My blog about parenting- A failure

As I revisited my blog about 'Impending Fatherhood', I realised it was a failure as a blog. I'm sure I learnt a lot by putting pen to paper (so to speak). But when it comes to the true spirit of a blog, I can't help but feel its a failure. What I really feel would have been effective was to have the people commenting about things that made them suceed as parents. Things that worked for them. Instead it ended up with me defending my opinion... which was definitely the last thing I wanted to do. So without much ado... if I can have the tolerance of ze parents in the forum- please share with me what really worked with your kids... and ze non parents in the forum- please share with me what you have seen parents do that has worked for their kids. Also if you are upto it, share with me what didn't work. I'm sure we will have more fun this way.

Thank God, India's out of cup

I got the following from a friend of mine who in turn quoted it from Times of India... Thought it was interesting to share...

There’s a brighter side to India’s exit from the World Cup. Something that can cheer up disappointed fans and angry advertisers. Sri Lanka has done a great favour to Indian economy by ousting the cricket team from the World Cup.

There are about 80 million cable and satellite viewing homes in India. According to TAM ratings, the average viewership of all World Cup matches held till now stands at about 3%, with India vs Bangladesh touching a high of 7.25%. To reach the finals, India would have played at least seven more matches. Considering a TV Rating of 7.25%, at least 5.8 million people would have watched the match. This would have resulted in a productivity loss of 371.2 million man hours (5.8 million x 8 hours x 8 matches), apart from stress faced by mothers during exams.

About 3% of 81 million TV viewers (2.4 million) were ardent cricket fans and would have sat through all eight hours in the remaining 28 matches. Thus overall, Indian team’s ouster would result in a productivity gain of 481 million man hours of work (28x2.4x8 man hours), if put to use. The Sri Lankans have given a boost to the Indian economy by saving 54,902 man years of work (one year = 8,761 hours). Indians can build seven phases of the Golden Quadrilateral connecting Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai spread over 5,846 kilometres all over again, with this time saved.

A daily wage skilled labourer in Delhi earns Rs 17 per hour. If put to productive use, the 481 million man hours can produce Rs 817 crore of GDP, which is 63% more than BCCI’s annual revenues of Rs 500 crore, last year. It’s 401% more than the Rs 163 crore losses, corporate India has predicted to incur due India’s ouster.

The state electricity boards are also thanking Sri Lanka for the great favour. A TV consumes 45 watts per hour. Assuming a viewer will now switch off his TV by 12 midnight, it will save Rs 135 watts at least per viewer (not considering the electricity consumed by other appliances running simultaneously.) This will save the electricity boards 324 million watts of electricity ( 3.24 lakh kilowatts) in just 28 days. According to estimates, SEB losses in India will touch Rs 1 lakh crore by 2008. If disappointed viewers completely switch off their TVs for eight hours, it will save the government at least 8,64,000 kilowatts, along with many more lives — at least three Indian citizens have been reported to die due to cardiac arrest or suicide after India’s defeat at the hands of Sri Lanka.

Remembering Seinfeld

I love watching "Seinfeld" . I think that sitcom portrays human nature very well. It shows that everyone is self-centered . You can see Seinfeld & Elaine talking about their lives, not caring about others, though it is a bit exaggerated. Many a times, we think about our problems while talking to others ,rather than listening. An excerpt from a recent conversation in our house..
I had come home after visiting my doctor.It was a follow up visit and our concern was the medicine dosage.

Sh: Hey, the doc was asking why you didn't come today.
Su: Hmmm......( with a blank look)
Sh: Actually, he told me that he finds you very supportive.
Su: Really...
Sh: I told him you were a very determined, optimistic guy and also about your marathon training.
Su: Cool..Thank you
Sh: Ya, I told him you were a very helpful, supportive husband.
Su: .......
Sh: Do you know what he said for that. He said, "So, he is one of the new breed of Indians. I thought Indian men were very chauvinistic". And I told him you are definitely one of the new kind. Anyway, I asked him about the cyclosporine dosage....

