The tale of two brothers

No this is not Deewar, but it is pretty similar.

There are two brothers who work in the same office that I do, here in Madrid. They both are about 50 years old. One is my client reporting manager, while the other is the one whom I eat lunch with and socialize after work.

One brother, the younger one, wears suits to office, drives a Mercedes M Class which costs around 50 lakhs in India, eats lunch in a fancy Italian restaurant every day and is like a VP here with direct reporting to the CIO.

He is also unmarried, lives alone, has a reputation of being too picky, has only travelled once outside of Spain to Germany, that too for work and makes a graceful but quick exit from office parties after one drink. He also looks more aged than his older brother and reportedly gets upset if you compare the two of them.

The older brother on the other hand drinks till everyone else is drinking and then urges them on some more, he taught me the Spanish toast before a shot (quite handy if you are travelling in any of the Spanish speaking countries or quite cool if you are not). He has been to India twice, once to Nepal, Egypt, China and pretty much all of Europe. Can speak a few words of Hindi, Swahili, Cantonese, Croatian and fluent German. Can sing ‘Pardesi pardesi jaana nahi’ and say ‘Mero Nepali naam Ram Bahadur ho’. He has a wife that works in the same office, a daughter; a dog named Kika, he sings in the local choir on weekdays and treks on the weekends.

By now you I think you would have pretty much made up your mind which brother that you want to be. But wait, there is more. The older brother is actually junior to the younger brother in the office hierarchy, though he has been working longer here. He drives an old Volkswagen hatchback full of dog hair, his trekking T shirts have holes in them and he brings lunch in a reused plastic container. His reportees skip him to discuss a severe problem in the software that he works on and directly go to the manager. While the younger brother has a cabin of his own the older one sits in a cubicle like me, with his headphones on, listening to western classical music. He said he has never been to Ibiza as it very expensive (it is).

I want to be rich and well liked and well-travelled and fluent in multiple languages and high up in the corporate ladder and have fancy lunches wearing fancy suits and to have time for my hobbies to which I want to go to in my expensive car. I really do like being married (except when I am made to clean a perfectly clean house or when Supermodels invite me to share a hot tub with them; although the former happens more frequently than the latter) and I want to be close to my family. But seeing these brothers I understand that some of these things are mutually exclusive. It’s like the ending of the two paths, which I keep wondering about, laid out in front of me. One of them is the future of the decisions that I take today. I sometimes do console myself saying that “Naah, I’ll walk the middle path, get the best of both worlds.” But I don’t know if there is a middle path? And does it entail the best of both worlds or the worst of both worlds?

And to people who keep sharing posts like “If travelling is free you will never see me again” or “I'd rather have a passport full of stamps than a house full of stuff” I say bullshit. You can sell the stuff in your house and travel half the world. Hell, you can sell your phone and spend 5 days travelling Cambodia or buy a return flight to Europe or have a week exploring Rajasthan. But no you want that STUFF, you need that stuff. You want to hold a job which says Associate vice president or Product manager or some other fancy shit.  You want a fancy car. You want a big couch for days when you want to stay at home and don’t want to meet new people. You want to stay in a beach resort in Thailand with a staff that speaks fluent English and has a good Italian restaurant, while drinking a Dutch beer. More on this later perhaps.

Getting back to the two brothers, I really can’t say who has done better, who made the better choices, who is enjoying his life the most, whose compromise is worth it. It is like choosing between the Devil and deep blue sea, or rock and a hard place. When I think of it I feel that I am not choosing some things but rather letting go of some things. I mean will you let go of your brand new SUV  for a trip to the Moon? Will you give up an extra bedroom in your house for meeting your dad 15 more times before he dies. Will you like to have a best friend in office or would you like to get higher rating than your colleagues and rise above them. There was once a survey, can't find the exact link, but it went something like this. "Would you want a week in Paris or would you want a new wardrobe?" 75% people took the new wardrobe, they all said that the new wardrobe will last them years instead of the trip to Paris which they anyways plan to have. 90% of the people regretted their decision. And none of new wardrobe people took a trip to Paris in the next 3 years the survey tracked them.

