An idiot who sold a ship

Author: Vijay Walia
Interesting book on self help, inspirational, and a text for sales person. The most I liked in the book is the simplicity. Lots of anecdotes are given from different walks of life. Pictorial presentations are nice. Each chapter is short and crisp, with continuity between the chapters.

Not sure how much depth and stuff this book contains; but definitely worth a quick read or as a light reading.

The author address himself as 'I', 'He' or 'the idiot'. Quite confusing to know which person he is addressing. 'The idiot' mentioned in so many places seems artificial and irritating.

Mangalore design

This picture is the railing we used in our home staircase. If you go around Mangalore or Udupi homes, you will find the same design. It is as thou this area people love this and imbibed in their homes. Here is the story behind the uniform installment.

When I was looking around for such design material, the vendor gave out a brochure. I carefully went through different designs, compared them each other, choose few, rejected some. After 30 mins or so, I came up with a preference list and showed them to the vendor. He was quick enough to tell those designs were not available and pointed only two designs possible. Also, out of two, he cautioned not to go for one because it was cloth unfriendly (saree or dhothi gets stuck in such design).

I came to know about another shop with wide range of selection. I approached them and enquired about few designs. They called their suppliers in Mumbai and confirmed those designs were available. However the cost quoted was double the times compared to the previous shop.

That is how I (and most of Mangaloreans) ended up with the Mangalore design railing pattern. We are waiting for one soul to purchase a new design from shop B, so that the new design will subsequently be added to the local menu. Hope that new design is cloth friendly.

official mail

I had to send an email to 10+ folks at office and gather their response. I sent one email addressing them in general and cc-ing bunch of managers. I didnt get any response.

Then I sent 10+ emails. Directly addressing them, placing their name in the subject and cc-ing none. An email was sent to one member only. I got response from all.

Just wondering what is the key behind this situation. Did they respond because they are directly responsible and hold accountable? But managers were not informed, so they could have deferred.

Anyway I got what I wanted and a new technique to apply at such scenario.

night lights

Have you taken time to notice lights? What is about lights? While strolling in the night time, watching the lights surrounding you. The hazy yellow light from a distance street lamp, dull white light from a near by shop, the head light and tail light of a passing by cars. Some funky bikes have fancy colored led lights, bright blue, green, red blinking together. Then the faithful traffic lights, mercury lamps, stadium lights, lights, lights and more lights.

One interesting facts about these lights is the way they kindle one's past life. Some of the lights brings me strange feelings inside me. They transport to a distance past, to a distance place. A place where we had been on a night, where there was a similar light glowing as a witness. A dim light from a distance carries a dimness, sadness of its own - just as a dieing star emitting out its last portion of energy.

ok, let me save this blog before the lights goes off due to frequent power cuts.

Astronomy sun vs astrology sun

Here is a thought about astrology and the symbols used in this field.

History of fore-telling ought to have been practised from pre-historic times, may be before even civilisation formed. As hunters, they would have tried to figure the future with local gods, priest; and used tools like dices, flowers, bones, bird movement, black cream on leaves etc etc. N number of devices might have been used, but their queries would have fallen into a countable categories. will I come back safe from the hunt, can we expect a good game, will my wives and kids be safe till I return, what will the enemies' strategies ... not much of today's queries.

Anyway, the tools used got sophisticated as technology improved. Crystal ball, card reader, palm leaf prediction, Nostradamus poems, computer prediction etc. One such field would have been astrology, developed when astronomy and astronomical terminology became popular. Astrology might have borrowed the terminologies and designed a confusing tables to obscure from common man. The zodiac sign in astrology may be more of symbols and notation than the actual star and planets. Something like algebraic notation like x,y used to mean something in an equation but they don't refer the actual alphabets.

So, this again boils down to constructing a sophisticated system with hify buzz words to cheat people. Weak minded folks who cant accept uncertainty fall prey to these foretelling traps.

Power of negative thinking Part 3

Here is an authenticate proof for the "power of -ve thinking".
Happen to go thru this article on
Why Positive Thinking is Bad For You.
The summary of above article is When Positive Thinking Creates Unnecessary Stress

The summary of above summary is:
Dont worry about fixing every 'problem' you come across. Most of them may not be problems. Or the fix is costlier than going thru the pain.

a farmer's suicide

I am a farmer owning a fertile land portion near a river. I remember good times when the crop yield was high and generating surplus money. Gone are those days. We, farmers, started using fertilizers and ended up with corrupt land. We spoiled the fertility with chemicals and now suffering from surprising results.

The city used to be a distance place and we had our own undisturbed life. These days the city is sprawling out of proportion and had grown very near to us. Soon it will gulp our little village. The cost of village has already started growing up. Our life style seem to modernize and improve with city air, but that is leaving a gloomy heart at the end. Even the crops, land and water are turning impure, pollination has reduced.

I had to spray chemical bottles thrice a season. Each bottle costed me Rs 300. The seed cost, preparation, labour etc ran into few thousands. The money used to be on rotation. Borrow the money from the merchant and sell the cultivated crop back to him. Good yield goes through smooth. However, difficult times like now is what mounting stress at many points.

I contemplated on selling off the land and settling the few thousand outstanding. However with improper title records, complexities of selling agricultural land, bureaucracy etc stopped me from attempting that.

I cannot hold any more. This is too much for a tiny man - to face the gigantic problems, stir through the trouble, reach a safe harbour - no, I dont think I can do. I had decided to put a stop this flow; it is just like cultivation .. you grow the crop and cut it when rip. I see my life like that. Only that I feel like going towards rotten state. Let me reap myself.

Oh river! you had breathed life into the crops year after years, generation after generation. You had given life to all of us. In return I could give only by swollen body. Be kind to shovel it off to the shores.

The water flow is calm but strong at this time of the year. I am standing at the brink of a small bridge. Last thing I want to do is pray good for my family. Let them flourish with whatever support they could get.

A car from the city stopped by on the side of the road. Had someone seen me at stopping to help me out? No, nobody is shouting or rushing. A man in thick suite got out of the car and moved towards the edge of the bridge. He dragged his heavy frame of body over the bridge railings. That is the time he saw me. I could sense his feelings through his eyes. The same destructive forces. There was a stillness in the air. He slowly started the conversation and enquired about me. I told my situation in short and asked about him.

He: I am a businessman. Thought of givings up my life due to recent transactions.

Me: Lot of loss?

He: No, it should be a profit.

Me: How much?

He: Petty. Should be near 15 million.

Me: WTF?!!! Then why?

He: Well, it is not the kind of money I used to make. These days I am doing bad enough to get into deep depression.

I started walking back to my home.

Power of negative thinking Part 2

This is an extension theory of part 1. A broader application.

Many people complain about life in this manner, "I have been good to everyone, I dont know why things like this happen". They imply that by being good (as per their own measurements), they are bound to be showered with goodness. The expectation is that by default the system they are in ought to be nurturing their current needs and demands. Any deviation from their mind plan is considered as unfair.

Let us wear our negative hat. See the world as a horrible place with vicious people around. We will never have problem dealing with one or two bad events. It is not that we will have to be pessimistic that the system will be always bad. There would be patches of goodness, but dont expect to have it at all place, all times.

