Trivial Pursuit

Something of mine that was published in Dawn, an updated and more detailed version of an old blog entry of mine.

Among the benefits of knowing trivia is that one gets to know the true potential of seemingly innocuous things.

Have you ever wondered why Graham Bell chose to invent telephone of all possible things he could have invented?

If your answer is no, then you belong to the sane majority of people who generally don’t spend much time wondering about things that have no relevance whatsoever with their everyday life. If your answer is yes, then it probably is very important for you to know that Graham Bell probably (and it’s an intelligent guess) invented telephones because he wanted to speak to people. As both his wife and mother were deaf, the need to speak with other human beings, besides the quest of scientific discovery, urged him to create the telephone.

I have been fascinated with trivia and general facts since I was a little girl. I always wanted to know things like the exact duration of a blink, which by the way, approximately lasts 0.3 seconds. I would try to read volumes of encyclopedia, much to my mother’s chagrin, who wanted me to spend every waking moment with my text books. My mother actually thought that cramming my brain with useless (in her opinion) information would not leave much room for trigonometry and English literature. What she did not know that knowing that a chameleon’s tongue is twice as long as its body or that milk of a hippopotamus is bright pink or the fact that it is impossible to lick your elbow would make it so much easier for me to understand the Pythagoras theorems and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Such seemingly useless factoids also explain some things that you would not understand otherwise. For instance, an ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain; it is probably why they bury their heads so that no one will notice how disproportionate their eyes are with the rest of their heads and we humans think that they are shying away from their problems. No, they are not; it’s just that they are a little more aware of their eyes than the rest of the animal kingdom. Talking about eyes, human beings cannot keep their eyes open when they sneeze. If they do it by force during a sneeze, the eyes may pop out. It is body’s defence mechanism that we always close our eyes shut while sneezing.

When one once asked me what my favourite animal is, I said shark. No, I am not a carnivorous freak with a ‘Jaws’ fixation. It is just that sharks are immune to all known disease and who cannot be awed by such an infallible creature? Another interesting thing about sharks is that their skeleton is made of cartilage only, it has no bones. It is probably why the saying goes that ‘he is as smooth as a shark’.

People think that multitasking is a term coined in twentieth century and gained true currency in twenty-first century; little did they know that it was truly mastered in 16th century. For instance, Leonardo Da Vinci could write with one hand while drawing with the other. Who can multi task like that in this century? The best we do is drive, yell at the kids, talk on cell phones simultaneously and get fined for that.

Another benefit about knowing trivia is that one gets to know the true potential of seemingly innocuous things. Peanuts are considered fairly healthy food but do you know that it is one of the main ingredients of dynamite, yes the same dynamite that is used in blowing things up. Similarly, beautiful grapes can be lethal when you put them in a microwave; they explode!

According to trivia, cows produce more milk when they listen to music, I wonder if this stands true about the all music or does the quality of music matter. If the quality of music influences milk production patterns, cows will produces finest quality milk while listening to The Who or Abida Perveen but will go on strike if they listen to Naseebo Lal’s songs with many a double entendre.

Some interesting facts about food are that French fries are originally from Belgium and not France. Table salt is the only commodity the price of which has not dramatically risen in the past 150 years (probably because no government anywhere in the world thought about either privatising it or levying new taxes on it). Bananas are the new chocolate; it is discovered that they contain a natural chemical that makes a person happy. The same chemical is found in prozac, so if prozac is not readily available, have a banana instead to feel happy!

There is a phrase in English language about selling ice to Eskimos. Well, they may not buy ice, but they sure do buy refrigerators. In Alaska, the Eskimos use refrigerators to keep their food from freezing solid. In Taiwan a third of all funeral processions feature a stripper — and we thought it was the decadent West that brought the trend to this part of the world. If BBC radio is to be believed, 57 per cent of British school kids think that Germany is the most boring country in Europe, however, BBC radio did not elaborate why do British kids think that way. Desi restaurants in United Kingdom employ more people than steel making, mining and shipbuilding industries put together in that country. No wonder John Major declared ‘Chicken Tikka Masala’ to be the national British dish. Another important tradition started by marketing forces is Santa Claus’ red coat. It is only about 80 years back when coca cola started this Red Santa campaign. Before 1930s, Santa used to wear green coats.

It is said that a human being spends, on an average, two weeks of their entire lives waiting for traffic lights to change. Obviously if that person happens to live in Karachi, he or she would spend an average of about two years waiting for traffic signals to change.

Needless to say, I have proven beyond doubt that I’m a trivia junkie; if you want to know the lurid details of Nelson Mandela’s divorce (for a price of course) you know who to contact.

C o n v e r s a t i o n !

