Ninaivugal...Thoughts

New year resolutions

noreply@blogger.com (Praveen Krishnan) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:41:46 PST

The first time my fifth or sixth grade school teacher asked me about my new year resolutions, I looked at her with a blank expression. I had no idea what that meant. And, I would have had no further idea for years to come if, I repeat, if she had not asked us to come up with essays on the topic. That was also the year I was introduced to the concept of writing your own essays. Till then, it was about cramming a few sentences in your head and spitting it out verbatim in the exam papers.

I asked a few blokes around me as to what resolutions meant. All of them were as intelligent as I was, save for a few exceptions. These guys were writing as if their whole lives were about to be shaped by this composition. They formed a kind of protective enclosure, with notebooks and text books surrounding the sheet on which they were writing, on three sides. The fortress had an opening only for the pen or pencil to find its way through the gap. And the eyes would stare in all directions as though about to kill anyone who stared in his direction. The other buddies would nod at each other, as if to say, it's not worth the effort to look into the other guy's writing.

So, the rest would come up with their interpretation of what resolution meant and fill the pages. Resolution, for the first time, would mean different to different people - dream, aspiration (not sure whether I knew the meaning of aspiration at that time), wish, goal, holiday, sport, game and so on. My interpretation rested on hobby, and even though it's funny when you think about it, "My new year hobby" felt like a valid essay title. So, I went on and on about how I would like to collect stamps from different countries, about how I would request stamps from different uncles and aunts, and friends in different places. For the record, I had no uncle or aunt in other countries. For that matter, I had no one living anywhere other than the southern part of the country. I am not sure how it is now, but those days, the teachers had a habit of calling students near the board and read out their writings to the class. As the handpicked students read out their essays, we would let out nervous guffaws when the teacher would say, "Are you sure resolution is a game?" or "Are you sure it means a holiday?" As the more knowledgeable read out their essay, the teacher would give out her sign of approval with a good or a nice. They would bask in the glory while some looked at them in admiration and for the rest, would feel like kicking their butt.

Even though I did not make any new year resolutions, just thinking about it, I can do a dozen changes to my lifestyle. For a start, I can spend less time on my iPhone and actually have a conversation with my wife in a restaurant.

Next, spend very little time reading. If you have seen the Indian movies in the late nineties, you will always see a villain who shouts out dialogues like "Come on, tell me, where is the treasure located?" If the same question is put to me today, I will be in a position to point out the exact location of all the hidden treasures in the world. Such is the information overload, I might choke to death with so much unwanted data. Actually, knowing something about hidden treasure is not exactly a bad idea.

Next, eat healthy. If given a plate of raw vegetables (salad) or a plate of Gobi Manchurian, I would want to pick the former. That's almost impossible!

Moving on to my eternal goal next, which is to go to the gym regularly. The gym going exercise is not to lose weight, but actually to gain some. It has been a never ending exercise, and I think, this year too, it shall remain one.

Finally, the most important change would be to spend a little less time on cricket. I realize how futile it is to waste precious hours of your life on a cricket match. And, for a person who watches test cricket, it is like losing 40 hours a week for no good reason. Considering that we had the world cup last year, along with test matches in South Africa, England and Australia, I must have easily lost about 375 hours (about 25 hours for the South Africa series, 100 hours for the England series, 30 hours for the Melbourne game, throw in about 100 hours for the six tests against the Windies, about 75 hours for the India games in the World Cup, about 50 hours watching highlights). I have lost 50 days last year just watching cricket. I can easily tell you that this is a very conservative estimate. This does not include the amount of time I spend on cricinfo or the time spent discussing the game with friends. I definitely want to reduce this time and bring it down to 25 days this year.

And, when I say read less, I meant the online information. I really want to read at least 12 books (fiction/non-fiction/biographies/...) this year. I think that's not too hard. One book per month is a reasonable read, I suppose. Let's see.

Since California is bestowed with a wonderful landscape, got to keep the weekend hiking plan going with friends. Some of the places around are just breathtaking, and I would love to explore the area as much as possible.

But, for the time being, let me see if India can pull off a draw in the second test match at the SCG. I can assure you that this will go in my quota of 25 days for this year.

Wishing everyone a very happy 2012.

Of Thanksgiving and Black Friday

noreply@blogger.com (Praveen Krishnan) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 23:55:42 PST

Every year, I wonder what Thanksgiving is all about. I take a look at Wikipedia, understand what it's all about and then the following year, take a look at the same article again. This year, I did the same. But, at the start of every year, when the list of holidays is released by the HR department, you will find it hard to miss that you're getting four days off in the last week of November. The Friday that follows the Thanksgiving Thursday is referred to as the Black Friday, which is a massive day for shopping. This is the day when the retailers give you a big discount by bumping up the prices beforehand. OK, some of the items are actually dirt cheap, but most of them are such that they can be purchased at any time of the year.

