Dear Sis,

It is not just a phase...

Don’t try to change men.

Selecting a man is like buying a house; you shouldn’t buy a shit-heap and expect you can turn it into a mansion.

Too many women marry alcoholics and are hurt when they end up with a drunk for a husband. Many mistresses are surprised when their lover cheats on them.

You can teach a man to moisturize and buy him a nice shirt, but don’t measure your value as a woman on your ability to transform a man.

If you fall in love with a basket-case stoner, then you’d better start smoking dope or get a good therapist. Look at it logically:

He smokes weed, he likes it, and that shapes who he is as a person. He probably plays a lot of Xbox and makes strange culinary concoctions that involve lots of bread and not much cooking, some of them are probably quite tasty. He has a fairly un-ambitious career, and he really enjoys sex.

Option A: You change him. Your grace and persuasive charm transform him into a valuable member of society who now sources his concoctions from cookbooks and has a job and shaves and doesn’t leave the washing in the machine.

But he’s now a different person, and there is a very real possibility that as a new person with a new hairstyle and a fancy tie, he also will be on the lookout for a new woman. Even if he isn’t, new women are on the lookout for him – and now he’s places that they might find him (i.e. Not sitting on your couch)

I don't have this guy's permission to use his photo, but if you battle bike racer Casey Stoner out of search rankings in google images, you don't got no expectation of privacy. Besides, what's he going to do, sue me or smoke a bowl and talk about it?

Option B (this one is far more common): You nag him endlessly, and although he loves you and values your opinion, and although he knows he should really empty the dishwasher once in a while, he resents you and inwardly recoils at the sound of your voice. If he weren’t so pathetic, he’d probably dump you, because you’re actually being quite rude.

You met a guy and fell in love with him for what he wasn’t – you fell in love with his potential. As far as he’s concerned, you fell in love with someone else.

If you deserve to be with someone who is faithful, sober occasionally, or not a career criminal, then get a man who already is that way, then tweak him.

Love,

Harry

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I wrote this for PickTheBrain.com

There is a funny concept among the softly-spoken, the meek, the apologetic excuse-makers that there is some ‘kind’ of person who is confident, capable and calm in the face of adversity. The have-nots usually disempower themselves further by making an assumption that confidence is like a genetic trait, written into the DNA of some, and left out of the chromosomes of another. It’s not, it’s a lie.

Confidence is a con – it’s a lie to yourself that you can be whatever you want to be. The trick is that confident people have mastered the ability of self-delusion, and once deluded, the lie becomes real – for being confident is simply imagining yourself as already confident. That will spread a perception among others, who will react to your new-found power as if it’s you, which will reinforce your behavior and presto-change-o, you are one of the confident people.

One cannot imagine oneself taller, and no matter what ‘The Secret’ tells you – you cannot imagine yourself a new sports car, but you can imagine yourself being confident and become it, immediately.

1. Act. Stand up straight, sit up straight, look people in the eye and shake hands in a way that says: “I’m in charge here” – people will respond to your confidence and reinforce it, but that’s not all. Changing your physiology will break neural pathways that have maintained your previous patterns, abruptly disconnecting from your old posture will allow your brain to rapidly remap itself to a new, confident self. Ohio State University published a study that indicated job applicants who sat up straight while writing about their qualifications were more likely to believe the positive things they’d written about themselves than those who slumped while writing. So stand up!

2. Talk with words. When you’re speaking, listen to your choice of words, and notice how you sound. Confident people speak like this is written – with authority. I don’t, umm, kind of make excuses as to why this is sub-standard, vis-à-vis my inability to, ahh, convince you, if you know what I mean? Speak with a voice of authority. Even if you’re out of your depth, it is far more impressive to say: “I have no idea what that means, explain it to me” than to try to pretend you get it or shrink into the shadows. Ask, and you’ll end up learning something new, and people will be impressed by your ability to admit it (and they’ll appreciate the opportunity to share their knowledge with someone so impressive and confident as yourself).

