INSOMNIA

At B schools, they use an example to prove the futility of mathematical decision making ... Its called “Hot Hands” ... The example comes from the sport of Basketball ... When a coach draws up the final lineup, he always chooses players with "Hot Hands"... These are the guys who have scored the most points in recent games ... Something like a batsmen being in form (Fans of Team India might not know about this, but in form batsmen are the ones who score consistently) ... Mathematically speaking, the concept of hot hands is totally unscientific ... The probability that a player scores in the next game has nothing to do with how much he scored last time ... And this my friends is the problem with any mathematical model...
That’s seriously bad news for me ... As an engineering graduate , I have always had great faith in the powers of statistical analysis ... The only subjects I did well in MBA were the ones where the answers came out of an Excel sheet ... And now I realize that more often than naught , the excel sheet just gives you crap ... Its quite interesting this concept of Hot Hands ... A friend of mine told me that there are times in your life when everything you do just bombs on your face ... No matter what your intentions are , no matter how hard you try , no matter how good you are at it , things just wont work ... In short when your life sucks, there’s pretty much nothing you can do about it but hang around and wait for the bad times to pass … Easier said than done , but trust you me, no sort of analysis would help your cause …
I have had a lot of time to think about this sort of stuff lately ... Thanks to some seriously potent medication... On Dr. Gruntos's recommendation, I restarted my antibiotic course ... I hate antibiotics ... They kill my appetite, give me splitting headaches and they taste funny…To make matters worse,I had to take a friend from work out to drinks last night ... Had a great time in spite of exercising extreme moderation ... But like always , the bloody antibiotics got me ... Couldn’t sleep a wink ... Watched televion .. Read the newspaper... Read a book... Watched some more television ... and by the time I started feeling a lil sleepy, the sun was out and I decided to head back home ... Chandan my domestic help freaked out when he saw me ... My eyes were blood shot red and I looked such a wreck, he thought the Dalit mob had caught me and beaten the crap out of me ... Sorry Trillian it didn’t actually happen...
Given the number of sick leaves I have already taken this month, I didn’t want to skip another day at work ... So I got dressed and for a change came to office on time... Spent all morning explaining to folks at work that the reason I look like a zombie is just lack of sleep and not something contagious...
G called up to chart out plans for the weekend ... Its K's last weekend in India and G suggested that we all go out partying tonight ... Now this is a big problem for me coz I have a bunch of medical tests scheduled for tomorrow morning ... And I really don’t want my bodily fluids to show any sort of combustible properties during the lab tests ... In case any of you wish to volunteer to be my proxy for the medical checkup , lemme know ... Volunteers should be healthy, and can expect too be handsomely rewarded... And as a bonus I would also throw in an original Ford Prefect letter of appreciation for selfless act beyond the call of duty ...signed by yours truly himself...

BTW, the place G plans to take us tonight is called Insomnia... Aint that just beeeeauuuutiful...