I dunno why - but these 3 phrases have been churning through my head all day today. The day started with me singing in the shower and thinking to myself when was the last time I just casually spent time massaging shampoo through my hair strands, my palm going over and over the same few strands of hair, again and again, enjoying the warmth of the water drops on my cold and fat body? I stood deep in thought under the shower for a while more. The time passed, I thought more about my last week at work, how silly busy I was. Yes, silly busy, not busy busy.
I thought of myself about 4 years back, when I was starting out on the fresh throes of undiscovered love. The feeling then was like probably when Columbus (was it Columbus? I might be wrong, well you will get the picture as you read along) discovered America. A sinking feeling that I know there is land somewhere, I just wish I land on it. And then bang, suddenly after days of sea wrecked fatiguing travel, a piece of land appears from nowhere. That feeling of exhilaration as he and the rest of his troupes might have felt as the ship approached land, with the mist settling on the green and brown chunk. And as you first step on the land, that feeling of discovering something new, something which only he has access to. Something, exploring which will take up the rest few weeks, or months of his life. Busy Love, yes that's the word. Love and catching up with that feeling that everyone talks about, keeps you busy for the next few months of your life.
And then again I thought how I was behaving at the end of Friday last week. I was happy for no apparent reason. Everything might not be going oh-so-right in your life at some time, but you might still feel those pangs of happiness. It feels good, but it is choking when you are at work. You cannot concentrate on work. You feel like picking up the phone and talking with anybody who is ready to listen. You feel like going shopping, eating out, singing, watching a movie, anything and everything that makes you happy. You are lucky if that feeling lasts for more than a few hours. But actually when it does, at the end of it, you begin wondering what was that about? I think it is called 'silly bliss'.
These phrases, they are still churning in my head. Wonder what it is about? Today is over, I wonder how I will feel tomorrow, I don't see any chance for busy love, anyways. Silly bliss? Maybe. Silly busy? Most probably.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Whine up!
Warning: Today's one of those days when I get whiney. It happens often. At such times I suffocate my instincts to write, talk and socialize. But I just can't today. You are forewarned.
********************************
I constantly get into arguments with friends and acquaintances who say they have had a difficult life, and they went through lots of struggles. People who (I sincerely believe) had lives just very easy and when they get a small setback, they think they have had to go through a very rough patch. Well to each his own! But sometimes it just really pisses me off. I can't help it, I think mean at times.
At times I really think such people are kidding themselves - they get too airy-fairy, or stupid, on account of their easy and protected lives or their education. They lose touch with reality. Educated people, literary people, some rich people they lose touch with reality. Due to an unmerited good fortune or due to an innate silliness.
Silly people, full of boring knowledge and protected by some fluke from the truth about life. People who don't have to worry about holding on to their house and can go around thinking their complicated thoughts. Free to dream up the fine, generous schemes that they believe would make other people happy.
Such jerks!
I feel amused by their upbringing, able to think their harsh notions quaint.
They would probably not be good in a crisis. Not good at basic survival tactics, not able to live even a single day of "28 days later", not able to scrounge for food and not able to tend to a dying friend on the street.
And inspite of all my practicality, I look at myself where I have ended. Or not ended. Probably, the better way to phrase it might be - where I am right now. With my practicality I often believed that I would be better off than where I am right now. This often happens to the practical people. Inspite of their calculations, survival instincts, they might not get as far as they had quite reasonably expected. No doubt life seems unfair. No doubt I whine.
********************************
I constantly get into arguments with friends and acquaintances who say they have had a difficult life, and they went through lots of struggles. People who (I sincerely believe) had lives just very easy and when they get a small setback, they think they have had to go through a very rough patch. Well to each his own! But sometimes it just really pisses me off. I can't help it, I think mean at times.
At times I really think such people are kidding themselves - they get too airy-fairy, or stupid, on account of their easy and protected lives or their education. They lose touch with reality. Educated people, literary people, some rich people they lose touch with reality. Due to an unmerited good fortune or due to an innate silliness.
