Anupam Mathur's Blog!

Road trip

2010-09-24T13:46:00.000+08:00

Road trip main

India Road Trip Update 9th September

2010-09-10T01:16:00.002+08:00

A quick update from us - sorry for not blogging regularly. First 7 days of the road trip have been very hectic leaving me with little time to blog.

We are doing good, having covered more than 4,500 kms on the trip. However, we are a day behind from our original schedule - a number of factors have contributed to this. We knew that first 4-5 days would be tough, but congested highways in Kerala really did put us behind by a lot and we are now running a day late.

Will try to update the blog again if I can. We are currently in Jaisalmer and there is tons of planning required tonite. Heavy railfall and chances of Yamuna flooding have added some logistical complexities for us. All ritee... btw, Swift rocks! :-)

10,000 Kms Drive

2010-09-02T01:13:00.002+08:00

Hi All,

We are just about to leave for a 10,000 kms road trip.

Starting from Chennai, our planned route is:

Chennai - Rameswaram - Kanyakumari - Kerala - Mangalore - Pune - Dwarka - Jaisalmer - Amritsar - Manali - Agra - Kanpur - Dhanbad - Gangtok and places in Sikkim - Kolkata - Puri - Vishakapatnam - Chennai.

As much as possible, we will try to blog about the trip and post snaps and updates from our end. As for now, the car has been repaired and serviced and the drivers are gearing up and landing in Chennai tomorrow.

Wish us luck and we promise to keep you posted!

Tossing between 9 and 81 :-)

2009-07-22T17:20:00.002+08:00

Glad that we made it to top-100, the next stage is a lot more competitive. Though we do think, we are probably just as good as anyone else, it finally comes down to luck here, I guess.

The jury is fair - they are clearly not picking 9 names from a lucky draw. However, this is the stage where the criteria used, the preference of individual jury members, what they consider good, etc start to become a lot more important. From our point of view, we have given our best and we have absoluely no regrets as far as our application is concerned - the eventual quality, the effort that has gone in to it and more than anything else the enjoyment we have had in this process.

Top-9 is a tough call - and we will be extremely glad if we make it. If we don't, we have the option of doing the same drive all by ourselves! OR plan a drive to Leh, which was not possible within the rules of this competition.

Choose your pick - is it 9 or is it 91? :-)

Our travel plan for The Great Driving Challenge

2009-07-18T01:45:00.003+08:00

Summary of our plan

Our plan for The Great Driving Challenge is to create what we call the “Mitsubishi Constellation". Just as our forefathers saw the stars in a dark starry night and joined them by imaginary lines to form shapes and symbols and called them constellations, we intend to visit various places in Dakshin Bharat which when joined by imaginary lines across the map transform into an insignia of Mitsubishi. The route plan is: Mumbai-Goa-North Kerala-Alleppy-Munnar-Coimbotore-Mysore-Bangalore-Chitoor-Hampi-Belum Caves-Pune-Mumbai. The whole itinerary maintains the maximum limit of 350 kms and minimum of 300 kms on all 12 days. And to top it all, the “stars” on our constellation have been painstakingly chosen to bring out the best perspectives that India has to offer… (We will be exploring India from 15 different perspectives to give you a complete package!)

DAY-1

Route : Mumbai-NH-4a-NH17-Chandoli National Park
Key attractions : Chandoli National park, Mumbai Sea Link
Perspectives : National park, Modern Infrastructure
Distance travelled : 300kms + a few kms inside National Park, easily within 350 km limit

On the first day, we plan to drive from Mumbai to Chandoli National Park, covering a total distance of 300 kms (50 spare kms left to explore Chandoli National Park and buffer for Mumbai travel). We will start off in the morning, driving across the new Sea Link in Mumbai and then head towards Vashi, going through Panvel creek to join NH-4c. After traveling for about 10 kms on NNH-4C, we will take the Pen bypass and join NH-17 to drive down south to Chandoli National park. We plan to visit the following places inside the national park: Kandhardoh, the Kandhardoh Falls, Tanali Falls and Vasant Sagar Reservoir. Would have been a long day by then- we plan to check-in to the guest house inside Chandoli National Park to blog, upload photos and share our travelling experiences on the day-1 of our journey.

DAY-2

Route : Chandoli National Park- NH17-South Goa
Key attractions : Goa beaches
Perspectives : Beaches, Architecture, Cuisine, Education
Distance travelled : 301kms + a few kms within Goa, easily within 350 km limit

We will get up relatively earlier (i.e. before 9am!) to explore Chandoli National Park a bit more, before heading off to Goa. The idea today is to get to Goa as early as possible to give ourselves maximum time to enjoy the beaches at Goa. We will head south from Chandoli National Park on NH-17 all the way to Goa. We will explore the key spots in Goa – e.g. Arjuna beach, Mapusa, etc. Other than the beaches, we will look to explore the cuisine of Goa and understand the intermingled Portuguese architecture and remains in Goa. We will be staying at one of the resorts by the beach in South Goa. We will also visit the BITS-Pilani Goa Campus – a testimonial to modern India’s education systems. As an Alumni of BITS-Pilani, Anupam is really looking forward to visiting Goa campus.

DAY-3

Route : Goa-NH17-NH 206 to Jog Falls from Manki-get back on NH-17-Bhatkali
Key attractions : Jog Falls
Perspectives : Waterfalls,
Distance travelled : 320kms includes travel to and from Jog Falls, easily within 350 km limit

After strolling on the beach in the morning, we will get into our Mitsubishi Cedia, fasten our seat-belts and vroom we go J We will head down South on NH-17, passing through Nagorcem, Karwar, Ankola, Kumta to Manki. At Manki, we will take turn left to NH 206, driving to Jog Falls (at a distance of 50 kms or so). After enjoying our time at Jog falls, we will head back on NH-206, reach Manki again and head southwards on NH-17 to Bhatkali for the night stay.

DAY-4

Route : Bhatkali-NH17-Mangalore-Mahe
Key attractions : Cannore beaches, Bekal Fort
Perspectives : Beaches, Forts
Distance travelled : 325kms

We will drive down from Bhatkali on NH-17, passing through Mangalore. Our first point to visit would be Bekal Fort - spreading over 40 acres, Bekal Fort is the largest and best preserved fort in Kerala with an alluring view of the sea shore. We would then drive down south further to visit Muzhappilangad Beach which is a long clean beach. Its Kerala’s only drive-in beach, one could drive the entire length-4 kms. Driving Mitsubishi Cedia sports model on a beach, would be yet another innovative way to test drive the car! J The next place to visit would be another beach nearby called the Meenkunnu Beach. This beach is a tourist’s paradise with golden sand & surf. We will continue driving south on NH17 to reach Mahe for our night stay.

DAY-5

Route : Mahe-NH17-Kozhikide-Kodungallur-Join NH47 at Cochin-Alleppy
Key attractions : Kodungallur (first Mosque, Church, temple), Cochin, Alleppy
Perspectives : Secular India, Back waters
Distance travelled : 320kms

We will start from Mahe and head south wards on NH-17 all the way, enjoying the green beauty of Kerala, along the coast. We will visit Kodungallur – which has the first mosque and church in India and has a temple also in close vicinity. This stands as a true testimony to “Secular India”. After that, we will drive further south on NH-17, joining NH-47 at Cochin. We will visit key attractions of Cochin (e.g. Fort Cochin) and then head to Alleppy. We would stay in a houseboat at Alleppy (Aditi is damn excited about it!). There will be plenty to blog today – though it will be a tough balance to strike – should we blog and update for the benefit of the avid followers of GDC or enjoy the scenery around, which would add to the overall experience for everyone! Can’t wait to get there!

DAY-6

Route : Alleppy-NH47 to Cochin-right turn on NH49-Kotamangalam- Munnar-Udumalaipettai-NH209 to Coimbatore
Key attractions : Munnar, Eravikulam National Park, Indira Gandhi National Park
Perspectives : Hill stations, water falls, National parks
Distance travelled : 300kms – enough room to visit places in Munnar

Its time to get up early again, Day-6 has a lot in store for us! We will start from Alleppy and head northwards on NH-47 to Cochin. We would need to turn right on NH 49, at Cochin and then head all the way to Munnar – enjoying the fabulous drive on the serpentine roads all uphill. At Munnar, we will visit waterfalls, the highest peak in South India, tea plantations and other key attractions. At around 3pm, we will head out of Munnar all along NH49 to Udumalaipettai through the lush green forests of Indira Gandhi and Eravikulam National Parks, where we will take left on NH 209 and drive down to Coimbatore for night stay.

DAY-7

Route : Coimbotore-NH67 to Gundalpet - then NH 212 to Mysore- Bangalore
Key attractions : Mysore Palaces (e.g. Ambavillas, etc), Brindavan gardens
Perspectives : Palaces, Gardens
Distance travelled : 335kms

We will drive down from Coimbatore, taking NH67 to Gundalpet, where we will join NH 212 and drive down to Mysore. At Mysore, we will visit the key attractions of Mysore – Ambavillas Palace and other palaces of historical significance. The theme at Mysore will be “Historical Heritage” as we explore the great forts and palaces at Mysore. Towards the evening, we plan to visit Brindavan Gardens, and see the fountains post sunset. Later, we will head off to Bangalore for night stay.

DAY-8

Route : Bangalore-NH4 to Chitoor- then NH 18 to Rayachoti
Key attractions : Bangalore, Koral Mines, IT Park
Perspectives : Mines, Information Technology
Distance travelled : 310kms – room to go around Bangalore

On day-8, we will start with exploring the great attractions of Bangalore, the garden city of India visiting one of the key gardens (e.g. Lalbag). We also plan to visit ISKCON - A blend of modern and traditional south Indian temple architecture, the ISKCON temple houses a multi-vision cinema theatre, computer aided presentation theatres, vedic library and a preaching library. We also plan to visit one of the IT Tech parks in Bangalore – (e.g. International Tech Park) to showcase the IT industry of Bangalore. Any perspective to Bangalore would be incomplete without mention of IT industry that has transformed India in general and Bangalore in particular. We will then drive down on NH-4, visit Kolar Gold Mines (just in case, we don’t win the gold medal in this competition, gold dust from Kolar is all we will need to be content with J ). We will further keep driving down on NH-4 till Chitoor (which is one of the vertices of our Mitsubishi Constellation). From there, we will take NH-18 to drive down and halt for night at Rayachoti.

DAY-9

Route : Rayachoti-NH18 to Mydukur, then turn left and head to Belum Caves continue and join NH 63 to Bellary
Key attractions : Belum Caves
Perspectives : Caves, Natural Beauty
Distance travelled : 320kms

On day-9, we will start from Rayachoti and drive up north in NH-18 till Mydukur. From there, we will take left on a less important highway and drive through Proddatur, Gollapalle and then reach Kolimigundala. This is where Belum Caves are located. It is the 2nd largest cave in the Indian sub-continent with a length of 3.3kms! We will spend a major part of our day-9 exploring Belum caves. After exploring the caves, we will drive through Tadpatri, towards Gooty and then take NH-63 to Bellary. Bellary would be our night stop.

DAY-10

Route : Bellary-NH63 – take detour to Hampi and join NH63 at Hosapette – NH 13 to Hungund, Left to Pattakadal and then to Bagalkot
Key attractions : Hampi, Tunga Bhandra Dam, Pattakadal
Perspectives : Temples, Monuments, Dam
Distance travelled : 300kms – inclusive of detours

On day-10, we will start from Bellary and our first stop would be Hampi to explore various monuments of the mighty Vijaynagara empire in ruins. This is a UNESCO world Heritgate site. Our next stop would be at Hosapette, where we will visit Tunga Bhandra Dam – which is the largest dam in Karnataka. From there, we will get back to NH-13 and head towards Hungund. At Hungund we will take a left to Gudur and then reach Pattakadal. Pattadakal is another UNESCO world Heritage Center, it has 10 major temples representing early Chalukyan architecture. From there, we will drive to Bagalkot for the night halt.

DAY-11

Route : Bagalkot-NH218 to Bijapur- NH13 to Sholapur-NH9 to Indapur
Key attractions : Bijapur (Gol Gumbuz), Kollur (Malik-e-Maidan), Sholapur
Perspectives : Architecture, Palaces, Canon
Distance travelled : 300kms

On day-11, we will start from Bagalkot, take NH 218 to Bijapur. The key attraction at Bijapur is Gol Gumbuz which is the 2nd largest dome in the world (nearly 44m in diameter). The other attractions at Bijapur include Malik-e-Maidan, which is the world’s largest medieval canon, Jumma Masjid and Ibrahim Roza which is said to have inspired Taj Mahal. Clearly, we would have a lot to do in Bijapur and we look forward to covering as many of these great structures as possible. Bijapur is famous for hand woven sarees as well. After spending nearly the entire day in Bijapur, we will head off to Sholapur and then to Indapur for night stay.