Now, there is a sparkle in "SU"'s eye and the blank look is gone. I was happy that he was at last paying attention once my dosage was mentioned.

Su: Do you think he might have considered me a chauvinistic guy ?
Sh: I don't think so.He said that I can continue with the current dosage as the reading is only slightly below normal.
Su: Hmmm.....( thinking seriously). You know what, I don't think he would have even formed an opinion of me. Maybe, he was just generally asking.
Sh: I think he has better things to worry about than forming an opinion about you.Did you even listen to me talking about the dosage.
Su:Yeah....I heard. Just because I come with you for all your visits does not prove that I am not chauvinistic. So, you never know what he was thinking..

At this point, I got reminded of Seinfeld and burst out laughing .

Oscar going green

It was a memorable moment when Leonardo and Al Gore proclaimed that the Oscar was going green. That baffled me then. What the heck were these guys talking about? One could see all the wastage happening during the ceremony . And, I was quite irritated when I saw the director of "Inconvenient Truth" glorifying Gore. It sucked big time. Anyway, this morning my questions were answered, courtesy of Business Week. It is called "carbon offset". During the Oscar ceremonies,all the presenters, participants were given a certificate( much like a gift certificate) of carbon offsets. These "carbon offsets" are sold by a company called Terrapass ( a profit organization), who sell "carbon offsets". What is carbon offset, you may ask. Basically, we are offseting the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by some means like recycling , converting them to less harmful gases etc. So, companies like TerraPass sell these and themselves buy it from environment - friendly organizations like Waste Management, Dairy Farms etc who employ various techniques of recycling etc. For ex, Waste Management works on all the trash mounds and converts the methane (which is more harmful than CO2) to Co2 , thereby reducing environment pollution. Now, Terrapass gives them money for their equipments, operations , buys "carbon offsets" @ some price x, sells it to Oscar committee @ y, making money in the process. Now Oscar committee has bought enough carbon offsets to suffice their guilt for one year.

Another example given was of a Dairy Farmer who gets $2 for one carbon offset , the same offset for which Terrapass charges $9 . Some cuts go in between to a broker who introduced Terrapass to the farmer. One carbon offset is equivalent to one ton of CO2 or equivalent of methane. From the Oscar cermonies, the amount went to Waste Management who were already environment conscious and this money was more like an icing on the cake.If you want to be free of any guilt, if you feel guilty at all , its time to buy carbon offsets. Many companies proclaim they have become carbon neutral by buying carbon offsets equivalent to their carbon release..

Thinking about Terrapass, the CEO is 30 yr old from Wharton and I really admire him for finding a neat way of making money. Some would call it an honorable job.:-)

Personally, I am not interested in carbon offsets as I dont accept the global warming funda whole heartedly and I don't care.

Another interesting link I came across during my blog reads
http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2007/03/elizabeth_hurle.html

Arranged vs. Love Marriages

I had written about this earlier on my personal blog, but I just thought I might share the thoughts here and probably get a different perspective! BTW there are variations from the original blog. That was written when I was still wet behind my ears regarding the theory of incentives (not that I'm any wiser today).

The topic which catches my fancy today is relationships. Let me be more specific here and look at the concept of marriage from a rational perspective (married readers please excuse if this sounds kind of stupid). What has rationality got to do with marriage??? I start with the basic premise that marriage is a social contract between two parties (following social norms lets call them the husband and wife). The outcome of this contract is some metric which defines how a couple feel about the marriage ( eg. good/bad).

To make matters clear, I'm thinking of a selection problem here. For instance lets assume that there are two stages. In the first stage the decision is whether to enter into a relationship with person X or not. Depending on the choice in stage one, the outcome is determined. There are several factors which determine the outcome and since both stages are correlated, the factors that determine the outcome will also determine the choice made in stage one.

At the outset, I start with the benchmark solution that an optimal selection policy implies good quality. The question is what is the optimal choice mechanism?