Here is the above point illustrated with an analogy. By nature a land would grow out useless weeds and harmful thorns. Manual efforts like ploughing, sowing, watering, etc would give useful yield. Same way the default behaviour of the surrounding system is not conducive for our life plans; hard work is required to turn negativity into positive results.

Thank god, got the long awaited government job

That is the title of the story.

Story:
14th Aug 1947 11am IST

Power of negative thinking

I was waiting for a craftsman to show up. This type of craftsmen are notorious to break their words and discard the appointments. They dont meet; puzzling thing is .. why dont they deny service instead of making false promises. Even if they start, they seem to drag the work and borrow more time. Had this experience four or five times with this particular workmen, also heard from others. They are branded for this attitude.

Anyway, here I am waiting for one of them. The time starts to slip. I could either tune up some positive thinking or negative thoughts. I choose to think negative. I thought the chap wont turn up. Odd things happened inside me. A lighter sense of being, with less tension and pressure developed. Turning off the expectations reduced the stress level. It was good at that time.

To keep up his clan's tradition, he didnt turn up. That didnt affect me as the negative aurora insulated me from the harsh externals.

Modern life

Delhi was chilling by the Sunday early morning fog. Grandma was shiveringly waiting at the bus stop. A skoda car skid through the wet road and stopped in front of her. Grandma was glad her grandson, Aditya, came on time to pick her. She had quite a good amount of luggage from the far off village, mainly eatables for Aditya's family. Also as this is her first trip to the metro, she had equipped herself with enough clothing to sustain winter climate.

Aditya and the car gave a warm welcome to the guest and they were on their way to home. Aditya's home is a mini villa tucked in a quite corner of the city. Few minutes of distance from the buzzing main road gives them enough silence amidst the crowd. An architect designed compact house with all essential features and tipping towards luxury.

Aditya's wife Sinu received them well. Thou married for 5 months, she had interacted with Aditya's relatives over phone and jelled nicely with them. Sinu took grandma to guest room and showed her the house. Breakfast was ready in short while and they were enjoying the day.

Grandma was quite comfortable in two day stay and got to know much about the new member of her family. One thing started bothering grandma in her visit. The bedroom. She happen to notice that Aditya and Sinu happen to come out of different rooms in the morning. Aren't they sleeping together?!! This was a shock and worried if there is a drift between the newly married couple.

Thou an experienced women, grandma was hesitant to raise the matter to the city girl. She was afraid of the repercussion of a straight talk. However she couldn't take the matter lightly. Things were bothering and clouding in her mind.

As she was helping Sinu in the kitchen (when Adi was not around), slowly grandma brought up her doubt. She politely asked without being nosey, to find why they sleep in separate bedroom. Sinu burst out a spontaneous laugh upon hearing grandma's disturbing question. She controlled her laughter and answered to puzzled grandma, "No ma, there is no friction between us; except that I need a bed lamp while sleeping and Adi want pitch dark room, he cant sleep with light. So, when we feel really sleepy, he goes to the other room!". Grandma responded with a relief, embarrassingly smile.

Stocks for the long run

When we think about stock market, immediate images that comes to our mind are ups and down of daily graph, quick money, double in short etc ... also the sad face after the bear attack. Herd mindset rules while chasing the brands and over priced items. The events are perceived more as a random act and hence reducing the trading to that of gambling.

Rare are those try to deduct some sense out of the rush. Observing the money flow and the trend. Those are the ones looking into the fundamentals and the technicals, choosing a method for their own style. They do invest wisely and be peaceful.

The book "Stocks for the long run" is for a person looking for ways to have a smooth sail through the market. The language is very simple for anyone to understand the concepts. Lots of sample data, historical facts, well researched ideas are presented throughout. Author Jeremy J Siegel puts forward many case studies of rise and fall of companies, market crashes, predictions etc.

Ever wondered how the stock exchanges list the companies and categorizes them? This is explained in a nice manner. Also there are methods for filtering out good companies. Those methods are explained along with comparison. The book touches upon other investing tools and checks the historical returns derived from them. Thou major discussion of the book happens at the American financial backdrop, there is a chapter devoted for Indian and Chinese markets and how we will be influencing the world economy.

Would recommend this book to anyone interested in making money through trading.
Btw, by 'long run', the author hints 15 to 20 years :-)

film network

Here is a recipe for social networking website for film fans. The core site is a canvas board where users can drop an item. Item could be a movie, actor, director, musician etc. These items may be interconnected to each other. For eg, an actor connected to movies he acted. From the same movie, there may be connections to director and so forth. The items may have properties, like when the movie was released, dob of the actor etc. Also, item could point to a wiki page for users to update and post their comments.

The end result would be a one big mess of complex connected graph. The beauty of this structure is that the data is generated by the users from scratch. Moderators could help in trimming the data and avoid duplication.

Tags on language or imdb style of genre could help in quick search.

Subjective queries like movies by particular actor+ actress, or Chinese romantic movies of 80s could be attempted.

group kelasa

When we think about farmland, most of us would get the picture of a landlord in pure white and white traditional dress, holding an umbrella and supervising scores of workers in the field. Gone are those good old days. Now workers had migrated towards city for better job, in whatever betterment that is.

The current landlords are different. They wear dirty khaki clothes, may be bare chested and plough in the muddy field. Farm operations are labour consuming, requires lots of man power. In order to resolve the issue, the land owners team up. They form a group of about 5 and combined effort. They usually meet once in a week, put their effort in one of their land. Round robin method is attempted.

Synergy wins.

Manage your investment risks and returns

Good old book from early 90s. Concepts and topics discussed are relevant till date. The main theme of the book is to walk through different investment vehicles and study the different types of risks involved in those.

Some of investments analyzed are bonds, preferred stocks, stocks, securities, tangible assets, non marketable investments.
These investments are analyzed from risk point of view, like purchasing power risk, interest rate risk, business risk, financial risk, liquidity risk, reinvestment risk, market risk.

The dynamics of these risk, controlling means, are touched upon.

As a case study, three different motivated investments compared. Emergency fund accumulation, saving for major expense, retirement investing require totally different style of planning and process.

Very good read for anyone into investment. Would suggest to read basic materials and then read this book for risk handling.

Water tap terminologies

Construction materials provide array of options to choose. That invites lots of confusion, particularly if we don't understand the terminologies used by the manufacturers, dealers, mason etc. The following list is a jump start and not a complete one.

An aerator spreads water stream into many little droplets. This helps save water and reduce splashing.

Screw type normal water tap provides some kind of resistance to the flow at the point of tap junction. Gate valve has a vertical metal plate (perpendicular to the flow) to open the tap and hence doesn't provide restriction to the flow.

Bibcock prevents water to overflow into house or any desired point in the water piping system.
For eg, a strong valve is placed at the pipe connecting the outlet of the overhead water tank to the rest of the inlet pipe into the house. This valve can be operated while fixing the pipe or tap in the house.

pillar taps are usually found in basins and sinks. They are attached to the floor instead of fitted from the wall.

spout is an outlet part of the tap. Can be for hot or cold water.

mixer tap combines hot and cold inlet and releases a desired combination into the outlet. thermostatic mixer controls the outlet temperature.
The mixer tap requires two types of control, ie increase/decrease temperature and increase/decrease water flow. A simple way to get this is to have two knobs and control these two factors. A single lever mechanism provides a single lever to the above situation - turning the lever left to right would alter the temperature and lifting the lever outwards will increase the water flow.

