This happened a couple of years back when I was working in Bangalore. I was staying in a men’s hostel.There was a pack of Indian mongrels living on our street. They did not have any owners. They owned the street. If you have ever closely noticed the dogs living on the streets, you would know that they would clearly maintain territories. They will not let dogs from other territories enter theirs.Many a time during the nights, you would have felt disturbed by the non-stopping barks of your street dogs. You would have cursed them for ruining your sleep. You would have also wondered why they bark every night, while they seem so peaceful during the day.Because, it is during the nights, the scouting happens. If you step out to the balcony or terrace, you will see all the dogs of your street, barking at a strange new dog which you have never seen in your street. These new dogs are the scouts that were sent from other territories. These scouts travel alone at night to other territories to survey the other territories for territory expansion.Occasionally when I come back from work, I stop by to feed them some biscuits I bought for myself. But it was not regular.During mid-2015, I met with an accident and had 3–4 stitches in my right knee. Since the stitches were on the knee, I was not able to ride my bike and had to take public transport to visit the hospital for getting the wound dressing changed. To reach my hostel from the bus stop, I had to cross 3–4 streets.Once when I was walking back from the bus stop, suddenly some 4–5 dogs from the neighbouring street started barking and pouncing at me. The stitches in my knee were 3–4 days old and I wasn’t able to move swiftly. Next, the unexpected happened. Out of nowhere, 5 dogs belonging to pack living in my street came and surrounded me. They fought off all the other dogs pouncing at me and stood by me covering the entire 360 degree.It was like commandos rescuing the President in midst of an ambush. They walked by me securing me on all directions, to my pace, till I reached the hostel entrance. Oh! The look of pride in their faces as they escorted me to the safe-zone, they looked like the real commandos.Final verdict: A dog will protect you even if you have shown just a tiny glimpse of love without even realising you are doing. You don’t even have to be a owner.You can’t train someone to be loyal and loving, its their character.Credits: Man’s best friend, DOG
It depends where you live. I would find 3-10 houses near a university, put a downpayment down on each, then rent them out. (number will depend on where you are. In Houston you can almost buy a house near a university for 100k, in California it's a 10% downpayment. You will learn a lot about the landlord business. Best advice, even with students is to run credit checks on those you rent to, and when possible, only rent to those with good credit.If you go to youtube you can get lessons on just about any home repair - toilets, sinks, dripping faucets, washing machines, dryers, etc, etc.Do report those who don't pay. Do become familiar with evicting people; sad to say it will happen. Do learn to keep your rental places clean, painted, and as bullet proof as possible. Don't go overly cheap where you are putting in tainted flooring; do be helpful, kind, but not overly understanding.Most college students are poor but honest; most will pay their rent, albeit late. Do be prepared for having houses sit empty over the summer - which you can alleviate by renting them for a discount.Do make sure they put down a hefty security deposit and cleaning deposit and first and last months rent. Most students know this; they save up.Watch out for nasties like bedbugs, termites, rats, bees, wasps, fire ants. You should be able to get yourself a living wage to begin with; it will increase over time as you spot and buy houses at good prices and learn things the hard way.Or you could buy an empty lot and just build yourself - if the zoning allows it - a small apartment house with 6-8 units. In Houston where I live there is no zoning, so you can build what you like within reason. If you piss off your neighbors by building somehthing that really doesn't go with the neighborhood, you never know what happens: zoning or no zoning, they could make it very dicey for you. Do not forget taxes, do not forget to put money into a repair fund. Do make your tenants sign an agreement to do any repairs that cost less than $400 themselves as part of the rental agreement. Since you are an attorney you should be up on the laws.You might also consider getting your real estate license to save when you are buying houses.
You're 13. And on Quora. Asking a question about IIT. Congratulations! You're already way ahead of your peers.I'm neither from IIT nor from NIT. Heck, I didn't even make it to the top college of my city. But I somewhat feel eligible to write this answer. I'm 20. And you know what I regret? I regret not having a passion and not having developed a skill during my teens. My parents made me do a lot of things. I went to drawing/painting classes, learnt Keyboard, Bharatnatyam, took swimming classes, and then Skating classes, my brother was trying to teach me C and I ended up being mediocre (read as: I suck) at everything. I know people from both ends of the stick - People who know what they want and know what they're doing; and people who're okay with mediocrity. And people who know what they're doing, knew what they wanted before they turned 15. It could be parental pressure or whatever, but now the world looks up to them. I'm friends with quizzers whose mind works faster than Google, musicians whose music gives you eargasm, debaters who can mum the entire crowd, writers who can make the world think. Period. And they all started when they were in high school. My point is, chuck the idea of IIT for a while. Don't be driven by the idea of IIT. Be driven by beauty of science and math. Get your basics right. Solve all the math you can. Read all the physics and chemistry and be amazed. And at the same time, develop a passion, a skill and excel in it. I can't emphasise enough on extra-curricula. And use Quora wisely. Quora has made me what I am today. I joined Quora when I was 18, and in the span of 2 years, this website has given me a new direction, new hopes. Whenever I find myself in new situations, I think like the writers here and do what they probably would have done. And almost always, the outcomes have been great. Imagine how 'cool' you'll be by the time you turn 18. You would've virtually experienced so many things.Life is NOT ONLY about grades, ranks, colleges. It's about experience. And doing something you love! And being passionate about something! And most importantly, being happy. Have a gang of your own! Take to the streets, break your neighbours' windows, play till the sun goes down and do dumb stuff. This is only time you can do idiotic stuff and not get judged by people.God, it's awful how the definition of success has changed over the years! Go ahead, kid. Enjoy life. Worry about IIT in 11th and 12th!Get your basics right. That's all.
