Tidbits here and there

Clearing the air on Indian role model claims

2010-03-12T07:28:00.000+08:00

Earlier this week, my ex-colleague Mohan BN tweeted that 2 Indians made it top 5 billionaires in the world, one of which happened to be Laxmi Mittal. I went to Laxmi Mittal's wikipedia page and saw he was a British Citizen and tweeted back the following:

Indians claim ne person remotely connected to India as "Indians". Please stop. Its infuriating. Laxmi Mittal is a Brit. Period.

It turns out that Laxmi Mittal is in fact an Indian Citizen and a lot of people wrote back. Some people agreed, some didn't. I agree that I didn't verify it (how I could have is a separate thread) and I apologize for that. Now, I wish to go beyond that particular instance and try and convey my feelings on this matter. I am sure some would agree and some won't but that's fine.

I feel that every community and nations needs role models. These role models become more important, because our society, unlike many developed ones, tend to create many hurdles for its citizenry and hence trying to achieve anything becomes a matter of "despite of" rather than "because of". And in times when the hurdles tend to magnify, you want to have role models to indicate that if they could, so could you. Isn't this why we were all fed on the greatness of various achievers?

Nothing wrong in this approach, but we need to analyze who we want to keep as Indian role models. There are various kinds of achievers who come to mind (please don't get down to judging the examples I take, but look into the spirit of the categorization):

Somebody who is an Indian Citizen, Indian resident and pretty much practiced their wares in India. e.g. Ratan Tata, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam.
Somebody who is an Indian Citizen and a resident abroad, but their success can be attributed back to having studied or worked in India, at least partially. e.g. Indra Nooyi.
Somebody who gave away their Indian passport, but still has gained significantly from having been an Indian previously. e.g. M F Hussain.
Somebody who is an Indian Citizen, but much of their success can be attributed to their living and practicing their profession abroad. e.g. Laxmi Mittal
Somebody who is not an Indian, and their success cannot be associated with Indian Society or Indian past. e.g. Aravind Adiga
Somebody who was never an Indian, but their parents or grandparents were. e.g. Bobby Jindal.

My personal feeling is that we should be creating our role models based on the first 2-3 categories. Fourth is a doubtful category, but fifth and sixth are definitely out of reach. Yet our media routinely includes role models from any category and portrays them all in one light.

For our nation to move forward, we need more victories of the first kind, not the fifth or the sixth kind. There will always be Aravind Adigas and Bobby Jindals who will succeed and lets wish them the best, but what we should aspire for, and inspire, should be Dr. APJs, SRTs and Ratan Tatas.

I hope I have managed to convey the spirit of my earlier tweet and I apologize once again for hurting people's feelings over Laxmi Mittal's citizenship.

A techie equivalent of Sachin's innings

2010-02-25T10:57:00.000+08:00

Some of my non-cricket-following colleagues won't understand all the fuss about Sachin Tendulkar's historic feat of scoring a 200* in a innings in an ODI. So, I am going to take a shot at converting it into a programmers achievement to see if I can make get across to them. Here it goes:

Imagine you are a programmer who has mastery over any one programming language (take your pick). Now, there is a guy or gal who comes in the morning and gives you a spec, one which may take about 1000-1200 lines of code in a highly structured language (e.g. Java) and less if you can use a concise language. You have to implement this in exactly one day with only two breaks allowed - 20 mins for lunch and 15 mins for coffee in the evening. You are not allowed any references (Internet and types). You have to implement the spec - but the catch is that you have to write it in one go - you can keep editing the same line as many times as you want, but once you press enter, you are committed to keeping that line. You compilation is allowed to fail only once, but as long as it keeps compiling, you can keep redoing it.

For starters, imagine that you are given the same spec every single day and you have keep opportunities to master it out (a la net practice), but on the actual judgment day, you can be given any random spec.

Now that you get the context, Sachin Tendulkar, in equal terms, was given the spec to write the real time OS for the next space shuttle and he did it, in one go, without his compilation ever failing, with only those breaks. Thats why all we cricket fans are creating such a fuss.

[Summary Post]: HK holiday, iPad and Parents in Singapore

2010-02-18T07:18:00.000+08:00

Many apologies for not posting for such a long time. It has been a rather interesting period since my last post, but I have just not come around to writing about any of it. In the past 5 weeks since I wrote about my mexican food experience, a lot happened, but I am going to do a quick summary (and probably come back to address a particular experience in detail later on):

I took my wifey out for a 4 day holiday to Hong Kong. Hong Kong was superb. The location, climate, geography, look and feel, transportation and the overall outlook makes it a great urban destination. Having come to Singapore earlier as tourists, and with the general perception as HK and Singapore being similar cities, owing to their past as British colonies and both being successful city-states, the comparison between the two became an obsession for us on the trip, and the conclusion we arrived at was the HK was a far better destination.
The iPad got launched and as with the general sentiment, I am confused on its prospects - useful device for moms and dads or an useless device lacking in basic features.
My parents made the trip across the Indian Ocean and into Singapore for a week long visit to the island during the Chinese New Year time (which also happened to be our first ever CNY celebrations) and they had a nice time in Singapore. I hope they finally understand why I decided to make the move from Bangalore to Singapore.

More as I find time (and topic) to write.

A foodie note on Mexican food in a food court in Singapore

2010-01-10T18:05:00.000+08:00

One of my colleagues had been raving about a mexican stall in a kopitiam food court near Dhoby Ghaut. He had even lead a bunch of other colleagues to the place last week. It was enough of a incitement for me to try out the same. So, on a sunday afternoon, after a lazy morning, me and the missus got our lazy bums out of the house and took the MRT to Dhoby Ghaut station. I knew that it was somewhere between there and SMU, but we didn't have an exact address, and it was searing hot and humid and we were both quite hungry. We did find a kopitiam at the intersection of Bencoolen and Bras Basah, but we didn't find a mexican stall, and so we kept going further ahead. The Maps app on the iPhone showed another kopitiam a block away on the left and so we thought that must be it. It wasn't. Actually, there was no kopitiam. Curses to the Google Maps ensued and sighs from the missus followed. Not.Good.Signs.

Then, I decided to disturb AK, my said colleague and he promised that the last he saw the stall, it was still in the same kopitiam that we found at the intersection of B & BB. Now, my wife dispensed curses aimed at me. By now, I had this ominous feeling that Murphy was playing strange games with us, punishing us hard for dreaming to eat Mexican food.

We trodded back to the same place and on careful investigation, found a place called "EXICANTACOBAR", not really a mexican place, but if you looked carefully, you would notice a sombrero hiding an "M" and on even more careful observation, you could see a space between N & T and O & B. So, there we were, two Indians staring at a caucasian lady in a Singapore food court looking for Mexican food.

We asked her for vegetarian options and the kind lady suggested we have quesadillas and burritos and suggested that one serving of each should be good enough, with the quesadillas normally more than good enough for one person. We settled for those options, waited for the food to arrive, and broke into them like a pair of hungry wolves. Those two dishes were gone in 60 seconds, and we had to order a plate of fajitas to get us close to two full stomachs. 20 minutes and 20 singapore dollars later, we had eaten our best food for a long long time. This was the one time we weren't eating Indian food (I am bored to death with Indian food in an island full of esoteric possibilities) and still both enjoying it (my wife can't appreciate anything but Indian simply because she finds everything else too bland). Today, we learnt that mexican food is awesome, there is at least one food court stall being run by a caucasian in Singapore, that the mexicans eat with their hands too, and that there may be more interesting similarities between Indians and Mexicans despite us having no obvious historical connections.

At the end of it all, the food was so awesome that me and the wifey agreed in consensus (which itself is as rare as a blue moon), that the effort was well worth the super awesome food experience. Three cheers to the Mexican Taco Bar.

