The Chilli Effect

Green chillies always bear the brunt of a sore person's temper at the food table and rightfully so in my opinion. There are certain cooks and cook's assistants who cut all the vegetables and the chillies in exactly the same dimensions. While I like to see vegetables cut a certain way, there are certain types, especially chillies that I like to see stick out! It is also for this reason, that I don't take endearingly to the chilli hidden in the omelet or the oothappam. That to me is guerilla warfare.
When I am having lunch, you can visualize a person who stuffs food in the opening where usually the mouth resides. One day if my nose were to shift downwards, I would be in a sorry state indeed. I gape at the computer screen, and immerse myself in the mundane-surfing routine that my lunch time allows me to do.
So, you can safely assume that I am not on a chilli-weeding routine while tackling my lunch. I might catch a peek of the dangerous thing if I were expecting it, but the hiding in batter/egg variety freaks me out. One minute, I am stuffing the faithful mouth, and the next I am shooting up from my seat with the green from the chilli and the red from the taste coursing through my veins and bursting forth in pink spurts on my face. My nose inexplicably starts watering and so does my mouth. When the nose and mouth do that, the eye feels the compelling need to keep them company and before you know it, you have liquid leaking from all the open pores in the face. I feel my ears turn beetroot, my tongue refusing to quiet down, my hand reaches for the tissue - one for the eyes and another for the nose, because obviously once can't do for both.
I once read somewhere that drinking hot water quietens your tongue quickly. Nope - now you have the hot water and the burning to deal with! Sugar doesn't help either. And no, I don't think honey with warm water would help. What would? Time perhaps!

PS: I attended my brother's wedding and have blogged some posts on the wedding in my personal blog if interested:

New Year !

As every year goes by, there is a part of me that scoffs on what the big deal is? Another part of me convinces that, new years are a great time to reflect on the past. It is like a water break in running. Especially given the shut downs that we've been having, it gave me extra time to think about what I did last year. Even less reason not to brood over the past.

Well, if I were to summarize on what I did last year (apart from the usual) in a nutshell is that, I did a lot of running. I ran about 1600 miles over the year, racing 4 half-marathons, 2 full maratons and the relay. I did improve with every event, which kind of fed back to itself making me run even more. Not sure if this trend can continue for long, especially, the coming year. But, I am happy with how it went last year. Shoba and I had a wonderful 3 week vacation, or should I say, hibernation... The start-up I worked for got acquired by Cisco. Not that it matters much to me except till next year. I was just running out of stuff to list...If it is less than 3 items, the word list sounded meaningless to me? Oh, and then, I did bungee jumping during our visit to New Zealand. I know I've bored most of you with these facts. But, I am going to repeat it again. My major revelation during our trip to NZ was that, they don't have any native mammals in the entire country. What it means is that, you can walk all over NZ evergreen forests and you will never see any other animal other than sheeps/deers/stoats and possums... No bears/tigers/lions...Interesting, isn't it?

As most people, I do have my list of stuff (aka resolutions) to do for the new year. One of them is to start blogging actively (atleast 1 every week). Blogging, in a way, keeps me tuned to information... As a disclaimer, this has nothing to do with me being part of Cisco... Believe me...:)

Anyway, to start with, I was going to blog something about economy. My inspiration came from an interview in NPR (Forum with Paul Saffo). As I started typing the blog, I went back to listen to the audio archive. As I figured, I wouldn't do any justice whatsoever to the content than the content itself. To give a sneak preview, it is about where we are heading, in terms of economic trends and how factors like global warming, internet revolution, etc., influence it. It was one of the most interesting talk I've heard in a long time. Savor it when you find time. I am sure most of you will love it...

Link to Audio Archive of the interview

Happy New Year Y'all !

If you were a citizen....

