why are we incompetent?

in developing countries, we take things that are broken for granted - shitty roads, shitty procedures, shitty everything. no, we actually expect them. when we deal anyone from our countries, we automatically assume that the quality will be inferior.

but why?

what is it that stops people from doing things well? i mean, the deeper question i'm looking for is, what is competence? what is that innate drive (ability?) that pushes some people to do things well, and others to do them half-assed? and from there, what is it in developed societies that guides the collective consciousness to just look not only at doing things well, but for ways to do them better?

is it a matter of skill? i'm sure it's part of it, but how much skill is required to slip a fucking burger properly? or realize that the bun is stale? or that the fries are mushy? is it a matter of education and sophistication? i really doubt it since the incompetence i've seen didn't seem to discriminate based on knowledge. like i said, how much does it take to know that a job was done well?

i may have finally figured it out, and i think my original question should be reversed. it shouldn't be a question at all - instead of asking "what is it about people from developing countries that stops them from being competent?" i should've stated the fact as "collective incompetence is what classifies the country as being a developing country." it's not the money or buildings or cars or cell phones or how much internet connectivity it has. bear with me.

i think it's basic human psychology: it's the link between effort and reward. the biggest difference between developed and developing countries is that in the earlier a job well-done is rewarding in itself. even if there was no money or recognition involved, people strive to do better because it makes them happy. it makes them feel accomplished and productive - alive, for lack of a more encompassing word. in contrast, people in developing countries look at things backward - they work for money. what that practically translates into is doing as little as possible to get the job "done" by the minimum definition of the word. what is lost here, of course, is what does beyond the minimum definition of the word, like the difference between a lada and a bmw (both, using the minimum definition, are cars).

i am, of course, generalizing, and i may be being unfair to many hard working, accomplishment driven individuals, but the generalization holds, i believe. until the developing country's collective consciousness starts recognizing competence as a reward in itself, it'll forever remain developing.

living in shitty cities

i'm fortunate in the fact that i live in dubai. one may argue its merits and drawbacks, but there one thing i can assure you of: it's a great place to live. it's clean, getting things done is easy and everyone is welcome to call it home.

i'm also fortunate in the fact my work allows me to travel often. mind you, this is a double-edged sword: though sometimes my work takes me to awesome cities like istanbul or cape town, i sometimes find myself in riyadh or lahore. the entire time i'm in those substandard citie i'm wondering how the fuck do the people living here live here. for many reasons, these cities are difficult to live in. riyadh, despite its government having riches literally sprout out of the ground, is in a state of development more fitting for a dark-ages hamlet. and it's not poor roads and shoddy governmental services that give it that feel (though they definitely contribute to it), it's the general attitude of indifference and incompetence. lahore, on the other hand, is a mess of disorganization and chaos that, in my experience, is only surmounted by karachi (though i've heard wonders about indian cities).

what really baffles me about these cities is this: how do people, especially expats, just accept living there? it's not that they're developing countries; it's that they're so utterly chaotic that no amount of individual effort can can generate any noticeable return. so all of one's hard work and toil turns into frustrated rage when trying to queue at the local bakery. i was pondering that and then i remembered my time in amman, where i used to live before dubai.

human beings, i've come to realize, have an almost magical ability to accept the conditions they're in. whether in extreme cases like the Stockholm syndrome or in the slightly less extreme of contemplating living in saudi, the human psyche is extraordinarily adept at adapting to where we are. it really hit me after a completely normal and rational friend made the argument that riyadh is "not that bad." i don't want to imagine how much worse it needs to get to be "bad" (i've really never been anywhere i'd less rather live in), but that just points to how powerful our minds are adapting to our situations and making them "ok".

this, of course, goes beyond that to any shitty situation one may find oneself in. Whether it's a shitty job or boss or marriage or whatever, we always find ways to say "it's not that bad".

