The Football Fever

La la la la la,
La la la la la,
La la la la la;
I dare you.

What can I say? I'm a bit addicted to Shakira's song. At first, my sister and I were literally laughing out loud at how 'cool' the song was. Yet, just like every Miley Cyrus song, this one was catchy and I ended up listening to it nearly five times today before I couldn't take it anymore!

I'll make something clear to you guys though - I don't watch football. I've read the rules, taken the patience to understand how it works and willed myself to watch a match too. But somehow, I just don't feel like watching it.

Till the world cup came up, I'd see a couple of facebook statues now and then from selected people, related to games and mostly expressing joy if the team they supported won. Suddenly, when I stepped into college about ten days ago, ALL I heard about was the football matches that took place the other day.

Gone were the discussions about the newest resteraunt that opened and the amazing food they served, lost were the conversations on the 'epic-osity' of our professors who do calculations in milli-seconds. In fact, football was just everywhere. Girls who didn't know the names of the players suddenly started finding a couple of them (alright, more than a couple of them) hot. Everybody started talking about how a guy couldn't score in the game but scored in extra time (Whew! So close.). Everyone is busy critisising the performance of a few players while appreciating the others. But *surprise surprise*, some people are yet confused about which colour Jerseys belong to which team. Yes, like totally, Argentina has a yellow Jersey. (Not a New Jersey definitely though.)

In my previous post, I talked about how people play follow the leader/society all the time. That's exactly what I believe is happening. Football has suddenly become the new thing, and regradless of their liking, people want to follow it. So I'm going to test whether you are a follower or actually love the sport. Yes, me, the person who knows hardly anything about football is going to test YOU. If you get all these correct, I believe that you are a true football fan. xD

Q1. What do footballers drink?
(Ans:PenalTea)

Q2. Why do soccer players have so much trouble eating Indian food?

(Ans:They think they can't use their hands!)

Q3. What lights up a football pitch at night?

(Ans:A football match.)

Just kidding. 

But honestly, seeing people act like they love football when they didn't even know about the existance of the teams a month ago annoys me a bit. It's ridiculous. There was this experiment conducted by the people of the show "Brain Games" in Las Vegas. They put up a board that said "Line Starts Here" in the middle of nowhere and made one of their own man go and stand there. Everyone asked the man why he was standing, and he repeatedly told them that someone told him to form a line. Slowly, people started queing up behind him. Mind you, NO ONE knew why they were standing there. After about 30-40 people came up, they were lead through a useless maze - no one complained. There was a red line they put at the end of the maze over which the man jumped over. EVERYONE jumped over the red line too. Basically, people played follow the leader without even realising what they were doing!

Think about it. Why are you watching football? From where did this sudden craze appear? Do you actually enjoy it, or is it just a style statement? Because why in the world would you do something just because the rest of the world is doing it?

Thanks for reading!

Kanksha :)

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Are Your Thoughts Really YOURS?

Do I really do what I want to do? Is what I think, REALLY what I, myself, think? Or is it influenced by hundreds of other things and biases?

This is what I ended up thinking about when I came across Cognitive Biases while strolling the internet.

So firstly, what exactly is a bias? Whenever you feel something, particularly for or against a certain group or topic which may not seem fair, your opinion is biased - Just like how your mom thinks you run better than Usain Bolt because you’re her kid, or the former social system of South Africa where skin colour decided how many rights you had and made you superior or inferior.

There are loads of different kinds of biases, but I’m talking about the cognitive bias. A Cognitive Bias is like a limitation to our thinking. It stops you from making a decision that you really wanted to make and leads you to make mistakes instead.

A really interesting one under it is called the Gambler’s Fallacy.

 

In this bias, the person is misled into thinking that what happened in the past will affect the future. The last few tickets’ not winning in this case doesn’t mean anything. In reality, the chance of him winning is still 50% and not more.

Another such bias is the Buyer's Stockholm Syndrome. Ever found yourself purchasing something extravagant yet unnecessary in the spur of the moment, but then realizing what you did too late? Also, you must have ended up convincing yourself that what you did was alright and smile about it all day. We do this in many situations. Make awful decisions first, regret them a bit later, but make ourselves feel better about them subconsciously because we don’t want to regret them.

Like if I don’t study for my test properly, I regret it the very moment I start writing it. But then, by the time the day is done, I’ve somehow convinced myself that it’s alright and happens with everyone and one test didn’t really hurt. At the same time, I’m challenging myself to debate that thought, but do not as I know I don’t want to regret it. And I guess doing this is fine, it’s okay..but only as long as you know you are doing it.

