SfericalCube

A room, a road, a rocket and a road trip to remember

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 03:13:00 +0000

A few days before Christmas 2021, I packed my car, made a rough plan and left home for a solo road trip. Over the next 10 days, I'd end up driving 2469 miles (3973 km) through 10 states and having one of the best road trips of my life. One sees a lot of things on a trip that long. But this post is not going to be a detailed account of the whole trip (although do hit me up if you want the deets). Instead, I want to share three of the places I visited and what I saw there - a room, a road and a rocket- and the thoughts and emotions they stirred in me.

THE ROOM

In Philadelphia, I saw a room, The room where it happened. In this room, in 1776, the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, thus creating the United States of America. As if that wasn't claim to fame enough for a room, 11 years later, after having won the American Revolutionary War against the British Empire, some of them returned to the same room to debate, frame and ratify the Constitution of the United States.

If one considers the USA as a startup, this would be the proverbial Garage where it was born. One does not think of a country as a startup. And yet, at that moment in history, that's exactly what America was- A mere idea in the minds of a few individuals, an opinion about what they ought to be, and a whole lot of uncertainty on how it would all pan out. Seeing how small this room was, and reading about the people that met there and the events that transpired there, I understood just how precarious it all was then. It is said that after the Constitution was ratified, when Benjamin Franklin came out of the room and was asked by a woman what kind of government the delegates had given them, he answered "A Republic, if you can keep it". At that point of time, the United States was a bunch of delegates from 13 colonies, all located on the east coast of today's US, deciding they were no longer going to be British subjects. Over time, the leaders , through wars, treaties and actively promoting exploration and settlement, would expand westwards and grow the country geographically, economically, politically and socially into the superpower we know today. Being in the room, one wonders whether the people that inhabited that room once had any inkling that the system and the Constitution they were debating would serve so well as the blue print for a powerful nation. And yet, their work has had an impact far beyond their own lifetimes, continuing to shape our world today.

Nearby is also the room that served as the first house of the US Congress while the Capitol Building in Washington DC (and indeed the city) was still being built. Later on in the trip, I would visit DC and see the magnificent buildings that serve as the symbols of the American Government today. Seeing both the past and the present of the US political system in one trip made me think about nations and societies like I had never done before.

--x--

THE ROAD

The Blue Ridge Parkway, is a 469 mile (755 KM) long stretch of road that snakes through the Appalachian mountains through rural Virginia and and North Carolina, connecting the Shenandoah National Park to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The drive itself is beautiful. The road meanders through lush forests, bucolic meadows, has some gorgeous views of the valleys below and passes by some lovely towns and villages. All along the road, are preserved/recreated homesteads from the early 1800s, when European settlers and their descendants tried to establish a livelihood in the Appalachian mountains. Purely as a road trip, this is one gorgeous stretch of road to drive on. There is a reason this is the most visited National Park in United states.

Driving down this road, it's easy to think about it as just another road that has always existed or is somehow, natural. But when you dig into the history of this road and how it came to be, you realize that like all the best products that feel natural and obvious, this road is the end result of some extremely meticulous design, planning and execution as well as intense politicking for and against the road. The entire stretch was deliberately conceived and purpose-built to be a scenic byway, specifically to bring in jobs and visitors to the rural Appalachian region during the Great Depression in the 1930s. The road took over 50 years to finish!

The design details of the parkway are fascinating. As an example of the painstaking attention to detail, look at the wooden fence in the above picture. Looks like any other fence you'd find in the countryside. But this isn't a fence built by some country farmer. The designers of the road took pains to research the kind of fences that would have existed here in the 1800s and created fence standards that were used to design all the fences along the road! The same level of care informed the design of bridges, tunnels and other facilities along the road.

Early brainstorming on this road had proposed golf courses, amusement parks and other modern recreation facilities along this road. But the decision makers were able to advocate for and push through a vision of the road that showed off the natural beauty of the region and stuck with a version of the road that the chief designer of the road, Stanley Abbott described as "One Panorama following right on another". The result is a road that delights the soul, even though most people passing through it might never understand the efforts that went into this masterpiece.

--x--

THE ROCKET

If one is asked to make a list of humanity's crowning achievements, the act of landing a human on the moon is right up there. It remains a singular achievement, unsurpassed in its audacity, complexity and sheer scale as a mission. Thousands of scientists and engineers owe their careers to the inspiration that this act ignited in them. So ever since I learned that there was a museum where I could go see the rocket that took humans to the Moon, Huntsville, Alabama has been on my list of places to visit.

I had heard a lot of things about just how big the Saturn V rocket is-36 Storey building tall, 2.4 Statues of Liberty tall. But trust me, no picture does it justice. It's humongous.

The US Rocket and Space Center is as close as you can get to a shrine to the Apollo program. The museum has some fantastic exhibits, showing the absolute nitty gritty of the program. Each layer that you dig deeper into the program, you are left aghast by the sheer complexity of each sub system of the whole thing. Most people usually appreciate the moment where Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. But the complex dance of things that had to happen right from the moment that the rocket left the earth, to the point where the Astronauts splashed back into the ocean, each step is absolutely incredible and an achievement in its own right. When President John F. Kennedy announced in 1961 that US must land a human on moon before the end of the decade, we understood very little about how long humans could live in space, what a journey to the moon would entail, or if we could dock and undock spacecrafts in space. What the engineers were able to achieve within that decade, without the kind of tools we have at our disposal today, is nothing short of miraculous. Over 400000 engineers, scientists and technicians are said to have worked on the program. The scale of it all boggles the mind. (If you are interested in all the things humans had to figure out before they got to the moon, this is a fantastic video about it)

But equally important is the human story behind the Apollo mission. Before the 1950s, the city of Huntsville called itself the Water Cress capital of world. But in the 1950s, the US Govt moved a group of about 200 German Rocket scientists and engineers to the town to work on rockets and missiles for the US Armed forces. These Germans, in a previous a lifetime, had developed rockets for Nazi Germany and were transferred to the US, almost as prisoners of war, to keep them out of Soviet hands after World War II. This group would prove to be the cornerstone of America's rocketry and space program and turned Huntsville into the Rocket City of America. In 1958, the govt set up the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, the NASA center that would go on to be responsible for the whole of Apollo Program. Wernher Von Braun, an ex-Nazi SS party member, was named the first Director.

--x--

So those are the three places I wanted to share. On the surface level, the three seem very different. But there is a common underlying theme to all of them. All of them, started as very simple-to-understand visions- A country rooted in liberty, a scenic road through mountains and a goal to land humans on moon. Yet, all three represent exceedingly complex endeavors when you drill down into the details. Despite the complexity though, all of them were brought to life, thanks to the unyielding passion of some very strong individuals and the hardwork, tenacity of the many thousands that they led. And all of them, left behind products that far outlived their makers and served as the platform for future endeavors to be built upon.

The audacity and collective, societal ambitions that these represent are inspiring, to say the least. In our day to day lives, it's far too easy to be surrounded by people who are either too bogged down by their lives to be ambitious, or whose ambition is limited to job titles and monetary gains. So it was great to be reminded that there are bigger ambitions to aspire to, that the things we work on can far outlive us and have impacts that are bigger than us. And it was a reminder to be thankful for those who came before us and left behind things we benefit from today. They say travel expands your mind. For me, this trip most certainly did.

What's in a place?

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Mon, 23 Aug 2021 00:16:00 +0000

Back in 2014, towards the end of my first year in US, I went on a pilgrimage to the mecca of any self-respecting technophile- ✨Silicon Valley✨. After all, this was the place I had heard about all my life, this mythical birthplace of Apple, Google, Intel and so many other companies whose products we all use and love. Amongst other things, I walked the streets of Palo Alto in search of one particular place. I was looking for a garage.

The Garage where it all started- the HP Garage

From the outside, this garage was absolutely no different from the hundreds of other garages I had passed by on my walk. If it wasn't for the plaque outside, I wouldn't even know that this was it- The Birthplace of Silicon Valley. In this very Garage in 1938, Hewlett and Packard started their eponymous company, thus marking the start of a technology revolution that we are still living in to this day. And yet. when I finally found it, I was almost disappointed by how ordinary it looked.

This was a pattern that would repeat for me all over silicon valley in that visit. Be it Apple's HQ in Cupertino, Google's HQ in Mountain View or the hundreds of other offices I passed by were all remarkably, ordinary. Don't get me wrong, they were nice offices. But not so unlike nice offices anywhere else in the world.

Apple's old HQ at 1 Infinite Loop

Over the years, I would go on to visit a lot more places that I had grown up reverently watching on TV as a kid in India. The buildings of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, MIT's campus near Boston, Boeing/Amazon/Starbucks offices in Seattle and so many others.

It was a similar feeling when I started working at Ford Motor Company. Here was an office space that for 60+ years had witnessed the decisions that had shaped a global automotive empire and seen the birth of iconic name plates like Ford Mustang, Bronco and the GT. And yet, working in that space, you wouldn't know there was anything remarkable about the building.

In hindsight, I don't know what I expected to see instead. They were all just buildings after all. But I think somewhere deep down within me, as a kid growing up on the other side of the world, my imagination had imbued these places and their accompanying physical resources with mythical qualities. "There must be something about these places", I told myself, "that leads to them creating the kind of amazing work they do". Clearly, the answer wasn't the buildings (duh).

So what does explain the extraordinary work that comes out of these places? In my limited experience- a network of amazing people (otherwise called an ecosystem) and pure hubris. Let me explain.

Every one of these places represent a concentration of smart people. The reasons why they concentrate vary- some are brought together by employers, some meet at a university, some start off as creative people start co-living in an area due to presence of major employers in the area. Silicon Valley, for example, started off when NASA Ames research center brought together a lot of high-tech talent to the valley and then Stanford university acted as a precipitating agent. However it happens, a concentration of a lot of smart people seems to be the pre-condition to creating great work.

But smart people by themselves are not enough. After all, there is no dearth of smart people in the world. What I do believe is far rarer is the second factor- supreme self belief to the point of hubris.

I truly believe a large part of why these institutions end up changing the world is they truly believe they are the ones to do it. American exceptionalism is often vacuous and unjustified but when it comes to entrepreneurship and bleeding edge endeavors, it manifests itself as a self-fulfilling prophecy. How these institutions instill such self-belief in their organizations is more of an art than an exact science. Leadership, history, external factors all play a role. But you need your people to internalize the feeling of "If not us, then who?".

There is nothing surprising about either of these. They almost seem obvious. But for me, I had to viscerally feel these in-person to know they were the magic ingredients. The institutions I had grown up with always had an internalized inferiority complex that explained away the successes of others. But it's only when you stop giving yourself an excuse for your mediocrity that you can begin to work towards greatness.

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”- Steve Jobs

Stop celebrating Jugaad!

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Thu, 24 Dec 2020 17:56:00 +0000

A few months ago, I learned the hard way that water is HEAVY. For those who have never gone backpacking before, water is likely to be one of the heaviest weights you'll carry on the trail, and yet it's not something you can skimp on. As such, solutions that allow you to carry less of it but readily filter water from available sources on the trail instead are vital for backpackers. I went to REI's website to see what solutions were available out there. I was blown away by the sheer diversity of options available.

Some of the Portable Water filters on REI's website

There were literally pages upon pages of solutions of all types, across price ranges, weights and capabilities, all of them trying to solve one, simple problem-How do you filter water on-the-go.

This is not a one-off experience either. In my last few years in the US, I've seen similar abundance of well designed options available for solving all sorts of tiny problems, from kitchen tools, to machine shop jigs and fixtures , heck, 3M even makes a few dozen types of sticky notes! Who knew there were so many ways to sell paper with glue!

It gets better. When you dig into the companies that make a lot of these products, you'd be surprised how many of them are either made by small mom-and-pop operations or started as tiny independent operations that grew big. The origin story for a lot them goes something like this-- Ms. Stacy once encountered problem X. The options in the market weren't exactly what she was looking for, so she put together a prototype of product Y for herself. When her friends saw her use it, they asked her to make one for them too and offered to pay for it. Stacey realized there might be a market for this. So Stacey went into production and now the product is a sustainable business.

I've lost count how many such stories I've read in the last few years, about western companies that have taken this path. And yet, when I try to think about similar product companies coming out of India, I often come up short. There are a lot of reasons why you don't see as many Prototype-to-Production-to-Consumer-brand success stories in India as you do in the US. Disposable income, ecosystem, infrastructure all play a role. But I'd argue at least a part of it is our romanticization, nay valorization, of Jugaad.

For the uninitiated, 'Jugaad' is the colloquial Indian term for the spirit of coming up with frugal and inventive solutions to life's problems. Often marked by duct-tape solutions, it's an oft-celebrated matter of national pride, so much so that even people who ought to know better are often seen celebrating the spirit. I'm a fan of clever hacks as much as anyone else, and there is value in low fidelity prototyping of ideas, but I think we've taken this national pride a bit too far. Far from treating it as an intermediate step to a better solution, we've come to see the Jugaadu solution as a logical end point.

I think the Jugaad mentality harms us on both sides of the equation-both as Inventors and as buyers.

It's not that we don't have inventors that come up with clever solutions. We've all read stories like that of the girl who invented the pedal powered washing machine. You see such stories in news, on facebook, through WhatsApp videos. And yet, most of these only ever exist as one-off prototypes. So many of our Inventors are content with just fixing the problem for themselves that they never go down the path of maybe productizing their invention, even though every person around them might be facing the exact same problem.

On the flip side, as would-be buyers, we take so much pride in the half-solutions we invent that even for individuals that could afford to do it, paying for a professional solution that actually fixes our problem well is often the solution of last resort. We are reluctant buyers.

This unwillingness to productize or pay and instead settle for half-solutions harms us at a societal level in insidious ways.

For one, our problems are half-solved, or solved temporarily, or inelegantly, or even dangerously.

Two, it dissuades potential inventors from coming up with good, market-worthy solutions. After all, if people aren't willing to pay you for solving their problems, why would anyone go through all the pain that goes in product development? Repeat this a few thousand times and we pay the price of not having a vibrant product economy. Once you begin to see lost product opportunity squandered with half-fixes, you see it everywhere. You'll see it in ugly blue tarpaulin sheets covering windows and roofs in the rainy season, instead of designing better windows and roofs. You'll see it in haphazardly hung bulbs wherever someone needs more light in the house, instead of getting a good lamp in place.

Third, this society-wide tendency to be OK with good-enough solutions comes at a very real cost to holistic system-level thinking and aesthetic sensibilities. This is far from trivial. Chaotic surroundings breed more chaos. Good solutions to small problems compound over societal scales to form a well functioning society.

Fourth, I do think it manifests as our general unwillingness as a society to value our time and consequently pay for products that save our time. Optimizing for money takes precedence over optimizing for value.

Look, I'm not immune to this myself. A lifetime of conditioning makes me default to not spending money money as the first option too. There's also the minimalist in me that hates owning more things. But over time, I have become more and more conscious of the value in paying for thoughtfully designed products that solve real problems for me.

Going Home from Home

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Sun, 17 May 2020 13:09:00 +0000

Aji's home in Ponguinim, Goa (photo by @sanimastudent)

I left Goa to come to the US in 2013. Since then, about once a year or so, I go through a predictable sequence of emotions. The month before the flight is full of expectations and dreamy eyed longings for the Goa of my memories. A relaxed Goa, a Goa with warm lazy summers and dreamy rains and secluded Beaches, of narrow coconut tree lined country roads and one full of people I love and who love me back. An idea of Goa that's probably even better than any reality that ever existed because what you miss is an amalgamation of all your fondest memories safely distanced physically and temporally from their mundane parts.

The first week back is always, always harrowing, as you try to reconcile the home you longed for with the home that changed while you were gone. The feeling of being a visitor is hidden in the small reminders. You feel it when you hesitate a moment thinking about where the button for the fan is. When you no longer remember the keychain that has the keys to your house. You feel it when your parents laugh gregariously with neighbors you don't yet know. And then come the kids. The goddamn kids. They seem to grow in steps - wittier and cuter then you last remembered them, reminding you that you have been gone for a while.