A recent conversation between two friends


Tazeen says:
hmmm
askari says:
khair..
askari says:
anything interesting going on in your life?
Tazeen says:
yeh meri life hai ... I am the most interesting thing in it


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Conquering another language !

I soooo want to learn a new language.

There is merit in learning languages other than your first language and English which frankly everyone speaks these days. I don’t even want to learn a new language because it will look cool on my college application – been there, done that – without ever knowing a third language. In fact, I already have three degrees and if I even think about going back to school (which I secretly do), my sisters will commit me to a mental institution. The doctors at the mental institution will have to coin a new term for my disease which would sound something like ‘addicted to being a student so that she can do weird stuff and stay unemployed while pretend pursuit of academic excellence’, but I digress.

I don’t want to learn a new language because I want to be known as that ‘crackpot who can speak Ukrainian’; there are enough reasons already for me to be classified a whack job. I don’t even want to be called a well rounded person because I am a well rounded person. As a matter of fact, I need to turn some of that roundedness into lean muscle, but I digress again.

My problem is, every time I decide to learn a language, something turns me off that language. Anyone who knows me knows my love for Ghalib. According to Abba (not the Mama Mia fame 80s pop act – I call my father Abba), one cannot appreciate Ghalib unless one knows Persian language, so I was always a little biased towards Persian and wanted to learn it to understand Ghalib better. My 45 day trip to Iran stripped all the love and affection I had for the language. All I can now remember is how the Irani actor who was working on my play complained about being sexually attacked by a Pakistani actor and how I placated him and requested him not to register a complaint (Homosexual advances are a non bail able offence in Iran).

As a child, I also wanted to learn Arabic because I quite naively thought knowing Arabic would guarantee a palace in heaven. Dealing with a Saudi stalker in university who refused to register the fact that no amount of petro dollars will make him popular with quirky girls, took care of my childish fascination with Arabic. The fact that I can still fool my European friends at Dubai airport into believing that I know Arabic by reading flight schedule in Arabic also contributed to it (why learn a language when people think that you know the language already?).

Another language that I toyed with a bit is French. I hate snooty waiters at French restaurants who always correct my pronunciations. I dream of going to a French café and ordering Soupe au pistou, Boeuf Bourguignon and Salade Niçoise without fumbling once. I tried speaking French with my friend Laurent but every time I said voulez vous, he cracked up and dashed my hopes of holding my head high in a French restaurant.

I think I should concentrate on Spanish instead. For one, I know all the swear words in Spanish after attending football matches in Spain. They say that if you know how to swear in a language, it is half the battle won. For another, I have always wanted to sing along Ricky Martin’s Spanish songs.

GO SLOW: Fast and Furious

When Simon and Garfunkel wrote the song... Slow down, you're movin' too fast, you’ve got to make the moment last, we were not living in a world where you have to run like crazy just to keep pace with the surroundings that are moving twice as fast. Imagine how much more we need to slow down now when we travel in supersonic jets and trains, power read, skim through TV channels at the speed of 60 channels per minute and eat, what else, but fast food, at least, thrice a week.

The present day need for speed is best described by Klaus Schwab, founder of World Economic Forum, “We are moving from a world in which the big eat the small to the one in which the fast eat the slow.”

Everyone feels that there is not enough time and they have to cram as much stuff and at the fastest possible speed in a day as possible. In 1982, Larry Dossey, an American physician, coined the term ‘time sickness’ to describe the belief that time is getting away and that one must pedal faster to keep up. We all, at least the metropolitan or mega polis dwelling citizens, belong to the cult of speed. We want to get to our destination in the record time, we want the fastest Internet access, we want our news as fast as it can be delivered, and if we don’t get that, we fret.

What pains me most is the way media portrays the virtue of speed. TV news analysis is run by fast thinkers with glib answers for everything. They are analysing events as they are unfolding. It’s another matter that they are proven wrong at times, but who remembers something one week down the road these days. Knowledge and wisdom do not have much currency in this age of information. It is all about here and now, not how.

It is said that we live in the ‘age of instant gratification’. But the way things are going, that too has become passé. We are looking for things that are beyond instant. We are living in the ‘age of rage’. This fixation with speed leads to road rage, shopping rage, relationship rage, office rage and at times, even gym rage. I have seen it happening; people mutilating gym equipment because they want to do it all in 25 minutes flat. Imagine the harm done to their bodies in the long run.

Consumer capitalist economy is contributing its part in this time sickness. It is getting too fast –– even for its own good. It is interesting to know that at the outset of the Industrial Revolution, one of the first things to come out of Gutenberg press was the calendar of 1448.

