Breaking News

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of "All that you can think".

After a long period in hibernation, there are reports of unusual seismic activity emanating from a human brain in the SFO area. At present a consensus cannot be arrived at on the possible effects of such frenetic activity in brainwaves. Experts speculate that an alien attack could be responsible. Sources from the neighborhood seem to confirm the alien angle. As the world is coming to grips with this unusual activity, several questions remain. Why did the alien chose "brainwaves" as their source of attack? Is this likely to be the first and last or do we have more to follow? Has the attack ended? Are we likely to see more activity in the near future? If you have answers to these questions, please feel free to write to us at "All that you can think".

Reporting for "All that you can think" - Mad Max

(Very) Short story

This is the story of two aliens

I say we will wake him up now. It is just 4.26AM, the first one said.
I have a better idea. Let me make him write story about us, the second one said with playful smile

He started typing..."This is the story of two aliens"

Walk-in Traffic court

To cut a long story short, I got a red light violation ticket (381$) for taking right turn on red without stopping. (For those who don't know, it has to be treated like Stop sign) Since the ticket cost is high and I see a reasonable chance of reducing the fine (based on feedback from friends) I decided to fight it out (at least beg it out) at court.

1) When you get a ticket you have 3 options
a) Plead guilty & pay the full fine through mail and request traffic school
b) Plead not guilty by written declaration. i.e. Mail your case and hope you will get concession
c) Plead guilty - but try & reduce the fine by appearing in the court.

2-a) If you are choosing option 1, it costs you money but saves your time. And if you can apply for Traffic school then you can clear your points

2-b) If you are opting to plead not guilty by written declaration, then write your reasoning and sent it by mail. If accepted then you are free. If not accepted you are left with option a or c

2-c) If you choose c, then you should either get a court date of go to walk in court (in Alameda county it was on Tue & Thursdays).

3) Based on the suggestions to go early, I reached the court by 6.45AM for 8.30AM court. Apparently, they open they issue 50 (or so) tokens at 8AM and inform others to go home.
- There were atleast 70 people in front of me. I hoped that 20+ people would have come to support their dear ones. I figured out at 8AM that I was 10 people away from getting the coupon. 10 poor souls did come to support their friends :)

- The second attempt was more painful, I took a chance by going at 7.45AM on a very cold day (with mercury struggling to get out of his 0 degree celcius position) and was 2 people away from getting the token. (Damn! if only...) But I ended up taking the court date which was given a well 8 months away.

- The third attempt was planned to perfection. Thick jacket to negate the cold & Ipod to kill the boredom. Well almost perfect prepartion, apparently Ipods are not that useful without head phones :) I had to call Saumya to bring in the Ipod headsets and hot coffee. I reached the court at 6.15AM this time and had 30-35 people in front of me.
Tidbits:
- Afgani women in Traffic court line are no different from Indian women in water queue. They get upset if someone tries to cut the line. Even scary(?) looking Blacks were little bit scared
- Polish (or some Easter european) moms are identical to Indian moms. They show lot of affection but don't shy away from putting their kid in their place :)
- Camaraderie between people of different race, age and strata are easy to build when you have one common enemy - Cop or Traffic ticket :)

4) Finally I got the much awaited coupon. I entered a court for the first time in my life. Clear instructions were given on dos & donts by a professional clerk. Tape was played to tell what are the options we have (Plead not guilty, Plead guilty and No contest)
No Contest: It is almost like pleading guilty except for one thing. If someone sue you for the same reason you are pleading guilty (like Red light violation etc) they can use your guilty plea against you whereas with no contest, they cannot do that.
In that sense, no contest is better

5) Since they don't have appointed judge, they got a temporary judge that day. Only bad thing about it was, that judge relies more on the secretary (who happened to be a stricter one)

6) People are called in batches of 3-4 (with everyone else watching from their seats) to sit in front of the judge. One by one they were told their ticket reason and asked what they want to do.

