Cherry Mistmas everyone!!!!!!

Sarkozy n'a jamais mangé chez quelqu'un!

Putting fun into politics! finally!!!

Samosa Blog / Jealousy and French rail workers

I haven’t posted since a while now, not because I had nothing to say but because I had nothing interesting to share.

When I started this blog a few months back, my idea was to share the experiences of my life and to focus on the lessons learned, this is still my main objective but I decided to add a little spice to samosa blog by writing about the things that don’t make me happy or that purely disgust me. As a close friend said to me it is important to show the different facet’s of my ever so complex personality ;)

In my work, I try as much as possible to avoid pointing fingers at my co-workers when mistakes are made, for the simple reason that we all make mistakes and it is counterproductive in the long run for any organisation or work relationship.

The reason why I mention my work “ethics” is primarily because there is a huge amount of jealousy in France and it is only since I started working that I realise it is an ever growing cancer in our society.

What made it all click was a conversation with an old friend who wanted to send me a PowerPoint presentation about the advantages French rail workers had.

He was outraged by these benefits and during the whole conversation all I could think about was why he felt so angry at them when really he should be glad for them.

The fact of the matter is that there lives a sentiment that we should all have living and work conditions that are equal. Reaching some sort of balance would be a fantastic thing and I believe this is what most citizens on this planet wish for every single day.

Nevertheless, I have the feeling that most citizens would rather pull others down than hoist themselves up. I personally am happy that French rail workers have advantages even though I don’t have those advantages in my work, but I do have other advantages that make up for this gap that disturbs so many of our citizens.

It is hard for me to be faced with individuals who look at our society with a self centred point of view as if the French rail worker was reaching into his pocket and was thus making the individuals life worst.

Human being have never managed to survive individually, teamwork is always more productive than working alone, having someone in your life is always better than being alone so why do people view society and its mechanics as a one way street that leads to them?

I am tired of hearing people complain egoistically about their problems in a system that attempts to care for them and amazingly succeeds a great deal.

Be grateful of what you have, always wish for more and fight for it, the French rail workers did and so can you.

Until the next post,

good night

Perhaps the most beautiful letter ever written

I have always been a great admirer of Nietzsche. For me, he was far more than a philosopher, the dimension of his writings puts us beyond the simple role of the reader. The best example of this extra dimension in his thinking is his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, A Book for All and None.

Above all, this letter is a marvellous vision of friendship and love that was put down on paper decades ago and that retains its emotional, spiritual and philosophical value to this day.

This letter was written by Nietzsche to his friend Franz Overbeck in 1881.

Genoa, November 14, 1881: Letter to Franz Overbeck

"My dear friend, what is this our life? A boat that swims in the sea, and all one knows for certain about it is that one day it will capsize. Here we are, two good old boats that have been faithful neighbors, and above all your hand has done its best to keep me from "capsizing"! Let us then continue our voyage—each for the other's sake, for a long time yet, a long time! We should miss each other so much! Tolerably calm seas and good winds and above all sun—what I wish for myself, I wish for you, too, and am sorry that my gratitude can find expression only in such a wish and has no influence at all on wind or weather. [....]"

Murphy's Laws

I have been a devotee of Murphy’s Law for years now and I thought I would share a few of my favourites with all of you.

As an optimist, I try and embrace the good side of life and to persecute relentlessly the things that could make my life a living hell if I let them.

In this context Murphy’s Laws are at the absolute opposite of my optimism as they are all extremely pessimistic but, as in everything it is usually the things that we don’t agree with that make us smile, my post on Borats movie attempted to highlight the need to express and laugh about things even if we don’t agree with them at all.

Hence, after this preparatory speech here are the above mentioned quotes:

General Laws

“If anything can go wrong, it will”

“If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.”

“Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.”

“If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.”

“Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure.”

“If there is a possibility of several things going wrong the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.”

Love Laws

“Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.”

“The amount of love someone feels for you is inversely proportional to how much you love them.”

“The qualities that most attract a woman to a man are usually the same ones she can't stand years later.”

“Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you won't either.”

“If the effort that went in research on the female bosom had gone into our space program, we would now be running hot-dog stands on the moon.”

And remember “Smile, it makes people wonder what you are thinking.”

Until tomorrow,

Good night

Jagshemash!!!

I realised that I always post on serious subjects like happiness etc.
Since I've been a great fan of Sacha Baron Cohen (AKA Ali G / Bruno / Borat) for ages now, I thought this was the best time to tell you about my view of his unique humour now that his movie has been released worldwide.
As you might know by now, Borat jokes about everything from patriotism to women, gays and Jews, many find it offensive but most laugh terribly at his amazing humour and at the way he manages to bring out the worst in people. (In the movie he enters a weapons store and asks for the best gun to kill a Jew, the shopkeeper without even blinking recommends a .45)
I've always believed humour was one of those things that couldn’t be controlled and should be free of all censorship, who are we at the end of the day to say that something is or isn’t appropriate. Hiding racism and anti-Semitism, burying them as if they didn’t exist at all in our "civilised" countries fails at countering them because sadly many people are racists and anti-Semites. The best way to get rid of these demons is to show how ridicule they are and Borat does an amazing job at that. By portraying himself as a racist idiot he shows the ridicule of racism, the shear intellectual void that surrounds it, the imbecile’s vision of a world divided not by personal growth or achievement but by pure hate based on irrational, unscientific rumours where Jews have claws and black people are lazy thieves.
As a “vanilla face” that knows and loves Borats talent I encourage everyone of you to go and see the movie and sadly, you might realise that there are probably some of the stereotypes in it that you might believe in yourself and that you never thought where this unworthy of your intellect.