DAY-12

Route : Indarpur-NH-9 – Pune – Expressway- Mumbai
Key attractions : Expressway, Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum, NDA
Perspectives : Museum, Modern India Infrastructure, Defence
Distance travelled : 320kms

The last and final day of the trip, we will start with a visit to Ujani dam in Indarpur and then head off to Pune. At Pune we plan to visit Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum. We also plan to visit National Defense Academy – the only academy in the world where all three forces are trained together. We will then drive through on Mumbai-Pune express way, a testimony to India’s great infrastructure. We plan to reach Mumbai at a time preferred by the trip organizers for the closing ceremony of the drive.

Why we are the best? - 5 key reasons!

2009-07-18T01:41:00.001+08:00

Typically, it is sufficient to have one of the following to succeed at a task: Skill, passion, dedication, experience, great idea, support from friends and relatives. What if we try and combine all these factors? The resulting combination would be unbeatable. This is precisely the reason why we are the best candidates! Lets us describe each of the above reasons to you:

We have a great idea and a great plan – our route plan “Mitsubishi Constellation” is not just an innovative idea, but also our unique way to highlight the myriad threads that form the richly interwoven tapestry that's India. Yes friends, we have managed to pull through the toughest route challenge! We have made a route plan that showcases India from 15 different perspectives, is all within the daily limits set by the TGDC guidelines and still manages to draw a Mitsubishi insignia when plotted on a map! Please refer to our travel plan and the google map for more details. What’s the point we are making? Well…it proves beyond doubt that when you are in India, it just doesn’t matter what direction you decide to travel in, coz India is sure to surprise you with its beauty at each corner! Nothing else could have brought out India’s richness any better! To be honest, to design the route within the parameters of the daily kilometers limit plus the self-imposed constraint of forming the “Mitsubishi Constellation” was like solving a complex puzzle- the moment you increase or decrease the kilometers here, there goes the aesthetic appeal of the insignia, and the moment you pin down the end-points of the constellation, you realize suddenly that the kilometers got exceeded! Phew! Despite the constraints, we designed the route (a whopping 50-60 man-hours spent on that!) and as is evident from the testimonials, the efforts haven’t gone in vain!
We're Traveloholics! We have visited 17 countries worldwide and enjoy traveling immensely. So much so that we’ve decided to set up home at one of the world’s favourite tourist destinations- Singapore! The last we heard, the visa offices of the world (and environmentalists the world over) have been pretty unhappy with us…thanks to the rate at which we’ve been using up the pages in our passports! That’s why we believe that this contest is tailor made for us- an exact fit with our travel passion!
Driving, Driving, And Driving!! We love driving and we love cars, and also anything and everything that comes with being in love with driving and cars. We have driven across 4 different continents, and been on several long road trips world over (in 8 countries). In fact, saying that Anupam loves cars is an understatement- he lives them! What else would you say about the guy whose Mom asks her prospective daughter-in-law if she is prepared to live out of a car after marriage! And Aditi? Well, she has decent driving credentials too although she prefers to enjoy watching the scenery and contemplating on life’s philosophies while Anupam drives! ;) But despite what writers Allan & Barbara Pease may tell you, this woman is out to prove that “Women can read maps”! For us, driving is not just about passion, but it is something that needs the right mix of technique, experience, endurance and passion! Check out our blog for more details on our driving trips
We love to Jog… err…we mean Hog….oops…apologies, we meant We love to Blog! We’ve been blogging since 2004- about travel, driving, auto, cricket, self improvement, and everything else under the sun. But humour is our forte (or so we like to think!!) and we derive immense pleasure out of unleashing our PJs on the world! Check out our latest attempt at doing that- The Car-toon series called “Puncture ke Car-namey!” on our blog, which we intend to continue publishing while on the drive as well, deriving inspiration from the life-on-the-road. Please also see our Flickr album to get a flavour of our photography skills. Aditi is an artist at heart and some of her shots portray just that- an eye for detail and an eye for beauty in the mundane….
They say rolling stones gather no moss, but it seems rolling stones do gather a lot of votes! We’ve gathered almost 750 votes so far and we are seriously overwhelmed with the support that our family, extended family, friends and even people who don’t know us have extended to us. It feels really nice to have 750 odd people backing up your application…and we can’t wait to thank each and everyone of them by sharing the stories from our experiences on the drive!

All-in-all, we are not just the best candidates with required "skills and experience", but we will also ensure that all the avid followers of Great Driving Challenge have fun reading our blog posts, photo essays and updates. In short, Entertainment Guaranteed!

We are the best candidates for The Great Driving Challenge! - Our Video

2009-07-18T00:18:00.004+08:00

Please see our video for The Great Driving Challenge! We are the best! :-)

Puncture ke Car-namey

2009-07-17T20:47:00.002+08:00

A funny sketch from Aditi to help you get a flavour of what our puncture is like! Enjoy!

What's your route plan? Is there something special happening guys?

2009-07-17T13:43:00.002+08:00

12 hours and 15 minutes left, before we submit our final application to the great driving challenge.

"So, whats your route plan? Is Mitsubishi Constellation happening guys? We haven't seen it as yet... " - we have heard many such queries over the last couple of days.

Wait a little while longer. Our route plan, credentials and something-very-very special will be uploaded on this blog (and in the application too) in the next 12 hours.

Please continue voting for us, and thanks so very much for your support. Today is the last day - please give us your support!

http://www.greatdrivingchallenge.com/application/1246425248799124

A walk down our driving experiences! :-)

2009-07-15T14:32:00.002+08:00

Aditi and I have been on several drives. We are vastly experienced at driving trips - a reflection of our true passion. Firstly, let me start off with listing our key achievements:

Driven in 4 continents: Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa
Driven in 8 coutries: India, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland
Been on several long road trips. Going by distance, the two longest ones are the 3,630 km trip through Chennai - Bangalore - Goa - Mumbai - Pune - Hyderabad - Chennai and the 3,200 kms trip touching Chennai-Hyderabad-Mumbai-Vijaywada-Chennai
Achieved "1000 kms of driving in a day" twice. Once in South Africa and once in Malaysia.
Maximum distance in a day in India is ~900 kms from Vishakapatnam to Chennai... and many more in 800-900kms range in a day

Having highlighted key achievements, we would like to now highlight, some of our most memorable drives:

Auckland to Rotorua, New Zealand
Capetown to Cape of Good Hope, in South Africa
Stutgart (Germany) to Interlaken (Switzerland) and back, through Alps
Singapore to Cherating Malaysia - 2 trips
Several trips from Chennai to Ooty, Kodaikalan, Kerala (each ~1,500 kms or more)
Chennai to Dandeli Water Rafting, via Bangalore (trip of ~2,000 kms)
Separate trips from Singapore to Pangkor Island, Tioman Islands, Penang (in Malaysia) with each trip being ~1500 kms long8)
Atleast 15 trips from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur
Capetown to Knysna, South Africa (Garden Route)
Perth to Margaret River, Australia.
.. and numerous others....

Please check this blog for more details on a few of these. I have another blog for the longest trip I have been to: http://wimwi-road-trip.blogspot.com/

Introducing to you "Puncture"

2009-07-15T09:49:00.005+08:00

The Great Driving Challenge is an amazing concept. It has been designed in such a way to get everyone excited. While I am kicked about driving and blogging, Aditi has let her creative side take-over.

For our trip, Aditi has designed a new cartoon character - "Puncture"! Puncture is purely Aditi's brain child. As she puts it, "Puncture is a little dumb... recent medical reports suggests that Puncture is suffering from Carotitis - a mental disorder, leaving the patient with the ability to only understand things that are in anyway related to cars.. for rest of worldly matters, our Puncture is totally dumb!"

Ladies and Gentlemen, Unveiling to you, "Puncture" (back ground music goes tain tain, tain tain toden tain, tain tain toden tain tain)

1) This is our "Dumb Puncture" - the natural pose!

2) If you discuss anything other than cars, this is his usual reaction:

3) All you need to do is to mention the word "car" and this is the reaction you get to see!

Mitsubishi Constellation - what's that?

2009-07-15T00:03:00.002+08:00

We are all geared up for The Great Driving Challenge. By 17th, we all need to submit our final route plans, our driving history/ credentials and to define why are we the best candidates?

Our route plan is unique - we are creating the Mitsubishi Constellation - what's this? Well, it will all be unveiled shortly - this blog would have all the information by 17th evening. Till then, its all under wraps!

Please keep voting for us at The Great Driving Challenge. We need you support:

http://www.greatdrivingchallenge.com/application/1246425248799124/

Great Driving Challenge!

2009-07-14T23:16:00.002+08:00

Aditi and me are participating in the great driving challenge contest. Please vote for us (link on this blog)!

Starting from today, we will be regularly updating you with our plans for the great driving challenge. You can read our profile and our travel plan at this link:

http://www.greatdrivingchallenge.com/application/1246425248799124

We will be updating our profile till 17th July. Please do keep checking - would be fantastic if you could help us get more votes. Please forward to your friends.

Do keep checking this blog... there will be quite a few posts in the coming days!

What can be done?

2008-12-04T14:42:00.002+08:00

Mumbai terror attach has again brought up the biggest question that the world faces - how can terrorism be tackled? Any views - sorry - this post doesn't help us get anywhere, but would love to discuss further

Parallel Algorithm for Quick Sort!

2008-04-22T23:31:00.002+08:00

It's been a while since I last logged on to Blogger. Over the last few days, I have tried to justify this temporary sabbatical attributing all possible reasons ranging from global warming to crude oil prices, but after extruding these set of reasons through a truth-funnel, the same age old problem emerged as the primary reason - my struggle with blogging topics! This time, it was a problem of plenty. I was confused with tons of topics to blog on - Tata Nano, about my latest challenging drive to highest peak at Cameron Highlands, aircraft technology and the airline industry, IPL business model, Sachin's statistical comparison with other greats, da da da...

I then did the mistake of again asking Ninja for a topic to blog on - and this is what Ninja the geek came up with. So, I thought, well why not? After all this blog was started to enlighten the world! :-)

At first glance, the topic looked fairly okay - "Parallel Algorithm For Quick Sort". Within first few minutes, I realised that I had understood all 5 words listed within the quotes - so should be a no brainer! Little did I know that the phrase that once appeared is one of my finance books would hold true here as well - "the whole is greater than the sum of parts"

Since then, I have spent the last 3 hours trying to figure out what this topic could mean before getting down to blog on it. These are the possible interpretations that I could come up with:

At all points, it is equi-distant from algorithm for quick sort
Logical sequence of steps (algorithm), parallel to each other, quick to compute in some ways (sorta)
Parallel algorithm that fast bowlers in cricket (quicks) could use to sort opposition batting order
You type in 4 words in excel - "parallel", "algorithm", "for", "quick" and then use data sort function
Parallel algorithm to kick start a scooter?
On par with allege rhythm for quick sort?
Pyare Lal agle road pe quick sutta!

... yesss... I think, I cracked it! :-)

Tata Nano – the most amazing thing to have happened to auto industry!

2008-02-15T09:26:00.003+08:00

All through the post medieval history, any technological advancement has caught human attention – be it Wright Brother’s first flight, invention of internal combustion engine, the first super computer, the discovery of antibiotics, the decoding of human DNA – needless to say, one theme links it all - “technological advancement’. Lately, a new dimension to ‘innovation’ has emerged. Over the past decade or so, ‘cost’ and ‘affordability’ have started to drive changes. A lot of changes are now focused on bringing on redesigned products at much lower cost – be it the $100 laptop, a low-cost mobile phone or an ultra-cheap car. Yes, this post is about Tata Nano, priced at Rs. 1-Lakh or $2,500, it has halved the entry price for a car.

Ever since Mr. Ratan Tata first declared in public to manufacture the 1-lakh car, I have nearly followed every possible news article on this car. To me, this is the most amazing thing to have happened to auto industry, particularly for developing economies and will possibly impact entry level sedan segment world over. Before going in to details of the car and its impact, let me provide the views of a distant observer, from the day the plan became public (~4 years back) till today (just after the official launch of the car)

Announcement of 1-lakh car project (~4 years back): I thought “hmmm… interesting, but not sure if they can pull it off” I was excited, but didn’t have too much confidence if this would be ever possible!