For those who plan to go back there:
Stall Name: Mexican Taco Bar (might be spelled as EXICANTACOBAR)
Location: Left corner (sandwiched between Chicken Rice and Economic Rice stalls)
Address: Ground Floor, Plaza by the Park, 51 Bras Basah Rd. Map Link.
Average Cost: $10 per person ($6-$8 per dish and average of 1.5 dishes if you are really hungry)
Rating: 4.5/5
My most liked dish: Quesadillas

Quick notes from the middle of the week

2010-01-05T22:40:00.002+08:00

A few interesting things have been happening, both inside and outside of my world, but none of them singularly interesting enough to merit a full post. Just a few quick notes then:

The 3 Idiots Controversy:

Let us ignore, for the moment, the conspiracy theory that the issue has been wrought upon by the parties to increase the publicity ahead of the movie release. I have already mentioned in a facebook thread that the reason why 3 idiots is so good (and I believe it is quite good) is all the changes in the script brought in by the film makers and hence the 70% credit, as Chetan Bhagat, would like to fight for, is undeserved for. There is enough semblance with the book that he definitely deserves credit, which he has received.

Self Serving MPs:

The fact that the Indian parlimentarians were a bunch of self serving maniacs was a long gone conclusion, but their latest act of unlimited travel for family members and companions of MPs is taking it a little too far. Read TJS George's brilliant, to-the-point write up on the topic.

Here, in Singapore, all parliamentarians are paid corporate grade, high-end compensation, meaning that no MP ever needs to worry about either earning illegal money or resort to such menial measures to live a comfortable lifestyle, forget a reasonable one. All Indians know that their representatives live in comfort (and why shouldn't they?), so why not make it a legal and straightforward for them to do so in the form of healthy remuneration? None of these stupid perks would be needed then. It would also mean that a professional in any other field, but worthy of representing and leading the public, would have a honest means of maintaining his income standards despite entering politics. (A guy like me can never make in politics what I make today, which is a lowly engineer's salary in a tech company, if I resorted to only the legitimate income of a full time professional politician). Something for all of us to ponder about.

A meaningless driving license:

I gave the Singapore's basic theory test for driving license and converted my Indian License into a Singapore Driving License, valid for a good 5 years. I neither have a vehicle nor do I intend to buy one in the foreseeable future. So the natural question is why did I get a license for myself?

Hidden behind all the highly structured and logical rules of the Singapore administration is a rather vexing rule that foreigners who wish to convert their home country license ought to do so within the first year of their coming into Singapore and would be disqualified from doing so later. They would have to go through the entire process (basic theory test, lessons, final theory test, practical test etc) to get a license thereafter. Is their any reason for burdening a guy just because he did not convert it within the first year? What benefit does the system gain from it? I couldn't guess the reasons.

Nevertheless, since I was in no mood to endure the entire process (and pay for the costly affair) at a later point of time, I chose to spend the effort right away in obtaining the license. Hence the conversion.

Trek to MacRitchie to begin the year

2010-01-02T14:14:00.002+08:00

What could be a better way to start the new year than a healthy 10.5k trek in a tropical rain forest? So, me and Shyam (aka fox2mike) did exactly that for New Year 2010. We headed out to trek around the MacRitchie Reservoir, Singapore, which is classified as a rain forest. The MacRitchie reservoir is connected by bus 157 from Toa Payoh MRT station. If you plan to go there, you should try to carry sunglasses, caps, sunscreen lotion, loads of water and energy drinks and possibly a raincoat. Between us, we had everything except the rain covers and as Murphy would have it, it rained quite a bit for us. :)

First, have a look at the reservoir from the front (the barrage side).

The trek is not too steep and it should be easy to maintain a steady rhythm. The canopies cover you well in case of a light shower. Don't depend on it if it rains hard, but there are rain shelters every half km or so.

Being a popular destination for hikers, don't be surprised to find company.

The first leg of the trek, about 5km, should end when you reach the HSBC treetop. Its a very narrow, wire suspension bridge, where you can walk only one way.

Dress for comfort, not vanity. It can get hot, humid and sweaty (specially because of the sun screen lotions).

The view from the treetop walk is quite excellent. There is a wide variety of flora to be appreciated and there is also good views of the reservoir and a distant view of the city to be appreciated.

Stop every now and then to check out and appreciate the variety of plants and trees around you. You would normally not associate such diversity with something thats right in the midst of a bustling city-state, but this is Singapore and anything is possible here!

This was on our way back through a different route, along the reservoir, where we stopped every now and then to soak in the nice views of the water body.

We were stuck in the rain a couple of times and this snap was shot to capture the ripple effects of rain droplets on the water surface. Nice pattern.

It took us a total of 3:40 hours to cover the 10.5k including the stops. As per Shyam, Singapore is only one of two cities, other being Rio De Janeiro, where you can find a rainforest in the middle of a city. So, its a worthwhile treat to your body and senses to head out once in a while and do the trek.

More photographs on my flickr profile with tag macritchietrek.

Needed: Civility

2009-12-30T21:53:00.006+08:00

(Note: I am going to use some strong language against my own countrymen. If you are an obsessive Indian patriot, stop right here.)

I am not amused. In fact, I am angry. I am very angry. It makes my blood boil. I am talking about the violence surrounding the death of Kannada super star - Vishnuvardhan. To recap - Mr. Vishnuvardhan (or rather Dr. Vishnuvardhan as is the case with every actor, good or bad, in south India) died due a cardiac arrest earlier today (Please note that it was a natural death) at the age of 56 (Please note that he wasn't young or in his prime either).

What followed was mayhem involving protests, madness and violent mobs, bringing the city of Bangalore to a complete halt. As per reports from the city, many essential services were disrupted in the city and may take up to 2 days to recover. Oh and by the way, at least two people are reported dead as a follow up to this death (one fan committed suicide and the other died trying the save the first fellow). The law enforcement officials, who tried their best to retain peace (and I believe they did. They have no reason not to) were attacked, so much so that the vehicle of the top police official in the city was assaulted on. Some public property (a bunch of buses) were also annihilated (somebody surely believes in reincarnations - burn the buses, new ones will come along).

This is not even a solitary example of people (and possibly politicians) taking their mourning a little too far. It happened when Mr. Rajkumar (effing apologies, Dr. Rajkumar), NTR (effing apologies, Dr. NTR), MGR (effing apologies, Dr. MGR) and more recently Dr. YS Reddy (he is actually a doctor by education) passed away. I am also sure that this shall be repeated when other actors pass away (God forbid anything happen to them, I am just saying when they pass away) - Rajnikant (he is still not a "Dr", odd, very odd), Ms. Jayalalitha (effing apologies, Dr. Jayalalitha) etc.

Everybody has a right to grieve, but nobody has the right to make even one violent move in the name of grieving. If anybody is going to say it was politically motivated, then shame on the politicians (for doing it) and for everybody else (to repeatedly fall into the trap laid out by them scum-bags). If anybody wants to shut shop due to their own voluntary respect for a dead person, there are free to do so, but to shut down a city by using force is unacceptable. Nobody, I repeat, nobody, has got the right to bring down the city in the name of grieving.

So, why can't we grieve without bringing down a city and killing a bunch of other people? Civility, or rather the lack of it, often underlines our Indian society. We believe that we are the most civilized people on earth, while we are not even close to being civilized to any extent. We routinely jump queues, disobey traffic rules and grieve with a stick (0r a stone) in our hand. Civilized people actually know how to grieve, we don't. Civilized people follow the rule of the land and enable the law-enforcers to do their job, not stand in their way, bringing up unreasonable clauses. Civilized people use non violent methods to prove their point (hello, this is land of the Mahatma), not pelt stones for every tom, dick or harry cause. We are not civilized people, ladies and gentlemen, we are barbarians in the cloak of a civilized populace.

The dignitaries of our country do not miss a single opportunity to raise to a dais and declare that we are the next global superpower with statistics that make the eyes pop; alas never do they stand up and talk about our behavior, our decorum or our civility. Its a pity.

ps: Dr. Vishnuvardhan - Rest in peace and I am sorry I could not pelt stones or attack a police officer or shut down a few shops in the name of your death. I hope you will still rest in peace and not come to haunt me.

