Big Brother is coming

Big Brother is coming...

Big brother is the bread winner of the family. He stays in Pardes. He decided to visit his family back home. His folks are all prepared for his visit. They want to make his trip home very special.

The sun has been given a deal to make the day sunny on the eve of big brothers visit.

The hump on the way to home, which normally breaks the back bone of the folks travelling in that way, has given clear order to reduce its elevation by itself. Folks, don’t want the hump to break the backbone of the backbone of the family.

The naked thinking man (to be exact the statue of thinking man), who is sitting in the veranda in thinking pose staring at his Laptop, Who depicts more of life of a software professional hit by recession (Glued to Laptop even if nothing to wear), has been given bath along with his laptop. He complains that it’s only the rainy season where he used to take bath. And he feels terribly bad since being a guy; it’s not nice to take bath at unnecessary intervals.

He is given order that when the big brother comes, he must not move. He must stay in the thinking pose no matter how much he is bored of his job.

There are flower dancers hired for the day. They are given orders to remain always in the bloomed position and not to bend under the luminous day.

The fountain which looks more like a fire extinguisher which runs whenever there is water, placed near to the naked man, has been instructed that it should keep its energy at high level. Also the lights surrounding the fountain which illuminate the fountain in different color at night are given order to illuminate the water in different color under the sunlight. It’s a very big challenge.

The aquarium in the home is neatly cleaned. They polished all the stones in the aquarium, and hence now the black stones look white.

The fishes in the aquarium have been given oil bath.

An orange colored, color aware fish complains, “Hum logonko pakad pakad ke dhoya hai saab. Humari itni buri haalath ki hai ki, mein red color kit hi, ab orange dikh rahi hoon.”

Whenever anyone goes near to the aquarium, normally fishes will come together drooling, expecting they will be fed food. Hence a big sign is put, not to feed the fish. Also the fishes were given order not to drool, and come together whenever someone comes near to the aquarium.

They were also warned not to pishaab in the aquarium till the big brother leaves, so as to keep the aquarium clean of shit and urination of fishes.

Since the big brother lives in pardes, the family is decided to read the newspaper of pardes till big brother is in home.

So there is huge wave of big brother’s visit in the family.

I remain,

The J.

One Interview Question

This is a story about an interview question.

The technical guy asked this question.

“There are three colleagues who don’t want to reveal their salary to anyone, but they want to calculate the average of their salary. They have a calculator. How can u help them to find the average salary?”

Well this is good question. I thought for some time. Suddenly my mind remembered one of problem which I had solved earlier.

That puzzle goes like this.

“A car can travel at a speed of 63 miles/hour in straight road, 56 miles/ hour in uphill and 72 miles/hour in downhill. This car starts from A and reaches B after 4 hours. Then starts from B towards A and reaches A after 4 hours 40 minutes. What’s the distance between A and B?”

This problem I had solved like this…

Let X_u be the total uphill distance from A to B( which becomes downhill on the return trip) X_d be the total downhill distance from A to B( which becomes uphill on the return trip), and X_s be the total distance of straight road between A and B in miles.

Then problem reduces to form.

X_u / 56 + X_s / 63+ X_d / 72 = 4 hours

X_d / 56 + X_s / 63+ X_u / 72 = 4 hours 40 minutes.

Adding these two equations, will give

(X_u+X_d)(1/56+1/72) + 2X_s/63 = 8 hours and 40 minutes.

Now though finding the answer looks little tricky. And the trick is noticing 1/56,1/ 63, 1/72 are the terms of HP.

That is 1/63 – 1/56 = 1/72 – 1/63.

Hence (1/56+1/72) = 2/63

This will simplify the above equation as

2/63(X_u+X_d+ X_s) = 8 hours 40 minutes.

Which gives the (X_u+X_d+ X_s), that is distance between A and B. Pretty simple isn’t it?

Well I applied the same logic to solve the aptitude in the interview.

Lets say the salary of people be X₁, X₂, X₃

I will choose three different numbers in HP lets say a,b,c. I will tell 1^st and the 3^rd person a and c, for the 2^nd person b. The logic goes like this. 1^st person will divide his salary by ‘a’ in the calculator and give it to 2^nd person.