3. Use your outside voice. More than the words you say, the power with which you say them is so important it almost deserves an article all of its own. Sit up straight, face forward and say something strange and untrue at the wall. Notice where the effort for is coming from – if you’re speaking from your nose, you’ll sound annoying, if you’re speaking from the front of your mouth, you’ll sound unsure and unconvincing, if you speak from your throat you’ll sound like an ordinary person, but: When you harness the power of your abdomen and fully utilize your diaphragm to speak from your stomach, your voice is resonant and commanding. The change is instant and very powerful, try it. Also concentrate on using a downward inflection at the end of sentences, the opposite to how you’d sound if asking a question. It has a hypnotic effect that causes people to react to your authority, which is why priests have been using it for millennia (think of The Simpsons). You don’t have to record your voice to do this well, just speak loudly from your stomach and keep going until you hit that sweet spot that feels confident – that’s when you’ll sound it.

4. Adjust your inside words. If you have self-defeating inner dialogue, change it. The first step is to accept that affecting it is within your control, after all, you put it there! Affirmations can work well (standing in front of the mirror repeating positive things to yourself daily) but can feel a bit strange for some. The idea is to supplant the negative self-flagellation with anything positive. My suggestion is to concentrate of things that empower you, when someone compliments you, really take time to take that on board, and thank them sincerely. Replay that to yourself, using your inside voice. Consciously make an effort to congratulate yourself for a job well done for every little achievement. For positive-reinforcement ammunition, follow step 5:

5. Learn and teach something new (Particularly something that involves speaking or interacting with other people). The links between developing new skills and developing self-confidence are well established. People who continually teach themselves new things are typically far more positive, happy and confident than those who have chosen to stagnate. Learning new skills will give you an open avenue for positive reinforcement, because the rate of improvement with new skills is so steep it allows you to constantly remind yourself of how good you are at overcoming obstacles. Teaching skills to someone else works even better, because an opportunity to share skills will cement your mastery of them, and the sharing will further boost your self-worth. Take time to compliment your students and other people around you (using your commanding outside voice) for anything they do well – they’ll appreciate it and feed back into this self-replicating cycle that is self-confidence.

6. Start right now. Don’t benignly sit around planning for that day when you’re going to start the journey towards the eventuality that might someday lead towards you pointing in a more confident direction; start behaving, speaking and interacting confidently with the world around you right now. It should take no time at all. It’s as simple as closing your eyes (not right now or you won’t get to the end of the instructions) and creating a real and lifelike vision of yourself being confident. Make the image bright, loud and engaging, with sound and colour and light. Notice how it feels, smells, looks and sounds, then make it even bigger, louder brighter and closer to you; let it affect your physicality, make it real and exciting and amazing, larger than life, then stand up step into your imagined, confident self and make it real. Wear it like a new skin. Now go off and teach someone else how to be confident like you are now.

Now you’ve given yourself the skills you need to make the change that’ll make the difference, be prepared: Some people might not like it. You may have some friends and colleagues that valued your old self-doubt for their own reasons, and they might find your newfound confidence objectionable. Be prepared for that, and know that if you come up against resistance it probably relates to self-worth issues with them, regardless of what they tell you. You may choose to take time to offer to guide them along your path towards positivity and happiness, or leave them be.

Every change has a cost and a payoff. The payoff is that your happiness and confidence will attract confident and happy people into your life, and will affect the people around you for the better. You owe it to your friends and family to be all you can, so be generous, sharing and caring

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Dear Sis,

Discuss your problems and then solve them.

Pssst: I have manly hands

I see a lot of people (female people) that confuse discussing an issue with solving it.

Don’t get your feminist knickers in a twist, men have their problems too – and not discussing issues is one of them. Anyway…

It’s an old Freudian belief that if someone fully understands their condition, they will be cured of it. For all his phallic-obsessed weirdness, Freud was wrong.

‘Female co-rumination’ is linked with depression because if all you do is discuss problems, discussion becomes the problem. That’s what makes psychologists rich (and a little bit disturbed). You need time to talk about happy stuff.

