Using large numbers

The numbering system has reached trillions and centillion (which is 10^303).
In India we dont follow millions & billions, instead we go for lakhs and crores. However, we are for left behind without words for larger numbers. Already politicians had crossed thousand crore scams and more. It is time to coin words.

Instead of inventing new words, we can go through the Ancient words and see if they can be re-used, just like lakhs and crores.

Here are the words from Ancient India.
10 ^ 0      eAkam
10 ^ 1      dasha
10 ^ 2      shatham
10 ^ 3      sahasram
10 ^ 4      ayutham
10 ^ 5      laksham
10 ^ 6      niyutham
10 ^ 7      koti           <- this is the crore stuff
10 ^ 8      arbudham
10 ^ 9      vrundham
10 ^ 10     karva
10 ^ 11     nikarva
10 ^ 12     shanga           <- trillion
10 ^ 13     pathrama
10 ^ 14     sAgara
10 ^ 15     anthyam        <- quadrillion
10 ^ 16     mathyam
10 ^ 17     parArdham

These numeric words are preserved in a sanskrit poem.

story of tata broadband

The slogan I would suggest for tata broadband internet connection is, "works smooth; cancel registration upon failure".

I had observed the above functioning for the past couple of months. When there is a problem, there is limited response. The customer care reps are clueless. Repeated call to them are futile. Tickets raised go wasted.

At times, even raising tickets are blocked!! I get either busy tone or continuous ringing. Whereas in normal circumstances, the call should be directed to an automatic phone menu. I doubt that the customer care "switches off" their receiving mode when there are lots of complain.

Anyway, I got an alternate connection to the tata guys. Let us see how they both function. Hope they dont sync up to fail.

Book: The Circle of Innovation

Happen to pick this book written by Tom Peters. It is quite interesting.

Many useful tips on thinking in the direction towards new dimension, unfolds our thoughts for a better way of living. Very nice way of illustrating the danger of clinching to old ideas and the benefit of taking risk into new arena.

Thou the book is more than 10 years old, the ideas are still fresh for these days.

More than the above, the unusual fonts, random pictures, etc etc made the book easy to read.

GA's marriage reception

GA invited us for his reception. We all planned to attend around 7pm. As per the plan, KS to pick me. He reached 40 mins after the agreed meeting time. Still then I was standing at a busy junction and admiring the natural resources of the city. KS asked me the venue and I was stareing blank. I thought he will be knowing. By then LN called for the venue. We asked him to check with RN. Seems like RN came to know about the reception only after LN called.

I came up with the idea of dialing GA's mobile. I was sure that someone else wil b holding the phone while GA is busy at the stage. My guess was correct. GA's brother answered the phone and gave us the direction.

That saved the day for all of our unplanned, unorganized friends!

airtel saga

Still the airtel is behind me with their greedy tongue. Here is what happened before.

There was no response from the company inspite of 8 emails. Phone calls were answered without any conclusions. Their standard response was that someone from the concerned dept will be calling me. Needless to say, that never occured.

After consulting with a lawyer friend, I drafted a 'professional' letter. Sent it through courier. In two days I got an acknowledgement .. at last! However the message was the usual one. Seems like the concerned dept will contact me in two days; that was four days ago.

Anyway, let me wait for one more month to see if they are making any move.

Mahjongg

I had increased the phase of playing Mahjongg game from Moraff. Quite addictive one. The idea is simple. A collection of tiles are piled up in the screen. Each titles have colorful images and symbols. We have to click the titles having the same image. Few rules for clicking a tiles like - tiles have to in the corner and no other tile should be above this one. Aim of the game is to clear all the tiles from the board.

After repetitive playing, it occurred to me that I was able to get the images I was looking for and I am able to get only those I was looking. Thou few tiles might be in prominent position, which were clickabe, I seldom located them. I read this idea elsewhere in a management book saying, we will get what we look for and hence we ought to set our goals clearly.

Insurance policy benefitors

I do have this opinion about life insurance: why do I need it? If I die, why should I worry about the current kith and kin? (my wife also shares similar idea). Only when we think at the family level, it starts making sense. We feel uncomfortable to think about our family in a financial difficulty in the absence of the bread winner. That is exactly the emotional blackmailing weapon used by the insurance agents.

I used to think why the government, (atleast the Indian govt) is encouraging insurance. They give lots of tax rebate and other benefits. May be it will be a headache for govt when the income of a family is totally cut (ie, when a single person is the sole person earning in the family). If such insurances are not encouraged, govt will have to take the headache of providing plans for widows and kids.

Tool kit

My long time goal was met last weekend. I got a tool kit for house use. The kit has trivial things like screw drivers, pliers, hammer etc placed in a neat box. Quite handy set of instrument, got the power by holding it.

It is a magic tool kit box - just in a day, many of the nitty-griddy problems at home vanished. I was able to split the phone line into two, assemble a book shelf, fix the cot. May be I worked on them with initial enthu, let us see how things go.

Dodging airtel

Inspite of repeated request to cancel the number, airtel sent the monthly bill (for the month I didn't use the number and surrendered the same). I didnt want to waste time in going behind them to revert it. I have automatic payment of airtel bills through my bank account. I tried to stop that but the bank ppl insisted on getting a letter from airtel for closure.

I emptied the bank account and waited for the fun. During the monthly bill cycle, airtel tried to take money from my account. It was fun watching the disappointment in its face. However, the bank has placed a penalty of Rs 200 since the account was empty when the automatic service tried to retrieve money.

Now I am in the process of closing the bank account as I no longer need it. Let us see what airtel is upto.

Romance

This posting is continuation of the title Human Fantasies.

Olden
In all parts of the world, people had their local version of erotica and other pornographic materials. Based on movies, we get an impression that there were special villas for the big shots which had erotic paintings and statues. The Indian version of erotica or the sex guide, Kamasutra, rules till date. Most of the temples of India which are 1000+ years old have nude images and sculpture with sexual positions (hmmm .. are these possible to do? I dare not to try).

Modern
Do you know what drives the internet boom? Porno. Any new technology is put to test by applying on the porno sites. Even better, the porno sites drives the technology by demanding new features. World wide these sites have a good customer base. It would be interesting to find if there were any contribution by porno movies in improving the technology behind flim industry,vcr, dvd etc.

Dont assume that I am totally corrupt and hence I am stating the above. I rarely go to those sites.


If you could think any more fantasies, please place them in the comments.

Good service

The wireless mouse had some issue. It didnt function. I tried replacing the batteries. That didnt help, moreover the keyboard also stopped working. Different combinations of pressing those reset/sync up buttons failed to bring them live.

Monday morning I called up the person running Krishna Computer Care, the place where I bought the computer and accessories. He told he is busy today and he can send technician the next day. As it is not a pressing issue, I agreed for it.

The surprise came in by afternoon. Technicians arrived inspite of rain, and fixed the keyboard problem.

It was very nice of them and I felt happy.

Lousy airtel

Pathetic service from airtel - that is the simple way of summarizing their service.