the problem here is that it's a mixed blessing. on one hand, it's a natural defense mechanism that keeps us sane; on the other, it allows us to accept the status quo. and that's fucking dangerous. being aware of things being shitty and accepting them (like a bad job that's tiding you over due to family and other obligations) is one thing; things being shitty and you thinking they're not bad is another: it's a cause for complacency and indifference. so accepting shit needs to be a conscious decision, not something one settles into. otherwise one wouldn't be aware of the shit one is steeped in.

like fucking riyadh.

keep learning - always keep learning

don't buy facebook

because everyone else is writing about it, i'll throw in my two cents.

first of all, don't buy facebook.

i know it's a limited controlled IPO with carefully dosed out quantities and us mere mortals have no access to said magical shares, it's still a bad idea to buy facebook stocks now.

why not?

i've been following the social media "explosion" for the last couple of years, and i've seen numbers about the growth of mobile devices vs. radio and tv, seen statistics about how if facebook were a country it would be the third biggest country in the world. i've seen how there are a billion tweets a week and how many people have followers. but the question is this:

who gives a fuck?

in case it wasn't clear, facebook isn't a country. not even as a metaphor. comparing it to a country is like saying if my car were an eagle it would have eggs the size of large dogs. that makes absolutely no sense. all the other numbers about social media out there are out there for us to ogle at them, but they really lack meaning. we have social media experts and certified consultants and analysts. we have this wave of change that everyone is speculating about, but the fact is this: they're all fucking clueless. facebook's 900 million members are tantalizing for their size and the info the share, but not because it makes a lot of money. in fact, facebook made around $4 billion in 2011, yet was valued at $100 billion. why? for the promise of making money from those users.

social media is a trend that's in flux and people still can't figure it out. think of the internet in the late nineties. speculators were betting that this new wonderful tech that's changing the world is worth far, far more than it really was. was it new? yes. was it wonderful? yes. did it see phenomenal growth? yes. did it change the world? absolutely. was it worth the money. nope. social media is in this state. think yahoo, hotmail, myspace, flickr... all past their prime and basking in their former glory.

so my projection is this: facebook has more or less hit its peak i think zuckerburg should've IPOed 2 years ago. i'm not saying it'll fade away, i'm saying it'll turn into something like email - everyone has it, most users use it, yet nothing exciting happens there. people will use it to share pictures and comment on them and all that, but it'll fade into a commodity that was once exciting.

back from hiatus

i was pleasantly surprised today when i discovered that some people actually follow what i write. this blog has always been a personal thing for me, where i rant and swear. to find anyone actually interested in it is a nice compliment.

thank you.

for anyone still following this after the long, long hiatus, but i hope to get to posting more regularly.

be happy

i was driving the other day when a billboard caught my eye. not sure what it was advertizing (looked like a clothing brand, but i couldn't tell), but the people in it were early- to mid-thirties, good looking, decked in the latest fashion, all seemed to be enjoying their lives. that and an article i read recently about people not being happy with kids, and it hit me: the source of our misery is advertisement and popular culture.

what we see in advertisements and commercials are snapshots. other than the ones that are deliberately outrageous, most portray everyday situations condensed within 30 seconds (tv) or a single page or picture (print, internet), yet they skew everything to unnatural happiness. a family is having lunch: they're all laughing and smiling. someone was at work and went home: he drove an expensive car, drove into a mansion and was greeted with a laughing beautiful wife and two lovely kids. meetings in an office: everyone happy and beaming. ordering fucking fried chicken? server smiling wide. having a smoke? look at this awesome party we're always taking part of. perfume? let me take my shirt off and jump off my yacht into the azure ocean.

how about poplar culture? sitcoms? shows? part-time waiters living a normal, rich life. everyone is either happy or laughing all the time. if not, they resolve all their problems in 48 minutes before jumping into the pool with their clothes on. movies teach you that whenever a male and female meet they end up fucking falling in love. they teach you that good guys win. they teach you that stupid guys can get the girl.

no wonder everyone is fucking miserable.

no one is happy all the time. no one is always cool and partying. happy endings are rare. in fact, it's unnatural for human beings to maintain a constant state of happiness. the normal state of human beings is misery (not to be pessimistic here, it's actually neutral). the article about people with kids talks about how older professionals expect things to be perfect, or at least fixable, but i think a part as important is this belief that life should somehow be easy.

