How pets and being stress-free can help in getting pregnant

We got 2 cats as soon as we returned from a 9 days vacation from Goa. As we were new to cats and with them playing around us, we were focused on them all the time and were enjoying every moment. The first week was a zero stress period. Within a week was our 12th day and we possibly conceived our baby that day.

There are some more incidents in my acquaintances:

1. One of my friends also got a cat and within the same month, they conceived too.

2. Another friend of mine got a dog and within the same month, they conceived as well.

3. One of my relatives and his wife went to her parent's place for a month and during the same month, you understood now. Right?

I am not a biology person but I am a pattern matcher.

What were common in all 4 cases?

1. The stress level of the couple is low.

2. They don't fight with each other.

3. Maybe less number of making-out opportunities.

4. Each of the 8 of us was above 32 years old.

I am no expert but free advice doesn't harm anyone. If you have checked with a doctor and have no major physical issues but are still finding it difficult to conceive, try including the below fundamentals in the routine. For people above 30, please try to do everything.

How to get pregnant basics:

1. Try to be stress-free all the time: This is rule 0 - a non-negotiable option. Doctors also recommend trying to be stress-free during this period. Even if you do everything right but are under a lot of stress, the chances will be very low. Over and above, if you are failing to conceive every month, it will only add to more stress.

2. Understand and maintain the female ovulation calendar: Every girl knows this. Anyway, for guys, the first day of the period is day 1. Reference: https://www.womenshealth.gov/ovulation-calculator

3. Folic acid and onions over other medicines: If you are trying to conceive, then you may want to add folic acid to your routine. You may not want any issues with the child. As our body is deteriorated by our lifestyle, our body doesn't get enough folate naturally. For guys, onion is a must-have to increase the sperm count. References: 

1. Folic acid - https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/folic-acid

2. Onion - https://www.thehealthsite.com/fitness/health-benefits-of-onions-142940/

4. Exercise 6th-11th heavy and rest light: From the end of the period, the girl should exercise till one day before trying to conceive. Rest of the month, you should still exercise but light. Exercising also helps in decreasing stress levels. Guys can exercise throughout the month. It helps in improving sperm quality.

5. Maternal Instinct (Theory): This is just my theory due to the pattern. Women can develop maternal instincts from pets or meeting other children from the neighbourhood. That might release some hormones in the body that could help in conceiving.

6. Vacation: Vacationing regularly could help in reducing stress.

7. Pets: Pets help in reducing stress a lot, plus maternal instincts.

8. Make out on 12th and 14th days: Mostly 14th day is the day women ovulate. The chance of getting pregnant is dramatically increased if you have sex on the day of ovulation, or two days before that. - Reference: https://www.yourfertility.org.au/everyone/timing

9. Horny sex: Having horny sex helps. So try to keep a gap between make-out sessions and have horny sex on the 12th day. Guys shouldn't masturbate or have sex for some days before the 12th.

PS: This is all from my observation. Not proved by any scientific facts!

Modi is playing Big Boss during Lockdown and giving us tasks on a regular basis

        Everybody has been complaining about their boredom during the lockdown. They are not able to meet people because of WFH. As Biswa says, extroverts are like "Insaan kahan hai? Mujhe Insaan ke saath hang out karna hai thoda sa." meaning "Where are the human beings? I need to hang out with a human being." Not just extroverts, after so many days of social distancing, we all want to hang out with human beings. We want to celebrate festivals. 

        Our beloved PM Modi Ji, who is known to give tasks to the people of India, like make Aadhar cards, stand in ATM queues, donate cylinder, etc continues to give us tasks. First, he asked the people of India to come to the balcony to make noise. Now he is asking us to show lights. It has started feeling like Big Boss. Now I am wondering what his next tasks will be. Big Boss wants all the housemates to come to the balcony and pee to the ground?

        Jokes apart PM Modi does know our situation here. He finds out ways to help us indirectly interact with each other and celebrate like festivals. First, he asked us to make noise as we do in Holi. Now he is inviting us to show lights like Diwali. He certainly needs to have a team to find creative ways to celebrate in the lockdown. 

Game Of Thrones S08E03: How the Night King should have been defeated?

Game Of Thrones S08E03: How the Night King should have been defeated?

Many are unhappy that Arya killed the Night King and not Jon Snow. I am not. I loved that it was Arya and her training paid off. Many are unhappy that she did it very easily. Here I am unhappy too. So much build up of Night King to die like that. Everything else has been shown perfectly, but the last 10-20 seconds spoiled the whole thing. Let's rewrite a more sensible ending for the S08E03.

