Love = Cocaine = Dopamine

Every time I hear about cocaine, or grass I get a picture of ‘hare rama hare krishna’ song, in short the picture of hippie culture. Feels like so much of love and passion involved.

Taling about love, it creates strong emotions & chemical reactions which results an increase in certain hormones like dopamine in the body. A reaction your brain make on making love (having sex) is similar to the brain reaction on having cocaine. In certain cases the emotion can be so strong that the person under effect can be intoxicated enough to kill someone or even self if refused love.

Dopamine is a hormone commonly associated with having pleasure, providing feelings of enjoyment and motivating a person to perform certain activities repeatedly. Well, you know what this is pointing to… People in India might be aware of ‘Bhaang’, which on consuming also results in similar behavior.

Did you also know Dopamine helps regulate movement and emotion and its depletion may cause Parkinson’s disease.

Do you like what you do?

*This blog entry is specifically targeted for people in IT.

Do you like what you do? How often do you do things that you do not like but still do because everyone else is doing that?
Working in a global company gives an advantage of knowing fellow peers working elsewhere in world. Different parts of the world have different working style and cultures.

Look at Japan, people are hard working or rather workaholics – they come early and go late. They have high quality standards. They have long working hours and they have unsaid rules like no one leaves until the boss leaves. But they still manage to get time to go to pubs every night. They like pub hopping, and they still manage to come to office next day by 8 am. Surprising! I wonder when they sleep.

In Europe, people come early and leave early. Friday is usually half day because no one is in office after 4PM.  The beer party starts at 4 pm on Friday and continues till Saturday night. (It may sound like an exaggeration but is still true).

In US, people are more professional come early, go early and the time that is spent in office is highly productive.

In all the above three cultures one thing is in common – They find time for themselves; do things they like and have heart to follow their passion.
Now you must be wondering what point I want to make. There is a Scott Adam’s Dilbert Law – After every salary raise you will have lesser money in your bank account. All my friends agree with that. What do we do with our money?

Now let’s talk about us – Indians. How often do we follow our heart? Do we have passion for something? Who are our role models? How do we contribute to the society? Do we define new paths and set example for others to follow by setting new trends?

I think we seriously miss doing something passionately for ourselves. And this is from the beginning. As a child you do things which your parents want you to do. Most of the time what we do is based on what will impress others, but not on what we like. What we do is more decided based on the circle of friends, the company we are in, the money we earn. We always try to make a statement but in doing so we miss doing things that are close to our heart.

How expensive will it be to maintain a car in future?

Today I spent my complete day with a friend of mine. We are neighbors. So after our lunch we were watching an old movie ‘chupke chupke’, where in once scene the driver repairs the car, and the owner of the car says to his wife that if the car had been taken to workshop then then minimum Rs100 bill would have come. This was some 30 years ago. I am not an economist, but will do some simple math without bringing any inflation or current salary trends in.

Today if you take your car to workshop then  you will spend minimum Rs.1000, and I m only talking about a samll car. So it is almost 10 times more than that as it used to be in 70’s. If we continue to go at this pace, then in next 20 to 25 years taking a car to workshop may be as expensive as spending 2 nights in a 5 star hotel today.

Now look at the petrol price today, it is above Rs.52 per liter, which 30 years ago was just Rs.10. I still remember taking my father’s scooter out and then 2-3 rupees from friends and filling petrol for Rs.10.  The oil prices today we get are highly subsidized by government but which still means the price of petrol has gone up by 5 times. In next 25-30 years this price of petrol may be equivalent to taking a family of 4 for a movie today.

It will be so good if there is some machine which does not require any maintenance and fuel. :)