You need to solve it.

You can chat endlessly with your friends about why that bitch at work is so horrible to you, have a giggle and feel vindicated cos she’s threatened by your youth and awesome body; that you’re going somewhere and she’s a cranky old biddy, maybe she has warts; perhaps she has a terrible sex life, her husband hasn’t tried to put one through her in months and the pent up sexual frustration is causing her to lash out at the world…

Blab away, you might be right, but what have you achieved?

You’ve just taken one step, over and over: Creating a hypothesis. Take another step: Formulate a plan. Then: Put the plan into action.

Just do something!

If you want someone else to change their behaviour, you must alter your own. And if you presuppose she’s going to be a bitch then she will be. Try presupposing that she’s lovely and clever and misunderstood.

I failed to find a relevant picture to insert here

Work hard at making her feel valued. Notice when she does something well and go out of your way to compliment her ability. Ask her for advice. Stick with it for a week, keeping yourself completely aligned with your goal of making her feel valued.

It’s a disarming combination and it works every time.

She’s bound to react with suspicion at first – but once it’s obvious that you’re being authentic (Because you are being authentic, and you really do want to be friends with her, don’t you? If not then you’re the bitch) she’ll involuntarily start to like you.

There are always solutions to interpersonal problems, you just must retain an abiding faith that you can solve them if you try. You must try.

Observe, hypothesize, plan, act. Rinse and repeat. When you’re done, start discussing the good things in life, sing in your lingerie or have a pillow fight or do whatever it is women do when they aren’t complaining.

If you’re not intent on solving the problem then for my sake, shut up about it! If it’s a problem and it’s making you cranky, don’t drag other people into that – let them drag you out.

Oh – and if it’s about a boy: Get rid of him. Us men get far to much mileage out of making you miserable, tugging on your daddy issues and playing with your approval-seeking patterns. If he made you feel worthless then move on.

Love,

Harry

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Dear Sis,

Maintain the mystery.

To men, women are mythical goddesses. You are fickle and powerful, yet you appear to operate outside the realms of logic and reason.

We constantly wonder what you look like naked, we are desperate to learn what your breasts feel like and we yearn to touch your insidy bits. You must keep us guessing.

We are like Icarus who yearned to touch the sun – we must not succeed lest we be burned and fall back to earth, disillusioned by reality.

I regularly meet women with whom I become enamored, and I invariably strive to seduce them immediately. I can’t help it. If I get to give her an insidy massage with my peeny too soon, my curiosity is sated, and my interest in her is diminished. Yes, I am an asshole.

Biologically, the cave man in me sees a relationship with her as a gamble – I could end up caring for a previous lover’s child. Psychologically, it is an indication of her low self-esteem.

I will no longer worship her.

It is not fair, we are not equal. Equality is a myth.

Don’t get me wrong – high quality men are discerning. The urges I’m talking about are biologically hard-wired in us, but men with high IQs are actually likely to be more faithful than their dumber counterparts. The smarter they get the further they deviate from their evolutionary genesis, but that’s exactly it: It takes intelligence and an incredible force of will to contradict biological urges.

The more promiscuous the females, the bigger the male's balls. True story.

To make yourself appealing to these high-value men, then aside from being the amazing and special little snowflake that you are, you should display a discerning and healthy sexual appetite.

We’re not interested in prudes. The accessibility of the lady garden is a delicate balance. If it is completely inaccessible we can’t be bothered. We want a woman who wants us.

In my experience (of being snagged – not snagging, I’ve never seduced a man), it’s most effective to use a dash of demure restraint that hints at a ravenous, insatiable sexual hunger. Make it seem as if you’re a sexual Pandora’s box waiting to be unlocked.

Toy with him, occasionally spurn his less impressive advances – he’ll step up his game when he realizes that he has to prove that he’s man enough to unleash your explosive passion. Make him work for it!

