An Inconvenient Truth

I am not a huge fan of movies. Every once in a while, a movie comes along, that brings about the following conversation in our household:

Man of the house: Saumya.....I've played the movie. Could you come and watch it?
Self: I can see it from the kitchen, while I am loading the dishwasher.
The titles start, and the man of the house glimpses in my direction, and he cannot even see me, so, how could I be watching a movie?: Can you come here now?
Unfazed, I reply that I can hear the conversation while wiping the floor.
Man of the house: GRRRRRRRRRR....No, this time you are coming here and watching it properly.
Self: What's the BIG Deal??? I don't enjoy movies as much as you do - so you go ahead, I'll join you in a moment.
10 minutes later, the tone hints on exasperation: For heaven's sake, come here, and watch the movie.
Self: Okay, okay...am almost done. I just have to <insert 6 totally unrelated, mundane task list here>

It is at this point in the proceedings when you can see a grown man pull a grown woman from the kitchen, and switch off the kitchen light. The grown man then follows aforementioned grown woman closely to ensure no u-turns are taken, and plays the movie. Usually, I sulk for the first few minutes before getting immersed in the movie. Invariably, I end the movie by thanking him for making me watch the movie. You see, my husband undertakes great pains to select movies I like and am sure to enjoy. I really appreciate that - I really do! He not only knows my taste, he actually makes me enjoy my life.

After scene above was enacted successfully on Friday night, we sat down to watch Al Gore's documentary: An Inconvenient Truth.

Let me just say this: my thought process has been altered. I don't think I see the world with the same eyes anymore. To those of you who have not yet seen this movie, please do so as soon as possible.

We owe it to ourselves, and our children.

I won

I have been wanting to share this good news from last week. Yes, finally I have won an award. I never had any presumptions about my blogging and was really thrilled when my name was announced. I saw it first on TV in CNN. YES ! I finally made it to the cover of TIMES. Now, what were those guys thinking? What are they trying to accomplish by catering to our collective narcissism? Does this show how irrelevant the Person of the Year award has become?.
Confused !?@X - Check out Times Person of the year

Time-Space Tail...

We all have heard about different facets of self realisation. One could argue that trying to know oneself is a tough process since we may not try to acknowledge our negatives even if we might acknowledge it internally. As always, corners can be cut and we can obviously find situations where we can still use the concept. I think, one way of self realisation is to be self-aware. For example, look at situations where we are prepared for a given interaction, like attending an interview, addressing a crowd, talking to a group, etc., In such situations, we are not only prepared to say what we have to say but are also prepared for the other person's response. When we are prepared for other's responses, we are not emotionally attached to "us" but rather the situation and that makes a big difference in keeping us more rational. Especially, in professional scenarios, as most of you might agree, EQ takes a person to greater heights than IQ.

One of the take-aways from a recent course that I took was this. There are a lot of soft-skills that one could master easily. Though skills such as leadership are perceived to be natural, studies have shown that following key set of characters can groom the leader in you. Though the initial bringup and socio-economic factors play a major role in influencing someone, practicing a skill consciously can get you to greater heights, much greater than what you might imagine. Easier said than done..But then, nothing is easier... Doing nothing is the easiest decision one could make to avoid getting into lot of troubles. But, is it what we do ? I think, we all leave a trail of legacy behind us. Even if we dont do anything, we will leave a legacy that we never did anything..:)... And, thinking about legacy at a ripe age is not going to make a difference to the way we live. So, I think living for what we truly believe in, living for what everyone wants us to be remembered for, living a life that makes a difference in other's lives is important and will leave a trail for who you really are. So, to grow a long distinct tail (of legacy), Self-Awareness is the key.

Another realisation on running...

I know you folks hear a lot about running and may be bored to death. But, I have to write about it since that's all I am doing these days..:).. Well, I recently had a different perspective on running and I thought I will share it with you all.

If you think about long distance running, I think there are only 2 factors that are very vital. One is the cardio factor and the other is the muscle factor. It is all about sustaining a higher heart rate for longer periods of time and having the muscle power to endure the distance. What it means is that, for being a good long distance runner, one need not run several times a week, but rather, mix it up with other activities which can get your heart rate to increase or get your running muscles worked up. Running performance will be an immediate by-product!

Kiriket

Staying up all night to watch a game of cricket has never been a cause for concern for me, even when I have to to go to work the morning after. I still remember staying awake the whole night to watch India take on Pakistan in the 2003 world cup. Fifty of us (including 3 pakistanis) crammed into a relatively small living room in rural Kansas to watch one of the most intense rivalries on the field. It was like watching the game live. The atmosphere was electric and every boundary, wicket or something eventful was greeted by thuderous roars. Luckily the apartment complex was filled with "desi" grad students and parallel shows were being telecast in other apartments. Hmm well the end result was of course favourable. Today, the environment was different but the outcome was the same. I was all alone and did not have live telecast but rather had to depend on text commentary through Cricinfo. But the fact was it was so much fun to watch both Australia regain the ashes and India outplay South Africa. Hmm..luckily I'm on a break now, so waking up at 4 in the afternoon can be forgiven (lol). Cricket is cricket. NFL/NBA will never get me to stay awake the whole night but a good game of Cricket sure will.

Decaf Coffee

I recently heard from a friend that Decaf coffee need not necessarily be a good alternative for coffee lovers after all. Apparently, there are 2 processes involved in decaffeinating coffee. The Swiss Water process cleans up the coffee seeds with high temperature water and steam to get rid of the caffeine. The other process uses solvents like dichloromethane (methylene chloride) to take the caffeine out of the coffee seeds. It has been proven that methylene chloride can cause tumor in humans.

One of my friend wrote to both Starbucks and Peet's coffee and he found that most of the decaf varieties use the methylene choride solvent. Their story is that, after treating with the solvent, they roast the coffee seeds at a significantly higher temperature (400 F, boiling point of methylene chloride is around 114 F) and hence shouldnt have any problems since the solvent will be vaporised. But, it is highly possible that there are residues (in the order of ppm (parts per million)). The reason why the water processed beans are not common is because they are not as flavorful as the solvent processed ones. So, if you are one of those people who think that decaf is the way to go and consume it in large quantities, be aware of this.

Following is the list of decaf coffee from Peet's. They have a total of 6 decaffeinated coffees. Decaf House, Decaf Special Blend, Decaf French, Decaf Sumatra, and Decaf Sierra Dorada all are processed with a "direct contact method". Decaf Mocca-Java is water processed. In Starbucks, Decaf Komodo Dragon Blend is the only water processed and all the others (House Blend - Decaf, LightNote Blend - Decaf, Shade Grown Mexico - Decaf, Sumatra -Decaf, Espresso Roast - Decaf, Caffè Verona - Decaf, Starbucks Decaf Christmas Blend) are solvent based.

From Newyork Times

Read these interesting exerpts from Newyork times and though of sharing

Art & Science (NY title: Air-Index impressionism)
Scientists are trying to figure out pollution levels in 1900 using Monet's impressionist paintings during that time. They say, he accurately drew the light, color, clouds and sun position. It may give lot of scientific data for the period which has no statistics.
But some are little worried about Monet's affinity towards pink (which apparently he tend to use mildly in his paintings)

MIT Geeks (NY Title: Ambient Walkman)
Criticism: iPod/headphones tend to tune people out of surrounding completely. (isolated)
Vawter, Graduate student from MIT media lab, is designing a headphone which has mike & speaker. It takes the background noise and convert into acceptable music background (using DSP). He even think of converting the noise and matching to the music you are hearing.
**Geeks!!

Ballot - Lottery
If Osterloh from Arizona have his way, there will be more than one winner in the state elections.
Yes. He is suggesting to print lottery numbers on the ballot and pick a winners from the voters to increase the voter count.
And he suggested using state lottery unclaimed funds for this purpose.
***Some argue against it. I wonder why?

Booemrang Drone - Remote controlled spy plane.
Let me leave to fellow bloggers to guess what it is!

Candid Candy

What a paradox that 'Candy' and 'Candor' sound so similar, yet mean entirely different things. In fact, could there be such a thing as Candid Candy? Interestingly, these two words are etymologically different. Candy traces its origins to the French word, 'Candi' and the Arabic 'Qandi' made from crystallised sugar 'Qand'. Maybe that is the origin of names for the Indian sweet Kalakhand too.

Candor, on the other hand also traces its origin to French - 'Candeur' and Latin 'Candor'. Candor implies the absence of sugar-coating, or an honest opinion.

While I value candor, I love candy, and I need both in my life.