4th June 7 is the date when I raised a request to close a mobile number. They acknowledged and after few days a lady called and suggested that I can retain the account by transferring to a new number in different city. She went on trying for that and each day I call she would promise at the end of the day things will be fixed.

As things didnt move any further, I gave up there. Now they had started sending bills for the time when I didnt use the connection.

Phone calls and mails to them are of no use. Planning to dump the bill and see what they come up with. Will keep sending them mails and keep them as evidence of correspondence from my side.

Most beautiful

This posting is continuation of the title Human Fantasies.

Olden
"Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the most beautiful, fairest girl in the world?" The quest to find beauty is time immemorial. Guys had different tastes. Girls tried everything possible to meet the requirement placed by the guys.
In ancient China composed a poem with a line describing the feet of a girl so small to a particular flower. For thousands of years, that became a standard. From childhood the feet of the girls are crushed to miniature size just to make sure that they are upto the beauty standard. The western world has a dynamic interest and quite seasonal. There are times when busty babes are the rage and so the girls enlarge their bosom with some kind of silicon stuff; something like the stress ball we keep at office to squeeze. At other times, flat chest, tom boyish girls are preferred. I dont know if there are operations for this. (my wife, dont ask me how I know these. You will be disappointed to know that these are not of practical knowledge, but stuff I had read).


Modern
If a garage is not suitable for any useful purpose, it is rented out for a beauty parlour. I always wanted to see what is inside. But the board with Aishwarya says only women and kids are allowed.


Alright, after meeting the most beautiful, what else but - romance!!

whizz kid

happened to interact with a smart kid, around 10 yr old. Thou he is visiting from gulf country, he didnt have those 'nri look'. He was quite casual and enjoyed his stay; and even liked the sambar, papad etc.

The kid was flaring with questions and they were quite thought provoking. The current country where he is, he is been placed in a school based on Indian syllabus. With such background, he is trying to understand the education system, why people need to study, which subject will be easy, how to find if a subject wil be easy for me or not ...

Hope our education system will not ruin the thinking of such kids.

sudoku in real life

Just came a thought in the early morning. That was about sudoku. Many times I had wondered if there is any utility out of playing this game. It strike at me about the usage. Yes, I feel that sudoku has resemblance of resource allocation algorithm.

For example, let us take a college department. There will be batches of students, courses and staff. We need to prepare a time table that would allot staff for different classes. Constraints like staff skill set to handle courses, or unavailability of staff/rooms for a specific time.

What is to do with sudoku? I see the same kind of allocation, conflict resolution, meeting criteria etc.

The same kind of problem is addressed at different places like industries, traffic regulation, loan sanction process, etc etc

getting into a schedule

What is running in my mind is to bit more organize my day to day activity. Wanted to do things on time, like monthly payments, project deadlines, etc.

I am doing a minuscule amount of exercise. That too not very regular. Wanted to improve the quality and quantity. Reading pattern is slightly ok, but can be done better.

Also thinking about social activities like study group, satsang, volunteer group etc. Will try to do in small manner, one at a time.

Job satisfaction

My wife is going through rough times at her work space. She is trying to balance different factors and get a suitable environment to strive.

If job satisfaction is the thing most of us look for, what is it made of? How do we get that stuff?

Had gone through couple of books in this subject and they talk about being independent, able to align what is expected out of you with what you like doing, and many other similar stuff.

This is quite interesting topic as when an employee feels positive about the env, it will boost the productivity.

sudoku without a pen

While coming in the train, the person in front of me was reading a newspaper. The last sheet facing me had sudoku. I started filling the squares .. mentally :-) Guess I need to increase my sudoku speed so that I can complete it before the person turns the page.

This seems to indicate my sudoku addiction is on the raise. The next one is still more interesting.

I stayed in a hotel and got a complimentary newspaper in the morning. Nothing more cruel than leaving a sudoku puzzle to a sudoku addict, who doesn't have a pen!! I didn't want to leave the room as some may raise objection for nudity in the corridor.

I turned my creativity switch. Went around the room to find something which can mark in the paper. I got the tv remote and tried to create impression of those numbers in the paper. Nope, that didn't work; they should make better remote buttons.

Then I was going through my wife's suitcase. Seriously I opened to look for a pen. Found her beauty enhancement/replacement kit. While digging thru it, got the cute little lipstick. At last got what I wanted. It was writing in an amazing manner. Necessity is the mother of invention.

This puzzle is the sexiest puzzle I had solved.

Murphy kicks in again

In my last post, I mentioned that I couldn't test the ups usage as power cut was not seen after installing it. Today there was a total power shutdown and I couldn't test the ups as usual. I thought of finding a internet cafe where I can work with my laptop. Murphy came in here. I couldn't find a cafe even riding for 20 mins. Spotted one in the other part of the city. Luckily this cafe had power and he allowed me to use the laptop with his network.

Let me get a generator and see what Murphy is up to.

Murphy's law on electricity

Last week there were many power shutdown. It was difficult to work and more important to play games. So, got a ups as a backup power.

After setting the ups, did not get a power failure so far. Didn't even test the functioning of ups!

wireless keyboard

May be I am in the pre-historic world and got this gadget just now. I bought this on a need basis; earlier I made the laptop usage easier by accessing it through a desktop.

Now that I am using only the laptop, I felt the need for a keyboard. Today I got it and getting the benefit. Lots of comfort compared to the laptop keyboard, mouse. Wish I got this earlier.

The new place

Settling in another city takes lots of effort. To get things done and almost at the same time is stressful. As basic necessesities are brought into the house, now I am able to relax and enjoy. This change is good.

Something interesting about the people here. Observed this with many customer service people, not sure if it is something generic to the city. These people dont know how to refuse something. Whatever demand you place, they will accept the work and timeline. Later they find it difficult to get it done. Also, they are surprised when I followup with them on time.

Being from the metro, I used to negotiate the timeline with the service people and come to a reasonable time and load. Here I need to understand the protocol of request/work.

Semi-farewell

Today friends took me to a restaurant. As I am leaving the city and going to work from remote, they were giving a remembrance farewell. Thou the food and service was not good in the hotel, still I enjoyed being there because it was something for me. Quite nice moments to be with them and talking to them. Will be missing their company.

To think about it, these blog postings started due to their company and conversation, as the name of the blog reflects. Let me dedicate today's blog to their friendship.

Thank you guys!! for pumping up my happiness level when I was in the worst part of my life. Thanks for all the support and guidance you folks gave with your knowledge or without knowing. Thanks for everything.

The Move

Last week I shifted my belongings to another city. Quite hectic. Had fever, headache. Then a night travel in a truck. Luckily had a break in my in-law's house. After the break, had some more travel in the day time. Since we were travelling towards south west in the morning, the sun didn't bother us.

My wife choose this house for rent. Lovely house. Quite spacious and well planned. Thou the garden space is not very wide, it had enough plants and trees to cool the environment.

With complete rest, I came back to normal.

Started doing required stuff like advance payment, gas connections etc. Network connection seems to be troublesome, hopefully we will get one in three days.

