My inner self

Live Together, Die Alone!

2011-02-18T19:16:00.000+01:00

In all the unnecessary discussions I have with my friends, we always have a good point that we agree on. What are we give back to the society? Are we doing enough?

I have always wanted to do something. And I have always wanted to do for Education, because I believe it can solve all the other problems. But was short of ideas on how and how much?. But I think I have some ideas now.

So, here on the occasion of my birthday I hope you will help on the how much part. For every wish I receice I am going to donate some money.

For every Text : 1 Euro (SMS/mail/facebook/etc)
For every Call : 2 Euros
In-Person wish : 3 Euros
and so on.. The more personal the wish, the greater would be the contribution :)

How: There is this awesome NGO called Naandi where they are spending in a lot of energy for the education of rural kids, just like me. I have arranged with them so that all the money will go to one classroom (or one school) so that we can see the direct impact of our contribution.

Also, some of my generous friends have agreed to put some money in this pot and I am trying to raise a total of around 1500 Euros. Please help me reach the goal, either by donating yourself or just wishing me.

Wish me good luck!
Raja

* You can donate directly by going here: http://www.naandi.org/donate.aspx?VerticalID=0&Source=General
Or please leave a comment/mail if you would like to donate together.
** Part of donations may go as gifts to my friends who are also donating to this wonderful cause. Gifts are in the range of 5-10 Euros for donations above 50 Euros.

Sri Lanka

2011-01-06T00:57:00.001+01:00

India and Sri Lanka had defense bilateral talks last week and India offered 1,400 training placements for the Sri Lankan Army.

If I were the President of Sri Lanka, I would definitely not take this offer. So this got me to thinking on what I would do if Sri Lanka were a corporation and I were the CEO* of it. Here are some non-conventional things I would do, apart from doing the best for the people in health, education, infrastructure etc etc.

No Government hiring: The war is over. The country do not such large military now. Stop hiring for government jobs on as many positions as possible. Reduced government spending could be used for other development work.Use the qualified candidates from the military and move them to appropriate government jobs. Rather than doing security training deals with India, do educational deals and give training to the current non-qualified candidates.
Postpone Excellence in Education and Research: Right now the country needs more educated people who will eventually become policy makers and great teachers for next generation. Otherwise excellent students will run away to west. The country needs more it's intelligent people right now than few hundred thousand dollars in remittance money. India is a huge country, it could survive the brain-drain, but Sri Lanka's population is too little to take the risk.
Rather than investing millions in finding a new medicine or the next big thing, prefer MoUs with other developed countries. No need to reinvent the wheel. Damn, there is no need to invent anything!
Piracy and Somalia: For once, Sri Lanka is at a right place at the right moment. All the Chinese, Japanese and other Asian ships destined for Europe pass somewhere close to Sri Lanka. This is a really great business opportunity. Be the next hub for exporting countries. Invest money to buy ships which can provide security to the huge ships carrying goods. Sri Lanka is geographically closest and hence can provide the security, cheapest. In fact, don't take money in exchange for this, but knowledge and other non-mensurable resources from the powerful exporting countries.
Have Double Standards: Seriously, every developing country must have double standards. Give preference to countries and cooperations that are more beneficial. Don't worry about others getting offended, everybody will forget once you are rich and developed. The first time I saw Indian museums charging more (almost 25x) for foreigners, I was upset, but now, 5 years later, it makes perfect sense.
Tourism, Tourism and Tourism: There is a limit to export of agriculture when you have only 65,000 km2 of land. Other industries take a lot of resources to set up and have returns in the long term. Whereas, tourism is the easiest and fastest way to make money . With millions of working Indians just few hundred miles away always looking for a weekend get away, Sri Lanka could be the next destination. Build honeymoon resorts, have flight timings suitable for working class cheaper than what they have for neighboring islands in Andaman Nicobar!

A big photo op! Look at the current Google maps view of Sri Lanka or Google images. They suck. Every tourist searches for these things before making any plan. They need to feel the excitement. Invite nations best photographers and may be some internationals. Nothing speaks more than a nice red sun setting in the ocean. No painting or artificial sketch can match that. This is serious business. While we are on this, invite some brands that make yearly calender with hot-shot photographers and models.
Movies: This is a small point I realized after being in Europe. Every single Indian I know, that comes to Europe visits Switzerland (there was a famous movie in 1990s). People prefer Greece over Croatia (famous song). Thats ridiculous but it happens because of the social acceptance of these places. People like to visit places that they can brag about. Spend some money to invite the directors from Hollywood and Bollywood and give them complete freedom.
Fact: I know at least a couple of thousand working Indians who are making decent money and go for regular vacations. Out of these few thousand, I know a few hundred have already spent more than Rs. 25, 000 (500$) on a single weekend for a party or a vacation. Not a single of them has been to Sri Lanka yet!