The US is filled with deals and promotions almost all year round. Thanksgiving weekend is just another excuse to shell out money for products that you actually did not know you required. Before the Thanksgiving weekend, you have promos saying why you should buy something. During the Thanksgiving weekend, you have more promos saying why you should buy something that you already have purchased before and the reason offered being that the products are available at so called throwaway prices. After Thanksgiving, you will have more promos asking you to buy more stuff that can be obtained at Thanksgiving prices. So, basically, the whole US market is running in some kind of a chain reaction. If the sales are down at any given point, Wall street guys shout out that consumer confidence is shrinking and the US economy is headed for a recession. Phew!

Anyway, my wife, who was relatively new to the Thanksgiving experience, wanted to experience first hand the pleasure of shopping on a Black Friday. So, last year, we made extensive plans to target specific stores and wait in front of the big stores well before midnight. That was the year we made our foray into gaming thanks to the Xbox and Kinect Experience. We were looking at some of the Kinect games. There was a Black Friday offer from Old Navy that the first few customers will be given a free copy of the Dance Central DVD (normal price is around 40$) with the purchase of anything from the store. So, we went and stood at about 10:30 or 11:00 PM in front of the Old Navy store at virtually sub zero temperatures. It was freezing. It was like hell. But, you know, all this is a part of the experience. We counted the number of guys who were ahead of us. Almost everybody was there to get the free DVD. There were about 20 guys in front of us. So, we waited patiently, and as the store opened at midnight, everyone who entered the store were given the free copy of Dance Central. We were really excited. But, somehow, as our turn came by, we were told that the guy ahead of us had got the last copy. We were absolutely gutted. What Sachin Tendulkar felt today after missing out his 100th century is nothing compared to what we felt when we couldn't get that free DVD. Anyway, we walked in and my wife picked up a jacket, rather, half-heartedly. We headed back home and explained our misfortune to our friends. Also, we didn't feel too good about the jacket.

There was an offer from Target with a special price for Xbox. Also, Target was offering a lot of discounts on toasters, mixers, blenders and what not. We thought that the Xbox was a pretty good deal. But, since we had already ordered ours online, we didn't deem it a good idea to stay in overnight lines at freezing temperatures(thankfully!). So, the next morning, after checking out a mall, as we were heading home, we entered one of the Target stores. We went to the aisle where the Xbox boxes were kept. I was surprised to find plenty of them. Then, we walked to the aisle where the toasters that were sold for 5$ were kept. There was not even a single toaster. We asked the store attendant who was passing by as to whether the store had any toasters left. He had a huge grin, "Oh, sorry sir. You know these toasters were sold out in like five minutes at 5 AM in the morning." He was filled with pride. We thought they must have been some extraordinary toasters to have sold out so quickly. We didn't find anything useful. We went back home and had a sound sleep.

After the Thanksgiving mania had died down, we went to Target for our weekly shopping. This time, we were able to find the toaster. There were plenty of them. We saw the price. We couldn't suppress our laughter. The toasters were marked at a price point of 6.99$. We wondered how people could stay overnight braving freezing temperatures to save 1.99$ on a toaster. Life can be totally mysterious.

Here comes the clincher. Then, we went to the Old Navy store. My wife was somehow not too happy with her jacket. She felt that it would have been a great purchase had we got the game DVD. I seemed to agree with her. What else choice did a married man have, but to agree to his wife. We walked into the store to see if we could find other jackets to her liking. We saw the exact jacket that we were holding in our hand. The price had dropped by a further 15$. There was no way in the world that we would be keeping that jacket with us now. We spoke to the lady at the counter and told her how we didn't like the jacket. We also told her about how the price was lesser than the Black Friday price. Thanks to the US store policies, we got a refund on our purchase. But, standing in front of the Old Navy store on a cold wintry night to get a jacket at a price that would go down by 15$ in the subsequent week was totally, totally not cool.

And, that's our awesome Thanksgiving experience.

It is ten minutes to midnight. The Black Friday fever is gripping the town. I am going to bed.

An engineer's conundrum

noreply@blogger.com (Praveen Krishnan) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 15:12:32 PDT

Engineering degree is at a premium in India. At the same time, every other guy is an engineer. I don't know whether it's the job market or the social status, everybody wants to be an engineer. Put everything aside. First become an engineer and then you can worry about the other stuff later.

There is nothing like brimming with pride when you go home and tell your folks, "I hit a century in the local cricket match."

"Okay, okay, all that's fine. What about your exams in the coming week? Are you prepared for that?"

It may be wrong to say that this is applicable only for engineers; I think it is true that this holds for medicine as well.