A different life style compared to the busy metro. Change is good.

Girls, girls and girls everywhere

This posting is continuation of the title Human Fantasies.


Olden
I had read about fantasy stories in my childhood about a youth from a village, who is driven away from the family. He travels far and wide, just to meet girls of different place, different status and all with unmatching beauty. One common thing among the wild girl in the jungle, merchant's daughter and even the queen is that they all obsessively fall in love once they see him and in some cases when they hear about him.

Modern
Scientist have invented babe attracting magnet. Powdered form of this magnet is an important ingrediant in utilities like body spray, home theatre system, bike, shaving set, underwear etc. Good news is that this magnet powder is used in all gadgets used by man. Not so good news is that it is quite costly (understandable). Being a tight fist with respect to money, I have never tried any of these products which use the powder. However, I am sure that they work; if else how are these companies making such a profit so that they can advertise in every tv showtime and everywhere in the city? Anyway, I am waiting for them to announce a free trial or a heavily discounted sale. Once they do, I am planning to stock my homeful with these products. Already I had prepared a list of girls on the way to my office and in the office against whom I need to use. Yeah, I will be going to the malls on saturday evening.

A normal person might wonder what to do after attracting so many girls in the city and doubt his potential. Worry no more. The Science is here again for our rescue. Viagra!!

Ok fine, the scientist have invented this essential vitality. Will it be readily available to all? Ah! what are social service organizations for? There are set of teams pledged to put the tablet in each and every person around the world. They even squeeze them through email. None can miss these tablets.


The beauty is also important.

Who is the fastest?

This posting is continuation of the title Human Fantasies.


Olden
Passion for transportation is an obsession, mainly with the guys. Cart race, rowing boat race, horse riding, buying the best horse, building beautiful chariot, were few manner in which ancient people spent their time. They valued and cared a lot for these.


Modern
The thumb rule for picking toys when we visit families with kids: barbie for girl child, car for the boy. This works well in most of the cases. Few parents dont like this idea as they may not like to bring in such discrimination. However, I feel it is something in born - ie the preference of barbie or car. Anyway, obsession is quite evident with the youngsters and adults when they talk about their bike or car. Thou our road and traffic restrict the speed to 20 kmph, we still flash our money to get the bike which can reach 120 kmph in 10 secs.

The only non-living being I own which raises to a quasi-living being is my bike. At times I pat it if I drive too long or if I am late than promised time.

You may rush for girls.

How to cut a cake

Read this book recently. Amazing to know how mathematician sees the world. For most of the problems around, we can explain in a scientific way. For eg, the book talks about tangled phone cards. The reasoning behind tangling cords are interesting.

There are many interesting views to learn. There is a chapter on security, that is - how to authenticate oneself without revealing much to the party which is questioning. As the techno-systems becomes complex and social structures adapt to technology, such issues will be popping up. A correct balance between security measures and personal space ought to be achieved.

As the book title goes, there are two chapters devoted to sharing cake among n number of competitors. The solutions suggested are practical and would satisfy all the participants. It is relevant at global scale as water sharing bloodshed is just around the corner.

Author, Ian Stewart, had written advanced mathematical concept with layman-istic simplicity and with a lighter vein. Happy reading.

Panguni Pongal

My native town is Virudhunagar in Tamilnadu. Last month the town celebrated the festival 'Panguni Pongal'. Panguni is the last month of Tamil calendar. This festival is conducted to express gratitude to the town's main deity, Mariamman. Mariamman translates to Goddess of Rain. (btw, adjacent to this temple, there is a bigger temple for Veyiluganthamman, Goddess of sunlight).

During the three day festival, people carry fire pots (see pics) from home and deposit in a big furnace available in the temple. It is very exciting to watch so many people carrying such pots. The drum beat, blown pipe music, crackers etc add vibe to these processions.

Last day is really interesting as the majestic temple car is pulled around the town.

Lot of people gathering at the same place itself is a good experience to go through.

Insurance game

Last week my wife went through a minor surgery. Prior to that, we asked the hospital to apply for expense claims from the insurance company of our membership. Hospital requested for 25k. Insurance company approved 12k for the particular surgery.

The hospital refused to use that claim as that would be setting a sample for future claims. Hence they suggested us to go for cash payment. (For cash payment they charge 10k). We had to go for that option due to lack of time to hunt another hospital.

Wondering if there was an alternate way to handle this situation.

Different lunch

We all visited RS at his house. He is doing fine. VY ordered food from Nandini and we all had a good time around the table. Also, munched some snacks before the arraival of food, as it took sometime.

RS narrated his tale about the accident. Good thing is the fracture is minor and RS will be back into office in two weeks.

Get well soon, RS.

Dream comes true

Couple of months back MsAD had a strange dream. She saw RS met with an accident and placed in ICU. Immediately after waking up, she wanted to tell RS in the middle of the night. Later she shared the dream with us and we had a good laughing at it.

Now the dream turned out to be true!! RS bike was hit by an auto and RS has a fracture in his collar bone. Hope it is a minor problem and he will be back to normal soon.

Beware of MsAD and her dreams.

Others started sharing their dream experiences. MS gets dreams based on tv shows. VY has dreams on a regular basis. He feels dreamless sleep as disturbing.

How does hiv spread?

There was an interesting conversation about hiv stuff. Many questions about the virus where raised. How does the virus transmit? If malaria can spread through musquito, why cant hiv? How come people affect by hiv do not show any symtom for years?

Seems like in recent years doctors are able to eradicate hiv from the womb. Amazing.

Dead lizard

Morning I found a lizard dead in my bathroom. Since that lizard was small and young, it still lingers in my mind. What could be the cause of the death? Do they have heart attack or stroke? Did it see some frightening enemy? Could it be a suicide? If so, what could be the reason?

May be it couldn't tolerate the smell of the bathroom. I had to clear it off before it starts smelling the room.

Same story

Today I went with my wife to USKB restaurant. A couple sat next to our table. Happen to snoop their heated argument.

Guy to his gf: "These days you have increased ur quarrelling frequency. You are fighting a lot. I feel better if u shout at me. Instead you are stop talking and that is paining more. We wasted yesterday like that."

hmm .. same story everywhere.

Doctor's job

RN, VY, my wife and myself went to Mast Kalandhar restarant today. Later my friend, NN, joined us. The ambiance was good and food ok.

As my wife completed her medical studies recently, discussion went towards medicine, practices and ethics etc.

Quite interesting discussion.

house renting criteria

My wife and myself will be looking for a rental house in few weeks, we started discussing the type of house we want. As my friend, LN, is an expert in house hunt, we sought his help. LN was kind enough to send us the list of items to check while finding house.

Placing the criteria here for netizen to benefit.



Visit the house more than once before deciding if you wanna move to the house. Talk to the neighbours casually.

