The sad spider

Found this spider in my garden.  I first thought its carrying its egg case.  But this is the spider's body!

This looks like a very sad spider.

Influencing Ads

   I did not like the ad of a particular biscuit brand.  In that ad, the younger brother eats all the biscuits and entraps his elder brother who gets scolded by their mom.  There are a few more ads from the same biscuit brand in which kids cause problem for others and get away with it.

   There was a detergent ad where kids splash dirt on another man and then tell him that it can be washed for free because that brand is giving some percent extra for free.  What about the inconvenience caused to that guy.  The detergent may be free, but what about the effort and time required to clean it.

  I have seen similar ads for other products which hint that being bad is OK, entrapping others is OK, being troublesome is OK, causing problems for others is OK.

  Yes, kids are mischievous.  Kids are troublesome.  They do mess up stuff.  But that should be for learning.  Its must not be a right.

  Oh, how I hated those ads.  I striked all these products off my purchase list.

  Then I saw the Mahindra bike ad by Aamir Khan.  There he his making pun of all other bike ads.  Thats when I noticed what other bike ads were hinting at.  And I was buying into their hints all this time!!  I realized its not just kids, but even grown ups mind can be easily manipulated by such ads.

  Thats it!  All those bikes are off the purchase list as well!  From now on, I won't just watch ads.  I'll also watch out for what they are hinting.

  My favourite ad is a person sleeping on a chair at an airport when another person wakes him up and tells him that his hair oil is spoiling the chair.  When the first person asks whats his problem the second person, while wiping the chairs, says that he has paid enough tax to sponsor at least 7-8 chairs for the airport.

   A  bike guy hits my bike from behind and then shouts at me.  I see a bike guy jump a signal and is hit by a car but the car guy is forced to pay.  A student gets thrown out of the class for misconduct but the teacher is forced to apologize.

   I don't think these guys are getting influenced by the ads.  Its these kind of behaviour that is depicted in such ads.  And it propagates.  Because of both ads and what they see around them.

   Looking at the trend in human behaviour, my list of not-to-purchase-items may grow for ever.  Maybe I should prepare a people-to-avoid list as well...

Compulsive Honking Syndrome

Compulsive Honking Syndrome is an acquired syndrome. Mostly fed in by the driving school or whoever taught driving. Most people are very scared when they handle a car's steering wheel or a bike's handle for the first time. Honking is least of their priorities. The trainers then scare the learners about potential consequences of causing any damage. So much so that honking gets embedded in their survival instinct.

There are two types of CHS.

1. Periodic honking

2. Obstacle honking

Periodic honking is timer based. Every 'x' seconds the a mental timer fires and the driver honks. One day I was following a guy on a bike who would honk every 9 seconds. The road was 100 ft wide, no vehicles, pedestrians, potholes or humps in sight. But he would still honk periodically. This guy's trainer must have forced him to honk so much that it is now programmed in his sub-conscious mind. Even though he appeared to be relaxed, the pressure would slowly build in his sub-conscious mind and hearing his own vehicle's honk would release all the pressure. Like a pressure cooker. The pressure is created by his survival instincts.

Obstacle honking is very simple: "Honk at any obstacle or at any potential obstacle that may move in your path or in any of your path options (if you have multiple options) if you were driving 20% faster than your current speed". That means you have to honk at that pedestrian that you see few hundred meters ahead who would definitely move out of your path by the time you reach it. This is also a trained minds job. The trainer would have jumped out of the seat everytime he sees an obstacle. This would appear to the trainee as if this is a mandated requirement to honk at obstacles.

Conscious driving happens only during the training period. After that the sub-conscious mind takes over the driving. Thats leaves the conscious mind free to to talk about politics/cricket or ogle at large posters across the city even while driving (almost) safely. If the training triggers CHS, that gets programmed in the subconscious mind as well.

Well, the good news is: CHS is completely curable. It requires conscious observation and re-training the mind.

Bangalore Traffic

After observing the evolution of Bangalore traffic and driving through it for considerable time, I proclaim myself as an expert on traffic analysis. I can now give free traffic analysis, just like the way most people analyze cricket. I'll start writing a series of blogs in this regard.

Watch out for BlrTraffic label.