Now that placement season is on us, it is a good time to review some “guidelines” on how to get a job. A lot of people unnecessarily get stressed about making a living in this world etc…, but as this article will show you, it is just a matter of following a few simple steps.

Résumé
Many people don’t know this, but “résumé” is a french word that means “fictional short story”. It is usually 2-3 pages long, and details the chronicles of your life in an entertaining fashion. What you write in your resume is very important, and if you are having trouble filling it up with funny anecdotes, this exercise may help:

Think about what Superman would do if he had Einstein’s IQ and could time travel. Write down all his adventures in your resume and put your signature at the end of it.

Hobbies
Most resumes have a “hobbies” or “interests” section. The key to filling up this section is to write unverifiable claims that show what an interesting person you are. Here are some tips to fill this section:
Wrong: “Hobbies: Lazing around, testing various sleep-inducing methods and collecting swear words in different languages”
Right: “Studying abstract impressionism, skydiving, helping impoverished poor people.”

No need to mention that the abstract impressionism is “TV”, skydiving is really throwing paper planes from rooftops and the impoverished poor person you are helping is yourself.

Interview
This may sound ironic, but the best way to do well in an interview is to have a misplaced sense of very high self-esteem. Most interviewers can immediately detect if you are low on what’s called “self-confidence”, so you have to go into the interview thinking you are Robert De Nero (or Julia Roberts for you ladies). Here are some tips to get you through the interview:

Puzzles
Think about it: there are more candidates than there are puzzles, so the interviewer is going to be asking the same questions over and over again. The best strategy is to ask your friends who went to the interview before you, and then act surprised when the interviewer asks you the same question. When asked a question you know the answer to:

Wrong reaction: “Aahaaa! I know this one. Page 45 of ‘100 most asked interview questions‘. Answer is 25″
Right reaction: “Hmm… Interesting. I will break down this problem into components…” (…5 minutes later…) “…and therefore, by equation 5 above, the answer is 25.”

“What are your weaknesses?”
This is a very popular interviewing question, designed to measure your self-confidence. Be careful when answering this one.

Wrong Answer: “Chocolate is my biggest weakness. No, wait… French Fries. No, Chocolates. Wait…It’s really french fries…I think.”
Worse Answer: “Gossip”

The right answer is to say something that is really an advantage to the company, and you cannot help doing it.

Right Answer: “I tend to work too hard, sometimes late into the night, because I find it unable to give up on a problem without finishing it, because I want all my colleagues and bosses to like me so much, that I am willing to do their laundry too.”

“Do you have any questions for me?”
Most interviewers will end with this question. This question is one of the most misunderstood parts of the interview. Be careful of asking the wrong question here.

Wrong question: “Does the company make you work like a donkey while constantly beating your behind with a stick?”
Worse question: “Are you allowed to take office supplies like pens and staplers home?”

When the interviewer asks this question, what he is really saying is “I’ve had a long day taking to half-brained, overanxious kids who want nothing but money from this company. Do you know that the company is not even paying me overtime for interviewing you?”

So, in this situation, don’t trouble the interviewer by asking about the company. He is already frustrated with it, and don’t remind the interviewer about it. Ask instead about his dog, or if he saw the latest Rakhi Sawant movie.

Follow these steps properly, and you will not be disappointed. Let me know how it goes.

• 16 Comments

[This is part 2 of a series. Part 1 is here]

Legend has it that Jon Nash invented Game Theory to figure out the best strategy that can be used to pick up girls in a bar. This eventually led to the Nobel Prize in Economics (and he also got the girl, By the way), but I figure that game theory can be used for much more practical applications: Getting out of household chores. Take that, Jon Nash.

So I’d managed to convince The Wife to try out the auction method to allocate household chores. After much cajoling, she’d finally agreed, and we were going to have a “trial run” with 4 household chores. We were ready to start the auction, and I was ready with my strategy!