External Factors

1. Close to work place or in a area from where there is good connectivity, transportation
2. House shd be located in a good environment (surroundings) Shd be close to the market, shops but not right in between them
3. No water problem and water logging in the area
4. Underground drainage preferred
5. Security - it will be good if there are street lights and one such is just before the house.
6. Good if the house has trees (esp. neem tree)

Internal Factors

1. Type of ceiling - Bombay ceiling is easy to maintain
2. Flooring of the house - avoid marble if you have elders @ home.
3. Elevation of house from road - slight elevation will be good
4. Direction of house facing - good if the house is North or East facing
5. Floor in which house is present - Ground floor, 1st floor - anything is ok if only young people are gonna reside in the house.
6. Cross Ventilation
7. ventilation in kitchen and bath
8. Sun light (at least in the morning)
9. Hall shd be big enuf to place TV, Sofa set
10. It will be good if the house has a veranda (for keeping shoes and other stuff)
11. Bedroom shd be big enuf to have a 6-6(ft) cot. And it shd have extra space for moving around.
12. Kitchen shd be big enuf to keep utensils, grinder,mixie,coffee maker,micro wave. Kitchen slab, sink shd be at correct height and shd be big enuf to dump utensils. If you have gas cylinder there shd be space to keep it.
13. Bathroom, latrine shd have ventilation and shd be spacious You shd get water in bathroom, latrine (24hrs)
14. Bathroom shd be big enuf to wash clothes otherwise there shd be separate space to wash clothes.
15. Nice if there is both Indian and western latrine. One should be common. It will be good to have the latrine inside the house and away from living space.
16. Need to have space for Washing machine near bathroom to drain water
17. Nice to have balcony. Washing machine and other stuff can be kept there. (check security if you have a balcony)
18. Security - Better if the house has got grill doors.
19. It will be good if the house has a store room
20. Nice if the house has closed shelves
21. Internal electric wiring
22. Inbuilt fuse system to prevent overloading, proper earthing
23. Provision to keep bero, refrigerator, dining table, computer, television
24. will be good if the hose has closed lofts
25. There shd be enuf points in the house to connect electronic/ electric devices.
26. Ceiling height of Bathroom needs to be high enuf to accommodate geyser
27. Good to have mirror + wash basin
28. wash basin close to dinning hall
29. Separate meter for our part of the house. Nice to have a separate meter for water consumption
30. Space for hanging clothes ( balcony where you get sunlight will be good otherwise there shd be a terrace or other space)
31. Shd have provision to hang clothes inside the house (in rainy days you can't hang clothes outside)
32. Maintenance charges
33. Sheltered Two/ Four wheeler parking preferable
34. Ask about painting the house
35. Other furniture's, fixtures, fittings(fan, light)
36. Nice to have separate pooja, study/dining room
37. 24hrs Water supply ( Overhead tank, Corporation water, Well, Bore well )
38. You shd have access to the motor switch
39. Some houses will have cracks in the ceiling. This will give you a tough time in rainy days.
40. Facility to fit AC.
    

Happy hunting.

Longevity

This posting is continuation of the title Human Fantasies.

Olden
As many wanted to live longer, younger and healthier, quack doctors sprout all around the world. Wealthy people were willing pay heft money for elixir. Looks like many had died by consuming toxic medicines.

Modern
Knowledge about disease and medical techniques had helped man to postpone death. The average lifespan had increased drastically. Further improvement might take human to greater age and living.

The next stop-over is at driving freaks.

Everything for me

This posting is continuation of the title Human Fantasies.


Olden
Conquering land, search for secret treasure, digging out gold, alchemist, black orchid, voyage for new land etc etc are few of the technique we followed to amass wealth. There were great warriors determined to conquer the entire world. They marched through half the globe. They all got a six by three or ended up into ash, as per their culture.

Modern
The business venture, acquisition, crazy stock and the bust, etc seems to be modern day manner of wealth aggrandising.

The next topic is on longevity.

Happy husbands - when wives are away

VY hosted the lunch as it is his birthday today. We went to Royale Comforts. Food is ok.

These days MsAD (should I say MsKD?) is showing lot of interest in understanding the complex relationship between husband and wife. MS showed a brilliant glow while telling us that his wife will be joining him after 2 months. Thou he didn't want to show the smile in an explicit manner, we were able to get ecstasy he was in :-)
MsAD observed this and out of curiosity questioned MS on his state of mind and what he was up to etc.

Married guys shared their experience and how they tackle situation at home.

Later I was wondering what is that brings that happiness. Is it the relief out of monotonous activities and voice? Or is it an eagerness to live through the all-free bachelor life for a short time? Or to enjoy the personal space of loneliness, till the need of wife arises?
May be a combination of all this with a pinch of a factor called male madness.

Miniature pets

Other day I was thinking about bonzai plants.  If it is feasible to grow a big tree on a small scale, will it be able to do the same with animals?Imagine playing with an elephant, which is on your table top.  
Or a Kangaroo that is tall upto your knee.


With genetically engineering progressing, these things should come to reality in near future.

The question is: do we want it?  If we think about the negative aspect, when it is possible to minimize, it will be possible to enlarge too.  A group aiming to create roits in a city, can unleash megasize elephants into the  city.

My daddy is bigger than yours

This posting is continuation of the title Human Fantasies.

Let us see the way people were showing off their powers.

Olden
When one clan started using stones as weapons, the other groups had to withdraw from the battle. They had to go back, do some R&D and invent something like bow, arrow or spears. One these people got an upper hand. Other people got a defensive shield and also swords. I guess this is inbuilt nature of any species. We see that the conflicts in jungle and ocean are resolved by power. Once human started inventing equipment for fighting, the race for better tools began and improved the warfare. Mere possession of superior tools gave the owners protection and dominance over others.

Modern
Interesting twist in the modern story is to blame others that they have powerful equip and kill them. (I dont understand this part completely. Is it legal for some bully to say, "I can have any number of weapons with me, but you should not")


The next is about money.

Human Fantasies

Ever wondered what kind of fantasies we carry? I do think in different domains and try to find few. Prominent ones I could think about are girls, wealth, youth etc. Fantasies differ from person to person. Also, the priority of these likings vary too.

I am planning to explore the fantasies carried by human civilization, right from the animal age to our modern days. Let us see what is driving us to do whatever we do and aspire.

Let us start with power struggle.

Bojug

Java User Group started functioning in Bangalore. The first meeting happened today at Sun Microsystems buildings. Thanks to Sun for allowing the team to conduct the event in their premise and providing facilities to the group.

It was nice to meet different people from different background experience.
The meeting was very friendly and healthy; quite informative too. Two technical sessions were conducted. One on Netbeans IDE usage, module development and the next about Java db. Very well prepared presentation and audience were interested to know more.

People have an idea about doing something useful in terms of project implementation. That would be great thing to happen. We will have a open source development community right at our doorstep (or in our backyard, whichever one wants to see and feel comfortable). With such dynamism, we will have innovation happening among us and technologies shaping here. I feel that is one area India needs to jump in. This meet seems to be a good start.

Looking forward to more jugging.