Looking up at Lookups

Being in the networking world, the only thing that I have been hearing about over the past several years has been the term "packets-in and packets-out", day in and day out. When I get to work, invariably the hallway tech talk will be about why packets are not coming out or why packets come out at a rate less than predicted or why the packets coming out mismatch with the packets coming in and so on.

If you are not onto internet technologies or routers, the only two things that you need to know is that any networking device (router, switch, etc.,) looks up for a destination address and sends it across accordingly. In other words, a lookup is made for the destination address and the packet gets routed until the final destination is reached (if you use windows machine, go to command prompt and type "tracert www.yahoo.com" and you will see the routers through which you get to yahoo's webpage. You can obviously try it for different websites as well). It kept me wondering. I think, we as humans, fundamentally do just that. Ofcourse, we bring in a lot of associativity to the contexts. But, at the lowest level, all we do is just store and lookup information. One could contend that we do perform processing of information as well, but when I think about it more, I think processing can in turn be categorized into a bunch of lookups based on information already stored in our database. In networking world, the one thing that most people work on is, how fast we can do lookups using the least amount of storage and thus cost. Just a rationale to the human context is that, our brain stores all the information that we care or we dont and processes items so fast using the least energy (when compared to a machine). Just a reality check on how far technology is off.

What do you want?

We all spend a lot of time in different types of organizations associating ourselves with different people. We have people whom we look up to, as a role model, as a leader. When I say role models and leaders, it indirectly maps to the company that one works for as well. What does one look for in a company? What does one look for in a manager/leader/role model? I had different answers to these questions based on different times along my career. However, the questions still mystifies me. Is it the money? Is it job satisfaction? Is it the quality of people around you? Is it about how trust worthy your leaders are? Is it about how friendly the environment is? I understand that everyone would like to have the best of all worlds. Without revealing what I consider to be the most important thing, I was hoping to hear some perspectives from people on what they think are important based on importance levels.... What do you all think?

Simpson's Paradox

Lemme talk about something which I thought was interesting. The best way to go about it would probably be through an example.
The subject for todays study is cricket. To be more specific batting averages and judging who is the better player. A particular statistical anomaly of interest is as follows. Sometimes we might find that the success rates of individual players over a period of time (individuals seasons), might be significantly better compared to the seasons combined. This seems like a mathematical impossibility! FOr instance, when compared in isolation or season by season, if Sachin Tendulkar had a lower average in both the 2004 and 2005 season as compared to say Mike Hussey, then how is it possible that When you combine both the 2004 and 2005 seasons, Sachin has a better average??

Let me illustrate with a rather simplistic example.

Sachin

2004 Season - Average 50
2005 Season - Average 40

Hussey

2004 Season - Average 60
2005 Season - Average 45

A simple examination would indicate that Hussey seems to be the better player and combining the 2004 and 2005 seasons would still imply that Hussey has the better average. But this need not be the case. Think about this.

Sachin

2004 Season - 100 games scoring 5000 runs at an average of 50 runs
2005 Season - 10 games scoring 400 runs at an average of 40 runs

Total combined average for both seasons ==> 5400/110 = 49 runs per game

Hussey

2004 Season - 10 games scoring 600 runs at an average of 60
2005 Season - 100 games scoring 4500 runs at an average of 45

Total combined average for two seasons ==> 5100/110 = 46 runs per game

Therefore despite the fact that the averages for each individual year are higher for Hussey, combining the two seasons leads to a reversal in inference. The key here is the difference in weights placed when calculating the averages. This gives us important insights into how to think about statistics.

Lice, Lice, go away

Do you remember scratching your head vigorously? No, not in wonder, but because it was really itchy? I remember all too well the "lice" problem I had when I was a kid, especially in primary and secondary schools. The "lice" exterminator was Palaniamma, our maid, who I used to refer to as "Pals", she had only 8 teeth. Whether I liked it or not, I had to go through hours of scrutiny every Sunday to not eliminate, but atleast reduce the lice population in my head. Maybe today the methods are different after a few decades. Here's what I came across, for those who are not absolutely disgusted by the topic.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6556272

Witness to our existence...

I was watching the movie "Shall We Dance" and the following piece of conversation that Susan Sarandon says sounded quite interesting to me...

Susan: Why is it, do you think, that people get married?
Guy: Passion...
Susan: No.
Guy: That's interesting. Because I would've taken you for a romantic. Why, then?
Susan: Because we need a witness to our lives... There's a billion people on the planet. I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, your're promising to care about everything - the good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things...All of it. All the time, every day. You're saying, "Your life will not go unnoticed, because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed, because I will be your witness"

[Courtesy: Subtitle on DVD]

Vegetarianism

I am told it is a tradition. Somehow the news of Bush releasing 2 thanksgiving turkeys the day before Thanksgiving makes me really sad. Not for the fact that the turkeys can now live, but for the fact that when sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner the next day, you can visualise that it is remarkably similar to the birds that took flight yesterday.

I try to rationalize that when people are served processed meat, they are not thinking about the animal in question. Fair enough: how often do we think of the condition of the cows when drinking milk? Had we lived on the farm, and Bessie the cow was not feeling well, or wanted a walk instead of giving milk, we might have let Bessie out on the pastures before approaching her when she feels like giving milk. In the store, there is just reduced fat, lowfat and whole milk. Bessie might have been sleeping when the milk was taken from her - but, we don't know that, and that absolves us of waking a cow deep in slumber.

So now my question comes back to relating the animal to the meat on the table. Do people do that, and when they do, does it trouble them or not? I am just trying to think of the meat-eating thought process here. Any insights are welcome. My vegetarianism from birth has endowed me with only 1 view.

Big Bite !

Why are foods here in US packed with all the gooey stuff that drips from all sides and are unable to be eaten easily? Is it just me? The common food items that come to my mind are the Burritos and all types of Burgers/Sandwiches. Is it the way I hold it or Is it the way I bite it? I dont know. Should I just let it (guacamole/tomatoes/dressings) go? Well, I like guacamole. I dont want to pay for a dish and not eat parts of it just because it falls back on the plate/paper, however disgusting it might be. I do perform decision making based on the size of the piece. But, with a piece falling for every other bite, it does get tricky. Dont even get me started on the spillings which run between fingers. Should I wipe after every bite or just wait till the entire food is stuffed in? I think, our stuffed parathas with side-dishes or masala dosas or kozhukattai or samosas are technically far more superior inventions in food than burgers and burritos. Not that I dont like them. But, I am just frustrated
about the logistics involved in consuming it.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone !!

Is "not voting" a sin?

How many times have I voted and expressed my preferences during elections? I was walking back home and I dont know why but this question came to mind. The answer is twice. Both times because somebody told me that it was my constitutional right to vote and that I owe it to the motherland blah blah. But is not voting really a sin? From a practical stand point sometimes not voting can be an equilibrium outcome.

Consider this scenario. When I land at a polling booth what are the choices facing me? I can be sincere and vote for the person/party that I support with all my heart. I could vote strategically such that my vote ensures that the person I dont want to elect never gets elected. Or my vote could be the decider, therefore a make or break deal which makes it all the more valuable.

Generally, if you are the supporter of a leading party, we are never in a situation where strategic voting is necessary. This is logical because by voting for the person you want, you are in fact loading the bets against the person you dont want. But imagine the case when you are a supporter of a marginal party. For instance in Indian politics forget supporters of BJP and the Congress. What about supporters of marginal local parties such as PMK blah blah.

These supporters have to make a choice between voting strategically or voting sincerely, because their individual party nominee is highly unlikely to win. If they vote sincerely, then this is equivalent to them not voting, because the outcome is not influenced by their vote. On the other hand if they vote strategically, then the outcome of their vote does play a hand in the final result.

Therefore here is a situation where "not voting" is actually an equilibirum outcome. Does it mean you are not excercising your constitutional right? Probably not. What would be more apt is, you do not want to use your constitutional rights as the platform to go against your own beliefs.

Crusades: Imagination Vs. Imagination

Eyes large as saucers, voices as vehement as can get, we demanded:

"Who/What gives them the right to throw out processed, dry foods, and that too at Bangalore airport?"

The group, gathered around a table with sumptuous food, demanded between tasty mouthfuls. It was actually quite an effort to sound affronted when every movement sent a divine taste surging through the tongue. But, we are all known to be a determined lot, and piqued we were.

The topic under discussion was that one of my aunts was forced to leave behind much of her belongings at Bangalore airport. The "sambhar podi", and the various dried powders that can be mixed with boiled rice were all thrown out, we were told by our every chagrined parents. They had heard the news from one of their neices, who must have sounded quite convincing, because it actually prevented them from carrying too many things. We discussed the possible causes, criteria used by the airport authorities in such cases, and sounded rightfully indignant about the whole process.