Divertor helps in channelizing the water. For eg, we can turn the knob to get water in the shower or bath or to the hand shower etc.

pop up - a control on the tap opens and closes the waste, with the mechanism hidden behind the bath or basin.

Traditional tap has a head or knob which should be turned one or two+ full turns (rotations) to get full water capacity. A quarter turn tap requires to turn the knob or lever in a much less distance to get full flow. (Traditional tap uses washer mechanism, quarter turn uses ceramics). The later has many advantages.
Guess half-turn tap is similar version.

flanges - a protective metal sheet holding the tap connection away from the wall. (I am not sure about it .. couldn't get a reference on a quick search)

Baby's smile

Like all kids, Varsha kicks, cries and smiles.

Like all fathers, I feel her kicks, cries and smiles are unique and special.

Kural 35 - Righteousness

Righteous is not to yield towards jealousy, greed, anger and using harsh words.

Social equality

When we hear the word 'social equality' general thought we get is something like uplifting poor, education, land for all, healthy consumable at affordable price etc. However Indian politicians have found shorter means of achieving equality. To bring down the rich to the beggar's poverty, eradicate good education for all, etc.

The latest such measures were implemented in the railway dept. Few years back the train transactions were automated and made accessible through internet. People need not have to stand in queues, they could just click few pages and book the tickets or ask someone to click those few pages. Saved lot of time and effort; I am sure the dept would have benefited very much with the reduction of work load.
New minister took in charge. Somehow she found online utility as inequality to poor. Hence brought in many changes to the system - mainly to cause inconvenience to the online commuters. For eg, when you query for seat availability, you are put in a virtual queue for few minutes before the page gets loaded!!

Most likely the word bureaucracy was coined after seeing the Indian administration. God save our country.

Kural 28

The greatness of a person can be gauged by the wisdom/books he or she leaves behind.

Puppies got a home

There is a sad and a horrific story behind these puppies. On the seventh day of their birth, a visitor came and took special interest in them. With a hood, fang and a lengthy body .. a cobra!! The mother dog tried its best to chase away, but its barking failed to drive out the snake. It stood one feet from the ground with a big hood. It was able to catch a puppy. Hearing the continuous barking, people gathered and drove away the cobra.

After that the dog family got a new home. One less puppy the family became. They are resting under a shelter. Hopefully the puppies would grow up and stand tall.

Kural 12

Second chapter is about necessity of rain, titled as "Glory to rain" aka "the rain dance".

Second kural of this chapter is a nice tongue twister, with repetitive words. Many would recite this fast but may not know the meaning. Here it goes .. The rain involves in the process of generating food for all consumers; to add to that, the rain becomes food in the form of drinking water.

btw, this site has the English translation which is most apt and clear. Instead of doing a literal word to word translation, an attempt is made to convey the original message.

Kural 6

I used to read a page from my Kural book. Trying to make it a daily habit. (I remember my grandpa used to do that). Thought I can share 1 kural out of 10 each day. It would be a random one among the 10.
The thing I like in Kural is the abundant wisdom packed in a concise format. Apart from this, we will be able to pick up a subtle message or context out of it. It would be a new dimension to look upon and enjoy. Let me try to show such cases here.

The first chapter is devoted to the god. The sixth couplet talks about virtue and abstainism. May be interpreted as a definition of god, one who has control over the senses and with pure virtue; folks who adapt god's path will have a great life.
Another way to look at this kural is, one who controls the senses and leads a virtuous life will enjoy a prolonged joyous life.

Handling washing machine outlet

The outlet of washing machine machine is supposed to be let out through the drain pipe - either loosely placed or properly fit into the drain. However, if we happen to place the machine outside the bathroom, we end up without having proper exhaust for the dirty water. We end up throwing the pipe into the near by wash basin.

One problem with this is the retractory force of water and the outlet pipe gets dislocated. The water floods the room. Tying the pipe to the tap or other object doesn't give a convenient solution. Here is an alternate way that works. Tighten a t-connection pipe at the end of the outlet (see photo).

This solves the problem as the water is split between the two ends of the T. Also the metallic T is heavy enough to hold the pipe close to the bottom of the basin sink.

The rice hunter

I dont fit well in the purchase department, but my wife thrust the task into me. I get the grocery list and need to get it home. Most tricky item is the rice. Guess the confussion comes with the wide range of choice available.

At some point of time, I was buying only red rice. Folks started complaining and demanded white rice. Next time I picked the white bag. When we opened the bag ... the red rice was smiling at our face!! I sincerly believed that white bag will have white rice. Who the hell placed red rice in white bag?

After that incident I became wiser. I make sure I buy rice in transparent bags. No more taken for a ride. This month order for rice was heavy - my mom asked for 2 bags and wife wanted 1 bag. I picked the usual set of bags. Apart from this, they wanted idli rice too. That ought to be from a different store; went there and got smaller bags of different rice.
with distribution of the parcel, then came the news .. they are not boiled rice, just the raw type. In total 20kg of rice which was not liked by any. The next surprise was with the idli rice which had the similar defect. Thus we ended up with bags of rice with different orientation.

Dear wife, I know the job allotment happened due to the shortage of man power and increase of work load with the new born. I suggest you relax your hiring policy so that I may get a suitable assistant. I will make sure that she will fit in our family :-)

social reform

another haiku passed thru me.

Let us change the society,
Remove dowry
after my son's wedding

Dont beat us; we will beat ourselves

There is a desi bashing going on in Auz. It is a hot news and many desi leaders are condemning against such barbarian act. Auzzies are branded as racists. Prominent figures, actors etc voiced in supporting Indian students in Auz. Good to know our leaders support us.

What happens when the inter-state violence takes place in the country? Maharastrians thrash Biharis, Kannadiagas beat-up Tamils, Assamese punch out the Hindi-speaking crowd. Hardly we hear anything from the leaders. They silently watch the local violence. They dont see any racism here, in fact .. from their perspective everything is normal in the inland.

Information handling

My wife was telling that I will resume blogging only after our kid is born. Seems to be true, as I feel like blogging after ShreeVarsha is born.

Most folks call friends and relative during that moment to share the news. I controlled the urge. Thou my wife asked me to inform my relatives, I didnt. Somehow I didnt get an answer to 'why we need to tell everyone immediately? why not after two days?'

Before we go further in this discussion, let me list out the advantage of delayed broadcasting. I didnt get any in call on that day; also I sparsely used my phone. I was able to focus on the tasks I had to do at the hospital. More than anything, I had lots of precious moments with the baby.

ps: After two days, when I relaxed myself, I called everyone in my contact list to share the news. Most of the people were just happy and didnt mind the delay. Very few questioned why I didnt inform them at the earliest.

80 year old house

Could be more than that. (Localites claim that major renovation took place 80yrs back, house might have been constructed in the end of 19th century). The house is located in our farm. Compact one with required space for a couple to stay. The house looks rich thou the roof is tiled.

The wood work are unique and antique. The doors and windows are crafted carefully. The door is 'inserted' into the door frame rather than sticking out like modern day one. The keys are stylish and awesome.