Guiding the students

While browsing through orkut, I found lakshya. This is an interesting social service activity put up by few people. Lakshya aims at raising the thinking capacity of the student so that they will be able to shape up their career and life.

I had registered with them. Planning to answer questions raised in my message board. So, if you are a student or a fresher, feel free drop by the site and post a quey.

Simplified tax

Discussion started when MS mentioned about the medical allowance and travel allowance. Various policies and practices pertaining to tax system came into perspective. I feel we should have a simple taxing system. A standard percentage of income to be deducted; maybe a slab on different income range is fine.

The current system of providing allowance for medical, travel, insurance, donation, etc etc provides loophole for people to misuse. A simplified taxing would free up people from these calculation and crookedness.

PG had a good counter argument about genuine people needing such provisions and benefits, and the difficulty of government to aid them in some other means.

Since I am not an expert in these domains, I couldn't provide more points; but feel that something can be done to simplify.

Lesson from sudoku

After playing for two or three weeks on a continuous basis, I checked the sudoku addiction relief web pages. Invariably they had a sample sudoku matrix and I started playing there :-)

Now it is more than 3 months and I am still playing the game with more interest. Best completion is in 7.51 mins at evil level. The sudoku site showed that I am one among 12% in the world to solve it so fast.

Here are my philosophical insights upon playing the game.

• Seldom you will get the numbers you want. There will be something missing. You will have to struggle to get the required things.
• Thou at times I felt I got a buggy puzzle, never that was proved. We might get difficult situation in life and feel that entire life is a total mistake or a failure. We just need the patience to put the pieces together to get the beautiful picture.
• Practice makes us perfect
• Successful completion gives great satisfaction

Beautiful road

I happened to travel to Vellore in the weekend. The road is really enjoyable from krishnagiri to Vellore and beyond. Visually it is pleasing as they had planted flower plants and maintaining too. The colors are varying and soothing. Good feast to the otherwise dry and blunt landscape.

Hats off to NHAI department who are constructing roads and also maintaining these shrubs. Good to see such positive things happening around. Hope these initiatives are sustained forever and also wish this will be practiced across the country.

I had sent a note of appreciation to that dept contacts.

Graph using flash

I had to gather data in the server side and display the result as a graph. Was hunting for good way to generate bar chart, pie chart etc. Thought of using flash in a way to get a decent presentation and also learning the tech :-)

Upon analyzing, maani.us seem to be close to what I want. Thou it is a freeware, the licensing part has a catch so that people who dont read may end up paying for them. The interesting part is that we cannot insert this graph display in some other flash screen. Hence, you will have a graph isolated from the rest of ur apps.

In order to overcome this limitation, I glued this flash graph into my pages with js, iframe and some patience.

Now my site looks decent.

My dirty neighbourhood

The post about "Dirty Indians" ended with a question, a wish and expressed the dreams, inability, and helplessness.

Upon thinking further in that direction, I was able to see some light. It is very easy to blame someone for any kind of situation we are in. Any simple logistic query would give us the following cycle - We start blaming that particular private or public sector, then the governing body, the politicians misusing the power etc. There is one more level to be blamed. All of us. I am not taking the argument that we elected them and so we should be blamed. I am talking about sociology. As a society, we value wealth, power, status etc. We value these too much to an extend that directly or indirectly we assume the ill stance of "means is not as important as the end". This result oriented, fast track society breeds corruption, laziness, cunning cheats (like the apple vendor who cheated me recently. Actually I went to his shop written with the words "cheat me" in my forehead. He swapped the paper cover which had shinning apples with the cover of rotten ones), injustice, terrorism etc etc. We happily pass on these values to the next generation. We donate to schools for making them successful. They will eventually turn out to be successful corrupt (what outcome to expect from a corrupt institute?).

However, I dont believe in an answer which blames others. The problem with that external answer is that we are satisfied by finding that answer and we stop bringing up the question again. I was looking at my life. I do clean my house because I like a clean environment. I do put the dust in the bin and dispose in the right manner. Apart from this, my personal life is not worthy. Sometimes I read thought provoking books or play computer games, or day dream about future, or watch some porn &/or fantasize some girls in different combinations. Once in a while I think about social service and choose something I find it easy -- take tuition for underprivileged kids, that too whenever they call me.

May be I feel I am too dignified to clean my neighbourhood myself. I might be shy to talk to the neighbours about this problem and face their ridicule look, smiles. I thought about finding three or four like minded volunteers and take the cleaning activity as a project. Before even putting some solid plan to ask for help, I came to know that our office is shifting. Probably, I will have to move to another house. I will try to find a house in a clean (relative) street rather than spend time in cleaning the current street. Well, with this attitude, I doubt if I would ever be helpful in cleaning the environment. However, I get irritated when I see people dirtying the place around.

I complain about raising house rent and greedy owners. Occasionally a thought comes in regarding my aggressive investment in real estate business; that could be an important reason for the rental market to shoot up. I feel comfortable to dismiss this thought whenever it shows up.

The bottom line is, I am noticing and complaining whatever I dont do or I take care of. I am not willing to know or change whatever corruptness I am made up of.

Mangalik or non-Mangalik

Today's lunch discussion went around marriage practise, something similar to the horoscope discussion we had earlier. There were many explanation given for topics like gothra, mangalik etc. Mangalik stuff happened to be discussed actively.

Looks like mangalik can be nullified by spending money for doing so. That is how a magnanimous movie star was able negate her mangalik. Is that conversion from mangalik to non-mangalik so costly for commoners to follow it? Why should cream layer of society be given that allowance and general public have to go through the hard life of being a mangalik forever?

Are you wondering what kind of hardship a girl of mangalik clan has to face? Well, she is an unwanted person in the matrimonial market. The rule says that a girl with mangalik should marry only a mangalik boy. I was looking in the net if the converse is true, however I didnt find any statement about the mangalik boy. In practise, even the mangalik boy doesnot prefer a mangalik.

In the horoscope text, mangalik is a concept discussing about suitability of bride and groom. However the reality is that the word mangalik had become a bad omen. Due to this, there are many cases where the girls do not get married at all. What a cruelty!! It is totally inhuman to deprive a basic need of life.

Let us assume that the people are aware about the meaning of mangalik factor. Even then it is a big setback for the girl. She doesn't have a free choice of profiles. She has to match her groom based caste, family status, earning capacity, expectations, family background and apart from matching all these, the mangalik factor should also match. The choice available to her shrink to one tenth in comparison with a lucky non-mangalik girl.

This is a severe discrimination not only against mangalik and non-mangalik, but also a great divide between haves and have nots.

micro X = X + 1

While I was in the pantry, the office boy asked if I worked in another building few years back. I responded positive. He was able to recognize me after a long time. I had a chat with him in local language.

Earlier he was working for a catering service which served our office. Later he joined as an office boy as he got 25% raise. He is quite happy with his decision, brought his cousin to the city and fetched the same job to him.

