Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

I saw the following in the status message of someone I know and while most of it is stuff I could ignore, one line caught my eye and annoyed me enough to post about it. Specifically I am talking about “When a Woman stops getting jealous or No longer asks about the other women in your life”. A person can have friends of the opposite gender as friends and I refuse to accept that you are showing your love/affection/care by being the person who questions every other woman in the person’s life.

If you think that the only way to show your love to your partner is to be jealous of their other friends and controlling who gets to be in their life then I am sorry, you don’t have a loving relationship, what you have is an abusive relationship where you are trying to control who the other person can talk to / meet with because you are a deeply insecure person.

Jani and I deeply love each other and I can’t recall a single instance of either of us questioning the other about their friends or women/men in our lives. We have never questioned each other about who the other person is hanging out with and what they are doing when out. Most of the times we meet folks together but there have been times when we meet people without the other person present and the most we ask the other person is “what time are you planning to be back home?” by. I have had friends crash at my place when Jani wasn’t around and it was a non-event in our life, the same way it was when she has had people crash here when I was traveling without me questioning her about it. We are together because we trust each other not because we are controlling the other person. If the only reason your partner doesn’t cheat on you is because you are controlling the people in their life then you are deluding yourself and you should reevaluate your relationship with the person.

When you question the other person about the people in their life you are not showing your love, you are showing that you don’t trust them. Which as you can imagine is not a good way to build a relationship. The following (or variations of it) keep showing up as ‘jokes’ online and personally I feel sorry for people who are so deeply insecure that they can’t trust their partner to be faithful. If that is the case then why are you still with them? It would be better to leave them and be with someone with who you can be your authentic self without worrying about the other person flipping out just because you happened to meet a friend for a coffee or a drink.

I rather trust a car with no brakes than ‘he is just a friend’

One other explanation for this behavior is that they are projecting what they would do in a similar scenario and thus are suspicious and jealous. Basically they know how they would act and are expecting everyone else also to behave the same way. I see this in a lot of couples and when I can I do try to advise them that this kind of behavior only pushes the other person away.

Obviously I don’t mean that you ignore obvious signs that the person is cheating. If you think that the person is cheating you should check and verify that because in some of the cases, the person is actually cheating on you. In which case you need to decide if you are ok with it or you rather get out of it. Personally I would choose the second option but in either case being jealous and controlling is not the right reaction. What you shouldn’t do is be jealous of every single person in their life just because you think that shows your love towards them.

– Suramya

Interviews are stressful no matter which side of the table you are sitting. But till you join no interaction you do with anyone from the company should be done lightly, you need to behave in an absolute professional manner throughout the process. I saw the following screenshot in my feed and just had to comment on it as this is a really bad take.

Well, yes. Yes I do. Typically, if I get past interview 2 I assume the rest of the interviews are just dilly dallying. You shouldn’t need 7 interviews to decide between candidates. If you can’t discern the best candidate within 2 or 3 interviews tops, you can’t interview. So it makes sense to assume that i you made it to interview 4, 5, or 6 let alone 7 you are indeed the top candidate and all interviews past 3 are just a time-lengthening, budget and paperwork approval exercise.

– Elisa from BrainDrip

I assure you that no interviewer wants to be taking interviews just for the fun of it. We have enough work that needs to be done that if we can save time by not having another interview that would be perfect from my perspective. The max no of interviews I have given for a single position was 7 even though 4 of them were done in the same day. In this case the first two rounds were technical. Then the next round was by the local manager and then another one with the global manager. Then we had the FIT interview with the unit head and another with their Indian counterpart. Finally we had the HR round and then we closed the interview. Each of them covered different skillsets and yes theoretically speaking we could have merged some of the interviews but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it was possible or even desired.

Thinking that you don’t need to expend effort because its the 3rd or 4th round is an almost sure shot way to ensure that you don’t move to the next round. Like I said earlier every interaction you have with anyone from the company needs to be with full focus and courtesy. I remember reading about a company where the owner would take feedback from the receptionist on how the candidates behaved with her to screen out unfit candidates. So if someone was rude or insulting in the interactions with the receptionist they would get rejected. I have had candidates rejected in the last round because information came up in that round that made us decide not to go ahead with the candidate.

I am not saying that the process can’t be optimized but until that happens the worst thing you can do is become complacent.