My first impression: As more information started to come in, I thought this car would be without doors, possibly with a basic 2-wheeler engine and suspension system, possibly a cloth cover on top instead of a metal roof, no dashboard panel, wooden seats – in short, a car, but possibly not meeting the basic safety requirements and comfort

My first inference: But even with the above description, 1-lakh car seemed attractive – it would be the same value for money that a Maruti 800 is at Rs. 2 Lakhs. It might have been a success, but Tata would have probably struggled to sell half a million units a year

At the half way stage: Once Tata announced that it would indeed be a “proper car”, with a cute design, I really got excited about it. For this was not cost cutting, but a complete new invention of "traditional car". In one of the recent interviews, team at Tata Motors described their experience working on 1-lakh car – “we worked towards cutting almost 50-60% of costs for most parts”. Kudos to the team and the leadership – they would have pushed for 1-lakh price tag from seemingly impossible situations at many stages all through the development of this car

The day before the official launch: The day before the Auto Expo Launch, I was betting my money on the following specifications – a price tag of 1.25 lakh, a boxy design, high proportion of plastics esp. with doors, a basic rear engine not meeting environment norms, two doors with seats folding to access the rear seats, etc

Tata Nano launch: … and then, you get to see a much better car than a Maruti-800, meeting Euro-IV emission norms (I think engine sensors are a must for this), a killer design, plenty of space to seat 4-5 people, etc, etc – in short, a super car! In my books, if I was to benchmark this car with existing models on the road, it is worth at least Rs. 2 Lakhs

… well, at price tag of Rs 1.Lakh, it is a killer product! A pure market share eater!

Congratulations again to the team at Tata Motors, they have really redefined car designing and manufacturing. With the success that Tata Indica and other models have been, I am confident Tata has the operational capability to put the design to assembly line and manage the entire supply chain from suppliers to dealers producing a consistent good quality product. A big thanks to Tata Motors Team!

Harbhajan ban: time for us to set things right...

2008-01-07T23:21:00.000+08:00

Sydney test had been a fantastic great test match - for the fight that Indian team put it, I seriously don't mind the result. However, Australian team, umpires and the match referee deserve no respect what-so-ever.

It's been 3-4 days since Aussie's first complained against Harbhajan - for apparently calling Symonds a 'monkey'! I just can't believe it. This is just stupid. You don't need a masters degree in lip reading to understand the kind of language Australians use on the field - apparently all that is absolutely normal stuff for them. The world's best performing team "yes", but one seriosuly needs to question the way they are playing cricket. I would instead watch an ethical Kenya team defeated by most teams by an innings and 450 runs play cricket as opposed to the current Australian lot.

That's not the end of the story - the umpires and the match referee join the party as well. The number of decisions that have gone against India cannot be defined as 'errors' even by the probability corresponding to the long tail of a normal distribution function. Statistically, it is impossible to be at the receiving end of the umpire goof ups so often. Steve Bucknor should be sent out of the game right away - this is not the first time this has happened.

Match referee deserves a spot light as well - what a decision to suspend Harbhajan for 3 tests. If this ban is to be enforced, lets set the whole system right. Suspending the entire Australian team wouldn't be enough. ICC would need to invent a time machine, go back in time and suspend all current and retired players from 1995 or so.

I am a bit worked up - this is not an issue of "just a game of cricket". There is more to it. This is racism at its peak. Team India is representing India the nation as well. There is a narrow line that separates "Well, lets just take the crap" and "compromising on self-respect"... and the line has been crossed. Irrespective of the fine (I hear it is $2.3Mn), team India should call off the tour - no matter what it is, BCCI has sufficient corpus to take the hit. It is a situation far from "for sake of the game and the relationship between the two nations, lets get on with cricket" - India should pack up and leave Oz land right away.

There are millions of viewers world over who are crazy about cricket, just as I am. We watch the game under the assumption that it is fair for one and all. We respect umpire's decisions, assuming that it is a simple case of human error, never for once doubting the "intent". We assume that match referees are there to make sure that things go in the spirit of the game and are the match is fair to one and all. When that basic assumption goes for a toss, I seriously wonder why we have woken up at 3am to watch a test match irrespective of anything else for over two decades - be it long work hours, board exams, etc, etc - just about anything on this planet.

Some very strong and serious measures need to be taken here. This is simply not done - unless the ban is revoked, the umpires/ match referee changed and punished, a few Australian players banned, I refuse to watch the scheduled 3rd test match at Perth. There is absolutely no need to be diplomatic anymore.

... may be, I will chill down in sometime, but I don't think I am gonna edit this post very much even after my head gets down to its STP (standard temperate and pressure)

Experiencing lateral inversion!

2007-12-01T11:18:00.000+08:00

If I was to rewind back to school days, my NCERT science text book would have defined lateral inversion as “The effect produced by a mirror in reversing images from left to right”. In Kerala, I experienced “Lateral Inversion” in a somewhat different way – for some fuzzy reason, in a statistically significant way, most people got ‘left’ and ‘right’ wrong on most occasions. With time, I understood that ‘left’ is ‘left’ and ‘right’ is ‘right’ only as a matter of ‘convention’ and probably there is no strong logic behind that. On the contrary, with ‘up’ and ‘down’ there is some bit of ‘gravity’ rationale that comes into the picture.

To remain attuned to rest of the world, I decided to mentally define ‘right’ as ‘right’ symbolized by a few subconscious, yet logical rules – I started off with “I eat with my right hand”, shifting gradually to “steering is at the right of a car”. Beyond that stage, I don’t quite remember ever having problems with left and right. So in all probability, “steering is at the right of a car” is the ‘internal rule’ that over the years my directional sense has been calibrated too!

Through my existence on planet earth over the last 2 decades and my experience with excel modelling errors, attempts at solving ‘limited-information-case-studies’, trying my luck with Sudoku puzzles and attending structured communication training workshops, I have come to the conclusion that ‘assumption’ is what determines the ‘outcome’!

This is exactly what I experienced on my trip to Europe. Till then, fate had almost cherry picked my driving experiences as purely ‘right-hand drives’ – India, South East Asia, South Africa and Australia. On my trip to U.S., I took a bus from Boston to Capecod. With the intention to experience the ‘left hand drive’, I went and sat next to the driver, in the front. I was left in a state of being ‘zapped’ in a few minutes – possibly a combination of jet-lag and ‘left to right’ transformation on the road left me in that state. It was strange weird feeling – I couldn’t get to terms with the fact that on-coming vehicles were passing-by at 100 miles an hour to our ‘left’!

This November, Maharaj and I rented an E-class from Stuttgart (Germany). Since I had a valid license, I was the one behind the steering wheel. Frankly, I was a bit apprehensive to driving on the right side of the road. I tried various things to convince myself of this transformation, most notably being – ‘driving on the right side of the road, should by definition be the right side of the road!’

My over-cautious side took over for sometime – I drove at the minimum possible speed, shut the music off, kept 100% of my focus on road and tried to follow the arrows on the road. It all looked very weird! Maharaj was trying to give some fundaes and vibes about driving in Germany. I shut him up and said “… and you rustic! Keep shut and utter only when you find me heading on the wrong side of the road!”

Well, it took me probably half an hour to get used to this left to right transformation – with no better phrase to describe this, I coined it as ‘lateral inversion’!

By day-2 of our drive, I had completely lost it all. I had lost the sense of left and right. There were many occasions when Maharaj told me to turn right and I peacefully took the left turn! Given the rusticity of the situation, Maharaj came to my rescue by putting some rustic vibes – finally, we found a reason to cover up this goof-up and blamed it all on the human brain in general. Apparently, human brain can’t distinguish between left and right without any frame of reference, while up and down is governed by gravity.

I am back to the driving convention world that I am comfortable with. Inverse lateral inversion was rather easy – I got my directional sense right on my Avante during the very first minute of the drive. But, wait a minute, is right the right way to look at it when I am myself not sure if right is right and not left? Would Wright Brothers have the right answer to this mystery? Why are right hand drive cars more suited for left side drive? Confusion prevails, so does lateral inversion!

Europe Trip: London, Paris

2007-11-24T17:40:00.001+08:00

London

Met Boopos at Underground station near his house. On Sunday, he was returning from office at 9:45pm, still early by his standards – senti scene followed as we were meeting after 2.5 years :-)

Reached Boopos ka apartment, had dinner, gen random fundaes discussed, off to sleep

Next morning, took a bit easy, Boopos left at 8am, I started after 10am

Headed to Lords Cricket Ground, The home of cricket! – In the last 26 years, histroy has failed to impress me, but for once, it was interesting to know about the history of Ashes, Lara’s record innings, etc, etc

Had lunch next to the cricket ground, headed to London eye – a fantastic view of the city and places nearby

Took a few clicks at the Tower bridge (I thought it was the London Bridge, supposed to have been falling down - so said my nursery rhyme!)

Caught up with friends for drinks and dinner- Challa, Buttler, Anta, Philip Boopos and Bharath

Next day, got up at 5am or so and boarded the Eurostar to Paris.

Paris

Toulouse trip cancelled due to non-availability of tickets.

Checked-in to a hotel, took the day off and slept – It has been 5 days with very little sleep.
Got up late at night, went for a walk at around 2am near Montparnasse. Enjoyed the chilly cold winter and the light wind that made it even chiller!
Next morning, took the Metro to Eifel Tower
Long queue at the tower, so took a city tour
Went to ….Museum – I can’t appreciate art, just not inclined to any form of art. But, even for someone like me, this Museum was amazing.
Saw the much-hyped painting Mosalisa. Must say, other painting and the colour combinations used impressed me a lot more
Visited Notterdam saw from outside and had a good lunch at a typical French restaurant
Visited another piece of architecture and the region around that. Saw Lido from outside, the show didn’t start till late at night.
Got back to Eifel Tower – had a chance to go up right till the top (3rd floor) – the view was simply superb. Eifel tower is amazing – build only of iron trusses and it is rock solid, unshakeable!
Eifel tower was now lighted and was looking fantastic – a true killer sight
Took night train to Stuttgart – train journey was okay types, perhaps I had expected the train to be a bit better than what it really was

Europe Trip: Introduction

2007-11-24T17:25:00.000+08:00

The foundation of this post and the basic ingredients were fused on my way back from what had been a fantastic trip to a chosen few destinations across Europe. This post is a brief account of the terrific trip.

Off late, certain otherwise ‘loyal’ blog-readers, have criticized the typical length and wordiness of my posts. Taking into account the ‘recent-criticism’ and my general typing-laziness has resulted in a bullet point account of the Europe trip!

Pre-trip planning

First thoughts of Europe trip appeared around a year ago.
Started to plan for this trip in July, applied for vacation and I was politely told “dare not take-off before the end of project” – so mid-October it was!
I persevered through my allergic response to book shops and eventually succeeded in purchasing a guide to Europe. I had to literally start my trip planning from scratch. – had no clue to the overall geography of Europe; I still wonder how I managed to pass Social Studies exams at School!
Started with the ‘mugga-process’ on net, found links to typical Europe trips covering major cities, going deep into history of modern Europe, art, etc, etc
However, that didn't excite me at all. The very idea of going from one museum to the other, from one city to the other, drained me. This didn’t sound to me like a vacation by any stretch of imagination
Got back to basics, thought and thought about what I really wanted from the trip
After a few hundred random iterations of possible Europe travel routes, eventually understood what I was looking for – scenery, winter, snow, drives and may be some bit of technical funades –e.g. car museums or visits to manufacturing plants (e.g. Airbus)
It was a fairly complex plan – had to fit various constraints to my trip. Maharaj’s 6-day vacation schedule, ideally a weekend in London to meet up Junta, attend cousins’ wedding at Delhi, Diwali at home, attend Slippy’s wedding at Udipi, etc
Hour-by-hour planning is beyond me, except when it comes to challenging long drives. Lack of time to plan out every detail meant that trip had to be like “reach-the-damn-place, search-for-a-tourist-office, … and take it from there!”

The overall planned trip

Singapore ---> Chennai (0.1) ---> Delhi (2.0) ---> London (1.5) ---> Paris (1.0) ---> Toulouse (1.0) ---> Stuttgart (0.5) ---> Switzerland (3.0) ---> Norway (2.5) ---> Frankfurt/ Black forest (1.0) ---> Delhi (0.1) ---> Chennai (1.0) ---> Udipi (2.0) ---> Chennai (0.5) ---> Singapore
(Figures in bracket are number of days spent)

... the journey begins...

