Meerkat Monocle Mannerism

The meerkat is a clueless societal animal like me. The actual meerkat is originally from the southern African region. As always nature was kind enough to give us enough variants just to have a laugh with the names we give it.

It has one quirky mannerism which I share.I was probably once bitten by one of their distant cousins or some concoction of the sort. If you look at the meerkat outside of its burrow which is usually how you would have seen it, it keeps shifting its gaze. The meerkat does this to check for predators and makes an early warning system. How I wish we could teach them the notion of money, and then charge them for inventing a infra red/motion sensor predator alert system. (Thats another science fiction I am working on secretly in my burrow while a meerkat keeps a watch for me outside.)

In much the same mannerism, but in the sense of wearing a monocle. Imagine a grad student in a research group meeting, the lead researcher or primary investigator or my favourite "the brains of the operation"  has gone on vacation. So now you need to talk about the progress you made that week, for the pennies worth, you are clueless about what goes on, you just sit in your corner and watch youtube videos and kill your time. The professor starts with the infamous question, "so whats the progress on the transmogrifier?". For a moment you can't believe your ears, you just look around once to see if this is a dream, when you signed for the war you never expected to be at the front-lines. I should explain the monocle now, have you seen a person wearing a monocle, does he not have a quizzical look on him. The grad student in this scenario generally has the same look and the hence the inclusion of the monocle.

Well disaster aversion mode, some other "researcher" in the group, the unwise fool I call him, takes the "lead" and starts pouring out what he has been doing all of last week, and the results on the transmogrification. Obviously this guy was such a jerk, the know it all wizard eh, you look around to your friend with a stamp of "what's he acting so pious for?" on your face. That betraying rascal is actually listening to him and has no clue of your irreverent telepathic phonecall. You look around the room, with a look on your face still hanging like it was painted on. The "researcher"'s close friend looks at you with the mocking "what an idiot!" look. You go all crazy and start fervently shifting your gaze to check for attacks before you hear a familiar reference to the KL divergence and flashbulb remember "your  research" ages ago.

The period of frenzy gazing to avoid looking like an imbecile, while proving your idiocy is what I call the "Meerkat Monocle Mannerism". You might see a publication of this in nature in the far future.

PS:
For people who have never heard of the transmogrifier - http://members.shaw.ca/newsong/calvin.html

For people who don't know what the KL divergence is; take a course in linear algebra, I'm sure wikipedia doesn't do justice

For people who have never seen a meerkat in action - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWKW-dw9cuY (albeit the video claims its wales, its thanks to the work of the transmogrifier)

Learning to play

The concept of learning itself comes from the idea of playing. The first words we learn, the first time we ride our cycles, the first time you hold a bat. There is something very basic and essential in that "first time". We are eager to pick up and explore the tools at our disposal, only for the fun of it. There is no sense of purpose, achievement or competition to motivate and propel you forwards. That basic "first time" instinct though is lost on us as we age.

A few of the first times happened a little late for me, the first time I ever rode a bike was just a couple of years ago. It wasn't a sense of achievement, "yaay I can ride a bike now" or an inflated ego boost that got me going to learn then. I was afraid at first, to fall down, to go into traffic and not being able to move, but at some point my curiosity got the better of me. I was not flying through the wind, but I was definitely moving. In all this mind you, I never fell down once, albeit I only traveled in the safety of my neighborhood and not in the wild country or the mean highways.  The feeling of the first time, the quaint exhilaration and the magical bliss, can propel into an euphoric trance.

Whats the point of that anecdote you might ask? The point is this, you need to take the plunge sometimes in the depths of the unknown not knowing what the rewards are, make a leap of faith and hope to land on your feet. It is not always possible and you might land on your head, this should not deter your ability to take risks, explore and learn to play. Sometimes, infact most of the times, its quite alright to make a fool of yourself. The reason I am writing about this is primarily to remind myself to explore the craziness in the world around me.

In the words of my friend's email signature -  

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” ~ Mark Twain