Flying an A330 like a glider

2009-12-30T09:01:00.003+08:00

About six years ago I was learning to fly gliders. I spent about 40 flights, and though I never got the opportunity to finish my training and obtain a license, my coach had taught me how to appreciate the nuances of flying. He always believed that flying a glider was far tougher than a power-plane (since you have no engine support in a glider), but a good pilot must always learn to fly gliders since it kept them closer to the physics (and nature) of flying. He always said that a pilot who understood gliding should be able to bring down any powerless aircraft to safety (given the conditions, of course). He also cited an example of a pilot doing so, but I forgot the details.

I rediscovered the case. Captain Robert Piché and First Officer Dirk DeJager safely brought down an A330 (Air Transat 236) after all the engines stopped due to a fuel tank leak. The first engine failed at 39000 feet and the second at 33000 feet. From there on, the pilots adopted the principles of gliding to safely bring it home with no casualties or structural damage to the aircraft. Though they were also blamed for not detecting the leak properly and not following the checklist, credit must be given for the application of safety and presence of mind to bring it safely. My appreciation to them.

Oh and you can watch the National Geographic feature on the flight:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Cricket: A better way of penalizing slow over rate

2009-12-21T10:15:00.005+08:00

Ok, so Dhoni has been suspended for two ODIs following the slow over rate. I am somewhat satisfied that something has been done, but as always it feels like too little and too late (its after the match ended). Before you jump to put in your angry comment, lets analyze why we need a strict way of enforcing over rate in the first place.

Cricket is a long game, ranging from 4 hours (T-20s) to 35+ hours (Test matches). In these fast paced days, hardly anybody has the time to follow a full test match live on TV. Moreover, in the day of globalization, with viewers tuning in from various parts of the world, you need to account for the time differences too. A day night match in India is a evening-night match in Singapore and a night-night match in Australia. So, lets get this simple fact out of the way - cricket is not a viewer friendly sport.

Now, largely because of an utter neglect by the authorities of the game, successive generations of captains have gotten away with slow over rates, mostly in the name of strategy, but actually because nobody is looking over them and fixing it. It wasn't always so - with 4 pacers, West Indies of the 70s were famous for never going beyond their time. Slow over rates just compounds the viewer-unfriendly nature of the game, making it impossible for a viewer to time the finish of the game. Moreover, enough test matches have finished in a draw because one of the captains could slow down the game and reduce the number of overs bowled.

Now, lets look at what the ICC has been doing and why none of it actually solves the problem:

Reduce overs for chasing team: This was a ridiculous idea that only penalized the team batting second in an ODI while letting off the team batting first (they were penalized with match fees, but no one cared about that). You need to be more equal than that.
Penalize through money suspensions: This sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. If a captain wants to spend more time on the field defending in a tense situation in a major tournament's final, he doesn't care about getting fined or suspended the day after.

So, what do we need? We need an in-match solution (one that has the opportunity to affect the result of the game), equal on both teams irrespective of batting order, consistent on all matches (important or otherwise) and potentially penalizes the entire team for poor over rate.

I can't take credit for the proposed solution (I watched this on TV in a English County T20 game), but here is how it goes:

Fix the maximum time for the innings up front on a large countdown clock visible to all including spectators.
On each injury, keep record of the time involved, either in a separate clock, or by stopping the countdown clock. As soon as the clock hits zero, start the injury time countdown.
For every bowler not bowled by the end of the clock, punish the bowling team by adding 6 runs (per over not bowled) to the batting total.
The quantum of per over punishment can be debated. My suggestion - go with the average run rate of the past 100 matches in international cricket of the same form. This way, it gets adjusted to the form of the game and keeps in trend with the ever increasing run rates (I don't like that either, but I will need a separate blog post for that).

With this solution, the problem is solved. You have a solution that affects the match, and hence adds seriousness to the entire effort. Its equal on both teams and penalizes the entire team instead of just the captain. And since there is the entire match at stake and not just money, our rich cricketers will have something to fight for by being on time.

It is high time the authorities of cricket made the game more professional and more viewer friendly. Each of these minor improvements will help to hold on to your viewers and in these days of empty cricket stadiums, you better retain each TV eyeball-minute that you can capture.

Musings on the Telangana matter

2009-12-13T18:34:00.004+08:00

Have you been following the latest news about Indian Government's decision to carve out a new state Telangana from the what's currently Andhra Pradesh? If so, you might also quickly realize that it is one of the very rare events involving a government decision which has left the Indian public opinion completely split.

While one section clearly despises the decision in the name that it creates yet another division in what is already a fragmented nation and sets a bad precedent, on the back of which, further fragmentation looks unavoidable. One the other hand, is a very sizable lot who believe that this was a very fair decision in the interest of keeping smaller, easily governable units which can only be expected to generate better results in the future. They agree with the first lot that the way the actual division was announced could have been done in a better way, they consider it only a trivial in what was a generally solid move.

I have been giving a little thought and hence the late response. Like the nation I have been equally split within my head over whether this is good or bad for our nation. Instead of trying to take sides, I am going to talk about various aspects of this and how we could have done a better job.

Let me start with history behind the formation of the States and the socio-political interests that emerged subsequently:

In 1956, with the establishment of States Reorganization Act, there was an impetus to uniting the country into a few small units mostly combined on the basis of language spoken in those regions.
The political class of the nation has always been found wanting. Instead of uniting the country into one homogenous unit, the class has thrived to keep them segregated into vote banks along lines of language, religion, regions, castes and classes. Hence what should been a gradual but definite building of strong nation based on these few states soon deprecated into an infighting to grab and control power.
Unlike the august thoughts of the freedom fighters and the leadership of the Independence era, the society in India never matured. They still put enormous impetus on holding onto what they knew best - the walls of religion, caste etc and hence each section of the society preferred to hold their own forte rather than merge into whatever was the larger cause of the larger unit they were part of. Maybe the poor political class contributed to it, but I believe this is the making of the society itself.

In the wake of this, lets analyze the current decision:

The principle behind the decision and what one section of the debate is supporting is that smaller units allow for better governance and would encourage the leaders to promote growth. As the population of these states grow, this principle definitely finds merit. We are pretty much the fastest growing large nation on earth and hence this is something we need to keep doing again and again. But the key is that the same issue will come up in almost every other state in the country. Why did the Government decide only on one state and not worry about every other state? Inconsistency #1.
The state of Telangana was fought on the following reasons (at least historically): Telangana had a less developed economy, but higher revenues (due to tax on alcohol, while the larger unit had prohibition); Dam projects don't favor them; Telanganas feared a disadvantage with respect to job finding with the natives of rest of the rest. Do you see the pattern? These are the same issues that are repeated not just within every state but across every state. Mumbaikars complain of north Indians coming and stealing jobs; TN and Karnataka have fought a bitter battle over Krishna water; Job opportunities have caused migration and subsequent pain to successive generations of Indians. So, what is required, I believe, is a stronger political will to solve these problems and not a creation of a new state. Unless the leaders wake up to start looking at solving these problems, forming a new division is not going to help.
The formation of smaller states is often underlined on the basis that a government of a smaller state can look after the interests of the residents better. Oh really? Do you know the small north eastern states (Manipur, Assam, Nagaland etc) as the most developed?
The bigger issue with starting a new state is the increase cost on the nation. Have you tried moving goods across states? Have you tried hiring a commercial vehicle from Karnataka and driven into Andhra? Have you tried to set up a company spanning factories across state borders? Have you tried understanding the complex plethora of inconsistencies across the educational systems of the individual states? We have just managed to create one more new division.

So, what could have been a better resolution?

Focus on the cities. Give them higher autonomy to control their finances and allow them to thrive independently. Many argue that this would leave the rural population into a disadvantage. So what? Over a period of time, the rural populace would move into the cities leaving what's left of the rural areas as a manageable units. This is exactly what has happened in the whole of the western world.
Focus on building a effective system of delegation leaving those at the bottom of hierarchy with enough decision making powers to make an impact. In the absence of that, new powers to a new CM sitting in a distinct state capital won't help the nation.
Have a consistent policy for the future fragmentation, if that is going to be the mantra. Indicate that when the density of a state crosses a particular number, a natural review of the state borders shall be undertaken. This leaves everyone in a happy state.
And for God sake, start working on homogenizing the nation across the lines of India and not let this game of divide and rule continue.
And I know I am asking for too much here - but can we just rewire the brains of all the politicians and insert some moral goodies into them. :-)

Debate on this page is most welcome. Waiting for the readers to start a constructive thread.

