Cucumber presents signs of coldness and indifference. Olive has long stood as a symbol of peace and harmony. Grape transpires glory and magnificence…

… strawberry however, is an honest fruit. Her seeds are on the outer skin, so you see the roots and cores first. Strawberry symbolizes perfection in every sense of the word.

Strawberry is leaving.

The Smart Alpha Male

Right in the middle of a pretty respectful gathering, he started speaking loudly and obnoxiously saying a lot of nothing. He was not communicating. He was positioning himself as the alpha male. His voice started to go a few octaves above two-lined and people around him were turning their head as if they were irritated. It all started becoming a scene after a few cold minutes.

Kim noticed the situation and walked across the room to get closer to the alpha male tribunal. The straight-shooter that she is, I thought she was going to ask for calm and quiet given someone else was giving a short speech. But to my disbelief Kim engaged in the banter and started laughing orgasmically -to attract the alpha male. From there on, I knew we had a show that would end up in my blog somehow.

A couple of hours passed and later on in the evening, Kim approached me for a chat and in the middle of our schmooze, she started asserting that the alpha-male-lookalike seems to be a smart bloke. I hope it’s not mean to say this: but for the first time in our long friendship Kim transiently looked like a goat to me –in that very quick moment. I suppose I was being very briefly judgmental. I just failed to understand why. I know I was hypercritical of Kim inherently and involuntarily.

A few days later, I was still feeling pretty crappy about having that instinct about a friend. I started asking myself questions like: was I judgmental? Is it fair that I didn’t say anything to Kim? Did I feel that way because Kim started participating in a socially unacceptable behavior? Do I like Kim, so I was being jealous when she complimented the alpha-male-lookalike? Should I talk to her about it? Am I a good friend if I don’t talk to her? Was I envious of the alpha male because he got attention? and the questions kept going, going, and going. Nothing seemed to connect however…

…and in an unassuming morning at a cliché moment it all came to me. I realized I had felt that way about Kim because she characterized the alpha male as smart. But why would that lead to such decree? How do I know if he is or isn’t smart. What does it mean to be smart anyway? Is being-smart equal to sounding-smart? After a lot of thinking, this is how I broke it down for myself: people usually and mostly inaccurately associate one or more of the following traits to smart:

– Quick get-it factor
– Articulation of facts, stories, and points
– Asking too many questions
– High education or multiple academic degrees
– Being master of a few skills such as music, sports, chess, games, etc.
– Being able to connect a few seemingly unrelated data-points (=intelligence)
– Patient analysis of issues
– Social manipulation
– Remembering names, phone numbers, etc.
– Having broad set of information about different topics
– Knowing historical facts
– Talking too much, as a mean of knowing too much
– Etc.

I’m afraid none of the above has to do with being smart by itself. The adjective (smart) is used to qualify the way one’s brain works. It has to do with the process of a) absorbing b) processing and c) communicating information. A smart person should have a unique ability in all of the three. The only attribute that can distinguish one person from another is (b), and sadly, that’s not immediately apparent because (b) is a function of time and well-formed unconscious.

First, curiosity holds the main weight in our ability for absorbing information as a multi-faceted faculty. The dearest tradition that’s also a painful and common non-sense remains to be the assumption that academic education is the best (and perhaps only) source of absorbing information. That’s why the myth of educated=smart surfaces all over the place. Let’s face it: there are only two reasons as to why one might think that way: the structured manner of academic education and accredited nature of academia itself. In my view, continuous reading and listening can be the most important sources of absorbing and refreshing information. Academia doesn’t necessarily or fully insure continuity and freshness of information.