<WARNING: MATH CONTENT!>
The auction was designed as a combinatorial, no-reserve auction. In game theory terms, this was a 2-person zero-sum game, and my strategy was to bid up one item to 3T/4 (where T is total money available), so that I could buy the rest of the items, since x < 3T/4, and I could win the rest.
</WARNING>

So the auction starts in earnest. The wife notices that I’ve started to bid a bit heavily on the ‘I Will Not Make The Bed’ chore. She starts to get a little suspicious, and she bids on that item too. Rs. 200. I bid Rs. 300. She really wants to teach me a lesson, I think, because she ups the bidding on the item, and bids Rs. 350. The image of me getting up all sleepy headed in the morning and struggling to make the bed day after day comes to my mind. I start to feel a bit nervous. I bid Rs. 400.

The wife gives me a stare. Ah, she’s trying to psych me. But I’m not going to fall for her mind games. I want to stare right back, but I don’t really have the guts to do it, so I stare at the ceiling fan instead.

She bids Rs. 450 on it. This is my chance!

I suddenly switch strategy and start to bid on the other items. Since she has so much of her fake money tied up on the “I Will Not Make The Bed” item, I outbid her on every of the other items. She doesn’t seem to be too worried about this, (probably because she does all these chores anyway, and the prospect of making me make the bed every morning is pleasing her no end).

Wife: “So I guess that’s it. All the chores have been sold, and looks like you have to make the bed! You can start right away!”

Hah! The auction may be over, but the game is not. Like the undead cursed thing from the movie The Mummy said, “The End is only The Beginning“.

Me: “Actually, I would like to apply for a loan from the HCB.”
Wife: “HCB?”
Me: “Yes, the HouseHold Central Bank. I’m going to use all the items that I won as collateral, and borrow Rs. 500 from the bank.”
Wife: “Wait… How did the HCB get the money to lend to you?”
Me: “Oh, all the proceeds of the auction go to the HCB…”
Wife: “Wait a minute… How can you…”

Before she can protest, I interrupt her.

Me: “So, I’m going to use this Rs. 500 and buy the “I Will Not Make The Bed” chore as well.”
Wife: “Hey, wait a minute. I won that!”
Me: “But I’m buying it for a higher price than you paid, so it’s fair.”
Wife: “In that case, I am also going to apply for a loan too!”
Me: “Unfortunately, you don’t have any collateral to apply for loan, since you don’t own any chores now. But if you want to put your remaining money in a HCB fixed deposit, you can earn an annual interest rate of 9%, so you can try again next year”

The Wife is giving me The Look.

Wife: “So lets summarize. Your bank took all the money from me, I didn’t win ANY chores in the auction, and not only did you win everything, you will also not do any chores around the house. Correct?”

Me: “That is correct. See? By following the rules of the free market and the banking system, you can see that everyone benefits tremendously.”

Apparently, I was profoundly mistaken. What happened next was rather unconventional, but I was forced to accept it as “fair” under some severe threats of being homeless. The Wife proceeded to appoint herself as the Director of the Household Central Bank, and made some questionable “investment decisions” to “lend” ALL the chores to herself.

So here I am, cleaning the dining table, yet again. Not only that, I also have to make the bed from now on. Arrrrghhh! I am now preparing a petition to the Director of the Household Central Bank to waive off loans held by some poor subjects.

• 7 Comments

There comes a time in every married man’s life that he is faced with the difficult prospect of having to cut tomatoes. If you have had any experience with vegetables, you’ll know it is a painful and difficult experience. I’m sure making someone cut violates some fundamental human rights, but I’ve not been able to find the relevant law yet. I’m still working on it.

In the meanwhile, I’ve come up with some innovative strategies that I’ve been using over the past few months to avoid getting assigned any work, especially cutting tomatoes. I call these strategies Pretty Effective Tomato Avoidance or PETA.

Strategy #1: The preemptive denial
The preemptive denial is a very effective strategy, but it needs to be executed very delicately. The core of this strategy is to avoid getting assigned the cutting of tomatoes in the first place by making oneself seemingly unavailable. And for this strategy, I must extend my most sincere thanks to Mr. Lalit Modi for creating the Indian Premier League matches. You see, the IPL matches are all highly optimized for PETA (Pretty Effective Tomato Avoidance). All matches are in the evenings, exactly during cooking time, the time when you are most likely to get assigned tomato duty.