Silly people, full of boring knowledge and protected by some fluke from the truth about life. People who don't have to worry about holding on to their house and can go around thinking their complicated thoughts. Free to dream up the fine, generous schemes that they believe would make other people happy.
Such jerks!
I feel amused by their upbringing, able to think their harsh notions quaint.
They would probably not be good in a crisis. Not good at basic survival tactics, not able to live even a single day of "28 days later", not able to scrounge for food and not able to tend to a dying friend on the street.
And inspite of all my practicality, I look at myself where I have ended. Or not ended. Probably, the better way to phrase it might be - where I am right now. With my practicality I often believed that I would be better off than where I am right now. This often happens to the practical people. Inspite of their calculations, survival instincts, they might not get as far as they had quite reasonably expected. No doubt life seems unfair. No doubt I whine.
Friday, March 7, 2008
roti, kapda aur MAKAN
Weird are the experiences that people have apartment hunting in NYC (or for that matter any big city in the world, I would say). I am sure that this is one topic which most of the commonplace populace would relate to. In 'Roti, Kapda aur Makan', it is the Makan which is the most difficult of all three to possess. It's much much more expensive, and its supply scarce, and getting a dream place to stay is well, a dream for most of us. I should be thankful to God that I have a good place to stay. That it comes with one major issue (it's far from the subway station - about a 15 minutes walk) is something that I choose to overlook nowadays, given some of my other friends' roommates / landlord / househunting situations.
A friend of mine from Mumbai had been living with me for the past 2 months. I offered that he could live with me as long as he did not find a place to stay. His previous roommate experience in Astoria, Queens was no less than a traumatic one and hence I exhorted him to rather take his time and find a good place with a good roommate and if luck is favoring him, a good landlord / landlady.
He finally found a place to stay after about 60 days of hectic searching, and he is due to move out today. It's a 300 (or 280) sq ft. studio in Soho which he has to share with another 40 (or older) yr old lady. The location is good, the facilities are good, the roommate seems decent and there is no landlord to deal with, the rent is cheap - 800 bucks, but of course there is a major catch. It's so small for Chrissakes! How can two people live happily in such a small place without constantly invading each other's space? It seems a big compromise for me, but my roomie, or rather my ex-roomie thinks that this was the best deal he could find in more than 2 months of searching and hence he is sticking with it. I have my skeptical thoughts, but I am happy for him if so less makes him so happy.
He thinks that this is the best deal, because here are some of his previous experiences when he went out apartment hunting: Another tiny apartment in Manhattan which had 6 dogs in it along with the landlord and still the landlord thought that there was room for another prospective tenant. A decent sized apartment in Manhattan, with decent rent too, which came with a catch - the landlord wanted the prospective tenant to be 'comfortable' with nudity. Hell no! I am not comfortable with my own nudity, let me speak less about somebody else's nudity. When I asked my ex-roomie, was he at least good looking, in the sense would the landlord's nudity be at least a pleasant one, he answered that that landlord was fat and old and bald and had this huge paunch. Good for him if he is comfortable with his nude body. I am not, and neither was my ex-roomie. Then there was this another huge 4 bed room apartment he found again in the city, and the rent was steep. Although the rent was steep, since it was a good location and the place was good, he was ok with it. But then it was another humongous task having to find three other roommates to share the place. Not all prospective roommates were fun. Those who were normal (and thus, fun) could not afford the steep rent. Some did not want to move in immediately, because their lease at their previous places would have ended in another 1-2 months and hence they were just looking. There were an awful huge number of variables, and finally none of the prospective roomies even moved up to being probable roomies. I forget the other apartment hunting disasters, but nevertheless they all had something wrong with them. Finally my friend here thinks that getting a 280 sq ft apartment in Manhattan to share is a 'good' deal. Well, good luck to him!