7) New court date was given for people pleading not guilty (bcoz this judge was temporary - I guess)

8) Pleading guilty was the only option and the secretary was telling 381$ is a mandatory fine for red light violation. That means there is no chance of reducing that fine

9) In some random order I was called as 10-15th person. I pleaded "No contest" and then told the judge that I was taking right turn (and not shooting the red light) and still got the 381$ fine. Before the secretary could chime in, I said, my friends came and got their fines reduced.
The judge requested the picture/mail and after investigation reduced the fine to 125$
(First one on that day to get their fine reduced). I was happy that the time spent meant something :)

Here are my take

- Given the circumstances, it was definitely a good experience (not that I would look for one)
- If it is red light shoot (not right turn) OR <100$ ticket, then you don't gain anything for that 4 hour wait.
- If there is a traffic school option (by mailing), then paying 250$ more is not a bad option

Bottom line: DONT GET A TICKET! It is not worth it!

What are you gonna do?

(Speech by Alpacino from the movie, Any Given Sunday (1999))

"You find out life's this game of inches, so is football. Because in either game - life or football - the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don't quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast and you don't quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They're in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team we fight for that inch. On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when add up all those inches, that's gonna make the f--king difference between winnin' and losin'! Between livin' and dyin'! I'll tell ya this: In any fight, it's the guy who's willin' to die who's gonna win that inch. And I know if I'm gonna have any life anymore, it's because I'm still willin' to fight and die for that inch. Because that's what livin' is! The six inches in front of your face!! Now I can't make you do it. You got to look at the guy next to you. Look into his eyes! Now I think you're gonna see a guy who will go that inch with you. You're gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team because he knows, when it comes down to it, you're gonna do the same for him! That's a team, gentleman! And, either we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. That's football, guys. That's all it is. Now, what are you gonna do?"

Have a wonderful new year !

Obsolete Skills

As I was about to dump the paper with the hotel to airport direction written on it, I remembered a distant friend who used to keep all the direction print-outs he ever took in his car and reuse them. But in these days of navigation systems, what will you do with that piled print-outs? I know I know the organized skill set is applicable universally. But still...

There are people who can recite Shakespeare's play without missing a word, remember all the cricket score, be proficient in one specific skill etc. What will they do when the world changed and lost interest in that skill? The same skill once was praised, respected and admired. The same skill which provided positive feedback to their self-esteem.

Of course there are some core competencies which led you to develop these specific skill sets which will make you adapt and learn new ones based on the trend or there are timeless skills which could be learnt. Or we can stop caring about what others think and learn & repeat (even if there is no one to listen)

Even in our careers when we step out of our comfort zone we may have the same question hanging around. Is our skill relevant or obsolete? But again in careers the time it takes to become irrelevant is little longer and hence we may be safe.

New year coming around which triggers the resolution part of the Brain which was rusty with lack of use for an year :) So the ramblings..!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Spotlight

