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The Making of a Dumb Datum

Imagine 10,000 years in the future. Two archaeologists are digging a site, and they find the remains of human bones. They take those remains to the lab, perform tests on them, and try to reconstruct the habits and lifestyle of that human. Say those bones belong to me. They are trying to find out my story, how I lived, what I ate, where I traveled, etc. Once they find all the info they need, they toss it into a museum where they store all other such ancient human remains they find. I was essentially one data point to them in trying to understand how humanity evolved over time. Or I can also call myself a “datum”, the singular form of data, literally one piece of information to solve a bigger puzzle. Honestly, I don’t need 10,000 years to become a datum. I am already a part of several datasets people use these days to study many things. So for that objective learner, I am already a datum. Now let me get to how I got the dumb part of it. I have had an interesting and eventful life so far...
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No Nonsense November


1.     Yet another 23-year-old I know is getting married. What was I doing when I heard that news? I was discussing with my friend about using up the PTOs left for this year to go biking around the lake. I sometimes wonder if it’s me that’s holding back, or if it’s the world that’s rushing, to reach this milestone of becoming a grown up. Maybe it’s a bit of both.

2.     Whenever someone tells me they are worried about growing old, I wish I can explain why aging is just wisdom wrapped in a giftbox of wrinkles and gray hair.

3.     I remember this one incident last year where I mistook an airplane in sky to be a star, so I told my friend that I can see a star. He glanced at sky, and with an expression of “are you really this dumb?”, he burst my bubble that it is an airplane. But I fortunately had a quick comeback. I told him if he hadn’t heard of that song which goes like ‘Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars’, and that somehow diverted the conversation away from my ignorance.

4.     Every month is No Nut November if one is allergic to nuts.

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