saving the world

I always wonder about the preference-order of world issues to deal with. Is it terrorism or global warming? Alternative energy research or poverty? Genocide or nuclear bombs? Every time I read about one of them or another, I keep changing my viewpoints. I’ve not found the answer to one question – Where should we begin?

Most important body to answer my question is UNO. I generally keep track of the things it does and I came to know that it has only $75 billion(roughly the sum total of global foreign aid budgets) to spend per year. If you look at this amount, it’s very small. Even Warren Buffett has $62 billion. So what’s the cost effective way to save the world? Most of us would make the decision based on emotions- witnessing the pain of hunger, or experiencing the fear of nuclear terrorism. But what if there was a way to calculate the exact values of global priorities, a way to figure out how much human suffering we could alleviate per dollar spent?

Recently I read a news article about this and it said “Last month Copenhagen Consensus, an organization gathered 8 major economists, including 5 Nobel Prize winners to come up with an answer. The result is very surprising. According to the numbers, the biggest problem facing the world isn’t global warming or terrorism. It is malnutrition in the developing world. And the advice of organization : Spend $60 million per year by supplying basic micro nutrients for 112 million kids who lack essential vitamins. It will give better health, fewer deaths and more worker productivity.”

Shocking, isn’t it?

the park-bench

“Ohh! there is that park and there might be some benches”. You’d be surprised if you hear 10 people saying this, all at one time and all of them have crossed their teen-years. You’d be shocked if you know that all of them are studying in one of the best institutes of world and it’s pretty sure that they’re going to be very rich and successful. But they were not born in a rich country and their parents don’t have loads of money. It is their own ability that has brought them in Europe for three months. Technically they’re here for ‘Internship’ but who likes research?. They want to see the world, the most beautiful parts of it. They all know that it’ll not be possible in their professional career so why not now? Even if they have to spend nights sleeping on benches of public parks, they’ll go out every week-end. Even if they’ve to walk 40 km in a day to visit an entire city like Rome or Barcelona, they’ll go out still.

I’ve never known this outlook of humans towards a park. It is supposed to be a place for jogging and for kids to play and for love-birds to meet but whenever we see a park, our eyes want to spot a few benches just like eyes of cat want to spot a rat. It is necessary to find a shelter otherwise we’ll not be able to sleep and next day everybody will feel lethargic. We don’t care if some police-man comes in the middle of night and kicks us all away or there happens to be a rain-fall. We’ll think about it when it actually happens, till then- we look for parks and nothing else in them, only the benches.

Murphy’s Law

The law goes like this : Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Whenever it is told by somebody(specifically the CEOs in their keynotes), not only it makes a good joke but reflects the reality also. Total belief in this law can sometimes result in waste of time, money and energy but as per my experience, taking measures to deal with the worst case scenarios is not regretted later on.

Recently, I was in Delhi to get my VISA for France. I’m staying in farthest sector of Noida and if I get the bus in time, it’ll take me around one hour to reach French Embassy. My interview is at 11 AM but I left at 8 AM. The next day when I had to meet a friend at 10:30, I left at 9:30. You might argue that getting the VISA was far more important than a meet with somebody. You’re right for the most part but not completely. I’ve learnt that things go wrong only when you’ve to accomplish something important and urgently. There will be renovation going on in the hospital when you have an accident or the doctor will go to meet his parents(after 10 years) when you have fever. If you just stop by at hospital or doctor’s house, they’ll all be there, working flawlessly.

Let me continue with the VISA story. As I told, I left at 8 AM and got to know that buses don’t come to the area I was staying at so I talked with Auto-walas. They asked so much money that I can’t afford. Since I’ve started it, let me also tell you that the things you’d like to buy at a store are always out of your budget. Same was the case with Auto-walas. I started walking to find a bus stop. I had prepared for that too. Last night I had got something to eat as breakfast because I knew that I’ll need lot of energy and Delhi is full of restaurants but there will not be any nearby Embassy.

I’m at a bus stop looking around. Trust me, there was nothing or nobody interesting. This nature of world makes me think more about myself although even in the worst circumstances I try to find something good(not bragging). Now I’ve been waiting there for half an hour and bus getting late is no surprise to me. I decided to walk a little more and hired an Auto, not just till another bus stand(called the better one) but till last destination as I believe that I will not get the bus there either.

I’m sitting alone in the auto, very relaxed and looking at my face in the mirror. The road is wide and best traffic management systems are used in the capital city but I’m not expecting the auto to reach at embassy without any error. It’s not that I’ve an attitude of looking at things only negatively but attitude of being prepared to face anything that can possibly happen. I’ve not learnt it from a person or book but from life. I’m almost lost in thinking about my thoughts and suddenly I found the Auto stopped. Apparently there is a traffic jam due to some accident. Now the autowala looks left and finds a street. He turned into that street which had a very bumpy road. I assumed that he knew all the streets and I was not wrong, I rarely am . But in the mechanical terms, knowledge of driver didn’t help the auto and the tyre breaks down, at the farthest point from the main road so that it can’t be repaired easily.

The temperature is above 40. The auto-wala has taken money from me with the excuse that he needs to repair the tyre although I didn’t ask him to go into that street. I don’t know anybody there. My phone doesn’t have balance(the first time in life) so I can’t make a call. “Everything will go wrong all at once” is the variation of Murphy’s law and at this moment, I’m the victim of this. But I’m extremely sure that I’ll reach there in time. I’m not tense or irritated probably because it’s not the first time I’m seeing this.

If I walk to the main road and then to the nearest bus-stop, I’ll never make it to the embassy in time. My only hope is some ride if I can get one. I started asking knowing that at least 20 people will say “NO”. I only had to hear this word 5-6 times with different excuses but finally somebody agreed to drop me off to the main road. Life has bad things but they’re not as bad as you can imagine and neither are the good things so good as you can dream. I walked towards bus-stop along main road and finally I got a bus which took me to the embassy. I still had half an hour to search for French Embassy and it was very easy to find. Just after the worst parts of life, there are easy achievements otherwise newspapers will have news only about suicides. Everybody finds pleasure after some tough time and repetition of this is the probably the definition of life.

First Step

I had started a blog long time back but very soon I discovered(or prejudiced) that it’s not a good idea to open up much. Some time later, I also discovered that my program wasn’t giving the correct output and I needed to continue debugging my thoughts. This blog is the result of that continuous debugging. Also, I’ve been inspired by a couple of friends who blog regularly. So, I’m taking one more flight in the same sky but with new wings. With great enthusiasm and energy, here I’m joining the millions of bloggers and on a great platform. This is not just a place for me to tell what I know, what I’ve learnt and more generally my approach to life and at times some technical stuff, but to improve my expressions, writing skills and some things more…

Little bit about the title, “domainfull“. I tried gsingh, goverdhan, lessonsoflife, lessonsforlife…all of them were unavailable. I tried domainless but that didn’t work out either. All the sense-making titles were over so I had to go with anything off the top of my head. Finally I tried ‘domainfull’ and that’s what you see. The blog is supposed to be full of domains – Discussion of current issues, technology, sports, politics, life-in-general, education, history, psychology, economics, management, places, people, pictures, movies, music, food, clothes, books, poetry… you name it!

Sources of information include websites, magazines, newspapers, books, blogs, people and my mind of course. You might be bored by now about the things I’ve told as they’re pretty obvious. Trust me, to some-they’re not and I’ve mentioned keeping them in mind.

Anyway, that’s all in the first post. Comment, suggest, mention if you see any error or disagree if you don’t agree or whatever else you want to say. Guest posts are also welcomed, just drop me an e-mail : gie.…@yahoo.co.in