Here’s an illustration of how to use this strategy:
Pretend to be deeply engrossed in the match while simultaneously keeping an eye on the tomatoes.
As soon as the Wife approaches the Tomatoes and is about to say “Can you please….” scream like this:
“WOOOHOOOO!!! Hohooo!!! WHAT A SIX! This McCullum dude is awesome! Did you see how he hit through the line by picking the ball of the bowlers hand and turned his wrists along with the anticipated spin on the up? Too much….”

It is important that you use the appropriate cricketing jargon so as to make it convincing that you are really engrossed in the match. If you don’t time it right, then this will happen:
Wife: “Can you please cut the tomatoes?”
If you forget to scream at this point, or if the wife completes her sentence, you will have to respond
You: “The Tomatoes? OK, I guess…”
GAME OVER.

Strategy #2: The negative learning variations
This strategy has existed for a very long time and is already widely practiced, but I have come up with some innovations of my own here. Basically, the strategy involves doing such a bad job that you don’t get asked to do it again. But this is not as easy as it seems. You have to be quite thorough and meticulous in doing the bad job. You have to do a good bad job, otherwise it won’t be bad enough and the tomatoes will come back again the next time.

To do a really effective and efficient bad job, you foremost need to have a calm mind and think clearly. The first strategy involves taking the Tomatoes, and saying that you just saw an amateur jugglery show on TV and have learnt how to juggle. You then take a few tomatoes and throw them into the air, and let them fall and generally make a mess. Bonus points if the tomatoes fall on the sofa, because if that happens, you won’t be allowed anywhere near a tomato for several years. Mission accomplished.

Another useful variant is to say that you saw a show on Discovery Channel that showed how to properly cut tomatoes using a food processor. Now, if you try to cut tomatoes using a food processor, it makes a royal mess (and some tomato soup, but no cut tomatoes). Don’t ask me how I learnt that you can’t cut tomatoes using a food processor. Anyway, when it is realized that you’ve made a mess, then you won’t be asked to do it again. Success!

Strategy #3: Gross incompetence strategy.
This is actually an extreme version of Strategy #2. In #2, you demonstrated that you can’t be trusted with tomatoes, but this strategy takes it to the next level by demonstrating that you can’t understand instructions. You have to act and behave like a complete idiot. Again, this is not as easy as it seems, and it takes a lot of will power and discipline, although it comes naturally to some people like me.

According to this strategy, when you are asked to cut tomatoes, walk up to the fridge and take out some cabbage. Then proceed to cut it. Experienced foodies will immediately realize at this point that cabbage and tomatoes are not very substitutable, and that annoys the hell out of the person in charge of the cooking. So much that they will do the cutting of the tomatoes themselves.

Another way this can be accomplished is to do the following. When you are asked to cut tomatoes, run down to the local grocery shop and buy 2 Kgs of tomatoes. Now you have twice as many tomatoes, and none of them are cut, increasing the ratio of uncut tomatoes substantially. It is my repeatable experience that this almost certainly leads to you not being asked to do ANYTHING again, which is really the jackpot.

Now that you’ve learnt all the PETA tactics, go ahead and use them. I wish all of you a tomato-cutting-free life!

• 13 Comments

Some people think that arguing is pointless and it is not “constructive”, but I beg to disagree. Firstly, there is that incredible entertainment value, which I think is very under-represented. Then, if you are arguing about a sensitive topic with someone who holds their opinion dearly, there is this sheer joy of annoying, then frustrating, then angering the person you are arguing with. Seeing them go through this progressions is one of the few best things of like that are still free. Arguing is a skill, and today I will teach you the most important points.

Be Condescending
Being condescending is the best way to push your opponent from frustration into anger. Effective body language is the key here. One of the most efficient techniques I’ve seen is to yawn with your mouth open wide. You have to get the timing right - Break into the yawn just as the opponent is making an emphatic point. Another technique to use is to tilt your head and let it rest on your hand - As if you’ll fall into sleep if the opponent makes one more boring point.