Tendulkar: A Great Knock against Pakistan!

2007-11-16T01:28:00.000+08:00

A great knock by Sachin, 97 vs. Pakistan leading India to a series victory, has forced me to push my work-in-progress Europe Trip post to the back-burner.

This truly was one of the best innings that Sachin has played - he seemed to have been in the groove and the 'zone' all the way through. Some unbelievable shots played - a typical classical Tendulkar innings characterized by great timing and placement. One can travel miles to see the flicks to square leg, the authoritative square drive and the punches down the ground. A great knock!

Yeah, yet another score in 90s... 6th time in 2007. But frankly, there is no real reason behind it - it is probably one of those things that just happen. Though this would for sure be at back of Sachin's mind, I am sure, as he said at the press conference, he wouldn't think too much about it. Probably what is more important is that he has been in great form, scoring big scores and at the end of the day, a 100 is nothing more than a psychological boundary... a 93 or 97 or 99 is just as good.

Well played Sachin! A great knock!

A trip to Margaret River and Cape Leeuwin in South Western Australia...

2007-10-22T13:54:00.000+08:00

I had a chance to travel to Cape Leeuwin and Margaret River in South Western Australia. My last few trips to Perth had been so well scheduled smack in the middle of the week, leaving me with little chance to explore Perth and places nearby. This time around, the story was a bit different. It had started to tilt towards a frustrating week at work – totally pointless slogging and needless-endless spinning of the wheel…

Mr. Blog Moderator: Take work offline, this is a travel post – keep it that way! You are at the border of breaching rule-2

… to break the shackles, after a couple of hours of googling for places to see, I eventually did find a place that qualified as a “drive-able” destination – the choice had less to do with the scenery and credentials of the location, but more to do with the mileage that the odometer could clock! I did a rough summing of distances to figure out that a trip to Margaret River from Perth could be ~600km in a day – not extremely challenging, but enough to keep me interested! The other option was to visit a place nearby (~200kms trip) – but that failed to inspire me enough! I managed to book a rental car on Friday.

Friday evening at work was easy. I was out of office at around 7:30 or so. I did a bit of a walking tour of Perth. Perth is actually a lovely place. It is nearing summer time, but the temperate is still in that zone of comfort - near that 15 degrees mark that I relish the most. May be, it was not just the temperature that made the city fabulous. There is this laid-back attitude that engulfs Perth making an ideal place to chill out. Add to that, Perth rates fairly high on my ABR (average-babe-rating) scale – in my recent global benchmark study of ABR scale, Perth figured right up there, largely driven by presence of certain specimen samples that were observed to be a unique blend of hot and cute variety! :-)

Mr. Blog Moderator: Focus…focus…my friend!

It was a rather strange Saturday morning - I was up at 6:30am, while the alarm was set for 6:45am! There is something about these long-drives that does the impossible to me – “waking up early”! Anyways, I went to collect the rental car. I had asked for a Toyota Camry but was provided with another car – at first go, I couldn’t figure out what the model and make was (after googling over the weekend, came to know that the car was “Holden Commodore”) I found my way to the expressway navigating through Perth roads.

30 minutes into the drive, I had seen nothing outside other than the road and occasional stare at the overtaking vehicles. I had still not reached any level of comfort with the car, I was still trying to synchronize my driving to this new strange car – it was packed with power, the accelerator reacted to the slightest hint and intent to get going, but overall, it lacked that air of refinement. It is a huge turn-off for me usually. Add to it the traditional rectangular side rear-view mirrors (as opposed to the curvy ones you find in most modern cars) gave me a feeling of driving one of those classical vintage cars. The car had the look and feel of a Contessa Classic. I continued to drive, with every passing minute, it got better. One hour into the drive, I had got a good gauge of the engine and the transmission system. Having reached some level of comfort with Holden Commodore, I stopped by a petrol station to stock up some coke-light.

Mr. Blog Moderator: Dude, this is a travel post. Why on earth are you talking about cars and driving and stuff? You are again all over the place; this qualifies as breach of rule #2. Official warning served!

I took a bit of de-tour from highway to enter a region of marshy land. It was a lovely drive – the reflection of the nearby hill in the blue waters was a great sight. I figured out there was no one in the vicinity – no other cars, no houses, nothing… I got off the car and took a few clicks, just as I had started to feel good about the place and scenery around, a scary realization flashed passed my mind – there is absolutely no one here! …I remind myself “if I survive this, I could be the next recipient of red and white bravery award!” While that was inspirational, I need a practical doze of logic. So I told myself “hah, it’s all fauna, there is nothing to fear here”. However, my brave front lasted for exactly 15 seconds. I heard some strange sound and got a feeling that something was moving behind the harmless-green-plants! I got back into the car in a flash, locked all doors and allowed the engine to roar! Phew! I actually didn’t care to look back if there was something really out there.

I took a couple of de-tours on the way to Margaret River – but made sure to remain in the car with the seat belt fastened! Nah, I was not scared, but just in case…! :-)

I reached Margaret River by around 1pm or so after having made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to reach the coast-line on the way. Frankly, Margaret River had been a bit of a disappointment. There was nothing great to see there, it was all winery and wine tasting tours. I was driving that day, so there was no way on earth I could have done the wine-tasting tour. Even otherwise, wine is not exactly aligned with my non-psued life! As I looked around, couldn’t find any decent scenery worth an “orkut-pic”. I have a very simple philosophy to travel – “Is this a place that's worth a few orkut-pics, if not, I wasting my time here”!

As hunger took over me, I got to this sandwich place that had service time of infinity. I was lucky enough to be served within first 60 minutes. Post-lunch, I did a of customary souvenir shopping and just when I was about to head back to Perth, I saw a direction-board that read Cape-Leeuwin – further scrutiny of the entangled maps that I was carrying in collaboration with my limited geographical and direction sense revealed that Cape Leeuwin was where Indian Ocean and Southern Ocean met. For the disappointment that Margaret River had been, here was a ray of hope to make this day “bloggable”!

50 kms I probably covered in 30 minutes and I reached the town of Augusta. The next 15 kms were fabulous. The road ran all along the coast that had a hint of hilly terrain to it. I stopped to take a few clicks. White beach, vast blue water, greenish shallow sea near the beach, waves splashing into white rocks, temperature around 15-18 degrees mark, couldn’t get any better than this. It was in all a great sight, worth the struggle that the day otherwise had been.

I drove further down to Cape Leeuwin, took a few pics at the lighthouse. I tried to push myself to the limit, but my lack of imagination couldn’t help me distinguish between Indian and Southern Ocean water colour.

It was about 2:45pm, Perth was 350 kms away and I had to get back to Perth before sunset. In Australia, it is better to avoid night drives as Kangaroos often take over the roads post sunset. I actually didn’t get to see Kangaroos at all. My net research tells me that there are 3-4 times more Kangaroos in Australia than humans (80Mn vs a population of 20Mn). Got back to Perth by 6:30pm, had a couple of hours of sleep before heading to the airport to take the red-eye flight back to Singapore. Overall an enjoyable day, nice drive, good snaps…

Mr. Blog Moderator: Time up! Breach of rule-3… some people just don’t learn!

Mr. Blog Moderator steps in!

2007-10-17T00:03:00.000+08:00

Mr. Blog Moderator is forced to step-in to maintain the reputation and standards that this blog is supposed to live-up to. Recent trends indicate an alarming fact - “zuk new posts in the last one month” – even in the most liberal blogging world, this would have been completely unacceptable. It's time to pull-up the strings, fasten loose bolts and power this blog back to the expressway!

Mr. Blogger's (author is not for blogs!) lack of self-discipline in maintaining this blog, has forced Mr. Blog Moderator to clearly articulate 'The-Blog-Protocol' moving forward. Furthermore, Mr. Blogger is severely reprimanded for not updating this blog in the recent past and three not-to-be-compromised-at-any-stage rules are hereby enforced to get some discipline going:

Rule #1: Thou shall regularly update this blog.

Rule #2: Thou shall maintain post discipline - focus only on the topic on hand, not the entire world surrounding it!

Rule #3: Thou shall compose shorter posts - no more long-posts-that-go-on-and-on-and-on for eternity!

By order,
Blog Moderator

20-20 cricket and Dravid’s decision to call it quits

2007-09-16T13:13:00.000+08:00

Quite a lot happening in the world of cricket – So, I thought this would be the ideal time to pitch in with a post on cricket. Two parts to this post: 20-20 world cup and Dravid’s decision to step down as captain of India.

20-20 is truly an amazing concept and in all probability, the future of cricket. Promising a very cricket-unlike "result in 3 hours”, this version of the game is packaged with a lot more intensity to bring cricket on-par with other sports. At first go, 20-20 world cup didn’t excite me at all. It was not until I saw the first match and realized, well, this is different and interesting. Three factors make this version of the game exciting to me:

While it looks like a pure batsman’s game at first thought, 20-20 is not just pure bang bang bang with the bat. 20 overs has proved to be a lot of time. Batting requires a fair bit of planning and more than anything else ability to adapt to the situation right there at the centre. With fielding restrictions lasting for first 6 overs, it gets very interesting – should batsmen go all out and slog in the first 6 overs or keep wickets till about 10th over and then start to turn things around. As teams play more and more matches, they will get to the optimum solution to this riddle - it probably depends a lot on the depth of batting, but I think, most teams would try to follow an algorithm as this version of the game develops and game statistics are further analyzed. I am sure most of us have an opinion on this (after all, we are no less cricketing gurus)! I am no different and in my view, if I was the develop a batting plan for 20-20 I would approach the game in the following way:

o First 6 overs are critical – it is important to make most of it to post a huge score. After a couple of quick singles in the first over, 2nd over onwards openers can probably go all-attack and get some quick runs, taking a few risks and sacrificing a wicket or two, if the need be.
o In my view, 2-wickets-down is probably the first decision point. From there-on batsmen need to balance defense (singles and twos) with full-blown slogging. It all about the confidence the team has in the batting “at what stage can we be reasonably confident of not getting bowled out?”
o The above would lead to “not any worse than 3 down at 10 over point”, “not any worse than 4-5 down at 15 over point” and so on
o So, if a team is 40-2 at the end of 6th over, they could possibly play a bit sensibly till 10th over, get to 65-2 or 70-3 by 10th over and then look to take the bowlers on
There is little to choose between teams in this version of the game. All it needs is a couple of cameo innings to post a decent score on the board. 2 quick-fire 40s or one 60-70 in the innings and you get to a decent 150+ score. While better teams start as favorites, there is every chance that a lesser team would come up on top. This is very good for popularity and the reach of the game.
Bowlers have a role to play and a very important one. Firstly, it is about understanding expectations – if one can bowl 4 overs for 25 runs, that is indeed a job well done. A bowler with 6 runs an over against his name can walk off the field at the end of 20 overs with his head held high and all pride intact! Secondly, it is not impossible to get wickets in this game. A few bowlers have picked a 4-for in 4 overs and that is no less than a match winning contribution. So, all-in-all, I would say, bowlers continue to be just as important as they are in a one-day or a test-match. It requires all the skill to keep batsmen down to singles when they are looking to attack almost every bowl.

Dravid’s decision to step-down

It was a decision that surprised everyone – after a very successful series in England, this was probably not expected. While various reasons are being speculated ranging from media pressure, to unwarranted criticism to his own batting form to rift between senior players to conflict with selectors to a very reactive decision, etc. But knowing Dravid the way he has been over the years, I find it almost impossible to believe this decision to be anything close to being a “rush of blood”. Dravid is one person who would have thought through this in very minute detail before making his decision public. In tune with his on-the-field personality, “Dravid, the wall” is a very balanced individual off the field as well. He is a master at “putting things in perspective”. I am therefore very sure that this decision is not a result of one comment or incident that irked Dravid, but rather a decision that he believes is in his best interest. If I was to bet my money on the most important reason driving this decision, I would probably guess his own batting form to be the most important factor – an average of 21 in South Africa and 25 in England is clearly playing on his mind.