I asked his native, what he was doing there etc. He started narrating his plans. He is clear that the city life will be good only till marriage. After getting marriage, he wants to return to his village (some 100km from the city). He told how good it would be to return to the vegetable farms and start cultivating stuff. I was nodding and agreeing to his statements. Definitely it is a good idea. The way food materials shoot up and farm land urbanized, it is a sure win to bet on farming. After the discussion, I returned to my seat and started thinking in what the boy was mentioning.

When he marries, there is a high chance that he is going to find a girl from his village. This assumption is because of his plans to return to village. I doubt if any girl from city would like to accompany him to his village and settle with his family gang. He will be having many options to choose from out of the village girls. His city job would have raised his status way high up in the matrimonial market and has an edge over his cousins who plough the land or share their wisdom in the tea stall.

Best girl among the choices could be slightly above our boy's family and financial status. This acceptance from the girl's side will be because of the 'city lights'. After settling in the city, they might start buying 'essential' things for city life. He may not dare to talk about shifting back to village. With kids, their education, job, life style, comfort etc etc will make them stay here. Kids will be taken to village for summer vacation. However, they will not agree for settling there. (Few of my uncles moved to city. Cousins from their families do not like visiting our town, which is not a village).


ah! I had read this somewhere. Yeap, this is our x=x+1 theory, just by replacing the software engg by our local hero and the green shores of US by our bustling city.

Amazing to see how the macro factors work at micro level too.

While we are at it, read the comments to x=x+1 by "Jai Shanker, Former VP and General Manager, now unemployed" at http://www.garamchai.com/XPlusOne.htm

Book: 80/20 CEO Vaman Kamath

I bought this book in the weekend. Since it is a thin book with lots of white space, I was able to read in a day. This book is an interview with ICICI Chairman, Vaman Kamath. Lots of information packed in each section and since the sections are two page long, it is easy to read. Inspiring thoughts and ideas, dynamic nature of business environment, attitude of change managers, how business identify talented and sidelines bottlenecks .... these are few topics of interest.

There is a discussion of Gujarat money scarcity rumour. Very very interesting and amazing way the bank handled the situation. We could feel the heat while reading. Btw, I read the net version of the story and it portrays how the world perceived the event. The inside story is much more thrilling :-)

The book gives the challenges at a CEO's office. Nice narration and interesting tales in the corporate world. Good read for anyone in the career path, particularly for the guys aspiring higher up.

Dirty Indians

Yesterday I was strolling through the streets. How dirty we are!! Garbage thrown all over the streets, stagnated sewage, small restaurants dump the wastage in the road side, mutton shop hang the skinless animals for display, hmm .. I wish I was else where.

What is that we lack to keep our surrounding clean? Relatively our homes are cleaner than the surrounding. Before blaming someone, let us look out the answer within. Foremost factor is laziness. We are too casual to throw plastic wrapper, waste paper, empty can, used clothes, anything we don't want on the streets. We don't know the right way to dispose things.

During college days, a friend of mine taught us how to dispose waste during travel. Simple things like carrying a plastic bag to collect waste, throwing it in a bin at any stop point, reducing the intake during travel -- were few tips. I try to follow whenever possible.

As any Indian, let me bash the governing system. We do have waste handling process in the city. People are paid by the corporation to clean the roads, collect wastes from door to door, ply vehicles to transport the waste out of the city etc. I have seen uniformed people doing these acts. Are these adequate? Nope. We need a system which would be responsible on what it does and result oriented. I had seen these people dumping the waste they collect from homes into a nearby empty sites. In due course, this empty site becomes dumping ground for the houses nearby.

Considering the health risk we have with these unhygienic habits, I hope we wake up early before some irrecoverable hazard.
Thou I dont have answers to many questions, I would like to involve in betterment of the city.

Beautiful names Part 2

Like the vi- series in part 1, we have ni- words like Niroopa, Niranjana, Nirguna etc. This prefix negates the meaning of the root word. Hence the above three words could mean formless, beyond-desires and characterless(?!). These words has positive annotation to mean someone or something who is not restricted by the forms, desires and the behaviour; something that had transcended or overcome these qualities.

su is the prefix to indicate auspiciousness, goodness and prosperity. suguna - good or pure charactor, swagatham - agatham is to inviting someone, swagatham adds a wellness to it to become 'wel'come. swarna is auspicious or nice color, usually this word is used for gold.

Anirudh is a quite common name we hear these days. I was curious to know the depth of the name. Happen to read a book about Krishna, the flute guy. Krishna's grandson is Anirudh and Anirudh is the only survivor of Krishna's community. Rodhah is to block or stop something. Nirodhah is to imprison and stop the flow, and hence Nirodh is the right word for condom. Anirudh is someone who cannot be imprisoned and in this context, the one who didn't let the dynasty flow to stop.

Such etymological analysis helps us to understand the words better and also throws some light on the language/word creators. We will be able to extrapolate the ancient life style, social values, ideas and ideologies. That is a Science by its own with the name Semantics.

Quest of the students

When I get a chance, I will be visiting my college. Last week I went to my native and thought of going to the college. As usual, staff members asked me to handle a session and discuss about industrial experience. Students were quite interactive and asked many questions. They were very curious to know the working culture, the interview process, the technologies that are in demand, what is the good approach in studies and many more. Had a healthy discussion which was very useful to me and hopefully some of them benefited out of the discussion.

A team of students were asking about designing a sniper utility and asked my opinion on using ejb versus corba. Since they need a minor interface between c and java for their network oriented project, I suggested corba instead of going through ejb concepts. Off hand, I am wondering if a xml data exchange would have been a better choice for them. Need to understand their project and suggest the best approach. Nevertheless, I thought of discussing this question with my friends and pass on the details to the students (if the students contact me through mail).

I mentioned about the blog I had about gaining experience without getting a job. Forgot to mention the hunters04@yahoogroups.com details. I should have asked them to join this group which sends job related info.

Overall, it was a nice experience being in the campus and interacting with fresh minds. Would like to do so frequently. Once in a year seems to be optimal. I should prepare well to face them again.

Who is intelligent?

A friend of mine sent this webpage. The message lingers in the mind even after the smile of the joke fades away. Is the society biased for the 'intelligent' species or is that the payment society gives for the learnt who really contribute? Is the mechanic really sees the smartness in people or he releases his frustration?

Water Water

Was reading this article about Cauvery water dispute. The issue had worsen in recent times due to increase in population in the river belt areas and cities which are dependent on Cauvery water. I guess the situation is going to become very bad down the line as the water scarcity is expected to multifold across the globe.

Wish we could unite the rivers in the country and improve our prosperity.

Apart from this water issue, I feel the borders between states should dissolve and we should think more about the country rather than the local state. The way we are divided by caste, creed, religion, language etc are the barrier for us to raise. These divisions may be useful for few people but not for the commoners.

Chennai marriage

Went to Chennai for LN's marriage reception. After having dinner and wishing the couples, just relaxed in the hall and looked around. I thought of speaking to LN's mom as I happened to talk to her whenever I visited their house.