We live in a society and everyone of us likes to get to a higher place in that society. Many of our decisions are influenced by what will others think of it. Getting a tattoo is only cool if others around you appreciate it, otherwise you are paying money to scar yourself. A Volkswagen Beetle's classic value of 22 Lakh is only derived from people who think it is a classic, drive that shit into a village in India and people would be laughing their asses off. So the point is that, between these two brothers can you even make a choice yourself or is the choice made for you by the society that you live in or our parents? Main Engineer / Doctor bana kyunki ye meri maa ka sapna tha. Aren't we all dancing on the strings held by the people who came before us, who were dancing on their forefather's strings? Acting how we do to live up to their expectations or do disprove their theories. I know quite a few people who did the shit that they did do just to piss their parents off and be established as a rebel. So all in all, do we even have a choice a chose a path? Or is nature or nurture? Or kismat as some of us call it? Or answer to the hundreds of prayers that people around us keep us chanting?

Poets die with an empty stomach but a full heart, materialistic people at least have a full belly even if their dreams are crushed. And from what I know hunger pangs hurt as much as hopelessness. No matter how I think about it I cannot make up my mind about which brother that I want to be. Can you?


Aaj mere paas building hai, property hai, bank balance hai, bungalow hai, gaari hai, kya hain
tumhare paas?
Mer paas Kika hai!
(Kyunki maa to dono ke pass nahi hai, wo Leon mae unke baap ke saath rehti hai)

My Favorite Beer Point

My favorite beer drinking place has been a bend in the Dehradun Mussourie road for around 8 years now. It is one of those innumerable Maggi points that dot that road, one of those places which offer tea, biscuits , their own recipe of maggi and a makeshift stone bench. But this one had a bench further down the level of the road and a clearing in front of it which gave a clear view of Dehradun from it.

And the view was outstanding. The place was calm, not much noise of the vehicles filtered through the trees, there was always a breeze blowing, thought it was freezing in January and the Maggi was good. I was pretty stressed about my MBA entrance exams and other shit but there for a few minutes I felt entirely at peace, I did not think of anything else except how it would feel to live here. No fancy job, no loads of money, no other fancy materialistic bullshit, just come here once in a while to drink a beer on a bike and eat a maggi. Total expense 150 Rupees per trip more or less. Less than the cost of pint in a pub in Bangalore. You can read about the whole Dehradun trip here. It is strange how the priorities of life can shift, I guess this is also a type of masaniya bairag. I will elaborate on the concept of masaniya bairag in a later blog post.

I do not have a photo of that place and sometimes I am glad of it, I can mentally mold the picture every time to the perfect place that I want to be in, in that moment of time. And everybody needs a beer point, even if they do not drink beer, it is a place of peace, their garden of Eden, a mental sanctuary.
But that place has now been replaced, by this.


This is near the castle (called Alcazar) of Segovia. Segovia is an old historic town near Madrid, it has an aqueduct from the Roman times, an impressive cathedral and this castle. It is said that this was the inspiration for Walt Disney for the sleeping beauty castle and the tower of Rapunzel.

 


I entered the castle from the regular entrance and the view was not impressive as the biggest tower facing had scaffolding on it, so after seeing the castle from inside I went out and was trying to get around it to see a different angle and came upon some narrow and steep stairs. The stairs are a recent addition, after the discovery of Cueva de la Zorra,

literally translates to the cave of the bitch, though I think it does not mean that. After I reached the bottom of the stairs I walked around I entered the woods near the foot of the rock the castle stands on. These woods called Dehesa in Spanish are typical of all Spanish royal residences, a break from then the hustle bustle of the castle. It also has a stream, which was probably a river surrounding the castle, cutting off approach of armies and has a small wooden bridge, now renovated, on it

While the place isn't really hidden, quite a few locals come here, but it is off the tourist track and thus very quiet.