Fishing: It seems ridiculous to talk about fishing in this list. But fishing contributes far less to the Sri Lankan GDP when compared to Agriculture, Industry and Services. Again, a small investment in buying huge ships and make it a government business could do wonders. Don't leave this to local fishermen. Government should enter this without effecting the fishermen by fishing in the deep ocean using huge ships. Develop/buy technology so that these fishes can be exported at the latest in the best condition.

*This is to keep it simple, being a elected President complicates everything.

Hey Minister, Save Trees!

2010-12-29T21:38:00.004+01:00

Dear Union minister for Civil Aviation,

While traveling in India recently, I understood that I must have my domestic flight ticket printed on a paper to enter the airports.
Initially, I thought this was a security requirement so that bad elements cannot enter our beloved airports. However, I noticed that anybody can pass this step with a visitors ticket that can be bought only for INR 30. (0.75$ cents). Also, with my little knowledge of computers I can assure you that the required printout at the front gate of airports can be produced with-in 5 minutes. So if bad elements want to enter the airport, they will.

The only conclusion I could reach is, this is done to stop over-crowding airports and only let the passengers inside. I completely agree on this arrangement as I myself know, my entire family comes to drop me at airport every single time, and if allowed they would certainly drop me till the aircraft. (and would not leave till the aircraft is ready to go).

So, my problem with this is the "printout". The airport security were not even willing to look at my smart phone where they could actually read everything. They strictly demanded a printout. I tried to convince security at various Indian domestic airports but had no luck.

According to DGCA, we had 50 million domestic travelers in 2010, which means we cut approximately 8,500 trees to only pass the first step at the airports. (please find the calculation at the end of this letter).

I think there is a real possibility of saving trees. I believe we can fix this.

It would be unreasonable to assume that every traveler will have a smart phone to show the e-tickets at the airport. However, it is equally reasonable to assume that each traveler will have a simple phone*. Can we use the mobile revolution to save some trees? If the aviation ministry can regulate air fare prices, I am certain that, they can also dictate airlines to send a SMS for every booking. I am also attaching a possible format for the said SMS with this letter which contains all the information available in the e-tickets which I used to enter the airports.

The airlines do NOT need the print outs. For them, piece of identity and PNR is more than enough. If this information is enough to enter an aircraft and fly, then why can't this be enough to enter the airport.

Also, this 8,500 trees are the direct saving. There is another few thousand trees/CO2 saved which was spent in making paper from these trees, transportation of these paper and waste management afterwards etc etc.

This small measure will definitely make a big impact and moreover make the Ministry of Environment and the minister, your dear friend, Jairam Ramesh happy :)

I believe we have a real opportunity to lead the world by example!

Yours truly,
An average Indian citizen

* The travelers without phone can of course use print outs. There is no easy way around them.

Suggested SMS Format: (100 characters only)

Name: (40-char-name)
DoT:dd/mm/yy
PNR:123456
ToF:hh:mm
FNo:AL123
ETC:ARL:PoB:PoA

(if-needed the remaining 60 characters can be used for advertisements-VOILA)
DoT: Date of travel
PNR: Unique code used by airlines for a particular travel.
ToF: Time of Flight
FNo: Flight Number
ARL: Airline code
PoB: Port of Boarding code (Example: DEL)
PoA: Port of Arrival Code (Example: MUM)

Calculation for number of trees:

50 million passengers per year.
One A4 sheet weighs 10 grams.

So thats: 50,000,000 * 10 grams = 50,000,000 * 10 / 1,000, 000 tonnes = 500 tonnes
It takes 17** trees to make one tonnes paper so thats: 500 * 17 = 8,500

8500 Trees per year.

Source:
DGCA website: http://www.dgca.gov.in/reports/pass_data.pdf
Number of Trees per tonne: (Everywhere on internet it is almost the same figure) http://www.tappi.org/paperu/all_about_paper/earth_answers/earthanswers_howmuch.pdf

Assumptions:
1. Every traveler will have a A4 sized printout. Honestly, there is no other way. Few will even take more than one copies.
2. Visitor pass prices may vary across India, but they are not a lot. Maximum around Rs. 100 (2$)

The Great Indian Story

2010-12-28T19:40:00.001+01:00

When anybody in the world thinks about India, one of the first thing that comes to their mind is cheap labor. After my month long travel in India, about one thing I am sure is, there ain't any labor available, forget about being cheap.