Goa is changing fast. When you live in a place, you have the luxury of seeing it change gradually. When you visit it once a year, the change hits you hard. It's not that I resent it. I understand Goa has to change so it can be a home of opportunities for generations that follow. I liken it to talking to the girl you once loved and knew everything about, only to find her life has changed in ways you know nothing about. You knew her intimately once- every little quirk, likes, dislikes, oddities included. But now when you talk to her, you are grasping to find that person you once knew, all the while knowing both she and you have changed over the years. That person is still in there somewhere but the idea that you don't know them as intimately anymore is somewhat disconcerting. That's what the first week back home feels like.

After a few days though, the feeling of being a visitor disappears. It's nice to be among your people again. Nice to be loved, nice to be over-fed, nice to attend inane family rituals you once hated, if only to indulge in a part of your past. It's nice to zip around on your bike, happy that you still remember those back roads. It's just nice knowing you still belong, even after all that time away.

And then, just like that, it's time to go back. But far from being sad, the journey back is equally full of anticipation. As I come back to my apartment in US, I also feel that feeling of being home. And that's when I remember I'm are lucky enough to have two homes.

I am lucky that both these places feel like home. But they feel like home for different reasons. One is the place where I was born and grew up. A place of my family and friends and a place I can always count on. A place I feel a deep sense of gratitude, belonging and obligation to.

The other is a place where I grew up, mentally and emotionally. US has been an adventure, with deep lows and incredible highs. This is where I have faced my worst demons and met best of friends. This is the place where I have discovered my values, found out what I'm willing and not willing to do.

You read often that moving away from home, to a foreign country if you are so privileged but just away in general, opens one's mind. I feel like I now know why. Growing up in a place, you accept things you've been told while growing up as inevitable. There is a rhythm to life that you just go through passively because that's how it's always been. You go to the temple or church on a day of the week, attend all the festivals and rituals through the year like clockwork, eat what your mom always cooked and go through the regiment your parents came up with. With everyone around you repeating the same dogma, reinforcing the same opinions, you never truly have the opportunity to reconsider your opinions.

Moving away from, few of those constraints remain. In that gap between leaving your motherland and settling into the rhythms of your new place, you are in this wonderful zone of self-discovery where everything you are doing is a choice. There are no family commitments and your life is a clean slate that you get to populate exactly how you want it. That is why the world I have created for myself in US feels like home. My apartment here, in all its sparseness, is a reflection of what I am. The solitude it offers me gives me the time and space to reflect on a lot of things. For that, I'm thankful.

The idea of Home is a weird thing. They are way more than just shelter or a protection from elements. There is a psychological element to having a place you call home. It's a place that makes you feel safe, even if it's just an illusion. A place where you feel you can let your guard down. A place to reset yourself at the end of the day. Maybe this is why being away from home, even if you are in a secured place, feels so exhausting after a while and you long to go home. Maybe this is why India is currently seeing a terrible migrant crisis, with families and individuals choosing to walk hundreds of kilometers just to be back home. In the last few weeks, as we all have hunkered down in our homes, I definitely feel fortunate to have two places I get to call home.

COVID19 Chronicles

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 01:47:00 +0000

Every once in a while, I find myself reading my old posts on this blog. Often, it feels like I'm reading something written by a completely different person. But each time, it takes me back to that phase of my life. In that sense, this blog has been a personal time capsule of sorts. So it's only natural that I especially want to document this extra-ordinary time that we are all living through with the COVID19 Pandemic. I wanted to write down what I'm feeling right now because I want to look back on this phase.

So, how am I feeling right now? Last few months have felt like I'm standing on a beach, along with every other person in US. In January, we heard the crack of an earthquake on a distant island far off our coast. We heard it alright, we wished well for the people on that island but we largely told ourselves we had nothing to worry about. The tsunami soon started building up, the waters on our shore started receding. Some people even warned us about it, but we mostly paid no heed. Then in March, the wave hit our shore. We STILL did not fully grasp what was about to come. And now, as I write this on March 28th, 2020, the wave has torn through vast swathes of our land. We don't know when the waters will recede again, we don't know what it will leave in its wake. We are all hoping we'll stay afloat and survive this. That's what I feel like.

Last few weeks have made me reflect a lot. First and foremost, I feel tremendously privileged. To be able to even look at all of this through an academic interest, without feeling any existential dread in my heart, is a huge privilege. I feel privileged my family is back home together, in a stable part of India, with resources and family close-by if they need help. I feel privileged to be able to watch this unfold from the comfortable confines of a cozy apartment, with a fridge full of food. I feel lucky to have a job that allows me to work from home. I feel lucky to have a job, Period. I feel lucky I don't have obligations or responsibilities that keep me awake at night, if things were to go south. I feel lucky I'm not in the vulnerable age bracket, and that if I do get sick, lack of medical insurance will not be one of my worries. Most people going through this don't have these privileges.

Next, I feel astounded. Astounded at just how fast this has unfolded. When March started, it felt like an ordinary month in every way. There were less than 100 confirmed cases in US, it looked like the authorities had things under control, the markets were climbing new heights and a virus was not on most people's minds. A week later, things were very different. I had never maintained a daily journal but on Monday, 9th March, I started one. In the first entry, I wrote "Times feel extra-ordinary". The case count in US was 647 then. By Friday that week, on 13th March, we were told to work from home indefinitely till things improved. By Monday, 16th March, Michigan announced that all public places like Restaurants, pubs, schools, universities would be closed. By 23rd March, all non essential businesses were ordered to be shut down for in-person work. It's as if each week was a different lifetime. As I write this, the number of cases in US exceeded 100000. At the start of March, layoffs were not even remotely on my mind. As of today, 3 people I know have lost their jobs, along with 3 million people who filed for unemployment insurance in US as of last week. The pace of change in our society, our businesses, and our lives has been nothing I ever thought possible.

US COVID19 Cases till march 27th 2020 (source: US CDC)

I also feel curious. I had only read about cataclysmic events before. Growing up in Goa, India, with both parents in stable jobs, I had never really felt any direct impact from any of the defining moments in my lifetime like the dot com boom/bust, 9/11 or the Great Recession of 2008. Over the years, as I read about these events and how it changed people's lives, I asked myself what I would do were I to be impacted by such events. Now I get to find out. The curiosity is on two fronts- as an investor and as a curious observer of society.

As an investor, this COVID19 pandemic is a unique opportunity for me. I'm invested enough in the markets now that I feel the heat from the current market volatility, but have the comfort of knowing that I have the time and freedom to wait this phase out as. So this has been a unique opportunity to try out the various investment philosophies as well as learning more about my own internal thought processes, my risk tolerance and my judgement. It's too soon to tell whether I made the right calls in this drop. As an investor, this has been a heck of a ride. The markets touched record highs as recently as mid-February 2020. At its peak in feb, the S&P500 was up nearly 30% in the last year. Since then, it has dropped precipitously, going back to the level it was 3 years ago in 2017. March has been full of headlines about the market breaking new records both in terms of the falls and the recoveries. There is just so much unknown at this point- When will this end? Which companies will survive this? Will the consumer behavior go back to what it was before? Or will this change be more plastic? How low will the market go? When do I buy more stock? When will the market recover? Will it even recover? Which companies do I Invest in? I don't know the answers to any of this and there's so much learning to do about each of those answers.

I also feel curious about the societal response to all of this too. I have read often that as tribal creatures, humans crave authority figures. Most of us need to be told what to do. There's comfort in instruction, in not having to make life-or-death decisions. Consequently, most do what their leaders tell them to do, without putting too much thought into what's right for their own good. The govts. of different countries have reacted very differently to this crisis and yet, for the most part, the citizenry of each country has mostly complied with the instructions given by their specific govt, and not what's necessarily best for them. They locked down when their govts told them it was harmful to go out, not before. They believe the WHO and CDC when it tells them they don't need a mask. They take the 6ft distance guideline for social distancing as an article of faith because that's the number the experts told them to abide by. It's a remarkable exhibit of how we perceive authority and expertise. We want to believe our leaders are competent, that they know what needs to be done.

Much ink has been spilled writing about how true leadership shines in moments of crisis. This one is the mother of all crisis. This crisis has revealed both the best and the worst of our leaders. I'm in awe of the enormity of decisions this crisis will force upon various leaders. As Aaron Levie tweeted below, this is a tremendous test of leadership for all institutions, large and small, as well as their leaders. Many won't make it through this.

Some companies have had to deal with a global crisis, a macro economic meltdown, distributed and remote teams, and pivoting an entire corporate strategy on a dime. But no one has done this all at once. Now *every* startup has to.

— Aaron Levie (@levie) March 28, 2020

This experience has also made me think, really think, about how fragile our modern society is. We take it as an article of faith that our society just works. We don't think much behind the elaborate choreography of our world that makes possible our modern lifestyles and what happens when the music stops. This collective pause in our societies has brought this choreography into stark relief. As I write this, my hometown in India is under a complete lockdown, with people struggling to get their daily supplies, because so much of it comes from other states. Migrant workers in India's cities are walking hundreds of Kilometers to their villages because their survival in the city was precariously contingent on them having daily work. Hospitals in US are struggling with masks and PPEs because the country long ago 'optimized' their production capabilities out of this country. It all worked in good times, till it didn't.

I admit, I feel concerned. The health effects of this crisis are no doubt lethal. But I feel a lot more concerned about the economic effects of this crisis, as I expect that to be far more pervasive. We have never paused our societies for long periods before, certainly not over most of the world all at once. Economists are already expecting the unemployment and GDP hit from this event to far exceed anything most of us have lived through. For now, most also expect this to be short lived. But will it? Will the recovery lift all countries equally? Many are also predicting this will be the death knell of globalization, of unrestricted movements of goods and people across at least some borders. The 2008 crisis and the lack of punitive actions then had greatly fueled latent resentment amongst the general public in US. Will the fallout of this pandemic push them over the brink? The Indian economy was also on the verge of an economic slowdown even before this crisis. What will this do to that slowdown?

I want to believe we will come out of this a better society. I'm seeing increasingly large number of people understanding, truly, viscerally understanding why healthcare insurance should not be tied to one's job. I hope this sparks discussions about the need for a better safety net for the less fortunate amongst us. I hope we will be more deliberate about our supply chains, about the importance of the 'unskilled' workers in our lives. To the more fortunate amongst us, this pause feels like a welcome breather; a chance to slow down, reflect, and put in perspective what matters. I hope this will inspire us to make lasting changes to our lives. I'm hoping our workplaces learn some lessons too. And I can't wait for the wealth of research to come out of this period, owing to the incredible opportunity it has afforded the researchers to see a slowed down world.

March 2020 has been extraordinary, to say the least, for a huge number of people around the world. If you ask anyone in the US who's old enough to remember 9/11, they will tell you exactly where they were on that day and how their lives changed after. This feels like it will be another such event, this time for all of us, around the world. Something we'll tell our grandchildren about. If you're reading this in 2020, what are you going through right now? Write it down in the comments below. This crisis is far from over. I have no clue what awaits us in the days to come. This may be a useful chronicling of this moment in time, if only for catharsis. Someday, hopefully in a brighter time, we will look back on this moment with awe.

And to our Medical workers, grocery shop workers, govt officials, law enforcement officers, delivery professionals, medical equipment makers and all those helping our society fight this battle, thank you!

The year I learned to Run

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 04:38:00 +0000

12:35:30 PM on 20th October, 2019 was perhaps one of the greatest moments of my life. As I crossed the finish line at the 2019 Detroit Free Press TCF Bank marathon, I was living the moment I had visualized countless times in the preceding 9 months. In the last 5 hours and 15 mins, I had run 26.22 Miles (42.2 KM) to complete the very first Full marathon of my life. And what glorious miles those were!

“If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon"

-Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon

Earlier that day, the energy at the starting line was electric. The weather was in the mid -40s F (about 7 C) and the sun was yet to rise. Here I was, finally at the starting line. Around me, were thousands of other runners, each with their own stories and their own journeys. Some wore theirs on their T shirts- a group running to celebrate someone’s birthday, another running in memory of someone else. There were runners hugging dear ones, calming their last minute nerves. I took a silent minute to look back on the last few months….

When I signed up for the marathon on February 10th 2019, I could barely run 10 mins at a time. Signing up for this marathon was very much a leap of faith-a leap I had taken out of sheer frustration and desperation. I had tried to be serious about running for years, and failed miserably each time. I just did not seem to have the stamina or the fortitude to run more than a mile at a stretch, and it made me angry like nothing else. At a personal level, it was more than just about running- it made me feel deeply insecure about my ability to achieve audacious goals. So, in a moment of madness, I signed up for the first running event of my life- The Full marathon at the 2019 Detroit Free Press TCF Bank Marathon. I would have 36 weeks to go from from a complete non-runner to a marathoner.

Just signed-up for the Detroit @FreepMarathon, which will happen in October 2019. Will be my very first Full Marathon. As of today, running a 5K takes me 37 minutes. 36 Weeks to train myself. Let's do this!
— Sagar Kamat (@sagarkamat) February 11, 2019

I set out a simple timeline of sub-goals for myself— Run a continuous 5K by end of February, continuous 10K by end of March, Half marathon by end of June and finally, the full marathon in October. The next few months were a revelation of just how many of my limitations were self imposed. The thing about running is that your body never really becomes OK with you running for long stretches at a time. It always wants you to stop, sit down and relax. What you do become better at is convincing your brain you can keep going. It’s a mental endeavor first, the body just adapts in due time.

I had struggled for years to keep running for 5 KMs at a time and never succeeded. It seemed like an unassailable wall that chided me every time I attempted it. Now, next to the gargantuan goal that was the Full marathon, the 5K seemed like but another hurdle i had to cross. I started keeping a track of every run, making sure each week was somehow an improvement over the last. For the first few weeks, most of my 'runs' were walks punctuated by sprints. Each week thereafter, I reduced the stretches of walking and increased the runs. Every Sunday, I tried to keep going for longer and longer distances. Within a month of signing up for the event, I could run 5KMs without stopping. Within 2 months, I hit 10KMs. I was ecstatic!

I also learned a lot about the science of running and sports. Nike’s excellent ‘Trained’ podcast opened my eyes to the 5 facets of training- Exercise, recovery, nutrition, mindset and sleep. I did a better job working on some of those facets than others, but it was a fascinating journey in discovering how our bodies work and improve. I spent countless hours reading articles and watching videos about running form, training techniques and other myriad topics about running. The running community, both online and offline, is amazingly supportive and I learned countless valuable lessons from them. I started going for group runs at the local running store (hat tip to Ann Arbor Running Company). I had avoided that for the longest time due to my fear that I wouldn’t be able to catch up with the group. Not only were my fears unfounded, the group runs became one of the best parts of my training.

The week leading up to the race day however, threatened all those months of training. My left knee inexplicably started hurting every time I tried to run. In all 3 runs I tried in the week before the marathon, I never managed to run for more than a mile. The facebook group for the marathon was full of posts from people dropping out due to last minute injuries, and that petrified me. I massaged, Iced and stretched that knee as much as I could, constantly telling it “Not today, not this week!”

So as I stood there in the corral, after all those ups and downs, moments of ecstasy and paranoia, I was grateful that I was finally there. When they horn went off for our corral and I crossed the starting line, I couldn’t help but tear up. I would tear up several times over over the next few hours. I teared up when i crossed the old man running with an American flag in the memory of his fallen son. I teared up when a man cheering us on shouted “You are an inspiration! You worked hard to get here and you inspire us all”. I teared up when I saw a blind man running the marathon while being tethered to his guide (turns out he's famous). I teared up at all the countless signs held up by family members, cheering on their loved ones. I teared up when I saw my friends dance for me on the sidelines. There were just many stories of struggle and triumph that day, it was hard to not be inspired!

Detroit is also a special marathon. You start running in Downtown detroit surrounded by some historic buildings. You then cross the international border while running across the Ambassador bridge into Windsor, Canada. Watching the sunrise as you run across the bridge while looking at the skylines of Detroit and Windsor will be etched in my mind for a long time to come. You then run through the streets of Windsor in Canada while reading some of the most hilarious signs on the course. You cross the international border again, this time using the tunnel under the Detroit river. You can't help but feel like a rockstar as you emerge out of he tunnel to the sound of the crowds welcoming you back to US. The rest of the marathon goes through Detroit’s lovely neighborhoods and the lovely Bell Isle. Detroit's residents come out in their best form lifting your spirits even when your body is aching in every damn place. It’s a marathon full of beautiful sights and memories.