Living with a woman is not so easy. Men, when with other men can be easy going, laid back and can even change in front of other men. They can talk about sports, beer, senseless movies and they could bother less about cooking and cleaning. That is in general when it comes to men. I don't know how my ex-roomie will cope living with a woman. And not only any woman, a considerably older woman. I wished to narrate to him this anecdote from Phillip Lopate's collection of personal essays "Against Joie De Vivre":
"Another time I sublet in Tribeca from a stylishly pretty woman: her silk kimonos, her peignoirs, her sachets cohabited with my undershorts and T-shirts in the limited dresser space. Not only did I have the pleasure of sleeping in this glamorous woman's bed, albeit without her, I also experienced myself for fractions of a second as a glamorous woman. The low angle of her showerhead, the scent of her oval bath soap, the pegboard arrangement of her pots and pans, all subtly feminized me: by going through her daily motions I was camping in her psyche, my muscles mimicking her reach, my eye level learning to emulate hers."
I can only imagine my subtly feminized ex-roomie after his stint at his new place.
This reminds me of another friend of mine, who having lived as a roomie for God knows how long, decided to finally stay on his own. He had had a raise at his job and he decided to say good-bye to any roomie situations. He is a grown up man now and can live on his own. He decided that he deserves his own space, in midtown or maybe the East Village. A broker showed him a cramped, overpriced studio off Second Avenue. He balked—after all, he’s a grown fella; doesn’t he deserve a little space? He dismissed the broker and started obsessively scanning the rental listings on Craigslist (ah! What would we all do without Craigslist), determined to find an affordable one-bedroom with no fee.
After responding to hundreds of listings and visiting more than twenty apartments — all of which were either dilapidated, vermin-infested, meth-lab-adjacent, or some combination of the three — the search began to wear on him, and he started questioning why he was so fixated on getting a one-bedroom. After all, he’s a single man, and doesn’t he spend all his time at work anyway? Besides, with some creative light-palate decorating and a new flat-screen TV, a studio could look quite spacious. After a few days, this logic sinks in and he not only signs a two-year lease for the Second Avenue place but also recommended the broker to several other freinds of his. Two months later, he broke his leg tragically when he rolled out of his bed and directly into the trash compactor. He is still walking on crutches.
Phillip Lopate in "Against Joie De Vivre" had a few particularly fascinating essays on life in a rented space in the Big Apple. So in his chapter "Never live above your landlord" he narrates this particularly funny tale:
"One day this note was slipped under my door:
Please do not use the wash basin to empty the dirt and the cat litter in. Use a pail and throw it in your toilet. This past week, the Basin was Packed full of junk. And we used $9.95 worth of Drain Power. Then I had to get the Plumber to dislodge the dirt. Let the water run to clear the drain in that sink. Please throw the stuff in the toilet and flush. Next thing the pipes will get leaking.
- Mrs. Rourke
My answer:
Dear Mrs. Rourke,
What makes you think I am emptying cat litter and dirt in the wash basin!! This is an absurd contention. Please make sure you know whereof you speak before you start making baseless and frankly, fantastic accusations.
Sincerely,
Phillip Lopate
I held my breath for the next few days, thinking that perhaps I had gone too far this time. Yet when I ran into my landlady in the hallway, she was almost respectful. Not that our epistolary relationship ended there. I keep all the notes she slips under my door, among which is this quaintly worded favorite:
Please stop that
Jungle Drum Music
_________________
Or whatever it is.
_________________
I'm going out of my mind.
Bang Bang Bang
- Mrs. Rourke
Since I don't often listen to music, I was a bit insulted at the time, but I turned off the jazz station I had on."
It's my ex-roomie's last day with me today. As he is packing his stuff and leaving, I am feeling a bit elated - I have the Whole space to myself, a bit upset - who will I try and find faults about now, a bit excited - I can get more people home now, a bit generous - I helped him out when he needed some help and a bit lonely - who will I come home to? As I said previously, Good luck to him! He will need all of it.
A friend of mine from Mumbai had been living with me for the past 2 months. I offered that he could live with me as long as he did not find a place to stay. His previous roommate experience in Astoria, Queens was no less than a traumatic one and hence I exhorted him to rather take his time and find a good place with a good roommate and if luck is favoring him, a good landlord / landlady.