Sum in the calculator now = X₁/a

2^nd person (who is unaware of ‘a’ hence can’t decode what’s the salary of 1^st person) will add (2/b* X₂) to the number in calculator and pass it to the third person.

Sum in the calculator now = X₁/a + (2/b* X₂)

Third person will add(X₃*(1/a+1/c)) and pass it to the first person.

Sum in the calculator now = X₁/a + (2/b* X₂) + (X₃*(1/a+1/c))

Now first person will add X₁/c to it.

Sum in the calculator now = X₁/a + (2/b* X₂) + (X₃*(1/a+1/c))+ X₁/c

Using the HP property this simplifies to

(X₁₊ X₂₊X₃)*2/b

To calculate the averages multiply this by b/6. There you go.

Well this is how sharp minds works.!!!

You may guess i got that job. But your guess is wrong. J

I wasn’t selected in that interview. But im still proud of this answer as this answer came as out of box solution.

Recently I was thinking about this method. And I questioned myself why concept of HP came into my mind but not of AP or GP, though the same result can be achieved by any of the sequence. I realized it’s because my mind had already seen similar problem and it related the puzzle to it. That’s what pattern recognition power of mind.

Geniuses are not born. They observe things, record in their subconscious mind and use it whenever required.

Well enough of boosting myself. The simple answer to that question is

Let first person add some random number Y to his salary and pass it to the second

Sum in calculator = X₁₊ Y

Let other second and third person add their actual salary and pass it to the first.

Sum in calculator = X₁₊ Y+ X₂₊X₃

First person who is aware of Y will now remove Y from this sum and divide by three to get the average of their salary.

No wonder I wasn’t selected in that interview..!!

Always there are plenty of methods to solve anything in life. But finding the simple one really makes the difference to anyone.

I remain
The J.

Muttata

I travel to office by the company shuttle. Even today as part of my daily routine, I’m standing in the steps of shopping complex and browsing through the morning news paper. The road where the shuttle picks me is a one way. It has a yellow colored direction stone which points to the opposite direction as that of the way, since the flow in that road is changed recently but not the direction of the pointer..

Its wonderful road; which is fully covered by the shadows of the huge trees. One side of the road has this shopping complex; where as the other side has some apartments, Tiffin center and a School. Both sides of the road are paved with uneven sized granites. At some place the stones are placed at 20 degree inclination to the ground, that people walking on it surely feel the ups and down of the unevenness.

Today as usual, I observe lots of kids playing "Muttata" in the road side. Running over the uneven granites so as to avoid being caught by the chaser. They are in school uniform, Boys in Light blue shirt, dark blue chaddi, blue socks and Black shoes. Girls are also in the same color, they wear "Langa and Rakhi". Some guys also wear black jacket over their light blue shirt. The dust of the pavement did polish their shoes and turned them into somewhat red color. They all study in the school opposite to where I stand. The school gate is not yet open. Hence these kids need to wait till watchman comes and opens the School gate. But being best utilizers of time on Games, these kids play game "Muttata".

They run, they shout, they hit others to make them "out", they climb the compound, they jump off from the compound, they run around tree, they argue about cheating, they...
what not.!!!
I observe them playing like this from many days.

Even today, they ran, they jumped, but at one point, one kid under the josh of "making one out" hit the uneven granite. He fallen down over the granite, with a cry out.!!!My eyes moved from reading "deflation(a rare word to hear these days) in the dress of celebrities" on page 7 of Bangalore times to this kid’s cry out.
I forgot to breath for a moment, Lips said "OMG", legs was about to move to other side of the road where the kid had fallen.

1, 2, 3….
His mates, who were running away from him a couple of seconds earlier, were all around him. My heart said “The kid is surely hit hard”.

What’s next?
Kid who had fallen, got up and showed his small wounded hands and elbow to his mates to get some sympathy from them, gave two bumps into his chaddi to remove the dust from it which stuck when he had fallen, gave a kick to stone which made him fall,
And most importantly he is back into the game of Muttata.

If u fall in the Muttata of life, doesn't mean u can’t play anymore. It simply means "give two bumps into your chaddi, kick the stone and move on".


I remain,
J