The above two techniques are what I call “Passive Condescendence“, where you passively show how disinterested you are. The second type, called “Active Condescendence” is also very useful. Here, you want to trivialize your opponents’ statements and rubbish them. Example:

Victim: “… and so, if we have to do something to stop global warming, or we’re all going to die!”
You: “We have to do something about your squeaky nasal voice first, or I’m going to go deaf!”

Victim: “…and that’s why education is so important to one’s life.”
You: “How can you make such a stupid statement? You must be “educated”. Hahaha!”

Use rhymes and “profoundities”
You’ll think I’m kidding, but using rhyming constructs adds a lot of force to your argument. “Might makes Right!” has a certain sound to it that makes everyone feel like it’s true.  Also “No Pain, No Gain” sounds more true than it really is. Using a rhyming first syllable also helps: “Mind over Matter!”, “Hire and Fire”. Using such phrases can make it sound like you know more than you do.

Another trick is to use “profoundities“. Notice that this is using profound statements, not the same as “profanities” (Well, you can use profanities as well, and it sometimes helps to speed up the argument to its logical conclusion - A fist fight). For example, anything said in Latin sounds Profound like “in vino veritas” (”there is truth in wine”) sounds much more convincing than when said in colloquial form: “I want more booze”. This actually goes for any classical language. Anything said in Sanskrit also sounds more convincing - “Tawa Murkham Asi” sounds much more convincing than “You’re an idiot”

When cornered, challenge all assumptions
Occasionally, you’ll find yourself cornered by a logical argument that you can’t get out of. That’s only a problem if you believe in logic. (Believing in logic, by the way, is optional) If you find yourself in this situation, you can have some extra fun by denying all assumptions. Be careful when you do this, however, because in my experience the next step after this is usually flying projectiles that can cause bodily harm. Denying assumptions is easy, philosophers have been doing it for years! Example:

Victim: “…And so our impact on the environment is real”
You: “What is real? It’s just signals your nervous system is sending to your brain. Your brain is creating the reality, which means reality is in your head. That’s another way of saying reality is just your imagination”

Einstein: “…and that’s why the earth revolves around the sun”
You: “Or, it could be an illusion created by the curvature of space-time according to the theory of relativity. Seriously, Einstein, you should read up on this stuff.”

You can tell that I’ve thought about this very deeply. I get a lot of time to think about these strategies when the wife kicks me out of the house for using them on her. That’s also, incidentally, when I write most of my blog posts.

• 4 Comments

Living in a house inevitably means that you’ll have some share of the household chores assigned to you. The situation is particularly bad if you are lazy, and even worse when you are a follower of Adityaism, which requires you to NOT do work. But fortunately, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking of the counter measures we can use to avoid doing any work around the household. Here are some very useful tips:

1) Ask a lot of questions
Asking a lot of questions is a good strategy to use when you are assigned some new work. The person that has assigned the work to you is probably using the common misconception that “Give a man a fish, he’s happy for a day. Teach him how to fish, he’s happy for life”.

This saying is obviously not true, because if it were, we’d all be fishermen. Clearly, we are not. Therefore, it can’t be true. Quite simple.

But sometimes, your opponent doesn’t believe in logic, and can’t be convinced with the above logically correct argument, so you have to use a different strategy. You have to make your opponent so frustrated with questions, that they should think “I’d rather give him the fish!”. Example:

Wife: “Can you cut some Tomatoes and Onions, please?”
Me: “OK. How do I cut them?”
W: “Well, with a knife of course.”
Me: “Do I have to use a chopping board?”
W: “Of course!”
Me: “What if I cut myself?”
W: “You’re not going to cut yourself.”
Me: “Do we have emergency bandaid, just in case? Besides, it’s pretty late. Do you think the hospital will e open?”
W: “Just cut the Tomatoes, OK?”
Me: “I think we should call the hospital and ask if they’re open.”

… and so on, until your opponent cuts the Tomatoes.