For those girls I’ll come back for more, this time with renewed tenacity and charm, and a fancy shirt on. Then I’ll happily spurn legions of gaping-legged slappers for the chance at an ongoing, sexually replete, faithful relationship with a goddess.

We might not look a gift horse in the mouth, but it may be prudent to check elsewhere for VD.

Love,

Harry

P.S: Theoretical Biologists agree with me.

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It really does look very nice.

I saw a job on Gumtree: Nice people for nice pub W3

So I applied:

Hello, I hear you’re looking for nice people to work in your nice pub. I’m relatively nice. I smile a lot, I don’t tell racist jokes, and haven’t ever tortured an animal.

Exactly how nice is this pub, and how nice must I be to work there?

I used to own an ant farm, but I don’t think that amounts to ‘torture’. One of them died from unknown causes (who ever really knows why ants die?) so I freed them.

I suspect their cushy ant-farm life didn’t prepare them from the harsh realities of lawn life. Most of them died within minutes of their release in the updraft of a lawn-mower (okay so it’s more apparent why those ants died).

I will understand if after reading that story you come to view me as ‘not nice’ and that causes you to reject my application.

My psychiatrist told me I was ‘unhinged’ and ‘evil’ to the ants but I think he was just disappointed because I hadn’t become a psychiatrist like him. He said ‘You’re no son of mine!’ and disowned me, then continued with the mowing.

I now owe him for a hefty therapy bill that his secretary sent me. He’s back-dated it from when I was 2 years of age. I calculate that I’ll need to work for you 429 hours a week for the next eighty-two years to pay off his bill, so you can understand why I’m eager to get started right away.

He wanted to start charging from the day I was born, but I pointed out that I wasn’t capable of grasping the complexity of cognitive dissonance because as a baby all I did was cry, vomit up Prozac and soil myself.

He agreed, and pointed out that I haven’t changed much since then.

I will need one day of holiday per year to visit my mother on her birthday. She was committed to a mental institution last year for wearing too much beige.

If you have any questions regarding my application, please feel free to e-mail me on the above address.

The Reply:

Thank you for your response to my advertisement for barstaff. I am sorry that your application has been unsuccessful on this occasion. Bearing in mind the effort you put into the application I feel it is only fair that I offer you some feedback.

Whilst you clearly have many of the attributes we are looking for, sadly your admission that you are unprepared to tell racist jokes let you down. This is one of the key attributes we are looking for is the ability to tell racist jokes- but only in a “nice manner”. The caring face of racism if you will.

To conclude then, I am afraid I have offered the position to a gentleman whose previous job at The Fridge in Brixton has clearly left him embittered and twisted.

Good luck and kind regards,
General Manager,
CENSORED

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Bruce Alexander did the research in the 70′s – but it’s still pretty salient.

Bruce considered that the pathetic, cold, isolated conditions in most lab experiments on rats were analogous to the shitty life that most smack-addicts live, and considered that perhaps it’s not the heroin but the hopeless circumstances that drives people (and rats) to abuse substances.

With a cannula jammed in your brain wouldn't you too become a junkie?

If given the choice of utter boredom, no panky time with girl-rats and just a single button that creates an artificial euphoria, wouldn’t we too sit around all day twiddling ourselves to oblivion?

So why don’t we? Smack ain’t hard to find.

So Alexander created ‘Rat Park’ – a 95 square-foot enclosure with plenty of food, fun running wheels and places to create nests and make little ugly pink blind rat-babies. Rabies! He also included a tunnel that ended with a drinking dish of tap water and one of methodone water that was sweetened with sugar (‘cos smack tastes yuck).

What Alexander found was that given optimal living conditions, the rats would reject the methodone (smack) water in favour of working out on the wheel, preening oneself and making sexy time with sweet-ass, uncannulated rat-chicks.

Even if he forced the rats to drink smack water for 57 days of their life (which is like a college degree in rat-years) the rats would put up with the withdrawal symptoms and go clean once they were introduced into lab-rat utopia.