When the Night King entered the Godswood, there were only two white walkers present. He comes and stands in front of Bran.
Jon is trying to defend himself from the wight dragon and shout "Go", which happened.
A white walker enters the Godswood and stands beside the other walkers.
A walker feels a breeze and sees to his left to the walker who just came, but there was no one.
When the Night King removes his sword and attempts to kill Bran, a white walker jumps to him with a dagger. Night King turns and holds the walker's neck with one hand and the dagger hand with his other hand. Realizing the secret of the walker, he scratches his nail on the neck and pulls out the fake face, who turns out to be Arya.
He thinks instead of choking and killing Arya, it will wiser to convert her into his walker general, a replacement of the one that she might have killed to show up and would have taken the face of. He places his fingernail on her neck, still holding her by the neck and tries to convert her.
Bran realizing that he is not only a three-eyed raven but also a stark and it is his duty to protect Arya, just like the same way Arya realized that she is not the noone.
Bran tries all his power to warg into the Night King. Night King finds out that Bran is trying to warg him, and looks towards Bran with anger. Night King gets distracted by Bran's attempt to warg him.
Arya uses this opportunity, drops her knife from one hand to another and kills the Night King.

This would have been a more sensible ending for the Night King and would have shown a proper team effort from Arya, Bran and Jon.

One Day Adventure: Left the Job on Day 1

I was 100% sure I will be joining Clipshow (name changed) as an Engineering Manager, which was my eighth offer of the season. I even gave my confirmation to join the company, so that the CTO can inform the investors and roll out the offer letter. I changed my status to "not looking out". The scene with the other company suddenly got aggressive.

The offer from Lindakart (name changed) for Principal Engineer was the ninth offer I had. I had even had a quarrel with the CEO of Lindakart when I met him, but still, he kept his ego aside. The HRs from Lindakart were urging me to join them, even though they were offering me Rupees 2 LPA lesser than Clipshow. After hundreds of calls from those HRs, the founders, the VPs and other stakeholders, I started appreciating their perseverance and also started liking the importance I got. I hesitantly called the Clipshow CTO informing him that I couldn't join them. Surprisingly, he was cool about it.

I was supposed to join on Monday, which was the day before yesterday. On Sunday, I got a call from senior EM asking me if I could come to the office at 9 AM. They were having the new product discussion, and it will be better if I can attend it. He added me to a Whatsapp group, and the Project Manager shared a document on it. I read it and got prepared for making a mark on the first day.

The meeting started around 9 AM. One of the members of the product had not read the document. The PM scolded that person that he should have. This behaviour pissed me off very badly. Why in the world, he needed to work on Sunday and expect people to do the same? But, I did not say anything at that time because I did not know how things are in the company. The meeting went on till 1 PM. I had my lunch with the PM in the cafeteria. It was a Bharat Band that day, so almost all the shops were closed. The meeting continued postlunch.

In the evening, the PM and I went down for tea. Two of the people who were present at the meeting were already at the stall. One of them was saying that he is finding it difficult to pitch in the colleges, and he needs to make a new pitch.
I asked him, "What pitch are you talking about?"
He replied, "We work almost seven days a week."
I questioned him, "But the company has a five days working model from today. Right?"
He got defensive and changed the topic. I guessed that something was fishy.

I asked the PM about it. He got very defensively and asked me to confront HR. He said that it was wrong on the part of HR that they set a false expectation to me. I went to the HR, and he was sitting with the same guy who was talking about the pitch. I came back and waited for a few minutes and went back. He was still sitting with the same guy. I asked him whether I can talk to him for a minute. He knew what was I going to discuss.
I asked him straight, "Is it five days working or six days?"
He said, "We proposed that it should be five days working, but the management rejected it."
He was steadily asking me, "With you, we can strengthen the proposal, and go back to the management. Allow me to work on it."
I exploded, "Even if you succeed, what next? I came at 9 AM, and it's already 8 PM. No one seems to be making any move. There doesn't seem any work-life balance here. I have heard you guys work 24x7."

The HR went in a meeting with the CEO and other managers. After he came back, he called me. I was in a room with the HR and the VP.
The VP defended, "The engineering team is lagging behind the business team a lot. So they have to work a lot. We are going on a model where people work for weeks till the task is over. After that, they can take as many compensatory leaves."
I answered, "Both of us know that this won't work, and the tasks never finish. Even I have run a company, and I can understand your problem."
He defended that they don't work all seven days. But I was clear what I had to do.
I told the HR, "I am leaving for the day. If I don't show up tomorrow, tear off my onboarding form."

At night, the person, with who I had the introductory conversation, called me. I thought the HR would have asked him to talk to me. But he dropped a bomb. He said that he was very sorry about telling me earlier that they are five days working. He had said the same thing to many candidates, and he can't face them now. So he had quit too. Fuck! Not just him but 4-5 more people in the company had resigned the same day. Everyone was hoping that the tech team will adopt five days working model, but it did not.

The next day, I went to the company and went straight into a room with two of the HRs, who regularly interacted with me. I felt it would be rational to tell them face to face that I don't want to be a part of the company. I asked the other HR to give my three passport size photos too. It transformed into a joke that I came to the office to take them.

I met all the dissatisfied employees and few already resigned ones at the tea stall. We bitched about the company a lot. The two HRs were passing by for lunch, stopped to talk to us. I told the senior HR that we wished to get a hold of him outside the office, and we cracked many jokes on them and the company. Then they went for the lunch. After some time five of us left for food too. One of them told me that they officially have Diwali off, but still, everyone comes to the office on that day. Heights!

I realised that it was not only the work timings that was the problem, but also the management was inhuman. We made a Whatsapp group called "Linda Sucks", and they shared their resumes in it.