2) Argue
This technique is a variant of the first one, only more aggressive. Use this technique when the first one doesn’t work, and you are cornered. The difference is, this time you have to push the opponent into a state of frustration. This works best if you counter every question with another question. Example:

Wife: “Can you cut some Tomatoes and Onions, please?”
Me: “Why?”
W: “So that you get Sambar to eat tonight, that’s why!”
Me: “Can’t you just use the food processor? Why do I have to cut it?”
W: “Because the food processor doesn’t cut it into small pieces”
Me: “How am I going to cut it into small pieces?”
W: “Do I have to tell you EVERYTHING?!? Start with a horizontal cut and then slice it”
Me: “Are you sure that’s the proper way? I read somewhere that cutting tomatoes causes it to loose important vitamins.”
W: “JUST CUT THE TOMATOES!!!”
Me: “I think I’m going to look up Wikipedia for “How to cut a tomato”. I’ll be right back.
W: “AAAARRGGGGGHHHHH!!!”

3) Reverse Psychology
This is a dangerous technique, but if you can pull it off, it is very effective. The idea is to get your opponent to feel extreme sympathy and pity for you. Bonus points if you push your opponent into a guilty feeling. An easy way to do this is to make it seem that you are doing something super-important, something that matters more to the universe than the chore. The trick to achieving this state is proper body language - That means cute puppy eyes and a voice that seems like you’re almost going to cry. Example:

Wife: “Can you cut some Tomatoes and Onions, please?”
Me: “Um? I was just going to call our broker and talk about our investments.”
W: “Really?”
Me: “Yeah, it’s tax season, and we need to make the proper investments and save for our future.”
W: “That’s true.”
Me: “Have you finished your tax planning under section 80CCC and applied for Premium Deductions on your IT declaration?”
W: “Uh… Huh… Hmm… Err… What does that… I don’t know…”
Me: (deep sigh) “OK, I’ll take a look tomorrow. Do I have to do everything? Aren’t you worried about our future together? Isn’t our financial security and independence important to you?” *sniff* deep sigh…..

… and you’re done. Your opponent won’t bother you for 2 days after this.

Do you have any more techniques?

• 23 Comments

One of the great undervalued skills of life in the 21st Century is the ability to disguise insults. Swearing and cursing to someone’s face is quite easy, but often produces counter-effects (i.e., you’ll get beaten up). If you’re an expert at disguising your insults, your victim will spend several agonizing hours deciding whether what you said was meant as an insult. A very subtle, but brutal form of torture. It’s a lost art these days. But don’t worry, I’m going to help you out with this skill.

1) Use Subliminal Messages
Using this technique requires fine timing. The idea is to blurt out the insult directly, but have a “cover-up” word ready, so that if the victim suspects that you’ve insulted him, you can use the “cover-up” word to get out of the situation.

Example:

The wife has been trying to get me to exercise, but without much luck. So, one day, as I’m going to office:
Me: “Bye bye, I’m off to office”
Wife: “Bye bye, Fatty!”
Me: “Excuse me?”
Wife: “Smarty! I said Smarty! You know, because you’re so ‘Smart‘ “
Me: “Hmmm…..”

I spend the next hour trying to figure out whether she really called me fatty. This technique is very powerful, especially if you want to effect emotion trauma along with your insults.

2) Use ambiguous interpretations
Fortunately for us, the English language is full of confusing words whose meanings can be twisted to fit the situation. Some would call this a “bug” with the language, but I say it’s a valuable “feature” of the English language.

Example:

If your GF has just cooked you a meal that you’ve struggled to push down your throat. You have to say something, but not insulting.
GF: “Did you like the Mushroom Risotto with White Sauce? I got the recipe from this new book I bought”
Wrong Answer: “If I had an imaginary Donkey, and if the imaginary donkey hadn’t eaten for 23 days, even then that donkey wouldn’t eat this.”
Right Answer: “It was truly Insipid. Inspiration is a key ingredient.”

With some luck, your GF will think the first ‘Insipid‘ was really ‘Inspired‘. It won’t hit her till later that you said Insipid, but that’ll give you enough time to escape.