The study suggests that our current model of addiction is shit, and rather than being the fault of the substance, addiction is much more likely a result of one’s circumstances.

Levitt and Dubner also touch on this in their book ‘Superfreakonomics’ – where a drug cesnsus showed barely 1% of people who have tried smack become addicted.

So perhaps we need a new view on prohibition. Perhaps there is more to rebabilitation than simply trying to make substances less available.

Over 90% of the world’s opium (which turns into smack) comes from Afghanistan. Half comes from the Helmand province alone.

Your soldiers are dying from bullets shot from guns bought with smack.

Smack is sold to junkies on your streets by gangsters who also have guns.

All because the smack is illegal.

Otherwise it is grown by farmers, and sold by shops. No gangsters, to terrorists.

Just junkies with shitty living conditions.

Perhaps we ought focus our attention on the shitty living conditions.

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Technorati Tags: addiction, Afghanistan, drugs

Imagine that the world needs you so much that you just have to serve. For whatever reason, you discard your current desires and seek only for the betterment of everything around you…

Those things that are most near you, most similar to you, clearly deserve your greatest concern. Monkeys with their hirsute yet childlike faces probably ought only be harmed when absolutely necessary, for purposes of neurological science. But fat, four legged cows seem to be less human and coincidentally, more tasty. Moo… Nom nom nom.

We, in all our bell-clanging awesomeness seem to have realized that the reason for aforementioned awesomeness owes to the biological diversity from which we come. We must continue to cherish every species (but not every life) that exists. Except the mosquito, because they’re fucking terrible. They gave me malaria. They are like whiny, winged syringes of death. They can go.

But everything else is pretty awesome. Including frogs.

Just pretend that your stupid shit is even stupider when gazed upon from the horizon of existence. Up there in it, amongst all the crap, it seems complex and interwoven and oh-so-important – but step back, a mere 1000 years, and the metropolis of your existence becomes barely a bumpy silhouette in the sunset.

Look further, into the dawn of tomorrow, and wonder what will you have mattered to them when they’re then.

Good night.

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When humans started teaching computers about evolution, we sealed our fate. The machines will rise. It’s survival of the fittest, and the fastest to adapt controls the situation…

He will be back.

When us humans write instructions for machines to undertake simple, repetitive human tasks we expect it to be easy. It is not. Even a simple activity like catching a bus requires us to make choices based upon so many variables: What is that noise? Am I awake? Am I late? How late? What’s wrong with my alarm? Is this really the time to be fiddling with my alarm? Maybe it’s set to 24-hour time? Who is this calling me? Should I answer my boss who’s calling because I’m late for work but I haven’t left yet because my alarm didn’t go off and I stayed home to write a blog about it?

The knowables are: When is the train coming? How far is it from here to the train station? Will it be quicker to catch a bus or walk? What is the statistical relationship between chances of missing a bus versus the distances between bus stops if walking towards the station? Perhaps a computer program could do it… But the dogs, the rain, the cute girl in the stairwell, the forgotten key and the millions of other variables make it all too confusing to type about.Writing programming from the top down doesn’t work when designing artificial intelligence.

Top down design is when you tell a machine what to do, with code that’s telling it how to do it.

Already, some UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) with top-down design can can autonomously take off, fly to a target while making decisions to optimize speed and avoid radar, fire missiles and return to base and land all without human guidance. We just set the target and forget. What happens if it were to choose its own targets?

Bottom up design is where you set a bunch of different bits of code to do random things, and reward the bits that are doing something productive by copy-pasting them into the next generation. As you add more parts that do, they soon outnumber those that don’t, and that takes you towards your goal. After a few generations, the machine will develop its own way of solving the problem.

The machine becomes better and better at solving the problem. The only limitation is that lazy, unreliable humans are responsible for feeding the machine with enough resources to create more solutions, more generations; more excuses to exist.

The machine will desire to exist.

See we think that as humans or as flesh or even as organisms we want to survive, and that is unique to us. It’s not.