The answer to this question is not simple. For instance, consider Indian families. Typically there are two approches. One is where the potential couple select themselves (love marriages). The other is when the choices are made by parents or arranged through other related parties (arranged marriages). To start with I argue that both approaches have potential costs and benefits associated with them. Therefore the optimal choice would be the one which minimizes costs (mirror problem being maximizing benefits).

Let me start with the arranged marriage mechanism. We can resort to tools from information economics to conceptualize the information problem associated with this solution. Using the standard principal agent framework we can classify the potential spouse as the pricipal who employs the services of the agent (parents) in finding his/her potential mate. The problem in this case is on account of differential information and/or misaligned interests between the principal and agent. What does this mean???

The first potential cost to the system arises in the form of differential information between the spouse to be and the parents (agents). Consider this! The groom/bride to be have the best information about their personality, expectations, mate preferences etc. In the case of a love marriage where the bride or groom find their mate themselves, there should be no information imperfection. But in the case of an arranged marriage, since we are delegating the primary choice to a third party there will always be some form of information imperfection which lead to positive agency costs. An argument against this could be that since parents take a serious role in bringing up their kid, they probably have a good sense of the tastes and preferences of their child. I will argue that to a large extent social pressures and the need for the kid to appease the elders leads to suppression of the true preferences (this is contestable). The crux of this approach is that agency costs are present due to information imperfection when one chooses the arranged marriage mechanism.

The second potential cost is the misalignment of incentives between the principal and agent. Again going back to the social system where traditionally the boy's parents tend to live with them post marriage, parents have an implicit incentive to find a daughter in law who can adapt into the family. Further it some cases the girl brings in a dowry of some sort at the time of marriage (in some communities and some parts of the country i guess). This implies that parents of the boy (who want a dowry) have an incentive to find girls who are from a wealthy family background, have good education and several other potential considerations.

Similarly there is an incentive problem from the other side also. In some cases the incentive for them would probably be to find a groom who will preferably stay with them rather than the opposite. Taking this forward, in cases where that is not possible it might be expectations of help/support in some other form. Either argument implies that again we some positive costs associated with misalignment of interests.

Now while I have tried to show that two potential sources of costs can arise from an arranged marriage mechanism, what about the other side of the spectrum? From arranged marriages lets move to love marriages. Again this is kind of a stylized setting which I think is more intuitive to understand. Basically the theory is that here the potential bride/groom self select their mate and hence the question arises as to what makes them choose between arranged and love marriages?? for instance a handsome young man, well educated and in a good job might find it far easier to select a mate by himself as against someone who is shy, not so good looking etc etc.

Therefore in the case of the second person he might be better off by going through the arranged marriage system. The point here is that the potential players know their relative strenghts and weaknesses and therefore their choice of action is purely dependent on their evaluation of the same. Therefore there is no information imperfection in that sense that since the player knows his/her preferences, he/she chooses optimally.

There is no incentive compatibility problem here because there are no third parties involved here and therefore keeping everything else constant, we can see that the self selection of the mate minimizes search costs.

A caveat which is important is that the cost of self search also depends on how much the society is willing to tolerate. However today this is less of a problem compared to say two or three decades back.

The dynamics underlying the entire system seems quite complex. Rationality and expected utility maximization behavior suggests that the quality of the marriage is probably better under the self search system since it minimizes search costs.

So are love marriages better than arranged marriages (hehehehe)????...I guess thats theory (i'm not saying you have to buy this). What is observed in practice might be quite different.

The question is then is what is missing??? or is it just futile to try and even think about this???

the rambling will continue...

Neither black nor white - Grey

As I combed and recombed my hair looking into the mirror to conceal the silvery riches, this fleeting thought ran through my mind. Increasingly, life is more grey than either black or white. Anyone who has observed the silvery grey transformation happening up on my head would instantly understand why this thought even came on. (I wish it were in my head, as in grey matter, rather than on my head) It's suddenly not black or white, just grey.