The Main attraction is the entrance. There are three! For a house of such size, three doors seem to be a lot. Apart from the main entrance, there are two in the side. Opening all the doors give a nice ambiance.

Job you dont like

Let us say, you work for a company. As part of the job, you are asked to withdraw money from the bank. You collected the money in a suitcase and on the way back to your company. Now, all of a sudden, you got an enlightenment. You understood that you are working for a wrong company or a wrong cause!! You decide to quit.

Question here is, what do you do with the suitcase? Option 1: go back to the bank and deposit money to the company's account. Option 2: reach ur company, hand over the money to your manager and resign officially. Option 3: What if you decide to quit immediately upon enlightenment? How about leaving the suitcase on the middle of the road and going to your home?

The last option is what my wife did. She doesnt know what is wrong about that option.

Green sapling in drought condition

Just wondering what long term effect will inadequate resource on a young plant result into. Will the tree grow tough and strong against any environmental fluctuations or the tree will be weak and powerless on external factors? Guess there might be few more details and factors influencing the above case. For example, how much resource constrain is placed on the sapling? Is it about to die? What is the benchmark to compare against or in other words, what is the right tree growing conditions?

Would be interesting if there is a study in this line.

Morning walk

Today I thought of going out for a stroll. Didn't want to go for the long route, instead walked into near by area. That is the place I had been many times. It is a road winding down in the hilly area into a bunch of houses and a temple. Usually we go to the temple and return back. Never seen anything further. This morning I found that the road was cleared further after the temple. There was a road.

Walking through the road, I found many more houses that side, which were out of sight earlier. Further I went into the woods. Saw a group of peacocks, some six of them. Quiet a near sighting. While watching the peacocks, someone else was standing by and watching. It was a mongoose! When I saw it ran away.

A thrilling way to start the day.

the perception

While going through tough times, it helps a lot to have a positive mind set. If we bury ourself with all sort of negativity energies like anger, depression, repeated thought pattern, emotional break-down, worries etc, we are doing more harm to our mind and complicating the situation.

Instead, a positive frame of mind pushes us out of the situation fast. Winning or losing the situation depends on the strategy and many other factors. But having the right attitude acts as a shield to protect ourself from negatives. It helps to come over from sore heart and recover fast to normality.

Any more thoughts?

strange experience

How would you feel when you have to ask a favor from a person you lost touch for a long years? And that person in the foregone years, had expected something from you and you had refused at that time. That becomes tricky.

After going through such interactions, I feel how we view situation when we are at giving end and how we see things while asking or receiving. It is strange.

If god was a banker

Very few books fall in the category read-through-in-the-night. This book made it. I thought of reading couple of chapter before sleep, but ended up reading the whole book in the night. The story line was so catchy that there was no break point to leave the book down. Great book!!(Note to self: Never ride bike after a night out; couldn't open eyes while riding)

The book narrates the corporate world and the power struggle in it. Each chapter takes a twist+turn and carries a suspense till the last page. We feel sorry for Swami at many instances. Real life business practises are narrated when required. Adequate eroticity sprinkle to turn the heat on.

As with the recent book, the author, Ravi Subramanian, made his story run through Marina beach and Nariman point - which makes the Indian readers at home.

Few points that didn't vibe well in the book:

• Lack of Stability in characterization. All folks in the play are quite clear, except Sundeep. He swings between extreme intelligent, aggressive guy to a total stupid. Many a time he does senseless deeds and foolish decisions out of greed. All of a sudden, indication about his intelligence, skills of past or present are highlighted - as thou to compensate the black image furnished in earlier chapters. Then again it goes down and starts showing a foolish Sundeep. Not sure if this see-saw effect was intentional by the author.
• Too many names to remember. Most of the chapters introduces a new character. Some of them dont last over a para or two. Too many such names made me to skip all names and it was difficult to keep track of who is who.
• Flimsy ending. The last few pages were far from reality. An ex-employee, Aditya, being invited (he was flown from Mumbai to NY) to go through a sensitive case. Also Tedd & management confronting Sundeep and then giving options for his exist.As I haven't climbed any corporate ladder, I cannot confirm if these are feasible or not.

Overall, if you like a story line on money, power, sex .. this is a good book to read.

Magical eraser feasible

Looks like Science is in the right path towards human imagination. Whatever we could think about, technology pounce on that and makes it possible.

The selective memory erasure I blogged about is feasible, it seems.

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22187/

Freakonomics

I wanted to read this book for a long time and happened to buy this recently. Real life scenarios are narrated in puzzle like manner and the answers surprise us. To apply our scientific mind on trivial matters produces interesting results. For example, to study the business dealers' business or a sumo wrestlers' life style etc are nicely covered in this book.

For a long time I was suspicious about the manner society names their children. Example, a name Ramalakshmi Ammal seems to be from a far gone era. May be a catchy name at that time. Many of the upper society folks named their daughters, later on the lower sector started using that name. Upper society had to move to a new set of hype names, say Lakshmi or something.

Freakonomics explains the naming trend and many other topics. Good read.

Barbers change

Heard about latest SRK movie? It was named 'Billu Barber'. The barbers' association demanded the name be changed on the context that the word 'barber' is derogatory. They prefer to be addressed as hair stylist or hair dressers. (Not sure what they call their association).

The word 'barber' seem to have gone through a phase of euphemism. It is going out. The word got enough negativity that it got to be pulled off. Another classic word in Indian context is about addressing the SC/ST community. Olden day nomenclature went with 'Sudras'. That is a big no no. Gandhian era gave a name as 'Harijan', to mean god's people. These days people get offended with harijan. Preferable word today is 'dalits'.

I guess there is nothing wrong in words. It is the context and meaning we fix the words. Many neutral words gather negativity and slowly the neutrality usage drops out. Only negative context associates with the word. After a while, we start looking for a new word to mean the old thing.

It is highly probable that the word 'style' becomes negative charged because of these barbers, oh sorry .. the hair stylists.

The Transport office saga continues

The officer asked me to come and collect the letter for the followup from City A. However the concerned officer was not in the office when I went there. That was a lucky thing to happen, as they skipped the letter part. Now they dont need the letter from city A!! I had to carry the paper from one building to another. There was a small record verification in the other building. Not sure how they managed to store info in a slim register. After few signatures, rubber stamps there, I came back to first building. Submitted the documents. I have to go there in 15 days to see if things are done. I cant check the status through phone or through agents. My physical presence is wanted.

Hopefully I dont have to go there further on.

Searching at RTO

After buying an other state vehicle, we started the vehicle transferring ritual. City A (which in other state) had to issue no objection and other artifacts. After going through many to and fro transaction, we are almost in the final stage. The last task is to apply for a vehicle number change.

I took all required documents and originals. The officer went through the papers and told that he would have to look for the acknowledgement card from City A office. He was going through a bundle of postcards. Then another. I couldnt compare his search with the database queries and indexing techniques. After failing to find, he shifted his focus on one or two office files. I was hoping that we wouldnt have to dig through the pile of sacks that were tied up.

Since he couldnt get that postcard, he is going to write a letter to City A office. I am suppose to follow up with that office to get this acknowledgement.

This office was quite a big one to hold lots and lots of files, bags, and more files. I am sure they have not heard about the words like work flow model, computers, paper-less office etc.

How sprinkler works?

