The Other Side of Life

Let's take a shot at a simple puzzle. You are the manager of a Day Care Centre. You notice that every week, around 6-7 parents arrive late to pick up their kids. Which means, you have to stay extra and look after them. You have to do something to change this habit. So, what do you do? An obvious answer is to introduce a Fine for late comers. A couple of researchers (Gneezy and Rustichini) did this in Israel to see if the introduction of a fine reduces the number of people coming late for pick-ups. And guess what they observed: (Source: Gneezy, et al, 2000) In short, the number of people who were coming late increased. And worse, even when the removed the fine in Week 17, the number of parents coming late never came down to the original level without fines. Quite a bazinga, isn't it? I mean, when you introduce a fine, you assume people are going to behave rationally and think, oh this is unwanted behaviour, so we should not be doing this.

..But I did it. The one thing which I always take pride in, is my control. I eat one piece of sweet and I don't crave for a second. (Except during Diwali, but then, it's Diwali, so let's not judge.) I watch one episode of a show on Netflix and I turn off the TV. It's not even like I feel I am missing something. That's my bandwidth, I cannot watch more than one. I browse social media for 5 minutes. And then, stop, because I don't need to know more about anyone's life, let alone see their honeymoon pics. I watch 2 videos on Youtube and then, I stop.  It was always like that. And I was so proud of that. Till recently, that is. I realized much to my horror, I was not so controlled any more, atleast in one aspect - Social Media and mindless browsing on the internet. Now that I am studying and I am expected to read academic papers and journals and most importantly, get ready for an exam this week, I am at the laptop for long stretches. Mostly,

Do you have a happy place? I never did. But now, I do. Last month, Sherlock and I were on a trip of a lifetime. We went driving all around Ireland and Scotland. Here on, if I use the word beautiful anywhere in the rest of my post, please feel free to report my blog as Spam, because there cannot be a bigger disservice to the places we went to than describing them with an adjective as trite as that. It rained a lot there. Except on one day. The day we went to Cliffs of Moher.  On a bright sunny day, we arrived at the Cliffs of Moher. The geography of the place is quite logical - there are cliffs extending to both sides of the Visitor Centre. You arrive at the Centre and decided whether you want to go left or right. And then start walking along the cliffs. The trail is amazing, to say the least. It overlooks water and one step here and there, you can say goodbye to all that you love. So we reached the Centre and decided to walk towards the right. WIth sun out in