Retrospect on running the 10k run

2009-12-06T20:40:00.004+08:00

I ran the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon 10K run today. I managed to finish it in one second short of 80 minutes, which I consider pretty good based on my training. It was the first time I was stretching my body so much. I had been practicing for it for a bit now, but even the longest practice run had taken me only about 6kms.

I am not writing this post to say I ran the race. A tweet would have sufficed for that and that I did earlier today. What I want to highlight upon is the amount of effort one has to put into doing something which involves one's body. Being from a conservative middle class Indian family, I was encouraged to do well in studies and discouraged from spending time in sports related activities since it was considered wasted time. Not that I didn't have my share of playing sports - I ended up playing quite a bit of diverse set of sports, starting from Cricket, Table Tennis (Ping Pong to those who live between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans), Chess and dabbled in Tennis and football too. That said, the general assumption, when you come from that background, is that sports (and I am talking about the casual type, not the professional type) is easy and studies is not.

I want to break that myth. The fact is that running long distances is hard, very hard. Seriously. Any long distance running beyond the trivial takes a lot of effort - both physical and mental. Thats the key differentiating factor - in studies, your physical fitness is insignificant - if you trained your mind, you were good. Running is about both - physical and mental endurance. You need to plan, focus, concentrate and improvise, both in training as well as execution. That's the key - you need to bring both your body and mind into alignment.

Having done this today, there are 2 individuals I need to thank. The first is Shyam Mani, aka @fox2mike. He is a fitness freak, but more than that, he is an encouraging mentor. When I had brought up the idea of running for this run, he instantly agreed to helping me out. He ran the first few training sessions and always offered invaluable inputs on training, running, and the mental games involved. Many thanks to him.

Second is my dear wifey. She encouraged me from day one and egged me on to do this. Waking me up at 6 and sweet talking me to head out; having tea alone (her favorite coupling thingy) while I was out running; or waiting to have dinner, while I switched from morning to evening - all of this helps when you are trying to achieve something thats difficult for you. Many thanks to her too.

What's next? I am not sure - there will definitely be more running involved - but whether I want to stretch on distance or improve on time is something I haven't decided yet. Sometime soon I hope to decide.

Secrets of Red Lantern: An odyssey into Singapore's past

2009-12-03T06:30:00.003+08:00

One of my colleagues had organized a walkabout tour of Chinatown, Singapore through the Original Singapore Walks. The walk that we chose was the Secrets of the Red Lantern, and the objective was the travel the road less traveled. The walkabout was about 3 hours long and touched upon the history of Singapore - specifically with respect to Chinatown, migrations from China, its past of prostitution, opium addiction, poverty and slavery spread over 200 years starting from early 19th century.

To say that it I was completely enamored by what I saw and what I heard would be an understatement. A few highlights from what we saw:

Behind the prosperity of today lies a time when there was utter poverty in Singapore. With heavy immigration from China, all of whom hoped to make it big, what resulted was housing in small cubicles of about 30sqft each housing as many as 6-7 people at a given time. Take a moment to visit the Chinatown Heritage Gallery to see a depiction of the size of the cubicles, kitchens and toilets.
Behind the drug safe city of today lies a past where a significant share of Singapore residents were opium addicts. History goes that many of the rickshaw pullers of the day had to pull their carts with bare feet on melting tar that the pain of resting them in the evening brought out so much despair that a 15 minutes relief through opium was a natural option. The opium sale was promoted by the British rulers of then as a form of government income. They had licensed 43 wholesale vendors for the purpose.
Behind the highly women-safe city of today, there lies a time in Singapore's history when over 50% of the women were forced into prostitution and other related professions through a system that gave them no choice. There was a time when there were 60,000 Chinese migrant males, but only 6000 female migrants, out of which over 3000 were licensed prostitutes. There are stories abound of suicides by the girls of that era.
Behind a country which offers its citizens free access to over 150 countries through the prized Singapore passport, there lies a time when slavery was abound. Migrant workers, promised of a bright future would be shipped to Singapore and auctioned off, sometimes for anything as low as 30c to $1, by the underground organizations of the time. There is little proof of the British authorities of the time having tried anything to prevent the practice, barring one raid. The police officer leading that raid has confessed of having never seen such a deplorable sight.

I learnt that there is a lot more about the tumultuous past of the city and its transformation into a prosperous and clean city offering its citizens a standard of living matched by only a few other nations in the world.

2 states: post mortem

2009-11-27T09:00:00.003+08:00

The past weekend, when I was in Jakarta, I found enough time to complete Chetan Bhagat's latest novel - "2 states, the story of my marriage". I generally like Chetan's style of writing, but the past two books somehow didn't have the same punch on the story front as his first novel Five Point Someone had. With 2 states, Chetan has presented a solid story with a very good narrative. I enjoyed every page of this book.

Having myself gone through pretty much the same story in my marriage - I am from a conservative Tamil Brahmin family and married a Saxena from Delhi - I can empathize with the characters in the novel. To be sure, Chetan has done a fantastic job of portraying the stereotypes of both the Punjabis and the Tamils. Having been in Delhi for too long and having been very close to many Punjabis over the years, I am also well acquainted with the Punjabi culture. So, I believe I am in a position to appreciate 2 states.

The unfortunate truth is that the story presented in this book is not far from reality. Only 4 years ago, I went through the same, and for all practical purposes, the families considered themselves modern and forward looking. The reality is that the peoples from various regions of India still have too strong an affinity to their own individual customs, that any thought of stepping outside of that and merging into one national identity is too difficult for them to fathom. I am saying not only from a TamBrahm perspective, but inferring the same from my numerous meetings with friends, classmates, colleagues from various places.

The most interesting part is that the peoples are willing to get together and mingle with others for purposes of friendship, wealth creation (business, employment etc) or even for national building (army, sports etc), but never for the concept of finding love, partners or family. Its quite sad.

That said, I have to admit that my generation is doing a wonderful job of breaking this and taking the progress on this front to the next level. My own group (friends, classmates, colleagues) has seen enough marriages across caste, communities, regions, religions and languages that I see immense hope for the next generation. At last, we might able to cut across all lines to find what's most important - love and harmony.

While I have already digressed, I wish to bring my focus back to Chetan's book to indicate what I believe are clear factual mistakes in 2 states. Some are trivial ones - like a Tamil sentence never starts with "Illa ...", its almost always the other way around, but the more serious gap is the projection that Tam Brahms treat the bride and the groom families as equal. He portrays that the bride's family (Tamils) had problems with dowry, or with the expenses or with the gifts. Thats complete and utter nonsense.

Tamils unite with their brothers across the country on this. The bride's family bears the cost and groom's family doesn't. The bride's family showers the expensive gifts and so on. In fact, it is in the north, where marriages make the groom pay for at least something. In the Tamil Brahmin community, nothing, and I repeat, nothing is expended upon by the grooms.

So, this whole part of the story where Chetan is trying to put together an alternative view leaves me rather disappointed. He was free to use his freedom of fiction, till it is not tried down to the stereotype of Tamils, but that didn't seem the case.

Chetan Bhagat's past success makes me believe that there shall be enough people who shall read this one too that there is a real danger that this error might be considered truth. I can't help that, but I hope that my bringing this to fore might help turn the tide the other away.

Any which way, do get a copy and read the book - specially if you are in love with somebody who is outside of your caste, community, region or religion. It will be worth every page you read.

