What's the most motivating one-liner ever?

Shovan Chowdhury, Whatever you do always give 100 %. Unless you are donating blood :)

No just means Next opportunity : 

I have been told ‘No’ more than hundred times by employers, Boss, parents, opposite sex, clients, society but I did not disappoint and I take ‘No' as need to find the next opportunity.

What are some foods that are commonly thought to be healthy but really aren't?

Austin Schopper, studied at Emporia State University

Answered Jun 1

My top vote would have to go with this:

Iceberg lettuce. Pretty much a staple in every salad and on every sandwich, but it’s little more than filler. Buying it is pretty much just paying for air. It has a little water, but not more than other leafy greens, it has a little fiber, but not much (0 grams per serving, so you'd have to eat a lot to get anything), and negligible vitamins and minerals. It doesn’t even work as a diet food, because other leafy greens have a better nutritional profile, and it tastes so bland that in order to stomach it, most people have to put some sort of dressing on it.

When you go to subway, skip this and get spinach. If you order a salad from a restaurant and it’s mostly this, you are getting ripped off (and don’t even get me started on salad wedges).

Oh, and one other fun fact, they can give you e. coli food poisoning if they aren’t properly washed. Sure, a lot of produce is the same, but most other produce doesn’t carry a risk for 0 return.

What are the crazy things introverts do?

Being an introvert I do a lot of crazy stuff.

Example: I stay in hostel where few colleagues of mine from another branch also stay who are very senior to me. They have their dinner late around 9 PM at the dinning hall. So if I get late for any reason I just skip the dinner to avoid interaction.

Hilary Lee, studied at Students

Answered May 30

Ahh, what a struggle.

I practice my Starbucks/restaurant/cafe orders before I talk to the waiter/waitress.

I always look ahead when I’m walking so I can avoid interaction with people I only kind of know

When my parents have guests coming over, I try to grab my meal and just stay upstairs…forever

If I don’t feel like talking to someone, but I see them, I will “coincidentally” look another way (also works if you look at your phone or something like that)

One time at an event, they were offering free drinks and a snack, but you needed to call the waiter over to take your order (obviously). Didn’t order anything until my extroverted friend needed something halfway into the event.

I let the phone go when I don’t recognize the number

I think as a rule if you’re the first in the classroom, you gotta interact with the teacher. Once I saw from the window that I was gonna be first, so I turned around and walked a couple feet, stared at some trees until someone went in, then I went in.

And that’s about all I can think of. What is interaction, really.

What are some common secret hacks in international air travel that only flight attendants know?

Flight Attendants, pilots, or engineers - what are some secrets that passengers don't know when you ride on planes or things you can get for free from the cabin or crew?

Andre Menzanius, traveled to 20+ countries

Updated Apr 17

Things you can and may get for free on a flight:

Basic medication and bandages

Free alcohol - some airlines(e.g. Alaska Airlines) offer free beer, Delta offers complimentary wine. So ask your flight attendant

Grooming kits

Extra snacks (like peanuts)

A tour of the cockpit - not guaranteed, but you may be lucky

Sanitizing wipes

Here are some fun airline facts not many people know about:

Did you know that Airplanes have horns? Pilots use them to notify a ground crew in noisy environment.

Only a certain amount of paint is allowed on an airplane. On average, not more than 2-3 coats of paint is used, as the paint adds to the weight of the aircraft. For example, the paint on a Boeing 747 weighs 1200 pounds (544.31 kg).

Some pilots carry guns

Airplanes take off and land AGAINST the wind direction.

Flight are very safe!

What small thing can tell you a lot about a person?

Ed Semeniuk

Answered Jun 6

I once had a girlfriend who would say that she could learn just about everything she needed to know about someone by looking at their shoes.

Are the shoes clean, or dirty? Old, or new?

Are the shoes well taken care of, or have they been allowed to become ratty?

Are the shoes casual, or formal?

Are there laces or not, and if so, are they tied or untied?

She had very good intuition about people, so I tend to believe that you can learn a lot about someone by their shoes. Unfortunately, I never learned to decode her formula, so I can’t actually tell you what each combination means.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-cool-tech-savvy-hacks/answer/Clayton-Hull-2?srid=4qnf

Who is the smartest programmer you have ever worked with and why?

Costas Anastasiou, software developer

Answered May 29

A developer I worked in my previous job was the smartest person I have ever worked with. Let’s call him Jon.

Jon was hired 4 years after I was. He is 5 years older than me. His brother was working with us at the time, another very clever person. He would tell us that Jon is much smarter than him. I thought he was just praising his older brother.