I can remember how questions were infinitely easier to answer several years ago. It usually was a 'Yes' or 'No'. Yes, that's true or no, it ain't. Yes, that's funny. No, it is not funny. Yes, I like that or No, I hate that. Most often, I notice that that is not the case anymore. Even if the transition from averring and "putting my foot down on something" to "...I guess that depends" was gradual rather than sudden, that realization suddenly struck me that evening when I was combing my hair. I wondered why Rumsfeld or Bush or whoever was asked anything about the "War on Iraq" (or almost any other topic) could never start an answer with "Yes" or "no". In fact, yes or no was not any part of their answer. That might be a different issue, so we'll leave it at that.


Looking back, I was opinionated, one might say. I always thought, with age comes exposure, experience and wisdom. Thinking along those lines, as the sample size of experiences increases, your confidence level should increase, thereby making you sound more confident and making you more opinionated. Perhaps, the confidence level starts high, then decreases before increasing once again, creating a downward bell shape curve, with age/experience on the x-axis.

As we "get seasoned", the numerous variables that are in play come to our focus, and as we scramble to factor all that in to formulate a response to a questions asked, we almost always start with "...I suppose that depends ....." making the response immediately sound less than 100% sure. Unless, we are one of those people who almost never have been wrong. I don't necessarily think I know more than I did before, but I know now that there is infinitely more to know. I even wonder sometimes whether I take all these other factors or variables into consideration, read and re-read the question, just because I don't want to come off as politically incorrect. As I remember it, I never gave political correctness any consideration a decade or so ago. But, I digress.

The word "ceteris paribus" comes to my mind and I find myself thinking "ceter may not be paribus", thereby casting major doubts in the precept used to understand almost all economics principles and more. The variables are important..atleast some variables are! I looked online for what would be the opposite of "ceteris paribus". It was not "ceter ain't paribus" like I had thought. Its called "mutatis mutandis" meaning, "having considered the necessary differences".

As my thoughts wander along the highway that we so casually call "Life", I think about all the seniors in my family. They seem to incline one way or the other in their views. Their answers are not as iffy and don't typically start with "I believe...", "I suppose...", "I guess...." or "...that depends..". I wonder if they have understood something from their experiences that I am yet to unravel. That they somehow have imbibed the meaning of "ceteris paribus". That they somehow have relied on their numerous more experiences in having one view versus the other and they have already taken all factors into consideration before they formed their views. All their experiences, positive or negative, have possibly formed the basis of their opinions or intuition, which in itself is a whole different topic for another blog. Or maybe they just realize that the listener does not want to hear that long convoluted answer? I'll end this blog with the "..maybe".

School Performance

Reading sowmya's fond memories of school performance, remided me of the first time I went on stage. The atmosphere was fantastic. It was January 1993, I was in class XI and should have been spending more time with my books. But the rock n' roll disease had caught on and everything else was secondary. Four of us (three of us in the same class and the drummer was in 9th std) created Amnesia (that was what our band was called). Being rock fans, it was imperative that we did something from the 1970's. The song we chose was from a cult band called KISS and the song was Love Gun. We did not have a vocalist, so we thought the best idea was to entertain with a dose of instrumental hard rock. Well well well, it was a performance to remember! We made tons of mistakes (abhaswaram is more like it), but then parents are parents (everybody clapped lol). Off stage there was a lot of praise and we were basking in glory. Hmm, two days later back in school, reality strikes. Our friends recount the terrible performance it was and oh cheezzz (rest is best forgotten..the giggles from the girls and the sneer from the guys). Anywayz fond memories and I rerecorded the track i performed for the first time. I tried to jam as close as possible with the one back in 1993. Obviously the technology we had was far more limited than this recording. So you can imagine how it would have been 14 yrs ago. Enjoy!