Lewis Mumsford once said, “Clock is the key machine of the Industrial Revolution.” Another indication of the long history of time sickness is that most of the 15,000 machines registered at the US patent office in 1850 were for “acceleration of speed and for the saving of time and labour.”

Urbanisation, another feature of the industrial era, helped quicken the pace. Cities have always attracted energetic and dynamic people which accelerated the general pace of living. Terms like time rich and time poor are also coined in the super fast age of industrialism.

Industrial capitalism feeds on speed and rewards it as never before. The business that manufactures and ships its products fastest can under cut rivals. If one pauses long enough to notice, one would see that there is a human cost to this turbo capitalism. These days, people exist to serve the economy rather than the other way around. Have we ever stopped and asked why are we working so hard? The obvious answer is money, but the endless pursuit of consumer goods means we need more and more cash.

In a corporate set up, gone are the eight-hour working day and 40-hour week, everyone works for as long as it takes to make one’s mark. After years of downsizing, companies expect employees to shoulder the burden left behind by their laid off colleagues. With the fear of losing their jobs hanging over their heads, people regard overwork as a way to prove their worth and this turbo capitalism offers a one-way ticket to burn out.

Most people have unrealistic expectations from themselves. We all want to be over achievers; with the most promising careers, ability to speak at least one foreign language, ability to discern art and sing, time to work out at the gym, read the newspapers and best sellers, play some sports, spend time with friends and family, watch TV and movies, listen to music, shop for gadgets and travel to exotic places. If we don’t do it all, we are not content and keep on craving for more. We fail to realise that there is an unrealistic difference between what we want and what we can actually achieve and there is no guarantee that we will achieve it all.

What is forgotten is the fact that long hours on the job are making everyone unproductive, error prone, irritable, unhappy and ill. It is because of such work environment that stress related diseases are on the rise and people are burning out in their 20s.

Japanese, the ever creative nation, even added a new word to their vocabulary, ‘karoshi’ which means death by over work. Consumerism and its pressure for speed are taking its toll on everyone.

We live in a 24/7 time frame. We can be reached 24/7 via cell phones. We shop on our days off, we pay bills after hours. We are online all the time and take our laptops to bed with us. We all need to ask if we have lost the capacity of doing nothing. Taking pleasure in sitting in a park and enjoying the cool evening breeze can be as pleasant an experience as staying cooped up in a dark room and playing a super fast game at Xbox.

I was once travelling from Edinburgh to Manchester on train and I realised that not a single person was either gazing out of the window or sitting idle. They were either reading, playing games on their phones, texting messages or listening to music or news, working on their laptops or yammering into their mobiles.

I too, have been one of those people who wanted to do it all as quickly as possible. Rushing on from one task to the other was the norm, I was the kind of person who would curse everyone who was slower or crossed my path at a slower pace.

Things changed for me when I took time off to go back to university for another degree. Being a student for a year has changed the perspective for me. Multi-tasking sounds so cool, and I too, was quite proud of my prowess at multi-tasking but when I realised that when I read the newspaper and watch TV at the same time, I get less out of both, I decided to give it a miss unless absolutely necessary.

There is a ‘Slow Food’ movement founded in 1986 by Carlo Petrini in Italy as a resistance movement to combat fast food. Geir Berthelsen created ‘The World Institute of Slowness’ and coined the term ‘Slow Travel’ in 1999 citing a vision for an entire ‘Slow Planet’.

Carl Honroe in his book, In Praise of Slow says that there is a growing trend in people who are looking for a more holistic attitude which can be seen in increased use of alternative medicine and popularity of yoga. Even the aerobics queen Jane Fonda, who sold millions of tapes and books on aerobics, now, swears by yoga.

Leisure was declared a human right in 1948 by United Nations. We need to go back to more leisurely pursuits such as gardening, reading, painting, making crafts and learn to be happy with it. Feminism denounced homemaking as a curse on womankind; hence modern woman does not know the pleasure in knitting, making crochet, and sewing. Even though denounced, it nevertheless is a creative process and has a therapeutic effect to it.

Debbie Stoller, an American feminist, hailed knitting as the new yoga and a lot of young women have taken to it, including the woman with a 20-million-dollar smile, Julia Roberts. I hope it now makes knitting officially cool. BBC recently reported that even Prince Charles has urged people to slow down and allow themselves more time for reflection. The prince said modern life had got out of balance, and needed to return to the rhythms of nature.

I agree that most of us do not wish to replace speed with lethargy, but finding the right balance is the key to a balanced personal and professional life. Like Mahatma Gandhi once said, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.

Originally published in The Review, Dawn


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Work is a four letter word

Something that was published in Dawn, they gave it a different title but I liked mine better so here it is. It is actually a longer version of a previous blog.