After a while, the other HR messaged me that she was sorry to mess up with my career. I wrote to her, "It's alright. Now, I need to get shameless and talk to the other companies where I had the offers from."

Two good things happened to me because of this company. One is that I got to learn their complete supply chain process and second, I met many fellow engineers who I can pull in other companies or start up another company.

I am officially an author now

Finally, I published my first story on Amazon. The title is "Is Lal Bahadur Shastri Fine?" You can search and read it on Kindle. It is a science fiction short story. I hope you like the story.

My Author Page: Dr Mystique
Kindle Edition: Is Lal Bahadur Shastri Fine?
Paperback: Is Lal Bahadur Shastri Fine?

It felt great after publishing. It felt even better when one book was sold at Smashwords.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Updates: I have published another book through a publisher. This is science fiction as well. If you read it let me know how did you like it.
Kindle Edition: The Travellers.

Women empowerment gone wrong

Policy 1: Sex ratio

Many companies have a policy of maintaining the sex ratio in the engineering teams. Most of them have separate bars while interviewing male and female candidates. The lower bar for female candidates has been pissing off male candidates for very long. The men in the office don't respect the management decision of having women with lower calibre. To decrease the displeasure among the men employees and to justify pay as per productivity, the management offers lower pay scales to women candidates. It creates discontent among the women.

If the bars are equal, the ratio decreases. Suppose, there are 80 boys and 20 girls in an engineering college and the percentage of smart ones is the same for both, say 20%. The set of selected candidates will have 16 boys and 4 girls. If the bars are different, the policies for maintaining the ratio will create unemployment among the male engineers or a shortage of women engineers in the long run.


What is the solution to this? How to create a 50-50 ratio among the engineers?

For having a 50-50 ratio in the companies, the colleges will have to select students in the same proportion. If an equal number of girls are trained to be eligible for the corporate world, then the ratio will be maintained. But it has been seen that fewer girls crack the entrance exam. So, the objective isn't achievable, unless the bar is lowered. Lowering the bar will create the same dissatisfaction in the colleges, instead of the companies. It will be a bigger problem because at least the employees in the companies are peaceful, but college students are not.

It is an old scientific myth that women are better in arts and creativity, while men are better at problem-solving. There are many great examples of female achievers in the engineering field like Gwynne Shotwell, COO of SpaceX and Priya Balasubramaniam, a VP in Apple. The training goes all the way up to the upbringing of the girls in the families. If an engineering mindset is instilled from the childhood, girls can be as competent as boys in engineering fields or even more.


Policy 2: Maternity leaves

Women have been dropping their careers after pregnancy for years to support their family and kids. It's an expectation from the women in the family as well as it's the choice a mother takes herself. This phenomenon had prevented the most of them to excel in their careers and also the companies to maintain the diversity among the employees. The Karnataka Government have passed a bill to increase the maternity leaves from 135 days to 180 days for supporting the female employees to maintain a work-life balance. This policy was adopted by the established private companies as well.

The median tenure for employees age 25 to 34 is 3.2 years. For companies, giving almost 180 days leave is an enormous loss of resources. So, the companies avoid having dependencies on the women employees and due to which the women are even more dissatisfied. This policy seems to be failing because of management enforcement.


Startups

Overall both the policies, sex ratio and maternal leaves, are creating chaos in the technology world. The startups, whose average life is three years, will surely avoid hiring a woman due to these factors unless the candidate is exceptionally skilled.

Is there no perfect solution to this problem? Please let me know if there are any.

All the measures are implemented to empower women globally. Is it mandatory to have an equal number of women in the realm of technology? Why? There are many fields where women excel a lot where men don't. I can't think of any practical reason, other than the vote bank for the Pappu.

In Bangalore, autorickshaw drivers never take a ride by the meter

        I have been in Bangalore for years, and I have not seen any auto driver accepting a ride by the meter. They have excuses to not obey the meter and always charge double, one and a half times of the meter or fifty rupees more. There are mainly three main excuses.

1. Between 10 PM and 6 AM, the reason is the night charges, which are double, saying that it's Government rule.
2. Between 9 AM and 1 PM or between 5 PM and 9 PM, they take more because of the heavy traffic.
3. Between 6 AM and 9 AM, between 1 PM and 5 PM or between 9 PM and 10 PM, they demand more saying that they have to come back empty.

        For point 1: The night charges are applicable from 10 PM to 5 AM, not 6 AM; also the night charges are 1.5x, not double.

        For point 2: Heavy traffic is a satisfactory justification, but they exploit it to extract out money from the customer's pocket, due to customer's critical obligation to reach on time.

        For point 3: This one is the shallowest and is not acceptable no matter what. These are the only time when the above two convincing excuses, night charges and the traffic, don't apply. "Coming back empty" is what they could come up with for these timings? Coming back empty, seriously? Bangalore is so abundant of human beings even at night. Every hour of the day in every corner of the city, we can find people trying to stop running auto rickshaws all the time. How can they go back empty?

        I have encountered many more excuses but could not recall momentarily.

        Please let me know in comments if you have encountered any other excuse or if you met any driver who agreed to take you by the meter.