Second, the most fascinating step happens during processing information. If there is anything as a God-given talent and/or genetic advantage hides under this rug. From neuroscience we’ve now learned that a synapse is the event which causes exchange (or production) of data between brain cells. I have this mental model of relating data to processed information. That means when two or more information points connect, data gets generated. Thorough research has verified the number of synapses per second differs from person to person, leading to the notion that there are people whose brains creates more data per second. I admit, I’m not one of them. My brain seems to have an inability to create data out of raw information without context. For instance, there was this professor in my college who would walk into a class and his default action was to write a painfully complex formula on the whiteboard. There were many of my classmates who seemed to immediately grasp it. I never did. Sometimes it took me the entire semester to understand the formula because I’ve always been handicapped by the story. I need to know the context, the problem, the why, and if that’s not enough, I would also need to attach value to the problem to actually direct some of my synaptic elasticity to the issue. By value, I mean I need to see if this is a subject I care to process.

The third and arguably the most important step is articulation or communication. The talent of being able to communicate data requires knowledge. Knowledge comes out of making logical relationship between data points. The knowledge is bound to be relevant to a context, as the source of relationship between data points. Throughout my life, the main lessons I’ve learned have come from narratives. Story-telling stands to be a rare commodity. It’s more of an art. Some believe you either have it, or you don’t. Literature, charisma, and humor as adaptive characteristics can tremendously help articulation of a story, but we should not mistake those attributes with volume, obnoxiousness, and a fake job.

To me being smart requires perfection in all of the above, wrapped up in a charming gift box of self-awareness and principles.

…once upon a time a professor of Physics was travelling in a boat crossing a river. In an odd moment of silence, the professor asked the boatman if he knew anything about physics. The boatman who was illiterate, said “no”. The professor pretentiously replied “half of your life is gone if you’re not smart enough to learn physics”. After that unpleasant exchange, the boatman and the professor had a few goings. By this time they were in the middle of the river and a big storm suddenly flipped the boat over. The professor was struggling in the water. The boatman asked the professor “do you know how to swim?” … The professor said “No”. The boatman said “well, now your whole life is gone”.

Forgive me, Kim!

The Same Wish

…he ended up having a blue day on his birthday. The day after, he said to Shaila “I wish my birthday was a day earlier”. Shaila cleverly responded “the only change would have been that you would have the same wish yesterday”.

In tough circumstances, we all have this unbelievable aptitude to bring in factors we can’t control, to punt responsibility. We do that to ease down the impact of agony and letdown that follows failure. Personal responsibility is a harsh mistress. It pleases you and feeds your ego during victorious times, and it comes back to belittle you when you’re routed.

During tough times there is a rush of negative feelings. All those chemicals kick in to your brain, and get you to a place where you can see nothing but the worst. But luckily, every feeling with a negative connotation maps to another positive feeling. For instance, selfishness maps to empathy, regret maps to hope, and jealousy maps to generosity. The only hidden element that’s the hardest part to bear, is time.

True, we live in a culture that makes it easier to assign moral status to victims of failure. Yet, one lets himself down if he doesn’t show up, or dismisses his part in this splendorous spectacle we call life.

Solo Dwellers

One of the subjects that has been at the top of my list of issues-to-think-about, continues to be parenthood. I don’t have a clue how it might feel to be a parent, but I can form a logical perception as to what’s involved in parenthood -as I’ve been observing a lot of parents including my own.

On the one hand, children go through a cagey phase with their parents while growing up. By cagey I don’t necessarily mean deceptive (though that could be the case too), I mean guarded, incremental, clever to maneuver one’s vulnerabilities. They balances positions to mollify opposition forces of the outside world, and surely, the unknown.

On the other hand, parents don’t fundamentally change personalities while raising children. However, different aspects of their character raise at different times. The first few years are the protective phase, helping the children with the basic natural functions all at once. But then comes the supportive phase, where parents let children do things on their own, grow up, and learn about the wonders of the outside world.

Nowadays, there is no doubt that the number of solo-dwellers is increasing. There are many academic or speculative discussions as to why that’s the case, but no one argues that that’s the case. I think one of the main reasons for people going solo relies on our inability to hold a human relationship together. Human beings need each other less and less every day, and sadly, the gap between mutual expectations and fulfillments widen.

Parents keep giving without asking for much in return. We can argue around some exceptions here and there, but the trend still stands to support the claim. I strongly believe the relationship between parents and their children and the one-way flow of love and care haven’t been impacted as much as other forms of relationships in transforming societies. And, that’s something to look forward to and desire.