Trip to Jakarta and miscellaneous notes

2009-11-24T09:42:00.002+08:00

I just came back from a whirlwind trip to Jakarta. I was there as a volunteer/presenter/judge at the Yahoo Open Hack Day SEA 2009. There were a few uniques on this trip for me:

Firstly, its the first time I have crossed the equator. This means I have seen both hemispheres. Not a big deal, but still..
Its also the first time I have been on a trip where I did not step out even once. This is absolutely new to me. Whenever I travel to any place for official work, I always find time to step into the city, take a walk, do some clicking or just plain shopping. If its a place I have friends, then meeting with friends in included too. But this trip had none of it. All I did was go from Airport to Hotel, then to Balai Kartini for the event, back to hotel and then to airport for the return. Why? The reasons are multiple - We had a tight schedule; The company, and the International SOS, had scared us off too much from venturing out due to high crime rate in Jakarta (maybe its not true), and somehow it worked; I stayed at Hotel Mulia which was so comfortable that it managed to keep me indoors even when I had a bit of free time.

I had the privilege to work with some amazing people on this event:

I met AP, a fantastic colleague with loads of experience in traveling and conducting events. The other interesting aspect, as far as I am concerned, is that he is gay. I had the opportunity to chat up with him for long hours - something I haven't done with any homosexual ever. I am a big homosexuality supporter and have been to gay/lesbian bars at Castro St, San Francisco, and chatted up with people, but those were all strangers. This one was a better experience and I have to say meeting AP was one of the high points in my travel meetings with people. (I owe him USD 40 from my duty free shopping.)
I met PS, who is a swede but lives and breathes Asia. As a sales guy who has setup multiple teams from scratch, his experiences and opinions about Asia, including his stays in Pakistan was most eye opening.
I met JL, who is a french-canadian, but lives in the bay area. He is not only a great technical talent for Y!, he also threw some light on his travels and experience of being a Canadian AND a californian, including his thoughts on dual citizenship.
The entire marketing team (SC, Ly, DZ, Ta etc) from the Singapore office kept me enlightened on the various innards of being a singaporean and about the various races in the Island, the consequences thereof (w.r.t education) and a bit about Mandarin and Chinese, were all great discussions. Also, they were among the best organizing teams I have met. Great company indeed.
Everybody else who came there, including the Yahoo engineering team, the e27 team, the local organizing team, the execs, Stacy, and anybody I might have missed out inadvertently, were all excellent company. Its quite rare that you go to an event and meet 50 other people and not even meet a single dork who pisses you off. But this one that.

Thanks to everybody for making it a pleasant trip.

Exclusive interview with Mr. Smart Rider from Bangalore

2009-11-12T19:49:00.006+08:00

I had the great opportunity to meet Mr. Smart Rider from Bangalore, India during my trip here. He is a well spoken-about person outside of India. Having achieved fame for having innovative riding skills in India, he spent some time in Singapore past week. In an exclusive shreeni.info interview, he speaks about Singapore riders' lack of value for time or money, self expression and freedom:

Shreeni: Welcome, Mr. Smart Rider, how are your doing today?

Smart Rider: Thank you for welcoming me on your blog, please call me SR.

Shreeni: Fair enough, so let me start by asking you about your Singapore riding experience. What were the highlights?

SR: It is a generally clean city, but I was most disappointed to find that all Singaporeans have no value for time or money.

Shreeni: How did you come to that conclusion?

SR: Take for instance the rider in Singapore. Not only do they wear helmets, but they also make their pillion riders wear helmets. Not just that, they apparently buy costly helmets which are good enough to survive a crash, but what's the use? Everybody knows the only purpose to buy a helmet is to show it to the cops. Why waste money on costly helmets? In fact, in my country, we can just mold used plastic in the shape of a helmet and carry it in our hands. That's good enough to keep the cops away. So, as you see, Singaporeans are a spendthrift lot.

Shreeni: What about your views that Singaporeans having no value for time?

SR: Again, I had ample opportunity of seeing riders there. They waste valuable road time on unnecessary things like stopping at red signals and pedestrians crossings. We Indians value our time. We cant wait for such insignificant things. As you might have seen in Bangalore, we don't follow these conventions.

Shreeni: Isn't that against the law?

SR: Not really. As you see, we Indians believe in true freedom. Not only is the nation free, but every individual is also free to do whatever he feels like. Thats what I like about our nation - we are not hypocrites like other advanced nations, calling themselves free and subjecting the residents to such restrictions like stopping their vehicles based on a color. That even sounds racist to me.

Shreeni: But what about the high level of fatalities in Bangalore compared to Singapore. Isn't that caused by "freedom", as you put it?

SR: Not really. All riders, both in Singapore and Bangalore, are performing nation building. Since India had set itself the goals of population control, all we are only doing is contributing our meagre bit towards it by keeping fatality rates high. But again, since Singapore birth rate is falling and all, motorists there are doing their bit by not having fatalities. You see, riders in both countries are a patriotic lot.

Shreeni: What about the incessant honking seen in India, did you see that in Singapore?

SR: No and that was surprising. In Bangalore, and in India in general, we consider it a mode of self expression. The volume of honking and the music are the way we express ourselves and our standing as a great free nation. I wonder why the Singaporeans don't do it.

Shreeni: But doesn't your "self expression" cause inconvenience to fellow riders?

SR: Thats mathematically impossible. Assuming I express myself at volume v1, there always exists volume (v1 + 1) at which a fellow rider can express himself. Since this is a recursive expression tending to infinity, any self-expression by any rider can, in theory, be mitigated by a higher self-expression by a fellow rider. Given that option, if a fellow rider chooses to only listen to my expression, he is expressing himself with that choice. So, its all a mode of self-expression.

Shreeni: Fair enough, Mr Smart Rider. I hope to be in touch with you.

SR: It was a pleasure talking to you.

(ps: For the humor challenged, this is a sarcastic post)

Administrative Note: Moving away tech posts

2009-11-10T11:25:00.004+08:00

I generally never bother to separate out my tech posts from my general posts, which is definitely for different audiences, though there might be a small overlap. Since I have taken to writing tech posts more frequently these days than previously, I am moved that to http://tech.shreeni.info. The feedburner link for the RSS subscription is http://feeds.feedburner.com/ShreenisTechLog. Please use these two going forward to read/subscribe to my tech posts. All other posts shall remain on the current URLs - http://blog.shreeni.info for reading and http://feeds.feedburner.com/TidbitsHereAndThere for subscription.

All the previous posts related to Tech have already been migrated and they shall be removed from this blog over the next few weeks. I am sorry for the inconvenience, but I am hoping separating them out shall leave you with less noise in the long run.

[Cricket] This is the One

2009-11-06T10:52:00.004+08:00

Before I say what I am going to say, I need to take a bit of time explaining the context here. About 1994, when I started following Cricket, Sachin was just about starting to convert into a match winner from the child prodigy he was hailed as. He hit 4 match winning centuries that season and has effectively been a consistent solid batsmen.

He is one of the most stylish, technical-sound, calculative, confident stroke maker you will ever find in the game. It is no surprise, then, that me and millions like me around the world were his fans expecting him to perform his magic every now and then. And he enthralled us all will amazing match winning performances, the tipping point most certainly being the 1998 Sharjah final against Australia.

However, in the years to come, possibly because of captaincy pressure, or otherwise, there were one too many matches in which either he didn't contribute or that he couldn't close things out. Most of the fans, having more idolatry than objective affection for him, continued to idol worship, while a few select people like me started questioning the point of making so much runs when India wasn't able to convert these to victories that matter - Test series victories abroad; Major (World cup, Champions trophy) ODI tournament victories and so on.

I was carrying this grudge for a few years and stopped giving as much importance to him, as I did to people who were from a younger generation, but working hard to make those very same victories happen. First Ganguly started a trend of winning test series abroad and then youngsters like Yuvraj and Dhoni and the likes have started making it happen in the ODI/T20 arena on the big stage. Somewhere Sachin wasn't contributing to this movement all the much, with the like of Dravid and Lakshman in Tests and Sehwag-Gambhir-Yuvraj-Dhoni in the ODI making the crucial difference.

However, I started having a change of heart in the past year or so, as Sachin has started making that extra difference - closing out the win against England on the fifth day and the World series finals in 2009.