View this post on Instagram

The Detroit @freepmarathon is a unique experience. You start running in Downtown Detroit, cross a bridge to Canada while trucks and barges honk their horns to cheer you on, run through the city of Windsor, then take the tunnel under the Detroit River back to US and then run through some of Detroit’s historic neighborhoods and landmarks. One of the best experiences of my life!

A post shared by sagar kamat (@sagarkamat) on Oct 21, 2019 at 3:54pm PDT

As I crossed the finish line, a million thoughts crossed my mind. I had visualized this moment countless times before. I had thought I would cry, I had thought I would be ecstatic and triumphant. But that’s not what I felt when the moment actually arrived. All I felt was the satisfaction of a job well done. I had just run a goddamn marathon.

The Hidden Kamat

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 09:37:00 +0000

Kesari. That's her name. She has a surname too - Canconkar - but saying it out loud always felt weird. She started working as a maid in my home in 1995, a month after my younger brother was born. I was around 4 at the time. She was probably around 14. I can't say for sure because, as is often the case in her community, she doesn't have an official birth date; just guesses. Yes, she was a mere child then. But like so many others around her, the poverty at home and lack of resources had pushed her to work at a very young age to aid the household income.

Little did any of us know then, that she would become an integral part of my family for the next 20 years. Since 1995, almost every single day, she came to our house at 10am each morning and went home at 6pm. In between, she took care of every chore that needs to be done to keep a house functioning. After both my parents left for work in the morning, it was her that made sure me and my brother had our breakfasts and lunches, got us ready for school and everything else in between. I have vivid memories of her going around my neighborhood, scouting my brother from wherever he was playing and dragging him home to get him ready for school.

Any guest who has visited my place enough number of times over the years have bonded with her as much as any of us. So many of them said they wanted to take her along. I always suspected they would, if they could. And it wasn't hard to see why. She had learned every quirk of every guest who frequented our place. So when my grandma's car would arrive outside the house, she would promptly start heating the drinking water for my grandma without being told. She knew which guest wanted their tea without sugar. She knew which dish, cooked by my mom in the morning, would not sit well with me or my brother and what alternatives she could serve us for lunch instead. When my grandparents were bed-ridden and in pain in the last few days of their lives, she took as much care of them as any of us, always making sure they had their medicines on time and so on. These were things that went far beyond her call of duty. And that made her rather endearing.

Over the years, the relationship between her family and mine grew a lot closer than a typical employee-employer relationship. As someone who comes from a seedy locality, being at my place for a better part of the day translated into a secure workplace. My mother nurtured her as one nurtures their daughter. As a result, in spite of receiving offers to work from other families in the locality, she stayed with us. This also led to some rather curious changes. When you've spent a major chunk of your day for 20 long years at somebody's house, you can't help but pick up some of the peculiar characteristics of that family. Over the years, her mother complained that she did not like fish anymore, an hangover of the vegetarian lunches she had at my place. Her cooking habits and taste pallets were shaped as much by my mother as her own. She almost became an extended part of my family. So when her house collapsed on a rainy night, it was my parents that helped her rebuild it back. For my brother's thread ceremony, she felt obliged to present him with a small gold ring like a family member would, if only as a token of love. When I went home after 1.5 years in the US, she came running to the car to receive me, trying hard to contain her excitement.

She got married a few days back, after a rather long search for a groom and a series of setbacks. My brother was her official wedding photographer. When talks of her marriage started, my relatives congratulated my mother for getting a son-in-law. They were only half joking. 20 years! We all were so used to having her in our house that the idea of not having her around sent us all into thoughts about how we would cope up. How would we deal with all the relatives? Who will take care of everything? Will my parents be able to find everything in the house that only she seemed to know so well? On her last day of work a few weeks back, I spoke to her on FaceTime to wish her good bye. It was an eerie conversation. To think, she spent her entire teenage years and youth in my house. For us privileged lot, these are some of the best years of our lives and we hardly value the opportunities we get. She spent those years working in my house. Yes, we did provide her with a means of subsistence, an environment of security and helped her in times of distress. But I'm not sure if we could ever pay her back enough. Its a thought that's both humbling and depressing.

I know my family will be forever grateful to her. Wherever we may reach in life, I and my brother know she has played an important role in shaping our lives, perhaps next to only our parents. Whenever my parents receive praise for raising a family well, they know a part of the credit also goes to her. Not many in our social circle, apart from my close relatives, probably know she exists. But behind the scenes, she has played a major part in making the Kamat family what it is. Although the name will never be formally attached to her name, she will always remain a Kamat.

The Death March of Mechanical Engineering

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 01:41:00 +0000

A few months back, I had the opportunity to visit the Computer History Museum in the middle of Silicon Valley. Oddly enough, the highlight of my visit was.....a very mechanical contraption.

The Babbage Difference Engine 2 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California

Pictured above is the Babbage Difference Engine 2 designed by the 'father of the Computer', Charles Babbage in the 1850s and built by the guys at the London Science Museum in 1990s. This was what a calculator looked like, once upon a time. Powered by a human rotating the handle on the right, this machine performed calculations through a movement of gears and screws and levers and printed the output on a tray of plaster of paris or paper. You should see it in action here (fast forward to 1:12). Now compare this to your modern calculator. Sure our devices are smaller and far more versatile and convenient. But in sheer elegance and beauty? I doubt it.

As a Mechanical Engineer, I increasingly feel like I'm a part of an endangered species of practitioners of a dying art. Everywhere I see, our turf seems to be under a siege by the ever-growing army of Bits and Bytes.

Take for example the automobile. For the past century, the automobile has been the flagship domain of mechanical engineers. Its what we are synonymous with. A car is brilliance in motion- where a series of explosions in a bunch of cylinders, happening thousands of times every second and an arms distance away from its driver at that, is converted to flawless and controlled motion. On its way the energy goes through a multitude of systems that work in perfect unison for extended periods of time.

By contrast, a modern Tesla Model S supercar has a battery pack which powers a single water-melon sized motor linked directly to its wheels. Engineering wise, its brilliant. Mechanical Engineering wise, its a huge loss of accumulated knowledge and craftsmanship. But for the good of the environment and the human race at large, electric car is our future.

Then comes the modern watch. Watch making has been long considered an art by itself, inspiring fierce pride and prestige amongst its artists. The sheer no of things that have been achieved in watches purely using gears, levers and springs are mind-boggling. But this ubiquitous piece of mechanical dance gracing everyone's hands is soon gonna make way for another screen in our lives, doing things we never knew we needed (Do we?). These new watches will do far more. And the ubiquitous mechanical watch is gonna go higher up on the ladder of exclusivity and privilege.

This move is happening everywhere. The Gramophone and the cassette players of yore are now the iPods of today with no moving parts. Our hard disks are now SSDs. Heck, even the once-unlimited no of Phone form factors have now been reduced to identical looking slabs of screens. So much of Mechanical engineering syllabus today involves coding and Computer aided tools.

To be fair, Mechanical engineers still have a huge role to play in modern society. It takes mechanical engineers to make all those computers and their PCBs. Every time an iPhone gets smaller, its a triumph of mechanical engineering that figured out how to make things smaller than they already are. You still need mechanical engineers to make everything around you. But the inspirational nature of our work is on the decline. The movement of engines, the complexity under a car's hood...all have the power to inspire new generations to make things. How many kids you know give a thought to the process that must've gone into making your phone?

Its not only the field thats undergoing change, its the Mechanical Engineers themselves too. All around the world, the discrepancy between the incomes of the Computer engineers and everyone else is only increasing. And for good reasons. For most industries so far, the price of the product has always been linked with the amount spent in making it. This is especially true for most mechanical products. Every extra dime spent on an employee had to be recovered from the consumer of the final product. This is not true for the new internet economy. For companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter and the army of Start-ups working on the 'Next Big Thing', the final product often does not even have a price. This decoupling of investment in employees from price of the product allows these next gen companies to pamper their employees in ways Mechanical engg companies just cant afford to. The result is a mass exodus of students from traditional branches to the software industry.

Its a confusing time to be alive as a Mechanical Engineer AND a technology lover. As a specie, we are achieving amazing levels of automation and interconnectedness, doing things that would be considered nothing less than Magic half a century ago. And I love being a witness to this transformation. But this progress is also disrupting a lot in its wake and Mechanical Engineering is one such sacrifice at the altar of progress. I'm not sure if there's anything we can do about this, or even if we should. Our tools are a means of a better life, not an end unto themselves. Its illogical to expect people to give up practicality for the sake of beauty. But as someone who treats engineering as an art as much as a science, I sure will miss our machines.

5 Things I love about America

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Sat, 05 Jul 2014 02:00:00 +0000

Today is the 4th of july, when the United States of America celebrates its Independence day. Its been 10 months since I landed here and there's a lot I've learned from the people around me. There's a lot one can learn from this country. Following are the most prominent lessons I've learnt.

1) Traffic Discipline

Trust me, coming from India, the very first thing you'll notice about the Americans is their immaculate sense of discipline on the road. US is a car loving country and its the most commonly used form of transport around. In 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower approved the bill to build an Interstate Highway system to ensure the country's security in the face of a foreign aggression. The outcome was a fantastic network of super-wide highways connecting all major states and important cities. With a fantastic system, came increased number of cars. And thankfully, a better sense of driving.

Having been used to adventure that is crossing a road in India, I was almost shocked when, on my first day in the US, a car stopped a few feet away from me to allow me to cross the road. Turns out, the Americans take the right of passage of the pedestrian rather seriously. Whether you are at a marked zebra crossing or otherwise, a car WILL STOP to allow you to cross first. Lane driving is impeccably followed and the average speed of the vehicles on the highways is unusually high. The cars maintain a safe distance between them at all times, even during gridlocks. In fact, whenever stuck in a traffic jam, I'm sure we Indians could squeeze 2 more cars in the space maintained between two cars here! The lane discipline and the wide highways makes driving almost monotonous and boring. But its definitely a better way to drive. Hearing somebody honk a horn is extremely rare in most places and I'm not exaggerating.

2) Predisposition to Trust

If there's one quality I'd like to pick up as a person from the Americans, its their predisposition to trust people. Im not sure the Americans even realize they have this quality, but its definitely something that me and my fellow Indians have noticed here. Without a genuine reason to believe otherwise, most Americans trust you. Most officials that Ive dealt with in various offices, they genuinely listen to you and believe your reason for not being able to do something. Most retail establishments and companies have extremely liberal return policies, even after a product has been used and they take your word for it, that you are genuinely not satisfied the product. I have had products replaced under warranty without a question or being asked to prove that the product is within warranty or broken due to my fault. They just take you at your word. And I find it heartwarming.

It also breaks my heart to see people abuse this trust. A lot of outsiders take these privileges as a license to abuse the system. The best quality of this society also brings out the worst quality in a lot of the people.

If only we all trusted each so easily, the world would be so much better.

3) Thought for the disabled

image courtesy: Valleymetro.org

On my first day here, when I took a local bus, I was surprised to see that it had a pneumatic ramp that could be lowered for wheelchairs to come on board. The footpaths tapered at every crossing, so that the wheelchairs could effortlessly cross the roads. At the university, every building had at least one door that could be opened by pressing a button by persons sitting on wheelchairs. Every computer lab and classroom had some height adjustable tables for use by these people. As a result of all these thoughtful provisions, people confined to wheelchairs could independently move around on mechanized wheelchairs without anybody's assistance whatsoever. Ramps and signs in Braille are present without exception. Most of the classrooms on my university have special hearing aids for use by hearing-impaired students. In fact, the university has a dedicated Disability resource center to help disabled students with any need they might have.

I find all this amazingly nice. This is a society which is genuinely, truly disabled friendly.

4) Love for the Outdoors

The Americans take outdoor activities rather seriously, and invest heavily in it. Its common to see lakes full of canoes and kayaks and sails. Beaches are full of surfers. Trekking trails are marked as nicely as highways and are always full of families hiking and trekking with their little ones in tow. Mountain Bikers and off terrain vehicles are all over the trails. There are RV parks everywhere and full of mobile homes. People do use every long weekend and holiday to hit the road and do the activity of their choice.

I find this a fantastic culture. Maybe its the luxury of having all your basic needs taken care of are the relative inexpensiveness of the activities here. But I love the fact that people do more than just survive and do all these things. And they do all this with their kids! This is how you get your kids away from the TVs.

5) Systems

This is perhaps one aspect which is known back home- everything works by the system here. I felt the difference from my first day here. I walked into a bank and walked out with a Debit Card in my hand within an hour. It takes one day to get a working power connection and a day or two to get a working Internet. The public transport is easy to use and I love the fact that I can take my bike aboard a Metro or a bus. Roads are well maintained, regularly cleaned and repairs are swift. Even in the middle of the desert here in Phoenix, lawns and gardens are impeccably maintained and are lush green. Most things can be done over the internet and the customer care helplines are almost always helpful. Cities are well planned.

I like the fact you are not judged by the kind of job you do. Unlike India, its very common for students here to simultaneously work while studying to meet one's daily expenses. And students do all kinds of jobs, right from serving at restaurants to food deliveries to desk jobs. Or that certain jobs are not restricted to a certain, marginalized sections of the society. Blue-collar workers are professionally dressed, well equipped and have a decent standard of living.

Its nice when everything just works. Personally, I want to return back to India. But I no longer find it difficult to understand why so many don't. Its a good society to be in.

So there it is, my lessons from this wonderful country. This society is not equal, not by a long shot. But its certainly a better place to work your way upwards, if you want to. This society has its flaws, like any other place. But thats a discussion for another blogpost. Maybe the things I've mentioned are common to every developed nation. This is the only place I've seen so far and hence, can comment on.

Its the place to be for millions around the world. And for good reasons. On behalf of all those people, Happy Independence day USA!

My not-so-short guide to MS in US

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Wed, 25 Jun 2014 05:56:00 +0000

Ever since I landed in US about a year ago, a lot of people have got in touch with me asking how to go about the process of getting admitted to a MS program in US. There is a lot of info about the general procedure available online but the sheer number of queries Ive got shows there is still a scope for yet another post on the topic. If nothing else, it will save me the effort of repeating the same answers multiple times. So if you are thinking of applying to US universities, this blog post is for you. Fair warning though- This was my experience when I went through the process. Follow the advice using your best judgement.

Before you Start

There are a few things you should know before you start on this long path. First and foremost, its an expensive option. Right from the moment you start answering the entrance exams, you are going to pay through your nose. So make sure you have some money set aside. Ideally, you will be spending around Rs.50,000 to 1,00,000 just for the application process. So it helps if you have been working for a year or so, or have parents who can fund that.

While the MS program itself is going to be expensive, fees can be paid through educational loans. The loans are granted pretty easily, provided you have the needed collateral. As such, when starting the process, the only money you should worry about is the one needed to fund the application process and your tickets to US.

Secondly, although you don't need a stellar academic record, the better your academic record, higher will be the reputation of the university you can aim for. Just like in India, there are universities abroad too which will admit students with any academic record. More often than not, the lower ranked ones offer little value except the foreign-educated tag. Personally, i do not think its worth joining institutes ranked below 50 nationally with respect to your chosen discipline in the country you are going to.

Most universities in US admit students twice a year- Spring semester starting in January every year and Fall semester starting in August. The major intake generally happens in Fall. Ideally, that is the semester you should look for, unless you don't have an option. International students in US cannot join Internships unless they have completed a year of studying. Since most internships are offered in Summer, the students admitted into Fall semester can readily apply for internships after 2 sems while the Spring admits have to finish 3.

The application process should start 12-14 months before your intended semester of joining. So If you are planning to join in August 2015, you would start the entire process in May-June 2014.

A lot of people increase their costs manyfold by approaching expensive 'Consultants' and 'advisors' to guide them through the process. The fact that this process is daunting and long intimidates people into shelling out the money. But I personally believe you can save that money. I did not hire any consultants. In today's day and age, there are countless sources online that will guide you through each step. You just need to be patient and search the relevant info. Its an exhilarating process and a prelude of your life in a US university. Go through the process on your own and you will love yourself for it. And save A LOT of money in the process.