– Suramya

Travel can be a pain for women because there are enough idiots in the world who will take the opportunity of a woman seated next to them to make them miserable for the entire flight by making unwelcome advances etc. IndiGo recently launched a program to try to address this issue. If the ticket is being booked for a female passenger then the system will show them the seats that are already occupied by women. This allows the passenger to book a seat that is next to a lady passenger. I first noticed this when I was checking in Jani for her flight. The below screenshot shows what it looks like:

Female Friendly seat selection option

I think this is a good move but as with all things there is an easy way to game the system so men can ensure they are seated next to a lady. Basically, I need to open two windows. In one window I would search for a flight ticket pretending to be a lady passenger. Since the payment is not required till after we do a seat selection I get to see which seats are occupied by women. Then I cancel the process and start a fresh one with the actual passenger details picking a seat next to a lady.

There is no easy way to detect and block this. One option would be to allow the seat selection only after making the payment for the ticket but that would mean folks would have to make a second payment for the seat selection as most of the options are paid ones, which would not be a user friendly experience.

Even with that, this is a good move and should help make the flights more comfortable for women.

Source: NDTV: IndiGo Launches Female-Friendly Seat Selection Option. Here’s What It Means

– Suramya

As folks who know me know I read a lot of books. To give you an idea of what I mean by that, I read 209 books in 2023 and my goal is to read 365 books in a year. In 2024 I have read 99 books so far. (I am way behind in my reading this year due to various reasons)

A little while ago folks in my apartment complex started a book club and I was invited to join since I read a lot. Book clubs are interesting but I never saw the appeal because of multiple reasons. First, I read fast enough that by the time others in the club would finish a book I would be in my 4th or 5th one. The second issue is that I don’t particularly like dissecting a book and look for hidden meanings or life lessons etc in it. Lastly, in a lot of these clubs they seem to be more interested in hanging out/gossiping rather than book readings.

I have no issues discussing books but doing it in a structured way takes the fun out of it. Also not a lot of folks read the kind of books I do so that’s another issue I face. In the next meeting over here someone is actually preparing a presentation on the 3 Body problem and that just sounds like work to me. Personally when I meet with like minded folks I exchange book recommendations rather than the content of the books. That could also be because I mostly read fiction whereas a large majority of folks who are part of these clubs seem to prefer non-fiction books that can actually be dissected and have a lot of data to discuss.

As I mentioned in a previous post I have never been a part of any of the fandoms and I am glad that I didn’t. The issue with discussing books is that folks get too invested in it and that just takes the fun out of it.

However, all that being said I am glad book clubs exist as they give a way for people to connect and learn about books they might find interesting. Anything that gets people more interested in reading is great in my mind.

– Suramya

Someone shared the image below and ever since I saw it I have been trying to figure out what the problem is. I think this is a very entitled take or someone who is suffering from the Main character syndrome (a term used to describe someone who often sees themselves as the main character in the story, and that everyone should cater to their whims)

Would you get angry if your kid was over at a friend’s house and their parents invited other adults over without checking with you?

This is a very common thing that happens all the time. When we were kids we would go over to a friends place and hang out. If the parents had folks over we would be asked to keep it down or go play outside. I see the same thing with my friend’s kids, the kids play separately and the adults hang out separately. If your kid is at my place and I am taking them over to someone else’s house without telling you then you have full right to get upset. However, if we are at home then you don’t have any right to restrict / control who I have over at *my* place. Who are you to require that I should get your permission to have friends over at my place? If there was a specific person who you don’t want interacting with your kid, you can request that I don’t call them over when your kid is there. However, end of the day it is still my decision to agree or disagree with your request.

‘Feeling Murderous’ because you didn’t get to control someone else’s life and friends is just silly. If you feel so strongly about this then you should get some help to figure out why this is the case because it is not healthy (in my opinion).

Or it could just be that they are worried that their kid will interact with other ‘normal’ adults and realize that what their parent is putting them through is not normal behavior. Another possibility is that the kid is getting abused and they don’t want them telling an adult about it.

Whatever the reason behind the ranting, I feel bad for this person’s kids. Hope they stay safe and are able to get away from such a control-freak.

What do you think? Am I misreading the situation and do you think this kind of demand makes sense?

– Suramya