In this context, I wish to say that I was most privileged and honoured to have witnessed what a fantastic effort he put into play in making the stunning 175 yesterday. It was an effort in the second innings, which is generally harder with the tiredness of the first innings showing in, under the pressure of a huge total, with little support during the first half of the innings when the Indian top order was busy failing.

A few innings of such proportions come to my immediate mind, but none of them is better than what Sachin did. Saeed Anwar had a runner while batting first; Brian Lara batted first for his 169; Herschelle Gibbs had a solid partnership going for him during his 175.

And probably for the very first time, the result didn't matter. It didn't matter that he didn't close out the win, it didn't matter that he fell a few short of the ODI world record, it didn't matter that India lost the match, and possibly could lose the series on this one match. It doesn't matter. The effort was the absolute best I have ever seen in an ODI. Period. Full stop.

[Backpacking Travelogue]: People I met

2009-11-01T09:55:00.007+08:00

Continuing on the travelogues of my backpacking trip, I am going to write a bit about the people I met. A few days before I was to leave, I was chickening out at the thought of spending an entire week alone, but D steeled me saying other backpackers are always a great source of quality company and some interesting anecdotes. How true did that prove!

Pretty much from the first day of my trip, I had some great interactions with people of various nationalities, traveling/living in these areas for various reasons. I am going to list them out here (of course in brief). As you can understand, there wasn't much identification involved - nobody asks your name and you don't ask theirs. You just keep talking to them and move on!

The Kiwi Couple: I met them first on the ferry ride from Penang to Butterworth and found them to be my neighbors on the train ride from Butterworth to Prachuap Khiri Khan. The couple had got a cheap deal to come to Malaysia, but realized they could enjoy a bit of Thailand too and they decided to just take the short ride to Bangkok. The lady was most enamored by the idea of meeting an Indian and asking some thankfully-not-the-stereotypical questions about India and I enjoyed the company.
The Vietnamese Salesman: A young lad of early 20s, this guy had come from Vietnam to Penang, malaysia in search of greener opportunities. As it turns out, he admitted, it is just a case of grass being greener on the other side. With a compensation attached to the number of book sales he made, the slowing economy and the inflation had ended him up with a bad financial state. On top of this, he was sorely missing his family back home. I hope the next time I see him, he is in a better state.
The English Marketing Dude: This dude was awesome company. A Brit by birth, but lived in France for too many years. A advertising creative person in his past professional life, he says he is in Asia because it is cheaper to live. He has two apartments in France, which he has rented out which supports his life in Asia. He has been to pretty much all countries in Asia and speaks very highly of the whole continent. He was traveling to Bangkok to pick up his wife who was coming back from a quick trip to France. Apparently, tickets from France to Bangkok are much cheaper than those to KL.
The American English Teacher: A english teacher by profession, this person has written a couple of yet-unpublished-books. He has been spending his time in various asian and south american countries. He has a financial support arrangement, which I am not going to reveal for privacy reasons, which ensures that he can live in these countries without having to work. The man revealed too many interesting anecdotes during our bus ride from Prachuap Khiri Khan to Bangkok, which I shall not reveal, partially because of privacy reasons, and partially because I believe I can morph those stories into something more creative. Again, a very good company.
The Malay-Portuguese: I met him while eating roadside breakfast in Bangkok. This person is a Malay national with his grandfather being a Portuguese. He wants to change his nationality to Portuguese so that he can find greener opportunities in Europe. He has been struggling with all the red tape involved in the process as he detailed me the horror of having to work with a system where the Portuguese embassy is only in Bangkok, while he has to shuttle between Malacca, his home city, and Bangkok and work with documents printed in 3 languages - Malay, English and Portuguese with translations thrown in and the typical delay with these organizations to get this done. His frustrations was turning out to an interesting anecdote to the unattached me, of course.
The Australian traveler: I met him at the same spot I met the Malay-Portuguese the next day. He is an Australian who spends six months of his life working in Australia and making his money while he spends the other half of the year living and traveling and enjoying Asia. He is a spiritual traveler and has spent multiple weeks in India too being a regular to Ramana Maharishi Ashram.
The Swiss-Postman: This former swiss posts supervisor was kicked out of his job a while back, but with his 6 month severance in pocket, he headed to Asia to spend some time here. He has been liking the area so much that he is planning to start a garment export-from-Thailand-into-Switzerland business. I met him on the train ride from Bangkok to Nong-Khai, while he was heading to Udon Thani, where he was going to visit a swiss friend who had married a Thai and had recently built a new house. A little convincing from my side was enough to get a promise from him to visit Tirichur in India to see if it is a better place to get his garments made rather than Thailand. You see, you got to be a good ambassador/salesman of your own country!
The German Girl: I met her on my ride across the Mekong river and into Vientiane city. She is a german by birth, but lives and studies in London. She was interning in Cambodia for the past 3 months and was currently on a backpacking trip across Thailand and Laos. She had just come off a few days with her german boyfriend who is living in Thailand these days. Like me, her partner wasn't interested in Backpacking while she was. So, she headed off alone to enjoy Vientiane, Luang Prabang and the likes that Laos has to provide. An Asian-Australian kid on the same ride was so excited about her german antecedents that he started shooting of questions about the concentration camps and such and the lady was mst graceful and patient in her replies. She says she gets a lot of these.
The Indian cook and Waiter in Vientiane: After a tired afternoon, I headed into an Indian restaurant to find some familiar food and Beerlao. I wasn't surprised to find Indians working there, but the anecdotes were definitely interesting. They are hired directly from Tamilnadu, India, with one of them being from my hometown - Tirunelveli while the other was from Nagapattinam. They are paid a fixed salary back in India, while they are provided boarding, lodging, a little pocket money and a once-in-two-years-return-ticket-to-India-to-meet-family. Getting a little comfortable, I chatted up in Tamil and asked why they wouldn't take their wares and start a small business in India and get more independent. On of them said the little salary he gets isn't enough to save up for something like that and taking loans from the sharks wasn't worth the risk. It just opened familiar stories I have heard in the past.
The Boxing Secretary from Malaysia: On my final day I met a gentleman at the lobby of my hotel. He is the secretary of a malaysian state's boxing association and was in Vientiane to check out the preparations for the SEA games to be held later this year in Vientiane. I couldn't help getting a little lecture on history of the sport in the region and the way the Laotians were preparing for the games.

The Indian-Connection: It would be an injustice to cut out the fact that pretty much all of them are highly respectful of India, her traditions, cultures and the traveling opportunities. Multiple of the people I met were also in love with the spirituality in India, while others were enamored with the Architecture in India. Its a different perspective of India, which I touched down upon in an earlier post.

There were a few more interesting stories, but in the interest of brevity, I am stopping here. Also, a few not-so-successful attempts were made to strike conversations with locals at many places, but most of them ended up being short conversations with not much of an anecdote to report. I guess the span of the conversation and the language barriers were the problems.

[Backpacking Travelogue]: Transport infrastructure, convenience and price

2009-10-21T18:54:00.004+08:00

I promised to write a bit about my backpacking trip in form of essays. The first one I decided is also probably one of the easiest ones - transport infrastructure, because there must be quite less of subjectivity involved. Let me segment the transportation on a country-by-country basis:

Singapore: Easily the most developed infrastructure internally, but thats like stating the obvious. What does it hold for people wanting to travel out of Singapore? Its is connected by road/rail only to Malaysia. It has daily two trains heading into Malaysia into cities like Kuala Lumpur and Butterworth. Train is normally easy to get, but it is too slow and is available only for one direction - that of straight north. (Train tickets from SG is charged in SGD while the tickets from Malaysia is charged in RMY for the same amount. Its a ridiculous pricing mechanism of extracting more from Singaporeans.)