Instead, Join Edulix.com. This one site can replace the entire consultant change, to guide from Answering exams to buying you plane ticket. Its forums are a rich source of info on every part of the process and I highly recommend spending as much time on it as possible.

Also find out other around you who are applying for MS. It helps tremendously at every step.

The entrance exams

Most universities abroad need you to answer the GRE and TOEFL exams for their MS programs. Of course, some universities don't need either of them, but most good universities do. Universities in UK accept IELTS scores instead of TOEFL. GRE tests your analytical as well as verbal skills while TOEFL tests your English language skills. The details and score structure of each exam can be found on their respective websites.

Both exams can be answered anytime throughout the year. The ideal time to answer the exams would be in July-August-September timeframe, preferably in August of the year before your intended joining. This also happens to be the most busiest month for the test organizers. As such, its best to book your slot 3-4 months in advance to get a centre and slot of your choice.

Both these exams are also costly. Although the fees change often, you are generally looking at Rs.20,000 for single attempts of both the tests.

The no.1 question i get asked is whether one needs to join coaching classes. Short answer : No. I did not join any classes and scored 325/340 in GRE and 118/120 in TOEFL. Both of these scores fall in the topmost score bracket and I managed them without spending any money on coaching classes or expensive books. For GRE, i used the Official Guide to GRE published by ETS and for TOEFL, i used the Barron's book. These books and online info was more than enough to do a reasonably good preparation for the tests. GRE and TOEFL are both inherently easy tests. And in a way, they do test how you have been as a person over your entire life and not on the last minute mugging. I have been an avid reader all my life and that helped me a lot in the Vocabulary section of GRE as well as in TOEFL. I did have to learn a lot of new words, but the reading experience helped. This is where most people need to work harder. Personally, I feel classes have little impact on scores. There's only so much someone can make you learn.

University Selection

Ideally this process should be done before you answer the tests. Both GRE and TOEFL allow you to send your scores to up to 4 universities free of charge. Beyond this, you have to pay for each additional university and the cost adds up. But the selection process does not end till the moment you send your applications.

My process was as follows. Once you have chosen the country or countries you want to attend, find a ranking of the best universities for your chosen field. Rankings are not definitive and change from source to source. But they do give you a rough idea of where universities stand. Next, take the trouble of going through the websites of as many universities as possible. This task will seem very daunting when you start but over time, you develop a sense of navigating these sites for the info you are looking for. Go through the research happening in your chosen domain at a university and see what interests you. Make a Note of the concerned professors. You might even discover new concentrations within a field that you were not aware of. Many people hire consultants to tell them which university is best for them. The suggestions are solely based on your scores. But when you do this process on your own, you will discover so many things the consultant could never tell you. In the long run, this will benefit you.

Decide the number of universities you want to apply to. Considering the cost of sending tests scores, application fee and sometimes courier charges, you are looking at about Rs. 5000 per university. Decide the number of universities based on your budget. Most people select 10, although 5-8 is a good compromise. I personally applied to just 4. In hindsight, i wish i had applied to a few more.

You should select a few ambitious unis, few safe ones and many moderately ranked ones. For example, if you are applying to 8 unis, you may select 2 highly ranked ones, 2 low ranked ones, and 4 moderately ranked. Change this proportion based on how good your profile is. There are many websites online which can suggest you which unis are suitable for you. www.stupidsid.com and MSinUS.com for example.

Also, edulix has posts from people in the past who report which unis they got admits to and their profile. This can help you make an informed choice.

Once you have decided the universities that you are going to apply to, make a spreadsheet of the application deadlines of each uni, the required info and what interests you about each of them.

Once you have got answered your tests and selected your unis, its time for the application stage.

The Applications

Although exact procedures change from uni to uni, most unis will need you to write a Statement of Purpose and need around 3 Letters of recommendation. Again, you will find a lot of helpful articles on this online. One common fallacy people make is to write down a list of their achievements and why they deserve an admit. Instead, you should focus on what your purpose is, what you want to do with your degree. This is where it helps to know what research is happening at each uni. The more you can convince a university you wrote the State of purpose specially for them, the more favorably it will work for you.

Most recommenders will also ask you to write a draft of the letters of recommendations. Avoid writing all hyperboles for yourself. The admission officers are experienced enough to know which students are 'exceptional' or 'one in a million'. Instead choose people who have had a personal relationship with you and who can genuinely tell something about you.

You will also need to obtain a transcript from your undergraduate university. The transcripts are given to you in a sealed envelop. some unis need you to submit the transcript online but most need you to send the transcripts physically.

Finally, start filling the online application forms well before the deadline. Filling each form takes time and you will likely need to apply one uni at a time. So do not procrastinate.

Most deadlines are between November to February for the following Fall semester. The deadlines change from program to program for each university so make sure you note down the correct one.

Once you have submitted all the applications, sit back, try to relax and wait for the results.

I-20 & Vaccination

The results start coming in between March to May. Once you receive an admit, celebrate! You are halfway on your way to US! The next thing you want to do is carefully go through your admit letter and the instructions that arrived with it. Most unis will need you to accept or reject the offer or ask for some more documents. They will also ask you to submit proof, or undergo some vaccination. Unis will also ask for proof of finances for an amount equal to one year's worth of fees plus their estimation of living expenses. This amount changes from uni to change, so does the documents a uni acceots as proof. Some unis accept mutual funds and house valuation as proof of finances while others need you to show liquid cash equal to the amount. Its best to confirm from your university what is admissible. You might need to borrow cash short term to furnish this proof. Complete this procedure. The university will then send you an I-20, also known as the Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant (F-1) Student Status, which is one of the most important documents you'll possess while in US.

Bank Loan & Visa

As soon as you receive your admit, you should start speaking with your bank. Once you receive your i20, you can apply for an educational loan. From my research, SBI seemed to offer the lowest interest rate and no processing fee. Hence, I decided to go with them.

You should ideally complete this process by June, or 2 months before your departure. As this nears completion, apply for a VISA interview. An excellent guide to the entire VISA process can be found on Edulix here.

Another question i get is about how to carry cash initially to US. Personally I had carried half cash and half the amount on a SBI Vishwa Yatra Foreign Travel card, which is the common practice amongst students. In hindsight, i could've skipped the foreign travel card entirely. The only benefit it offers is security of not having to carry a lot of cash physically. But airports are fairly safe. I opened a local bank account on the second day of my arrival here and deposited all the cash in that account anyway. I hardly used my foreign travel card.

Bask in the glow!

Thats it! You have an admit and your Visa and you are ready for your MS in US! Make sure you book your flight tickets at least 3 months before your departure as tickets go really fast and prices skyrocket in a matter of days. (Side Tip: Whichever airline you choose, sign up for their frequent flyer program. A single international journey is worth A LOT of points.)

In the last few days, meet all your family members, eat all the street food you can get and visit every place you want to. You will miss all of it very soon.

You can read about my first week in US here

Why I bought a Macbook Pro

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 11:32:00 +0000

Buying a laptop is a big deal for any geek, even more so, when it's your very first one. And I had waited a very long time to buy mine. All through my undergraduate college, i procrastinated buying one, keeping it for the day when i really needed it. Finally, when i moved to the US for my MS, I decided it was time enough.

I had decided on a few things that I really wanted in my future laptop-

1) Thin and light body-- Ultra-portable for daily college use

2) 4th gen i7 processor, 8GB RAM-- Enough to handle Engineering software

3) Minimalist design with limited ports-- Personal aesthetic choice

4) No DVD drive-- The rare use of it is not worth lugging around the weight everyday

5) Great Battery Life

I also tend to be very brand conscious when it comes to technology-you get what you pay for. As such, I had decided to mostly stick to Apple, Dell and Sony only. I had heard way too many reliability issues about HP and I personally do not like Lenovo's design language. I believe owning a device and loving a device are two different things and the difference affects how you perceive and use the device. As such, if a brand doesn't excite me, I avoid it. I did visit all the stores though, just to see what each had on offer.

No matter how much you advise the world on all matters technology, choosing one for yourself is never an easy task. Sony did not have anything that suited what I was looking for. I did not like the new Inspiron series from Dell and most of their models weren't yet on the 4th gen processor bandwagon anyway. I loved Dell's XPS 13 but it cost as much a Macbook Air. XPS 14 was tempting, but a few bad reviews made me leave it alone.

I did not want to buy the 2012, non Retina Macbook Pros with 3rd gen proc either because I had read some great reviews about the new Intel processors and their associated battery life. Also, their DVD drive made them way too heavy for my liking.

I have loved the Macbook Air for a very long time now. I think its the epitome of beautiful, minimalist design and off late, versatility. Even better, they already received the 4th gen update earlier in the year. However, they offered way too low a spec for the price they charged. I did not feel like paying a $1200+ price for a 1.3Ghz processor. I arrived in US in August-right when the rumors of a new Macbook were in the air. They predicted a possibly new form factor. However, their release date was uncertain and I wasn't sure how I'd survive my MS without a laptop. In one moment of weakness, I even ordered an HP Envy 15t-j100 Quad edition laptop. As luck would have it, HP declined that order due to some technical reasons and I took that as Universe's hint that it was time for a Macbook. I went through 3 month of my MS program using the computing facilities on campus( hat tip to Arizona State Uni's computing infrastructure) and some generous help from my room mates. Finally, Apple announced their new Retina Macbook Pros on October 22nd 2013. Just 3 days later, i got my hands on my very own 2013 Macbook Pro with Retina display. They also almost-discontinued their old, non-Retina Macbook Pros, vindicating my decision to wait.

A lot of people who know me believe I'm an Apple fanboy. I disagree. I have my reasons for loving a few of their products, just the way I like Microsoft's or Google's. However I do believe Macbooks are one of the best laptops out there and I was inclined towards them due to a few solid reasons. Before taking the final decision, I did the following analysis.

I realized that the things going FOR the Macbook Pro are one that I'd deal with every single time I use the Macbook. On the other hand I wasn't even sure if I'd ever need a graphics card or a top of the line i7 processor. Most average modern day computers can easily handle the engineering software I plan to use and most seniors in college told me that I'd hardly be pushing the system to its limits. The Macbook Pro hit most of my checkboxes, and the compromises seemed reasonable.

As far as cost is concerned, i noticed an interesting fact. If you search for used, 2011 laptops on ebay, every other brand's laptop sells for hardly a $100. Macbooks on the other hand routinely sell for an upwards of $600. Considering the average life of a laptop to be 3 years, buying a Macbook would actually end up costing me lesser than any other brand with comparable specifications at the end of its expected usage period. In exchange, I would get great build quality and a beautiful laptop with a proven track record. My Laptop would be the single most used device by me in next 2 years of my MS. It made sense to invest in a good one.

I also admit that the hype about Apple did play its role. But its not hype for the sake of it. I routinely frequent http://usesthis.com, a site that compiles the computing habits of some interesting folks. 99% of the people listed on the site use a Mac. A lot of very smart people swear by their Macs. It even finds mention on Alex Payne's Rules for computing happiness- a set of rules that seem very sensible to me. I refuse to believe that so many people go gaga over their macs just because they paid through their nose for it. There has to be a very good reason why people love them so much. And I wanted to find it out myself.

I asked a lot of people for suggestions about laptops. For every brand, people suggested I buy a laptop of a brand different from what they owned. Almost everybody had issues with their Dells and HPs and Sonys. However, every Macbook owner I asked said there was no way they'd go back to any other laptop brand, and they meant it.

Considering all these factors, it felt right to take the risk and pay for a Mac. Its now been over 2 months since I bought the Macbook and I love it. It has its share of negatives but all in all, buying it was a great decision. The Macbook deserves a review of its own and I'll write one soon. But this is it- this is why i bought a Macbook.

The Week After

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 04:54:00 +0000

The quintessential wing photo

2.09 am IST on 12th August 2013. The moment when my flight, Jet Airways 9W228, took off from Mumbai's Chattrapati Shivaji International Airport. I had thought I would get a few moments to look back at my country and reminisce. But before I knew it, the flight left behind the glitzy city lights of Mumbai and got into the clouds. A few ships and the Bombay High oil platform passed by soon after, and then there was nothing. Pitch darkness.

There I was, having left behind everything I've ever known. The people I've loved and hated, the places I've seen, The things i loved......My every success and failure were back there on that land I had just left behind. This was the moment I had been waiting for, for a long long time. I was starting a new life, with 2 suitcases and a backpack, and a million dreams.

Last few hours had been a flurry of events. Nothing prepares you for the last few hours with the family, before you leave on a long hiatus. Those moments, when tears come out involuntarily, just by seeing your family do what they've always done. You want time to slow down and let you enjoy those last few hours. The final goodbye at the Airport was nothing like you imagined it to be. Its a lot less melodramatic, but a lot more emotional. You don't know when you'll see these faces again, the faces that were your world till now. And so you just hug, and try to have as much of them as you can, before you leave.

Once i entered the airport though, the excitement of the first flight of my life took over. Having a friend along who shared my enthusiasm, made it all the more better. We went through all the procedures like kids on their way to an adventure ride. The moment when we first set foot on the aircraft, the thrust when the aircraft hit the runway, every maneuver of the aircraft, our first stop at Brussels airport and the moment when we set foot at New york....we shared each of these moments with excitement fit for babies.

At New York however, we bid each other good bye and headed our own ways. Finally, I was alone in a distant land. My back ached from the long flight. 30 hours after i left mumbai, on a warm evening, i landed at Phoenix Sky Harbour International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona. I was apprehensive. Here I was, a boy from a coastal paradise coming to the deserts of Arizona. The city looked nice from the aircraft. Not many tall buildings, but a lot of short buildings laid out in neat arrangements. All roads seemed wide and every bit of it seemed landscaped. It didn't feel home, but I really wanted to like it. I had 2 years to spend here after all. Moments later, I was out of the airport. A taxi was to take me home, paid for by the university. All through the taxi ride, I anxiously stared outside. Yes, the city did seem nice. Every significant building seemed beautifully designed. everything was spread out horizontally with huge parking lots filled with cars. Very few seemed to be outside though. Or maybe that was just my first culture shock, coming from the bustling cities of India. A quick ride later, I was on the street of my new home. I nervously got into my new apartments, where my 2 new room mates had already begun their journey.

And then it hit me. I was all alone in a distant land. I had no way of going back anytime soon and had no clue if i had made the right decision coming here in a desert city. The next few days were incredibly brutal emotionally. I became terribly homesick, surprising myself. All those moments with near and dear ones came back to me, and made my cry against my will. Those moments had not meant as much back home, but out here, I really missed them. I cried on the phone, I spent early morning hours of the first three days writhing uncomfortably, feeling emotionally vulnerable. Those 3 days were horrible.

Things got better after that. I visited the Arizona State University's Tempe campus, my home for the next 2 years, and fell in love on day 1. The University is huge beyond my wildest expectations. I now understand why so many people told me that if you have to learn what a university is, you have to come to the US. The best of our institutes pale in comparison to the facilities and opportunities on offer here. EVERY building has been painstakingly designed and meticulously well maintained. I never expected the campus to be so classy. The students are the focus here and that is evident everywhere.

The orientations actually made me feel welcomed and excited. They actually made me worry that 2 years weren't gonna be enough to take advantage of all that the university has to offer. Of course, the sheer number of Indians and Chinese students slightly dampened my sprits. Not because of any racial bias, but because so many of them are just plain immune to any kind of fruitful interaction. But you start to get used to it. You realize that great discussions are gonna have to be extracted after going through a lot of noise. There are people from 118 nationalities here and one is bound to have all kinds of experiences. The faster you embrace the ground realities, the better you'll do.

Its just over a week since I arrived in Phoenix now. And as of now, I'm in love with the city. Yes it is hot. Terribly hot. everyone keeps saying the weather becomes beautiful next month onwards, but that remains to be seen. But the city is beautiful in its own right. The roads are wide, the architecture of the city beautiful and the people are exceptionally nice. The traffic mannerisms on the street are amazingly pedestrian friendly and the conveniences of American life are rather nice. I do miss people back home, but spending 2 years here doesn't seem so bad anymore. I have started liking the city. It feels a lot like home now. I am no longer worried whether I have made the right decision coming here. I am worried about making the most of it.