Who next? - is a tough question to answer. Ganguly is not likely to be given the responsibility, nor would he be very keen to accept it. That leaves Tendulkar to take up captaincy. But it is not that simple. While we expect Tendulkar to play every test match, he would probably like to pick-and-choose one-day matches. Yuvraj’s life off-the field does not make him an ideal candidate at the moment, though I do think he is captaincy material. That leaves Dhoni (the current 20-20 captain) to take charge. These are still early days in his career and captaincy could prove to be one responsibility too many for Dhoni. Having said that, Dhoni is very clearly what could be termed as “captaincy material” – a balanced responsible player as a very consistent performer.

As a Tendulkar fan, I would like him to focus on his batting and produce a few high-class innings before he decides to retire in the next 1-2 years. But, given the situation, it probably makes sense for Tendulkar to share the burden of captaincy and groom Dhoni over the next 2-3 series. A bit of a tough situation to be in, but hopefully team India will stay united in what promises to be a challenging winter ahead – a lot of matches against Australia and a few with Pakistan.

Musical preferences and peer pressure!

2007-08-19T04:10:00.000+08:00

While I was living a bit of a flash back last weekend, a very strange realization struck me, leaving me perplexed and with much to think about. – I found that my music preferences have changed quite a bit over the last few months. I tried to extend this flash back to as further back as I could to help me better understand this strange phenomenon. I found that, unlike most other things, my musical preferences have varied a lot over time. I gave it a bit more of thought, but I couldn’t get my head around how and why musical preferences have changed as much as they really have. Further introspection made me realize that this has by far not been a gradual natural shift over years, but instead a highly fluctuating trend largely driven by my external factors!

To put things in context, let me show an illustrative graph of how my musical preferences have evolved over time. (graph above)

With a very theoretical approach to problem solving, I tried to break this issue up into number of small time intervals to derive some sort of trend that could explain this huge fluctuation in preferences. This is how my musical taste had changed over years:

Early and mid 90s: Rehman’s brilliance and Baba Sehgal’s rap music essentially got the first change to my music taste

Late 90s: Much of it was driven by MTV, Channel V and 2 hour a week, 7pm-9pm countdown of western numbers on Chennai’s 107.1 FM

… moving to the more interesting phase of changes…

August 1999 onwards started my vidya vihar campus life. My walkman helped me survive through the initial ragging days on campus. That was not to last long as my walkman was subsequently “borrowed” by a senior (I still distinctly remember the senior who took my walkman away!). Anyways, immediately after the first one month of ragging as winter began to set in, I found my way to Nutan market and bought 2 local rustic speakers with a matching amplifier to help me graduate from walkman head-phones to something more bass-producing.

Our wing had started to gel together, 11 of us from 8 different states talking different languages. So was the music, a bit of Assamese music mixed with Gult and Tamil numbers from other half of the wing. Then there was rock and I had my pop music! I was then so against rock music that I had only one expression to describe rock music – noisy nonsensical stuff for drug-addicts!

Music to me was then pop – I would listen to boyzone and backstreet boys and likes. I called MLTR as rock (by the way, MLTR has and will remain my favorite). As our wing slowly became a wing from a group of 11 different individuals, we became a bit more vocal about our opinions. Soon, I started hearing comments like “THIS guy only listens to dhhop dhoop ding ding pop music” … while I put up a brave face to all the comments with a not-so-convincing reply that went like “so wat, my music, my preference!”. By the end of first year, my wing’s perseverant criticism has succeed in creating one significant change – I had internally started to feel the pinch of not knowing what rock was all about.

Year-2 (2000), I got my comp. to campus – while the intention was to learn some Java and C, the comp. processor spent most of it’s time processing music files and “movies” J.

I copied tons of music files to my hard disk – I now had a vast collection of music including rock. Somehow, I couldn’t get myself to listen to heavy metal. But this was to change soon – a change driven by my wing as they would all barge in and change the music to rock. When I resisted the change to rock, I would get a lecture from my wing and a long explanation to how my pop music sucked big time! Slowly, I started to appreciate rock, what sounded like noise not too long ago, had started to sound like music now – there was energy in bass and metal sound that I started to appreciate, there was madness in head-banging that I had started getting addicted to, etc, etc

Overall, the shift to rock was very much driven by my wing and access to MP3 songs. While it was to become my preferred music over the next few years, the dramatic shift was nothing more than pure peer pressure that raised an internal voice – “me too please…!”

I continued with ‘primarily rock’ music for most of my 2 years at WIMWI as well with no major changes. I played roughly the same play-list over and over again. Unfortunately, this in some ways implied that I had cut myself from following the latest top-chart music. My only exposure to new music during this entire phase was at ramp parties that I was anyways not too regular to.

Once I shifted to Singapore, we got a music system for our home and another amplifier for my room – I continued with my “rock only” music for most of my first year here. My flat-mates and other close friends would often play some nice Hindi-remixes and I gradually started to enjoy non-rock music all over again. No drastic measures as yet, I was happy with the mix of music and the odd addition of Hindi pop was always welcome.

2007, a different beat!

I am not a great believer of making new-year resolutions, but I sorta intended to bring about some change to my musical taste in 2007. It started off with when I got a few Hindi CDs during one of my customary Landmark visits in Chennai towards the end of 2006.

The next quantum leap was in April 2007 after I got my Avante. My first week drive of Avante was with heavy “side-rear-view mirror vibrating” rock music. While I enjoyed the blast of music, my friends didn’t exactly think too high of my music taste. I noticed the gradual resistance building up and I could visualize my music collection being vetoed against – this did hit me! I was now under pressure once again, to bring about a change and become socially more acceptable!

It was on one of those “destination-less” drives in Singapore, by some strange configuration of lack of other time-pass activities, we shifted to playing Antakshri. I had like not played Antakshri for years and it was nearly a life-changing experience for me if I was to stretch my imagination a bit. Firstly, it was back to Hindi music and alarmingly, I could only recall only very old Hindi songs! – the ones that a generation elder to us would classify as old! I was labeled as “1950s songs expert”! While that ended as a joke we had a good laugh about, it somehow made me ask myself some very philosophical and open ended questions “why have I completely shut myself from Hindi songs, Hindi pop, Western pop?” That of course had just one answer as I immediately went to the music store and began the process to gradually upgrade my music collection.

This was a turning point for sure. I still do enjoy rock as much as I once did, but I have started to get back to other forms of music that I once used to relish. It has been a strange rediscovery – certain songs have certain events and time stamps associated with them. e.g. Hindi pop (esp. Baba Sehgal) takes me back to my younger days, MLTR (like Someday Somewhere) takes me back to 30 minutes before a test, Bryan Adams’ “18 till I die” and Roxette take me back to my 12th standard days, Roja to very vague memories, etc, etc

This change in 2007 has again been driven by friends and so called peer pressure. I have little clue about how this trend would shape up in the years to come. However, if there is one thing I do know and I can be sure about, is that, I will continue to enjoy my music collection – the form, language, intensity would continue to fluctuate, but hopefully not the underlying passion!

800 rpm at crossroads!

2007-08-04T11:26:00.000+08:00

800rpm (my auto blog) was intended to be unique and different in some ways. In the short period of time since this blog first rolled out of the "manufacturing plant", it has already been to the service centre a couple of times with the co-drivers/ bloggers wanting to redesign this blog entirely!

After the fanfare surrounding the initial launch ceremony, Maharaj and I entered a phase of cold war. While I wanted this blog to be christened 800 rpm giving it a refined-and-cool-feel-with-just-enough-power, Maharaj wanted a more aggressive image with name closer to being 6000rpm and the blog’ image around roaring-engines-producing-full-thrust-power. With diametrically opposite preferences and tastes governing how we envisaged this blog to be, Maharaj and I officially declared the war on!

Over the next couple of months, we will leave no stone unturned to prove our respective blog-name preferences. The battle sparked-off with a few rough email exchanges, followed by a chat and call to prove how disgusting 6000rpm as a name was, etc, etc. In the coming few months, we are considering both legal and illegal steps to help us reach a conclusion. On legal front, we have approached IUPAB for the rules governing the latest blogging nomenclature (IUPAB is International Union of Pure and Applied Bloggers). We have also appealed to the wing jurisdiction to come-up with its point of view. Needless to say, 800 rpm is likely to emerge as the winner in the process given how nerdy 6000 rpm as a name is.

On the illegal front, our first instinct was to say “pen is mightier than a sword” and a “keyboard is mightier than a pen” – so let this battle be fought over blog posts. However, that didn’t sound like war enough, so we got back to fighting the battle with a sword instead. In the process, Maharaj ended up with a wounded left hand and had to undergo an operation to set it right.

While this was the opportune time for me to take over and declare 800rpm as the eventual winner, I am a firm believer of war ethics. Maharaj was therefore granted time to recover before we continue this battle further! In the mean-time, I will go ahead and compose a few posts for this blog – And you Mr co-blogger, recover soon buddy!

Tendulkar: Letting the bat do the talking!

2007-06-30T09:08:00.000+08:00

I had planned to complete my work-in-progress post on time management this morning, but 2 amazing knocks from Tendulkar resulted in this post featuring on this blog first.

Many congrats to Sachin on reaching 15,000 ODI runs - what a player! Mind-boggling statistics spread over 18 years of high-consistent performance explained by one magic number - a career average of 44.24 after yesterday's knock of 93.

The 2 knocks of 99 and 93 this week against South Africa in some ways summed up Tendulkar's career over the years.

His 99 on Wednesday was all pure grit - prior to the match, he was not in best of forms, knew he had got out to playing a rather loose shot against Ireland. So, he came out to bat against South Africa with a very determined look, playing very straight with no flamboyance, stuck to his task with all the patience on earth and produced a gritty innings of 99. This is what differentiates Tendulkar from other great players say Lara - he changes his gears and plays well within himself when things are not going all great for him, managing to make runs and fight his way back.

Friday's 93 was a high class innings - knew he had got his bearings right, now was the time to dominate and prove a few things. Many aggressive shots on a pitch with a fair degree of bounce and movement - a few punching square cuts, powerful pull shots and then later danced down the wicket to the spinner to play a few lofted shots over the ropes - an exhibition of why he is still the best and the most dangerous batsman around. A glorious innings under rather tough circumstances!

I have been a Tendulkar fan for most of what I term as "my in-senses life". 18 years back, when Tendulkar first walked in, I knew very little about cricket (I was 7 then!). Being Tendulkar's fan then meant nothing more than appreciating those 4s and 6s and 50s and 100s - a boundary was "hurraay", a rare dot dot-ball was "come on, whack them out of stadium" and his dismissal meant "numb silence". Since then, I have followed almost every cricketing and non-cricketing move of Tendulkar. Over the years, as a Tendulkar fan, I have been through many different stages, with every stage providing an additional reason to admire Tendulkar:

For cricketing reasons (stages from 1989 till date):
hurray >> entertainer >> great shot maker >> early achievements >> aggressive batsman >> high degree of focus >> compact batsman with a great technique >> very stable head >> highly ambitious >> great batsman >> high commitment to the game >> mentally the toughest around >> high cricketing ethics >> team man >> best batsman with all possible world records >> high passion for the game >> closest to being a perfect batsman

For non-cricketing reasons (stages from 1989 till date):
cool head >> positive thinker >> aggressive thinker >> extremely modest >> very ethical in all spheres of life >> high commitment to family >> high emotional intelligence >> assumes social responsibility >> a very balanced thinker >> closest to being a perfect human being

... I can go on and on and on about Tendulkar. But let me stop here and congratulate Tendulkar once again for getting to 15,000 ODI runs. As a fan, I would want Tendulkar to go on for ever, but we all do realise that Sachin is now probably nearing the end of his career. Let's hope that he finishes on a high, dominating all attacks over the next couple of years.

Repercussions of a desperate hunt for blogging topics!

2007-06-09T14:12:00.000+08:00

I have said it before and I say it again - the biggest roadblock to my otherwise promising blogging career is my complete lack of ability to think of nice blogging topics. Once a topic is 'assigned' to me, I can sorta find my way through the post.

If I had a database with minute-by-minute data of how I have spent my free-time in the recent past, blogging would appear right up there on top. That however does not mean that I spend a lot of time next to my laptop typing out posts. Let's look at this rather interesting phenomenon in greater detail which has left me perplexed! Some estimated data to help us understand this strange situation (all figures estimated as a percentage of total blogging time)

Reading other blogs : 5%
Typing out posts : 15%
Reading my own blog : 5%
Thinking of blogging topics : 75%!!