Skilled and non-skilled people should be available in abundance in a country with population over a billion.

Non-skilled Labor
These are the people working below the poverty line, on minimum wages. Of all the medium-scale industries I visited, every owner has the same problem. They have set up
almost automatic factories and need a very little number of hands to run the factories, but they can't even find those bare minimum hands. The problem is not money. They told me, if you pay them more, they are going to get drunk and not return to work next day. It is a big catch-22 problem with no solution in sight.

Skilled Labor
We have heard stories but multi-national companies complaining about not being able to find enough talent. This could be attributed to the lack of "quality" higher education. We do not have enough high-quality institutes to keep up with the pace of industry consumption of talent. At least this problem has a solution: Open more institutes of excellence.

And The Rest
And here lies the main problem. There is a big chunk of population that are enough educated to decline minimum wages jobs in factories but are not qualified to work in big competitive environments for multi-nationals. They are best suited for specific industries like manufacturing, distribution, textile, petro-chemical etc, where they can develop a particular skill over time and have a happy life thereafter. But the problem is supply is much higher than demand and we will always have these people who are very well capable of achieving great heights but will never get an opportunity.

I wish we find solutions to these problems soon, otherwise the story won't be so great after all.

Facebook photo album view still sucks

2010-12-28T02:30:00.002+01:00

Point:

Give more space to user to showcase his personal albums and less space to photos he is tagged in.

I upgraded today to the latest Facebook profile view to see if they updated the photo album view. Sure they did. But it they could not get over the old thinking.

Finally, my personal albums are on top of the tagged photos of me. Finally. With this change, at least they agree with me that albums are higher "priority" than tagged photos. Then, why are only 6 albums shown on the landing page and an unlimited number of tagged photos.

Let the user show as many albums of him as he wants. (or worst case set an upper limit).

With the new trend of people tagging others in photos that have nothing to do with the tagged friend, but to notice it. It will be a nightmare to scroll through all the photos the user is tagged in. There must be a grouping of these photos.

And, don't even get me started on the links between pages. There are some redundant links and there are some missing links. They should really focus on this: How a user would like to jump around the pages?

New Travel Policy

2010-12-26T20:26:00.005+01:00

It is really disappointing to travel to the most beautiful cities in the world and not being able to enjoy the most because of how we perceive time. A lot of countries (for example in Eastern Europe) set up their time zones not entirely according to the sunrise and sunset times but are influenced by other countries that bring them a lot of business.

After all my travel experience I have discovered a trick:

Adjust your watch such that sunset happens at 7PM.

This works great, especially in winters. For someone like me, who hates to wake up early during vacations, I used to get only 3-4 hours of sunlight. But now I get a lot more sunlight and also escape the tourist crowd at restaurents. In summers, I just get a lot more sleep with this, which is again perfectly fine :)

Try it!

Cities I have visited!

2010-02-28T23:53:00.001+01:00

I list of places I have visited so far.

Mumbai (Bombay), India

Paris, France

Create your own travel map or travel blog

Tale of Two Brothers

2010-01-15T13:31:00.002+01:00

An excellent piece my brother wrote a few days ago about his favorite monsoon story.

My story is a bit different from the usual romantic ones. I remember being in the second standard when it rained heavily in my hometown, Anjad, a small village in MP near Indore. My mother was pregnant and we came to know that she had given birth to a son. I was the second kid in the combined family of three brothers and my happiness knew no bounds. I sat behind my grandpa's Rajdoot and went with him to the
hospital in the torrential downpour. When I reached the hospital room, I was first dried with huge towels by two nurses. Finally I was allowed to hold the baby in my arms.

I can still hear the rain falling in the background and me holding my brother and looking at his tiny face. I absolutely doted on him and pampered him to a great extent. Years later, my brother shifted from a small village’s Hindi medium school to a reputed English medium school. He was facing difficulties in studies and tried to run away from it. I was away from home for my higher education and subsequently
work. I came down from Indore, discussed with parents and brother, tried convincing him and finally took him with me and put him in a good school cum IIT preparation institute in Kota.

After I had him settled in the hostel, I left. I could clearly see the pain and repentance in his face, but held myself strong for the sake of his career. While he looked out from the first floor hostel window, I kept looking at him and leaving while waving to him. Then it rained! I saw the same woebegone, ready to break into tears but conscious of being a guy expression on his face. My tears dissolved in the rains...