Yesterday saw a historic moment in US history and America lived up to its name where any dream can come true. I am sure the global perspective about America will change and the anti American sentiments will tone down.Am I happy? Yes, I guess. I am sure Obama's health care plan will be a big boost, though I am still not sure if it will affect me as he is forgiving to the small industries , but wants the big employers to pay towards the national plan. Will it trickle down and affect my premium? I don't know, but I am OK with contributing to the national plan as I have seen lot of old people( courtesy, my red toe nail support group) suffering with the current health plan. Believe me when I say we are blessed to have an employer-sponsored plan. Yes, it might be getting close to socialism, but I am fine.My taxes will most probably get affected, now, that is something I am not happy about.It is time to wait and watch. All the Indian newspapers are screaming about BPOs and outsourcing . He is sure to take out the tax breaks which all the outsourcing firms were enjoying and if you ask me, that is a big YES!!. I think it was preposterous and ridiculous for the businesses to enjoy such benefits.
Coming to california, there was an important Proposition (Prop 8) for which all the citizens voted last night. For the unaware, Prop 8 is amending the California Constitution, which was passed in May 2008, letting gay couples marry. Unfortunately, after the passing of Prop 8 last night, no one knows what the status of the multitude of gay couples who got married in the past few months, will be. Do they have to remove their wedding bands? Its a pity that the same day when the Californians who elected an african-american as a president, proving that race is no bar , also voted for prop 8 , thereby discriminating people based on sexual orientation. In my opinion, I think gay couples should be allowed to marry. People who are together for years might get some benefits by getting married, especially while filing taxes.And , I firmly believe that Church and State should not be mingled. There were mormons from Utah, who came to Cal , with all their multitude of wives and children in tow,just to campaign for Prop 8. How ludicrous can it get?
If you were a citizen, would you have voted for Prop 8 ?

On a lighter note, whenever I type Obama,MSWord asks for a spell check and tries to replace it with Osama. Obviously, Osama has been popular till now and is definitely going to be ousted by Obama.:-)

Sterotyping

I claim that I hate stereotyping, though I catch myself doing it at times. Frankly speaking, I do get nervous when I pass a couple of black teenagers while going for my walk. And to strengthen my point, once I was teased by a 5 year old and was afraid to retaliate as I was not sure of the protocol, especially when it comes to black kids. It could be interpreted as racism just to admonish the kid… Would the kid have teased me if I were a white woman? Would a white kid have teased me? Will it be considered racist if I shout at the kid? With all these thoughts, I just walked and made sure I ignore him and his friends, just a bunch of 5 yr olds.

A couple of months after joining linear, an engineer from the Singapore plant visited us for some training on a particular tester, of which I was supposed to be an expert and was hired for the same reason. I was sitting at a station debugging some board, when this guy walks over to me and asks about some operator setup. Firstly, I was new to the place and had no clue about what he was asking and secondly, I was not an operator. I looked at him and said that he needs to ask that question to an operator. He just blurted out, “Oh! I thought you were an operator”. Apparently, in Singapore, lots of srilankan and Indian women are operators and he had never seen a female test engineer till then. Go figure!! That was just the beginning. I have been mistaken for an operator a few times ever since just because I am female and it is very rare to find women in my area of expertise. I tend to laugh it off or give some smart-aleck retort, which usually forces them to laugh or blush.

If you watch sitcoms, you can see the Indian stereotyping. Any sitcom based in New York such as “How I met your mother” will see an Indian taxi driver, which can be quite annoying. But a sitcom based in CAL will usually have an Indian doctor or an Indian scientist,aka Raj from “The Big Bang Theory”. I don’t mind the Indian accent though as I think almost 95% of Indians have their Indian-American accent, in slightly different flavors. When watching discovery channel, it looks like we have snake charmers in every nook and corner of India. People are too busy catching snakes for dinner, to be had along with Monkey Brains(thanks to Indiana Jones) while making phone calls to American customers, with a cow standing just outside the door( Have you seen the movie “Outsourced”?)..Just yesterday, a colleague was talking about catching snakes to explain to me about something as if talking about snakes will make me understand it better and no, I am not making this up. When a junior Indian guy joined our team, which was a rarity in our firm, people came up to me and seriously asked if he was my brother, 'coz we look alike you see..:-) I could go on and on..

Talking about the upcoming elections, I am yet to see a single Indian who supports the republican govt. Is it just because of Bush and the Iraq war or is it just because we like to be democrats? Most of the Indians in the bay area will have an increase in tax cut if Obama gets elected. He has given the limit as 250K. Obama always talks about the middle class, well, I can guarantee you that most of the Indian engineers , especially with a two-income household are not middleclass. The average salary for a middle class family in SanJose is 70K. Is it because we associate Democracy with freedom back home , that we like to vote for a democrat , if we were citizens? Yes, Bush can be hated and you can be against the war, but are we stereotyping here?
Be it race, gender, country of origin , government , I think our brain has some association for certain words , which triggers a set of actions. Maybe, that is stereotyping and it may not be easy not to.
Have you ever been stereotyped or have you found yourself stereotyping someone when it was otherwise?