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The recent idleness in my life, the unintended vacation I was on, made my days long and nights extended and I started pining for — yes, of all things — workplace insanity.

I longed for the days when I was surrounded by colleagues who felt no compunction in stealing my lunch from the office refrigerator, the inveterate gossip-monger who would say something to me and then go to the other person with the same statement using my name. The insecure boss who hides his incompetence by putting down my degree as inconsequential (if you have a foreign degree and your boss does not, you would get as much of an opportunity of growth as a one-legged man would in a kicking competition). In short, I was so bored with staying at home that I missed all the things I used to detest about my workplace.

Workplace dysfunction is definitely funny when you’re watching The Office, but it is serious business when you’re trying to cope with it every day. The biggest irritant at the workplace is the fact that the most degrading workplace tasks are the ones that are always put forward as being special.

Another sign of workplace dysfunction is getting labelled. If one is working in the corporate sector, one is either a YAWN (young wealthy but normal — the term reserved for people who despite earning insane amount of money live normally) or one half of Dinks (double income no kids — this is the kind that go for expensive vacations and usually have a 72-inch plasma TV). There are yuppies (young urban professionals) who wear sharp suits and drive fuel-guzzling vehicles; and last but not least, Bobo (Bohemian bourgeoisie) which include people like most of us who, although gainfully employed, have no sharp suits, no plasma TV and definitely no extra money lying around for expensive vacations.

Everyone has their fair share of weird co-workers; I just happen to get twice as lucky as most people on this planet. The amazing variety of people I have had the chance to work with is astounding. Who else can boast to have worked with just about every clichéd office character under the sun, ranging from the narcissistic-jerk-of-a-boss to the regular run-of-the-mill slacker, the office stud, the office tart, the gossip, the manipulator, the eater, the people-pleaser, butt-kisser, whiner, over-committed-company-man to… my personal favourite, the sarcastic un-committed slug.

We all have at least one ‘70-hour a week guy’. He lives, eats and probably sleeps at work. He’ll be in when you arrive and working still when you go home. He’s often in on the weekend and before you can say the word ‘bingo’, the management starts encouraging you to follow his example and sacrifice your personal life, provided you had one to begin with. The management would probably throw in the incentive of paying for every third angioplasty, if caused by workplace stress.

I have had the (dis)pleasure of working with this man who had a British-public-school-boy attitude, an illegal amount of (over) confidence and insane profundity in corporate speak. He would always rant about things like ‘high accuracy assessment’ and I would want to scream, “what the hell is that?” Does anyone really care if the assessment is highly accurate or just accurate? The terms I loathe most are ‘thinking outside the box,’ ‘paradigm shift,’ ‘synergy’ and ‘brainstorming,’ especially brainstorming. What do you think people do when they brainstorm? Nothing gets shaken up, no one sees the light. All people do is consume loads of tea and coffee and bitch about people who are not part of that particular brainstorming session.

I once had this co-worker who epitomised Protestant work ethics of 19th-century Americans (even the Americans have slackened down a bit since then). It was impossible to indulge in a bit of harmless normal workplace slacking such as surfing the internet, making a few personal phone calls or reading some newspaper in her presence. She would look at you, berating you for doing the sinful act of reading the newspaper at the workplace. If her workload is low, she would sit in her chair and do nothing — like staring at empty spaces or at her computer screen. I mean I am all for meaninglessness in life, I think it is very important, but staring at empty spaces does not match up when you can actually read about Britney Spears’s life online and feel good about yourself.

In most offices, people aspire to become managers (if they already aren’t). A manager’s designation is not high enough to be out of reach for most people, nor is it lowly enough to indicate lack of ambition. I became a manager two years into my professional life — soon after I abandoned my efforts at eking out a living with journalism — and was quite happy being the team leader. For those who don’t know how misleading this title is, let me tell you that my title as the team leader means that I report on the workload to higher-ups at meetings and make sure that my staff does not steal too much stationary, do not take too many tea breaks and report back to work after the long lunch and prayer breaks on Fridays.

Another very interesting part of working in a corporate setup is personal appraisals. As a team leader, I sat through the appraisals of my team. I had to be politically correct and come up with inventive ways to get my point across without stepping on any toes. When one had to come up with lines like ‘works well under constant supervision’ at times when all one wants to write ‘needs a rap on the knuckles every five minutes’ every year for over a dozen people, any delusions of creativity fly out of the window. At times, I have been tempted to blurt “I quit!”, pack my desk and be carried to the elevators by my admiring colleagues, but a scene of such dramatic bravado and career hara kiri is best left for Hollywood movies like Jerry Maguire (1996). I usually take leave of my employers with a resignation sent via email. I console myself with the fact that for most of us, work is just a four letter word.