Later that afternoon we placed a call to the aforesaid aunt, and tried to learn the magnitude of her losses. Come to think of it, my mother started out on quite an apologetic note while asking about it. She explained that she had a tube of Bengay in her hand-carry by mistake, and was forced to throw that out in Frankfurt airport. That apart, some other food packets of hers, were placed in check-in baggage, instead of the hand-baggage. That was all there was to the whole story!

I cannot imagine how many rounds this story must have made, before reaching my parents in its current shape! Every story-teller tied their own ribbons and balloons to the story. Soon the story took its current form:

A monstrous team was out on a vicious rampage at Bangalore airport, stripping legitimate travellers of their chutney mixes, and filter coffee.

I can't help remembering the cartoon we used to see on Doordarshan about the balloon that burst in a house. Soon, the story takes on epic proportions before police arrive on the scene fearing a violent gunshot crime-scene, only to find a disappointed little girl, looking quite sullen because her balloon burst!

I am now seriously wondering the basis on which religious wars are fought. Most of our religious books were passed down through generations by word of mouth before getting penned as books. So, we use the combined imaginations of centuries to take offense against another form moulded by centuries of ... imagination!

Laughter, the Best Medicine

Marathon Myths...

I was going to type a blog of my first marathon experience. Then, I figured that it doesnt make an exciting story. It wasnt an experience where I went through tough times before I came out with flying colors. Infact, I think I performed below my expectations. Anyway, when people talk about marathon, it is usually construed as an impossible target to achieve. I beg to differ. I think it is about consistent training and discipline. I would like to state my thoughts on what I think as the hard/easy part of running a marathon and my fellow running buddies can update their thoughts.

First of all, it is the distance "shock and awe" factor. Well, when you look at it as 26.2 miles or ~42 kilometres, it is breathtaking. In my experience, I think, it is the first 5-6 miles that is most crucial. If you start running and are able to run 5 to 6 miles without any problem, it is just a matter of time (~3 months) before you can run your full marathon. It is as simple as that. The only factor to be kept in mind is "training". It is important that you run atleast 3-4 times a week. You could follow any training program that's out there in the web (e.g. Hal Higdon).

The second thing, from my opinion, is the pace. Since I started a little late for my marathon training, when I started training, the only way I looked at marathon running was that, if you can walk 26.2 miles at 15 minutes a mile, you should be able to finish the marathon in 6 hrs 33 minutes. So, if you run slightly above your walking pace, you are going to be limited only by your body capacity than running out of breath. So, finishing a marathon is not as hard, provided you dont worry too much about your pace. The converse holds true as well. If you increase your pace, you will get tired exponentially sooner and your average time could get screwed big time. So, it is all in the pace. I personally think that injury proneness is proportional to pace. Also, if you think you have pain during your run, run slower or stop running based on the pain. But, remember that it is not going to be pain-free when you train long distance running. When I talk about avoid injury prevention, I am talking about the "real" pain, which you will know when you get it..:)

The third most important thing, to me, was the discipline. If you are training for a marathon for 3 months, you better follow some training guideline and stick to it. Trying to skip runs and making it up is not a good thing. Also, running long distances without hydrating yourself with electrolytes and fluids is a bad strategy. Our body needs to be replenished with water and minerals (salt) since they get lost during the run. Also, assuming that a miracle would happen on race day and running faster than your regular trained for pace is very very BAD.

Another general perception is that you will lose a lot of weight when you train for a marathon. Whenever I called my parents, they thought that I was getting thinner by the day because of my marathon preparation. It is only true for people who are overweight. If you are about the right weight, by fueling your body with a lot of carbs, you might infact, put on some weight as opposed to losing it. Also, given that your body knows that you are going to expend a lot of calories, it gets into a cycle where it stores a lot of glycogen and carbs. So, eat well and eat smart. Again, once you start training for a marathon, you will google yourself to death by visiting a lot of websites which offer free information.

Another topic which is a debatable one is about running with groups. Personally, I have found that when I have a specific distance goal in mind on a given run, running alone has helped since I am not biased/affected by my running partner. When I run in a group, my competitive spirit takes over and I try to overstretch my goals. In other words, I dont prefer to run with someone who is extremely faster than me. It not only affects pace, but it affects your goal.

Keep in mind that, your mind starts playing games with you and can defeat you if you dont focus. Dont get bogged down by the enormousness of the run. It has more to do with your mind than your body. At times, you will feel like you should stop at 3 miles. At times, you can run 15 miles and still want to run. If you master your mind, you are definitely on your way to becoming a marathoner...

pictures- Marathon

Food for thought

Here is a rehash of some of my thoughts from the recent past. I had posted this on my blog some time back and thought it might provide some food for thought.

What is an interesting problem? A subjective question at best. What is interesting to some could be dis-interesting to others and vice versa. Understanding how people react in different situations is an interesting but complex problem. Abe Lincoln once said "When I'm getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds thinking about him and what he is going to say". This quote is inspiring in the sense it made me think a little bit harder on something that is infinitely simple yet with no solution for all practical purposes.

Let us think of a game with two players. Each player is asked to write either "a" or "b" on a piece of paper. If either states "b" the game ends there and the hypothetical pay off is 0. But if both write "a" the game goes moves on to the second stage. If the game proceeds then the setting is as follows. Each player is asked to write down the largest possible integer that they can think of. The winner gets a hypothetical $1000 and the loser gets $ 500.

A simple game one should think! Well if we think about it, it is obvious that both players will choose "a" in the first stage since $ 500 is strictly greater than zero. The problem really is in the second stage. Here a unique solution does not exist. Both players cannot play the best response strategy because the best responses are not defined. Example: say if player 1 is thinking of writing 999, he knows that player two will play 1000, which makes player 1 think of playing 1001 and then the cylce goes on and on. The problem is a technical difficulty in optimization theory. It is a mathematical impossibility to arrive at a result because we are maximizing over an open set.

Can we find a game as trivial as this? Just choose a number and the person choosing a bigger number wins. A seemingly innocous problem but in reality unsolvable at this level. Note that it is quite possible someone might say that they dont care about winning $ 500 dollars as compared to $ 1000. Let me assume that one always wants to win which is fair enough (dont u think?).

Ramblings of a Marathon Support Group Member

I do not wish to belittle the achievement by stating it as another marathon. Nevertheless, yesterday my husband finished another marathon along with 2 of our close friends.

The arduous hours of training, the "interesting" pain(Yes - he does state that the wrenching pain is interesting!), the accompanying medal were all taken in the spirit of a true sportsman. While volumes get written about the marathoners, nothing gets written about the support groups (in this case, a sturdy troupe comprising of the 3 wives, 1 toddler and a teenager). So, I have decided to pen the support experience.

Through the training sessions and the carb-loading phase prior to the Marathon, the support group has no mean task. There you are, with your unswerving loyalty to your loved ones, dishing out all the wonderful dishes. There is the potato fry (just the right shade of golden with the crispy texture), the fluffy rice and the creamy soups. On the subject of potatoes, I could swear they mock you from the frying pan, and just would not stop enticing you till the darn dish is over. I could feel the extra burden during the carb-loading phase. The only thing I can thank God for, is that the carb-loading is a short span of time. I ran a pantry in the kitchen serving hot dishes every 3 hours. You could judge by the loose pajamas I wore that day to make room for the extra carbs.

All the carbs safely tucked in, the marathon day arrived. While the runners braved the early morning weather to venture into the first part of their marathon, we, the supporters braved the roads and got together with bananas, apples and baked potatoes at the Mile 18 touch-point. I had mild butterflies in my stomach, just hoping that they will be fine and running sans injuries. Already, we knew one of them had an injury and had slowed down. At this point I could tell you that no amount of carb-loading prepares you for the elated sensation you get when you see one of your close friends running towards you in steady strides. You want to tuck into some baked potatoes for support, but you refrain. One must have self-control!

We stood watching groups of people run by. The plan was for us to give the runners a boost at Mile 18 with baked potatoes and bananas, and then head to Starbucks to get a boost for our hoarse throats and proceed onto Mile 21 and then to the finish line. It turns out that there was a mis-reading, and that the Mile-18 point was indeed Mile-15, and we had missed 2 of the 3 guys.