My classes start tomorrow. And I am anxious. Will the professors be good? Will I perform? Will it all be worth it? I don't now. But I'm Excited. I have no set plan, except to soak myself in the ASU experience.

Here We Go :)

The 'Spirit'ed Night

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:27:00 +0000

Goa's villages are replete with folklore surrounding the spirits, both good and bad. The tales of the Holy spirit, better known as Devchaars, are especially popular. The devchars are treated with all seriousness and offerings are regularly made to them, seeking protection from the forces of evil. Over the years, a lot of villages have evolved their own unique ways of guaranteeing protection, resulting into an eclectic variety of annual customs and traditions that are a culture junkie's delight. They are as varied and exciting as it can get.

Every year, in the days near Holi Pournima, a few villages in Goa celebrate what is known as the Gadyaanchi Jatra or the Feast of the Gades. Gades are generally male members from a few designated families in a village that take part in the ceremonies of the feast. The Jatra in the Villages of Kudnem, Sal, Pilgao and canacona are especially popular. Having witnessed the one at Canacona a few years back and having heard so much about the ones at Kudnem and Sal, I hoped to attend them this year. The cocktail of bizarre rituals, the fear factor, and genuine interest in local traditions make for a heady mix. And so we set out to experience the gadyaanchi jatra of Kudnem, a village near the town of Sanquelim in Goa's Bicholim Taluka, on the evening of 26th March 2013.

BEFORE

The unique thing about the Jatra at Kudnem is that the main rituals are carried out in darkness, lit by moonlight only. No other light sources are allowed. No electric lights, no fire....and no cellphones- or cameras. We honestly didn't know what to expect, and hence we arrived in the village before sunset, at about 6.30pm. The festivities happen in front of the Kudneshwar Mahadev temple in the village. Right in front of the Temple was a small pit. We were told that the ceremonial pillar is buried in this pit and the Holi, the festive pyre is lit around it. The Gades then dance around this pillar for the entire night. It was to be the epicenter of the festivities for the night. A clear area had been demarcated around the pit and an approach road to and from the pit was also demarcated. However, the strange thing was that almost the entire area outside the demarcated zones had been covered in mattresses, tarpaulin sheets etc by villagers, as a form of reservation for their place for the night's spectacle. This was clearly a big deal. But other than that, the village seemed quite empty. we were the only outsiders there at that point. We asked around about parking space and what to expect. We were told that the rituals begin at after 12 pm. We clearly had a long time to pass. We went to a nearby town, had our dinner, and returned at about 8.30pm. The villagers had made arrangement for parking in a nearby field. Ours was the very first car for the evening and the arrangements seemed rather optimistic. We wondered whether so many people even turn up for the ritual. We were in for shock, but more on that later.

We were by now quite anxious, and the silent night only added to the drama. A village kid walked up to the car and asked us to 'switch off the car'. He was basically asking us to make sure that under no circumstances the car should light up in the middle of the night, a common occurrence with today's electronically protected cars. He said to switch off any cellphones that we were leaving behind in the cars. If anything in the car lights up while the Gades are out at night, they would destroy the car, he warned us. That sent a chill down my spine. I regretted getting my car, and prayed I would see it again the next morning.

Nevertheless, after passing some time, we walked back to the temple by 9.30pm. The area was slightly more crowded by now, but still relatively empty. We found an empty piece of sitting area that wasn't reserved, right in front of the ceremonial pit. We had the front row seats to the event, and I couldn't stop wondering why they weren't taken first. It was a discomforting thought, but we sat there nevertheless. From then on, began a long, monotonous wait. We had left behind our phones in the car- batteries removed, just in case. Leaving the seats would mean losing them, and so we sat there, doing nothing but talking. In hindsight, i feel the ideal time to come would have been around 10.30pm. That would be early enough to get a good seat, yet late enough to not be bored to death. As the clock ticked by, crowds started gathering around us, and how. What was a sparsely crowded area at 9.30pm, had close to 3000 people by 11pm!

The crowd, somehow diluted our anxiety. The streetlights were still on, and there was no hint of the spooky night we had come to expect. We waited. 12pm came and yet there was no hint of any activity. Finally, after a long time of sitting idly, the drum beats started at 1.30am. The villagers carried a long bark of a tree that was to become the Holi pillar. It was really long, approximately as tall as 3 to 4 storey building. I couldn't fathom how they were gonna erect THIS long a pillar without the help of a crane or any other mechanism. The crowds standing in front of me made sure I couldn't see it either, so that remains a secret. But after a Herculean effort and half an hour's work, they managed to erect it. The tall pillar made for a majestic sight. The holi fire was lit and put off, rituals performed and the crowd were cleared out of the demarcated area. We now had a clear view :)

DURING

At 2am, the game began. Without a warning, the lights went out. All phones switched off, all fires extinguished . The crowd, which had swelled to about 5000 by now, went quite. The drums around the pillar, began playing an eerie rhythm, a beat every alternate second. some villagers around the pillar, began singing the Namans, or incantations. One by one, the Gades, dressed in Pure white dhotis and shirts walked up to the center and stood there. Within a few minutes, one by one, they started collapsing to the floor. The villagers took off the shirts of the fallen Gades. They were now 'possessed'. One by one, they started dancing around the pillar, in perfect sync to the drum beats. As their number rose, the excitement went up. I was expecting about 20-30 of them. Turns out, there were about 240.

Within minutes, they were in their 'zone'. 240 odd men, clad in white dhotis, dancing in perfect sync around the pillar, making strange sounds and wearing a completely detached look on their faces. Their movements reflected the tempo of the beats, quickening and slowing to the tune of the namans. Then the Devchaar began his games.

The belief is that on the night of Holi pournima, the ghosts are let out in the open by Lord Mahadev. They possess the bodies of the Gades. The Devchaar plays around with the ghosts by showing them light at a distance(which explains the complete ban on other light sources). The Gades, chase the light sources, which extinguish within seconds. During the chase, the Devchaar takes a few of the Gades, which go missing. The Devchaar eventually returns them by showing the light again. If not returned within 3 days, the missing gades are considered to be dead. ( The game is slightly different at Sal, which i shall cover in the next blogpost) .

The distant lights, are an unexplained phenomenon, shrouded in mystery. Every few minutes, at a distance from the gathering, high up in tree canopies, bright embers of fire emerged without a warning. The moment the light appears, the Gades dancing around the pillar break their formation and madly chase the light. Its a sight to behold. I could personally see the light source only twice, as the crowd made it impossible to see, most of the time. The light fades off within seconds, and the Gades return to their formation. This sequence- Dance, appearence of light, chase, and back to dance- happened about 10 times. The mysterious lights, the mad scramble of the Gades make for a part of the allure of the ritual.

At 4am in the morning, began the real scary part of the night. The Gades, broke their formation and went away running into the darkness. They supposedly go the village graveyard, to dig up the dead bodies. They returned half an hour later. Each of them, carried what is said to be a part from a dead human body. Most carried flesh, a few carried locks of long human hair, bones and skulls. The scariest was a severed human hand and leg. They continued dancing around the pillar, their piece firmly in their hand. Some fell to floor, got up, and continued dancing. It was a sight that could well be from some zombie movie. The stench of rotting human flesh was all over. The experienced villagers had carried bottles of perfume, which they generously sprayed. Just imagine the sight. Pitch dark night lit only by the full moon, 240 odd gades, dressed in blood stained white dhotis, carrying pieces of human body, dancing to eerie drum beats. You don't see such sights everyday in your life.

After a few minutes, the namans directed the Gades to return the body parts to their graveyards. The Gades obliged. Once they returned, the continued their dance for a few more minutes. Eventually, they all fainted to the floor and woke up within minutes to their normal selves again. By 6 am, it was over.

AFTER

Once we got back to our car through the crazy crowd, the million thoughts started buzzing our minds. What the heck had we just seen? Was it all real? Was it a dream? Are ghosts and spirits for real?

The logic of our pragmatic minds refused to accept that it had anything to do with supernatural forces. The ban on light sources seemed more to keep the mystery intact than anything else. Its really difficult to distinguish real body parts from fake ones in the glow of moonlight alone. And the Gades seemed careful to not trample the crowds even in their 'trance' .

But some questions remained unanswered. What about the stench of the flesh? How is it possible for men to dance and run around all night long and not pant for breath? Not once during the night did the Gade collide with one another during their dance. Can 240 men really pull off THIS elaborate a ritual for an entire night without exchanging a single word or without a central command? If it were indeed a piece of choreography, is it really possible for so many men and their families to not spill the beans over so many years?

As a friend put it, its all way to bizarre to be real, yet way too remarkable to be completely fake.

Real or not, I had personally never experienced anything like it before. It was spooky, adventurous, exciting.....stuff great stories are made up of. Also, its always a great feeling to experience the ingenious traditions of one's own people. These rituals are what makes us unique and special. They are our cultural endowments that we received from our ancestors. Such socio-religious customs punctuate the otherwise mundane day to day life for the rural folks. And it was great to spend a 'spirit'ed night with them :)

PS. At the time of publishing this, I am scheduled to visit the Gadyaanchi Jatra at Sal. I'm hoping to write a post on that too. Stay tuned.

Update: I visited the Sal Gadyaanchi Jatra yesterday and it was bad. The crowds made everything chaotic and there was no organisation in place. Everybody kept running everywhere and no one had a clue of what was going on. The rituals too appeared more funny than anything else. Hence, i will not write the aforementioned blogpost

Does goa deserve good tourists?

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 07:09:00 +0000

I went for a stroll on the Miramar beach last Sunday. I have fond memories of the beach from my childhood. Quite a few Sunday evenings with the family have been spent there. Miramar has a different vibe from the other popular beaches of goa, like Calangute or Colva. Its less ‘touristy’. You won’t find a shack on Miramar beach. Nor will you find the myriad different water sports or hawkers for that matter. While this still remains true, Miramar has changed over the years. Its crowded nowadays. Very crowded.

The crowd hits you even before you step onto the beach. It starts with finding a parking spot. The parking lots are full of a number of Activas and Dios and a pantheon of bikes, all with their Yellow and Black licence plates— a sign that they are one of the thousands of 2 wheelers the tourists can rent while in goa. There are taxis everywhere. We are seeing a lot of buses too lately, from the neighboring states, bringing in picnics from schools and colleges to India’s closest ‘foreign’ destination.

While this presents a huge business opportunity to the thousands of operators in Goa, it’s a sign of a chronic problem that’s only set to grow worse. Our crowds are growing, but we’re not doing anything about them.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

For a state that boasts of being one of India’s best tourist destinations, we have little or no Public transport infrastructure. There’s virtually no reliable system to move tourists from one attraction to another. The buses are mostly private and not nearly enough to deal with the kind of numbers we deal with. In most places, buses stop plying by 8pm. The rickshaws are absurdly costly. The taxis shamelessly overcharge. The resources are even more limited as one moves to the interiors of Goa. Most of Goa’s beauty lies in its hinterland. But its rarely accessible to the average tourist.

LACK OF ATTRACTIONS

World over, every tourist destination worth its salt works hard to draw the crowds and keep them happy. Be it the traditional tourist hotspots like France and Italy or the newer debutants like Dubai and Singapore, they invest in the tourism industry in ways that brings in the numbers. Not us. Very little of the ‘Goa Experience’ was built by us. The temples and the churches are what our ancestors left us. The Beaches were an endowment to us that we are all but screwing up. The quaint countryside, the verdant mountains, that almost spiritual rhythm of life are all gifts of a higher power. Our every selling point is a gift we should be thankful for.

OVER CROWDED, OVER COMMERCIALIZED

I don’t know if its what the tourists like, but seeing the Calangute-Baga-Candolim stretch disturbs me. It looks nothing like what the ads promote goa to be. Overcrowded, crassly commercialized and unorganized, it’s a picture of chaos at the peak of the tourist season. Its no different in other places. Panjim in the evenings is traffucked almost every day. The boat cruises try really hard to be fun, but the festive décor looks oddly out of place in the impossible crowd. The crowds and the traffic near the jetty would all but kill the excitement for me. Almost every supposed ‘Tourist attraction’ is horribly mismanaged. The Shacks are overpriced. Popular beaches are dirty. Somehow nothing is like the Goa you’d imagine.

THE WRONG CROWDS

Though often unspoken, we attract a large numbers of tourists of the wrong kind. The domestic tourist looking for cheap booze and ‘foreign girls’ treat goa like a lawless land. The international tourists have made Goa the drug capital of india. These are the kinda tourists we could do without. And yet, we are doing nothing to curb them. Till we work on reducing this menace, we are not gonna move up the tourism value chain. We need to attract the refined crowds, who bring value to us. But to attract them, we need to create value first.

I realize Goa is still an oasis in the cacophony that is most of India. It takes me just a few days outside goa to start feeling fortunate to be born a goan. Almost everyone else envies you for being a goan. But every goan knows his state is changing. Changing fast. We are fast destroying our limited USPs. We are almost aggressively complacent about the very things we owe our industry to and continue to milk them to their limits. The abuse is evident everywhere. We are sitting on a time bomb. We are fast killing what Goa has offered to outsiders for so long—peace of mind. And we are not developing alternate attractions. We are squeezing the Beaches beyond their capacity. We are not doing nearly enough to make our tourists feel safe.

I can’t speak for everyone, but if I was a tourist visiting Goa, I’d feel cheated.

NetWorked

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:08:00 +0000

Its early morning, and something finally managed to wake me up. No, not the alarm clock. That never works. Some weird combination of mum shouting, sun shining and time running out manages to wake me up. Even before my eyes are fully open, the hand reaches out to grab the cell. Quick glance through the messages and the obligatory Good morning messages done, begins my first tryst of the day with the world wide web—the Twitter app. Trust me, news and updates reach the twitterverse BEFORE they become breaking news. That done, I finally got off my bed.

The radio greeted me, jus like it does, every morning. More often than not, it beams the archaic All India Radio which sounds the same, every single day, Vicco ads et al. How I wish I could substitute it with the amazing Sky.fm. The app sits pretty on my phone afterall. But Parents prevail. So sky.fm is relegated to some special mornings, when I have the house to myself. Sky.fm brings to you great music via the web and the App works great. Bliss is the only word to describe its music.

A few mins later, I got onto my bus heading to college. An hour long journey that gives one plenty of time for self reflection, day dreaming or jus plain dozing. Its amazing how much a net enabled phone helps you on the bus. The uncle besides me struggles to gain control over his newspaper flapping with the wind as I read the day’s news on the Times of India App, sitting pretty on the phone. Same news, but in a much more comfortable way. Sometimes, when I feel like getting inspired, there are TED videos waiting to be watched in the TED app. Or the podcast I downloaded last night. I remember the time I used to struggle to find time to read all the articles while surfing the web on the PC. Now, Pocket enables me to offload all my reading to such Idle times. And of course, there’s always the Kindle app and the ebooks in it. Its safe to say bus journeys are never boring anymore. Or any waiting time for that matter. Internet in your pocket really helps in multiple ways.

Being in goa, one is always surrounded by Tourists roaming around on the rented bikes. Sadly, govt doesn’t bother putting up nearly enough sign-boards. And so you have the tourists, eternally asking around for directions to the locals. Looking at them, I smile to myself, remembering a recent road trip I had with friends. Google maps knew every road, sometimes even narrow alleys. Thanks to the Maps and GPS, we never struggled to find our way. Feed the destination and drive away! Whether it takes the spirit away is another question altogether. But it certainly feels good to know you’re never lost.

Anyway, the phone and the net keep entertaining through the day. Twitter, Facebook and their constant updates. As if they weren’t addictive enough, checking your updates and notifications is now a tap away. But its not all fun and play. 24-7 net means now the emails reach me in real time and if important enough, can be replied to, immediately. Must say, it really feels professional when you check and reply to your mails from the phone :)

As I get back into the bed at the end of the day, I jus saw this Vodafone Indiblogger contest mail in my inbox. Blog on the topic ‘Internet is fun’ they said. I thought back of the entire day and how the Internet intermingles with my day intimately. How it helps me interact with friendly strangers on twitter, read perspectives of people all ‘round the world or jus keep me updated. How it has taken personal entertainment to a whole new level. Yes, internet is fun indeed :)

This post was written for Vodafone Indiblogger 'Internet is Fun' contest (www.vodafone.in/fun)

Road Trippin’

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 19:25:00 +0000

“…..Its time to leave this town , its time to steal away…lets go get lost somehere in the USA……lets go get lost….”