WHY MEN ARE NEVER DEPRESSED

I got this post as an email. Thought it would be better to post it here.


Men Are Just Happier People--
What do you expect from such simple creatures? Your last
name stays put. The garage is all yours. Wedding plans take
care of themselves. Chocolate is just another snack. You can
never be pregnant. You can wear a white T-shirt to a water
park. You can wear NO shirt to a water park. Car mechanics
tell you the truth. The world is your urinal. You never have
to drive to another gas station restroom because this one is
just too icky. You don't have to stop and think of which
way to turn a nut on a bolt. Same work, more pay. Wrinkles
add character. Wedding dress $5000. Tux rental-$100. People
never stare at your chest when you're talking to them.
New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet. One
mood all the time.Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds
flat. You know stuff about tanks. A five-day vacation
requires only one suitcase.. You can open all your own jars.
You get extra credit for the slightest act of
thoughtfulness. If someone forgets to invite you, he or she
can still be your friend. Your underwear is $8.95 for a
three-pack. Three pairs of shoes are more than enough. You
almost never have strap problems in public. You are unable
to see wrinkles in your clothes. Everything on your face
stays its original color. The same hairstyle lasts for
years, maybe decades. You only have to shave your face and
neck. You can play with toys all your life. One wallet and
one pair of shoes -- one color for all seasons. You can wear
shorts no matter how your legs look. You can 'do'
your nails with a pocket knife. You have freedom of choice
concerning growing a mustache. You can do Christmas shopping
for 25 relatives on December 24 in 25 minutes. No wonder men
are happier. Send this to the women who can handle it and to
the men who will enjoy reading it.

Security & Me

I appreciate security. I appreciate the notion that I can go about my business dealings in a secure, risk-free manner.

Nobody can access my Pre-tax savings. I have been accumulating reserves paycheck to paycheck. I sit like a mother hen and imagine it grow. Considering imagination is the only course of action open to me now, it is a pretty good occupation to indulge in. Nobody can access my Pre-tax savings, not even myself.

I have been slacking with reimbursements and claims. As I groggily started my day, I decided to attack all of the 'Pending' items on my to-do list. Transit claims, expense claims - the works. I enter the site with determination. The site believes in security and so do I. It prompts me for a user id and password. Determination slowly turns to trepidation: This is where the trouble usually begins - each one asks for a different userid/password combination. I try to keep the passwords along the same lines, since there are atleast 8 different systems in the company I work in, dealing with different aspects of my life. The problem comes when each system requires me to change my passwords at varied intervals.

System 1 determines changing passwords once every 3 months is good enough, while system 3 wants it to be on a monthly basis. System 2, on the other hand, does not really care whether I change my password or not, as long as it is 32 characters long and has atleast 2 numerals irregularly spaced every 13 characters, and has atleast one special character to boot along with a rather simple requirement that the letters used cannot all be lower-case or upper-case. And it really only asks that you don't start the password with a capital letter.

I finally hit upon something - I appeased all the password Gods and dutifully complied with all the rules. I saved the passwords cryptically in my drafts folder. And for somebody to get to my drafts, they had to plunge into the very depths of my brain, and use advanced data mining techniques for connections and links to mundane details in my life, before they could find the password.

I had the system under control. Till it was determined that keeping one's email for too long is risky business too, and implemented a 30 day rolling deletion policy on email. One fine day, my drafts which contained the goldmine of information was deleted, without a trace of retrieval!

So, here I am enjoying a perfect day mailing random system administrators about my imperfect memory, and requesting system resets. They comply and remind me: I must only remember not to use any of the last 8 passwords I have ever used on the site. Given that I don't remember any of the passwords, is there a way to tell me which are the 8 I previously used, I ask innocently.

On the fallacies of the free market

The economy is in tatters and the markets are crashing! Billions of dollars of wealth (notional I agree) wiped out! The mortgage crisis, bad credit blah blah, greedy investment bankers...history repeats itself. What next? As most of you must have read, congress has voted against the proposed bailout package which could have potentially buoyed the market. As expected investors reacted by hammering the market. The question remains, was it the best decision to block the bailout package?

The credit crisis in recent times has made life tough for the average citizen. Banks are tougher on lending these days and even individuals are feeling the crunch with credit card limits being downgraded as we speak. The economy has slowed down considerably and the labor market is tight. In this backdrop, with lesser jobs and an uncertain future, people stop spending and start saving. When people start saving more the resultant lack of consumer spending hurts producers. When producers start feeling the pinch, they start to cut down on their costs and more layoffs occur. Thus the entire process spins out of control and leads to a depression.