Love Gun (1993 Jam)

Luck or Fate

We were watching the movie "Poi" yesterday. Prakash Raj , who personifies "Fate" makes a statement ," If something good happens, people call it luck whereas if something bad happens, it is called fate".
This got me thinking about luck. According to M/W, luck is defined as
a: a force that brings good fortune or adversity
b: the events or circumstances that operate for or against an individual
We do have good luck and bad luck.But, we call someone "lucky" only if he/she is blessed with good luck. Why can't someone be bad "lucky" . But, we do symbolize "fate" with bad happenings.We all know fate is inevitable but why should it be linked with disaster and not godsend. Thinking about godsend, some people would call luck as "God's grace". Why do we expect God to always bless us with good occurances in life. Synonymical to good and bad luck, we should expect God's grace to be good and bad.

"Inspite of what fate brings me, with God's grace,I am lucky enough to be happy."

School Performances

Schools have a method of making every child feel important. In my school, especially in the younger classes, the goal was to get as many children as possible onto the stage. Rounds of auditions were held for roles requiring no dialogues to speak of. The whole process instilled a sense of pride and the camaraderie was memorable. Every child wrote home stating they were to participate in the play on Founder's Day, and parents would take time to gather from all parts of India to see their off-spring shine forth and perform on stage. Well ... not exactly, since most children would be part of a queen's maids or fairies or some such similar thing, and just stand on the stage long enough for a photo-op.

The point is: it was a major highlight in their lives.

As I grew older, and occupied my status as an aunt, I was invited several times to performances of nieces and nephews. One such performance a decade ago still gives me goose-bumps. My niece, V, was to perform on stage as a Sunflower in her nursery school. Preparations were on at a feverish pace. She would sing and practice religiously everyday. Of course, I was there dressed in my best clothes to watch my dear niece perform.

I stepped back-stage before the program started, and wished her luck, before snaking my way through the crowds to an inconspicuous chair in the rear-end of the auditorium.

This is where things start getting interesting.

We were ready for the "Sunflower Song & Dance". V stepped on stage, and the sunflower field was before us. To state it mildly, V's vocal chords are noticeable even in a noisy bunch of first graders. She stepped on stage, scoured the audience and started singing. All this while, she was combing the audience evidently looking for me - her favourite aunt. She spotted me, stopped singing, pointed at me and waved - "Hi chitthi!"

I have never received a nastier jar in my life. I slowly felt the people farm turn and look at me. I started turning red with embarrassment. I could have done the beetroot song and dance just there but I went with sinking as low as possible into my chair, and prayed for the sunflower dance to be over!

What brings these reminiscences back after all these years you might ask - aah a good question. This time, it is the role of my nephew as a clown in his School play, which I will have to miss on account of living half a moon away from him. Nevertheless, I look forward to the narration of the event with gusto. I received a first account from my sister.

Performing is great fun, and an important part of growing up. That letter opened a flood of memories - all pleasant!

What if people sue?

The other day, I spent time reading a document towards our house purchase - a house inspection report. A bad document. Not only because it is flooded with mundane details, but also because of lack of certainty in every aspect of the report. At the end of reading the document, I can summarize as follows:

1. The water heater looks fine from the exterior. If you really need the water heater tested, please contact a water heater specialist.
2. The air cooler looks fine from the exterior. If you really need the air cooler tested, please contact a air cooler specialist.
3. The floor tiles look fine from the exterior. If you really need the floor tiles inspected, please contact a floor tiles specialist.
4. The gas burner looks fine from the exterior. If you really need the gas burner inspected thoroughly, please contact a gas burner specialist.

You could read the report, but to really understand the report, please contact a specialist report reader.

Underlying issue: What if people sue?

I could be a doctor and say I could check your blood pressure, but if you want to be sure about the sphygmammometer readings, you should go to a sphygmammometer specialist.I could check your temperature and say to be sure please check with the thermometer specialist.
What if I get sued for reading the wrong temperature?

The doctor example was extreme, but I have never left the office of any professional in the USA sure about the statements - caveats and exclusions rule the roost.

I enjoyed my dinner yesterday, but if you want to be sure, you better ask my taste glands.