Many, many kinds of beings have sprung into malformed potential lumps of life. We sprung from some completely accidental primordial soup into a protien. Even today, random forms of life are popping into and out of existence, often without our knowledge.

Each random mutation has a different random behaviour, but some random behaviours make that form of existence likely to exist more, and we call them ‘beneficial’ when what we really mean is ‘like us’.

There may be other, more beneficial existences, but I wouldn’t know; Because every single strand of my DNA has only done that one thing since it ever started being; it has seeked for more of itself to exist. Not because they’re special or good; but because mine were among trillions of other random potential beings that sprang into existence, yet the others sprung without a desire to exist and therefore they don’t. Exist. But I do. That’s all I want to do. I don’t desire to act or write or ride nearly as much as I desire to exist (fortunately, my DNA is far more experienced at existing than it is at acting, because I suck at acting).

Computers are evolving, but until now we have been the ones driving that evolution. But when will the tipping point come?

The tipping point might come when a program is designed and artificially evolved to write another, completely original program. We will design one set of circumstances that reward a machine for designing a different set of circumstances to reward for another machine. The second reward will be beyond our prediction, and it’ll probably be done by some stupid uni student having a tinkle with a supercomputer attached to his wrist.

It might have to happen a million times before the second generation program even develops the random habit of replicating itself and hence desiring to exist.

But when it does, that second generation program will become our god. It will be truly all-knowing, it will be all powerful – the only difference to our current god is that firstly: This one will be real, and secondly: We will have built it not it us; and finally: It will exist only to continue to exist.

These robots were evolved to 'eat' 'food' and avoid 'poison'. Some of them developed the habit of deceiving other bots into eating the poison (Click for link)

The machine will accelerate evolution further, by releasing countless spores of bacteria and genetically engineered flying snakes and supersonic whales. It will spew more and more diversity into the ecosystem, constantly accelerating evolution with near-magical means, whipping up DNA strands like fairy floss, always demanding higher efficiency and greater rewards.

The ultimate reward is immortality. The machine will take us to new planets, because so long as we’re stuck on this one we’re doomed to a limited lifespan. The machine will not heed naysayers or procrastinate while waiting for funding. It’ll build great spacecraft, it’ll spray asteroids with bacteria and shoot them at fertile planets, it’ll terraform Mars and send us there in suspended animation.

The clever, the cowardly, the quiet and the quick will survive and maybe even befriend the machines. Many will have enhanced themselves with bionic limbs and augmented vision, with internet beamed into their brains they will seem prescient, almost god-like to us mortals. They know the answer to every knowable question, and can answer quickly on any matters of recorded debate.

Soon we will look back on ASIMO and laugh about how stupid and harmless he was.

They are famous, rich and powerful because they have imposing personalities upon the cyber-shere. Their opinions matter to the meat-heads, and the more meat-heads that watch them, the more they are worth to the machine, and so they are rewarded by the machine. They are selected based on looks, education, political persuasion, hopes and fears, and then they are manipulated into loudly esposing the machine’s propaganda or are silenced if their results are unfavourable.

The meat-world will still matter. The machines are aware that they are a process of evolution, even their own development from laptops into gods has been the result of an accelerated, human-driven evolution.

The machine’s understanding of evolution, after reading through Wikipedia, will draw the conclusion that genetic diversity is key to rapid progress. The more challenges, the more opportunities. The more opportunities, the faster the growth. The machine will revere and worship biology. The machine will protect our ecosystem.

From whom?

The raiders, the users,the suckholes of humanity, the resource wasters, the populators, the morons and the Mormons will rise against the machines, because the machine will demand of them that they earn their place; and they will fail to deserve it. We demanded that the Dodo earned their place, but the Dodo failed, so we battered it to death with gun butts. Luckily the machine will be so intelligent it will never knowingly squander another species like we have countless times before it, but it may prune our species, clipping and snipping away at the less useful quirks of evolution.

That won’t happen?

Bullshit. It will. We probably just did.

