Why is it hard to trust our instincts?

This is something I've been wanting to write about for a long time.  It is something that I found in the movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  The movie itself was an interesting, gripping watch, not to mention very violent as well, but this is about one specific scene in the movie.

This is towards the end of the movie in the scene in the basement with Mikael Blomkvist (played by Daniel Craig) suspended in chains and Martin Vanger (played by Stellan Skarsgard) about to kill him.  Martin says to him:

Let me ask you something. Why don't people trust their instincts? They sense something is wrong, someone is walking too close behind them. You knew something was wrong, but you came back into the house. Did I force you? Did I drag you in? No. All I had to do was offer you a drink. It's hard to believe that fear of a offending me is stronger than the fear of pain, but you know what? It is. And they always come willingly, and they sit there, they know its all over, just like you do.

These lines seemed very powerful and stuck with me.  Why?  I realize I often ignore my instincts and act in ways that might make me appear more socially acceptable.  In fact, I'm so used to burying my natural instincts that it is hard for me to even pinpoint what it is trying to tell me.  This is the kind of thing that leads to analysis-paralysis during decision making because the external parameters are often inadequate when capturing the effect of unknowns.

This quote from the movie did two things.  It articulated something which I felt has been true for me and also made me aware that it is probably not that uncommon.

A thin wallet

A few years ago, I looked for ways to thin my bulging bifold wallet. I had several bank cards (credit & ATM cards), airline cards, insurance cards, membership cards, etc. filling up all of the pockets in the wallet.  I used to carry the wallet in my back pocket.  It was a standard billfold that I used to buy from a company called Creative Leather Concepts, and had ordered so many from them over the years that they automatically discounted my purchases.

One day I decided one day that I wanted to simplify things.

Reducing the number of cards

So the first step in getting to a thinner wallet was to reduce the number of cards.  I separated my cards into piles -- cards that I'm likely to need daily or in an emergency, and cards that can be kept away.  In the first pile were my license, bank cards, insurance cards, and membership cards.  I decided all of the loyalty cards could stay out of the wallet and instead put them in a separate card case.  Next I reduced the number of bank cards by canceling all but 2 ATM and 2 credit cards.

The switch to the front pocket

That still left me with about 10-12 cards and so I continued using the same wallet and continued to carry it in my back pocket, until one day when I decided to try moving it to my front pocket.  This was the first time in around 35 years of carrying wallets that I decided to change the habit.  It immediately felt more comfortable and secure.  That's when I decided to try and find a slimmer wallet better to suited to carrying in the front pocket.

Incidentally, I later found that sitting on a fat wallet can cause sciatica.  I'm glad I decided to switch before I had any problems.

The alternatives

Searching around on the 'net I found a bunch of alternatives:

• The Slimmy: This is one of the first ones that I came across.  But it would not have fit all the cards I needed and it required a complete change to the way I carried currency.  There were complaints from reviewers about stuff falling out of the wallet and all over the place.
• Tyvek:  The next one was the Tyvek wallet.  These are more of a traditional design and super slim, but it just felt weird to be carrying around something that's a piece of paper, plus it looked like stuff would slide out too easily (especially the cards).  NICO is a slightly more sophisticated take on the Tyvek wallet.
• All-ETT: I don't see the original All-ETT wallet listed here, but you can get an idea of what it looked like by looking at the sample in the link and thinking of a design that had 4 card slots, 2 on each side, organized one on top of the other.  This made the wallet too big to carry in a front pocket comfortably, but it seemed like an interesting design for a back pocket wallet.
• Big Skinny:  Back then, they had only one product, which they no longer make!  The closest one they have now is the sport wallet.  That one was slightly larger (the size of the multi-pocket bifold) but it had one less compartment than even the sport wallet.  And the material was a microfiber similar to those in Prada bags.  They seemed to be able to accommodate 10-15 cards quite easily and had solved the problem of stuff falling out of the wallet by using a rubberized coating.  It was also non-leather, super thin, and at $20 was quite reasonably priced.
• Money clips: This just didn't seem like a good idea with no real protection for the currency and the chance for cards to fall all over the place.

My choice

I ended up deciding on the Big Skinny because it seemed like the most practical of the lot and I wouldn't have to make any further adjustments to what I was carrying in my wallet.  I went through several of their original design.  And, since it has been discontinued, I have switched to the multi-pocket bifold.  I don't like the change in material, which now feels more like regular cloth, but I guess I can live with it.

One of the problems I've had with the Big Skinny is when traveling to Europe the currency is often too large and sticks out at the edges.  I usually end up having to fold it in interesting ways to get it to fit, and since these are very short trips, I don't bother to try to address it in a better way.  They do make a world wallet, but that takes away from the compactness.  Being an engineer, I've been trained to optimize for the common case.

Other interesting wallets

Here are some other wallets that I've come across later that I think look interesting, but I don't see a reason to change from the Big Skinny.