nothing good ever comes out of easy. i think people aren't happy with kids (or anything else) is due to unrealistic expectations. 100 years ago not starving was a reasonable expectation. so what do you do all day? you work, toil, reap and sell. you survive. now it's all about me me me and my misery. well fuck, the truth of it is no amount of money or power will make you happy all the time. misery exists.

so yeah, be happy, just expect it to be temporary.

the apple legacy

steve jobs has stepped down. due to illness. it's to that end i will not say anything negative about the man. i will, however, raise my voice at the endless praise he has gotten these past few weeks. the most visionary ceo, the man with the products that impacted our lives most, the genius behind apple's strength (that last one is true).

no one can argue apple products' impact on the mobile world. they have literally transformed how we think about what a phone is or could be, about what to expect from that piece of metal and silicon in our pockets. what irks me to no end is his portrayal as someone who did something innovative (he did) that helped transform the world (he didn't). the iphone and its siblings didn't do anything to transform the world. jobs' success and apple's ridiculous profit margins are not a result of technical innovation but of shrewd marketing.

how so? what transformed the world isn't the ifamily of products; it's the innovation that was built around the family. it's the army of little developers who wanted to make a buck selling large volumes of products at very low costs. the apple legacy is the platform it created, not the "transformation" that was the result of it. i would argue that the platform democratized the world of software development.

history will judge this; take the following comparison (inspired by theonion). faxes are perceived as relics of ancient history. they are slow, clunky, require proprietary paper and/or ink and only do b&w at painfully low resolutions, yet they've survived the revolutions of the internet and mobile phones and all that by virtue of their simplicity and reliability. no one will ever claim that the fax machine was revolutionary. on the other hand, at one point in time, the hottest thing you can own was a walkman. sony transformed the music world (thankfully, it didn't claim that it changed everything again, again, whatever the fuck that means) with its personal boombox.but the cruel reality is, people will still say something like "fax me that document" and unless you work in a museum, people will never say "hey can i borrow your walkman real quick?"

my point is this: 10 years from now we'll all be walking around with devices that are not phones nor tablets nor computers, devices that let us communicate and find information and work. we don't know what these are (retina implants? thought reading gizmos? star trek style comms buttons? we can't imagine them any more than mr. graham bell coming up with the idea of a mobile phone). but we can deduce from history that what we won't be is tethered to a single product, and when apple is mentioned it will be with some nostalgia to something we all used when we were younger, sort of like that yahoo email that you still hold on to.

everything and nothing - nothing

part two of the series. yes, still inspiring.

everything and nothing - everything

i don't usually just post movies, but this one is just mind blowing. somehow, whenever i watch one of these, i feel stupid. thank you, gauss and einstien.

no one else freaking out about this?

it's no secret i'm a geek, but every once in a while i just get blown away by what we take for granted. i mean:

1. not only have scientists deduced that there's anti-matter (basically matter with reverse charge that, when mixed with normal matter, combines to form pure energy), but they've artificially created it and trapped it for 15 minutes to study it. remember, this shit blows up with it touches anything
2. on my phone, i can watch movies, find out where i am in the world then navigate my way out, find nearby restaurants or whatever else i need (hell, part time jobs!), check email, keep in touch with friends around the world, find out about news as it happens, take video and upload it to the internet, point it to the sky and find out what constellations i'm seeing, fuck - point it anywhere and see what's around.
3. humans sent tiny objects to space 30 years ago (voyager 1 and 2). they're still "flying". they're outside the solar system. they're still sending back information. 30 years ago. 99.9% of their flights were powered by gravity - fucking mathematics! i'm still amazed by these two objects
4. the internet. people just don't realize how fucking amazing it is. you have instantaneous access to the sum of human knowledge from anywhere. there isn't an answer that i can't get in a matter of minutes. from my fucking PHONE!

FREAKING OUT BIG TIME