These lyrics from the lovely song “Road Trippin’ by RHCP often takes me to a different world. A world where I’m in the middle of nowhere on a wide open road on a Royal Enfield, wind going through my hair and sun gloriously on the evening sky…..

There’s something about the open road. Something that has an enduring romance and a sense of adventure to it. An appeal that transcends time, age, cultures and almost everything else. The possibilities are endless, destinations many.You just need to be ready for it. No one knows what awaits at the next curve or the one after that. And so you ride….

I daresay, I haven’t ridden much. Yes, I have been on a lot of road trips but they have been in the family car. Except for a few rides around and one ‘Proper’ Road trip partially covered on a Honda Dio, a biking Road Trip remains an elusive dream. And so you live, making the most of the occasional ride to the college not so closeby…or that ride to the places around. Being in Goa, you are never short of places.

I do not own a Royal Enfield, or any of the other ‘Road trip’ bikes. Heck, i can't even ride a geared bike properly yet. But I’m a biker at heart. I feel comfortable on my Honda Dio, like its an extension of my body. Feel a sense of attachment to it that’s unexplained. The road often seduces me. I spend hours reading about journeys of other bikers. Every time I leave on a long journey by road, there’s a sense of excitement. Its not always about the destination. Its about the Journey that awaits. The experiences it offers.

I don’t know when that glorious day will come. The day when I’ll be able to kick-start a bike and leave on that fabled Life changing Road trip across the Indian subcontinent. When I’ll undertake that mystical journey to the High Himalayas. Or when I’ll ride across the Rann.

For now, I wait. Planning, reading, dreaming….

PS: I'll highly Recommend reading "One Life To Ride" by Ajit Harisinghani to all. If the title alone inspires you to read it, you know what this blogpost is about

(This Post was written for IndiBlogger's The Castrol Power1 Blogging Contest http://www.facebook.com/CastrolBiking)

Experience Android

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 19:07:00 +0000

Its difficult being a technophile. There’s always something to drool over and an empty pocket to go with it. More often than not, you find solace in the fact that you can’t afford most of it(Apple anyone?). But once in a while, comes a device that is affordable, yet which you can’t really buy outright. This is the irritating zone. And Android stood out like a middle finger in this zone.

When I bought my First phone from my hard earned cash, the Nokia 7610 Supernova, in March 2009, Android was an emerging tech on the horizon, not a serious option worth considering. I was hardpressed to find a wi-fi enabled phone within my budget, let alone a smartphone. Cut to 2011 and Android is everywhere. Everyone you know is buying one and every website you surf has an App for Android, iPhone and Blackberry. Features like wifi, accelerometer, GPS are standard issue.My s40 Nokia is a nobody in the tech world. For someone who spends most of the online time reading up tech-website, most articles you read are about how smartphones are making life convenient. It’s a difficult thing for tech-lover.

But my phone was just 2.5yrs old. It did everything it was meant to do. Besides, I hadn’t been able to save enough cash for a new phone and I don’t think the cheaper Androids are worth it. So there I was, silently mocking every ‘via Twitter for Android’ tweet and cursing all the people on my timeline discussing the wonders of Android.

Then came my 21^st b’day. A generous gift from my parents and some of my own cash coupled with some coaxing by people around me finally lead to me hitting the Order button on Flipkart for a brand new Motorola Defy+! I placed the order on 6th January 2012. On 9th january 2012, I had the baby in my hand :)

I had spent hours reading reviews of this phone and seen countless pictures. But the piece i received was completely different. The body was black alright but the top button, volume rockers, and back panel latch were grey. Besides, the exposed screws of the defy were metallic, unlike the matching colored black screws in the pics. it looked neat!

Why Defy+?

First thing first. Why this phone? To be frank, I didn’t plan on it. It cost me Rs.17,400/- in Jan 2012 and that was way above my budget.I had been looking at the 10 to 14k range and had been drooling over Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini for months. But some reviews about its battery life and some other problems stopped me. Also, Moto Defy which was priced 14.5k was too good to ignore. I mean, when you can buy a water-proof phone with a large screen and above average pixel density, how can you NOT buy it? So I was inclined to the Defy. But Defy was released in 2010 and had been succeeded by Defy+ in 2011. It was priced about 3k higher and on paper, the only improvement was a 1GHz processor, new chipset, 1 GB ROM and a bigger battery. Defy has a huge developer support. But I decided to pay that extra 3k and go for the Defy+ instead.

Why Defy+ over Defy? For a start, I believe it makes sense to invest in the latest when it comes to tech. A year is a long time in tech world and though the difference might not seem much on paper, there is a good chance there are quite a few internal changes. Besides its much more likely to be supported for a longer time by the parent company.

The Pros

About the features, Defy+ came with a 3.7” screen and 265ppi pixel density which are both above average specs at this price point. It also has a 2gb internal memory which even many of the higher priced phones do not. Trust me, internal memory is a blessing when it comes o Androids. All apps cannot be stored on an external storage and 2gb internal storage means you do not have to think before installing an app like owners of most other Androids. The water proof, dust proof feature works like a charm and is extremely convenient, besides its snob appeal :P The hardware is great. Camera quality is great in external daylight. Audio quality is good. The 3 color status LED is convenient.

The Cons

The single worst part of this phone is its Software. It lags often and can get irritating. At times, ur phone starts ringing and yet you can’t receive the call cause the phone is yet to display the Answer button. There is also some lag while opening Apps at times.This is not always the case, but it happens pretty often. This is due to the faulty MotoBlur UI and its drawing a lot of flak from users. This problem also existed in the older Defy and is a reason why so many users chose to shift to CyanogenMod aftermarket ROM. The hardware is great and CyanogenMod really makes it worth it. But sadly CyanogenMod is not out for the Defy+ yet.

Besides this, the phone lacks a front facing cam which is the only hardware feature missing in this phone. The backside cam suffers in low light conditions. Battery, though bigger than Defy, lasts a day at max. Drain is much faster if GPS is used which is counter-intuitive, as you normally use GPS on journeys, where you may not get to charge very often.

My most used Apps

Owning an Android has fulfilled a lot of my expectations, and more. It has made life a lot better. So its only apt I share my most used apps.

For Twitter and facebook, I use the official apps. Twitter For Android does everything I expect it to, so not using third party clients yet. Facebook for Android is slow, but it works. I sometimes use the Motoblur Social clients that came with the phone, though they aren’t very usable.

Besides the social apps, the single most used app on the Phone is ‘Read It Later’. I read A LOT. A lot of my online time is spent reading and Read It Later has helped me offload my reading to times when I’m free, like on a bus journey or while waiting somewhere. Read it later is available as a bookmarklet for ur PC browser as well as has excellent integration with most of the apps on the phone including feed reader, social clients, browser etc. so you can literally mark articles from anywhere and save it to ur reading list. It removes all the formatting from your article and saves it in a beautiful, plain text form.

Next comes Any.Do. This app is so beautiful, I look for excuses to use it. It’s a to-do list in a minimalistic form and does what its meant to, in a beautiful way.I use MoneyWise to keep track of my finances. It’s a convenient app and takes care of everything you might need to keep a track of your spending. I use Google Reader to read the feeds of all major websites I regularly surf. I never saw the point of Feed Readers before I got an Android, but now it makes a lot of sense. Browsing happens in Firefox for Android as it helps me sync by bookmarks from the PC.Evernote and Dropbox are used once in a while, but not as much as I thought I would.

Other few notable ones are the default News & Weather app, default music player(Connected music player), Google Maps, the Times Of India App, Skype, Sky.fm, Zinio etc.There are several more apps that I’ve installed but the above ones are most loved and used.

The Android Experience

All said and done, its been a pleasure owning an Android. It feels great when u can finally read all those articles on tech sites as an owner and not just a tech enthusiast. Bus journeys are more productive. Its difficult to get bored. You have your documents at your disposal everywhere. Everything is better connected- your mail, FB account, twitter account…You can do things more efficiently. Read at your leisure, surf at leisure…wifi is a boon, GPS is great. Feels nice to tweet a pic when you want, from anywhere.

In short, Android has been everything that I had expected, and more.The next big thing in tech maybe right around the corner. For now, the geek in me is happy :)

Open Letter From a Goan Boy

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 08:57:00 +0000

The once-tranquil mandovi, now clogged with numerous floating casinos. On the opposite shore, yet another goan hillside fighting a losing battle with commercialisation

This letter is not just another blogpost. It’s a vent to a long pent up frustration, that more and more goans are feeling, EVERY SINGLE DAY. As every non-goan businessman who makes his fortune in goa tries to sell goa the wrong way, this frustration is only multiplying. And I have a problem with too many of them.

First of all, the tourists. Don’t get me wrong. Goans love to entertain guests. I do too.We are probably the most hospitable lot in this country which worships its guests.I personally love helping out tourists, directing them to the right places, helping them out. But we seem to be having too many of the wrong kind lately.

For example, the domestic tourists on a budget looking for a ‘phoren’ destination without moving out of the contry. Its easy to spot these. The uncles with their pants fighting a losing battle with the bulging tummies, the aunties who think sarees are great swim wears, the guys who think the a-size-too-small T shirts make them look sexy and the born-in-a-ghagra-choli-wearing-fake-roberto-cavalli girls. And they rarely come as one family. They usually come in these buses. Then they discover Goa. Suddenly, the entire bus wears a uniform of White sleevless Goa T-Shirts and shorts. And the sunglasses come out. Then they throng the roads like herds of cattle, occupying half the road, giggling in that idiotic way at their own stupid jokes. There is no hint of decency in their behavior.they are loud, noisy and messy wherever they go. they don't even think before dirtying the crap out of a place. The sheer mediocrity of this class irks the susegadness out of me!

Then comes the college groups and youngsters. Brought up on a firm belief that Goa is the Las Vegas of India, these people almost believe anything and everything is ok in Goa.So be it driving with your shirts off, roaming around drunk, eve-teasing any and every girl on the road, everything is a must-do in goa.And then they see this exotic species called foreigners. I dunno why the fascination with the white skin but somehow too many of these youngsters seem to lose their senses at the sight of them. And then they try to woo them with Inglis. No guys, saying ‘Hullo madaam! Yennjoying goa?’, doing that Rajni style acrobatics with your fake Gucci sunglasses isn’t gonna woo them.No sir. And for god sake guys, would you ever ask ‘yahan ladki kahaan milegi?(where can I get a girl here?)’ to anyone in your hometown?? That’s down-right filthy! These guys, with an excuse of a mustache and faces as sexy as the extras in regional films, are suddenly looking forward to becoming Macho Man in this land without a law.Sure you maybe looking for one, but asking that to anyone on the road, assuming its ok, is an insult to our values! No matter how you see goa, we goans respect our women! Every girl here is NOT available and every guy is not a pimp. Sure there are wrong elements here but you’ll be surprised to see how little of it is run by Goans. Either case, for god’s sake, respect the state. And its people.Goa is nothing like its portrayed to be. Carnival happens once a year. Everyone does not stay on the beach. Everyone is not perpetually drunk. We do go to schools/colleges/offices. Everyone is not a Gonsalves/Dsouza/peter.

Then come the foreign tourists. This is one category that brings in most of the money that runs the industry. That’s great. But can you guys please come, stay and return as tourists?? Can you guys please try and stop ruining my state?? The Russians have taken over entire costal stretches here! You’ll be hard-pressed to find a sign-board in Hindi but you’ll find entire menus, instructions and shop names written in Russian! I’m not really a language chauvinist but its outrageous that Russians have infiltrated our state to this level. You guys have one of the largest country in the world! Why eye the smallest state in our country??

I understand its hot here and you guys have to drive around shirt less and in other bare minimum clothing,but our religious places have some code of conduct. Dress codes aren’t strict here, ‘cause we can live with that, but is it asking too much if we ask you to dress up modestly? And when you go the temples, ask around what is to be done. The people will help you more than willingly. For example, the garlands sold outside are meant for the gods. They are not meant to be put around your neck 1^st and then offered to god.I know you don’t do it on purpose, but we have some culture freaks here who blow up any and every issue. We don’t want that to lead to insanely strict measures, so please be careful.

And its not just about the screwing of culture. Its an open secret that pedophilia, drug trade flourish in Goa because of these foreign tourists. One look at some foreigners and you can make out how stoned they are!

These are by far not the only categories of tourists that irk me.There are too many of them. And our state is getting choked. Jus venture out on the roads during season and the roads are choked with tourist vehicles. One-way and no parking signs are blissfully ignored by these tourist vehicles.

After tourists come the migrants. Unfortunately, goa happens to be an oasis in a poor neighbourhood. Areas around goa don’t exactly have a good standard of living or employment opportunities. So everyone comes to goa. It pays more, it’s a better place to live in and hey, its GOA! So first one member comes, followed by his entire extended family. Before you know it, Goa has almost as many migrants, probably more,then the locals, doing business in goa. So now every every vegetable vendor, every small business owner and ever sweet/cashew/liquor shop owner is a migrant. (Insider tip to the tourists—do not buy liquor/cashew from non-goan shops. There’s a reson you’re getting too cheap a price there. And no, shops named Goa Cashew are not necessarily goan). The migrants from Karnataka, UP and the omni-present Marwaris have completely taken over the trade. And you know the worst thing? These people do not have the goan courtesy. So when a tourist has a bad experience, Its goa that takes the bad name, not the migrant. In addition, the lamani and hawkers make sure goa’s image is marred.

But outsiders are not always migrants. The ultra-rich from Delhi/Mumbai, the glitterati for whom a property in goa as must-have accessory have ensured a systematic rape of our treasured land. So trees after trees are felled to build luxurious villas with scenic views which will be probably used for less than a month a year! And the sadder part is, we goans suddenly becomes ‘Tresspasers’. So when we go to a beach for a stroll(no we don’t do it everyday), we are suddenly being chased by Gurkhas(also a migrant) of these properties!. That’s insulting to say the least!

But perhaps the one section to blame for all this mess is or ruling class.These 40 thieves who fill their pockets at the expense of a systematic loot of our land. So while the mafia dines and the businessman mines with gay abandon, our politicos conveniently look the other way. A little political will can do wonders. But the only wonder they focus on is the next election victory. So the migrant vote bank is ever welcome so are the businessman that will fund the election.

Goa is losing its goan'ness.Its still tons better than any other place in India.but its fast losing its character. The coconut trees are being replaced with luxury resorts, the silent mandovi river being clogged with casinos.

There are too many people I’m angry at. Too many people who are ruining a paradise. Everyone is welcome in goa. But please enjoy it the right way, and bloody leave!

Goa is not a whore. Please stop screwing it.

Sagar.Kamat.Uses.This

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:37:00 +0000

NOTE: This post is inspired by the posts on http://usesthis.com. If you haven’t seen the site, then I recommend you check it out first(in a new tab of course. Don’t leave my blog!) before reading this post. I love that site and if you’re a fellow geek, I don’t need to explain why. I figured it’ll be a few years before i get to feature on that site, so till then, the donkey shall praise his own tail, right here :P so here goes….

Who are you, and what do you do?

I am Sagar Kamat and I’m a student of Mechanical Engineering at the Goa College of Engineering who occasionally blogs, regularly tweets and mostly wastes his time online just reading stuff.i love everything tech. And I also think too much. About everything. I love traveling and trekking and I love the spirit of adventure. I hope to roam the world some day. But for now, I’m still yet to see my beautiful home state of Goa, India in its entirety .I’m also an avid orator. Professionally, I haven’t done anything great yet and that’s why you’re reading this here and not on http://usesthis.com. But hopefully that’ll change in a few years :)

What hardware are you using?

Apart from my time at the college, I’m mostly glued in front of my Samsung 19” TFT LCD that’s powered by a CPU running 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6550. The otherwise 2 GB RAM is currently down to 1 GB. Every computer I’ve owned since my first in 2003, has been a generation or two behind the prevalent specs but that hasn’t hampered my computing much.