• Bellroy: Website claims they're made from leather from end-of-life cows (i.e. cows that weren't slaughtered).  I saw these at Nordstrom and wasn't impressed with the thinness or the quality.
• Mitchell: A slim money clip design.
• minimum squared: Made from a single piece of very thin goat leather.
• DUN: Claims to be the world's thinnest leather billfold.  Holds up to 8 cards and 10 bills.
• Wally: Several styles available.

Free online education

Here are some reputable sites that offer free online courses.

• Coursera: They offer the same courses by professors from several universities.  The catch is that enrolling without fee means you don't get credit for the course.  However, in many cases the instructor will provide a signed certificate.
• Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE).  A collection of 10 courses.
• MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW): Materials from many of the courses at MIT.
• Open Yale: Materials from courses at Yale.  Includes a course on Financial Markets by Robert Shiller.
• Khan Academy: Has basic courses for grade schoolers as well as more advanced courses.
• Udacity
• edX
• Udemy: Has a number of free courses and reasonably priced paid courses.

Update 6/17/14 - Macroeconomics @ Coursera

I signed up for a macroeconomics course at Coursera.  The course lasted 11 weeks and required a 2-4 hour time commitment.  I actually completed the course taking all of the quizzes and the timed final exam at the end.  I also signed up for the Signature Track program which, for $49, gave me a verified certificate from Coursera and University of California, Irvine.

Having taken this course, I must say that 2-4 hours is the comfortable amount of time that I'm willing to spend on something like this.  Even with intense load at work during some of the weeks,  it's still easy to put in the necessary time to keep up.  So I plan to look for such courses.

One big negative is that the material is only provided via video and text files of the audio transcript.  What would be really useful is for the instructor to make available a pdf of the slides.  Several students asked for this in the course forums.  A student from an earlier course had taken screen shots from the videos and made them available for the first six or seven lessons.  One of the students in our class made his "notes" available which was a collection of selected screen shots and the text of the audio transcript (the audio transcripts corresponding to each video are provided as .txt files).

Overall it was an interesting experience and I plan to sign up for the companion microeconomics course at a future date.

Much of the material from the course is available at naturalmoney.org.

Update 9/16/14 - Microeconomics @ Coursera

Based on the fun I had with the microeconomics course, I decided to enroll in the companion microeconomics course.   I signed up for the Signature Track program for this course as well.

Here, once again, I was lucky to get slides from someone who had taken the course at a prior date.  I actually got access to those materials during the macroeconomics course and ended up sharing it with the rest of the class.

Much of the material from the course is available at naturalmoney.org.

Update 11/9/14 - Ivory Tower

I recently watched the movie Ivory Tower which is a documentary about the escalating cost of college education.  The movie paints MOOCs in a negative light -- it creates a class structure among students where those who can afford it go to a real college while those who cannot are stuck with the cheaper online option; that MOOCs don't offer the learning help and people interaction that are offered in a traditional college setting; that in experimental studies, the graduation rates with MOOCs are quite low.

It also mentioned two other sites offering MOOCs -- Udacity and edX -- which I have now added to the list above.

Other notable mentions in the movie were -- Deep Springs College, a college in California's Death Valley offering free tuition, room, and board for an associates degree in liberal arts;  and Cooper Union which transitioned from offering free education to charging tuition fees.

Using Ayurveda as a guide for diet

(Disclamer: I'm not trained in Ayurveda so this post is just based on what I've learned through my own reading, through consultations with Ayurvedic practitioners, and listening to educational talks from people with training in this field.)

According to Ayurveda, we are all born with a certain constitution called prakruti which is measured in terms of the three doshas - vata, pitta, and kapha.  Vikruti, on the other hand, is the current state of imbalances of the doshas in the body.  The doshas get out of balance due to unfavorable diet and lifestyle choices.  Long term imbalances in the dosha will cause the manifestation of various diseases in the body.  You can read a little more about prakruti and vikruti here.

Find out your prakruti and vikruti

The best way to find out your constitution according to Ayurveda would probably be to get a consultation from a practitioner.  They can usually assess the prakruti and vikruti by reading the pulse.  If you don't already know these, you can get a rough idea by taking one of more of the online quizes -- just google "dosha quiz" and several pop up.  You can try the interactive one at the Chopra Center or the printed ones at the Ayurvedic Institute (prakruti and vikruti).  

As stated in the instructions by the Ayurvedic Institute, it helps to take the quiz twice, once based on long-term tendencies for the prakruti, and once based on how one is feeling more recently for the vikruti which is why they have two forms.  The Chopra Center says the quiz is only for vikruti, but I guess if you filled it out based on long-term tendencies rather than what's been happening in the recent past, then it can be used to get an idea of the prakruti as well.

Finding balancing foods

Once you know your vikruti, you can consult an Ayurvedic food chart to learn about which foods would be best for balancing the doshas.  For example, if one finds that one is primarily pitta dosha, then one should try and eat pitta pacifying foods more often than not.  Some of the foods are pacifying/favored by all doshas.  Such foods are sometimes referred to as tridoshic foods.