I think I just said it. Yes, I’d love to be a father one day.

Pearl

Using the word crazy about someone, is certainly a double-edge sword. I don’t know of any other word that could equally be both offensive and flattering. On the one hand ‘crazy’ is indicative of certain behavioral and social abnormalities. On the other hand, if you’re crazy the question that comes up is: who defines those behavioral and social norms. Unpredictability draws attention and poses questions. Lack of continuity in social behaviors portrays mysteriousness, entertains, and makes one fascinating. These notions are crazy, because conformists passionately find the dynamic nature of such attributes against the security of consensus.

The other day after lunch and an Irish goodbye, she walked away looking pensive. I sat in the car and looked back and it seemed she was walking indecisively -as if she wasn’t sure where she was headed. Then, she pulled a cigarette out of her loud black bag and started smoking. She was looking up every now and then while smoking. She then turned left at the intersection without looking back or sideways. She was only looking up or down. Her steps were telling something that I couldn’t quite put into words. I sat there for a few minutes thinking … I couldn’t even guess what she was thinking, or if she was thinking about anything.

Pearl is a person I know for such long time. I don’t even know what it means to not have her around. She’s one of a few friends who can sit down and talk in length about things like the symbolic character in Oblomov. She claims to read books and articles very quickly by scanning the key words in each page and then making a logical connection between each page and segment of the write-up. We’ve had ups and downs in our friendship mainly because we talk directly and say it the way it is. If there was ever a third person who was listening to our conversation, s/he could conclude that we’re both rude or brash. But that’s not how we feel. To the contrary, we think our straight forward approach to our conversations makes our friendship unique and never-ending.

I should confess that I find crazy people to be fun and interesting. If you’re a normal person, that’s my weakness I guess. My friendship with Pearl entails no dull moment because she is never distracted by quotidian concerns. Every second of her life is laser-focused on something, or another. Yes, she disappears for months and then comes back and drops a bomb on me, but also she continually talks to me about me in the most explicit way.

Crazy friends change your life into a sort of lurid technicolor format. You get good attention and you get bad attention, but you get attention. It’s like you’re in a theatre and the lights go down making you wait for the beginning of the show. I prefer to be in a theatre as oppose to watching a lame black-and-white movie on the couch.

Bamboozled

The other day, I was supposed to meet with a friend. After thirteen emails, three text messages, and an old-fashion and obsolete form of communication called “phone-call”, we decided to postpone our 30 minutes get-together. Imagine, we even had to talk to each other to get to that point.

That made me pensive quite substantially. I felt bamboozled to be spending so much time on scheduling a get-together. So I decided to devise a formula for determining as to whether or not it’s worth meeting with someone. The formula is actually pretty simple: if scheduling a coffee get-together takes more time than the actual meeting time, well, forget about it.

The underlying problem is not so much that we have become so fucking selfish. The problem is that we have lost track of who actually fits the description of a friend worthy of trust and attention. The social networks help people friend each other. But all that means, you keep track of the remnant of your social circle besides your actual friends. Without these tools, chances are some of us would meet for a coffee on the other side. That being said, we’re all headed in the right direction of being alone together.

Doubt

In general, doubt is the middle position between knowledge and ignorance. Doubt might encompass cynicism, but also genuine questioning. In the context of relationships doubt often takes the backseat, because its very existence leads to regret -which is a huge no-no in today’s hollow love subculture.

No matter how much you let doubt in, there are those encounters and choices in different relationships where you look back, and you feel like you have been drunk for the entire relationship –like the one I had with Golady. The fact that there is association between the relationship and the feeling of drunkenness encompasses doubt in the judgment within the context.