Further breakdown of 'thinking of blogging topics' (total 75%) reveals:

Staring at the wall : 25%
Over lunch/ dinner : 20%
During office meetings :15%
While waiting at traffic signal : 5%
Commercial break between overs of a cricket match : 5%
Looking for topics on orkut : 5%

The above data gives some indication to the gravity of the current problem. To sum it all up, this never-ending search for good blogging topics has taken a high share of my precious free time away! There has to be a solution to this... in my quest to answer the biggest puzzle of my life, I thought "what are friends for?", let me ask for some help. So, I pinged Ninja on gtalk and asked her for "good blogging topics, please" - little did I know that I this was a sure shot formula leading to nothing but disaster. After much pleading, got a response "go blog on fashion!"... my immediate reaction was "waaaaat, no way"... so I stopped chatting and got back to my staring-at-the-wall-for-topics state. Spent hours thinking, didn't get another topic of interest. So, thought - "lemme write something on fashion offline and if it shapes up well, will post it on the blog"

So, I started typing... "ehh...fashion... is amazing... is good... defines attitude"

... didn't sound that good, realized I knew very little about fashion to blog. The only way out now was to act brave and write a post with a few strong statements!

"...to me, fashion means absolutely nothing... while television channels would hate this blog from now on, I think fashion has exploited viewers of their time and money... I was shocked to see fashion tv on the list of pay-for-view channels... it can at best be termed as a complete waste of time and money... we as individuals should have our own identity... following a fashion, is much like being lost in image of a brand... that's not inspiring enough, the world needs a change. Dear readers, please go and define your own fashion! For instance, fashion to me is a pair of jeans with a-crushed-and-washed-but-not-ironed shirt... da da da"

... not heading anywhere, I decided to end the post there... still in search of a topics...juntaaa, please help!

Launching 800rpm!

2007-06-06T21:59:00.000+08:00

This post is to announce the launch of a very special blog - 800 rpm (http://www.800rpm.blogspot.com/) focusing entirely on the auto world.

This blog will continue to be my primary blog - with a mix of funny, 'bloggy' and serious posts (to inject some element of sanity!)

However, over the next few days, I will be devoting a lot of my free time to the new blog to get it up to speed. The interesting part is that Maharaj (Arun) would be my co-blogger for 800rpm.

We will be focusing entirely on the auto world. Though we haven't structured every detail of the content to be posted, very broadly we will be covering the following:

Car reviews and test-drives
Auto fundaes
Driving fundaes
Auto industry developments
Others/ Misc

Much of it is going to be dynamic and I am sure with time, the broad categories would evolve as well. Anyways, for more details, please visit http://www.800rpm.blogspot.com/

A journey of 1000 kms begins with a single spin!

2007-05-12T17:51:00.000+08:00

Life is a journey, travel it!... it’s the path that matters, not the eventual destination… focus on the efforts, not on the results... da da da

Sounds like a perfect beginning to one of those long boring philosophical posts on life and goals, etc, etc… however, dear readers, don’t be so disappointed, this post is the exact opposite!

I was initially thinking of posting a very objective matter-of-fact review of different cars that I have test driven in the recent past, but decided to instead post about a day that was from my point of view exciting, ambitious, thrilling and entertaining and for someone distant from the driving world, it would have been at best boring and tiring!

The story till Friday, May 4th 2007:

Singapore, a near diamond shaped island, 40kms wide and 30 kms in length when extruded out of complex trigonometry and geometry formulae would probably stretch to 100kms in perimeter. I had driven nearly 1300 kms in Singapore in 2 weeks, essentially implying that there was no major road left untouched. I started off with “lets try this expressway”, two days later I was like “lets try the 2nd lane of the same expressway”, a couple of days more I was like “practice makes a man perfect, so keep driving and repeating the same roads again and again!”…

It was during one of these drives, the music deviated away from “high-bass, side rear view mirror vibrating and floating rock music” to “…I want to break free…I wanna break free…” and I thought, well, I have had enough of driving in Singapore - I actually need to break free as well – probably a drive to Malaysia and experience highway driving. Next step was rather simple – visa application to embassy of Malaysia and I got my multiple entry visa in a week’s time!

Then I started calling up my friends to join me for the trip - while some were direct in their feedback “dude, crazy idea… I am not joining”, other psued specimens like Candy were a bit more refined “would have loved to join you on the trip, but have got work over the weekend and a couple of meetings in the office”… finally after much persuasion, Abhishek and Aparna (K&M from now on, dorm names not used in public interest :P) agreed to be part of my crazy idea – a trip to Mount Frazer and back (~1000 kms) in a day!

Saturday, May 5th 2007…

With no real preparation required for the trip, we decided to start at 5:45 am after a negotiation process that lasted for 30 mins debating the pros and cons of a 5:45am start vs. a 5:50am one! As usual, I had to goof up with the alarm and by some strange configuration of phone settings, the alarm just didn’t ring. I got a call at 5:45 from K&M and I woke up in a state of shock – “What! I am late to get up for a drive?… no way, this is not me…!” However, made some quick recovery and we finally managed to start off at about 6:15am. A quick trip to money exchanger and stocking up a couple of cold drink cans, we were all geared up for a trip to Malaysia.

We crossed the border after immigration formalities by 7:30am and hit the expressway by 8am. The road was excellent with speed limits not as strict as in Singapore. So, I decided to throttle a bit more and see how the car behaved at higher speeds. At 150 kmph, Avante was sailing – well balanced and sturdy, felt in complete control. I will go into technical and driving details in the next post, but to sum it all up, the drive was quite cool and the engine behaved in the exact fashion that fits my exact definition of an ideal engine/ car – packed with power when required, otherwise serene, refined and calm with low decibel levels!

While M free-rode and peacefully slept, K was busy with navigating out goof ups. We had one map to help us – on most occasions we got the highway right, however a couple of times we found ourselves driving down the wrong direction though! :-)

We reached KL is quick time, had a quick brunch – so did the car (petrol refill)! The next stage was a bit more challenging as we found our way to the other end of KL bye-passing the city. We soon reached the smaller highway leading to our final destination. With significant decrease in road quality and width, it took us much longer to get to Mount Fraser than we had initially imagined. We got lost a couple of times, till we found a desi to help us with directions. In typical desi style, the route from his point of view was simple – “keep going straight, no turns”… we were like, “thanks, you are the man!”. However, 200m further down, the road split to two tangentially opposite directions! With not much left to trust the directions we were provided with, we decided to trust our instincts instead - right turn was the verdict!

The uphill drive was a challenge as well, at times the road was a bit too narrow to be classified as 2-way – meant that much more of focus on the road and control at the bends. But Avante behaved very well at turnings and steering through the challenging climb was a pleasure – more on this in the next post.

Finally, we made it to Mount Fraser at 2:30pm and then began the search for a restaurant for lunch. We had to now define the “next steps” – any places to see around? K managed to catch some sort of cold on the way and that was reason enough for him to free-ride. I was the designated driver and therefore I tried to act as if I was too tired. That left M to do all the googling for places to see. Next 5 minutes were completely hilarious – M tried to communicate with a mixture of sign language, actions and Singlish, but that did didn’t help much. We were trying to get the directions to a lake: “ehh… lake, where?”… no reply… “water…?” again no feedback from the other side to confirm if our attempt to communicate had been received and understood… next, we tried showing mineral water, but that did no good too… finally M got the idea of asking for “..boating?” aahaa, our receptionist understood and gave us rough directions to the lake.

We were in more ways that one excited about the lake and boating… our conversation went like:

“… wow, lake would be fun here” … “lets get the camera out” … “we don’t have tons of time, so lets keep the lake visit short, mebbe just cover one part of the lake boating” … “a speed motor boat would be fun here, lets try for that”… and there was a gradual build-up in excitement leading to the lake.

The lake was not too far, we got there with 5-10 minutes of drive. However, we were greeted with a shocking sight: 1) The lake was a bit brown in colour, as opposed to blue that we had envisaged 2) There was exactly one pedal boat in the lake and the other 3 were stacked one over the other at the corner of the lake 3) … and finally it hit us… nooooo… the lake was only a fraction bigger than a bath tub… just a hint bigger! Ofcourse, as M was the navigator at Mount Fraser, K and I peacefully blamed her and added the lake to her list of exponentially increasing list of recent goof-ups!

It was time to lower our expectations – to understand and accept that Mount Fraser is not a tourist spot by any stretch of imagination. We spent half an hour doing time pass at a view-point – it was good, just that there was no view. To limit any further damage to our self-esteem and trip-planning confidence, we decided to erase out from our memories that we ever visited this place! It was unanimously decided that all pictures taken at Mount Faber would be donated to the recycle bin of our laptops, once we get home!

With K down with tons of cold and a bit of fever, M decided to be the navigator on the way back. We started from Mount Faber at around 4pm, stopped at another lake in between in an attempt to search for that one good scenery to make this trip good, but didn’t find any. With not much left to see, we started the return journey back to Singapore.

Next 6 hours was all driving – we stopped once in between for tea and once for petrol, but otherwise I did what I enjoy the most – night driving, a true test of driving technique, stamina and inclination. Avante clocked 500kms in quick time and we were back at the Singapore immigration at about 10:30 at night. There was some visa and passport configuration problem and resulting punga at the Malaysia immigration, but M in her typical style went and gave a big lecture to the immigration officer and sorted it out!!

As we entered Singapore, the odometer read 970 kms for the day. With Newton/Novena being only 15-20 kms from the border, I knew that the decimal system of mathematical numbers wouldn’t let me reach 1000 kms in a day. So, took a slightly longer route, via Tuas to inch closer to the 4 figure mark. Next when I saw the reading, it was 994 for the day – and I knew we were ~5-7 kms from home… was not sure if we would get to 1000, but decided to go ahead with the straight route back home. One traffic signal from home, the odometer read 999… it was close, very close and the meter turned to 1000 exactly when we were at the security gate of the building!

We were all tired after doing 1000kms – but M still had the energy to make some quick dinner and we called it a day soon after that!

This was my second time to 1000 kms in a day, the first being in October last year in South Africa. I wouldn’t want to compare, but this trip was probably a bit more challenging with 3-4 hours of hill drive included. But statistics apart, it was a great trip with K&M. More trips in the pipeline over the next few weekends, any takers? :-)

Capturing a very special moment - the state of Nirvana

2007-04-15T14:22:00.000+08:00

This is a very special post, to capture a very special moment that has eclipsed everything else over the last 3 days. I will struggle with words for most part of this post, ‘coz I am currently in a state of Nirvana, a high resulting not from 5 bottoms-up of neat Scotch Whiskey on the rocks, but a high resulting from realization of a long cherished dream come true. It might sound like I am going a bit overboard with this, but it wouldn’t have been a special post otherwise, right?
This Thursday, I got my car! … lemme give a short preview to the events and emotions starting from just before Thursday evening to the time when I started typing this post.

Jan 2007, first serious thought about car ---> Applied for Basic Theory Test to convert my India license to a valid Singapore one ---> Started with understanding various different cars, a trip to showroom almost every weekend to understand the specifications, price, design, etc ---> booked 17th March as test date for driving test ---> 16th evening, got a Singapore traffic book to ghot ---> went for a movie on 16th evening, came back at ~2am and then realized “ohh. crap, haven’t ghoted for the test” ---> ghoted the driving rule book from 2am to 5am on 17th early morning ---> went and gave the test, lady luck helped me pass the test and after ~2 hours of patience in the queue, got my license to drive!

Without even thinking of breakfast or lunch, I directly went to the car dealer, told them, “look, I am legally permitted drive now, so better let me take a test drive”! ---> went to different showrooms – Chevrolet, Subaru, Hyundai, Honda, Nissan, Toyota to check out all possible cars that could fit my extended-extended budget! ---> gave a very deep thought to what I really wanted vs. the risk of taking a huge loan ---> developed an excel model to see if there were any remote cost savings that I could do to fit the monthly installment of car in ---> alas, it made no financial sense to buy a car here in Singapore à so, Mr. Logic said, “don’t be stupid, there is no real need to buy a car, it makes zuk financial sense” ---> then Mr. Unknown told “stop living life so defensively, stop being calculative with things that matter to you most, try being fearless for once, stop relying on logic for every damn decision!” ---> and so… decision was made, Mr. Logic was asked to take a chill pill!