For those who are interested to know the working mechanism of a water spraying sprinkler. You might have seen this in the gardens where these sprinklers keep rotating and water plants in its surrounding.

The last pic has the close-up shot. There is a central axis holding the apparatus (the axis is protruding in the top as a small white pyramid). Two nozzles are provided to throw out water. (The nozzles have bolts and the main nozzle can be seen with the inscription '27'). Above the nozzle is a strange spoon like structure; this lever is attached to the axis and allowed to rotate around the axis. The lever is bound by a spring.

Ok, let us check them in action. Water flows with considerable pressure from the bottom of the tube and comes out through the nozzles. The main nozzle, which is the bigger one, does the important task. While pumping out the water, water splashes on the edge of the lever. As per the design, the water force makes the lever move away in anti-clock direction. Due to the coiled spring, the lever is pushed back its original position. When the lever comes back, it hits the frame of the nozzle .. making the nozzle structure to move clock wise. This completes one particular angular motion. Again the water is sprayed on the lever, again the lever winds back and springs forward .. this continues to make the sprinkler rotate.

It is amazing to see it in action.

bug in minesweeper

Found an interesting bug. After I completed the game, the clock was still ticking. The scoreboard had gone to -1 instead of 0. Somehow the counter had gone wrong.




Do I qualify for a game tester? :-)

Eleven minutes

This book is about how an innocent girl morphs into a prostitute. The author, Paulo Coelho, explores about the world of the prostitutes, how makes them keeps going, the dreams they carry etc. Through the lead, Maria, we come to know about the customers she has. In spite of being in high post, earning good or well to do status, men have the fear of failure and fragile inside.

We had read about love and sex in many books before. Here is yet another view.

(Not sure how many google searches will be wrongly directed to this blog due to those two famous and looked out words)

Retreat

The revenge of the nomad
Chapter 3. Retreat

Ramraj slowly healed out of the trauma. Took months for him to move around. All emotional feelings had died away from him. He became analytical and view his life from different perspective. He realized someone with muscle power is going to dominate. At the same time, he can sharpen his intellect to overcome the physical forces.

With that in mind, he schemed a master plan. As a first step, he wanted to eliminate Mr Rao's right hand, Das. Das is the brain of Mr Rao. Rao consults him for all activities and executes his task thru Das.

Ramraj started to observe Das's routine. Instead of trying to bring down Das by himself, Ramraj was passing the information to Rao's arch-rival. Weak moments of Das were studied and on a chosen day, men surrounded Das to hack him down.

The arch-rival, Mr Valliesh, was happy to hear about this. As per his estimate, Mr Rao would soon fall apart from his business empire.

Mr Rao was also analyzing the events. He happen to know that Ramraj had helped Valliesh.

Ramraj expecting trouble, travelled to a far place.

End of chapter 3 out of 7.

To be continued.

Magical eraser

What if our brain memory is erasable. If we can opt for selective cleansing. For example, all my experience of being in a beach are removed. Now my visit to a beach would be very fresh and new. The first time experience in a beach would be relived. That would be awesome.

People may use it to clear off their traumatic experiences. That is a double edged sword, with advantage and disadvantage. The issue is to loose such experience and being vulnerable to go through again.

Information flow in future

While hearing about molecular computing and nano memory cards, one would wonder how the future would be. Definitely different. Here is a preview.

You return home and settle at home. Want to know how organic is the tomato you bought. Pick one of them and use your TV remote as a scanner. Immediately picks of the universal identification number of the tomato and starts pumping data after data about the tomato. The shop it is been purchased, the date it is been stocked, the vehicle it came in .. You could use the remote to drill down the pouring info. The farm of the tomato is show live. The fertilizers used in the past, the chemical composition, the Dept of Agriculture's stance with respect to that fertilizer, What not ..

It is amazing to know the interconnected and data relatedness we can end up in.

Thou this kind of info access is technically feasible, I guess the legality over personal space, business confidentiality etc will hide these info.

The beast

Never came across this one before .. the cell surrounded by 8 mines!!! (circled in the image)

Got it correct and finished off the game too. Felt slight nervousness after unveiling the big shot. There was a pressure to complete the game successfully.

That was quite an experience after playing for years.

The land shark

The revenge of the nomad
Chapter 2. The land shark

Cacophony Rao is the villain of the story. He got his title for his loud and shrill voice. People are fearful to face his screaming shout more than his violent behavior. His family owns enormous wealth. In fact, most of Vijapura city belongs to them. Among multiple business they do, they are famous for real estate. Mr Rao make profit out of layouting land and selling for a margin. He also pockets out of forgery and threatening people to transfer their land. Our hero, Ramaraj, had bought a site from Mr Rao. After five years, this particular layout had appreciated a lot. Mr Rao couldn't digest the fact that his layout is no more with him and it is valued high. He started with usual way of bringing muscle power and trying to retrieve the land back from the purchasers. He was willing to pay them back the money they had given 5 years back.

Obviously site owners were unhappy. They protested, without much use. Many gave off the site fearing the consequences. Few people like Ramdas were trying to save their valuable. They can never acquire a site as the land price had raised up beyond reach. Their only chance is to hold on to what they have.

In order to clear off the problem, Mr Rao applied the ultimate weapon. He choose one of the protesters and made a hit. Alas, it happened to be Ramraj. Ten or fifteen gundaas came to Ramraj house in the mid night. They smashed opened the house and hit the couples with heavy iron and sticks. The attack went on for 30 minutes and both suffered a major injury. Neighbours dare not to intervene, they called for the police after the tough guys left the place.
Seethalakshmi couldnt bear the beatings and she breath her last on the way to hospital. Ramraj had to be administered in the hospital for months and slowly his body parts recovered.

Did police took action? Nope, Mr Rao took care of the matter through money. Beyond that his brother, Karan Rao, is an influential politician. None of the government bodies function beyond Karan's power, atleast in the Vijayapura vicinity.

continued.

First sale

(Pepper climber as shown in the above image. Pepper grows as a bunch of tiny tots. Seen in the right hand side of the image)

After we moved into the farm, we were doing lots of work .. one thing after another. Farm related, house maintenance, government paper work etc. Amidst all those things, we were able to pluck out some pepper and dry it up. My job was to sell it to some merchant.

I hopped from shop to shop, trying to learn the buying price. I had to put an act, as thou I am a seasoned farmer and trying to sell off a load. Had a fear, what if he asks some technicalities about the goods? I know that pepper is used in pongal, beyond that my knowledge is nill. Luckily a shop near the city center bought the stuff with less questioning.

I will have to research more to know about the best price. Less planning to pack it and sell them off.

Joyful life

The revenge of the nomad
Chapter 1. Joyful life

Ramaraj, our hero, has an ideal life. He is employed as a manager in a paper mill. His wife, Seethalakshmi, works as a clerk in a central government department. They lead a happy life; in fact they are expecting a baby in few months. Financially they are sound. Out of their small income, they purchased a piece of land away from the city. After five years of purchase, now that the city had grown and the area is developing good. Ram and Seetha are slowly thinking about constructing a dream house there.

All seem to be going good. Peace before the storm? Let us see.

continued.