I went to a store over the weekend. Things were all glittery with christmas festivities represented everywhere by stripes of red and white. I thought to myself, the american flag is red and white striped too. Is there any relation as to why US of A and Santa chose the same color? Anyway, I completed my shopping, after a long 10 minutes of stroll of which 90% was spent in trying to figure out the aisle to find what I wanted. Finally, I found my way to the paying counter. The lady at the counter was wearing christmassy suit to reflect joy when in reality was looking rather serious. May be, she just wanted to get the hell out of there and find her solace at her home with her family and friends. She started scanning all the items. "Is that all, Sir", she asked with a monotonicity that only folks at the counter can come up with. I said, "No, thanks"... As I said it, I wondered, why is there a custom to add thanks to an otherwise, display of negative answer. She was trying to sell me more which meant more profit to the store. It is not like she was going to give something for free? A simple "No" would have been sufficient, I thought. While my thoughts meandered over my own revelations of the world, she interrupted again. She asked me, "Would you like to buy one of these cards. They are for Children Education.." and the remaining words just vaporized before it reached my already feeble ear. I looked around and everyone in the line were looking at me. The guilty consciousness in my mind kicked in. It seemed like everybody was looking at me trying to convey something with their faces. A voice sounded in my head, "Aren't you going to help out a kid who probably doesnt have parents and the only thing in the entire world for the kid to look upto is to study and create a life?"... Not that I am averse to making donations, but, the lady at the counter pulled a weak nerve of mine which fluttered and cried out for help in the quietest way possible manifesting itself as a thoughtful facial expression. As it did, I couldnt help but notice the bold "$1" sign in the card. It is nothing compared to a lot of insignificant things that I do for myself... It probably costed them atleast 5-10 cents to just print the card. The kid's picture in the card looked pitiable. Without much thought, I said "Ok". I started thinking, how many times am I coerced into doing something "good" only when put on spotlight? How many times have I volunteered myself into doing some act of goodness just out of my own will? Is it just that we do good things just so that we will look like a better person in other's eyes. Does it matter?

Trafficking...

I am someone who likes to understand concepts through analogies. If I can't get to analyse a problem using an analogy that everyone can relate to, I will try to refrain working on it. The corollary is that, if someone cannot given me an analogy for a problem or solution, I will be more inclined to think that they dont have a clear understanding of the problem at hand...Anyway, being in the networking world and talking all about traffic engineering for a living, it is very logical for me to analyse these problems using the real life traffic. I found some of the results amusing...:)

While we have figured out how to get the internet traffic to get faster and more reliably decades ago, we are still getting stuck in our regular traffic to work. As you all know, a given networking link is characterized by how much traffic it can carry (bandwidth) and how much time it takes to carry (latency). Reliability is a relative word and I dont think it has much relevance to my following analysis. The question now is, what is the bandwidth of a freeway? Well, we measure network traffic is bits per second. For freeway, let us assume that it is cars per second. We could later change that definition to be passengers per second. For now, assume that there is 1 passenger per car.

Let us do some math. At 65 miles per hour speed, and an average car length of 5 meters, the number of cars per second is about 5.72, we can approximate it to 5 (since the trucks and the minimum gap between cars should be discounted for fairness). If we have 4 lanes, this comes to 20 cars per second or 1200 cars per minute. The two sided nature of the problem is that, the traffic is really heavy only 2 times in a day for around 6 hours. Provisioning the road to account for the peak case is the obvious solution, but a bad one too. In the networking world, we call it bursty traffic. Let us say, we want to double the traffic in a given freeway, what are our options? The obvious ones are (i) Make the cars twice as fast (ii) Make the road twice as wide, change it from 4 to 8 lanes (iii) Accomodate 2 passengers on each car (iv) Make the car half the length. Knowing what we know, (i) & (iv) are not easy to do, (iii) is the equivalent of enforced car pooling and (ii) has a cost associated. We could have different priorities with high priority cars or vehicles being the ones carrying more passengers versus ones with smaller number of passengers which in turn can transport more passengers per second since the larger passengers are grouped into a single lane. We could have alternative modes like trains and hope that passengers would take trains instead of cars, in which case the problem centers around how many passengers we can transport per second.

Ideally, if we make a big enough vehicle that can accomodate all the passengers to a given destination city, that is the best we can do. I just checked up that BART service here in bay area can carry a comfortable load of 700 people in a 750 feet train (225 metres) at an average speed of 36 mph (considering stops at stations). Now, if we had enough trains to carry people around, the ratio between car-passengers/second and train-passengers/second is 20 versus 50 passengers. Only a 2.5 speedup and the extra wait time in station to get into the train and back. Again, we can try to optimize by double-decking the train since adding additional railway line can be quite expensive, assuming the rails can handle it. Also, having non-stop service can increase the speed by 2 or 3 fold which can give benefits too. Remember that, the more the wait time to get to a train, the latency increases. In some cases, the bandwidth can look great if we wait long enough to accomodate as many passengers as we can. But, the time to get to a destination will suffer terribly.