We are a sacrificial lot, as mentioned earlier, and we decided to forgo the Starbucks visit, and dash it to Mile-21. We checked our watches, and sped away as fast as our cars would take us without drawing the attention of cops. During this particular ride, my toddler decided to fall asleep. So now, we parked at the 21-mile point, lugged a 2-year old on my shoulder and legged it across a Farmer's market cum bakery exhibition (I swear the temptation never stops!) to cheer the boys on. Guess what, they just left!

We now had the dubious reputation of chasing the marathon runners by car, and they were leading!

This was no time for dilly-dallying. Decisions had to be made, and fast. We decided to look askance at the wafting smells of baked products, and got back into the car, determined to get to the finish line before they did, and guess what?

WE DID! HA!

We reached the finish line ahead of the runners, and managed a decent photo shoot at the very end at least!

Great job guys: No mean feat, I am proud of you all!
Good job support group: No mean f(e)at.

First baby step=acknowledgment

Infamous "women accidents" propelled by dowry and what-nots have been a sad sphere for the Indian woman for decades now. Although, we have public awareness a little more than what it used to be, this abuse spanning different socio-economic groups and classes have taken more lives than what can be accounted for.

Women organisations in India are kicking dust big time in cities like Bangalore for instance. Enjoying media support and also being at the right place @ the right time have made their voices heard and women now are strongly urged not to take in-law, spousal and work environmental abuse that lightly. More shelters and 24/7 hotlines are coming up throughout the country and guess it's finally dawning on the supposed to be oprressed suppressed gender that this is infact not normal-- to get hit, pushed, bullied and more often than not sexually exploited.

Well, gone are the days when there were no laws to prevent, worse even question these so called actions against women, culture and tradition probably being used as one of the major guilt ripping tactic. Marital rape for instance, was considered a non-punishable offence under the CPC/CRPC (civil/criminal procedure code) since the husband was within his conjugal rights. A law has been passed now which entails the woman to get help for emotional, financial, physical and other kinds of abuse she has been meted out with. AND Marital rape is considered an offense!! So-- finally there's something that might the scare the S*^% out the batterers OR so I really hope.


Acknowledgment of such happenings was a major hurdle all these decades. So, atleast publicly admitting to a problem is a first step to something... IMHO. By no means a feather yet, but a cap has been donned for what it is worth!

Peace!

E = mc^2

I am not a big lover of mathematical symbols or equations. But, when I do come across universal constants and equations which change the entire way humans think of nature, it amazes me. One of the most famous equations of our time is certainly E=mc^2, which explains the mass-energy relationship. Though I have always wondered about it, only this time, I thought I will sit down and crunch some numbers.

If we assume a mass of say 1kg, the energy equivalence is approximately 90000000000000000 joules or 25000000000 kilowatt-hours or 21 megatons of TNT. Imagine how much energy we potentially have. The word potential is important, since the above energy assumes that mass is at rest...:).. This got me thinking, how much energy do we really consume per day in order to sustain. One way to calculate that would be to find the calorific value of the food intake. Assuming our mass doesnt change upon the food intake and we survive, one could say that the energy expended is just equal to energy consumed. Being a conservative person, I assigned 3000 calories of food intake to show a good number for the amount of energy we make use of. 1 calorie is around 4.184 joules, which would mean 3000 calories is roughly 12000 joules. Comparing that with the energy equivalent (still assuming 1 kg mass since multiplying it by 50 or 100 is not going to significantly affect the equations...again being on the conservative end of the spectrum), the fraction of energy consumed to keep our body in tact is around .000000000013333333 %. This is quite amazing from 2 aspects. One can look at it and say that our entire system works with such a low energy battery or that we probably are expending only a very small proportion of our energy equivalence.

Switching gears a little, I have heard from people who meditate and who are spiritually oriented that nature has a lot of energy. I often hear people saying that, when they go to a park or beach, they could see a lot of energy. Now, thinking back, based on the energy equivalence, one could say that, wherever there is a lot of mass, there is a lot of potential energy stored in that place. Obviously, forests, mountains, rivers and oceans have a lot of energy associated with it and thus the entire universe. Also, when there is a place, like a social gathering with a lot of people involved, you will still see that there is a lot of energy in that place. The only place where I couldnt find this correspondence to work is with obese people. We dont call all fat people as being energetic, do we? When someone oozes with confidence and optimism, we call them energetic. How is that energy defined? So, can one say that energy is not just a "mass" concept but rather a "mind" concept when it comes to people? I dont know...

Movies and Science

A pretty laid back evening for a Wednesday I should say. Did not get much work done and was bored to death. So what do i do? I decided to watch a movie. I have a fancy for natural disasters and this time I picked up Volcanoes as my pet topic. The movie was Dantes Peak starring Pierce Brosnan as a volcanologist and some other lesser known folks.

While the movie was interesting, there are some weird sequences which defy science (atleast i think so). For instance after the volcano erupts Brosnan and his lady love go in opposite direction towards the mountain to rescue the kids and their grandma. Enroute, their truck is literanlly submerged in water as they try to cross the river. Frankly I cant understand how that truck managed such a feat (mebbe i dont know much about automobiles).

Well the truck makes it and the two of em reach grandmas place and set about planning the escape. In comes molten lava pouring into the house and the house does not burn. Lava temperatures approximate close to 1000 degrees Centigrade. Come on folks I need a break. While we are talking about lava, there is a scene where Brosnan drives his truck over molten lava. Given the tempererature, the truck should be blown away or atleast the tyres should burn. Adding insult to injury, somehow the pet doggie finds it way right next to lava and manages to jump in. Talk about timing!

Hmm there are a number of other funny sequences, such as the acid lake where Brosnan manages to use his left arm wrapped in a thick coat, to paddle for nearly 3 to 4 mins and nothin happens to his arm, wheras grandma Ruth is crippled within 30 seconds of jumpin into the water. Do note that the water in the river is so acidic that it has literally eaten away the propellor on the outboard engine. What material did they use to make that coat. Obviously it can withstand acid, which by the way eats metal and humans too for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

An then the last sequence. I believe it takes two days before fire service comes in to rescue Mr. Brosnan and co. Well he probably was fractured and bleeding from the rock slide and stuck in a mine completely enclosed for 48 hrs. When he is rescued he walks out and lo behold the two kids and the mom are also safe. Now i wonder if folks trapped for 2 days without food and water (dont know where they got their oxygen from) and suffering from multiple fractures presumably(otherwise those rocks were probably made out of paper) can walk out without so much as a hint of tiredness on their face and get to hug each other blah blah.

What is the point of such movies? I guess its more the effect, the fact that you can show large scale destruction keeps viewers at the endge of their seats. It dun matter if science takes a backseat. The worst part is an added love story. Do we really need a love story between an erupting volcano???

Democracy - An alternative perspective

In my last blog on democracy, the stand taken was that the democratic system is quite feasible and in fact could actually end up improving social welfare. Here I would like to offer an alternative perspective based on agency theory.

Theory: Let me put the theory in perspective. The mode of analysis will be based on the principal-agent model from information economics.There exist two entities in this world with the principal being the person with the capital and a project that needs an expert to implement and the agent being the person with the skills to do the job. The Principal hires the agent. The agent has superior information (since he is a specialist) which can be useful for the principal in the smooth running of the project. In return for the services of the agent, the principal provides him with a monetary transfer.

Problem: As can be seen straight away, the fundamental problem in such a model is information asymmetry between the principal and the agent. The agent has superior information which can be used to extract higher rents from the Principal. Since the principal knows this, he uses his powers of monitoring over the activity of the agent to keep the agent in check and controls the transfer in such a way that gives him optimal returns.

This leads us to the fundamental problem of efficient contracting. In a world where there is no information asymmetry and both the agent and the principal are aware of the entire information set, we achieve the socially optimal outcome where allocation of resources is in equilibrium. However from a practical perspective this is never the case and hence we will see some loss in efficiency. Such losses of efficiency can be attributed as agency costs.

Application: Think of the entire set of voters as principals and the candidate as the agent. THe principals are hiring the agent to represent them and execute public projects (we can treat everything as a project for illustrative purposes here) for them. The first point to note is that the principal does not have direct control over the actions of the agent (i.e.) the voters have to wait atleast till the next election to punish their elected representative and cannot nullify any actions he has taken on a project. Hence this is an obvious source for agency costs. In my story here, the transfers are in the form of taxes which the voters pay. The tax money is allocated by the representative for projects which may or may not improve social welfare. Therefore the representative can engage in wealth destruction for their subjects.

