Friday, July 18, 2008

The odds of being shat upon

Yes, so iv copied it from Scott Adams. Big deal. As if we all are not guilty of plagiarism in almost every sphere of life. Back to the story.
I was as usual standing at the bus stop after gettin my a** off the bed in the wee hours of the morning ( 6:45 am ). I usually stand in the Bus stop shade area, and dont have to wait for more than 5 minutes for the bus to arrive. I take pride in the precise timing that iv developed in the only 2 weeks that iv been exposed to the drudgery of work. The only way in which today was different was that i did not have to wait 5 minutes for the bus, i went and stood at the bus stop ( in the shade, i must remind you ) , i couldnt have counted to 5 that the bus arrived. And so i get out of the shade, ready to board the approaching bus in order to get the usual seat that i always occupy (read: have been occupying for 2 weeks ) .

Within those 5 seconds, a crow shit on my head.

Its aim was phenomenal. Suddenly the amount of white matter in my head increased to never before seen levels. From the bird's point of view, it must have been an irresistible target.
Credit must be given to the crow. It waited for the right opportunity and then delivered with extraordinary precision. That bastard must have been eating all night and saving it up for the right moment. The main tonnage hit right on top, but there was plenty left over for my shirt and my arm. If i hadnt seen what bird it was, i might well have thought it to be an ostrich or maybe a pterodactyl or a flying cow or an UFO full of aliens with dysentery.

Needless to say, i missed the bus. Taking an auto i go home, only to find no one in. Okay, so i cleaned up the best i could, and then walked back to the bus stop, all the way, getting reminded of the phenomenal similarities between me and what happened to Scott in New york. And then of course, thinking about the odds of being shat upon so early in the morning.

Lets say there are about 15 million people in Mumbai. Of whom lets say, and this is a reasonable estimate, about a third of the people are out on the streets at about 7 30 to 8:30 am. ( if u disagree with me, this is the starting of the peak hour, when about two-thirds of the population gets out of their homes, however counter-intuitive it might sound). So that makes it about 5 million.
Out of these people, i daresay, not more than a hundred thousand people must have got shat upon in that time frame. thats a 1/50 = .02 probability right there. Further, i was out of the shade for an estimated 5 seconds. There are 3600 seconds in an hour. That makes it a probability of .02 X 5/3600 = 0.000027 . Further, we all know that crows are not creatures of the night. In fact, a majority of crow droppings are observed during the evening time, before they go to sleep ( presumably to avoid sleepless nights ). Lets say, not more than 75 % of crows would need to down load this early in the morning. That makes it a probability of 0.000020 of being shat upon within time to travel from the bus stop to the bus.
I got straight C s in math, so thats probably wrong. All i know is that it was unlikely, and that 'my ps is shit' just got a whole new meaning.
I obviously got late today, and adding to it, my pro 3-week-deadline-but-completed-in-a-week report was discarded away casually with a remark ' this is excellent, you have really done a brilliant job' and then a completely unrelated piece of work given to me for the next 2 weeks, one which involves looking at google page results that would make a honey bee ( that btw, has to visit only about a million flowers to collect a kilo of honey, and which it does too :-\) want to go hibernate, that too on a computer that stubbornly refuses to open microsoft word if it has explorer.exe running.
So if you will excuse me, ill get going outside for now, when there is much less danger of me being a victim of specieal ( derived from species ) discrimination.

9 comments:

Full Of Life said...

Hahahahahaa...rofl. Happens. I had one such experience standing in World Book Fair in Pragati Maidan in New Delhi (which is covered btw). Imagine receiving the honours from a bird's ass in front of atleast 500 odd people. Everyone had a good laugh...it wasnt amusing for me since I was to catch the Goa express that afternoon giving me no scope of a bath or hair-wash for the next two days.
I refuse to ponder upon the plight of my fellow passengers in the train seats next to mine. Of course, I had a cold. Hehehehehe.
Didnt look closely at the math...though i can say...the number of zeros post-decimal do prove its rare.
WELCOME TO THE CLUB !!

Prachi Bansal said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Prachi Bansal said...

hehehe..very unfortunate i must say
happened with me also, but it was sometime back in schooldays, so dunn remember the details now..

bOOn said...

6 45 is not early...5 30 is :(

Vidya said...

blog!

Sidharth Ullal said...

LOL!! mebbe it was a good luck sign.. what happened after?!?

Prachi Bansal said...

when is the next post coming?????

bOOn said...

today i hope *hoping he steps on cow dung*

Akash... said...

That's how an engineer deals with shit; throws numbers and probability at it! :P