He finally found a place to stay after about 60 days of hectic searching, and he is due to move out today. It's a 300 (or 280) sq ft. studio in Soho which he has to share with another 40 (or older) yr old lady. The location is good, the facilities are good, the roommate seems decent and there is no landlord to deal with, the rent is cheap - 800 bucks, but of course there is a major catch. It's so small for Chrissakes! How can two people live happily in such a small place without constantly invading each other's space? It seems a big compromise for me, but my roomie, or rather my ex-roomie thinks that this was the best deal he could find in more than 2 months of searching and hence he is sticking with it. I have my skeptical thoughts, but I am happy for him if so less makes him so happy.
He thinks that this is the best deal, because here are some of his previous experiences when he went out apartment hunting: Another tiny apartment in Manhattan which had 6 dogs in it along with the landlord and still the landlord thought that there was room for another prospective tenant. A decent sized apartment in Manhattan, with decent rent too, which came with a catch - the landlord wanted the prospective tenant to be 'comfortable' with nudity. Hell no! I am not comfortable with my own nudity, let me speak less about somebody else's nudity. When I asked my ex-roomie, was he at least good looking, in the sense would the landlord's nudity be at least a pleasant one, he answered that that landlord was fat and old and bald and had this huge paunch. Good for him if he is comfortable with his nude body. I am not, and neither was my ex-roomie. Then there was this another huge 4 bed room apartment he found again in the city, and the rent was steep. Although the rent was steep, since it was a good location and the place was good, he was ok with it. But then it was another humongous task having to find three other roommates to share the place. Not all prospective roommates were fun. Those who were normal (and thus, fun) could not afford the steep rent. Some did not want to move in immediately, because their lease at their previous places would have ended in another 1-2 months and hence they were just looking. There were an awful huge number of variables, and finally none of the prospective roomies even moved up to being probable roomies. I forget the other apartment hunting disasters, but nevertheless they all had something wrong with them. Finally my friend here thinks that getting a 280 sq ft apartment in Manhattan to share is a 'good' deal. Well, good luck to him!
Living with a woman is not so easy. Men, when with other men can be easy going, laid back and can even change in front of other men. They can talk about sports, beer, senseless movies and they could bother less about cooking and cleaning. That is in general when it comes to men. I don't know how my ex-roomie will cope living with a woman. And not only any woman, a considerably older woman. I wished to narrate to him this anecdote from Phillip Lopate's collection of personal essays "Against Joie De Vivre":
"Another time I sublet in Tribeca from a stylishly pretty woman: her silk kimonos, her peignoirs, her sachets cohabited with my undershorts and T-shirts in the limited dresser space. Not only did I have the pleasure of sleeping in this glamorous woman's bed, albeit without her, I also experienced myself for fractions of a second as a glamorous woman. The low angle of her showerhead, the scent of her oval bath soap, the pegboard arrangement of her pots and pans, all subtly feminized me: by going through her daily motions I was camping in her psyche, my muscles mimicking her reach, my eye level learning to emulate hers."
I can only imagine my subtly feminized ex-roomie after his stint at his new place.
This reminds me of another friend of mine, who having lived as a roomie for God knows how long, decided to finally stay on his own. He had had a raise at his job and he decided to say good-bye to any roomie situations. He is a grown up man now and can live on his own. He decided that he deserves his own space, in midtown or maybe the East Village. A broker showed him a cramped, overpriced studio off Second Avenue. He balked—after all, he’s a grown fella; doesn’t he deserve a little space? He dismissed the broker and started obsessively scanning the rental listings on Craigslist (ah! What would we all do without Craigslist), determined to find an affordable one-bedroom with no fee.
After responding to hundreds of listings and visiting more than twenty apartments — all of which were either dilapidated, vermin-infested, meth-lab-adjacent, or some combination of the three — the search began to wear on him, and he started questioning why he was so fixated on getting a one-bedroom. After all, he’s a single man, and doesn’t he spend all his time at work anyway? Besides, with some creative light-palate decorating and a new flat-screen TV, a studio could look quite spacious. After a few days, this logic sinks in and he not only signs a two-year lease for the Second Avenue place but also recommended the broker to several other freinds of his. Two months later, he broke his leg tragically when he rolled out of his bed and directly into the trash compactor. He is still walking on crutches.