Who bears the burden or the costs? Does the representative bear the cost? My argument in the previous blog was that the voters can punish the representative in the next election. But consider this scenario. What if the representative decides he is not going to contest in the next election? What if he decides to make the most of his office now never to return later? The incentive structure now gets into trouble. Keeping that aside for the moment, the ultimate burden is borne by the taxpayers themselves. The projects are theoretically for the benefit of the public at large. However if the representative engages in wasteful uses of the funds, he does not bear any personal liability, but rather it is the taxpayer who ends up losing.

A logical question here is are there other forms of organizations where agency costs arise and if yes are there potential solutions we can look at? Think of a corporation as a counter example. Investors in companies also face similar problems. For instance if you want to invest in google, basically you are the principal and the managers in google are the agents. Obviously the managers at google know more about the firm and its prospects than you will ever know. Since this information is known to you, you can protect yourself through the market mechanism by demanding a higher rate of return for the google stock. Hence the premium collected on the stock covers the additional risk on account of information asymmetry.

Can we use this line of reasoning for the state? Probably not but it is interesting to think why not. In our little example here, the rules governing the uses of money and also the imposition of taxation is governed by the same authority. Hence the institutional set up is such that the principal is virtually powerless. In the corporate case, the principal can control his transfers to effectively get the work done. But he cannot do the same here. He has to pay the taxes imposed upon him by the state. NOw given there has been wasteful expenditure, can he ask for compensation from the state? Maybe you can but the chances are slim that you will get a ruling in your favour because of several reasons one of which being, preferences for public goods by consumers are never monolithic. The basic disagreement between the principals provides disincentives for public response (exceptions being different ideologies such as labour unions in kerala, where it really does not matter what u think. if the union decides to strike then all members go on strike) being effective.

Now getting back in line, I wanted to briefly mention about the comment made by brainwaves which can be directly linked to this story. As noted by brainwaves, there are times when the representative can strategically manipulate the incentives of the principals by attacking a set of principals with monetary offers and other incentives. This is a classic case where agency costs pretty much kill the system.

Even assuming that such strategic manipulations never happen, what can the public do? One option in a democratic set up, as i mentioned earlier in this blog and my previous blog, is that the principals ncan choose to replace the existing representative with a new agent. However the institutional structure still remains the same. Hence all we are doing is subsituting the agent but not his incentives. The new agent has exactly the same incentives as the agent prior to him. So why should he do anything different?

Under these circumstances does a democractic system really improve efficiency??

(PS: Being an empiricist by choice, I just cant stay away from saying this. Was just looking at the timing of the posts by Mindframes on Democracy (6:58), my post of decmocracy (9:59) and this last post (10:59)..now what is the significance of 59 in this episode. An innocous sense of timing one would think...ROTFL)

Anniversary special and Happy Diwali

Ladies and gentleman, I came across this video and thought it might be a good one for the diwali party (i presume that there is a diwali party on)...hmm well even otherwise, we can use this one for the birthday party...it is is funny...hardcore Ilayaraja fans out there, please think before u hit play...the usual disclaimer applies from my side...BTW i hate hip hop but dunno why i managed to stay through this one....wishing one and all a very happy diwali..

Happy Anniversary

Officially, this blog was started on OCt18,2005 . I realised it just this morning. We are a day late..I think we can pat ourselves on the back for all the rants, thoughts, views shared , inspite of us not being great writers. When has that stopped us from writing anyway ?:-) Btw, in 1 year, we have 191 posts.

A note on Democracy

Instead of commenting on the very interesting post by mindframes on Democracy, i just thought it might be better for me to pen my thoughts as a blog.

@ Mindframes: An interesting point that you have brought into focus from your comment to the post on democracy is that if the social planner in a democratic set up is working in favour of the public, then why is it that just a fraction of the population end up voting? Does this represent the the breakdown of the democratic set up or a show of loss of faith in the system from the voters?

I agree that the right to vote is one of the principal determinants of a democracy. But lets look at this problem from a different angle. Generally democracies are big countries with large electorates and a significant number of eligible voters. In theory we can definitely think that the effect of one vote will at best be marginal (but i guess we were proved wrong in the US in the election prior to the last, which we can consider as an anomaly for our purpose here). But lets look at the individual voters decision to vote a little more carefully. Lets say that the net benefit for the individual comprises of two parts. One is the direct cost benefit (let C be the cost and B the benefit, then the net benefit will be N=B-C). The other will be the probability of casting the decisive vote for being on the winning side (just going back to my comment on preferences). THe higher the probability of casting the decisive vote, the more would be my inclination to vote. So let me denote that as (Z=p*X where p is the probability of casting the decisive vote and X represents the benefits derived from being on the winning side).

Now let us compare the two parts of the function individually. While N is straightforward since they are strictly observable, we cannot easily measure the impact on Z, because it has a probability measure p which is affected by the number of people who turn out to vote. To be more specific since voter turnout is endogenously determined and hence not observable prior to the decision to vote. The probability of casting the deciding vote will be near zero if everyone in the electorate votes and vice versa and note that the individual will have no way of verifying if the entire electorate will vote or not. Therefore again assuming rationality and the prior belief that p will be close to zero in large electorates, the decision rule that most individual will apply is that if N<0, then they will refrain from voting. Hence the decision to vote is definitely influenced more by the measurable direct costs and benefits of voting as against pitting themselves against uncertainties.

To take this further, suppose we assume that every individual in the electorate ended up thinking in the same line, then virtually nobody will turn out for the vote and hence every vote could be a decider, which will again make every individual think that his/her vote will be the decider, leading to everybody in the electorate voting. However, I will refrain from this line of thinking for the moment. Another line of thought which might do the rounds is using psychological persuasion modes (sense of civic duty etc etc.). I have chosen to ignore this line of thought (will reserve something on this for a later blog).

Hence for the moment let me use the argument of rational behavior and suggest that the voter turnout is lower not because, voters dont believe in the democratic system or that the social planner is not being efficient, but rather given the circumstances, their net benefit from voting is negative.

@ Survivor: One of the key points raised in your comment is there is no "true democracy". That really did set me thinking and I think my response to that would be democracy really means quasi democracy. While i agree to that and I guess i will reserve my comments on a quasi democracy vs. a democracy to another blog, my concern is with the comment on going to war. "invading other countries", that seems to be a little harsh. While again there might be hidden agendas for the social planner, what seems unclear is how to justify or not justify a single action, especially when there are several interlinking events, which may or may not have caused such a reaction (arguably justifying the actions). The direction of causality cannot be established without doubt and hence i would not go to the extreme to saying that this represents a failure in the democratic set up.

Now to your comment on dictatorship being the best at home as long as you rule! (LoL)..

I think this is an interesting area where we can apply Arrows impossibility theorem. Arrows theorem basically says that there is no ideal voting system in the world. Crudely stated every voting system is flawed. Lets think of the set up where decisions have to be made at home. If we assume that there exists a system for rank ordering of preferences for all the people involved in decision making process and that the preference would be for a collective choice rather than individual choice, how best can we arrive at an optimal choice where one ordered preference function is preferred over all others?

When we talk about collective decisions, we can arrive at a rank ordering of the preferences for each decision in several ways (ie. individuals can have difference preference functions). Let us say we have a choice function (c) which represents the best possible rank ordering of preferences. To achieve the optimal choice function C, there are several constraints that need to be satisfied. One such constraint says that there cannot be one participant whose rank order is most preferred over others (in other words dictatorship is not allowed). For Arrow's theorem to hold there are several other constraints too, but for the sake of parsimony, lets assume that all other constraints hold. Given this scenario, Arrow states that an optimal cchoice function can never be picked.

Hence in this set up since survivor ends up being the dictator, it should be a lot easier to make collective decisions as Arrows impossibility theorem holds.

Democracy

I find it disturbing to hear that Democracy is a panacea in the context of various forms of governments. Though I have had the privilege of enjoying democracy throughout my lifetime and certainly have no regrets, I couldnt help but notice that all forms of institutions and organizations don't embrace democracy.

Starting from home, we have the mother, father and kids. In most cases, it is questionable to assume that both father and mother have equal rights. I dont even have to talk about the kids. It is all driven by rules. Same is true in schools and colleges, all the way to organizations. Literature suggests that, having democracy in organizations, especially for decision making is a recipe for disaster.

Shifting our focus to governments, though it often seems like, in a democratic government, everything is based on people's will. Is it really true? If not everyone, do majority of people influence government? Infact, the more I think about it, I am inclined to say that, listening the mass of people is the most inefficient way to make decisions. Honestly, how many of us love to pay tax? how many of us want our mortgage tax exemption to be removed? how many of us want our securities compromised? how many of us really want globalisation to happen (assume that India is not the country where things move to)? how many people would want government to abolish junk food places? how many people would give up social security incomes, than have people to really save for their retirement? So, if a government had to act by people's interest, would it be an efficient government? Everyone who works for a company gets his own salary though everyone wishes to get the maximum possible salary there is, for the least amount of work. If companies start providing just that, would it be efficient...