I am very pleased to share with you that, today after completing his B. Tech and M. Tech from IIT Mumbai; he has started his career with SAP Labs in Paris (France).

Miss you Bhai.

Aman Ki Asha

2010-01-10T03:23:00.003+01:00

I think there are more rockets planned like the ones this morning. Full report here.

Pakistan wants India to fire back. A little mistake on India's side and they will make a big issue out of this. That is, India is not keeping quite at the border and hence they have to move their forces from Afgan border to the east to avoid any casualties caused due to India.

One thing will lead to another and the final decision would be to get more funding from the US.

An act of provocation. Really. I imagine, there must be huge pressure on Indian army right now to NOT reply back strongly to such attacks.

Incredible India

2009-02-12T21:20:00.002+01:00

So the other day I was in a cafe with some french friends (watching BBC news) and this ad showed up. After about 30 seconds I said (pr)loudly INDIA, and few of them were ready to bet some serious money that it was some "world tour" ad.

Really, really a wonderful ad. The directors cut below is even more better:

Jai Hind!

Thought of the day

2008-03-01T11:02:00.002+01:00

Nothing comes for free, and in case if it does either it'll be too late.. or too lame :)

Cheers!

PS: just said it to a friend, so some rights reserved :)

You Know You're Old When...

2007-09-27T12:56:00.001+02:00

Inspired by Guy Kawasaki's post on his 53rd birthday. Remember Guy, you're still 50, you're just looking at it from a different angle ...

From: RowanManahan, SlideShare

Orkut: The Road Ahead

2007-09-26T08:08:00.000+02:00

The new look-and-feel of Orkut is not at all appealing, not just to me but to everyone I talked to about this since the change. When all their competitors are coming up with new features everyday, all they could do was to put more colors wherever possible (and brighten the already used colors making it even worse). On this occasion I thought of writing what all I miss on Orkut:

1) Search in scrapbook: There is no doubt that the highest % of time spent on Orkut is spent on scrapping friends and other "wanna be friends". This is clearly led to exchange of information over scraps and where there is information, it needs a search tool. Though I think allowing searching through others scrapbook will be a security threat but searching on own scrapbook will be a real treat.

2) More number of Photos: Why in the world have they limited the no. of photos to 12? With Googles resources in place, there can't be a problem in terms of digital space available to them. When facebook is recording huge no. of images to be uploaded and MySpace buying photo sharing platform Photobucket, this is surely a big drawback. Also, I see a lot of "New pics uploaded" screen names, clearly indicating how much time we spend on checking others snaps. For me, this is the second highest activity I spend my time on (first is of course, scrapping).

3) Fan: Its too much trouble to become someones fan. Suppose I'm visiting a friends profile and I want to become his fan. The only way I can do this, go back to my profile, go to manage friends and then search him and then become his fan. (And with people changing their display names its tough to find, on a no. of occasions I couldn't :( )

Why can't there be a marking area in each of my friends profile? Simple? Isn't it?

Since past three years, when I joined Orkut, I haven't seen many big feature additions. A small poll app, or a blog or a change in their news section won't will make the road ahead tough and tough.

4) Messages: The most important of all the messaging in Orkut is almost useless due to the unlimited SPAM. I've seen a number of other sites where messaging is the strongest means of communication and I hardly read my messages on Orkut. This seriously needs to be revamped. Everything about it sucks as of now.

5) Communities: Many surveys have shown in past than most of the users (including me) have joined communities just show their interests/attributes and very few are actually active on them. Tagging would have done this for me. They seriously need to think some way to make it more useful.

India Aha...

2007-09-13T07:53:00.000+02:00

Interesting pics.

Cheers!

Living room of the Future from the 1970s

2007-09-12T09:12:00.000+02:00

The one thing which really caught my eye was:
Television is changing from a box to stare at into a two-way tool.

(Un)Surprisingly, this was predicted in the 70s. Image source.

This post is a part of an experiment.

How Projects Really Truly Work

2007-09-11T08:10:00.000+02:00

The truth of most of our lives :)

Cheers!

Google Vs Facebook

2007-09-10T13:17:00.000+02:00

Facebook: These guys know everything you are okay with telling your closest friends.

Google: These guys know your dirtiest secrets.

By Sam.

See You Soon, may be.

2007-09-04T15:17:00.000+02:00

Not long ago, during the college placements, while interviewing for a company one of my friends cleared all the tough initial rounds and was just left with a HR interview.