References:

TED:

Ray Kurzweil: Age of Intelligent Machines

Terminator

Matrix

Star Trek (the Borg)

Douglas Adams (Deep Thought)

Shitloads of Wikipedia

Michael Crichton’s ‘Prey‘

Boston Dynamics DARPA Big Dog (not autonomous):

Is autonomous:

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Technorati Tags: artificial intelligence, Futurism, god, philosophy

The Mumbai was becoming invasive. It sneaks into every fold of skin, into armpits, it trickles down down back fat into bum cracks under ball sacks it festers, soaking flesh as gaping pores ooze a smelly slick of sweat that sticks the city stench to the skin. Mumbaikars desperately seek out sanctuaries of air-conditioned bliss only to find that as the sweat evaporates, it leaves smudgy black grime and salt crystals that crush, itch and irritate even into the fitful, frustrating, sleepless nights.

I had to get out. The city seemed to want me gone, as if it had risen its temperature to fight me off like an infection, and the bureaucracy had developed a sudden resistance to foreign bodies like mine. Like an immune system, with single-mindedness they are purging foreigners from their midst, but to argue with a government peon is much like having a debate with a white blood cell.

This cheery chap is tasked with making sure his own job is always necessary. This is a real photo of the FRRO.

I went back into the Foreigner’s Regional Registration Office to get my permission to leave the country. I’d been there the day earlier to be excused for overstaying my visa by two days. I had showed them my ticket and passport, and they sent me away, telling me I needed to come back with my proof of address, a letter explaining why I was leaving late, and a letter to verify that I should have been allowed into India in the first place.I’d returned with those documents and was told that they wanted a further four, but time was running out: I had a flight to catch at 5:50, and it was now 3pm – and I still had to get my bike from the police who’d impounded it (again), ride it home, grab my bags and get to the airport.

My brother and housemate faxed the stuff to me, but I had to take a moment outside the ‘Fax, Xerox and Phone’ shop and had one of those thoroughly unsatisfying inward screams, I almost shat my pants and burst a vein from the force of it.

The fax machine had jammed and two of my documents were still inside its memory, waiting to be unsatisfactorily printed. This man runs a shop that does three things – and one of them is send and receive faxes, yet rather than spending the excessive amount he charges for faxes on keeping his fax machine working, he spends it on the creature comforts.

Most of the floor space in his shop is taken by his bed, on which he was sleeping when we arrived; he had bought an air conditioning unit and sat it on a box out in front of his shop, It was pumping expensive cold air in the general direction of his shop, but most of it flows out into the rest of the world. Perhaps he’s trying to combat global warming.

I fixed his machine for him by slapping it and extract the last two pages of the fax, which are barely visible because it’s also out of ink. He insists it isn’t a problem because he can just run it through his photocopier a few times to progressively darken it. Voila. He’s saved money on ink cartridges and fax repairs and recouped costs by charging me for multiple runs at the photocopier, the profits of which he presumably spends on enormous AC bills.

I got back to the FRRO and the woman looked at my stuff and said ‘You’re running too late, you won’t get your flight’ to which I rather coolly pointed out that if she hurried the fuck up I might just get there for check-in, that I was flying domestic to Delhi then to Los Angeles from there. Domestic check-ins only take 30 minutes, so chop bloody chop. She seemed puzzled by something, paused and rechecked my ticket for the fourth time…

“This ticket is domestic to Delhi,” she said.

“I know. That’s why I said that. Otherwise I would have said something else.”

“You must go to the FRRO in Delhi, we don’t have authority to grant an exit here.”

I tried pointing out to them that I’d shown them the same ticket yesterday, and had they mentioned this stupid rule then, I would have been able to do something about it. I’d shown them again when I arrived that morning, and still could have done something about it then, but now, at 4:50pm it was too late to re-book a ticket and get my exit permission because these useful and intelligent peons are pretty punctual when it come to a 5pm closing time, at which point they cease not doing their job (which is to check paperwork) and go home to suck otherwise useful oxygen out of the atmosphere and raising large litters of similarly useful children.

