Saurabh lets out the snigger he has been holding in. "What if no one asks you anything? Ha ha ha... naak-kaatofication!"
That hadn't occurred to me.
Uh oh.
Most humans find me obnoxiously argumentative - and that includes people in NTU's debating squad. That's saying something. It tends to lower one's popularity index. Certainly, nobody asks me questions if they can help it. It seems like AMADay is an idea doomed to fail from the start.
But I have principles. Once I write something I'm not going to take it down and pretend it never existed. Whatever my faults, running this blog like Big Brother isn't one of them.
The story has a happy ending. People (note plural!) did ask me questions (note plural!). It seems my nose was destined to live another week.
(At this point it occurs to me that perhaps I should call this "Save Wendelin's Nose Day". But that would be a little despo.)
So without further ado, I present....
Why do you want to be a "wannabe"? As in Wendelin? Why not "Nandini" and create a niche for yourself?
-Kr!sh
My dear Kr!sh, you should know that Saurabh calls you "Krexclamationsh", which I must say has a better ring to it than "Kr (gasp) sh", which is what I call you, or "Krplingsh", which is an equally acceptable way of looking at it. But I digress.
The reason for "Wendelin", Kr!sh, is that I need a cool-sounding pseudonym for when I publish the romance novel that I have written (not so) secretly. I'm also fiddling with appropriate last names. "Winters", "DeWinter" and "DaWeird" are all under consideration. What do you think?
I am curious as to why you are an atheist. There are possibly 2 possibilities(!?) I can think of
- your parents are atheists and you were brought up that way
- something spurred you? Or you thunk a lot and stuff and concluded that there is no god.
Because generic Indian is a god-fearing theist!
-Kr!sh
do {
switch (case) {
case "God comes to Earth": acknowledge His existence;
break;
case "God takes charge of legal system": follow commandments / Divine rules;
break;
case "God sets up Consulate of Heaven": pray devoutly for Heavenly Visa;
break;
case "Guy says he's God's messenger": tell him to f* off;
break;
case "Parents say must pray": ask why until satisfactory explanation given;
break;
default: don't believe extraordinary - or any - claims without proof;
break;
} } while (no particular religion proven (true && the right one));
I wish the world worked like a program, bound by logic. I wish I worked that way in other aspects of my life. Wouldn't that be something!
My parents are quite religious, but I've never thought God was realistic. I remember once when I was in 6th Std (6th grade, whatever), and my class teacher asked, "Who doesn't believe in God?" I was the only person who raised a hand. I think that was the first time I thought consciously about God's existence.
There've been a handful of times since when I've thought I believed, though - most commonly before exams and such. :D So I understand how faith can be comforting even when you know it's bull. My standard prayer is "oh, shit, God, get me through this, and I'll start believing in you". But these days I guilt myself into letting go of the crutch, because my faith is basically dishonest.
What do you do for a living? Are you a full-time writer or do you write part-time while working?
-Anonymous
I'm actually still on a student visa. (I took an inordinately long time getting through school... for various reasons not pertinent to this discussion :D) The work experience section of my resume reads sort of like that Harvard entrance essay some wiseguy once wrote: I've been an e-card maker, an op-ed writer, a telemarketer, a private tuition teacher in two countries, a door-to-door salesgirl, a debating coach, a waitress, a commercial blogger, an intern at a major US bank, a web designer, a donut-and-coffee server, a short-story writer, a cashier-and-bagger at two grocery stores, a bagel-shop girl, a substitute teacher in a secondary school and a primary school, a pizza place employee, a personal secretary, an editor and graphics-creator for my college's accreditation report, a computer lab assistant and an anti-smoking campaign gofer.
For the past couple of months I've been writing full-time, but unlike the above list, I'm not getting paid (yet) to write novels.
4WD said...
I have questions.
1) Why do parachutes have just one back up rip cord? What if that fails too?
The probability of failure of any given rip cord is independent of the probability of failure of any other rip cord. This means that if you have two rip cords, the backup-backup cord has just as much chance of failing as the backup one. Which means you might as well have an infinite number of rip cords, and even then you wouldn't really be safe. Or else (and I suggest this strongly) never put yourself in a situation where you might need a parachute. People like you are at risk of getting culled as Mother Nature goes about doing her "survival of the fittest" thing.
2) Am I ever going to be famous, or will I just have to settle medium-rich but quite cute?
My analysis of your set of questions tells me you will be famous in a Johnny Lever or Whoopi Goldberg type of way, i.e. an extraordinary number of people will name you as the most irritating person they know. Good news, eh? You don't have to "settle".
3) Why is love life explosivley (sic) juicy? Have you ever kissed a girl or been in a threesome?