As I walked in it I saw the leaves on the ground, the view of the castle and heard the sound of the small, gentle stream and I did not want to do anything but stand there, to stay there, to have a beer and think of nothing. And luckily I had a beer in my backpack; you see I was a Scout in school and you should know that their motto is "Be Prepared". So I stood on bridge with my one arm resting on the railing, legs crossed, looking up at the castle and sipped my beer. While the view was mesmerizing I was soon disturbed by a lot of elderly people who were walking their dogs. I thought public drinking would be OK in Spain, but I guess Botellon (Spanish for drinking in the street/park/beach) is now frowned upon and I had to move a little to the side to a stone bench.

And again I was lost from the my worries, like what to have for dinner and what number of bus leads back to the station, which I admit are the biggest worries of my life these days; and transported into a bubble where there was no past, no future, but only the present. I was looking up at the castle and seeing the myriad colors of the leaves, hearing minute changes in the sound of the stream and tasting the flavours in the beer which I hadn't noticed before.

But like all good things this had to come to an end as well, as I had to pee.

Even though I am no longer in that place, and this time I have a photo, but I will not look at it, for me it's my private paradise. So the next time I am stressed, when there is a P2 ticket or my in laws arrive and I need a place to retire to, to think of nothing and to feel relaxed, I will mentally arrive here. My new favorite beer point.

The Idiot's guide to going onsite

You've spent so much time working in office that your own dog growls when you go home, you have published a paper on arcane things like transient cloud interoperability and have put your head so up your manager's ass that when you cough he burps; culminating finally finally into getting the holy grail of IT <drum roll>.................... ONSITE !

And after getting the visa, your shoes polished, not so subtly letting it spread it through your relatives & neighbourhood aunties and buying that new red tie you think all the hard work is behind you, right? No. You cannot be further from the truth! Sowing your crop is something, reaping it is a different ball game altogether.

But do not despair! Help is here! With the Idiot's guide to going onsite you can do this stint abroad like a boss!

1. See the first order of business is to get active on social media sites, reactivate that Facebook account that you deleted because potential wives were liking your 'drinking beer in my favorite lungi' pics. Get on instagram as well, because if you haven't instagrammed 'Spaghetti al carbonara' (even though you couldn't finish it) then you are letting the best things in life pass you by.

2. Second you really really need a DSLR, no self respecting Indian man abroad can take the pictures of autumn trees with an ordinary phone camera. Because a photo taken from DSLR with a watermark with your name and the title "I love <insert name of your city> in fall xoxo" really ups your swag. Take as many ketchup packets from McDonalds so that you can fund your DSLR.

3. Just photos of autumn trees wouldn't do, that was for the classy half of your friends, the other half are going to wonder why are you taking photos of dying trees, for them it is the picture in the <crash cymbal> Snow ! That will make them realize that you are not in India anymore.

4. And the final and most definite photo you need is with the Caucasian people. No that is not another type of Asian people, I mean the white people, the goras, the firangis. But it has to be casual, no forced hand on the shoulder, no white woman awkwardly leaning away from you when you grin like an idiot, no you photobombing when they were taking a photo. Best option is to do it on corporate get togethers when they are forced to socialize with you and post with a casual caption "Lunch with friends / Beer with Yuergen, Havier and Hema"

5. Now that we are done with people and other natural things it comes to the pursuit of the most perfect creation of mankind! CARS ! The formula to stand beside a car that you saw parked on the street and take a picture with it has been done to death by our seniors in the 90s. Now you have to be in the car to make it believable. So hunt for the cheapest rent-a-car and get 5 more guys to pool in and then take the picture in the driving seat in turns.

6. Photos and cars are good but they cannot nourish you, you need food for that, that means rice. Also some rasam, sambhar, gunpowder and pickle would be good with it. Even the people who are in the know of pickle-packaging-for-the-flight understand that 2 KG of pickle isn't going to last you forever, so hound Facebook for people who are traveling from India and carpet bomb them with requests to get Mukkala Pacchdi when they come. Also simultaneously ask the locals which is the cheapest place to buy sona masoori.