The spider web

Usually when we clean the cob web, the spiders used to reconstruct within few days. This time it is a long due and still the house is clean. Upon reflecting, the truth unearthed. My wife had gone to her mom's home on a long vacation. So, no cooking, no food spillage, nothing in the waste bin. The house flies and other small insects should have migrated to better food source. And hence the spider had also wound its silk carpet to elsewhere.

Quiet interesting to note how these small creature observe the environment, adapt to the changes and base themselves to the food source.

Sales pitch

Selling goods seem to depend on two factors. The need of human and fear of something. The basic needs like food and shelter always keeps certain market thrive and healthy. Beyond this is the market where greedy people purchase. Samples: Invest in land purchase and it will double in three years. Drink saffron powdered milk while one is pregnant, and the new born will be fair skinned (if this is true, we shouldn't have any dark skin by now). I checked the price of the saffron and decided to have a baby with my skin tone. Another classic sample is the precious gem that is decided by one's zodiac sign. These specially designed gems can solve almost anything in the world, right from finding a spouse, promoting you in the place of your boss, healing chronic cancer, and a free pass to space travel.

Most of the above ingredients can be used with a threatening mode. If you dont alter your house as per vaastu, 1000 bad things will happen in the coming year and so on. All parents bought this vitamin tablets to boost memory of their kids, if you dont buy, your kid will fail miserably. Another classic sample of fear factor is the insurance policy.

Guess we will save lots of money when we shop without greed and fear.

Time convertor

How easy to convert a pacific std time to your local time? What if you need to deal with the london time too. Adding the 'day light saving' factor will increase the fun in the conversion.

I wish we have a simple plugin (mainly attached to the email client), that would scan through the document and highlight timestamp in different time zones.

Color synchronizer

Opposite to our house is quite an interesting house. It is occupied by five mallu girls. Quite a time pass to watch them together on their terrace or strolling in the front yard with their mobile and occasionally meeting in the streets.

Apart from the mundane task of watching these college girls, I made another observation. Their dress. Not only when they are wearing, but also when they are dried up in the cloth line. The dress colors are similar on most of the days. Indicating that the girls have been wearing same color on the previous day or so. It is as thou they decide earlier on what to wear. Or it could be subconsciously the roommates synced up in some ways and picked the dress with same color shade. I would equate this concept to "menstrual cycle synchronization" when girls stay together.

Whatever it is, definitely worth doing a research on this topic. If anyone is on it, I can volunteer to provide vital data for the project.

yErTram

yErTram is a method/tool for retrieving water from well. While writing the post "Chain of thoughts", I googled for this word and failed to find a description. Even a picture was not available. So, I asked my art master to help with providing a sketch.

A huge stone path is placed upon the center of the well. It would form a narrow path for a person to walk over the well. At one side of the path is a fulcrum setup which holds a hefty wooden beam. The extreme end of the beam is tied with rocks for balancing purpose. The other end is connected to a stick with a bucket. The stick and the bucket go into the well for collecting water. The person has to hold the empty bucket, keep pulling down the stick so that the wooden beam comes down towards the well. Once the bucket reaches the water level, the bucket is filled with water and the stick is drawn upwards. During this process, the person would have to walk from the outer edge of the well towards the center (walk on the stone path) and walk back after collecting the water.

The slow child

When an animal gives birth to smaller ones, immediatly the junior would move, spot the mom and starts sucking milk. In few days, the puppies or other offspring would run around, understand the world around, pick a fight with its sibling, try to chew anything that is available. What a fast track life.

Compared to that human child is very slow. After three months of looking after it, we are very happy to hear some noise out of it. With few more months, it starts pushing itself around - making us immense proud. Another six month to stand, try to walk, play with words. Would have to wait for four to five years to reliably be on its own and cross the mid-teen to be productive and able to lead a life.
This difference between animal growth and human always puzzled me. Reading Bill Bryson's book clarified the doubt. Giving a passage from his book:

Bipedalism is a demanding and risky strategy. It means refashioning the pelvis into a full load-bearing instrument. To preserve the required strength, the birth canal in the female must be comparatively narrow. This has two very significant immediate consequences and one longer-term one. First, it means a lot of pain for any birthing mother and a greatly increased danger of fatality to mother and baby both. Moreover, to get the baby's head through such a tight space it must be born while its brain is still small - and while the baby, therefore, is still helpless. This means long-term infant care, which in turn implies solid male-female bonding.

May be the smaller brain allow us to learn the stuff after birth. Wheareas animals comes with almost pre-moulded brain and the scope for them to learn is limited. So, our hardwork in terms of taking risk and going thru immense trouble paid off well.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

As the title says, almost all corners of Science is touched upon. Right from the formation of universe, rocks, volcanoes of the earth, ancient creatures, DNA structures, and more are discussed in a laymanistic simplicity. The flow of these topics are also wonderful. Had thrown lots of light upon life of the Scientists who worked in different eras. Amazing to peek into their personal life too, like who the 19th century chemist foolishly inhaled poisones gases, the enemity between different researchers etc.
A very good read for anyone curious to know our origin, stuff we are made up of, where we are and other Scientific inquiries. The book is by Bill Bryson.

Ellu juice

While being in a village, thought of having a cool drink. While checking the availability, I was puzzled by the menu item 'ellu juice'. There was a language barrier too, and the server couldn't explain more than that ('ellu juice' is something made out of 'ellu'). Out of curiosity, I asked for the same. What I got is sesame milk juice! Never had or heard about this before. It was quite tasty.

In the wild

Got the possession of the farm. On the first day evening, I moved in with my wife. The sun was setting slowly and so we were settling down. The electrical work ought to be worked out. Hence we had to pour kerosene in the newly bought kerosene lamp and lit it before the sunset. With the lights up, we found a clean spot (as clean as possible) for making our bed. It was inside a small room. We closed the window so that creatures from outside dont join us. As we didnt have anything to do around 6.30pm, we had our dinner. It was a nice candle light dinner, tasted like bread with jam. We promised to have lots of singing, playing jokes and talking everything under the sun (beyond as well). After talking about everything, at 7.30pm we felt sleepy. After putting off the lights, the room was pitch dark. It was so dark that closing the eyes or opening them didnt matter. Once in a while my wife switched on the torch and scanned the walls, roof to check any unwanted visitors.

Insurance policy and the functionings

ok, after chasing for the real Insurance policy benefitors , I found a clue. When we have some work to be done and we reach out a government employee or a distant relative or anyone, they help us out of the request. After that, they start with, "sir, my wife is a policy agent, why dont you buy an insurance policy". It is quite difficult to out right refuse the offer as we just got a free service through them. We will have to find an escape route like saying that we got policy previous month or so.

Anyway, I think these kind of social pressures are making the policy industry to thrive. And obviously the immediate benefitors are the agents.

The old bachelor

A friend of mine is in his late thirties. Had been going through all channels to find a life partner. Still no luck in settling with someone. The initial criteria were too many and beyond market supply. His family fancied getting a girl half his age and from a rich background. Slowly they kept relaxing their requirements. The recent one relaxed is the origin of the desired family. Earlier condition was to choose someone from the same community and also their family should have originated from the same town as theirs. The origination has been dropped for now.

I used to wonder why they are finding it difficult in the bride hunt, in spite of dropping many criteria. May be the rate at which they drop particular criteria is very slow compared to the brides moving out of the market for that age group. Wish he access the situation properly and moves fast.