Good night and happy time!!!

Tomorrow’s happiness is today’s anguish

I’ve thinking about the future allot in my life and I realised sometime back now that I kept thinking that things would be better in the future that for many reasons tomorrow was going to the way today should be.

When I get that new computer, when I get that car I always wanted, when I have a house, a new flat etc. but really thinking that the future will bring us happiness just gives us an excuse to be unhappy or unsatisfied today.

This allows us to avoid taking the steps that would make our everyday life better now.

I like to call it the “live today, be happy tomorrow paradox”.

As we move along in life, as everyday appears to be a collection of small or big problems we waste our lives saving up to be happy as if the future was something guarantied to be better but as I see it, it only leads to bad days, terrible weeks and a shit life.

We focus on today’s problems when we should focus on the bright sides because at the end of the day that’s all we are going to get, however much money we make, and however successful we become.

Dr Frankl in his brilliant book “Mans search for meaning” demonstrates that we are all looking for meaning and that all our materialistic desires are deprived of it.

The question that naturally springs is hence, what is our meaning in life; sadly this is something we must each discover alone.

Fighting the urge to complain

In regard to my post about happiness I had a testing experience with British Airways this weekend because of the less than honest practise of overbooking.
Not moaning about it really helped me enjoy the 4 star hotel I fought to spend my night in Paris in, instead of being with my girlfriend Chili who lives and works in London.
I guess rationalising the whole situation and getting the better of it made it all ok but it was a challenge to avoid sinking into a string of complaints that would have totally taken down my moral.
Its always interesting when you believe you have developed a way of avoiding the horror of perpetual complaining, to have test like these thrown at you randomly as if someone up there said "hmm ok you think you got it all sorted out, now eat this"

Social Project

I've lived in Paris for a few months now and I travel to work everyday, like so many of us, using the capitals amazing mass transit network.

Since my girlfriend Chili moved to London, I’ve started a social experiment in the MTN and while driving around with the company car.

Now it’s important to know that in Paris, like in most big cities, people are not very inclined towards communication when using public transport, they are even rude as reaching home as fast as possible seems to be the local sport.

Every morning free newspapers are distributed around town and my fellow citizens appreciate them a lot.

My social project “would you like the papers with that Samosa?” is to gather those newspapers in the morning and in the evening and when I head back home and there are no more newspapers available I give them to the person next to me after having read them. Now you must be telling yourself “this is normal” but it isn’t here in Paris were people would rather put the newspaper in their bag than risk talking to the person next to them.

So I’ve been doing this for about a month and a half now, asking the person next to me if he would like the papers, most say yes as they look at me with envy while I’m reading it just before, some say no, some even accept it and then put it in their bag.

The idea is that at the end of the day, people will start sharing the paper with others instead of keeping it to themselves, since at some point I or one of my “victims” will have given it to them.

The same thing applies to my other social project Samosa’s own “let the damn car that’s stuck in traffic pass”

When I drive in Paris were traffic is like in Bombay, I let people who are stuck in the middle of the road or trying to take a turn pass, something that nobody does here.

I believe that the next time the person I let pass sees someone else stuck somewhere he or she will let them pass as well and that if he doesn’t he’ll feel bad about it.

I realise that these are very optimistic ideas but I find it important to break the loop in which we are all entangled, not communicating, fending for ourselves behind our steering wheel in a kind of Darwinian nightmare where it’s everyone for themselves.

My dream is that someday, someone I don’t know will ask me if I want the newspaper in the subway and that when I’m trying to take a left turn and nobody lets me pass someone will block traffic to let me take my left turn.

These are actions I take because they would make life simpler, it’s just being polite and generous when you can, and everybody knows that’s how it ought to be especially in stressful environments.

Happiness

I spend allot of time wondering what I truly believe in and what are the things in my life that make me a happy person.

As I got older and I got to understand myself a bit better I realised on of the main contributors to my happiness was the lack of energy I would direct at things that made my life complicated and frustrating.

I am no nihilist, nevertheless my experience with situations that cause me to worry or feel stressed has led me to device strategies to avoid letting these situations ruin my life.

The main idea here is that the more energy I’m going to feed into a displeasing situation the more the situation will reduce my general happiness.

Ignoring small everyday situations and not complaining about them breaks the loop in which I have found myself entangled in so many times.

I walk down the road and realise I forgot my subway pass and I’m late for work, at that moment two options open to me in how I deal with the situation:

1 I moan about it, I complain and I run back to get my pass believing this is the first of a series of events that’ll ruin my day as if I had gotten up on the wrong foot.

2 I laugh about it, I let the situation slide of me giving it no importance at all and I get my pass from my house.

Either way I'm gonna be late.

Obviously option 2 is the better choice because life is full of situations that’ll make it a hassle.

The idea is too ignore the situations that are of no importance and to concentrate with dealing with the ones that do matter at a deeper level. This approach has the advantage of giving me the necessary energy to concentrate on the important things instead of wasting it on unimportant events that I most of the time have no control over.

It is so easy to make our lives a living hell by letting small things condense into bigger and bigger issues and problems, cutting the grass under a situations foot pre-emptively allows me to go about my life in relative happiness.

We all have strategies to cope with life’s situations it would be great if we could share them here together.

I think the most important thing to remember is that many small problems lead to bad days, terrible weeks and at the end of the day a shitty life. That’s what I try to avoid.

Welcom to my blog

Hi everyone,

As with many blogs this a place where thoughts will be expressed whatever their nature and without any censorship. Please contribute if you read anything interesting here.

74Z4