When we came out after the HR interview, he couldn't believe he didn't get the job. On asking, he explained to us what happened. (He actually didn't know why he didn't get the job). The "relevant" part of the interview:

HR: Why do you want to work for Sybase and not Googles/Yahoos/Microsofts?
Friend (Being completely honest): Actually sir I tried, but couldn't clear their interviews.
HR: OK, fair enough. But why not Oracle?
Friend: Actually sir, I don't want to work for a database company.

HR started laughing and I suspect he must have told him: See you soon, may be.

Those of you, who still don't know why he didn't get a job: Sybase is "actually" a Database company.

Best Wishes :)

Beauty + Brains = Constant

2007-09-04T12:35:00.000+02:00

Watching the following video made me realize how much I've missed being in a institute with YouTube banned. Sigh!

Q: Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the United States on a world map. Who do you think this is?

A: I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as in, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq and everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.

Chhor-Police

2007-09-04T12:31:00.000+02:00

Policemen: Tum kiske aadmi ho?
Chhor: Sahab meri to shadi bhi nahin hui hai ab tak.

:)

Thought of the Day

2007-09-04T08:25:00.000+02:00

Grow your kids like Serena and Venus Williams of 2002, who meet in finals of all the events they participate in. And never ever differentiate between the two.

Still far from parenthood, just happen to have this thought after meeting an aunty with cute twins :)

I'm losing faith in the system.. whatever small I had...

2007-08-31T13:43:00.000+02:00

We run court cases for 14 years, convict the criminals and then set them free in few days. Yes, I know the media will have once again have an happening day when Dutt Sahab once again goes back to jail but the reason for which he is out is simply ridiculous.

Today another celeb got bail. I don't know if they committed the crime or not. But if they were in there that means there was something they did wrong. Why does declaring someone guilty takes years and getting a bail takes just a few days? I'm not advocating to forcefully make getting bail a longer term but can't be make some effort to shorter the time it takes to solve a case.

With Sibhu Soren acquitted just because “the prosecution has miserably failed in bringing home the charges against the accused persons.” I feel sad. Still media would put their effort in finding out whether Sanju Babu has visited toilet since morning or not than to cover Hyderabad blasts.

I feel so insecure.

I believe this to be the title of the post.

2007-07-28T22:43:00.001+02:00

This is a test post from my email account. Lets see if this gets posted on my blog.

Finding Nimmo

2007-06-25T01:06:00.000+02:00

A friend of mine who is 30 touching but in his words still most eligible bachelor in his colony has lately developed a strange habit. Whenever he sees a temple (and is difficult to reach), the first expression from him is:
Chalo yaar madir chalkar, "sawa rupee" ka parsad chadate hai. Bhagwanji se ek "hot babe" ki request karni hai.
[Lets go to the temple and make our offerings to god with 1.25 Rs and ask for a hot babe]

I could not resist myself long enough and had to tell him this one day:
Aree "sawa rupee" mein hot babe to chhod, hot babe ka wallpaper bhi nahin de payenge tere bhagwanji.
[U can't even get a wallpaper of hot-babe in 1.25 Rs]

I wish him best of luck in his search of Nimmo :)

Title credits: Thakkar.

Mostly harmless!

2006-08-03T23:03:00.000+02:00

hmmm so sem has started and hence the classes, but not much work to do and hence the blog. After attending few of the lectures on a *hot* topic (class full of students with no place left to get seated, implied!), I've made few observations. Basically, the course is on Data mining and we are thaught to classify the data, typically that means catagorize the data, run some programs and build some useful reports in the end. So, here is the outcome of my first *academic* report, classifying the students in a typical class:

1) Gimme more: These are students who want to learn. They don't care about anything else in the world all they want is to learn ann learn. They have an unmatch ability to ask doubts at any point in time, most of which being around the end of lecture, extending an hour lecture to overflow by 10-15 mins. I've never seen them getting good grades, but yes they certainly can talk about anything under the roof.

2) Is it under exam syallabus: All they want is good grades. Watever be the course, whosoever be the prof. , all they want is 10/10. I don't know why such people exsist but yah they are surely a way for others to pass to course, as most of ppl under this section make good notes.

3) Proxy Guys: U won't see them much as they have a nice friend who will sign on attendence sheet for them. Good!! at least they are not troubling others. Have fun.

4) ... and then I see a totally different class of people (sadly very few ppl fall under this category). These ppl are the last to-be-harmful guys. They might attend classes but surely won't ask doubts. They might do some work, but most definetly they will do just the minimal to pass the course.

Cheers!

[Title credits: Gera]