Jon was hired along with 4 others. This group of 5 was one of the best hires we ever made. All of them were fully functional by the end of the 6 month absorption period, but Jon easily outshone them all.

Jon learned around 80% percent of our huge, complex system in less than 6 months. I left the company after almost 7 years and had hardly learned less than half of that (and I was easily above average in that company). He not only learned the business though. He could code almost immediately using our languages of choice. He would improve performance of pieces of code. He would propose methodologies to improve readability, scalability and maintainability. Whenever I discussed an issue with him, he understood my query from the first and almost immediately proposed solutions. If he didn’t know, he took a couple of hours and came back with solutions. All these while he was able to lead a team of 6, correct bad design from the top level designers, communicate with our competitive QA testing department (very few people could communicate well with them), communicate with other departments (and sometimes fix their mistakes!). In addition to all that, he was an awesome guy, mentally balanced, with a great sense of humour and a great father and husband.

A programmer who is also a good manager, good with people and without big eccentricities? He is a very rare fruit indeed.

Do you know someone who got everything they wanted while growing up? How did they turn out?

Sue Croke, former Subtitle Translator at Netflix (2016)

Updated Jun 7

Yes. One of my dearest cousins.

His father owned a pharmacy and being the only kid of his parents, he was raised in a way he never got rejected for any material thing he wanted. He went to private schools, he always had the latest video game consoles or portables. He travelled to the US a couple times all the way from Turkey, just because his family wanted him to, and he also started studying gastronomy in college. That wasn’t his choice particularly, but something his father thought would be great for him to study as they thought he could become a high class chef that would earn a good deal of money.

A while before his college years, the worth of his fathers pharmacy plummeted and they started getting in debt. They had to sell their extra house and all they earned was now being paid to his college. They went through financial difficulties and now they are doing ok and not as well as they used to at least 5 years ago.

He graduated from college last year or the one before that and didn’t get into cooking. Instead he built model and solar powered planes and he and his team won a few national contests which took him around the world. They moved up to the finals of American Society of Mechanical Engineers Student Design Competition, got the first place in Shell’s Eco-Marathon in nationals and won the right to compete in finals in London. And now, for months, he’s trying to startup his own business which combines gastronomy and online business world in two.

He grew up to be a super humble guy who is so kind and a great gentleman. One of my cousins whose opinions I value most. I used to think he would be a stuck up with the way he was raised but he beat against the odds.

Sometimes things change and your wealth doesn’t stay the same way. Important thing is to come out of it as a humble person who knows how to adapt to his/her now lower standards.

Why do charismatic people easily get what they want in life?

Deslyn Rou, My friend knows how to be charismatic, not me

Answered May 31

I had a girl friend who I adore a lot.

She's beautiful and reallyyy charismatic, everyone seems to know and like her.

So I started observing her actions to understand how she does her magic.

One time, we were at the administration office sorting out some stuff and the lady in charged was being rude.

Naturally, I got irritated and was about to point out her rudeness.

But my friend signaled me to calm down and let her deal with it.

She answered and talked to the lady patiently, smiled and said thank you.

I was so amazed at how she could stay calm despite being talked to like that.

Then I reflected back at how she always have so many friends and never had troubles getting things she want, I understand that you treat people the way you want to be treated.

You can’t expect people to like you if you're not likeable.

How do smokers make it through long flights?

Fadi Francis, Engineer. Traveler. Polyglot.

Updated May 16

My father’s friend has been smoking 2 packs a day for 35 years. In 2005, halfway through his flight from Paris to Los Angeles, he couldn't take it anymore and went to the bathroom to light one up.

Now of course he knew it was illegal but his urges were too strong, so he lit the cigarette, brought it up to his nose while taking a deep inhale without actually sucking on it, and then put it out.

The silent smoke alarm went off, and the co-pilot came to speak with him. He told him: “ Do you know that the fine is $10,000 for smoking ? ”

He showed him the cigarette, apologize and said: “I am sorry, I know, I just lit it, smelled it but didn't smoke it.”

He smiled, pulled out a pack of nicotine gum and gave him a piece. They shared a laugh and he hasn’t flown without the gum since.

EDIT: Many people have been asking for more details about the event so I called my dad’s friend and asked him about it.

This was in 2005, so the laws were a bit different. He lit the cigarette, smelled it, put it out, put it back in the pack, and went back to his seat. That’s when the flight attendant came to speak with him. They brought him up to the front of the plane to discuss what would happen. They asked for his passport, and told him US Police would be dealing with him as soon as they landed. About an hour later, the co-pilot came up to him and told him “ Here’s your passport back. You didn’t lie to me and you didn’t throw the cigarette in the bathroom, you’re free to go.” Then he handed him the nicotine gum.