What was the proposed solution to prevent the economy from tanking? Neutralize the credit squeeze in the market by bailing out banks. The government's plan on bailing out banks by removing bad assets might work, because it helps the banks balance sheet to walk out of the red zone. With the bad assets gone, banks are more healthy and can lend with more comfort thus inducing investment which in turn should lead to higher consumer spending. In sum, the idea is to kick start the economy by neutralizing the credit squeeze. In return, when markets bounce back the assets can slowly be removed from the books and the government does not really stand to lose.

Why was the plan rejected? Reports suggest that the citizens are unhappy with the plan, mainly because they think investment bankers were greedy and deserve to be in their current predicament. With elections nearing, it is a risky proposition from a political perspective to side an unpopular vote. Hence, it is but understandable that the vote went against the plan. The question remains: How informed is this opinion?

Agreed it might be a little late in the day to prevent near term depression in the economy, but the bigger question facing us today is how long will this depression last. There are striking similarities between what happened in Japan in the early 90's and the current situation in the US. In the Japanese case the economy tanked and stayed there for nearly 10 years. Will we see a similar recession here? While the opinion of the people is important, is it informed enough? Do they realize that their opposition will come back to bite them over the next few months? Only time will tell!

Tax the Rich ?

Came across this in a forum... Had to blog...:)

Our Tax System Explained: "Bar Stool Economics"

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten
comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go
something like this:

The first four men (The poorest) would pay nothing.

The fifth would pay $1.

The sixth would pay $3.

The seventh would pay $7.

The eighth would pay $12.

The ninth would pay $18.

The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the
arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all
such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily
beer by $20." Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the
first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.

But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they
divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They
realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from
everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up
being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be
fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded
to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).

The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).

The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).

The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).

The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).

The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to
drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare
their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20,"declared the sixth man. He pointed to
the tenth man," but he got $10!" "Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth
man. "I only saved a dollar, too It's unfair that he got ten times more than
I!" "That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back
when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!" "Wait a minute,"
yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The
system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down
and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they
discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of
them for even half of the bill!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how
our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most
benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being
wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start
drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics University of Georgia

Education For Life

I read an article in the Times comparing the number of school days for children in the USA against the number of school days in other countries such as Korea, Japan, china, India, Australia etc. No surprises there - US ranks amongst the lowest in the world. Now thanks to the fuel escalation problems, a few schools are contemplating the move of reducing the week to have more hours per school day for 4 days, and reduce the totals number of school days from 5 to 4 per week. I am not sure I could stop with just outlining a few problems with this approach, but I'll try not to ramble on...

1) Regardless of the number of hours spent in school, children are still left with one whole day apart from the week-end twiddling their thumbs and thinking of "recreational activities". I have my serious doubts whether the studious teenagers would dedicate their unsupervised time and energy to finishing up their homework or additional research.
Holiday Homework
Every vacation, we left school with the familiar brown coloured sheets detailing our holiday homework. The holidays would start, and the holiday homework would find itself buried in my room and mind. In my mind, it would raise its head every now and then reminding me about the unfinished work as the holidays went slipping by. My intentions were good, but there was just not enough time! I had to pick berries, gather materials for our toy-house construction, cycle all over campus, read Enid Blytons and cook up adventures in my mind to solve. Before you knew it, it was the last week, and I was scrambling to complete my holiday homework. Countries may be different, but I am guessing children universally would dilly-dally till the last moment to do any work. I very much doubt that children would spend Friday toiling over their schoolwork while their parents are at work. My guess is it would still be done only on Sunday night afer giving considerable strain to parental nerves!

2) The parents would have to arrange for care for the children on this day. Companies are not giving us 4 day work weeks, they would still expect employees to be present on Fridays.

3) This point is the most jarring one. In a separate study comparing vacation times among US, Britain, Australia, France and Japan, US ranked the lowest. The number of Paid time off in the USA seems to be close to the lowest in the developed world! I am uncomfortable with this. I thought Education and schooling was meant to prepare you for life! This model teaches children to expect a lackadaisical 4 day work week, and then when they start working - BAM! We strap them to their jobs and whip them without a vacation!

Particle Physics and Music

N'Joy