7. India's average saving rate is 30%, and that is just average, but you are no average Indian, average Indians are not sent abroad to do the most critical tasks like servicing hardware, entering data in tables and teach people how to use a software. You need to go beyond that, to boldly go where no man except an Indian has gone before, i.e for 90% of savings. For that, share a studio apartment with 4 other people and have beds from wall to wall, skip some meals entirely because they should not expect you to pay 107.50 INR for a sandwich, get your wife to cook the rest, travel only in groups of 11 to share costs, politely decline any invitations where you need to spend money, get a haircut once in a year, get a house in suburbs to travel 2 hours a day and get pressure cookers from India.

8. Praise their infrastructure, social security and healthcare while cursing the 30% taxation, mandatory health insurance and abundance of processes for everything.

9. Wait for 2 months then start treating the new immigrants like they have turnips growing out of their neck instead of a head. Correct their pronunciations, point out helpful facts like you can wait for 4 hours to take the bus instead of spending 30 dollars in a taxi, tell them to ask for 100% Angus beef before ordering in Burger King and memorize phrases like "Dos cervezas por favor" to help them out when they are having a tough time ordering a beer.

10. Be more Indian than Indians. Put a extra colourful Tricolour as your profile picture on 15th August and 26th January. Pay 100 Euros for a Kumar Sanu concert though you downloaded all his songs for free in India. Dress up in ethnic clothes on Diwali party on the weekend after Diwali and say things like "These westerners have no culture" in a mixed group and then describe the cleavage of the girl you saw in the train that day to the guys.

11. Cry and howl if you are being sent back to India by your company. Bring up issues like old mother and blind sister who need the extra income or the fact that you will resign if you are sent back or threaten to go full Julian Assange to the client. But also keep mentioning to everyone else how much you love India and want to go back soon.

12. And lastly but more importantly don't hate me for this, I do it too.
 

Don’t Learn From Your Mistakes

Don’t learn from your mistakes. Otherwise you become the sum total of things that have gone wrong in your life. The remainder of the bad experiences. The lowest common denominator of missteps.

Don’t arrive fifty minutes early to the airport for the next two hundred and thirty flights because you missed one by five minutes. Don’t stop trusting everyone when you were deceived by one person. There is nothing as realism; there is optimism and the opposite. Don’t give up on giving speeches when you gaffed on one. The result of errors is for you to understand and not memorize. To enjoy greatly you have to suffer greatly. Do not take a first aid box wherever you go. Do not make a list of things to carry because you could not find one of them in the three hundred trips you took. Cast off the bowlines. There is no new world to be found in the harbour.

It is the sign of old men. To wallow in faults and drink to oversights. Reduced to the smallest result of your biggest slip. Only great men make great mistakes. Rest of them just worry about it. There are little profits in being a safe adventurer. It’s better to be original in at least the blunders you performed. Do not become backup of a backup. A porter of power banks, spare toothbrushes and ready to eat food. The person who carries extra movies because he was bored once on a long trip. Trust your friends even after they’ve let you down. Remember they did not let you down the other two million times. Multiply the trust by what abides, don’t divide it by what was taken

.

Don’t become afraid while calling it cautious. Wear your heart on your sleeve. Wipe it and put it back on when someone throws it in the gutter. Look at the moon’s reflection in the puddles and not the craters in the moon. Remember there are infinite moons out there when you can’t see yours. Don’t save for the rainy day. Your backpack should be binoculars, photos and trinkets you collected over the years and not mistrust, a spare charger and an umbrella. Order Thai food again even if you did not like it in the last restaurant. Don’t always go in what is recommended. People who tie up safety nets always land in them.

Death closes all; but something before the end, some work of noble note, may yet be done. Be youthful even if you are not young. Remember the things you didn’t do also hurt as much as the things you did. Wounds heal but regrets do not. Ten thousands ways how not to make light bulb is a discovery worth making. You are no too old for this shit. Muscles weaken, vigour does not. Speak up even after you were shot down. Take out your car the next day you had an accident, think of the three hundred and sixty four days when you didn’t. Take unfamiliar roads. Trust your gut over the butterflies in it. Chase the butterflies. Trip and fall. Get up and leap but Don’t learn from your mistakes.