Phillip Lopate in "Against Joie De Vivre" had a few particularly fascinating essays on life in a rented space in the Big Apple. So in his chapter "Never live above your landlord" he narrates this particularly funny tale:
"One day this note was slipped under my door:
Please do not use the wash basin to empty the dirt and the cat litter in. Use a pail and throw it in your toilet. This past week, the Basin was Packed full of junk. And we used $9.95 worth of Drain Power. Then I had to get the Plumber to dislodge the dirt. Let the water run to clear the drain in that sink. Please throw the stuff in the toilet and flush. Next thing the pipes will get leaking.
- Mrs. Rourke
My answer:
Dear Mrs. Rourke,
What makes you think I am emptying cat litter and dirt in the wash basin!! This is an absurd contention. Please make sure you know whereof you speak before you start making baseless and frankly, fantastic accusations.
Sincerely,
Phillip Lopate
I held my breath for the next few days, thinking that perhaps I had gone too far this time. Yet when I ran into my landlady in the hallway, she was almost respectful. Not that our epistolary relationship ended there. I keep all the notes she slips under my door, among which is this quaintly worded favorite:
Please stop that
Jungle Drum Music
_________________
Or whatever it is.
_________________
I'm going out of my mind.
Bang Bang Bang
- Mrs. Rourke
Since I don't often listen to music, I was a bit insulted at the time, but I turned off the jazz station I had on."
It's my ex-roomie's last day with me today. As he is packing his stuff and leaving, I am feeling a bit elated - I have the Whole space to myself, a bit upset - who will I try and find faults about now, a bit excited - I can get more people home now, a bit generous - I helped him out when he needed some help and a bit lonely - who will I come home to? As I said previously, Good luck to him! He will need all of it.
Book Review: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
As you begin reading Jean-Dominique Bauby's 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly', you realize that probably you are holding a minor piece of miracle in your hands. The observative notes penned down with Bauby's eyes are so lyrical and melodious that you take flight similar to the author's imagination like a butterfly. Bear in mind that the author was suffering from Locked-In Syndrome when the book was written, which is normally believed to prevent its victims from communicating at all. Not only is the book a living example of the author's determination to win against all odds, but also it is so beautifully written that you begin to appreciate the book not out of sympathy to the author's condition but out of sheer enjoyment from the written word.
Bauby's condition called the "locked-in syndrome" paralyzed his entire body in such a debilitating manner that the only part of his body that could move was his left eye lid. That he managed to devise a communication pattern with that eye lid in an easy to understand manner is laudable in itself. That he managed to compose all his thoughts and successfully communicate them to an interpreter and get a book published out of it, is another remarkable feat. And that rather than wallowing in self-pity, the book manages to transport the reader to another land of mystic lyricism is a complete miracle. This is a remarkable achievement for a man who was obliged to compose and refine every sentence in his head, remember it, and then dictate it letter-by-letter with coded blinks of his left eyelid - the only part of his body which he could still control. As the author says "My main task now is to compose the first of these bedridden travel notes so that I shall be ready when my publisher's emissary arrives to take my dictation, letter by letter. In my head I churn over every sentence ten times, delete a word, add an adjective, and learn my text by heart, paragraph by paragraph."