When all forms of organizations are bound by efficiency, why is government thought of differently? Is it crippled by the issue of how the leader and representatives are chosen to carry out the job of governing? I dont know...

Background Music

Did you know I was a radio star? I have performed a few times on the All India Radio (I meant that to sound pompous) Before you go and start searching for my name in the halls of fame, let me put it in context. There is only 1 important characteristic in all those programs. Nobody can make out that it was me. The only way one could have guessed is by listening to the announcement prior to the program proclaiming my name in the list of students performing.

To be fair to my father, he recorded one event. When he rewound the tape and listened to the program again, he figured it would be enough to just retain the announcement section, since the rest of the program could have been performed by anybody. So, he promptly used the tape to record M.S.Subbulakshmi songs when he got a chance. It would have been nice to have the announcement proclaiming my performance followed by MS singing. Tut Tut....That was not to be: the announcement got over-written too.

So my claim to fame is solely by word of mouth. It goes like this: List of students in today's program: Subashini, Venkat, ............., Saumya,......!

I was a versatile performer. I sang at times(never solo: lest you start bad-mouthing AIR), and some other times performed in skits. The school stationery manager stepped forward gallantly and mentioned that he had left an illustrious career in the theatrical industry to serve the school, and therefore he should be the person who provided the background music skits. We nodded and the practice sessions started.

To state it as mildly as possible, the background music was HORRENDOUS. Every place in the play where you think some quietness would do, there was music blaring. Some other places where mild music would have done the trick, we had garish music making us shout out every line in order to be heard over the music. I would not call the program a fiasco, but there were no folks waiting outside for autographs. The highlight of all this drama was the lunch we ate at Annapoorna restaurant in Coimbatore (Plus: the day-off from School to drive down to Coimbatore, perform and get back)

There are times in my life when I envision my life as a movie, and there is background music. So I see myself cooking *Sax playing mildly indicating a chef's beauty being developed* Never mind that I am making Rasam and vendakkai curry. It provides spice in my life! The washing clothes/ folding them section gets a banal harmonium. Playing with my daughter and taking her on walks gets melodious flute accompaniment.

I have worked hard at directing my life, so why not revel in my role as music director?!

Meaningless songs etc

I heard a song recently that is in my head all the time. It's from the movie Fanaa and goes something like this. "Chanda Chamke Cham Cham.."

Tongue-twisters - What a brilliant discovery! Thats what this song is all about. There is no meaning in this song. That is not to say it is out-of-context in the movie. Compared to all other meaningless songs (And definitely all songs with double-meanings and vulgarity), this is by far the best it ever got. Tongue Twisters are an excellent passtime (for a few minutes) and also a wonderful ice-breaker. It brought back memories of childhood. My favorite was the cimple - Kaccha Pappad, pakka Pappad.

There are 2 stanzas in this song and I liked the second one which is moderately challenging.
It goes like

Pake ped me paka papeetha, paka ped ya paka papeetha
Pake ped ko pakade pinku, pinku pakade paka papeetha

Talking about Fanaa, the title song brought back other memories too. A line in that movie goes something like this -"...Zidd he ab to khudko mittana, hone hai tujme fanaa..."
And as I was deciding what to make dinner that night, I sang "..Zidd to ab he roti banana, khana hai mujko channa.."

In our hostel, my dear friend and myself would spend time on composing lyrics. We made some that I don't think I'll ever forget. It fits into the Vaa Minima scheme. I would share it, except I don't want to violate any confidentiality rights.

Too busy to be a hypocrite

One common denominator when people are asked about their likes and dislikes is “I hate hypocrisy”…. Actually, if you go back to my introduction in our blog, I had sworn my dislike towards the aforementioned trait. Hmmm.. this got me thinking…How do you define hypocrisy?

Mariam Webster defines it as

1 : a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially : the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion
2 : an act or instance of hypocrisy

I remember the day I started my first job at TI,India . We had to fill a questionnaire asking about hobbies etc. And that form was posted on the cafeteria board. I am talking about the days when TI was in a small building with few employees. Incidentally, I had written “I love – hypocrisy” and “I hate – hypocrisy”. This prompted a few employees to notice me. I guess people rarely see someone loving hypocrisy. Back to definition # 1, I think every single person is a hypocrite. People do so many things that they don’t believe in. I can summarise lot of instances in my life which I did provoked by others, inspite of my disapproval. An act or instance of hypocrisy- what about the act that one puts up infront of guests conforming to basic courtesy , or the forced smile when seeing a known face . Bottomline – Yes, I would like to be a hypocrite if my act brings happiness to someone, without causing any harm to self.

I would like to see a smiling face across the counter than a frowning one.

I would definitely like to have a doctor tell me I have chances of living for 10 years ( even if he believes otherwise) rather than telling me that I cannot survive long enough.

Talking about hypocrisy got me thinking about people who are “BUSY”. It is becoming one of my pet peeves nowadays.

“I wonder how you guys manage studying with work. I am so BUSY, I cant imagine studying with my work schedule.”

“I am so busy that I don’t have time to exercise.”

“I am so busy that I don’t have time to read blogs, though I am a member and even if I read, I don’t have time for commenting.” – Gotcha ! *LOL * Now lets see how many comment for this one.

Wars

I know why the US starts wars in far-off lands.

It is a place to groom future presidents.

X: I am going to contest the presidency
X's much older opponent Y: Which wars did you fight in huh? Come on you! Tell me which war you fought in?
X: None
Y: NONE!!!!
X: But...but there were no wars for me to go to.
Y: Well..too bad. There is no metric to measure your patriotism. I went for the War in Dracola Land. I know the pain and suffering and I would like to use this office to make the world a better place to live in. So you're out!

Threshold of squeamish

There was an article in today’s newspaper about the vaccine against HPV(human Papillo virus) which causes cervical cancer. This cancer kills 10 women every day and is sexually transmitted. They have started administering this vaccine to 11 yr olds girls as it is effective before one becomes sexually active.

The interesting part about that article was

“ The development of the first vaccine for any kind of cancer is a major milestone. And yet there was a reluctance by some to embrace the new vaccine because, well, you know how squeamish Americans can be about sex.”

LOL!!.Ofcourse, I am assuming they are comparing themselves to Europeans. Wondering how this will be taken in India. At home, it is not considered just squeamish, but a taboo just to use the word. I am talking about an average Indian here, though there might be exceptions. There could be two perspectives

1. Though every parent knows that it could be beneficial, they will still hesitate to administer it.

2. They may not understand the meaning of this vaccine and administer it as part of the usual regimen , like polio. Ignorance is bliss , afterall.

Beating the Mean !

I was at a seminar couple of days back and one of the things that the speaker stressed a lot for companies to succeed was the paradigm, "Beat the Mean!". As we all know, when Microsoft was started, they had only 4 people and each one of them were extremely smart people and the average IQ of the company was extremely large when compared to most companies. As companies grow, the average IQ drops down owing mainly to the size of the company. As long as a company can keep their average IQ to not drop significantly and consciously focus in maintaining it, the company wouldnt fail. That was the speaker's claim. When the average IQ reaches the IQ of the average population, he claimed that the company would certainly fail. Though I have my own set of arguments on the theory, on a large scale, it makes sense. I think the same could be applied to individuals.

As we undertake more and more tasks, it is possible that our average performance might come down. It recursively applies to the subtasks that we perform as well. For example, in the case of long distance running, I figured that, running at a slow pace in the beginning and a higher pace towards the end or vice versa will have the same effect as running at the average pace throughout the course. Infact, the simple truth is if I improve on my average pace, my overall performance can be tremendously improved.

I think there are 2 ways to improve the "mean" performance. Either, you drop some of the underperforming areas or areas that one doesnt like to pursue. In the company sense, this would probably mean shutting down the businesses that doesnt fetch money (much like what GE Welch did). The other way is to consciously question the mean effort needed to complete a task and try to improve on that. In real life, I think this can also be looked at from a consistency perspective. As long as one does a certain activity consistently, on an average, they become the person they want to be. So, the real secret lies in not improving one's peak performance, but the average performance!

Marriage

I was reading Khalil Gibran's Prophet last sunday. He has written beautifully about marriage. Well, we learnt it the hard way...Hopefully, Madmax can be prepared :-)
Here it goes...

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.

Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together, yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Parking buddy

I parked my car in front of Party America & Linen things to let my wife shop and decided to watch my sleeping kid. I parked right in front of this dark blue BMW. Then I saw him. He looked like an Italian from distance. Or is he Middle Eastern I thought to myself? Through two car windshield it is little difficult to figure out. He must have been there for a while.

First two minutes was casual I was setting up the CD and making myself comfortable. And I am sure he was half expecting me to get down and go shopping. Then I can see he getting little curious to find out why there is another soul doing the same thing. He must have got an answer after seeing the kid in the backseat. We said our head-nodding acknowledgment to each other.

After few minutes of listening to the CD and I glanced to my buddy. He was trying to change station to keep him occupied. He must have seen me glancing, he started calling his wife. Of course, I don't know who he was calling, but again, he was trying to prove he is getting out of this parking lot anytime now.

After some exchanges in cell phone he decides to find his solace in Cigarette. "Don't smoke in BMW buddy" I said in the confines of my car. His wife must be a big-time shopper I thought to myself. She certainly must be in Linen & Things and definitely not in Party America. His looks at me suggested he is thinking the same about me. I inadvertently looked at the Party America store to check whether my wife is back may be a feeble attempt to convey my wife is not shopping like his (!!).

Finally I decided to recline the seat to put it in sleeping position. After another 5 minutes my curiosity got better of me. I peeped to see the status of my buddy. He was getting restless. And my peeping did not help his cause. He looked away.

After what seemed like an eons, his wife (must be) walked with clear head scarf. I knew he was Middle Eastern guy I told myself! He was already in reverse gear and ready even before her wife stepped in and closed the door. Just before he left, my buddy gave, what I thought, a small victorious grin!

In Peace

Following is an excerpt from Khalil Gibran's PROPHET about death.

*********************************************************************************

Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.

Is the sheered not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?

Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?

And what is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink form the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

*******************************************************************************

For the past few weeks, my day always started with Rachel. She was a fellow blogger in my redtoenail site. A young lady of remarkable strength and determination. Her blog was taken over by her mom after she became very sick. She is finally at peace today.Inspite of her illness, she found time to thank everyone who signed in her site and signed in my guestbook. Whenever I felt like whining, all I had to do was think of Rachel and Val, to make me stop worrying about where my career is heading or what others think about me or getting angry over mundane matters. This morning, when I woke up, I knew she was at peace even before I opened her blog.
I dont feel sad, just calm.
http://rachel.redtoenail.org
Just felt like sharing with you all.

Lakshmi Devi

It is Navarathri, and I can imagine the festive frenzy in India now. Lakshmi Puja and Saraswathi Puja will be performed in every single home. Come to think of it, even now, I always put a coin in a purse (even if empty and stowed).

I was musing on these very thoughts on my way back from lunch, and stopped in my tracks at a seemingly normal gesture. Two men, dressed in business casuals and evidently working in the city, threw their one-cent coins on the street, like people sometimes throw trash, and moved on with not even a second glance. I was somehow disturbed. Why could he not have given to the numerous homeless? Or simpler still, dropped the cash in the donation jar kept almost at every counter?

I hesitate to throw out usable clothes, and try my best to donate them whenever possible. I guess our thinking is just ....well "different"!

Adam and Eve-teasing

"Am I touching you? All I do is letch a little and may be a little bit of a$% pinching!"

Why is it that eve teasing is a nation-wide problem especially so in our home country? I still remember the day when a 1st year fresher Ms.X studying in Ethiraj (my alma-mater) was teased, groped and pushed to the pavement on an other wise normal Monday morning way back in the late 1990's. She hit her head, bled endlessly while the police tried to apprehend the couple of college males who had done it for the fun of it.

This is one of the blogs that talks about the blanknoise project and some if their activities.

Somehow chancing upon this post in another blog made me pen this. Actually there's no specific point to this post excepting that we need to look, experience our surroundings more, be aware and more importantly empower ourselves, and that doesn't restrict itself to women alone.

AND to come to Ms.X, she fought for her life for a couple of days, was rumoured to have had nightmares of the *incident* through her last few days before she finally passed on.

Oh! and just so you know, the 3 college boys who were caught later got some meagre virtually non-existent sentences!

Well-- so much for a life!?

PEACE

:-)

Mindframes's blog about email subjects got me thinking about smileys . A smiley added at the end of any sentence changes the context of the email. You can never sound rude if you add a smiley . It is one of the most significant findings for emails. All the hatred brewing around the world is stymied by smileys.

I hope I am not rude . You think," Yes, you are rude".
I hope I am not rude.:-) You think, " Maybe :-)"

Well, you get the gist.

Can you get this done ASAP.
Can you get this done ASAP :-)

What the hell are you doing?
What the hell are you doing? :-)

Get lost.
Get lost :-)

I want the report on my desk by noon.
I want the report on my desk by noon:-) ..Hmm, that may not work, I guess.

What were you thinking , man! running around half-naked ?
What were you thinking ,man !! running around half-naked?;-)

Hi all

whew after a grueling 32 hrs of flying I'm back in town...sorry folks havent been checking the blogs here and BTW this is my first post...well the news is I got married recently (september 9th) to be precise...so was tied up with things and also a BIG sorry for not being able to atleast email invitations...neways will catch up on the posts soon and of course will add some interesting stories as well..cheers then and hope everyone is doing great...

Revised Introduction:

Profession: PhD student (its not 9 to 5 trust me). Working on Game Theory and Bayesian Statistics with applications to finance and accounting.

I love (in order of preference): My wife, My parents and lil brother, My guitars, My books and then everything else in this world.

I hate (again in order of preference): Nothing in particular but surely liars and cheaters. The rest is situation specific.

Best moment in my life: the day i was born, the day i first said amma and achan, the day i graduated, the day i first picked up the guitar, the day i met the love of my life...hmm so many moments to treasure.

Worst moment in my life: When my mom went into ICU, March 8th 2002, 11:54 PM. I cant forget that moment.

How do i define myself: you get but one life and hence live life to the extreme.

Hi !

When I joined my first company, I was so fascinated by the concept of e-mail. I was all thrilled when i knew that I can pretty much contact anyone in the world, all by sitting in front of my computer. Internet was still emerging. Well, if you are worried that this blog is going to be yet another of mine rant on some technical topic, you are completely mistaken. What else is it about? It is the most widely talked about "Subject". Yes, it is about what goes in the subject of an email.

When I started off, for some reason, I got hooked onto "Hi!". Whoever it is, if it was a personal email, it will have a "Hi!" in it. Sometimes, I used to get creative with "Hi!!, Hello, Hi "Name"" etc., But, mostly, it revolved around the same prefix. I found that, it was the same case with most of my friends as well. In fact, having used to writing a lot of letters, I used to begin most of my mails with a "Hope you are doing fine. I am doing great.", which in today's world, is a little arcane and redundant info, in my opinion. With official mails, I always found it to be very easy. I have a wide variety of subjects which will exactly convey the meaning like "Issue with your block, Fix needed, Look at the file from my local directory, Status/Weekly Report" and so on.

In order to save my time thinking about what needs to go in the subject, these days, I omit the subject field. Ofcourse, most mail tools will try to make sure if you really want the subject to be blank or not, which is okay. Thinking more about the subject part of the email made me to think about the spam mails that get loaded onto my mailbox these days. When the spams started, it used to have subjects like "New promotion, Urgent! and so on". If you look at the new spams, most of them have a subject of "hello, hi!, (no subject)" and so on. As much as I resist my temptation to open a mail if the sender is "Aishwarya Rai or Trisha", if the mail doesnt have a subject, there is always a tendency to atleast open the mail to see what it is about. What if, Aishwarya Rai really wanted to contact me and I dismiss it as a spam mail...:)..

Customer dis-service?

I returned recently from my trip to India. Needless to say, there were many blog-worthy events and incidents. Not that there aren't any when I am here..

I had to open a bank account and chose ICICI. They really wanted to make things easy and were even willing to come to a potential customer's home at customer convenience to collect the application and other required details. I met Vel (not his real name) in the bank and fixed an appointment for the following day and specifically asked him how I could identify him or anybody that came to my house representing the bank. He said they would carry an id that stated the bank's name. Sure enough, he came the next day and to my surprise, he was punctual too. I asked him for identification, he did not have a badge. I was not very happy. However, after a few questions I let him continue with his work. He collected the required details and let me know that he should be able to file the application the same day and by Monday the following week I should have an account and receive the notification. He seemed very sincere in his conversation and called me "Madam" a million times. I was comforted. "India has changed", I thought to myself, "how easy it is to get things done."