3) Complimentary Insults
This is a delicate technique, but with some practice, you can master it. The idea is to use to words next to each other, one complimentary and the other an insult. Your victim will focus on the compliment first, and only later realize that it was really an insult. Works most effectively on people who talk a lot, because they’re eager to acknowledge the compliment part, and their brains don’t process the insult part until later. It’s like how cows chew the cud.

Example:

Your Boyfriend is singing the ‘Aaja Re….Aaja O mere Dilbar aa jaa…’ song. He’s trying to do his ‘haunted‘ voice, but it’s more like the hunted voice. At the end of the song:

BF: “How did you like my voice?”
Wrong Answer: “All the dead ghosts that were haunting this place died once more after hearing that.”
Right Answer: “It was Spectacularly Tragic! What a voice!”

You have to put the emphasis on ‘Spectacularly‘, so that your victim thinks the ‘tragic‘ you’re talking about was the pain and emotion in the song. He’ll only later figure out that what it really means is that it was such a tragedy that you had to listen to it.

Now that you are an expert at disguising insults, go ahead and try them out. The whole world is your playground.

• 6 Comments

Chitradeep Chetty has lived a very colorful life, and we can all benefit significantly by studying his style. I have been doing it myself for the last few years. One of the many things Chitradeep excels at is knowing exactly what women want. And so, Chitradeep returns today to share his enormous wisdom with us:

——————————–

Knowing what women want is a very tricky thing, but there are some secrets to it that are gauranteed to make you score with the women! Today, I will teach you the 3 most important tricks that you can use to impress them.

1) Make them ask you questions.

This is probably the most important, since it opens communication with them and gets them interested in you. The Trick is to get them to ask question, but you have to guide the conversation.

Example:

Chitradeep: “What deo do you use?”
Girl: “EXCUSE ME?” (First question)
Chitradeep: “I use Narsingh Deo!”
Girl: “What?” (Second question. We’re making good progress!)
Chitradeep: “Haha…That’s the author of our ‘Graph Theory’ textbook. Haha… Did you get it? Hahaha…”
Girl: “Are you always this weird or only around pretty girls?” (Third Question in a row! SCORE!!!)

2) Showcase all your knowledge and achievements.

This is the trick to making yourself appear cool. The more you know, the more smarter you are, obviously. Show them how much you know about everything and impress them thoroughly. Never miss an opportunity to display your enormous textbook-knowledge.

Example:

Chitradeep: “Do you want to go and get some Coffee?”
Girl: “Sure!”
(Start walking towards the Coffee Shop. Here’s an oppurtunity to make conversation…)
Chitradeep: “So, did you know that a cup of Coffee has 350 calories? That’s the same as 100g of PURE FAT!”
Girl: “Eewww…..”
Chitradeep: “Yeah! But accumulating fat is good! It comes in handy if you are starving to death.”
Girl: “Why would I be starving to death?”
Chitradeep: “Well, after the Nuclear war, only Cockroaches will survive. But eating mutated killer monster cockroaches might be difficult. That’s when I’m going to use all MY FAT!“
Girl: “Oh! I just remembered something. I have to pick up my cat from the airport. Gotta go! Tata!”
Chitradeep: “Sure! We’ll have coffee some other time!”

I showed off how much I knew about Coffee and Cockroaches, and didn’t even have to spend money on Coffee! SCORE!!!!

3) Treat women with respect and dignity

The 21st century women doesn’t need to be patronized. It is important that you treat them with respect and love and dignity. Show them that you believe in equal opportunity for women.

Example:

Take her out to a nice Dinner, and when the bill arrives:

Chitradeep: “I insist you pay half the amount. I believe in equality for everyone!”
Girl: “Hmmmm…..Well, OK”
Chitradeep: “Yeah. Besides, you ate more than me. It’s only fair. I completely believe in fairness!”
The Girl has a surprised look on her face at this point, but that is normal. She’s surprised by what a nice guy you are.
Chitradeep: “Also, Can you take an auto back home? I’d drop you, but my house is in the other direction, and I don’t want to waste petrol and damage the environment”
Girl: “Bye bye!”
Chitradeep: “I’ll call you!”

SCORE!!!

• 9 Comments