I saw her in green saree, coming out of the dinning hall. Started a conversation with her.
Me: Hello aunty, how are you doing?
She: Fine. Who are you?
(Surprised that she didnt recognize me).
Me: I am friend of L and worked with him.
She: Who is L?
(hmm .. does she has some kind of memory prob?)
Me : LN
She: oh .. maapillai paiyanna?
She: ok, nice to see you.

I felt strange about the way she was talking and walking away in a relaxed manner.

After 30mins, I saw her again in red saree. She was quite active and energetic. Just to check her reaction, I walked in front of her. She recognized me and started talking. I introduced my wife to her. She enquired about our travel, dinner and usual queries. I mentioned about the strange green sareed lady. She laughed and mentioned she is her sister. What a resemblance!

However, I still carry a pinch of suspicion. My wife and myself were curiously observing certain odd things. We never saw LN's mom and the green saree lady together. When we spot green saree, LN's mom would have vanished from the stage. When LN's mom comes back, the green saree would be out of vision. We had fun trying to put forth difference theories. Recollecting various Indian movies where the same person swaps into different roles by simple attire change ... It was quite interesting evening.

Sales skills

PG narrated his experiences with Multi-network marketing companies. These companies train the members in sales and marketing skills. They shed away their inhibition in meeting strangers and socializing with them. PG mentioned couple of incidents at the shopping malls when he went with his wife. The sales couples used to approach PG and his wife on some context. For example, the lady would start a conversation stating the girl looks beautiful. With such pleasantries, the ladies would start discussing. Obviously the guy would be left with nothing but to talk to the other guy (the sales guy who would be waiting for a talk or start one himself). At the end of the discussion, they would exchange the contact numbers. In a day or two, the sales couple would call and propose a business opportunity. The rest is the usual talk and conversion rituals.

The other ice breaking openings range from "I have met you somewhere" to "you resemble like my cousin" ...

In the first meeting itself, they would extract enough details about a person and use this detail to assess the suitability of the person into their gang.

Thou these kind of marketing skills improve the communication of people, unfortunately there is a chance of becoming socially out casted. After attending couple of sales seminars and trainings conducted by the company, the members are too obsessed with success and money. Their thoughts, mind, soul, house, car and whatever they have are filled with the company's motto, logo, posters, articles and other junks. They speak about the same to all the known circles they have. After a while, their friends and relatives would start avoiding them. Once their known circles are exhausted, they venture into unknown territories and circles.

Not sure how they come out and what happens further down. I guess these people's behaviour and social interactions are worth doing a research.

btw, I happen to buy (was led into buying) a small bottle of some super-powered medical capsules for super-duper amount. I am trying to resale that bottle to some bakra like me and never did that in this one year of attempts. I guess I need to attend one of those trainings.

Tips for health

My wife forwarded few articles related to health. She thinks I need to gain few good habits to maintain my well being.

sleepfoundation.org talks about myths and truth behind sleeping. Very interesting to know about new info and burst few old thoughts.

This article lists out 13 tips for overall healthy life. Topics like morning breakfast, planned food nutrition, exercise, social well being, dental hygiene, skin care, balanced mental composure, fruits, water, milk intake etc are discussed in detail.

If you suspect depression, here are few tips.

Land cost

Today VY, MsAD and myself went to Adigas. Good food.

VY was mentioning a piece of land in the city. Also, we were discussing about the appreciation of land price. Over the past five years, the rate had increased 10 fold in most part of the city. Not sure if such sudden raise was realized in any part of the country in the past.

Recently we happen to know of two BHK renting out for 21k. This is not aimed at hi-society ppl but for the upper-middle class (whatever that means; when we are at it, why is the middle class broken into three? Are there more divisions?). In the same area, a single BHK was shown to a bachelor for 14k.

A year back, there was lots of demand for rental houses. Never we could see a 'To let' board as people would occupy when there is a vacant portion. However, these days we see lots of boards of vacant houses. Many are not occupied for a long time. May be the rent had shooted too high and owners are rigid in spite of no takers. Even with such trend, there are umpteen building constructed all over the city and beyond.

Let us observe the progress and see how things move. Most probably we might have to put up with this raise as the money generators like IT industries are still growing with more activities. We can expect a saturation in IT sector once the cost of living raises in par with western countries. In such case, outsourcing might become costlier than inland development/service.

cost of music

Today we went to the shopping mall. Had lunch and then went to the bookstall. I wanted to buy refill for the diary. Quiet lazy! Each year while buying the refill, I use to resolute that for the next year I will buy during December. Never happened so, always it was by end of Jan.

Before getting the diary stuff, I was browsing through the cd racks and picked few music. While comparing the prices, I got the following idea.

• Old classical film songs are quite cheap. If it is 40s and 50s era, then you get those vcd for Rs 40 or so.
• Then comes the devotional section. Starts from Rs 60 and keeps going up. Most of the cds are for 125. This depends on the time people are invested to prepare the audio collection and how popular that theme is. Celebrity singers' work fetch above 200.
• Also looked at the drama section. The comedy drama collections are above 200
• The dvd prices usually starts at 350 to 400.

Most of the above are available in our street video parlour in mp3 format. Price? Rs 25 for each burn!

Bangalore riot

In a far, far land there lived a tyrannic king (as per Western view). Once his government was toppled, the people in that land held him guilty of genocide and other crimes any normal dictator would do. He was hanged.

A month later of that court ruling and execution, Muslims in Bangalore gathered to protest that act. Fine, their choice. However, what does that execution got to do with the peaceful people who were walking in the streets of Bangalore? Highly unlikely if anyone in Bangalore had any remote connection with hanging of that leader. (None of the Indian media held a sms polling for the hanging).

Anyway, why should our buses, shops, people be attacked when some activity happens half a globe away? If some pope guy comments negative about a particular community, why should my way to office be blocked?

Does such mobic riots happen in other parts of the world; particularly curious to know how the Islamic developing countries like Malaysia handle such world events.

Interaction in a website

GA and myself had discussion about the technology. We were going through the advantage and disadvantage of a website allowing users to interact to a contribution level. User participation may be through wiki kind of editable page, blogs or forums.

Advantage

• The site comes alive with lots of interaction, awareness and many useful activities
• An integrated website may provide multiple facilities like forum, catalog, customization, wish list etc (depending upon what the website is aiming to do and the audience)

Disadvantage

• Need for continuous monitoring of the posted articles for maintaining healthy quality of the website
• Required resources for addressing the queries raised by users
• Able to take ownership and responsibility of the website content

I tried convincing GA by the fact that a team of staff would evolve out of the user community. They would monitor the content and such team would be a strong resource. This will avoid burdening the site owners. The staff can answer the queries pasted by the users and if the queries require the owners' attention, the staff can raise a prioritized attention grabber.

Let us see what GA decides.

zaika!!

Today we went to the restarant, Zaika, in Raheja Arcade. Earlier this place went with the name Annambrahma. Now the same management had renovated the place.

Ambience is fine. Tasty North Indian food. Price as you can expect in any such posh restarant; around 150 to 200 per head.

Try it out.