Now, if you would substitute cars with packets, passengers with cells (fixed size units which makes up a packet), transmission rate or capacity to bandwidth, the same kind of problems exist in networking and the same kind of problems are applicable there too. The parts that are easy in networking are that, creating wider lanes with high capacity is becoming increasingly easy and cost effective. The part that has always been difficult is to handle burstiness of traffic. Though there are many solutions, optimality is questionable. Another thing that is possible in networking is the use of a scheduler. If we exactly knew which routes were free and how many people want to get to a given destination ahead of time, we can allocate their paths for optimality. But then, when everybody is bursting in all at the same time, scheduler optimality is not guaranteed and that is still a problem. Well, that's all folks. You have survived yet another round of my random rambling session...Congratulations!

Rice and Turkey

What did you guess from the title? If you had guessed that this blog has something to do with thanksgiving, you are wrong. If you want more clues, checkout the following headlines.. I couldnt control my laughter as I read the following google news headlines today...

Rice in Baghdad as Tensions With Turkey Rise

Iraq Kurdish leader snubs Rice over Turkey raid

The other one that I found interesting was...

WHO probes Pakistan's first bird flu death

Who cares? WHO cares...;)

Genes

I've been reading about genes lately (inspired by the book "Next" by Michael Crichton). It is interesting and scary at the same moment to think about the way gene studies can emerge. My aim is to present a simple framework to think about gene research and it's possible outcomes. By no means, I can call myself anywhere close to knowing how it all works out together. So, take my words with a grain of salt and pepper and some sambar podi...:)

The fundamental question is, what determines us to be the way we are as humans, the way we look and think and so on? It was found that, proteins in our body (consider this as a big molecule) is composed of a linear array of amino acids. Based on the proportion and alignment of these amino acids, one can determine the answers to the aforementioned fundamental questions. The linear sequence of amino acids (the strand of DNA as it is often referred) forms the so called genomic sequence. There are approximately 30000 genes in the human body. Doesnt look like a very large number now, does it? As a matter of fact, chimpanzees and humans only differ in gene counts by a meagre 1.5% if you compare the absolute number of genes. As a matter of fact, an earthworm has around 20000 genes. So, what does these count really mean? If they differ only by a few percentage, why do humans have an order of magnitude difference ?

For a s/w programmer, one way to visualise is to consider a protein coded gene as a big library module with individual strands of amino acids as various functions/methods within the library. For a given individual or an organism, at any time, only a few functions's run. Each function has the ability to call functions from other libraries too. So, if there are 2 protein-coded genes which have a certain composition of genomic sequence, they could influence each other. So, the net effect is that there are various combinations in which they could interact. Environmental stimuli can also affect the way the genes work. In humans, one can think of it as more functions running which in turn fires a lot more stuff in the genomic sequence than other organisms.

Once we have that framework of thinking, the next question is where do we stand in terms of gene research. One central goal is to identify all the gene sequ
ences, which in human's case has mostly been done and named. The next thing is to associate each gene with it's associated set of characteristics and functions that it can do (partially done). Then, the third thing is to study the association between different genes (very much in the development phase). If we can do all three, then, for a given disease or ailment, we can figure out the gene sequence that causes it and then remove it or suppress it from the system. This series of study is about how an already grown adult can be fixed if there is a gene related issue.

