The theory, for sure. Not the practice.
Time and again, we've seen people take outsize risks without a second thought.
And others who wait for the perfect opportunity to come along and it never does.
There are those who take on physical risks - speeding, climbing mountains, dropping off bridges in a bungee jump. Or the affluent ones by skydiving.
Mental risk-taking is another thing altogether.
Entrepreneurs are drawn to the idea of bringing about big changes - and the lure is so strong, they almost can't help themselves. They'll conceive and execute plans in school and college, even when they turn out to be disastrous. But they're learning from every botched experiment.
They'll max out their credit cards, hit up friends and family for funds and do everything required to float their dream company.
But the vast majority of us can't conceive of such behavior.
When we build up a corpus, we'll strive to make it bigger, not bet it on something unpredictable. That's what separates the money makers from the savers.
The way they define risk.
And no matter how favorable the odds, you'll never be able to sway the minds of people who already have a fixed idea. And even they may not be aware of it.
The careful ones stick to the mutual funds and post office debentures. Because that's the level of risk most of us can tolerate.
But there are also the ones who become prey. Taking risks with investing in dubious financial schemes in the hope of getting high returns - and ending up with huge losses.
The appetite for risk is hard to determine. And it shapes the entrepreneurial gene.
The painful job of social media writers
Good memes are easy to read but hard to write.
Basically, it's variations on the same theme.
We respond to the same stimulus much like the doctor testing reflexes with a hammer.
Hit the right spot on the knee lightly and the leg swings out involuntarily.
Writers managing prominent social media profiles have to be regular, interesting and come up with new ways to say the same old things.
If it is a vacation, there are a set of headlines to fall back on - 'So-and-so's Mauritius vacation gives couple goals for...' or
Nothing negative or even slightly controversial. Unless that's the intention.
The monthly gossip film mag or 'lifestyle' magazines had time to file stories and dig up interesting bits. Or more often than not, make things up. Stars and celebs have the same lives everyone else does.
They're just in front of a lens more often.
The daily treadmill makes it hard to keep up the pretense.
A few hundred likes can be scored with an announcement of a new diet plan - or fitness video.
But how can it be sustained it for days, weeks and months?
Tanned and toned bodies are good to go. When it becomes a procession on a social media feed, even the smallest deviation provides room for sly digs and comments.
Which sets off a thousandwala of jibes.
In the celebrity PR machine, staying the course has become fraught with uncertainty.
The inaccessible ones using mystique and appearing only a couple of times a year may have a better chance of standing out.
And writers won't have to reheat decade old recipes.
Liquid gold grows in forests
It's not used to make any furniture, of course.
The economics don't make sense, even for the rich.
Every kilo of agarwood costs over $100,000 - and its already on an endangered list.
What comes from it is a heavenly fragrance - which is the base for some of the world's exotic high-priced perfume brands.
Nothing about the wood is simple.
It comes from the Aquilaria tree, which is not intrinsically valuable. But that's just the beginning. Grazing animals and insects can bruise the tree and some, but not all trees are invaded by a type of fungus. To fight off the fungus, the tree secretes a liquid and over years, this creates the wonderful aroma.
Finding these trees is an art in itself because they don't look different on the outside. Unless they are chopped and the tell-tale stains are found inside, the tree is not valuable.
The story of how the oud oil is extracted makes for fascinating viewing. One liter of the aged oil costs over $80,000.
Even the leftover wood chips are sold as incense and the aroma lingers in rooms, 2-3 hours later.
The tragedy is that less than 2% of it is now available in the wild and involves several expeditions that last for several days to find the trees.
And nature is in no hurry to replenish the stocks.
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