Thunder, wind and rain

It was a quite afternoon, calm and bright. All of a sudden heavy wind was flowing in the area. Followed were thunder, lighting and rain. The rain was thrashing around with fury and wind fueled the beatings. It was a dramatic scene to watch from the balcony. It was as though waves of water was cleansing the landscape.

Chain of thoughts

When my wife was about to enter the house, I thought of playing a childish prank - to hold the door tightly from inside that she will be puzzled with the door not opening in spite of unlocking. When such thought came in, suddenly something flashed from my young age. Of someone holding my bicycle from behind and I was surprised that my pedaling was vain. Now I tried recollecting the face of that person. Oh, I remembered. I used to go to a public garden at early morning. In those days, gents went to different gardens on a daily basis. That were our bath points. We had well in the center of the garden. Drawing water from well require good muscle and stamina. Bigger men can do themselves and fill their tub with water they need. A boy like me would have to depend on a gardener. He would fill the tub, which would need 3 buckets of drawings from the well. For a day, I will have to give 10paise, on a monthly basis to was decided to be Rs 2.

Ok, that is the man who found be on the road, someday and held my bicycle.
Interesting to note the thoughts we keep jumping from somewhere to anywhere. To think about the money value, the good old social life style, the equipments we used, etc etc.

Oh, I didn't trick my wife by jamming the door; partially got lost in my own world and other partial was due to the insight into after effects when my wife successfully opens the doors and find me the culprit.

Green peas masala

Couple of days before, we finally made up of our mind to prepare green peas masala at home. Here are the steps we followed.

• Peel and chop onions, small one are tastier. I assume the onion amount should be as much as the vegetable we add.
• Fry onion in oil. Make it to golden yellow.
• Add ginger garlic paste, garam masala, pepper or chilli powder. Keep stirring.
• With the brownish paste in the pan, add green peas.
  Let the peas be fried in oil first.
• For richness, grind some cashews in water. Add this paste to the peas mixture. Add some more water.
• Instead of cashew paste, tomato or coconut milk will also be good. None of the above is also an alternate option.
• With added water, close the pan for few minutues. Make sure all ingridents mix up well.
• Serve hot with chappathi or parota or dosa or lemon rice etc.
  
  

Handling old laptop battery

If I disconnect the power from my laptop, the laptop shuts abruptly in 5 to 10 seconds. Looks like the battery is gone. However, I suspect some kind of firmware involvement also in this problem. When windows desktop is put under some prompt, then the laptop doesn't die even after removing the plug. So, if I wanted to move the laptop around while still working, I click on shutdown and leave the shutdown prompt as it is. After shifting, I cancel the prompt. So for this method helped in retaining for power for 15 minutes. Let to try beyond.

Ideal expense writer

We tried maintaining personal expense using different tools and techniques. Started with a fancy spreadsheet, then a website, moved on to traditional paper book, a pocket sized one etc. Nope, none helped us to stay on track. After couple of days, laziness pulled us away from these equipments.

While thinking about an ideal expense maintainer, here is what I wish to have. A box kept inside the house, close to the entrance. I can drop any receipt of different shape and texture. The box equipped with ocr will grab those pieces of papers, analyze them and find the expense to be entered. A calculator size panel in the side of the box would beep out the number it found. I can alter the number within 15 seconds, or else that number will be entered in a registered. The receipt will be filled neatly inside the box.

Blue toothed box will sync up with my computer on a daily basis. QED.

catalyst

The purchase did happen, along with some kind of drama which happens in these kind of deals. At one stage, the seller and the buyer slightly withdrew from the interest of making the transaction happen. When the two parties were about retire, the middlemen swung into action. They rescued the spirit. Brought in required parameters and convinced the parties to move ahead. Quite interesting experience. Till the last moment we didn't know if we will be buying!

To buy or not to buy

A purchaser's dilemma. Particularly when the stake is high and the buy is ornamental. Many comments, speculations to digest from different walks of people. Is the price high? Are clean hands involved in the deal? How much to rely on the seller? Will the ROI be satisfactory, whatever may be the expected returns be?

Guess we will have to keep moving with timely decision. Just enjoy the positive effects and correct any mistakes.

first last Vs last, first names

Most occasions we use the format, first name last name. There are few places, particularly while writing, that the structure last name, first name is adapted. In good old days, most often the last name reflected the occupation of the person. We see many family names with Baker, Clerk, Smith etc. So, while entering names in the record, last name sorted list would list out folks as per the jobs they work on. That would be easy for some one to keep track of the records and call the right set of folks for duty.
Not sure about the above theory. This occurred at me while using the address book in my mobile. I try to store the occupation of the person first before his/her name, eg Elec Sekar, Taxi Gopal, Law Ganesh, CA Manikam etc.

Back to yoga

After almost an year, I am restarted yoga practice. It is quite difficult and muscle flexibility ought to be regained. Quite good to do and body feels light.

Reflected on the reason for dropping out of a regular practice. Guess it is lack of concentration while doing alone. Mind gets drifted away into its own world of thoughts. Getting back to exercise, that too in the early hours of the day, is difficult. I used to convince myself that if I had some company for yoga or I joined any yoga institute, then I would be able to do better.

This time I had decided to keep doing on my own and focus on the task at hand.

Tactics of the leaves

While watering the plants, a cool insight of the plants came upon. The leaves starts from the stem and raises up in a slanting manner. They form v shaped pattern through out the stem. Having a flat structure, instead of v shape, might be more efficient to capture sun light. The advantage of v shape showed up while watering the plant. Water falling on the leaves rushed towards the stem and finally close to the root. Had it been a flat arrangement, water from the leaves might have splashed away from the root to the ground instead of towards the stem.

May be the plants have to form a strategic positioning for maximizing sunlight as well as rain water.

Freedom to mind

While going through the strange world, I got a light all of a sudden. What a freedom and relief we get once we are out of an issue. The issue may be minor, but we feel our mind relaxed and calm.

The problems and issues we face need not be a real challenge. They can be just a lack of knowledge about that particular system or situation. If we put some effort to understand the functionality of the system and behaviour, we may be through the difficult moments.

Strange world

When we reach an ideal point in life, we settle down happily. And then creeps bunch of issues here and there. That leads to the yearning of cleaning off such negative factors. We want those issues to vanish so that we can relish in our imaginative conditions we fantasized on the first place. Slowly the goodness of this experience drops off and only the bad thingy stick to our mind. If more and more such issues pile up, the particular point reached will itself be a burden. We start fantasizing for something else. Back to square one.

transparent editor

What if the text editors we use are transparent? Or transparentable? This occurred to be when I had to switch between different window, refer info at various source and come back to the editor to continue composing. Instead, if I have transparency, I will have focus on very few lines close to the current line I am editing. This patch of visible lines should be draggable/movable. Remaining area of the screen will be displaying the windows that are at the background. I can refer or even cut n paste from any of the available screen. With a snap of key or click, I should switch from transparent mode to opaque. Would be cool.

Follow British or American

While interacting with American colleagues, one of the confusing factor is the date format. Desis are used with dd/mm/yy and Americans insist on mm/dd/yy. Upon pondering on this conflict, interesting things surfaced. It is not only date format, there are many things Americans wanted to move off from British traditions. Here is a short list.

road side

Brits ride to the left side. Anyone following that convention will find it tough on American roads that drive on the right hand side. Car steering is also position in appropriate side of the car.

switch on/off

Simple light bulb switch. Do we pull the knob bottom to top or top to bottom for turning it on? Depends on the country.