The 'Butterfly' part of the title is referring to the author's active imagination. Which, I don't need to mention again, is the master scripter of this book. The 'Diving bell' part of the title is the author's physical condition, he is imprisoned in this 'giant invisible diving bell'. The author's butterfly apirations lead him out of his desperate situation in his diving bell. This is how the author describes the constant struggle between the Diving bell and the Butterfly: "My diving bell becomes less oppressive and I take flight like a butterfly. There is so much to do. You can wander off in space or in time, set out for Tierra del Fuego or for King Midas' court. You can visit the woman you love, slide down beside her and stroke her still sleeping face. You can build castles in Spain, steal the Golden Fleece, discover Atlantis, realize your childhood dreams and adult ambitions"
Given his condition, it is quite expected that this crucible for the author might have driven him to the deepest gorges of despair. But rather than focus on how bad his situation is, and revel in attention out of self-pity, the author focusses on the beauty of life. How when you have an active and busy life, you do not focus on all those things that just pass by you. How life just happens to you, when you are busy making other plans. How lovely the world is, how beautiful the people are, how things are not so bad even when it seems so. How he is lucky to have at least one of his eyelids functioning, otherwise he would have had to get even his left eyelid sewn like his right eyelid. Now with one eyelid functioning, at least that one is free to blink, he is free to see and he is free to communicate. This is how he describes his inner turmoil when the doctor gets to sewing his non-functioning eyelid:
'I have known gentler awakenings. When I came to that late-January morning, the hospital opthalmologist was leaning over me and sewing my right eyelid shut with a needle and thread, just as he were darning a sock. Irrational terror swept over me. What if this man got carried away and sewed up my left eye as well, my only link to the outside world, the only window to my cell, the one tiny opening of my diving bell? Luckily as it turns out, I wasn't plunged into darkness. He carefully packed away his sewing kit in padded tin boxes.'
Reliant on others for every trivial yet painful detail of his physical existence, Bauby yet manages to joke. "They had to place a special cushion behind my head: it was wobbling about like the head of one of those African women upon removal of the stack of rings that has been stretching her neck for years." or "I can find it amusing in my forty-fifth year, to be cleaned up and turned over, to have my bottom wiped and swaddled like a newborn's. I even derive a guilty pleasure from this total lapse into infancy." In one of the chapters he even contemplates the extermination of an irritatingly noisy toy duck. More than anything else, his determination, spirit and inner energy shine through, as he invents film scenarios, travel adventures and a play, he even makes up an inventive new fruit cocktail (the recipe for which is not mentioned in the book).
Jean-Dominique Bauby died in March, 1997, at the age of forty-five, fifteen months after suffering the massive stroke which damaged his brain-stem and left him with an active mind in a paralysed body. He died in a span of less than a week after his book was published. His book is a remarkable achievement by a brave and determined man. His book speaks volumes about the indefatigable spirit of the human soul, which refuses to cow down even in the bleakest of scenarios.
Bauby's condition called the "locked-in syndrome" paralyzed his entire body in such a debilitating manner that the only part of his body that could move was his left eye lid. That he managed to devise a communication pattern with that eye lid in an easy to understand manner is laudable in itself. That he managed to compose all his thoughts and successfully communicate them to an interpreter and get a book published out of it, is another remarkable feat. And that rather than wallowing in self-pity, the book manages to transport the reader to another land of mystic lyricism is a complete miracle. This is a remarkable achievement for a man who was obliged to compose and refine every sentence in his head, remember it, and then dictate it letter-by-letter with coded blinks of his left eyelid - the only part of his body which he could still control. As the author says "My main task now is to compose the first of these bedridden travel notes so that I shall be ready when my publisher's emissary arrives to take my dictation, letter by letter. In my head I churn over every sentence ten times, delete a word, add an adjective, and learn my text by heart, paragraph by paragraph."
