Time for another poll!

There was a time before the internet.  Thankfully that time is now over (for the global elite anyway).

I was reading an article praising Wikipedia in the Economist and encountered the following thought provoking comment by the reader No Mist:

is there any alternative to WP ? as such WP is the single most valuable human creation on planet. it is indispensable … so much so that internet loses 90% of its importance if ever WP vanishes from the cyberworld.

And this from Lear21:

The hidden success of Wikipedia is the most underreported story of this decade. Forget Facebook, myspace, ebay and amazon. It is Wikipedia which enables mankind to use the internet in a noble manner.

I suggest that Mr. Jimmy Wales should be a candidate for either the Literature or Noble Peace Prize.

This got me thinking.  While I definitely use gmail, google and facebook very often, these are services/resources that are more easily replaceable (despite their inferiority, the Yahoo! and bing search engines seem capable of doing a lot of the same basic searches that Google does, etc).  As No Mist and Lear21 suggest, Wikipedia really does seem like a noble and incredible human achievement.

Anyway, this brings us to the second Kabcity Poll:

I have decided to ignore the thorny path of defining words like “better”, “greater than”, or “more important than” by using “>”.  Please vote!

the boy who lived

Before I chose the name for my blog, I wrote something I wanted to post which was quite serious. After spending hours and hours picking the perfect and most brilliant name for this blog (and what could be more perfect and brilliant than KabCity-The Sethi Equilibrium?), I was too lazy to actually post my post. I’ve now come to realize that “KabCity” does not suggest seriousness, so I will start out with something light and meaningless.

In keeping with the hype around the most anticipated first part of the seventh instalment of a movie series ever (I cannot wait to watch it!!!!), here are two stories from my life, followed by a poll (please vote, even if you can’t get through both stories):

Story A:

When working in villages in Odisha, which is where I’ve been for the last few weeks, it is advisable to always wear pants (as opposed to shorts) and full-sleeved shirts.  This is to:

a) Make sure you don’t disrespect the villagers by being immodest

b) Protect against being bitten by the female Anopheles mosquito

c) Look professional

When the “field team” visits villages, we usually stay in a hotel near our target village.  By the time we return to the hotel in the evenings, there isn’t any time for socializing and such, so we just change into our night clothes and go to sleep, meaning we rarely see each other wearing anything other than the prescribed outfit mentioned above.

On the fourth or fifth day of our recently completed field work, we returned early from the village and, because it was pretty hot, I decided to wear shorts. When I came out of the bathroom in my new attire, Jagat, one of the field staff, immediately told me I looked really good.

“You look really good right now, Kabs”

“Wearing shorts?”

“Yes my friend…just like Harry Potter”

“Thanks yaar”

Story B:

My sister, my mother, and I are all Harry Potter enthusiasts.  Mother is more devoted than either of us siblings, so she went to watch the new motion picture as soon as she could. She then called me to tell me it was fantastic, but that she cried from start to end because:

a) The Harry Potter series was coming to an end

b) All the children leaving home made her think of how my sister and I and all our friends are now away from home

c) Harry Potter looks like me

This brings us to…

The first KabCity Poll:

EDIT: I have removed the photograph to protect my identity haha.