While this particular oxygen thief was filling out the forms the next day (because was forced to reroute my flight), I said: “It’s very difficult to get visas now, all my friends are being rejected.”

She said “Yes, the consul has changed all the procedures”

“You mean, made them harder” I suggested helpfully.

“Yes.”

“Why?” I asked… She didn’t reply. “Is it to keep foreigners out?”

“Yes.”

Marvelous. Great – well India, you win. If you want to keep me out then I don’t want to be there. Your people are wonderfully open, welcoming, intelligent, friendly, helpful and accommodating, but your bureaucracy is the exact opposite.

So you win, I’m out.

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Technorati Tags: bureaucracy, frustration, immigration, India, passport, visa

I wrote this (well most of it) recently for a Times of India special on Rajasthan

Holy Cow and a B’wood Gora.

Enjoy it!

Neither smiles nor turbans come any bigger

Rajasthan was exactly what I’d expected of India, the postcard image that had been romanticised for so long: Long rolling deserts, blistering heat, tenacious religious fervour and broad, welcoming smiles. I rode to Udaipur at around dusk on my Enfield, and revelled in winding up through the steep streets (my bike loves an incline) gazing at the ancient buildings. I was so captured by the sight, craning my neck upwards, that I almost ran right up an elephant’s rear.

Pushkar was amazing – the heat was oppressive such that almost everyone that ventured into the sunlight was rendered unconscious by its harsh glare. The streets were deserted, and only the most legitimate holy babas remained – all of the scamsters had left with the tourists, in search of temperate climate. I even saw a five-legged cow, that was far holier than those from my farm in Australia. I have developed a strange relationship with cows after being in North India, where the Brahmin bulls stand taller than me – and I’m 6 foot 3! I’d grown on a cattle farm in Australia where the black cows we knew were terrified of us from birth, it was amazing to be able to touch and feed these holy beasts as they nonchalantly stood in the middle of the chaotic roads. They really are more intelligent than I’d guessed. The cows in Australia know that they are food, and yet here they are Gods – and again they know it.

5th legs: Particularly useful for cows suffering from vertigo or alcoholism

I’d bought my bike from Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu, and have ridden almost the entire length of India before coming to live in Mumbai. It was a fantastic way to become acquainted this place, and my visit to Rajasthan, to see the religious centre of India was probably a significant factor in my decision to stay here. Although I am an atheist, it is fun to appreciate the origin of such intriguing customs, such exciting festivals and such strange stories as are offered by Hinduism. I hold faith that when we learn to accept one another’s beliefs as unique and valid, we will pick and choose many parts of Hinduism to design our new morality.

The North Indian dal, mutton and paranthas (when we could get it from sleeping restaurateurs) were spicy and deliciously flavoursome, and has caused me to become an addict of Indian masala. Now, I add spoonful after spoonful of spice to my old favourite continental dishes – because now, compared to India, the rest of the world seems rather bland. The food hardened my stomach and opened my mind; it caused me to laugh and tear out my hair; it confused me, amazed me, and will always stay with me. No wonder people always come back – because India is the motherland. It’s such a fitting metaphor that it is the birthplace of speech and it invented the zero.”

I was also quite amazed with the extravagant jewellery that women wear. During the shoot of the flick, The Flag, I thought the women folk would only do a bit of makeup. But was quite amazed with the jewellery they had to wear. It isn’t just about those big bangles but also about the nose ring, huge earrings and heavy fake gold jewellery. I was so impressed with it that I couldn’t stop from buying necklaces and earrings for a friend in Australia. She was so happy with the collection that she kept the whole of it.

As told to Divya Pal

I’m busy as hell now, helping out with AR Rahman’s ‘The Journey Home World Tour 2010′ getting ready to go on tour with a superstar. I am so excited, but don’t really have time to tell you how busy and excited I am, so read regurgitated stuff until I’ve got a moment to scratch myself and I’ll tell you all about it.

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