The other aspect of the study of genes is cloning. As you might know already, the embryonic stem cell contains the entire set of protein coded genes which later determines characteristics of human beings. This concentrated potion that contains all our information can be obtained from the blood from umbilical cord during birth. If you have embryonic stem cell, you could take an egg and suppress it's default gene-signatures and inject embryonic cells to produce a clone which carries the same gene signature as yours. Think of it, you can pretty much take an egg and populate it with the genes that are termed "good" ones and create a new being... What if you dont have the embryonic stem cell? What if the blood was not frozen and stored at the time of birth? Scientists have figured out that, they can use skin cells and still construct a clone... So, if that is the case with humans, what about inserting a gene or two from humans to other organisms to see if they can do what we do, like speaking or learn math or whatever? That is proven to be possible too... Infact, just yesterday, I read an article that says that, scientists were able to populate cats with a fluorescent causing gene which makes them glow in night (don't ask me who in their real mind would do such a thing...ofcourse, it is the koreans...no pun intended..:))...

A lot of cloning related study is dangerous from the perspective that it could cause off springs with all kinds of defects and at that point, it is newly created human life at stake, which is why it is highly debated...The proponents claim that, one could develop organs which are a direct match to an individual and do transplants....Till a decade ago, what I used to imagine as fiction seems to be transforming into reality. Movies like Gattaca which focuses on gene based profiling is probably not far from future... Is it good or bad or ugly? Only time will tell.... You can too...:)

Enjoy!!!!!!

Dubai: A Reminscence

I am very reluctantly back in the US after the most invigorating holiday I've taken in perhaps a whole decade. I visited my family in Dubai. While there, I could not help admiring the thought and planning that goes into making an inhospitable desert a place you would want to live in. The city has large expanses of greenery in state maintained parks, lots of trees and given that it is winter now, does not feel like a desert.

Just to give you a broad background of UAE. Seven emirates make up the UAE:Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ras Al Khaimah, Fujairah, Umm Al Quwain and Ajman. The emirates unite and elect a Prime Minister and President primarily for Foreign Affairs, but within the UAE, each of these Emirates is ruled by their respective Sheikhs. There is an election to the council, but election of the PM and President is based (typically) on the Economic wealth of the Emirate. Therefore, currently the Abu Dhabi ruler is the PM and the Dubai ruler is the President (or vice-versa!)

There are some things that I must mention with respect to Dubai. The vision and the effort to build Dubai into an inviting cosmopolitan city is fantastic.

1) The buildings are all nice looking. Most of them by themselves look good, but collectively they don't gel all the time. For example I saw cases where there was a Hawa mahal-like palace near a very swanky looking modern building. It was like Noor Jahan linking hands with Madonna - bad analogy, but you get the picture.

2) The tunnels or bypass roads have both sides of the walls lined with tiles. These tiles somehow give an illusion of driving through a rather large bathroom corridor, but that's just me!

3) Dubai is one of the few cities in the Middle East where purdah (i.e. the portion covering the face) is banned in Government offices. The women you see clad in robes do so of their own accord in this city.

4) The Arab nationals wear a spotless, clean WHITE robe. I was amazed to see not one of them had a crease or a speck of dirt on them. Apparently, my sister had the same doubt, and she asked somebody who works in an Arab family how they manage that. The lady confessed it is a full-time occupation just to clean the robes and maintain it at that sterling white at all times. If you ask me, you could pay a maid a month's salary just for that! I was also wondering why the men wore white robes, while the women wore black robes in a desert.

5) Dubai is undergoing growth pangs like any other city that has tripled its population in the last 5 years. The metro railway is under construction, and the city has been dug up through all major roads. The vision is to promote suburban areas, and encourage people to commute to Dubai for work. While this is being implemented, roads are clogged and parking is a nightmare.

6) Citation required here: Apparently, when the temperature hits 50 C, all construction workers need to be given the day off. Officially, the temperature had gone up to 49.2, but not 50 quite yet :)


Just a pic of a signboard!

Highlights of my trip (not necessarily in the order mentioned below)
Desert Safari
Jet Skiing
Ibn Batuta Mall
Al Ain trip
Khor Fakkan
Shopping
Al Sooq Al Rasheed

The Ibn Batuta Mall:
The mall is built on a sprawling 1.6 million sq ft space with parking for 4000 cars available. The mall is themed after 6 different countries: China ,India ,Persia ,Egypt ,Tunisia , Andalusia. Walking proved enjoyable in the mall, but after a couple of hours we discovered we had only covered 4 countries, so we beat the retreat passing up the mall areas looking like the other countries.