The 'Butterfly' part of the title is referring to the author's active imagination. Which, I don't need to mention again, is the master scripter of this book. The 'Diving bell' part of the title is the author's physical condition, he is imprisoned in this 'giant invisible diving bell'. The author's butterfly apirations lead him out of his desperate situation in his diving bell. This is how the author describes the constant struggle between the Diving bell and the Butterfly: "My diving bell becomes less oppressive and I take flight like a butterfly. There is so much to do. You can wander off in space or in time, set out for Tierra del Fuego or for King Midas' court. You can visit the woman you love, slide down beside her and stroke her still sleeping face. You can build castles in Spain, steal the Golden Fleece, discover Atlantis, realize your childhood dreams and adult ambitions"
Given his condition, it is quite expected that this crucible for the author might have driven him to the deepest gorges of despair. But rather than focus on how bad his situation is, and revel in attention out of self-pity, the author focusses on the beauty of life. How when you have an active and busy life, you do not focus on all those things that just pass by you. How life just happens to you, when you are busy making other plans. How lovely the world is, how beautiful the people are, how things are not so bad even when it seems so. How he is lucky to have at least one of his eyelids functioning, otherwise he would have had to get even his left eyelid sewn like his right eyelid. Now with one eyelid functioning, at least that one is free to blink, he is free to see and he is free to communicate. This is how he describes his inner turmoil when the doctor gets to sewing his non-functioning eyelid:
'I have known gentler awakenings. When I came to that late-January morning, the hospital opthalmologist was leaning over me and sewing my right eyelid shut with a needle and thread, just as he were darning a sock. Irrational terror swept over me. What if this man got carried away and sewed up my left eye as well, my only link to the outside world, the only window to my cell, the one tiny opening of my diving bell? Luckily as it turns out, I wasn't plunged into darkness. He carefully packed away his sewing kit in padded tin boxes.'
Reliant on others for every trivial yet painful detail of his physical existence, Bauby yet manages to joke. "They had to place a special cushion behind my head: it was wobbling about like the head of one of those African women upon removal of the stack of rings that has been stretching her neck for years." or "I can find it amusing in my forty-fifth year, to be cleaned up and turned over, to have my bottom wiped and swaddled like a newborn's. I even derive a guilty pleasure from this total lapse into infancy." In one of the chapters he even contemplates the extermination of an irritatingly noisy toy duck. More than anything else, his determination, spirit and inner energy shine through, as he invents film scenarios, travel adventures and a play, he even makes up an inventive new fruit cocktail (the recipe for which is not mentioned in the book).
Jean-Dominique Bauby died in March, 1997, at the age of forty-five, fifteen months after suffering the massive stroke which damaged his brain-stem and left him with an active mind in a paralysed body. He died in a span of less than a week after his book was published. His book is a remarkable achievement by a brave and determined man. His book speaks volumes about the indefatigable spirit of the human soul, which refuses to cow down even in the bleakest of scenarios.
War of the Words - II
Following this post of mine I had a conversation with some of my friends about what are those written communication errors that really look bad. In an effort to look smart and generally bright, we tend to be extra careful before we hit that 'Send' button on our email applications, because once sent, it cannot be retrieved. However with our hectic work schedules, we sometimes tend to overlook these common errors. I am listing these down here for my own reference, so that I do not make the same mistakes when I send out my emails:
1) Loose for lose
Wrong: I tend to loose my notes
Right: I tend to lose my notes
2) It’s for its
Wrong: Send me the details of the installation along with it's product key
Right: Send me the details of the installation along with its product key
3) They’re for their or there
Wrong: Their not happy about the repeated requests we are making
Right: They're not happy about the repeated requests we are making
4) Effect for affect
Wrong: The outage shouldn't effect the following applications
Right: The outage shouldn't affect the following applications
5) Then for than
Wrong: We had more problems then we anticipated.
Right: We had more problems than we anticipated.
Ya, and this last one which I saw and was reminded of by Mr. Truitt's character in the movie 'The Opposite of Sex' last night
Wrong: I could care less about what they think
Right: I couldn't care less about what they think
1) Loose for lose
Wrong: I tend to loose my notes
Right: I tend to lose my notes
2) It’s for its
Wrong: Send me the details of the installation along with it's product key
Right: Send me the details of the installation along with its product key
3) They’re for their or there
Wrong: Their not happy about the repeated requests we are making
Right: They're not happy about the repeated requests we are making
4) Effect for affect
Wrong: The outage shouldn't effect the following applications
Right: The outage shouldn't affect the following applications
5) Then for than
Wrong: We had more problems then we anticipated.
Right: We had more problems than we anticipated.