Another example is the Negativity Bias. Everyone gives importance to the bad stuff.  My cousin brother tried to block the game pieces of the opponent from going in the hole at the corner while playing carom, instead of trying to put his own pieces inside the hole. He was focused on not letting the other person win instead of focusing on how he could win. Newspapers always talk about inflation and rarely about how the prices go down. If I buy six apples and one is bad, the next day is spent in arguing why that one apple was bad and bargaining for a replacement with the local fruit vendor instead of noticing that five of them were perfectly alright! It’s like you consider the bad/negative things more important.  A person could have stolen bread in winter because there was no food and his/her family is dying. That person may have been working all day and was left with no option but to steal. Yet, you label that person a thief and not a caring, hard working human being like in the Les Miserable’s and give out a prison sentence for years.

The last one that I’ll discuss here is the Bandwagon Effect. Everybody has read “The Fault in Our Stars” and loves it. I have to read it and love it too! Not many people into cricket anymore and football is the new thing? I’ll have to Google and see what it’s all about. DJ Tiesto is coming to town? I don’t know who he is, and neither have I heard of him till today, but “OMG! He is amazing!” What people around you keep talking about influences what you think about a lot – more than you can imagine.

We all like to believe we are in control. We want to be independent in every way, including our thinking. I feel, many of us are prey to the Bandwagon Effect and highly influenced. There is another big percent of people out there who are probably lead to believe stuff because of the negativity bias which may be only partly true! And who out here hasn’t convinced themselves that the decision they had made (which was actually not good at all) was for the best?

^^^^Or maybe, I’m just biased.

Kanksha :)

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And as usual, thanks for reading!

That Weird Sense of Satisfaction

Everything you do leaves you feeling some or the other emotion. Sometimes those emotions can’t be guessed – you could go shopping and buy the whole store which in turn probably makes you happy, or come back with absolutely nothing and be frustrated. But some things have a remix of magic in them. They leave you feeling happy and satisfied no matter what. I call it the weird sense of satisfaction because it’s not “I-have-a-grin-the-size-of-the-universe” happy or “My-stomach-is-going-to-burst-the-food-was-epic” satisfied either. It just brightens up your day and keeps you in a better mood than you were. 

So here are seven things that give me that weird sense of satisfaction.

     1)      Running and managing to catch the bus at the signal.

No one except those who catch buses and trains everyday know how exciting running and catching a bus is. Yes, maybe there is a bus scheduled just five minutes later, but your brain is screaming at you to GO CATCH THE BUS IF YOU CAN! And that’s when the adrenaline starts pumping!

    2)      Finding money in random places

Whether it’s a hundred rupee note, or a ten rupee one, finding it in a pair of jeans that have come after washing or an old bag you had stopped using makes you feel richer than Bill Gates. (But that’s just for a few moments. Reality comes crashing back in a while.. :P)

    3)      Going through pictures and reading old emails

These days, all the pictures we have are digital, and that’s all cool. But the ‘feel’ of opening up a dusty photo album and looking at pictures of yourself and your family is completely different. Old emails and letters are awesome too!

Here is a snap of an email sent to me dated back to 20/2/12:

 first, i will talk about how to handle your enemies.

>>>

>>> enemy type 1 and a half: the bangers and mash enemy

>>>

>>> a bangers and mash enemy is so called because they like nothing more than

>>> a decent head to bang.  next to banging your head, the bangers and mash

>>> enemy's fave pastime is mashing a head.

>>> handling a bangers and mash enemy: the imposter method.i will email to u

>>> all of this other stuff later and first all the useful stuff.

    4)      When people laugh at your jokes..or pick up line…or puns for that matter.

How do you make holy water? Boil the hell out of it!

If you were sin^2x and I was cos^2x, then together we’d make one.

Girl, if I were a fly, I’d be all over you, because you’re the shit!

What do you call a bee having a bad hair day? A frisBEE!

^^^^You get my point!

    5)      Talking of bad hair days, add good hair days to the list.

I think all the girls agree with me on this one.

    6)      Bubbles and balloons

Remember all those birthday parties where we’d become all competitive in the end about who pulled off and burst all the balloons? And those days at the beach blowing bubbles and bursting them…and sometimes even waiting to see which one popped in the end?

    7)      Doing something you love

This could mean anything from taking pictures and writing a blog post to finishing a drawing or going for a jog. Photography, reading a good book….you name it :)

(I was actually going to add a number eight, which said “No Homework” but that happens as often as you see a green coloured moon.)

So what is it that gives you “that weird sense of satisfaction”?

Kanksha :)

Thanks for reading!

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(Thanks Chirag for the post idea!)