It is a matter of pride to say, "illa ree nammaga doctor alla engineeringay odhbekuantha iddhane (My son wants to study doctor or engineering only)." I used to secretly wonder What is meant by studying for doctor? Isn't it medicine?

So, as I pursued my passion for engineering, and completed four years of slogging and cramming right before the exams, I ended up being an Engineer. I think the next step was predefined as I took up one of the many available jobs in one of the many companies. Life went on, as usual. I had not broken the norms of the society.

During my Engineering days, one day, on a weekend, one of the taps in the bathroom of my house had a leak, and the washer had to be replaced. As usual, my mother was ready to call the plumber to get this fixed, and the plumber gave the necessary appointment to come over and get the washer replaced. Just then, that evening, an elderly gentleman in the neighborhood dropped by. He would have a brief conversation if my father was around and exchange the usual pleasantries. He had worked a major part of his life in the army and was very meticulous in his daily needs and activities. He was a man who was very disciplined, and always expected the exact things he wanted from life, and so, you can say that he was a stickler for perfection. Obviously, all of us had a huge respect towards him, and I have played a lot with his grandchildren during my growing up days. He was eighty years old and seeing him, you could never say so. During the conversation, my father mentioned that we were waiting for the plumber before heading out for the evening. The elderly gentleman was very very surprised.

Mr. Krishnan, Isn't your son an engineer? He asked.

Yes, sir. He is. Why do you ask so? asked my father rather inquiringly.

Then, why do you want to call a plumber. Just ask him to repair the tap.

I did not have a good vibe about this conversation. Immediately, I went on the defensive. "Sir, but I am an Electronics & Communications engineer." The kind of situation I was in, I was no doubt not too proud of my degree at this point.

In a typical South Indian Andhra accent, the elderly gentleman replied with an authority that shook me out of my reverie.

So what, I say. An Engineer is a person who should know everything. What do you mean by saying you don't know how to repair a tap?

I looked at him sheepishly. There was an eerie silence for a few seconds. This is the sort of silence that feels as though it has extended for light years.

My father quickly butted in, and as he spoke, I realized, what he said would in no way save my butt. Sir, today's engineers are useless. All of them have only bookish knowledge.

The elderly gentleman again asked me. So, what will you do, if, let's say, the wiring of your house has got messed up and the electrical lines are not working the way it is supposed to?

Sir, I am an Electronics Engineer and not an Electrical Engineer, I said. If, at that point, I had sought an IPO for my self esteem, it would have ranked at an abysmal low value.

Oh my God. What is the point in getting a good rank and joining an Engineering college if you cannot do the basic things at home. Do you know something? I have never called a plumber or electrician to my house till date. I have fixed all the plumbing and electrical issues by myself. I have imparted the same knowledge to my son as well. And as usual, he had to say this. I am not too happy with the standard of engineers in our society today.

To save me from further embarrassment, there was a knock on the door. The plumber walked in with his tools. The elderly gentleman started inquiring him about the nature of the parts he was using for repair.

I was happy, for it was the plumber's turn to face the music.

Two of an era - Jobs and Ritchie

noreply@blogger.com (Praveen Krishnan) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 14:28:07 PDT

The last couple of weeks have been particularly bad for technology related stalwarts. If the death of Steve Jobs hadn't even sunk in, it was even more painful to read up that Dennis Ritchie, the father of C programming and co-developer of Unix was no more. Dennis Ritchie may not be as famous as Steve Jobs is to the layman, but there is no denying that without C, one cannot fathom the existence of these super powered smart phones and almost every other embedded device today.

It was in my Engineering that I was first exposed to C. Already, the message was spreading quick and fast. If you miss even a single semi-colon, you are in trouble. It is so difficult to debug. And, maybe for the fun of it, somebody added a comma as well. Given a choice, my fellow batch mates would have added every punctuation mark to exaggerate the whole thing. There were also suggestions that it was mandatory to add two slashes after a semi-colon as a part of the programming paradigm.

Thankfully, the punctuation marks, apart from the semi-colon turned out to be false. And, for that last point, it would have been awesome if the two slashes were mandatory at least once every ten or twenty lines. Maybe, gaping at tons of lines of code would have been much easier. As one of my friends rightly said, for most of us, C, literally, is our bread and butter.

After the death of Jobs, I was really baffled to see some of the tributes pouring in. One of them in my Facebook timeline appeared "An apple a day does keep the doctor away. RIP Steve Jobs." I am still not sure what to make of it. If anybody understands the meaning of the quote, please let me know. The post also had a couple of likes and comments. I didn't know whether to feel angry at the person who posted it or the person who liked it. I would rather have stuffed an apple down her throat. The other cranky tributes can be obtained, obviously, through Google.