Then there are lots of buses criss-crossing into various destinations in Malaysia. My experience is that the bus infrastructure can be improved as follows:

There is no central bus stop for all buses. (There is Golden Mile, but too many operators are outside of it.) So, its not like you can go and hop on. You need to call individual operators, figure out which one is having seats and head there. That sounds a little dicey to say the least. The real alternative is to head to JB and then use Larkin as a central bus stop. There is of course the inconvenience of going to JB by the crowded woodlands route, but hey you can't have the cake and eat it too.
Its bloody expensive. Buses from Singapore is generally priced costlier than return tickets from Malaysia. There should be some way to address this.

Malaysia: Of all the countries I visited, Malaysia takes the cake for impressing me the most. Getting in and out of Malaysia through road/ferry/train across it's borders with Singapore/Thailand proved to be easiest. Trains have enough capacity that you can walk in and get a ticket. Local transportation in KL and Penang was adequate. All this comes are very reasonable price points.

The buses criss-cross the country, there a few good train options, though the frequency sounds suspiciously less to me. It also has good water and land connections. Local transportation at the cities I have tried - Penang, Butterworth and KL all look good. My previous trips to Malaysia have also left with a very good impression of the country.

The roads in Malaysia are a completely separate topic worth mentioning. The roads, to put it simply, are awesome. I have been on road between various cities in Malaysia - JB, Mersing, KL, Butterworth etc and the roads always impress me. Clean, wide, no-potholes, clear direction are just some of the attributes. Most of the main highways are tolls, but the tolls seem reasonable and definitely worth the quality of transportation you get.

Thailand: For whatever I had heard about Thailand, I found it's transport infrastructure below par. Don't get me wrong - I still had a good time - but it doesn't even get close to the reputation it tries to portray. Firstly, the train infrastructure is ages old. I don't think it is well maintained and with an accident happening too close to me, its wasn't a good feeling. The roads, albeit better than what you find in India, weren't as great as what you find in Malaysia. Also, the section of road I used - between Prachuap Khiri Khan and Bangkok, though it must be a major link, just didn't have that good feeling to it. There were no potholes, but at the same time, they weren't separated from the villages on the way - so they weren't truly expressways and the speed that the bus could catch was definitely less.

The commute infrastructure in Bangkok is completely and utterly pathetic. If you compare it with say Bangalore, which I always thought had bad infrastructure, Bangkok is still far far worse. There are a couple of metro like systems - one the Metro and other BTS. They both are quite costly and don't work with each other. So, you need to get down from one service and then get onto another and end up buying two costly tickets.

The road infrastructure is completely unusable. Even in the middle of any day, you are going to be stuck in a complete-halt-traffic-jam for maybe even hours. And with Bangkok being a very hot city, with most buses still non-air-con, the standing in the traffic can get to you very easily. Though it has to be mentioned that while the traffic is awful, people's response isn't so bad. They don't honk and create a ruckus. They just sit peacefully waiting minutes for next installment of the few meters crawl they shall get. I guess they are all resigned to the reality.

The only silver lining in the entire infrastructure in Bangkok is it's ferry services which goes along the chao phraya river. Get in and get out for a few bahts are pretty good speed. Definitely the service that impressed me the most.

While the infrastructure isn't that great, the thais have a great sense of service. The trains have great service for food and beverages, even alcoholics ones. All the berths have clean sheets and pillows on them with a blanket.

Laos: For a troubled country placed low on most living indices, I expected the infrastructure to be pretty bad. I was pleasantly surprised to find it good. It has good roads on which SUVs, and lots of them ply. Its only fair of you to ask why SUVs in a poor country. Apparently, the capital city has a significant presence of UN organizations and foreign embassies, all of which help in running a SUV economy. Even the local Laotians seems well off picking up their kids in their Air Con cars and SUVs. The roads don't have pot holes and the traffic seemed orderly to me. I guess, the french colonial past has had its good effect.

Walking in Vientiane is a pleasant experience, though the heat can get to you in the middle of the day. Also you can hire a bicycle and ride around. Thats not bad either. In general, I found it pretty pleasant.

Prices in Laos, in general, disappointed me. A short tuk-tuk ride costs as much as a air-con cab in Singapore! I believe I definitely overpaid for my transits across the Thai-Laos-Friendship border and the trip from the border to Vientiane. But hey, its the way it is.

Summary: In all, I have to complement all the four countries that a backpacking trip like this can be planned and executed with little trouble. There is definitely scope for improvement, but in all, south east asia is definitely worth a good long backpacking trip.

Backpacking trip SG/Malaysia/Thailand/Laos done last week

2009-10-15T21:40:00.005+08:00

This post is at least 4 days overdue by now and I'd rather get it off my back. On Saturday, 10th Oct, I completed a one week long backpacking trip. I started off from Singapore and backpacked all the way to Vientiane, the capital city of Laos by land.

It was a trip I wanted to do for a long time. My wife can't do backpacking to save her life. Its not that she doesn't like traveling, just that she can't stand the chaos of a pure backpacking trip. So she skipped. I was hoping that D would join me, but he was too engaged and hence I decided to do it alone.

And it was fun. To say the least. The trip involved traveling from Singapore to Penang (Malaysia) by bus, transferring to Butterworth by ferry, then traveling to Prachuap Khiri Khan (Thailand) by train and from there to Bangkok by bus (actually, it was planned to go direct to Bangkok by train, but the unfortunate train accident at Prachuap, to which I was too close for comfort, forced me to shift into a bus. May the deceased souls of that accident rest in peace.)

After halting in Bangkok and soaking in the culture of all the backpackers to touch upon the thai capital, and after having enjoyed the Chao Phraya river, I moved on by train to Nong Khai (Thailand) and transferring to Vientiane (Laos) by a series of buses and tuk-tuks, while crossing the Thai-Laos border at the friendship bridge.

After checking out the Laos capital city for two days, I took a flight back to KL and then a quick bus ride back into Singapore. The whole trip was exactly 7 days long, involving 3 borders, 10 stamps on the passport, 4 countries, 5 currencies (the US dollars comes into play in such trips) and loads of experience to share and memories to cherish.

Writing one blog alone would not do justice to the trip, but instead of writing more travelogues, I did rather write essays of the distinct trains of thoughts that I had while on the trip. Hold on for that and the photos.

Runners in Cricket

2009-09-28T15:52:00.002+08:00

I am so glad that this event happened - a captain turning down a runner for the opposition for reasons unrelated to injury. I am really very glad. Here is my take on it - a runner is not a general purpose substitute pair of legs. It has to be a specific replacement only in case of injury - injury that was collected on the line of duty in that particular match.

The problem is that all teams in cricket have been abusing the system of runners. I recall the days when weak players with less stamina would just call upon a runner as they ran tired of scoring their centuries (If you don't know who they are, think of a laughing Sardarjee and a enigmatic prince from an east Indian state.)

The system gets even more unreasonable when cricketers carry small injuries into a match and use a runner to replace their running. This happened in the ICC 2007 world T20 final, where thankfully, the umpire refused one to Imran Nazir for a injury he carried from a previous match.

Well, frankly speaking, there shouldn't be a concept of runners in a T20 match. Just let the injured guy get back to the pavilion and move things on. If your injured player has to come back as the eleventh man, then probably a runner can be allowed. If your entire batting line up can't survive 20 overs just because of one guy's injury, then sorry, you shouldn't be winning anyway.

Now, as happened in yesterday's match, a player shouldn't be asking for a runner because of cramps. Cramps is not an injury, its a problem of under preparation, and the sport shouldn't bother subsidizing their training. In fact, it gives an unfair advantage to the relatively-unfit cricketers. And that only decreases the value of the sport.

It also belittles accomplishment. When Saeed Anwar scored his world record 194 against India, I was left in a bad taste - I knew that Viv Richards didn't need a runner for his 189, so why should a runner-supported innings of Anwar's be considered better than Viv's genius performance?

The bigger problem is that ICC and the Cricket leadership is often found wanting in taking action to rid the sport of its ills. For instance, they haven't yet worked on the over-rate problem effectively. They are yet to effectively tackle the issue of toss-winners getting too much advantage in lopsided pitches. And this one - of not-so-fit cricketers using the game's rules to achieve what they couldn't have without the support system. In the end, I dearly wish the leaders of the game get together to tackle these, and other problems, to make the sport better.