Monday came and went, but there was no news from him. I called him and he said there was once particular information that was missing and he would come home to collect it. And he did. So, now I was to expect it within a week starting from then. The next Monday came and went and no word from Vel. By now, I was anxious as I did not have much more time left in India. I called Vel and he said he would call me in half an hour to report the progress on the application. In half an hour, I realized that customer service had not changed all that much. Vel never did call. The strategy seems to be, "Let me get the customer of my back at the moment and I'll say anything to do that", which is not really much better than the state of things before. In fact, its been a month now, I still don't have the account number. I have asked the bank to return my check and I don't want an account anymore. Doing business in India is as scary as it has always been. Vel had no problems making commitments, the problem came to keep those commitments.

A trip to my tailor later that day rebuffed this conclusion. This is the condition of customer service in premium institutions like banks and local mom-and-pop stores alike. Think then about the service we get in state government offices ( which also I had to visit), but I'll cover the topic separately. There are other elements in it that need its own blog.

All in a day

She walks into the Gym , all set to have a good workout.

Ann and Jennifer are talking about Alaska. Ann has plans of taking an
Alaskan cruise next year. Jennifer says," Oh! I love Alaska. We are
thinking of taking another cruise. That place is abundant with
nature". Ann says that she is really thrilled and is already looking
forward to it though it is 6 months away. Jen says," There is this
place south of anchorage….I don't remember its name. We took a train
ride and it was wonderful".

" Hey! Alaska is lovely gals. I wish I could travel more
often. Jen, I think you are talking about Seward. It will always be my
most memorable train journey. Ann, you would love it."

" I think Jen is talking about Seward. It was quite a
memorable ride. These girls always find something to talk about. Give
me a break. The trip is 6 months away and she is already gushing over
it. There is abundant nature in California too."

" Shit! I wish that guy at least had some decency to tell
me why my raise was a meager 3% . He has an intellectual vacuum
surrounding him and has the audacity to call me incompetent. How dare
he?. Maybe, I should have just retaliated .So what if he is my boss."

Ann and Jennifer's conversation is steering towards TV programs and
they are talking about the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Ann is talking
about the United 93 and the TV program which telecasted the fate of
the family members of the people who fought with the terrorists. Jen
says she watched just a snippet as it is depressing and leaves her
hollow.

" I watched the show too. Looks like they have created a
monument in the name of the seven crew members who traveled in
United93.It is certainly a very touching episode in our lives."

" Oh yes !! All they can talk about are TV programs and the
latest diet programs. I am sure those two have not really experienced
a loss as big as the 9/11 episode. Its nothing but frivolous talk."

" How dare he? I should seriously think about quitting this
company. This guy is an oxymoron. He is a nincompoop. Maybe I should
talk to the GM about it."

She walks out of the Gym,deliberating.


" Not a bad day after all. Maybe we could go out for dinner ."

"What a day ! .I wish my headache would get better."

"The worst day of my life.I want to quit."

Run of the Mill Reporting

Topic: Katrina's anniversary
Coverage: Redundant, boring
Suggestion: MOVE ON!
Excerpts:
"Most people I talked to after Katrina are hopeful and positive of rebuilding their lives."

So, let's say that for most people the focus has shifted on to getting on with life. I suggest the media do the same. While I understand the importance of learning from past mistakes, there is a point when I feel enough is enough. For all the thrashing and blame-fixing, I frankly don't see much happening.

So why continue thrashing and blame-fixing - killing time till the next fiasco? That seems to be a cruel explanation, but the only one I could come up with.

There is lots happening the world over, and as usual the US seems quite wrapped up in its own stories, however old and lackadaisical they may sound.

Just a rant ....

Of Kalki & Vigadan

One lazy summer afternoon, a month back, I was idling at my parent's house. I felt like reading something light and rummaged through the cabinet. Inside there were current and old issues of "Ananda vigadan", "Kalki" & "Mangayar Mallar". I took out some issues with colorful front page, stacked them besides me and started browsing through them. Usually my first reading includes glancing at the pictures, reading jokes & interesting tidbits. Maybe some "Kelvi Badil" when accompanied by interesting pictures. However, this time I decided to pack all those magazines in my empty suticase and bring them with me to US. That way I could read "The Week" one day and 4 month old Ananda Vikatan the other. A break from monotony.

I have them all stacked in by bedside. I go through several iterations of one magazine and incrementally finish reading the entire magazine after a few days. I found that the jokes no longer are funny. But the "cinema star" gossip articles are still interesting. A day with Asin, Virkam's body building secret, Nayantara & Simbu seeing each other etc, Jyothika to wed surya, this is accompanied by a picture of jo & Surya from the movie "Chill Yendru oru Kadal" (Cold love???).

Kalki and Mangayar Malar have a plethora of cooking, household & Beauty tips. I am not sure if all of these work. Here is one I read: Want your hair to become soft? Apply vinegar mixed with 1 teaspoon of lemon. Can someone try this and let me know if it works? And then there are these short stories. I love reading them. They are short and some really pack a punch. I can't read "Thodar Kadai" and wait till a week to read the next chapter. My Paati used to cut out each week (like sujatha's Ganesh Vasanth) and make a book out of it. That was much easier reading for me.

Yesterday I read this short story about a middle aged mother who is called "Sudoku Sundari" coz she spends all her time doing sudoku. Her hubby darling ends up taking "Kadugu thalichu kottina Moru sadam" for breakfast and lunch. He thinks of making a business out of his wife's sudoku passion by having her start a sudoku class. He comes home that evening with this brilliant idea and finds that his wife has joined a sudoku class taught by a next street "maami" for 250Rs a month. This story is accompanied by a color picture of a rolly polly, saree clad middle aged lady sitting on the bed with a paper and pencil. Her face shows excitement in solving the sudoku. A thin wirey veshti clad husband looks at her with raised eyebrows, scratching his head and a pavadai clad girl peeps from the kitchen with a coffee cup for her dad.

I have 3 months of Kali, viagadan and Mangayar Malar to read. I just finished the first iteration. Good for another 6 months!

Another Life is Taken

A guest blog by Arthi Umesh ( my niece)


ANOTHER LIFE IS TAKEN

Another Life is taken,
Little difference does it make,
The newspapers yell it,
The T.V. follows,
After which it is forgotten.

Another Life is taken,
Little difference does it make,
Only adds a little more blood,
To the pool already created
And a little stinking smell
To the already foul-smelling bodies.

Another Life is taken,
Little difference does it make,
To this vast country
But what about that ruined family,
Which went without many things,
Thinking that one day their child
Would fetch them more than they could ask for.

Another Life is taken,
But what about that dream which
Never came true?
What about that baby which,
Never learnt to smile?
What about that lady,
Who burnt herself alive?

A kitchen with a window.

I have been living in a rental apartment for a long time now. Those of you who ever stayed in an apartment would know that kitchens in general are not spacious. And If you have a kitchen with a window, lady luck is smiling on you. Having a window in the kitchen depends on whether your kitchen shares its walls with neighboring apartments or not. Most of the kitchens are open to the living & dining area and you end up getting just one patio door that lights the entire kitchen, dining & living. So, when I moved into an apartment that had a window in the kitchen, dining & a patio window in the living I was thrilled.(Its got windows in the bathroom too! Cool!)

I have been cooking in a windowless kitchen for 6 years. For 6 years I did not realize how important it was to have a window in the kitchen. Maybe since people here bake or throw a salad or sandwich together or barbecue most of the time, they do not feel the importance of having a window to let (a) light in and (b) smoke out. Our cooking requires us to bring oil close to a boiling point and splutter all condiments in it. And don’t even talk about deep frying. For 6 years I must have made "Bakoda" (not the north Indian pakora) or deep fried "Appalam" 3 or 4 times. The first time we did deep frying and went out for shopping, we came back to a home smelling of oil and bakoda. And don’t even thing about cooking before going to work. You are probably going to smell of what you cooked.

Turning my attention to the new kitchen now - one word, "WOW"! My husband is sensitive to irritating smell from the kitchen (sautéing red chillies, green chillies etc) and used to cough a lot in the old aptmt. New one, I have not heard him cough one day. The window takes care of it! In the mornings as soon as I get up, I open the window slats and beautiful sun rays come streaming in and light up the granite counter tops of my new kitchen. Granite counter top. Another WOW, so easy to clean though difficult to spot dirt. But then that’s a nice thing right?

Right from the time I went to the new kitchen, I seem to be cooking more often and my creativity in the kitchen is flowing. I feel that its mainly because of the windows. Ladies (and men who cook), we need windows in the kitchen!

Funny Math Answers !