There’s also a HP laptop in the house with similar specs that technically belongs to dad’s office but is as good as mine :P

Most of digital life is stored on a 500GB Seagate FreeAgentGO External Hard drive that helps me take my data wherever I go. The imp folders on my PC are synced with this hard drive and vice versa every time its connected and that’s very helpful.

My music is played by an Edifier m600 2.1 system. It produces some crisp audio though you'll never find it in online comaprisons of speakers.

Late night movie sessions are heard on a pair of Philips SHP1900 headphones.

Another very imp hardware for me is my cellphone. Right now, that role is played by a Nokia 7610 Supernova and its heavily ~~Abused~~ Used.I'm never comfortable with in-ear earphones and the stock ones i got with this phone are more than satisfactory for me.

Sadly, the only piece of Apple in the house is an iPod Nano that went through the washing machine which shorted its battery. so now it can only be used as a 8gb external storage.

There's also a Nikon D3100 DSLR in the house mostly used by my brother.

I also rely on my trusty ol’ Honda Dio to get me around.

And what software?

I’m a Windows person for now(i have hopes from Mac OS). The PC runs Windows 7 and I love it. Its remarkably better than XP and actually more productive. I have given Linux a try(Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex) but could never use it as my primary OS. Don’t get me wrong, its cool. But it doesn’t run a lot of software I’d like to and after using 7, I didn’t feel like using it anymore and it recently got replaced by Windows 8 developer preview.

The single most used software is obviously the browser, Firefox for now. Chrome is cool but the Echofon(for twitter) and Webmail Notifier(for mail) add-ins have stopped me from migrating. Most recently, I also find the Firefox sync very convenient. It syncs my bookmarks n stuff across my browsers on PC and laptop and that’s handy.

I use Microsoft Office. My limited internet bandwidth stops me from using Google Docs. That, and the fact that Docs doesn’t offer all the features that Office does.

As an Engineer, I use SolidWorks 2010. It’s a brilliant CAD software that’s also very easy to use. I love the community built around it and that’s the reason I use it out of the many options available. I also fiddle around with Google Sketch-up at times. I’d like to get conversant with as many CAD softwares as possible but Hard disk space is an issue.

Image Editing happens in Photoshop CS5.Maintanence in CCleaner.Picasa is a favourite too.

Some imp files are backed up on Microsoft Skydrive in the rare event that my PC AND external HDD get destroyed together.

What would be your dream setup?

Ah, dream set up! That would have a lot of glowing Apple logos :P Since I first set my eyes on it, I have been in love with MacBook Air. Would love to own one. I know its low on specs but people who own one swear by its utility. Its light, fast and beautiful. But expensive :(

For my PC, I’d love a dual monitor set-up. The one time I used it, I loved it. Plus it looks cool ;)

And also a 3D connexion navigator.

The only time i got to use a dual monitor set up

And unlimited, fast, wireless Internet. That's gonna be a necessity as we shift to the cloud.

I’d like a smartphone. Android, iPhone…or anything better.Been drooling over Sony Ericcson Xperia Mini these days.

Also, a tab. Would say an iPad but I like flash, so that’s a dealbreaker. So any Tab would do.I'm longing to tuck under my blanket, reading an ebook on a tab.

And an Aeron chair.

Yep, I’m a man with trivial dreams.

But really, looking at the way devices are going, there is no point in dreaming of a set-up. Technology is progressing at a breakneck speed and things I havn’t even dreamt of must be ready in basements of Apple, MIT Media labs, Microsoft and the garages of many entrepreneurs. So better keep my tech dreams trivial.That way, you allow yourself to be delighted.

Update: I have since upgraded my Phone to a Motorola Defy+, the review of which is here

10 things I learnt from my summer internship@Ford

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 17:47:00 +0000

My reward :)

So after years of waiting for a chance, I finally got the opportunity to ‘work’ in the big bad world out there, this summer(summer for the namesake.is been pissing non-stop here). I got to spend a month at the Caculo Ford Sevice Centre located at Verna-Goa from 9^th June to 9^th July 2011. And boy did I learn from it!

The entire experience deserves a detailed blogpost-as my next post. For now, here are a few nuggets of wisdom that I picked up from my stint.

1)The ONLY thing that matters out there in the corporate world is Money. Everything else exists ‘cause it brings in the money.

2)When things go wrong, you pay for your mistakes. And the intensity of the brunt is felt the hardest at the bottom of the pyramid

3)The diploma and Vocational certificate holders have the knowledge. But the guys with the Degrees Have the respect.

4)you may not realize it in college.But engineering education makes you think differently.

5) 9 to 5 jobs suck.You don’t realise what you’re enjoying when u can go home early from college.or bunk a lecture.

6)Smart people aren’t exactly a rarity in this world.

7)Making it big in this world isn’t gonna be easy.

8)There are a LOT of things in this world you have NO clue about. And you can’t help it.

9)The management theories are for the Management, not the workers.

10) Weekends are holy.

+1) ‘Earning’ your 1^st salary feels AWESOME! :)

Yeh blogpost ek Engineer dwara Janhit me jaari. Dhanyawad :)

(PS: Sincere thanks to everyone at Caculo Ford. Every employee there willingly shared whatever they could with me, regardless of how stupid the questions were. Learnt a lot from each one of them. A very professionally run workplace indeed with a very able leadership at the helms. This could not have been possible without them)

The Underdogs-How mech won Tandav 4.0

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 08:33:00 +0000

At the outset, let me admit, this post comes late, very late in fact. It should’ve come out somewhere in October 2010, but I never got down to writing it, ‘cause I was too ~~lazy~~ busy. But this remains one of the most imp events of my life so far, so I felt I HAD to write it down. As they say, better late than never.

For the uninitiated, Tandav is the interdepartmental event of our college, where the 6 depts-mech, ETC, Comp, Civil, EnE and IT, fight out a no. of events to win the coveted Tandav Trophy. Needless to say, its an intense display of branch loyalty and passions flare out at the slightest push.Sometimes, in less-than-appropriate ways.

But anyways, my dept-the mechanicals, didn’t exactly have a record to boast of in the previous 3 tandavs.The year before, when I anchored Tandav3.0, I had seen my branch end the event at the bottom of the Score table.needless to say, it was humiliating. When you see the victors celebrating on stage and you know your branch didn’t even give them a proper fight, it hurts. The mechanical spirit-something which the mech students and teachers swear by, had become somewhat a public joke.The dept which boasted a legendary history had to regain its glory. We had to win it this time.

It was somehow also important to me at a personal level. I had something to prove to myself. That I could do it. As the co-ordinator of my branch for tandav, I felt the result, victory or defeat, would be very personal to me. Frankly speaking, it wasn’t about the victory. It was about giving a tough fight. Whoever won, we wouldn’t let them win it so easily.

Not so surprisingly, whoever we told that we were gonna give a serious fight this time, they laughed at us. yes, even people from my own dept. Nobody thought we could do it. “Mech is destined to lose” they said, “Why are you even bothering?”. I liked that. ‘Cause it meant we could work without pressure. Everything to win, nothing to lose.

And so we started. I spoke to a few of my classmates whom I felt brought something to the table. My seniors(whom I had no hopes from then, but who I’m proud of now) also joined in. We called a combined meeting of the mech students from all the four years. Our pump-in-chief Joyton Fernandes, who can give the best politicians a run for their money in giving motivational speeches, did an excellent job of getting everyone on board. For the 1^st time since I joined this college, the entire mech crowd was united. My 1^st glimpse of the proverbial mech spirit :)

Then began he task of selecting the right people for various events.Those who had a proven record in any field were given a preference. For the events where we had too many candidates, we had our own mini-tournaments to select the best representative. The seniors, led by Ishan kossambe, tanay rege, Marvil soares n others, took it upon themselves to handle the Key events like Group Dance, Street Play and others.Pratik, Janardhan, Aditya, Manesh and others spent days working with the thermocol to make the Instruments for Rock mime and Fashion Show. Achintya, Utkarsh, gautam, brahmanand and others helped wherever they were needed.For each of the events of Tandav, countless people worked day and night to give us a fighting chance.

One of my most vivid memories of tandav remains the Video making. From deciding upon a script, to the countless modifications at the last moment, to the actual shooting of the shots, it was all crazy fun! We had countless fights while making it. Manzil, Gajanan and Brian burnt the midnight oil while editing and post processing the video, even going sleepless straight for over 24 hours! But in the end, it was all worth it. The video won the 1^st place. You can see it here.

Another group worth mentioning was our band. Comprising of Bharadwaj, Manzil, Kishan, Deepak and ashwajit, it was super fun spending the night listening to them practice. They rocked it too, and got us another 1^st place. It still gives me goosebumps when I see the recoding on my cell :)

We also managed to get some Dhols for the crowd support event. This dhol did an excellent job of creating a super atmosphere during the actual event. Yep, 1^st place there too.

The actual Tandav week was a flurry of activities. Though the actual event was schedule for Fri-sat, 1^st and 2^nd Oct, the sports events began on Monday itself. Day one was pathetic for us.except 3^rd place in carom, we couldn’t manage any victory. The defending champs ETC meanwhile took an early lead. Was a bad day. But things started getting better next day onwards. Our huge 1^st victory came through our Football team. And since we had placed a joker on it, out points doubled. In a single event, we were propelled to the top of the Score chart. After that, we never looked back. A string of victories followed.

The actual 2 days of tandav were a roller coaster rider.A few hits, a few misses. The fight between Mech and ETC got very close.Tensions were at their peak. We made our fashion show barely an hour before the event. Everything from picking the models to making their costumes to deciding their walk was done at the last moment.Just before the last event, the fashion show,this is how things stood-We were leading the score board, but ETC weren’t far behind. They had a joker on the fashion show. And they had worked really hard on it. If they won the 1st place, Tandav trophy would be theirs. Any other place, it would be ours. Our fashion show, on the other hand, had NO hopes of winning. So the entire effort, weeks of prep, thesleepless nights, the trials n tribulations, came down to this. One event. The one event we hadn’t prepared for.those fianls 2 hours were THE most horrible moments of my life.You could cut then tension in my head with a knife. I would’ve never forgiven myself if we came this close, and lost. It was just not an option.

The fashion show ended. Tense moments followed. A friend stood by the judges’ table. As the scores were added up, he showed one sign- Thumbs up.

We had done it. We had FUCKING done it ! :)

The trophy was placed in the middle of the stage. The mechs couldn’t hold themselves back. We had waited too long for this. The stage was a sea of Black T shirts. It was a proud moment to accept the Trophy on behalf of my team.

Rewarding as it was, the tandav experience also had its share of bad things. It wasn’t easy—pushing your own friends to the limit(sorry pratik). Fighting against close friends from other depts.(sorry shambhavi, and other from ETC). Trust me, no matter how much you desire to separate your personal and professional lives, they take a toll on each other. But you realize the true meaning of friendship in these tough times. I’m proud to say I came even closer to many people after Tandav.

For every name I’ve mentioned in this post, there are countless more which I haven’t. I can’t. there are too many of them. It was a united effort afterall.

The post Tandav days weren’t exactly as I had hoped for. I didn’t agree with some of the ways in which we celebrated our victory. Nor did I agree with the allegations that were leveled against us. But guess they are all by-products of victory.

But at the end of it all, it was a good feeling. The feeling of accomplishment is suhweet.

We had done it. The underdogs had won tandav 4.0 :)

(PS. I might have unintentionally skipped a few things.Pls tell me if there is anything I should mention. Wrote the entire post in one go in abt 2 hours, so didn’t plan what I’d write. Also thanks to Pawan, Rahul and others from the council for a great event)

REASONS WHY I DIDN’T QUIT FACEBOOK,THIS TIME

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 15:36:00 +0000

This post might be a wee bit late considering its been 13 days since the ‘Quit Facebook Day’. But nevertheless, here I go. There have been many posts in the blogosphere telling us what was wrong with Facebook. Not all were hype. Some of them had genuine concerns and motivations (like this one, by Navin Pai and of course, the comments on quitfacebookday.com). And personally, I agree with many of them.But all said and done, I decided Not to kill my Facebook account, at present. Ironic, but true. Here’s how I addressed the concerns in my context.Please note that these are the reasons ‘I’ decided to stay back, not why ‘you’ should.It’s a matter of personal choice.

THE PRIVACY THING

This has been by far the biggest motivating factor for most quitters; Whether it is the third-party websites using your information or your profile being visible to everyone. But I think at the end of the day, it all comes down to ‘me’. I think I’m literate enough to choose 50-odd drop down options in my privacy settings. Yes, it is time consuming, but it’s an investment I’m ready to make if I value my privacy. It might not be as easy for everyone around the world, but why should I care about them? It may come out as selfish, but I’m no mahatma Gandhi. I am worried about my privacy and I can take care of it.

In any case, I think everyone should exercise a little caution when they put-up possibly sensitive stuff online. Nobody wants to know your intimate details or how bad your boss is.

THE EVIL THIRD PARTIES

For the record, facebook asks you to tick-off O-N-E 1 check box to opt you out of the Instant Personalization Program. But even if you are too lazy for that, stop being paranoid. Stop imagining the companies as evil goblins going over your data. They are just a bunch of computers using standard algorithms to give you a more personalized experience. Its as scary as Gmail posting customized ads in your inbox. And as we live in a more networked world, you are gonna see more of it. Your every choice,every transaction & every move is gonna be recorded to give you a more customized experience. Its scary, but as long as it stays computer based and we don’t have Skynet, I feel its harmless.Remember, you can still choose what goes out and what does not.

OPT-IN Vs OPT-OUT

I haven’t met Zukerberg and he may be every bit as evil as he is portrayed. But I think the Opt-out system rather then an opt-in one was purely a business decision. Think about it, any company has to make money to survive. Facebook does too. Now they have a bunch of users who don’t want to take the trouble to fix their Privacy settings. What are the odds of a substantial no. of users taking the trouble to understand and opt-in? And you CANNOT base a business model on odds like that.

Now I know that users don’t exist for the company to make money. That’s fine. Then Opt-out of it. But stop expecting a company to throw their business model out of the window. Or start expecting Fail-whales on facebook.

THE SOCIAL NETWORKING PART

Even I agree that FB is not the best social networking site out there. Its far too frivolous. But then, for me, social networking is not restricted to meeting new people. I appreciate being able to stay in touch with some old friends. And facebook(and orkut) , by virtue of its popularity lets me do that.I have met so many lost fiends here. Even people I had met at competitions around the country.

Sure I can call or mail them, but then, there are a class of friends who may not special enough for you to sit down and write a mail or call, but yet are friends enough for you to stay in touch. Plus it’s a passive medium that’s far less awkward to talk through. Can I stay silent while talking to someone on phone? No. But its ok to do that in chats.I can just drop in a scrap.I don’t have to worry about changed email addresses or phone numbers. Its just more comfortable.

THE BUGGERS

Off late, there have been more and more self-important morons out there who fill my timeline with their frivolity. Sure they bug me, but its OK. Aren’t they everywhere? The world around me is filled with mediocre/loose moralled/not-so-sophisticated people. How can facebook be any different? And you will find them everywhere, be it Twitter or Diaspora. Unless you are a part of illuminati or something, there are always going to be cheapos in every social group you belong. But should I surrender to them?

THE UTILITY OF IT

I think you will NOT understand the utility of Facebook unless you organize an event. Whether its just getting the word across or creating forums, facebook really helps you. We were able to get national participation for PhotoFlare through Facebook groups. We are still in touch with many of the participants through it.

All the news channels are using Pages to leverage their audience interaction. Some companies are also conducting recruitment through Facebook ads. Its sheer popularity makes it an attractive medium. And I think it makes sense to stay close to it for now.

All these were my justifications for staying back.For now, the pros outweigh the cons for me. I agree that there are a lot of users out there(children for example) who are at a risk.But I don’t think I’m one of them .

All This does not mean I’m a Facebook loyalist forever. If at all,someday, I feel the line has been crossed, I will leave.

In either case, I think facebook is destined to die . Orkut is already dying . someday twitter will too.that’s technology. The next big thing maybe just around the corner. And I will move on too.But for now, I’m a part of the 400million Facebook users.