Ya, and this last one which I saw and was reminded of by Mr. Truitt's character in the movie 'The Opposite of Sex' last night
Wrong: I could care less about what they think
Right: I couldn't care less about what they think
Requirements Engineering
I have often been asked by many of my non IT colleagues about what I do for a living. And when I tell them what I do, it often makes no sense with anyone. When it comes to IT, the most that the layman can follow is either writing the code to develop applications, or maybe the bit about testing the application. And while requirements analysis is an integral part of software development, it is considered as one of the less glamorous cousins of the technical architecture designing or even the development. The BAs in a project are considered as talkers who do nothing else but talk, and if any project needs to cut costs, its generally the BA who faces the axe. After all, anyone can talk...and thereby gather and analyse the requirements.
So I was quite happy to come across this white paper online today.
While it says exactly what I do for a living, the bit which impressed me the most was the problems that I face during the process of requirements engineering. Here is that excerpt which talks about these hurdles, and which science to approach to overcome those:
1) Cognitive psychology provides an understanding of the difficulties people may have in describing their needs. For example, problem domain experts often have large amounts of tacit knowledge that is not amenable to introspection; hence their answers to questions posed by requirements analysts may not match their behaviour. Also, the requirements engineer may need to model users’ understanding of software user interfaces , rather than relying solely on implementers’ preferences.
2) Anthropology provides a methodological approach to observing human activities that helps to develop a richer understanding of how computer systems may help or hinder those activities. For example, the techniques of ethnomethodology have been applied in RE to develop observational techniques for analysing collaborative work and team interaction.
3) Sociology provides an understanding of the political and cultural changes caused by computerisation. Introduction of a new computer system changes the nature of the work carried out within an organisation, may affect the structure and communication paths within that organisation, and may even change the original needs that it was built to satisfy. A requirements gathering exercise can therefore become politicised. Approaches to RE that address this issue include the “Scandinavian” approach, which aims to involve in the requirements definition process those most affected by the outcomes.
4) Linguistics is important because RE is largely about communication. Linguistic analyses have changed the way in which the English language is used in specifications, for instance to avoid ambiguity and to improve understandability. Tools from linguistics can also be used in requirements elicitation, for instance to analyse communication patterns within an organisation.
Requirements Engineering must concern itself with an understanding of beliefs of stakeholders (epistemology), the question of what is observable in the world (phenomenology), and the question of what can be agreed on as objectively true
(ontology)."
Interesting!
So I was quite happy to come across this white paper online today.
While it says exactly what I do for a living, the bit which impressed me the most was the problems that I face during the process of requirements engineering. Here is that excerpt which talks about these hurdles, and which science to approach to overcome those:
1) Cognitive psychology provides an understanding of the difficulties people may have in describing their needs. For example, problem domain experts often have large amounts of tacit knowledge that is not amenable to introspection; hence their answers to questions posed by requirements analysts may not match their behaviour. Also, the requirements engineer may need to model users’ understanding of software user interfaces , rather than relying solely on implementers’ preferences.
2) Anthropology provides a methodological approach to observing human activities that helps to develop a richer understanding of how computer systems may help or hinder those activities. For example, the techniques of ethnomethodology have been applied in RE to develop observational techniques for analysing collaborative work and team interaction.
3) Sociology provides an understanding of the political and cultural changes caused by computerisation. Introduction of a new computer system changes the nature of the work carried out within an organisation, may affect the structure and communication paths within that organisation, and may even change the original needs that it was built to satisfy. A requirements gathering exercise can therefore become politicised. Approaches to RE that address this issue include the “Scandinavian” approach, which aims to involve in the requirements definition process those most affected by the outcomes.
4) Linguistics is important because RE is largely about communication. Linguistic analyses have changed the way in which the English language is used in specifications, for instance to avoid ambiguity and to improve understandability. Tools from linguistics can also be used in requirements elicitation, for instance to analyse communication patterns within an organisation.
Requirements Engineering must concern itself with an understanding of beliefs of stakeholders (epistemology), the question of what is observable in the world (phenomenology), and the question of what can be agreed on as objectively true
(ontology)."
Interesting!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)