Culture

Britons and I guess most of the European countries adhered strict hierarchical order in the society. The working place too followed such bureaucratic structure. Americans bent such rigid model and practice somewhat loose hierarchy.

Language

The formal British English had to give way to American slangish language.

Considering these factors, looks like such drastic change were taken upon themselves to symbolize their freedom from a former colony. They want to show their difference.
May be top to bottom writings of Chinese, right to left of Arabs could have originated out of similar identity establishment.

The power game

Recently Manipal University was derecognized as a quality medical college. The reason given by the government inspecting body is that the univ is lacking resources. Considering the recent past, where the institute is considered one among the best (to be precise, fourth best medical college in the country), such a lack of resource is a surprising findings. Are our institute adhere such a low standard?

Clearly the corrupt hands of the inspecting body wants to tamper into a resourceful setup.

A thought occurred to me. The state government is somewhat friendly towards MU. If a state government inspecting body could be floated, that would ease out the issue for now. Slowly the authenticity of such inspecting board can be popularized among other states.

This will bring down the power of the Central inspectors. However, the new setup will introduce few more flangs of its own.

Travel updater

Recently I happen to be on road and rails for four days. Just kept on moving from one city after another. Apart from the hackers, beggars, loud video player .. a new annoyer had joined .. it is the co passenger yelling at his/her mobile. Observed a pattern in this mobile usage. These people HAVE TO inform the other party about their exact longitude, latitude coordinates. Even if they don't know, they would wake the co passenger from sleep and question them with, "where r we now?" .. followed by ... "Aaang, I have crossed so-n-so place." As thou the listener is going to open up their GPS box and start monitoring the movement of this guy.

Wondering if we can have a personal mobile phone jammer.

rattled mind

In a volunteer mailing group, a small ripple will create a big wave of mails and an ultimate splash. One definite rocker is 'switch off lights' and 'save tissue papers'. What creative suggestions come out of these simple topics .. people get very unconventional and emotional about their ideas.

Recently such mail thread started with simple suggestions like:

Put some posters about power saving.

Encourage taking stairs as opposed to elevators.

Turn off lights in huddle rooms/conference rooms.

An engineer's response:

We are the engineers, we need to think of some innovative power saving
measures !

/What if there is sensing device at the entry of pantry as in one enters,
lights ON... and /

/as soon as one exists, lights OFF !! ( depending on the total number of
heads entered MINUS/

/total number of heads exited ) = 0 Implementation of this would cost intial
investment but would/

/save lots of power & power bills later.../

Someone started cribbing :

I do not see this poster idea is working, there are
posters just near the tissue paper in the toilets but people still use the
tissue paper. To my surprise even people stand and read this poster and use the
tissue paper as if the content is in French.

If we dont want people to use tissue, dont keep there! simple.

Followup ideas ...

On a related note, the quality of the tissue paper can be
improved.

Can someone tell this environmentalist that quality paper => cutting more trees

There were other suggestions like volunteers calling employees and advising them on tissue usage. People were going further to trace the origin of tissue, wondered if great grandfather and beyond used tissues etc.

What idle brain can do!

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Remember reading this book during college days. Couldn't recollect much of the story thou. Yesterday I had to travel alone in a taxi for 2 hours. While looking around for a book, got this one. Suitable to spend 2 hrs or so.

The first part of the book talks about how general trend in people and what kind of inertia hold them back from moving out of the flock. Also the kind of struggle and hardship of successful people. Particularly the kind of changes they have to make and willing to go through tough time due to different life style.

Second section is quite heavy with meta-physics and after life stuff. The highest thing that to be worked out is - love. Guess westerners have the notion of seeing love as the ultimate thing to go for.

Last part was too much .. purposefully painting a messiah image to the hero. It was able to cure a bird whose wings were immobile. Lots of followers and enemy camp and so and so.

A nice inspirational book.

fluid containers

Ever wondered about the shape of the fluid containers? Most of them are cylindrical. The petrol, milk tank containers, milk can, over-head water tank, water heater, most of the kitchen utensils, pen, water pipe, ...

Any idea about the reason?

Helping tendency

Someone sent a technical query to our office internal mailing list. The query was kind of simple. In no time there were so many replies and suggestions. Some of the answers were repetitive. Even two people replied after two days .. which is rare considering that most mails in that forum dies out in couple of hours.
The reason behind the mails is .. the questioner is a girl, that too with an attractive name. Guess the guys didnt know her age or other details, if so they might not have bother to provide such help.

perception

Morning I was looking at small spiders, ants and lizards. The first instinct is to drive them off. I was also trying to see their perception about human. They might have an image of 'annoying monsters'. Always the monsters chase them away. At time spray chemicals or set hazardous mechanical, electrical devices on them. Doesn't allow them to lead a peaceful life, the nest they construct is destroyed in fraction of seconds.

If only we could listen to their conversation, it would be really interesting.

Voyage haiku

Planning travel across our galaxy
may be far beyond Andromeda or Triangulum
Packing two condoms for safety

passing the bug

I was observing the neighbouring construction work through the window. A worker found a small snake. He hit it with a stick still it fell unconscious or dead. Now he had to throw it out. He used the same stick to pry the snake across but it fell inside the construction area itself. This time he aimed for our garden! The snake fell on our car path inside the compound wall.

He was about to get back to his work. That is when I had to come out of the house and shout at him. Probably he thought the house was unoccupied as no one was living for a long time. Then he realized the situation and immediately came into my house to clear up the mess.

How human behave! We are ready to take any short-cut to cut short our work.

Space allocation

While traveling, my wife and myself were enjoying the landscape and the scenic beauty. She asked about the dimension of an acre of land. It is 66 feet by 660 feet. Quite odd shape to divide the farm land. A lengthy rectangular partition. She asked if there is any reason behind such division. It seems like an ancient practice. May be from the time man started cultivation as a part time apart from his full time hunting job.

While reflecting, suddenly a similarity appeared between this land dimension and a totally different system. It is agraharam.

The Brahmins had an upper hand over the society. Their contribution is reflected in many areas of Indian life in the past. They were also biased towards their own kith & kins, (like any other human being). So, if they were doing town planning, we could expect them to occupy prime locality. The center of the town had the temple. Brahmins lived close to the temple. The central land ratio should had been minuscule compared to town's total land size. Low availability and high demand plus compulsory allocations to Brahmins would have a driven towards optimal, compressed allocation algorithm.

Probably with the above constraints, they got houses with odd dimension. In a typical agraharam house, a corridor will start from the front door and run towards the end. Rooms will be placed one after another along with the corridor. A small garden or open space will be available at the end of the house. It is a lengthy house with narrow width; the width of the house is always 1 room wide and the length could be 5 rooms or more.

The reason for the odd dimension is the resource crunch. Here the sacred street is the resource, which ought to be shared by as many as possible.

Going back to the farm land, similar resource crunch and optimal allocation might have lead to such rectangular division. The resource could be the water body like river, or the resource can be the approach or reachable to the road.

Would like to see if these rectangular partitions are adapted at international level.