The Story Of PhotoFlare’10

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 11:20:00 +0000

PhotoFlare’10: An event that was the talk of the town in Goa amongst the Photography enthusiasts, this April. For 2 days, 10th & 11th April, 2010, the who’s who of goan photography circuit were seen at the Sunaparanta Goa Centre For the Arts at Altinho, being a part of PhotoFlare. The response and feedback received was overwhelming. For an event to generate this kind of hype, response and expectation in its inaugural year, that too, organised by a club that isn’t even a year old, is no mean feat. But how did this all happen? Where did it all start?

PhotoFlare started out as an idea in the minds of few of our club members. Our objectives were simple—To organise an international event that would bring together, the best of international photography through various workshops, lectures and a competition. Through this event, we also hoped to give exposure to GEC Photography Club and its members. And thus, PhotoFlare was born.

Our Graphics team came up with an attractive sponsorship brochure and a website to match. our site-www.photoflare.org- was to be the main pillar of PhotoFlare. From telling people about the competition, to announcing the rules and the actual process of accepting entries, everything was supposed to be done via this website. And it did all that and more, beautifully.

The process of getting sponsors also started simultaneously. We had a few hits and a few misses. Regal electronics were our 1st breakthrough, followed by Goa Tourism, CMYK academy and others. In the end, we had enough sponsors to organize a successful event.

The Competition

The competition was the focal point of PhotoFlare. From the beginning, the competition was open to all, irrespective of age or nationality. Entries were invited under four themes-Reflections, Aim for Colours, Life by Night and Candid. Entries were accepted throughout the month of March. The process for submitting entries was given on our site. But the word had to be gotten out. This is where the marketing kicked in. We relied upon both-traditional and non-traditional forms of marketing. Attractive posters were put up in strategic locations in key places and college campuses. Posters were also displayed in the lounge of Inox Multiplex, they being one of our sponsors. PhotoFlare pages were created on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc. Forums were started on sites like Betterphotography.in and chip.in to tell people about the event. Meanwhile, the club members continued publicizing the event via their social networking profiles and blogs. The event was also listed in the event listing section of Times of India’s Goa edition. Navhind Times also featured article about the event. Smses were effectively used to send updates regarding PhotoFlare, thanks to our sms sponsor oneby0.com. Publicity was also done via the TV and Radio media via our sponsors, Goa365 and BIG92.7fm respectively.

All this effort paid off and the competition received an overwhelming response. In all, we received 375 entries. Being located in Goa, a large number of entries were from here. But notably, we received many entries from all around the world, like from west Bengal, New Delhi and Rajasthan from India, to Australia, and the UAE. Due to popular demand, the deadline had to be extended by 24hours.

In the end, we had a large collection of excellent photos to choose from .The difficult task of choosing the winners lay with our panel of judges, Mr.Prasad Pankar of CMYK academy, and Mr.Rajtilak Naik from Times Of India. In all, 40 photos, 10 from each category, were chosen to be displayed at the exhibition. Also, one winner was chosen from each category.

The Exhibition

The exhibition was the showcase event of PhotoFlare. It was held in the beautiful environs of Sunaparanta at Altinho. The serene, inherently beautiful surrounding took the exhibition to a whole new level. Preparing for the exhibition was a beautiful experience. The day preceding the exhibition, our members worked hard to set-up the exhibition and create the environment for the days to come. From putting up the Photos, decorations, banners and the sponsors’ posters to handing out all the invites, the last few days were a frenzy of activities. Would the efforts pay-off? Will people come to appreciate our efforts? These were the questions at the back of our minds as we slept with anxious anticipation.

The morning of 10th April, Sunaparanta looked all set to host a 2-day photography extravaganza. We felt proud wearing our PhotoFlare T-shirts(sponsored by Carasid’s).All the efforts, jubilations and preparations came down to this day.

The inauguration ceremony started at 11am at the hands of our chief guest, renowned installation artist, Mr.Subodh Kerkar, in the presence of both our judges. Amongst the audience, were the nominees of the competition. Notable was the presence of Mr.Prasanth Mohan, one of our nominees who was here all the way from kerala! The desire to be the winner was evident on their faces. The veil of secrecy was finally lifted when the winners were announced. But the excitement of their work being displayed at an exhibition was beaming from the faces of all the nominees nevertheless.

Besides the 40 nominated photos, the exhibition also featured the best photos clicked by our club members. Over the next 2 days, the exhibition was visited by over 500 guests that came from all over Goa and beyond. Considering the fact that the Gallery isn’t centrally located, this number is impressive. Some of the luminaries amongst our guests included Mr.Deep Pai, founder of photographers@pune , Mr.Hanuman Kambli, renowned artist, Fr. Tamatur, principal of Don Bosco’s High School, Panjim and Mr.Manguirish Pai Raikar of the Goa Chamber Of Commerce besides many others. The exhibition was very well received and the photos, much appreciated. The comments in the visitors book bear a testimony to this fact.

Workshops & Lectures

2 workshops and a lecture was organised as a part of PhotoFlare. The 1st workshop on Night Photography was conducted by Mr.Akhil Sinai Khandeparkar on the evening of 10th April. In this workshop, the participants were introduced to the new world of Light Painting. This workshop continued till 9.30pm and the participants had a great time.

The 2nd workshop, workshop on creative use of Outdoor lighting was conducted by Mr.Dattaram Gawade in the morning of 11th April. In this workshop, participants learned the art of creatively using the natural light available while photographing outdoors. Mr.Gawade’s experience showed repeatedly throughout the workshop.

The lecture titled ‘Story Behind the Click’ was delivered by Mr.Suresh Kulkarni, an Electronics enthusiast with a long experience in working with cameras. Through the lecture, the participants got an insight into the behind-the-scenes workings of a camera. It was astounding to know the number of processes that take place between the press of a button and the capture of an image, all within a fraction of a second!

All the workshops and lectures were very well attended. Many of the participants expressed their desire to attend more such workshops. Besides learning a lot in the process, everyone had a great time. When else do you get interact face-to-face with skilled industry professionals, that too free-of-cost?

The experience

All in all, PhotoFlare’10 was a great experience, for us organizers, for the participants and for all those who attended it. The event helped spread the word about GEC Photography Club. The lessons we learnt in the process were invaluable. If nothing more, the event was a triumph of Internet Social Networking. Never before had social media been used so effectively in Goa, to spread the word about an event.Many people expressed their desire to join our club, which we had to unfortunately and unwillingly decline, ours being a college club.

We could not have done this alone. From the beginning, we received tremendous support from our faculty, the Goa Engineering College, our friends and family. The coverage from the media was very helpful. Mr.Prasad Pankar’s and Mr.Akhil Khandeparkar's support was invaluable. So was the assistance given by the people at Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts. Most importantly, the huge response we received was very inspiring.

The event is now over and the compliments are pouring in from all around. The following is one of them.

“Something's telling me that PHOTOFLARE's gonna be a HUGE event in the years to come. I truly appreciate GEC photography club n its members for their sincere effort.. Congrats again on it's success....

Feels great to have been a part of it...”-Prasad Pankar

The accolades like above have only humbled us. We know we have taken the expectations to a whole new height. We have set a benchmark this year. We only hope we will exceed expectations next year. Thanks a lot for all the support. Keep Clicking!

Team PhotoFlare

(update: hey i forgot to mention about the improptu, unplanned events we had. on day 1, we had a informal session on canon hacked firmware upgrades by Ashwin Shukla. A student himself, Ashwin told us about CHDK, a open source firmware project using which u can boost the capabilities of ur existing Canon camera.

We also had a chat session with Deep Pai, founder member of Photographers@Pune a club wit over 1500 members!!)

My Archives 2: What keeps India kicking!

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:06:00 +0000

This article is 2nd in the 'My Archives' series. I had written the follwing article for an elocution competition, back in 2007. Its a rather long one,and maybe a bit boring for many of you. But it remains one of my personal favourites among everything i've ever written.Hope you like it too.

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60 yrs down the line: What keeps India kicking & lively?

The year was 1947. The place: the Indian subcontinent. Our nation was amidst one of history’s bloodiest exodus. Yes. We were a free nation at last. But nobody had ever imagined that the resulting celebrations would weep tears of blood and play trumpets of screams & cries. The situation had gone terribly out of control. Political heavyweights around the world predicted nothing short of an apocalypse for India. And yet, against all odds, we survived. Not just survived, but flourished. In a time frame that has been rarely surpassed in history, our nation, with all its snake charmers and cattle became the top contender for the podium of a world superpower.

It therefore becomes critical for us to analyze, what was the adhesive that held our massive nation together throughout the last 60 years? Why is it that against all odds, our nation held its own against the worst destiny could throw at us?

Ask these questions to a normal Indian and answer is obvious. The pride of being Indian; common, diverse and a rich cultural heritage, unity in diversity, tolerant mindset, so on and so forth. These are just some of the “answers” that have been imbibed in our minds through our educational system and polity. And given the size of our populace, it was necessary. But ask any thinking individual and you’ll know there is more to it then what meets the eye.

It takes more then pride in ones nation to become what we are today. Cultures were never common across India let alone the heritage. We remained united because that alone guaranteed our survival. It was more of an instinct then a virtue. And given the harshness with which we practiced our system of social hierarchy, we can be called anything but tolerant. Time and again, Indians have proved the unspeakable brutalities they are capable of. Surely, there must be some thing hidden deep within us that has so profoundly helped our resurrection from the post partition chaos. What are they? Lets start from ourselves.

What we Indians have is the zeal to succeed in the face of unimaginable odds. The desire to live a better tomorrow is congenital in all Indians. If yesterday did not culminate into a better life for me, tomorrow will. If I can’t do it, my son will. If the elder can’t, the younger will. This is the kind of hopefulness every Indian lives by. And this gives him a remarkable edge to overlook his present grim surroundings. People who get back home on roads flanked by open sewers in the slums of Dharavi, one day hope to walk the red carpet in Cannes. The ‘rags to riches’ stories of Dhirubai Ambani, Shah Rukh Khan and others are something everyone feels will be someday their own. The slums in India are amongst the worst places of survival for humans in this world. And yet you will find them bustling with perpetual vivacity of life. Without this inborn resilience, survival through the last decades was not possible. And until the conditions change for good, we may need this ability for a few years to come.

A word that has become ubiquitous in India today is ‘Superpower’. Living in a superpower is a dream that is not so far fetched for Indians today. But the question we may ask ourselves is- what is it that we got right in order to deserve this crown? Why is it that with so many countries vying for this top post, we achieved it with considerable ease? The answer lies in us, The Indians. Unlike other nations, we neither aspired to become a superpower for its patriotic aspects, nor for the power and respect it would bring to us. Indians knew fully well, the perks of living in a superpower. A superpower image projected at a global level would greatly improve their local standards of living. Resources would be at their disposal. Every Indian set his eyes on a better life and collectively for a nation; it meant a country stubborn on progress. In 1991, the American government refused to sell a supercomputer to India. In response Dr. Vijay Bhatkar and his team at C-DAC went on to build India’s first supercomputer PARAM. The next day, The New York Times headlines read “Angry India Does It”. This is the kind of aggressiveness that has kept our country kicking. And kicking hard.

True, we have the world’s largest slums and empty stomachs. But equally true is the fact that we have the world’s largest reservoirs of talented human resource, literate or otherwise. Penetration of corruption in our bureaucratic caverns is as much popular as the penetration of our democratic elections to the grass root levels. We may have one of the world’s lowest female to male ratio but that does not stop us from having a woman for a president. Such a dynamic equilibrium has kept our country from swinging into a state of perpetual doom.

Another factor that sets us apart from the rest is our firm belief in the values that are distinctly Indian. In no other country will you find conscience affecting actions so profoundly as in India. The unique social structure is seamlessly woven with far greater causes. Every plant, every animal, every element of nature finds a place of reverence in our country. Our festivals unassumingly coalesce our people. Our family system is still going strong and is massive contributor to our strength. Our ethics, our values and our code of conduct in life are appreciated throughout the world. For last 60 years, these were the values that stood behind the decision makers and the results are here for the world to see.

With the advent of liberalization in 1991, a new wave of entrepreneurs was unleashed in our country. Entrepreneurship is something we always had. This virtue was something that was subjugated in the socialist era. However, it didn’t die. A careful nurturing of this skill for last 17 years is now starting to bear fruit. Indian Industry is the buzzword everywhere. The Arcelor Mittal deal and Tata’s acquisition of Corus have shaken the roots of world economy. Today, Hindalco is the world’s largest sheet aluminum maker. The success stories of India now run into volumes. This newfound optimism can be seen in every media at home and abroad. No longer are NRI’s ashamed of their roots. In turn, the nation is proud of those who have carved out their niche in this world. It was this today that the people hoped for and worked towards for the last 6 decades.

People like Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Raghunath Mashelkar and their likes have made our country a knowledge superpower. People like Vikram Sarabhai have driven the country’s stride into the technology front. Our artists and the film industry have popularized our culture the world over. The India Phenomenon has swept the world.

Exciting as they were, last 60 yrs were by no means easy. The country has seen 3 major wars, countless separatist movement, a few riots and a stint of dictatorship. The earth continues to smolder in the valleys of Kashmir and terror attacks have repeatedly scarred our land. And yet we continue to stand and meet our crisis in the face. Perhaps, our greatest asset is our people. We have shown great courage when our country needed us. Every blow dealt on our people has been retorted by strong urge to get over it and move on. We have made sure that life triumphed over death, good over evil, humanity above everything else.

To quote our former president Dr. Abdul Kalam, “A developed India by 2020 or even earlier is not a dream nor mere vision in the minds of many Indians. It’s a mission we can all take up, and succeed.” The dream might be realized earlier then we think. Friends, let us make sure that for the next centuries our country keeps kicking, and lively.

The Budday Post

noreply@blogger.com (Sagar Kamat) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:16:00 +0000

(this 1's frm My 1st B'day.See how people like to see small chldren cry)
(Btw, cake's mom made)

Happy Budday toooo uuuu

Happy Budday tooooooo uuuuuu

Happy Budday dear bloggie

Happy Budday too uuuuu.

(my pune and belgaum readers, please directly go to the 5th para. I need some answers)

Hey guys, my blog finally turns 1 today!! Yup, after 16 not-so-regularly posted posts, SfericalCube is finally a year old. And like a year end medical report, I’d like to share with all of u, how my blog is doing(whether u like it or not).

Well, the blog hasn’t exactly been the raging success I expected it to be, but hey, it hasn’t been a total failure either.It has its share of a few loyal visitors. As of now, the blog has 7 official followers. But then, there are people like Tosha, Rujuta and my mom, who religiously visit the blog time and again and get disappointed ‘cause of lack of updates. Sorry girls. I must confess, my creative inspiration has failed me and I have not been able to post as frequently as I’d like to. But at the same time, I’ve also produced some posts like Confessions Of A Sleepaholic and The Story of my nth love which I’m personally proud of.

One advice for wannabe bloggers---sign up for Google Analytics the day you start blogging. It’s a great way to analyze the number of people that visit your blog, the places they come from, the time they spend on your site, even which browser they use……almost anything that’s worth knowing. Nobody told me all this and I had no clue how my blog was doing until 5th September, 2009. That’s when I signed up for Google analytics. The stats below represent my blog’s health since then till now.

Since September, my blog has had 267 visits by 165 unique visitors(thanks a lot guys) who have in all visited 841 pages on my blog.A bulk of the visitors came to my blog from my shameless self-promotion on orkut, facebook and twitter but about 40% also came here from other sources.

But the most interesting aspect is regarding where my readers come from. Me being from goa, it is obvious that most of my readers will be from goa, which is the case indeed. But after goa, the cities which send the highest no. of visitors to my blog are Pune and Belgaum. Belgaum didn’t even figure in the list a few days back but is suddenly giving pune a tough fight. And all this when I don’t have a single friend/relative in pune or belgaum! So, my pune and belgaum readers, thanks a lot! But from where are you all reaching here??

Anyway, lets keep this report short and simple. So that’s how my blog is doing. Not really hyperactive but very much alive and kicking. I shall try my best to update it as frequently as possible but suggestions are always welcome. Do wish my blog a long and healthy life and me some creative inspiration. Hope you will be back!