Social Media Posts With Feelings

It's confusing. I don't know whether to feel good or bad any more. Whenever I go to my favourite social medium, there are feel-good posts, on these lines.

A poor boy/girl made it to the IAS.

He conquered disease/disability/parents' insistence on careers to  achieve success.

His friends at the bachelors' party ditched him, but he found happiness in marriage.

He managed to eat a full biscuit without it breaking in a cup of tea that he'd dipped it in..



And then, there are feel-bad posts..

The world will end in a big ball of fire next Wednesday, when a meteorite/asteroid will crash into it.

The glaciers will enter your home in Chennai in 5 years..

MBA programs to close down soon, and everyone will have to keep doing whatever they are doing now.. coding for life, and so on..

Customer Service- Good and Bad

We live and learn. I learnt a lot from two instances of customer service today.

First, we were out trying to fix a punctured tubefull (for lack of a better descriptor) tyre. The first couple of guys were either not at their station or ignored us. The third guy condescended, but after he learnt it was not a tubeless one, nochalantly asked us to get the tube removed at "a showroom" and get the tube to be worked on. He would only work on the puncture, but not remove the tube. Amazed, we moved on to try our luck at the fourth. After giving us dire warnings about the tube quality (trying to sell a new one), he fixed the puncture and we moved on in life.

Immediately therafter, we had a delightful experience of some great service. At the restaurant called Haveli, we asked for food, and we asked him to make it quick as we had something to do in 45 minutes (he must have heard that from our talk too). We were literally out of the restaurant, bill included, in less than 30 minutes! Amazing, this time in a positive way.

As I said, one lives and learns.

Feel Good Stuff

What makes us feel good? Try some of these for size.

A road that was full of pot-holes being made up like Hema Malini's cheeks (to use a Lalooism). Had this feeling recently on the Rau-Pithampur road in front of the institute. It was languishing in a lunar crater syndrome for a while.

The sight of vegetables in a market, neatly arranged.

The sight of a shady tree on a summer afternoon.

The sound of rain, and the smell.

A cup of tea on the boil.

A long-time-no-see meeting with a friend.

A beach. A lake. A river. Particularly when it's deep blue water.

A poori fluffing up in the kadhai.

I guess I am hungry!

Yingluck Shinawatra and the Feel Good Factor

She must be one of the most good-looking Prime Ministers around. She shared the stage with Obama (on a visit to Thailand) and answered reporters' questions with aplomb in a press conference televised yesterday. I think she had a lot of sense too, in the way she answered them.

We are so used to getting advised by the West on what we should be doing. We need to kick this addiction, and start doing some thinking in this region ourselves. It might at least FEEL good.

That reminds me. I have classified a few things for their feel-good quotient or FGQ (Shinawatra's not in the list). Measured in time units- mins., hrs., etc.

Facial Cosmetics. FGQ- Until they run (down your face).

Shampoo. FGQ - 1 min.

Body Cream.  FGQ- 1 hour

New car. FGQ- 1 month

New child (your own)- 5 years or until they make unreasonable demands, whichever is earlier.

New child (others')- Until it pees on your shirt.

Golf. FGQ- 3 hours

Movie. FGQ- 3 hours, unless it's made by Ram Gopal Varma.

Favourite music. FGQ- Many hours

Cricket. FGQ = Playing time minus all the commentary and pre-game crap time.