So, after one final round of test drives on 1st April, made up my mind to go for Hyundai Avante ---> surprisingly, it was not even in my initial short-list, ‘coz I wanted a manual transmission only, while Avante came with automatic version only ---> deep thought again, decided to let-go the stigma attached with manual transmission to appreciate the other good things with Avante à booked the car over lunch on Monday, 2nd April

I was reasonably happy with the decision, though felt nothing special as such à work kept me busy for the next one week ---> on 11th April, got a message from the dealer – “your car has been registered and will be delivered this week” ---> I called back immediately, said “please please, asap!” ---> the plead was responded to and I was informed that I could collect it on Thursday evening (12th April) ---> Since then, I have been in a different world! ---> Mr. Logic probably gave up and disappeared and Mr. Unknown has been governing all my actions since then ---> didn’t sleep much on Wednesday night, out of sheer excitement and expectation of a special day ahead ---> next morning, went to work à everyone was like “can you please stop smiling for no reason?” ---> did a bit of work, with half my mind in the fast approaching dream world ---> finished the work and left office early at 7pm ---> rushed to the showroom ---> signed the documents, saw if the relevant papers were intact, and this was it ---> was handed over the key and …

Wasn’t entirely sure of the way back home from the showroom ---> a very tentative drive back home ---> takes a bit of time to adjust to a different car, so patiently drove back home ---> a quick couple of calls back home, started off within 10 minutes to see my cousin ---> lost my way, took the wrong route, but “so wat, I was enjoying it”! ---> drove and drove from 8pm to about 2:30 am, ofcourse with stops in between for a Birthday party and some late night Mc Donald’s visit ---> special thanks to special friends (Candy, Bharti, Bulco, Abhishek) for making the evening special ---> back home at 3am, had clocked ~150 kms by then!

Since then, a few more drives all across Singapore ---> have done 400 kms already! ---> many of these drives were purely “aimless” ---> take any damn expressway, keep driving, will reach somewhere at some stage, take a U-turn back and drive and drive ---> get lost somewhere in between à but I have enjoyed it all ---> I delayed the decision to purchase a road map and since then haven’t looked at the map, ‘coz I am enjoying these “aimless drives with no real motive or destination” ---> Maslow would have seen me drive before he came up with the term “self-actualization”!

Today, Sunday morning, got up à went for breakfast, something that I haven’t done in years, just to drive! ---> came back, did the first car wash here, spent a bit of time near the engine, but frankly, with all technology coming in, I couldn’t understand much

So, this is how it has been ---> frankly, I am in a totally different world at the moment ---> have dreamt of having a car for way too long (~2 decades now probably!) ---> and it is slowly sinking in ---> not sure, if any one else can appreciate it, probably Maharaj who is himself a bit crazy about driving would get somewhere close to appreciating my state of mind at the moment! ---> for others, I continue to a topic of intense research over the last 3 days “… he was okay till sometime back, currently looks like a case of acute mental instability, lets pray he recovers and stops smiling… ” and from my point of view, this is Nirvana!

PS: This post was purely to capture this moment. I will get back to my logical ways soon, hopefully before tomorrow morning; otherwise my boss will give me a tough time!! My next post will be a driving review on Avante. In short, I currently term Avante as “Raw power fused with dazzling curves and calm refinement”

A bit of rubbish...

2007-04-11T21:29:00.000+08:00

This is going to be a slightly different post - I am a bit annoyed with the way we all have reacted to World Cup debacle...

I am just as much disappointed with India's early exit from World Cup... to the extent that I haven't seen a match since India lost to Sri Lanka. But nothing on earth, warrants this sort of reaction from the media, public, etc

Anyways, that is history now - the events that have since then transpired have showed one simple thing - as a nation, we are highly emotional - we tend to live on extremes - worship Tendulkar one day and then show utter disregard the very next, now that we are out of the cup.

Probably, we all need to put things in perspective. Are we over-reacting? More importantly, is over-reacting to the situation and dumping the entire team likely to improve the performance of the team? My answer is a crystal clear no to the above. Yes, there is need for young blood in our team, but not at the cost of Tendulkar and co.

That is anyways a lesser point - I seriously don't mind that much when critics take a dig at Tendulkar's recent performance - it has been ordinary by his standards. But, to go one step deeper and question Tendulkar's attitude, motivation and commitment to the game is something unacceptable. We all have observed Tendulkar for 17 years to know what the truth is. Our ex-coach got this part totally wrong. I am still giving Mr Chappell some sorta benefit of doubt, terming his out-burst against Tendulkar as an 'error in judgment' as opposed to something 'intentional'.

May be, just may be, the onus is on us, to support the team and ask ourselves "What can be our role here?" Can we look beyond criticizing players and being a threat to the safety of their families?

My experiments with stress management

2007-03-18T00:00:00.000+08:00

This is going to be a bit of a heavy post, I will get back to my ‘chill blogging resolution’ soon. A post on stress management has been in the pipeline for long – has been a topic of interest and research since school days and more so in the last couple of years.

However, over the years, there have been a few changes to my attitude, understanding and approach to stress management. Often as it turns out to be, going through a rough phase can help us discover new things and this is what exactly happened with me. It is so much like Test match cricket, you go through a rough phase, you then improve your technique, temperament and attitude to the game. For me, in some ways, it has been a journey of extremes – from a point when I thought, stress meant nothing, driven by some sorta arrogant belief that one can take tons of stress (I can handle it all!) if one has the ability to chill out – to the other extreme when I finally understood that stress needs to be managed on a regular basis and there is more to it than just trying to be chill.

Since then, it has been a process of gradual reconstruction, driven by the intent to discover what I termed as AM_v2 (much like how Indica transformed as a car after initial quality issues!) – there is always that scope for improvement, but I have learnt a bit about stress management and this post is an attempt to put it all together.

Rest of this post is going to be more in graphical format to communicate the complex message better:

We all deal with stress differently. Please do get back to me with your comments if you think differently about stress management.

Of rusticity and vibes!

2007-02-18T23:51:00.000+08:00

I am currently at the half way point of the long Chinese new-year weekend. After an unsuccessful attempt at an unplanned road trip to East-coast Malaysia, I am back to my default state of doing nothing, also termed as guss in certain rustic parts of North-Western India! Having mastered the art of ‘doing nothing’, I thought, well, doing something constructive might not be that bad an idea. This in turn led me to spending a fair bit of weekend time thinking of possible serious blogging topics ranging right from motivation to driving to world cup to India’s growth story to stress management to wikipedia vs. unclycopedia, etc, etc. In the next few months, I will pitch in with my 2 cents on these topics, but for now, I am in ‘maxo arbit’ mood to even think of anything remotely serious! So, without further ado, let me jump into the most arbit post published on this blog since the previous posting!

Before moving on, a huge disclaimer: The following post, might make some (non)-sense to my wingies, but others please consult your psychiatrist before reading any further!

Nene/Ajay provided the initial momentum to this random post. Hence any frustration and disgust resulting out of this post can be directly communicated to Nene!

The following statements need no introduction, so...

Inspirational Quotes

Give me a rustic to vibe and I will move the earth
Give me vibes, I will give you rusticity
Whatever the rustic can conceive and believe, the viber can achieve
A journey of thousand miles begins with a single vibe
After all, a rustic is a social viber
All that vibes is not rustic
Not everything than can be vibed vibes, not everything that vibes can be vibed
I was born a rustic, education vibed me!
Vibes is mightier than rusticity

Murphy’s Law

If rusticity can vibe, it will

Laws of Physics

An object in rusticity will remain in rusticity unless acted upon by an external vibe
The rate of change of rusticity of a body is proportional to the resultant vibes acting on it
For every vibe, there is an equal and opposite rusticity
Vibes can neither be created, no be destroyed, it can only be transferred from one rustic to the other
If two rustics are in vibed-up equilibrium with a third, then they are vibed-up with each other
In any vibe, total rusticity of universe remains constant
The rusticity of the universe increases with every spontaneous vibe

Okay, even I am tired of these vibes! Too rustic, I think

Freeriders with a pinch of professionalism!

2007-02-03T13:14:00.000+08:00

This post is a result of a news article that was recently published in The Economic Times instigating an instant spam on freeriders mail list.
Link to the article:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/IIM-A_to_revise_placement_fee_for_flagship_programme/articleshow/1502401.cms

Being a topic of utmost significance and a decision that we had owned till recently, we discovered the setting was just about perfect for a placecom meeting! The participants of this meeting are the free-riders. (Boopos, Candy, Cosmo, Daph, Deepthi, Oik, Peepu, Slippy, Me)

The stage was all set for another round of heated discussions. But, there is a small issue now. The last meeting was held a fraction under 2 years back. We were then purely the pizza ordering, room cleaning, chairs lifting, walkie-talkie communicating, file making, stationery storing, phone line connecting, catering-desk setting, dynamic scheduling, PPT attending, preferences matching, company logo pasting, e-pigeon maintaining, short-list withholding, CV dead-lining, interview scheduling, recruiter-faculty lunch arranging free-riders!

However, two years down the time line, would the placecom discussion still be the same? Or will all of us look at things differently given the “professional-ization” that we have been subjected to! Let’s take a glance as to how things have changed and the influence that professional life has had on us.

Given the gravity of this problem and the possible repercussions it could potentially lead to, free-riders decided to take a day off to meet at Placecom office, Wimwi, Vastrapur. The venue for the meeting was the same old rectangular room in placecom, now with air-conditioning support to manage the temperature that the discussion could possibly result into!

We entered the room and quickly assumed our standard seating configuration. Let’s take a peak into how the discussion started off.

Me: Let’s order some pizza yaar, long-time no free pizza!!

Peepu: Get serious guys, we are meeting after a long time. All I can say is that I missed you all a lot. Those were simply amazing days, those discussions, those night-outs at LKP…

Rest of us: abe koi iska senti band karwao…!

(Peepu then realized that no one actually reacted to his senti speech. Dumb silence ruled the room for 15 seconds. The leli had happened, now let’s get started with the meeting!)

Peepu: Let me set the context for this meeting. As some of you might have read, insti has decided to charge a fee of Rs 1 Lakhs per candidate across all slots. We are here to discuss this matter and I would like to hear your views on this.

(A pause of 15 seconds again…)

Slippy: Let me pitch in, since rest of you still don’t seem to be in any mood to discuss! While setting up the retail chain that I did recently, we had to pay similar amounts to the building constructors per store across all cities in India. I see a lot of synergies of this discussion with my current work and I think insti is justified in asking for this fees.

Cosmo: I think there are multiple sides to this issue. Being a CA, I know how difficult things can get between placecom and insti – the sheer mammoth task of reworking the credits and debits into different slot accounts will require a lot of understanding of accounting basics. Then there is this issue of deferred tax that comes into picture and we need to figure out the possible impact it would have on the resulting ratios that wimwi would get to…

(Dumb silence again engulfs the room; we are all reminded of the dreadful Manac classes and quizzes of first term at wimwi way back in 2003. Candy and I exchange “extreme give-up” looks! Boopos appears to have understood some part of this funda with a nod of his head that either implies that he actually got the funda or he is looking at this as an opportunity to improve his listening skills!)

Comso: … add to it, with the extra cash flow coming in, insti can think of investing in infrastructure bonds that I recently recommended one of my clients to invest in. Typically, high return bonds and there are plenty of tax exemptions under section 420 of Indian Accounting and Tax Act…

(We all again look at each other, with high levels of internal self-doubt and body language that read “anyone else in the same boat? Or am I the only one who still doesn’t understand Manac?” None of us dared to speak a word. It required a brave soul to pull the discussion further. Who better than the anti-placecommer to take it forward)

Deepthi: I don’t want any companies to come on campus. It sounds so stupid to ask for money – okay call it fees. Ever since this article has been published, the recruiting head of my company simply refuses to go any further than one sentence with me on phone call…

(Free-riders burst out in laughter. We all are reminded of Deepthi’s “heellllaaaaa” on phone. We totally understand the agony that Deepthi’s recruiting head had to face and he/she is perfectly justified in keeping the phone down. May be, it’s not the fees debate, it’s just Deepthi driving his/her reaction!)

Oik: Wot the hell? These booshtaards don’t understand the implications of this decision. I spent some time in US and there students from best of schools actually go out and give interviews. So, charging 1 lakh is not a lot and insti must do it. Wot the hell…

Deepthi: Oik, you don’t understand the consumer’s point of view. In all the surveys I have done for projects on campus and at work, my greatest input has been to prove that customers are lying about their preferences. Similarly, companies might say that they will pay, but eventually they will not… Aaai aaam pained by this decision…

Daph: What do you mean by they will not pay? I will Kung-Foo them and get the payment out! I might be getting old, but there is still enough to kick a few recruiters out! Just like I recently scared my boss to death…

Peepu: I think we are deviating a bit away from the main discussion. Being in an entrepreneurship environment, I know how important it is to focus on right things. Do you guys have any sense of financial impact this decision would have?