T-Shirt slogans

Like to read t-shirt wordings? I am with you. Some people feel that it is not a good habit. If that is so, why do we have those wordings?

I wish there are few facility available in such t-shirts. To start with, we need a comment column just like this blog has. When someone feel like posting a comment on the wordings, the t-shirt should open-up a section for it ... okay, before we get carried away with further imagination, let us get into work.

Here are few wordings I had noticed, and wished to comment in this line.

No job, No girlfriend, No Problems
No life!

I like you, will kill you last
A killer with conscience

Virginity is curable
Guess the treatment involves some injection.

I am rich. Marry me.
Thanks for the invitation. Let us wait for the gay marriage clearance from the legal dept.

MBA - Master of Bad Activities
I guessed it after interacting with our HR


If you have any, post in the comments.

Bookmarks

The bookmarks I use are of wide variety. Off late, KPN bus provides a counter ticket while boarding. It is a good one for bookmarking. That too it helps a lot as I would start reading a book in the bus (their TV system is too loud while playing some stupid movie). When I go to bookshops, they give complimentary bookmarks with their advertisements. I get couple of more from them. Another favourite bookmarks are visiting cards!, either mine or whoever passes to me. If nothing is reachable, I tear a small portion of newspaper or waste paper for the purpose. As I don't like spoiling the books, I don't fold pages to mark them. I like the books which comes with a small thread to use as bookmark.

Now I am planning to design few bookmarks for myself. I want to distinguish the books I am currently reading, books I am yet to start and those which I have read. Want to place different colored bookmarks to separate these three categories. Hence I am planning to cut bookmarks out of red, orange and green thin cardboard. Red is for books yet to read, orange for ongoing books and green for completed one. Actually I don't need green marks, I could assume books without marks are completed one; but to match with fancy traffic colors, I can have green too.

If you have better suggestions, please pass on to me.

Thiruvasagam

Happen to hear Thiruvasagam as composed by Illaiyaraaja. A feast to ears and mind. It is a music blended with Eastern and Western instruments. The foreground goes with the classical Tamil lyrics, and mixed with English translated verses. The CD came with a booklet containing the lyrics. It is easy to listen the songs while reading them. My wife and myself used to pause at the end of each song and go through the meaning of the song. Overall nice experience and worth trying. Planning to play it frequently.

Breathability

Interesting to know something about breathing. My wife is submitting a thesis on breathing. She had done some experiments on how deep breathing helps in improving the coupling of heart and lungs. She explained some fundas like amount of air we intake per minute, how it is related to respiratory rate and intake capacity. There is a cool formula.

TV * RR = MV

Here TV is tidal volume, RR -> respiratory rate and MV is minute volume. TV is how much air we inspire in one breath. RR mentions how many times we inspire per minute. Multiplying these two numbers, we get the total volume of air we intake per minute; this MV is required for our body. The breathing system works efficiently when the TV is increased and RR is reduced; in other words, we should fetch maximum air during each breath and also reduce the number of intake. That way the organs involved in these operations will be used less and effectively.

While understanding this, I was able to relate to a familiar concepts in computer networking. When we have a greater than 2 tier architecture, typically we have clients and server. The clients keep pinging the server to retrieve data. The network efficiency is achieved by reducing the number of round trip to the server and by increasing the data transfer in each trip.

Awesome similarities.

Reading classics

So far I had seen two classifications in Indian classical literature. The first category narrates some event, person or a story. Either events and person are explicitly named to identify or portrayed as generic characters like hero, heroin, mother etc.

The second category deals with morality/code of conduct/mannerism of people, social norms and ethics. There are many such books. Other day, one such book was lying in my desk. Friend of mine picked the same and glanced through it. He wasn't very happy about what he was reading. He felt those do s and donts were impractical; also a waste of time to go through such materials.

That was an interesting remark. Are all our ancient wisdom a waste of time? I was thinking in this line. Here are few thoughts came out.

In our modern age, we have hundreds of authors writing self-help, personality development books. In a sense, these books are the continuous progeny of the ancient moral texts. Most of the do s and donts of a by gone era may not be applicable today. However, we cannot throw away all of them as useless ideas.

If they are not applicable today, why should someone read them? I read to gain an insight into the ancient world. What was their social practices? Which are the pressing issues they had to address? Reading history itself has lots of advantage. A good reason for human being to go through history pages is not to commit the same mistake again.

Apart from these mundane reasons, there are recorded facts and findings which stands good in spite of the deadly factor called TIME. For example, recently I was reading a newspaper article about harmful effects of hot water bath. Due to regular usage of hot water for head bath leads to headache, memory loss and other brain related issues. This is due to sudden raise in the temperature during bath. Mainly this affects the brain. Since this info was new to me, I was surprised to read this; also worried because I am take hot water head bath on a daily basis. Found a remedy for the above situation in an ancient literature. Different protocols are suggested for cold water and hot water bath. Following that could reduce the effect of the above brain attack.

Suggestion to my friend is, to read books of wide range and variety. One need not follow everything written in the books. However, it is essential to expand our horizons by exposing to different ideas.

Strange practices in funerals

Loud beat of drums, merry dance by drunkards, bursting crackers ... these are common in Chennai funerals. Somehow I don't understand this custom. Why are people happy about the death. Are they feeling happy for the person to pass away from this sorrow filled world or are they relieved from the pain created by that person? :-)

Upon googling, I found that such funeral dances are practiced at different parts of the world like South Africa, China, Ancient Rome and Egypt. hmm, we have/had company.

Anyway, a recent news in the paper related to funeral was amusing. Villages of Eastern China have a belief that the more people who attend the funeral, the more the dead person is honoured. In order to achieve this target, the relatives try ingenious practices. They hired stripteasers!! Here is the video. Also, news at BBC News.

Later the parties were arrested and such practices are banned in that area.

Wondering how people interpret believes and twist the original thinking into drastic practice. If there had not been any law enforcement on this new approach, soon people would have assumed this as a local customs.

Elephants

Read a small book on elephants. Amazing facts about them.

When we think about capturing elephant, we recollect the familiar method of digging a pit and camouflage it by leaves and branches; and capture the elephant that falls into it without knowing the same. This book illustrates another method to capture an elephant herd. This involves thousands of men working as a team. They dig a massive excavation which can hold may be 100s of elephants. Thick teak stems are placed inside the pit. Imagine a big circular well which is planted with teak close to the inner wall. A heavy door is available in a portion of the wall. A slope is raised from this door up to to the ground level.

Once the construction of this trap is readied, they locate the herd. Start making loud noise with instruments (hmm .. it would have been awesome to listen to hundreds of instruments). They direct the elephants towards the slope and finally into the well. After getting them in, they lock the door.

Elephants are starved, so that they don't have enough energy to fight back. People walk in through the teak columns with spear. They check the elephants, if found not suitable, they release them in the wilderness. Each elephant is assigned to a mahout. The wild elephant is approached with 2 tamed elephants until it is tamed.

This looks like old method. Modern hunters use darts to capture animals as a faster and easier means.