For instance, one of the visual events I can never forget happened when there was a conversation between Golady and I around the contradiction between her conventional nature and my unshackled mindset. When it was obvious that the gap wasn’t to be filled, it seemed thousands of crystal shards of all sizes suddenly explode around her all at once, creating shallow scratches to deep wounds as some embed themselves deep into her flesh. While shaking her heaad in disbelief, the corner of her lips pulled up faintly. She looked up momentarily and tried to mentally shrug off the pain…

Many years have passed, but I still vividly remember that moment and doubt as to whether or not I handled it gracefully. Yes, it is safe to say that Golady was conventional by nature which is very much unlike me. But the doubt that still clouds that moment cries: if conformity and rebelliousness can agree on anything, it is that sometimes it’s worth betting on unorthodoxy of the heart.

Kelt

Mr. Kelt was a well-honed historian. As his family hails from Scandinavia, he was very familiar with the Norwegian aquavit which has its maturation at sea. The maturation process includes: transported in aged oak casks from Norway to the Equator and then back again. The idea began to form that this was a method which should be tried to see if it works. The idea was to recreate a quality given by the sea, this could be beneficial and a further step on the road to perfection. With assistance from special container, the decision was that the best way to effectuate the sea voyage would be to let the container stay on a ship that did a continuous world round-trip taking 90-110 days depending on weather.

Further trials were made to optimize the effects. Smaller barrels proved to be most efficient. Traditional oak barrels are used which must be extensively research. The barrels must only be filled to 70% capacity so that there is ample room for the cognac to wash around inside the barrel which facilitates contact and extraction from the wood as well as exchange of oxygen.

The process takes an easterly direction. It has been experienced that there is a considerable difference between going east or west. For some unexplained reason a westbound, does not produce as good an effect as going eastbound. After leaving France, the direction takes cognac to a few Northern European ports, then heads south into the Mediterranean, through the Suez canal into the Arabian Sea and from there on to Sri Lanka, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and across the Pacific to the United States and Los Angeles. From Los Angeles we turn south for the Panama Canal and then north again following the east coast of the US to New York before the return across the Atlantic Ocean back to France. After returning, the cognacs are allowed a period of rest before bottling. This period varies between 3-5months.

All of the above takes place to make the best cognacs in the world and it is natural to find perfection through studying history and traditional methods rather than looking to the future and technology.

Tennis Ball

Is tennis ball yellow or green? How’s that for a short topic of discussion between several senior corporate dudes? I suggested the color of tennis ball is both because color technically is about wavelength and frequency intervals, and despite categorically-defined notion of yellow and green red, there are infinite combinations of the two characteristics that could fall in both yellow and green color buckets. I asserted there is a spectrum that’s continuous, and we shouldn’t think about it categorically.

 

Albeit, I was thinking about the question in its technical context … a few minutes later, her is the response from a colleague whom I highly respect: [What Kamran’s asking about is a construct referred to in the cognitive science literature as “categorical perception.”  Categorical perception of entities that otherwise exist on a continuum (whether speech phoneme categories, musical notes, or in this case, colors) is closely related to the individual perceiver’s previous experience with similar examples (“exemplars”) of the category, which drives activation of those examples in memory, followed by resulting categorization as appropriate. Hence at a very high level, in the context of being exposed to an ambiguous stimulus to be categorized (a la the TENNIS BALL), if your cognitive system contains a stronger
representation/activation of yellow category exemplars, then you’re more likely to perceive YELLOW.  If the green category is stronger in your cognitive system, then you’re more likely to perceive GREEN].

 

Well, thinking about these notions in their conceptual context, I think there is also a spectrum around mental-models and our approach to resolution. At the one end stands attributes such as simplistic, certain, and disconnected. At the other end of the spectrum there is a mindset that attributes to complicated, gray, and jointed. It goes without saying that there are many combinations in between of course, but beneath, it all falls into one’s tolerance for higher degree of conviction or doubt –in the mental process.

 

Some of us start our mental process by convictions by default, because it’s a more certain place and it brings more sense of comfort while casting opinions. If there was any representation of one’s mindset who starts by conviction, it’d probably look like a matrix or a well-organized bookshelf. On the other hand, some of us start the process of thinking from the place of doubt by default, because we get high on the sense of open-exploration and journeying.