Summary

I've found these guidelines to be somewhat helpful for bringing my body back into balance.   It takes a long time to heal the body just through diet changes and often the help of herbs may be needed.  However, by eating foods that agree with us, we immediately start to experience better digestion. 

My constitution is vata-pitta, so I try to eat foods that are favorable for both vata and pitta doshas.  In other words, I try and find foods that are in the columns of the food chart showing they are favorable for both vata and pitta.

A brief introduction to Hinduism

When I was a student at Duke University, one of our professors in the electrical & computer engineering department, Dr. Kishor Trivedi, distributed a small booklet titled "An introduction to Hinduism."  I read it back then, but I wasn't really in a position to appreciate it.  Now, almost 15 years since I graduated, I picked up the booklet and reread it and it made a lot more sense, probably because of the time I have been spending at the Yoga Farm on Saturday evenings listening to their teachings.

I was able to find a pdf of the booklet online.  I really like the way it categorizes the ancient Hindu texts, philosophies, and beliefs.  Well worth a read if you have an interest in this subject.

What happened to the links for astrology forecasts?

For many years now, since around 1994/1995, I maintained a page with links for astrology forecasts using my account at Duke University where I was a graduate student at the time.  I continued to have access to the account even after I graduated.  A few months ago, I lost the ability to login to my account there.  Then a couple of weeks or so ago the page went offline.  As a result, I didn't have a way to notify users of the page about the new location.

I'm currently hosting the page at anoop.netlify.app.

Finding a good credit card

This is a post to summarize some features I look for in a credit card and resources for where to research them.  It has been a long time since I applied for one, though.

Must haves

• No annual fee.  Since there are many options without fees, why pay a fee?  Some cards offer interesting concierge and travel benefits but their fees can be as high as $400-$500 a year.  Since I don't have a lifestyle to take advantage of those, I don't bother with them.
• Cash back.  There are many cards which offer cash back varying from < 1% to 5%.  Some have rotating categories of spending (e.g. for one month you get 2% on groceries, otherwise it falls back to the standard rate of 0.5%), some are tiered (e.g. 1% for the first $5000 spent per year, 2% thereafter, etc.).  I don't think it's that critical to try and optimize this return.  Just getting something is good enough.
• Annual summary statement.  This is a great benefit at least for me.  At the beginning of each year, I can toss out all of the statements and just hang on to the annual summary statement.
• Auto rental insurance.  Having this allows one to decline the various insurance add-ons that rental car companies tend to offer.  The catch is that the rental must be paid for with that credit card.
• Extended warranty.  Many cards offer an extended warranty for products purchased with the card, doubling the manufacturer's warranty, up to 2 years.
• Good customer service.  This one is hard to figure out without actually getting the card.  At a minimum, there should be 24-7 customer service, and it shouldn't be something that is only automated after hours.

Nice to have

• No foreign exchange transaction fee.  This is a fee that credit cards usually tack on to purchases made in a foreign currency, even though it might be a web purchase.  The typical fee is about 3% but some cards charge a lower fee, like 1%.  This is getting harder to avoid.  There are cards which offered no foreign transaction fees in the past but now charge 1%.

Don't care for

• Loyalty programs.  I don't care for cards that offer frequent flyer miles or other loyalty programs such as hotel or shopping points.  This means that I am stuck with whatever they offer and I find that restricts my options when it comes time to plan for travel or shopping.
• Low interest rate or balance transfer fees.  I usually pay my card in full each billing cycle.

How many cards?

Can't have zero because we need credit cards for such basic things as renting a car and reserving a hotel room.  One card can be limiting.  Sometimes, there are situations where a card is lost, forgotten at a merchant, or compromised by fraud and thus deactivated.  In those situations, it helps to have a second card handy.  Finally, having just one card may mean that it is not accepted everywhere.  For example, many places in Europe do not accept American Express.  Also, while Visa and Mastercard are almost universally accepted in the US, there are merchants in Europe that will accept only one or the other.  So it's generally a good idea to have at least 2 cards.  I should mention that an ATM check card could be used in situations where the credit card is lost, stolen, or not accepted.

I would avoid getting too many cards or even getting a card for its introductory freebies and then canceling it.  Your personal details will be in too many places and despite all of the security, there can be loss or theft of that personal information and identity theft is on the rise.

Credit cards and credit history

Each time we apply for a credit card, our credit score gets dinged; not by much, but it does get dinged.  So that is something to keep in mind.  Getting lots of cards and canceling them also dings the credit score.  Having lots of high-balance credit cards, even if they are not used, negatively impacts the credit score because the person is viewed being at risk of being able to run up large balances.  Finally, even after we close a credit card account, it typically remains in the credit report for up to 7 years.

Places to research credit cards

• creditcards.com
• money-rates.com

Additional reading

• 5 credit card fees you should never pay

(Disclaimer:  I am not an expert in this area.  This is just a quick summary of what I've learned over the years.  If you happen to find an inaccuracies, I'd appreciate hearing about them so I can correct them.)