Remember. We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 

P.S – Inspired by the Ulysses - Poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Frog in a hot vicious circle

I think I am having an early onset of mid life crisis. Because I think the first trigger has arrived - to be aware of your mortality, that your time left in the world is finite and you will not be able to do all the things you dreamt of that you need to prioritise and be realistic (I cringe while writing this word here, I hate it, what exactly is meant by it), the dawning of the understanding that your youth is fading away and there is less and less time to do the things that you want and how you are behind on things you assumed you would have by now.

But my bigger problem is something else. It is that I am not striving for fulfilment or happiness but more like distraction and temporary amusement. So I drink beer and eat pizza one day, next day I drink Scotch and seekh kabab, the next time I want to go out to a pub because I'm bored of the first two. And when I get bored of all these three I start planning for a holiday. Then I come back and start this cycle over.

So I am gaining weight, wasting my time and losing my money on these things which give me no long term happiness. One such distraction costs me around 1000 bucks, with my current salary I can buy two such distractions per day, of course I need to pay rent, service my car, travel to office and do some other long term investments, but still I can afford these distractions at least twice a week. You can label this habit as living in the moment, enjoying the present, having fun in the now rather that saving for the future which is uncertain and some other shit like that. But I know the truth that it is what I called it is  - a distraction because I can feel the hollowness and the guilt & despair it leads. Which makes me crave for more fun, more instant gratification. So it goes on and on the vicious circle.

But this was still better if the circle did not keep on getting bigger and bigger every time it repeated. If I keep wasting my time like this I realise I will have no future. I will have extra 10 kgs of weight which I will not be able to get rid of, would have spent on my money on fast food and I will see 5 years later that my friends had bought houses and TVs from that money; and to top it all my career will slow down even further effectively making me poorer in the future due to the inflation. I am afraid I will slowly boil in this hot water of life like the proverbial frog without realising it at what point did it happen

I want to let it all out, to hear me say it or rather read me typing it because these days I can barely hold a thought in my head, all I'm looking for are distractions and more distractions. These days I have started taking my phone with me when I go to shit, which I never did all these years, maybe I cannot be with my thoughts alone even for 10 minutes. I had tried to meditate one day and plan to do more but that is to clear my head of thoughts rather than clear the thoughts in my head, actually to have clarity in my thoughts and face these issues that I am facing. I have started slacking off in my work, I was never a hard worker and probably never will be but I was never this bad, I go to office late, around 12, work for 2 - 3 hours, surf the net and check social networking sites for the rest of the time and come back home thinking about food. What will I eat at home, what dessert can I buy while come and what snack can I buy at the small canteen that has opened in office recently. I guess food is the only thing I look forward to these days. I have a Spain trip coming up sometime in the next 40 days but I am so scared of thinking about it or planning about it because if for any reason it doesn't happen I will be crushed.

I plan to work out more from the next month, give up on the junk food, start working hard at work, plan for my next appraisal cycle which will be due in October, meditate every day for 15 minutes but I have been thinking of doing all this for quite some time now, but I keep waiting for some big event to happen to push me into doing it. Some long weekend (I had twice in the last month), culmination of some life event (I have been having none), some great inspiration from somewhere, perhaps some book or movie that I will reread and my third eye will open. Along with all this I am also afraid and insecure that what if my life is going to stay like this, maybe I will never amount to anything, never even do at par with my friends let alone beat them, maybe I will live and die in anonymity and mediocrity. The past says other wise, I have risen to challenges in the past and have done equally well as my friends so I should be able to do it again. But maybe the hard work that I cannot or would not do is the final key, only it can unlock further doors.

But I need to do these things in the future, not in any order and to find the strength of doing it.

• Get a new job after coming from Spain with a hike 30%
• Lose weight, get back to 70 Kgs

So I can accomplish these things before I am 35

• Buy a house
• Buy a new Toyota Fortuner or an equivalent vehicle
• Get a package of 25 Lakhs

And also these minor goals which also matter apart from the materialistic ones.