Shall I mention the night of the break-night party of the Asians in May 2004, in the Twin Towers Hotel, Bangkok in room 1024, was it? Hmm. Somebody has an incriminating digital photograph of a certain NUS gal and a certain SMU gal, both of whom shall remain unnamed. I shall always regret the absence of video footage showing how Some People were egging (begging?) yours truly to be a participant in said photograph...
4)Is `thiest' a real word?
The·ist
n.[Cf. F. théiste. See Theism.]
One who believes in the existence of a God; especially, one who believes in a personal God.
5) Doesn't singapore look [like] a big hospital? Completely sanitised with no smoking no peeing no peeking signs everywhere?
Damn, dude, don't insult Singapore now! You're 1.5 years too late! I'd have agreed with you when I was living there, but man, the place now seems vibrant and happening and utterly awesome to me. Anything would be awesome compared to the village I live in now.
And pssst... here's a secret.
a. Nobody really catches you if you smoke in, say, MRT startions
b. There are any number of public toilets where peeing is allowed
c. AFAIK, you're allowed to peek anywhere you please as long as it does not entail special peeking equipment. Even then, glasses and contact lenses are allowed.
Scientologists are really creepy!
-Kr!sh
Amen.
You're a writer? :oWhoa!
Awesome, you write a column ?
- Drops Of Jupiter
You made my day. *blush*
And column? What column? *whistles innocently*
--------------------------------------------------
And so we come to the end of the first edition of Ask Me Anything Day. Thank you for your questions. 4WD, dude, you just happened to be the guy I picked to make fun of this time. Tough luck. Chances that it will happen once again next time are low, unless you persist in asking questions about parachutes.
Meanwhile, the floor is open for questions once more, to be answered next AMADay!
--------------------------------------------------
PS: Happy birthday, Ma!
Ad Hominem eh dear Wendelin :-P! I didn't have a "Ask 'kr!sh' any question weekly.." .. Or "make fun of Krish's nice nick" but ..
ReplyDeleteKrexclamationsh is way too cool! :-D
--
You got it wrong though on the probability thing.. The probability of failure of 2 independent events is simply the product of the probabilities
Suppose 0.001 is the Probability of failure of P1 and 0.001 is the Probability of failure of P2.. the probability that both would fail ( fatal) is 0.00001! The first math jumper who thought that backup is safer would have been insecure about 0.001 but prolly felt secure enough about Prob = 0.00001
Infinite # of rip cords = 0.001 * .. (infinity) which tends to 0.. So the probability of survival is actually 1 :-) which means a sure event!
(Another paradox here though.. We have like 8 odd minutes before we hit the ground. We need 8/infinity minutes to try each rip-cord which is 0.. We are doomed anyway :-P)
I knew exactly what I was saying when I talked about the probabilities there. 4WD just sounded like the kind of guy who'd:
ReplyDeletea. buy into my math and
b. not feel secure about even P=0.00000000001
Which is why I was talking about the risk of Mother Nature's culling... :D
And come on.. I'm allowed to make fun of your name, right? :D Actually I just wanted to tell you about "Krexclamationsh".
[Peacemaker]
ReplyDelete:-). 4WD is probably just an unsuspecting bloghopper.
Hey 4WD, I've seen Wendelin getting stalked in this blog. So her initial reaction is like an aggressive, bantering college senior!
[/Peacemaker]
[Critic]
Hey come on. Your original post had no disclaimer about ragging in exchange of free answers to intellectual qns :-D! It was cool though.
[/Critic]
[Geek]
"switch(case)"
throws an error because "case" is a keyword. :D
I appreciate your effort on making this as less buggy as possible.
I just sounded like a stereotypical nitpicking Mother-in-Law.
[/Geek]
-Krexclamationsh Bolsheviks
Fact of life: There is always a disclaimer, even if you can't see it. :)
ReplyDeleteoh come on :) My questions were so much better than , ``why do you not believe in god,'' or ``Because generic Indian is a god-fearing theist!''
ReplyDeleteANyway, you guys got it wrong about the parachutes. See there's just one extra back up rip-cord, cos there's just one extra parachute! It's probably incredibly hard to carry more than 2 parachutes on a jump, leave alone infinite.
your math, i did not read. I left my geeky chemistry and bio loving side back in standard 10. And like Stephen Hawking said, every formula (or mathematical equation, i say) you add will make your readership drop in half, and the only essential one is e=mc2.
But what i really want to do, as soon as i can afford to, is base jumping. Of course, you jut have one parachute, and one ripcord. But wouldn;t you rather die having fun that when you're 92, and can't even do math?
Ah Wendelin! Your initial opinion on 4WD was so damn bang-on :-D !
ReplyDelete