Indoor domesticated cats can live, barring unforeseen health issues, between 10–20 years. That’s a large window of time, so to narrow it down, you have to take the cat’s individual breed, individual health, and individual living environment into account. Even then, you can only narrow that gap down with those factors taken into account by a couple of years on either side.My great-grandmother had an outdoor tom cat, ragged as the day is long, blind in one eye, a chunk missing out of his ear, lumpy, crusty, missing patches of fur, a purr like an old truck with a loose timing belt, and seriously looking like a stand-in from the movie Pet Semetary. For all that, he was the most friendly, affectionate cat… if you could get past the eerie resemblance to the devil cat mentioned above. He’d come in and eat and then go back outside and wander around… he killed snakes, mice, rats, birds, you name it, which always confused the heck out of me because he looked like taking on a rat would put him down for the count.Anyway, long story short and probably a hideous mental image… that darn cat lived to be 25 years old and even that I’m not 100% certain of as he just disappeared one day and didn’t come back. We assumed he just ran out of steam somewhere and after no luck when looking for him for several days, we hung our hats and raised our glasses (milk glass for me since I was a kid at the time) to that mangy, lovable, flea-bitten, friendly old guy. He certainly wasn’t a looker, but something in his genetics was good… or, he was really the cat from Pet Semetary and we never realized it.
My top three employees at a past job — the superstars head-and-shoulders above the rest — were a mostly-functional alcoholic and two off-hours potheads, respectively.I tolerated the first (alcoholic), starting with a preliminary “I want you to have both the rewarding [musician] night-life you desire, *and* the continued-satisfactory day job you’ve worked up till now” chat, then proceeding from there. He eventually fixed things on his own, after a series of ruinous life-changes which aren’t my business.The other two guys were harder, not because they had performance problems on the job, but because we spent occasional time hanging out socially (overlapping friends, same parties), during the course of which some herbaceous refreshment(s) were circulated, and I repeatedly bore witness to same (without partaking). We all held Dept of Defense govt security clearances, and I wasn’t going to rat anyone out, but I had visions of some future unpleasant “The boss knew I was doing it, and didn’t say anything” scenario. I ultimately asked them to keep their activities + paraphernalia out of my sight, and even that small request made me feel like a party-pooper.Serendipitously, one of our mutual coworkers (not on my team) drove over to a local military base, as part of his normal network/sysadmin duties, and was caught by perimeter guards (and guard-dogs) with the remnants of a joint in his car ash-tray, and this became a department-wide issue not of my own initiation or control. Might have been a real nightmare if that military-base driver was one of my staffers.So, to directly answer the question: I wouldn’t care (within reasonable lifestyle limits) if the employee(s) drank or took a periodic puff. And I would limit my assessment of their professional performance to factors observed only within the workplace. But this distinction gets blurry — is Superstar Employee #1 stepping into the men’s bathroom to take a few swigs from his rum-flask, are Superstar Employees #2 and #3 smoking up in the parking lot, are their gradually-slipping morning arrival times due to late nights, hangovers, oversleeping, are they starting to share/distribute stuff in the office — and then some line has been crossed, and intervention needs to happen.
Well for starters, consider only letting him do Youtube if he has passing grades. YouTube is a very viable career tool and anything creative or entrepreneurial is a worthwhile outlet for him.A job can be lost no matter how hard one studies. One of the reasons the younger generations are so entrepreneurial is that the old model of “get into a good college and get a good job” didn’t pan out for a lot of people. It left a lot of people with expensive degrees working entry level jobs. Self taught skills are forever though.His time pursuing YouTube can teach him how to brand himself, learn video production skills and learn networking skills.I won’t list all the YouTube millionaires because there are all kinds of working class people using YouTube as a financial tool. There are teachers, tutors, musicians, astrologers, counselers, life coaches, movie critics, chefs, podcasters, makeup artists and the like using YouTube to expand their careers and client bases. They are all ages and come from all walks of life.For every “A” he gets in his studies, offer to help him invest in a piece of recording equipment. It's great he is pursuing this! He may or may not become the next YouTube star, but he is learning very valuable self starting skills. Also, content creation is a commodity In any field these days! He may end up doing it for someone else and making good money.
In keeping with the tradition of American freedom to think independently as noted here with a Thomas Jefferson quote from 1802 in a letter to the Baptist Bishops of Danbury CT. The Bishops were intent on making the Baptist Church the default religion of the new“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”Freedom of religion is a great deal more that deciding what god one may or may not believe in; it is the freedom to think independently, to hold with value those opinions that may differ from others or from government as opposed to a government sponsored and centered belief, which in itself may become intellectually stifling and oppressive to the imaginative mind.Freedom of Religion is also freedom from a religious mandate to believe or to hold one religious belief above all others. The definition of religion is simply the claim that my belief is of “supreme importance” which may also apply to that secular or political ideology and even to that atheistic belief or opinion that gods do not exist. Religious belief is not exclusive to the supernatural, but, rather, inclusive of all opinion.As an Atheist, my Atheism is my opinion of life and living, my religious belief, and I consider it of “supreme Importance” to me, and do I believe that others should think the same, yes, I do. Do I believe that I should make or force others to believe as I do, no.Hopefully there will come a day, in keeping with the thought, the wish and the dream of Martin Luther King, that we are judged not by the god one may or may not belief in, ”—- but by the content of their character.”“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Martin Luther King, Jr.To respond directly to the question of what religion is best for America and in keeping with the definition of religion as something of supreme importance, I would say that the American Constitution is, by far, the best religion for America