Al Ain & Khor Fakkan:
The trip to both places involved driving through towns built around an oasis. The beauty of the place if definitely unlike any other I've seen, spotted with Arabian architecture (like huge lanterns, pots in the middle of the road!) The beach water is inviting and warm, and all of us had quite a time. It was at Khor Fakkan that we went jet-skiing for the first time. I remember it like it was yesterday - the sea breeze, the salt water spray, and then getting hit by another scooter, and tumbling head first into the Arabian Sea!

Desert Safari:
Here is the one of the gems on the crown of my visit. This was so amazing that I fear I cannot do justice with mere words and a badly taken video. The drive through the dunes was in a regular 4 wheel drive vehicle. Right before we hit the sand, the driver coolly deflated the tires, and my brother helpfully explained that this was to increase the surface area of contact to avoid toppling over the dunes during fast turns - gulp! Thankfully, we had my sister in the car who isn't frightfully fond of automobiles. She would rather take a horse buggy than a car to get from point A to B, so you can imagine how she was on the safari! That made life simple for me: I just swallowed my apprehension and put on a brave face to keep her alive.

While on the safari, you have to trust the ability of the driver. If not, you just cannot enjoy the ride. The jeeps keep together in a large convoy, and space themselves enough so that if the car ahead of them skids, it does not crash into the next one. We got chatting with our driver Salim, a young Pakistani national who does this everyday for a living. He explained that there are 3 dunes that are slightly taller than the rest. So, their job is to follow these larger dunes, and turn right once you cross the third dune. As usual, I had to ask him what happens if we turn left?

Ans: You are doomed to die, and will be devoured by vultures by sunset the next day, if your troop doesn't realise you are missing. But of course they would realise, and you would be rescued via helicopter, as a family was 2 weeks ago at 1 a.m. five hours into their ordeal. I explained to him that I have a three year old waiting for me to come home that night, so let's turn right at the dune.

"Yes Ma'am" , he earnestly replied. Every time the tires turned left to avoid a rock or something, I yelped- "Right Salim, Right!"

What happens when a sandstorm comes along, and the height of the dunes change? Apparently, they survey and study the landscape again, before opening the route out to tourists. While on the trip, I had to admire the tenacity of the generations of humans who lived and prospered in the Arabian desert with nothing but the stars to guide them.

We watched the sun set over the dunes, and then moved to a desert camp with henna stalls, drinks and a Belly Dancer! This belly dancer was hugely talented, and controlled not ony her movements and her body, but also the crowd with her breath. The Arabian music was scintillating, and the Lebanese dancer's movements made it an exhilarating experience. It didn't help my bachelor brother that he was watching this belly dance with his two married sisters - but hey, he invited us over didn't he?!

Al Sooq Al Rasheed:
Arabic has a soft spot for Q - pronounced as 'KH'. I found it quite amusing that English has so few words in Q, while every sign post has at least one word starting or ending with 'Q'. I digress : this Sooq is the famous gold bazaar. The gold bazaar was brimming with people, and here is the thing: not a single store had metal shutters for protection! Gold shopping in Dubai is an experience by itself. I am not very fond of jewellery - or so I thought till I saw the patterns. You can imagine what would happen when a person who likes gold goes there.

Shopping is a pleasant mix of shopping in India and in the US. It was only when was I packing up to leave did I realise that I had shopped quite a bit!

A vacation with loved ones would have been fun if it had been in Alps or Ranganathan Street in Madras or a quaint village near Trichy. Nevertheless, I was immensely glad I took a vacation in Dubai. All I have to do is think back, and I smile instantly - now, that's what I call a good vacation!