My wife and I were visiting the Golden Gate bridge, and somehow, I had forgotten to carry my DSLR camera with me. I operate the camera pretty well in the auto mode (what to do) and I am not one of those who experiments a lot (if any) with the camera features on the iPhone. For a change, San Francisco was not filled with a fog cover. It was one of those "You got to take a pic" moment in our lives. Naturally, your had the massive chunk of tourists getting the Golden Gate background with the foreground representing all sorts of weirdness. We were wondering how we could replicate the weirdness and our eyes were probing for someone who could take a snap of both of us together. To our good luck, there was this elderly gentleman sixty something standing next to us and getting some wonderful and captivating shots. Before we could approach him, he realized what we were looking for and was kind enough to take a snap of the two of us together.

"So, you want a snap of the two of you together?", he asked kindly.

"Yes, sir. If you don't mind please." We said, handing over one of our iPhones to him.

He, obviously, was a very experienced man in life. But, I, sensing that he must be new to technology, told him "Sir, you got to press the shutter button on the screen. There is no external button to capture the shot. Also, you have to make do with the default zoom. There is no zoom feature on the iPhone." All this, I said very confidently.

My wife was quietly nudging me from behind as if to say that I was talking crap.

"Oh come on, I know how to use the iPhone", he said and pulled out an iPhone from his pocket. "And you know what, you just have to pinch and drag in, and you will have the zoom options. This is just like Safari or any other app. You can also use the slider to adjust the zoom."

I just kept quiet. I had no words. I felt stupid. I dared not to look at my wife. He took a wonderful snap of the two of us with a perfect zoom, and a perfect backdrop, on a perfect morning.

We thanked him and we reciprocated by taking his photo with the Golden Gate background. I also adjusted the zoom.

A little later, after talking to him, we realized that he had taken a four mile bike ride to the vista point. At this age, he was so active.

He was not Steve Jobs. But, thanks to Steve Jobs, even a sixty year old gentleman could find it easy to use the features of a camera on a smartphone.

Again, to the greatest technologist ever. Steve Jobs, You will be missed.

Turning 30

noreply@blogger.com (Praveen Krishnan) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 12:53:00 PDT

I was getting up, and slowly my email inbox was getting filled with the usual suspects. These people never fail to email me on my birthday. I had a few calls as well. Again, these people never fail to call me on my birthday.

So, how's the feeling?

Pretty much the usual, I replied back.

So, turning 30, haan? Everyone had to ask this, unfailingly and unflinchingly.

Yeah, I let out a couple of the usual, monotonous jokes. It means, they don't deserve to be called jokes in the first place.

In the midst of all the jokes, I also tried to act all grown up (am sure I failed miserably at this).

I have to say that Afridi and I have a lot of things in common apart from a few obvious differences. Firstly, he is supposed to be a totally hot cricketer, according to the girls. OK, even the guys know it. I leave it to my friends to judge whether this is a similarity or a difference. They know it. I know it, too.

Secondly, Afridi has this amazing quality. At the age of 16, in the year 1996, he made his debut in international cricket. Now, after fifteen years, if somebody questions his age, nobody gets surprised when he says he is 17. All the economists, I am sure, are cracking their heads at this weird case of the laws of diminishing returns. For a change, I have never seen this concept in a better light.

If Afridi is 17, I am like ten. But, maybe, mentally, he is still 17. That's where we have our similarity. I still seem to have not grown beyond the general adolescence associated with youth, cracking those pjs that don't seem to invoke a laugh out of anyone or passing those baseless and insane comments. It may not be as outrageous as like Afridi saying that beyond the cricketing gear of front pads and thigh pads, he could see Tendulkar tremble when he faced his bowlers. I mean obviously, at the age of 17, he has the vision of a hawk.

Sometimes, when I play tennis and as I get that seething back pain near the spine, my colleagues are quick to point out to me that this is a sign of the age. I laugh it off and remind them that for a sportsman like me, who plays virtually every single game on the planet, that this is very very common. <Modesty, modesty. Control, control!>

Haha, I used to think like that. You will soon know. They retort and add the word experience to support their claims.

I watched Zindagi na milegi dobaara last week. It was a coincidental watch (a Hindi movie after a long long time), and the songs are on a repeat mode in my Spotify playlist. Nothing else can be more apt than the lyrics of Der Lagi (http://open.spotify.com/track/1cx0WexY9mFmD9bi6sw0AH).

So, what is it like being 30? I ask myself.

I don't know. Maybe, I should start eating less number of bhel puri plates and masala dosais outside. You know, the point where I need to take care of my health. Cholesterol, fat control and what not!

Spirituality? Yeah, maybe I should start following Nityananda.

Mature talk? Yeah, I can do a world of good for people around me with a little bit of extra maturity.

Responsible partner? Yeah, that seems easy. My wife can take care of the responsibility part.

I think there is still some time for all these things. Let me just get a plate of Bisibele bath, and let me continue the weekly tussle in tennis with the folks here.