Next JUG SIngapore meeting and introducing a new hack

2009-09-20T19:36:00.003+08:00

Well, this blog is way overdue but life has been a little busy in the last few days and hence I have been lagging behind a lot of things including blogging. My sincere apologies for the same. Now, coming to the point.

Last Monday (14th September) was JUG Singapore's September meetup. The attendance was much better than previous one and pretty much everybody from the last one ended up here too. The attendees was a good mix of hackers, managers, managers-of-hackers and so on.

We actually had Sun Microsystem's office and hence we could do a couple of presentations and discuss in peace. The first presentation was by David, who spoke about a Java VXML based voice browser he developed back in 2001. He explained the purpose, architecture, gotchas and ran us through the essential libraries required for something like this.

I spoke about Marvin, a new hack I have been working on. Its essentially a twitter trend analyzing engine, finding out trends which people are positively or negatively describing or they are being neutral. Once the trends are found, I just link them to the news and photos of that trend. These are being brought in through YQL. The whole system is built on Java and hosted on Google App Engine. There are a few interesting challenges I tackled, which I shall blog later. If you are impatient, you can grab the presentation deck or email me or comment here. The hack is open as an alpha and feedback is most welcome.

The discussions were very interactive with lots of questions and loads of feedback. I hope we can keep the momentum going on this group. You can try to attend the next meetup on October 26th.

[Video]: The world is amazing and nobody is happy

2009-09-16T11:00:00.003+08:00

If you haven't seen this video, then you must do so now. It's a brilliant take on how thew world is amazing and yet nobody is happy. I have often found myself reflecting on similar thoughts. That said, I have to admit that I myself have been caught in feelings of how the world seems crappy.

"Everything is amazing and nobody is happy"
by Meowbay

Anyhow, the notable piece is his anecdotes on flying. I have to say that I am one of the people who finds it extremely fortunate to be flying - just flying. I hate it when people judge negatively the aspect of flying in a budget airline. And nobody has put it better than Louis in this video. For me, flying is always a great experience, with or without the bells and the whistles. Its maybe because I still have a dream of flying myself one day, or that I used to do gliding when I was in IIT-K. Ah, the dreams of piloting an aircraft!

The whole YSR saga

2009-09-04T11:52:00.003+08:00

Andhra Pradesh CM YS Rajashekhara Reddy's death due to a helicopter crash and what's followed has been a little upsetting. First, the media has decided all of sudden to declare him a hero. The reality is that he is not even close to one. He is just one more of the uncivilized cadre of politicians that we have managed to create. I would like to go back a while, when he was elected, and quote from Swaminomics article about his election:

The main problem with this thesis, as you discover when you visit Hyderabad, is that the new chief minister is widely believed to have risen to power on the basis of murder, loot and terror. Local journalists narrate in the most matter-of-fact manner how warlords routinely kill one another to monopolise works contracts and win elections in the Rayalaseema region, from where YSR hails.

The hair-raising history of YSR's rise to power through terror is documented by K Balagopal in a recent issue of Economic and Political Weekly. Cuddapah district, YSR's bailiwick, has mineral deposits, including barytes. YSR's father, the local warlord, was a partner with one Venkatasubbiah in a mining lease. The price of barytes shot up when it was found useful in petroleum refining. YSR's father offered to buy out Venkatasubbiah. He refused. So, Venkatasubbiah was murdered. The lease passed into the hands of YSR.

For many years after, YSR's barytes mining operation was the subject of one scandal after another. Through the AP Mineral Development Corporation, he obtained a sub-lease on the land of one Vivekanandam, who got a court injunction against the lease. Nevertheless, YSR continued with the mining and took away minerals worth Rs 5 crore. A maternal uncle of Vivekanandam went to the then chief minister to protest. He was set upon by a gang, who broke his hands and legs. After that, few dared quarrel with YSR in the Cuddapah region.

Mineral wealth permitted YSR to become the supreme economic and political warlord in Cuddapah district. Elections would be concluded in his favour, and his musclemen would ensure he monopolised all the civil/excise contracts he coveted. This sounds bland when stated in this fashion, but the process involved a tremendous amount of violence and inaugurated a veritable regime of terror in the area.

Until recently, the EC postponed any election if any candidate died during the campaign. In 1989, simultaneous polls were held to the State Assembly and Parliament. In Raychoti constituency, where YSR sensed that his party was weak, his men are alleged to have killed an independent candidate to gain time. In the parliamentary poll that took place, five persons were killed including a polling officer. The Congress was declared the winner.

Yet it is telling that Balagopal's article has not raised any storm of protest in Hyderabad. There, YSR's culture of violence is treated as commonplace politics.

The day after I left Hyderabad, goons hacked four TDP cadres to death in a public bus. The attackers used axes and agricultural implements which, by an ironic coincidence, had been freed from excise duty in Chidambaram's budget as part of reforms with a human face. Chandrababu had submitted a memorandum to the President recently claiming that, since the election in May, no less than 19 TDP men were murdered and 41 seriously injured.

Congress sources say they are meeting fire with fire. They allege that 186 Congress workers were killed by the TDP in the previous two years, and 850 in the nine years of TDP rule.

He is a politician of a very shady sort, who could have been behind the bars, had it not been for our convoluted system of politics and justice. You might ask why would I trust Swaminomics more than the common news - it is because he is not the kind to be swayed by popular sentiment and the need for sensationalism. He looks for sound data and inputs in putting together the reality. He has a track record for more than a decade and the fact is that I love to read him to this day despite having moved on from reading the completely sensationalist TOI.

My orthodox upbringing suggests that I should pay respect to the dead, which I believe is not applicable to shady politicians. When I tweeted about me not feeling sorry, some might have thought I am cold. If being cold for the death of politicians like YSR is wrong, then I am sorry but I can't help it. Our nation needs to move on from blindly hero-worshipping every politicians, even if they are of the shady sorts, and need to start getting inspired by real leaders. I will reserve my respects when a Narayanamurthy or Ratan Tata face the ultimate fate. I, however, do feel sorry for the pilots who lost their life in the crash. My heartfelt condolences to their families.

What's even more appalling, as I hear now, is that Karnataka is declaring a two day mourning for his death. Even if I were to consider that he were to be a revered leader, two days for a different state's CM's death is a little too much according to me. This, I believe, is one of the two - blind hero worship or too much laziness to get work done. Otherwise, there is no excuse for Karnataka to shut down work for a different state's CM.

I have received criticism for both the stands I have taken - not feeling sorry for him, and for why Karnataka shouldn't hold work back for this - and I am willing to take this criticism by my stride. These are my feelings and I am going to stand by it.

ps: And as always, the others of the dirty clan of Indian politicians have started their race to the CM's post.

[Update: I now hear that TN (2 days), Bihar (2 days) and Orissa (1 day) are also shutting down. We have now managed to create a very dangerous precedent which might prove extremely costly in the time to come. All states will now start mourning the death of politicians from other states, in the interest of being politically correct.]

[Hack]: Chess runner

2009-09-02T15:58:00.004+08:00

As I wrote a while back, I spend quite some time playing chess on the iPhone using Glaurung app. The interesting feature is that it sends out email of your game describing the game in the Algebraic Notation. I mentioned at the end of the blog that I wanted to have a simulator/runner, that basically runs the entire game when this email is fed to it. I couldn't find one online - so I built one.

The easy part is to take the data, store it, parse it and the simple UI I built for making the moves work. What is infinitely more complex is to understand the moves in the algebraic notation and changing the status of the board. The problem is that the notation only tells you where something is to end up at, not where it originates from - and that has to be computed by you based on your previous board state and a complex set of rules.

The one that I built looks ugly in code presently (and hence not sharing right away), but it works, including moves like castles and en passants. The UI itself is just two pages - one to feed your game and another to run it. If you want to embed the "run" page, you can do that too by adding "&nfh=1" to the end of the page URL.

So check it out at http://www.shreeni.info/chess/index.jsp or check out one of my wins.