• Learn rock climbing, climb something worthy for a beginner.
• Go to Maldives and be able to pay for things that we want to do, though I think I will be still be worrying about money because it is a bloody expensive and you cannot compete will all the world's rich people

Maybe this blog will help. I have already thought about the problem now at least. Even my wife sees that I have problems and wants me to go on a vacation alone to sort out my issues,  a thought not very original as I had mentioned this to her a couple of times that  I wanted to do it.

Phew. I need help and I think I can only look within for it, Hell, who knows maybe my psyche will get fed up of this wallowing in self pity and bounce back on it's own; but till then I wish myself luck. And I remember that there is no luck in this world except what we make.

Incident 216598 - URGENT : Doomsday in Metropolis!

My name is Chintan Patel and I am not the fastest man alive, or the strongest, or a have a green ring which makes the defacto guardian of this space sector. But what I am is the co-owner of Patel Associates and PM (Project Manager) of Superman.

The origin story –

Let me start with the backdrop or as it is more commonly known as in comic book mythos as the origin story

The year is 2020, labour laws in US have become very tough with only 5 hours per day working, overtime rates are astronomical, everyone including superheroes have a right to union, and all workers have to be insured. And given Superman’s nature of work he is un-insurable. So as a result the superhero business, you know saving the world and shit, has been outsourced to guess what – India.

Now Superman works for an Indian company, my company – Patel Associates with the US government working as a client. And by working I mean actually do the superhero work, not his cover as Clark Kent in the Daily Planet, which was a pathetic cover by the way. This is definitely going in his annual appraisal as feedback from me. I plan to make him a Sardar with the name of Supreet Maan from Amrikka, complete with a turban and beard as his cover. This will be so much better than the current thing he does where he parts his hair differently, wears glasses and thinks no one will recognize him.

The process –

Before you go any further you should know that everything in a BPO or any service company for that matter works by a process and pre-negotiated terms. Any crisis has to be raised as a ticket. Let us see some examples

General Zod is in Metropolis – Has to be a P3 ticket, the damage is localized, no widespread disorder expected, people to be killed are in the 1 – 10,000 range.

Lex bhaai Luthor is causing a war in Qurac – It will be a P2 ticket. Damage is global, planet wide disorder expected but other parts of universe can continue their business as usual. Death toll between – 10,001 and 100,000,000.

Anti Monitor is causing crisis on infinite earths – This constitutes a P1 ticket. Anti matter cannon is about to bring an end to all multiverse. Damage is multi-universal and death toll is 7 x 10⁹ to 10¹⁰⁰.

The story –

 

But enough about Superman, while everyone agrees life is difficult for him what the general population doesn’t know is that life can be even more difficult for this PM and working with these inscrutable clients.

So it so happened that a monster shot into space from Calaton crash landed on earth went into a rampage in the American Midwest, punched his way through Booster bhaai Gold and a few other first level superheroes and finally reached Metropolis. At this stage a P2 ticket was raised by US Government but according to process I had to downgrade it to a P3 as the wildlife killed by Doomsday did not count in the death toll.

Superman responded within 3 hours which is within SLA. He had to finish cleaning his fortress of solitude first as part of the annual KPA.

There was a massive battle and half of Metropolis was levelled (as Doomsday was punched underground for some time and exploded a lot of gas lines). They hit each other so hard that the shockwaves from their punches shattered the windows of nearby buildings. In the end of the monster was killed and Superman was killed as well.

  

Of course Superman was sent to the fortress of solitude in a stasis chamber to absorb yellow rays and stuff and finally recovered but even after my team member being nearly killed the client has been a pain in the ass. I think people are thankless for saving their lives if they have outsourced that. See the stinker they sent, I nearly pulled my remaining hair out –

“Dear Mr. Patel,

Thank you for solving the problem – 216598 in Metropolis, please pass on our thanks to your team member as well.

But there are some serious concerns raised by our stakeholders and we need your response on the below questions:

1.  We need root cause analysis of this incident, why was this monster loose in the city?
2. Why is the occurrence of natural and supernatural calamity so high in Metropolis? Every other day either some alien or giant robot or mad scientist keeps creating havoc in the city.
3. How can we avoid such issues in the future? We need a roadmap to lower the rate of these things happening.
4. Total time taken to defeat was 4 hours 13 minutes.
5. There is an escalation from the Mayor of Metropolis, they say that there no communication sent from Superman to the city’s civilians that when this issue will be resolved and what was our action plan.
6.  How are we going to handle the damage caused this battle?

Please submit a RCA document for this issue highlighting our learnings from this incident.

Also we have proposed the below formula for defeating of super villains, this is effective immediately.

Weight of supervillain	Maximum type permitted to defeat
0 – 250 pounds	1 hour
251 – 500 pounds	2 hours
501 – 5000 pounds	4 hours

Best Regards,

Hillary Clinton

Secretary of Defense

United States of America”

I tried to give them reasonable explanation but I think they have adamantium skulls that nothing seems to get through, see the reply they sent. At this point I’m not surprised if even Superman jumped into a supernova after shooting himself with a kryptonite bullet while wearing a 15¹⁰ SPF sunscreen.

“

Dear Mr. Patel,

Please find my comments in red

I understand your point we can have a call to discuss these issues further. Also I do not think that classifying supervillains by weight is the most optimum way, this will classify Lex Luthor in the 1 hour category which is his biggest nemesis and the most formidable opponent.

Then we need to create another scale with classifying each villain into a type I to IV category. All classification should be assigned within 5 minutes of fighting the villain.

 1. The monster was supposedly killed by the people in Calatan and jettisoned into space as it was too unholy to keep it on their planet.

We need to proactively screen all space debris which is coming towards Earth to see if there are super strong evil monsters on them. Please submit an action plan for this.

2. We do not know what is the reason for this. Same situation is in Gotham and Central City as well. Lot of people keep experimenting on themselves with Particle accelerators, white dwarf star matter and gamma rays which almost always go bad and cause them to develop some super power and an evil attitude.

We need to be informed about any such potential new experiments minimum one month in advance with a rating of 1 – 5 scale on the threat level.

3. The appearance of intergalactic ancient monster on Earth is totally random and cannot be predicted.

Ok. Please provide all the monster appeared on USA soil in the last 50 years. Please classify them as human or alien.

 4. Originally known as "The Ultimate", Doomsday was born in prehistoric times on Krypton, long before the humanoid Kryptonian race gained dominance over the planet about 250,000 years ago. He has the gift of utilizing the power of whoever killed him and being reborn with it the next time. He is ranked 46^th in the IGN’s list of best villains.

 Because of the above complexity it took Superman a long time to kill him.

We understand but this was a very urgent issue, violent wrestling competitions were being held in the city that day which were affected by this incident. The organizers are being sued by the people who bought the tickets but couldn’t reach the venue. Please expedite these issues from next time.

 5. Superman was busy fighting the monster the moment he laid his eyes on him and kept on fighting for hours. There was no time to communicate anything and with the general disorder present we also believe the all public announcement systems and broadcast signal were down.

Communication to the stakeholders is very important. Please include this in the best practices to be followed. After 5 minutes of confrontation and accurately understanding the category type of the villain Superman should then convey everyone in the list attached to this email, that the supervillain is being taken care of and what is the approximate  time for the calamity to be over.

6.Covering of collateral damage is not under the process of Superman effort. If the city they can raise a separate incident under ‘The Flash – Quick Rebuilding’ section which will be additionally charged

The city has refused to raise a new ticket and wants the damage rebuilt under the same incident. As the monster as well the actions of superman are not any of their fault they are not willing to foot the bill for the damage caused. Please manage internally and have the city rebuilt ASAP

Best Regards,

Hillary Clinton

Secretary of Defense

United States of America

“

Sigh! I wish to go to the anti-matter universe where perhaps the vendors will make the life of client difficult and send them stinkers instead. Tya koi problem nahi  thai.

Second image taken from The Art of Dan Scott (DANSCOTTART.COM)