Boopos: Yeah, I think we should do that. Infact, I will do it tonight. Today seems easy. I should finish my official work early today, by 3am, one hour before my normal time. So, in that hour, I will make an excel model and run different simulations and scenarios for impact of 97 variables including interest rate and exchange rate fluctuations on fees income of placecom and the resulting valuation. I will code a macro for this and when you guys receive the file, simply click the run button. I should send this out by 4am.

(trinnng trinnng… trinnng trinnng…looks like someone just got a call. Oh, it’s Candy with his psued “hello” on phone. He blushes and says “yeah, sure, this evening sounds perfect to spend some quality time together on this”… and rest of us are like… “dude… kya crack maara hai!” He finishes the call and is back to the discussion. To break the anxiety (and jealousy?) surrounding the placecom room, we asked Candy… “ehh… bandi?”… and our man nods in disapproval… “again a call from my boss… chutti pe bhi he wants to have a conference call to discuss the slides… uski to @#&**@^#…” to get back the discussion on track, Candy pitches in with his 2 cents…)

Candy: I will think about the whole situation from buy and sell side point of view. In the recent deal that I had worked on, we supported our client on raising funds for the acquisition that they had decided to go ahead with. So, if the need be, I can help the recruiters raise funds for the wimwi recruitment process. It should be fairly straight forward, after all this doesn’t even look close to a deal of billion dollars. Tell you what, I will actually not spend my time and energy on this, I will ask a new fachchi in company to take care of this.

Peepu: That is a valid point Candy… I think you are right.

Daph: But, there is a chance that companies might make us sign a bond in return, given the high levels of “job switching” that is going on these days…

(I was like chilling out in one corner of the discussion table… I looked at everyone else… and it struck me…they all had chipped in, everyone had put in some CP or the other… ohhh crap, I haven’t said a word till now. What would fellow-free-riders think of me? That I don’t even have a point of view? I will not let this happen. The setting is perfect for a consult CP… I need to show the vision that I have for placecom…I gather all my thoughts to put a consult CP)

Me: Firstly, thanks everyone for all your views. This was a very “insightful” discussion that would go a long way in enhancing our differentiation as wimwi placecom freeriders. But, I can’t believe we have gone through the entire discussion without slides. I think, we need 2 circles at the top of slide, overlapping with a triangle in the middle and then a solid rectangle at the bottom of the slide to support our vision. Then we need to consider the synergies and the factors that would feed into creating sustainable competitive advantage for wimwi placecom in the medium to long term. Once we have envisioned the new placecom with new fees structure, it is critical to get a buy-in from various stake holders. One key question that we need to answer is: Is collecting fees the core of our placecom strategy? If not, shouldn’t we be looking to add value to our core verticals like building sustainable relationships with recruiters? My view to the entire puzzle surrounding the fees issue is that the answer probably depends on the adjacent externalities and the resulting internal fit! We are talking about a potential paradigm shift here!

(There was silence in the room again. I was like… wow, I have proved myself to be a stud!... look at all of them, they didn’t follow anything, total lack of vision I would say… ehhh… sudden change in configuration of the room… oh noo… another typical ending to placecom meeting as Boopos screamed out… Tharki ko bumps!!!...)

Disclaimer: The above post in no way supports or opposes Institute's decision to change the recruitment fees structure. This post is purely for entertainment and any other conclusion resulting out of this post would be purely coincidental. In any case, free-riders are only a minority subset of Placecom 2005 and therefore do not represent the batch's point of view on this topic!

India’s team for World Cup 2007

2007-02-01T19:54:00.000+08:00

The countdown has begun! We are 38 days away from the world cup. Amidst the excitement surrounding the event, most teams are in final stages of getting the 15 on paper for the grand tournament. So, what’s going to be our team like? Our selectors have 2 weeks in their pockets before they get down to naming the team.

India’s 3-1 win over West Indies did answer a few questions. Here is what the skeleton of my team would look like for the world cup:

(2) Ganguly to open with Uthappa
(3) Dravid, Tendulkar, Yuvraj select themselves
(1) Extra batsman or bowler depending on conditions
(1) Dhoni, an automatic choice again
(1) Agarkar: Has been consistent enough to be a certainty
(2) Kumble and Harbhajan, both should play in West Indies
(1) Zaheer Khan, again has well done well enough though would need a back-up

So, we have 9-10 players who would play every match.

Before moving on to the other 5 who should board the flight to Caribbean, quick comments on two senior players of the side. Tendulkar’s century yesterday would do his confidence a world of good, apart from getting his one-day statistics back on track. His average is again back to “above 44”! In the last few weeks, there were a few statements made by so-called cricketing gurus that in my view were totally uncalled for, however this aggressive knock should shut all criticism against Tendulkar. With the form he is getting to, World Cup could get exciting, even for Australia.

A couple of months ago, we would have never imagined Ganguly to feature the above list. But, he has made a terrific come back, would go down as one of the greatest fight backs in the history of cricket. I have been and I am a Ganguly fan. Despite this, in my view, Ganguly was out of the team for all right reasons. There was never a question mark on his talent – it was more to do with his attitude. Now, he is back with a bang, looking a lot more focused with no airs surrounding him about being the ex-captain or the Prince of Kolkata! Let’s hope Ganguly continues to perform, a consistent Ganguly is a must for India’s chances at the World Cup.

Back to the team selection, the contenders for the other 5 slots are:

Irfan Pathan, Munaf Patel, Sreeshant, Dinesh Karthik, Sehwag, Suresh Raina, Gambhir and Ramesh Powar.

I am still not sure if Sehwag should be counted in the scheme of things. Just like Ganguly a year down the time line, with Sehwag it is again not a question of his ability or technique. It is the attitude and focus that is missing. Selectors should probably give him 1 or 2 matches against Sri Lanka and observe his attitude on the field, not the number that appears on the score card eventually. I would much rather see a determined Sehwag scoring a fighting 30-40 than an attempt at a run-a-ball flamboyant 50.

I would include Pathan for the balance that he gets to the team, with Munaf Patel and Sreeshant as back up bowlers if India decides to go in with 3-4 pace bowlers. Karthik would be the 14th in my selection list and for 15th, it would all depend on the question around Sehwag. Otherwise Raina should probably make the cut.

Let’s see how the home series against Sri Lanka turns out to be. The team should now stop experimenting (other than a chance to Sehwag probably) and play consistent cricket. Wishing team India all the very best for the World Cup!

Little boxes, little boxes...

2007-01-19T16:35:00.000+08:00

Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same
There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

…a song by Malvina Reynolds – looks like I am a big fan of Malvina Reynolds, right?

Well, that is however far from the reality. I have known ‘Reynolds’ as a pen brand, I have vague memories of ‘Reynolds number’ from my CDC classes, but Malvina Reynolds... I had little clue about, till I ‘googled’ for ‘little boxes lyrics’.

Okay, with a rather complicated, convoluted and nonsensical introduction to this post, let me jump to the topic directly. This post is inspired by what I would call as the advertisement of the year (in my books, based on sample set of very few advertisements that I have seen in the recent past. I see very little of TV barring cricket matches!). As you would have guessed by now, we are talking about ‘Maruti Zen Estilo’ advertisement. Two parts to this post flowing out from the title – one being Maruti Sukuki and its latest offering Zen Estilo and the other being an outlook to the exciting times awaiting the Indian small car industry – little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky…

Revival of Maruti’s fortunes

Zen was first launched in India in mid 1990s. I have personally never been a Zen fan – to me, it has always been an over-priced car. Yes, it had the engine power, sophistication and smoothness, yes, it had a bit more of space than a 800, it did look a bit better than a boxy 800, but all factors combined, in my books, Zen was nowhere close to being worth the price tag attached. However, the new Zen Estilo seems different – the styling and designing being the most significant changes.

Within 10 days of launch, the tall boy design had attracted 10,000 bookings and this figure must have gone up substantially since then. It is fairly well positioned with the VX version being close to 4.1 Lakhs on-road Chennai. I didn’t get a chance to take a test drive, so will reserve my comments till I get an opportunity to get behind the wheels, but it does look like a car that’s going to sell a lot.

Let’s zoom-out the camera and shift our focus to Maruti as a company now – with the controversy surrounding the ownership structure behind, Maruti has looked a totally different company, introducing new products and aggressively increasing its capacity in a bid to fight back its decreasing market share. 2006 was characterized by Alto becoming the largest selling car in India, very successful introduction of Swift, a new look lower priced Esteem and then the promising launch of Zen Estilo. Interestingly, Maruti Engineers were involved with Suzuki’s global team in designing Swift which has been a huge success globally. Furthermore, Estilo is almost a 100% Maruti product, with engineers in India renovating the model with very little support from the parent company. It does look like Maruti has started to stamp its authority with these significant developments and I will not be too surprised if Maruti would become Suzuki’s biggest plant, overtaking capacity in Japan, in the early part of next decade. Currently, Maruti has an installed capacity of close to 0.6 million, while Suzuki globally is close to 2.2 millon mark. Maruti accounts for ~25% of global Suzuki sales and this figure is bound to go up. In comparison, Hyundai India has a capacity 0.3 million, soon to be expanded to 0.6 million.

Small Car Industry

The story of Indian small car industry dates back to the time when Maruti 800 was first introduced. Since then, this segment (industry definition being category A and B cars) has grown to become the largest segment in India, while globally Category C cars lead the way (Accent, Esteem, Ikon, Indigo, etc). While all through, new models have been introduced, old ones upgraded, the industry in my view has been through two critical phases and the third one is just around the corner:

Early 1980s: Introduction of Maruti 800: A fuel efficient, reliable new product with low cost of ownership and modern features – it was surely a big jump from Ambassadors and Fiats that Indian market had then
1998: For most part of 1990s, the small car industry developed and reached scale volumes, a few new products were introduced (including Zen), but it was all much the same till 1998 when Santro, Matiz and Indica hit the road (these cars really did hit the road running)! It created a totally different segment, providing customers with all the features of mid-size cars in a fuel efficient, compact car. In years to follow, Category B became the largest segment with Santro and Indica emerging as the winners.
2008 and beyond: In about a year and a half, the industry would once again go through a dramatic change. While the previous change was all about offering an enhanced product, this is going to be pure scale game. Yes, I am talking about the Tata 1 Lakh car!

As of now, Maruti 800 is probably the cheapest car in the world. Tata Motors, with reasonable auto design experience and know-how, is trying to beat that by driving the cost down further. I have followed the development of this car closely both from technical and business perspective over the last couple of years. When Tata Motors first came up with the idea of 1 lakh car, my reaction was “wow, wouldn’t that sell like crazy?” Since then, like everyone else, I have had doubts about the success of this ambitious project. It is difficult to get the pure manufacturing variable cost of a car to under a Lakh. Add to it, the amortization of fixed costs, the margin for economic rate of return, taxes at various stages, dealer margin and the puzzle does get challenging.

For all I have read about this project, Tata One-Lakh Car would in all probability have the following features:

A bit smaller than Indica, though big enough to seat 4-5
30 bhp, 700cc engine – probably 5-10 bhp lesser than ideal
Would meet safety and emission standards
Design would in all probability be a bit sleek and not too boxy
Automatic transmission with engine at the rear
Basic model would roll-out without doors

On a standalone basis, looks reasonable, rather attractive for the magic price tag of Rs One Lakh. But let’s consider the choices that consumers would have to determine the success of this project:

Maruti 800 sells at Rs. 2 Lakhs, but apparently, the cost of production is much lower than the final price (achieved due to scale and old fully depreciated dies). Maruti could easily slip the price tag down to ~1.5 Lakh. Given this likely scenario, Tata 1 Lakh car would need to match Maruti 800 as a product to have any chance of getting to the volumes that they desire.
The biggest challenge would be the 2nd hand market - to beat a 3 year old Maruti 800, a 4 year old Alto (now that’s not easy) and a 8 year old Santro
The car might sell, could do really well, but for Tata to make money on this project, the annual sales need to touch close to a million. That’s 3-4 times the market currently occupied by 800 and Alto.

So, where is this battle heading? Can Tata Motors repeat the success that they have had with Indica and other models or is this project a little too ambitious? Although I have little data and knowledge to back my claims, here is my best guess to the final outcome of this project:

The basic version would cost ~1.2 lakhs. This version would be a complete car, however without proper doors. Tata motors needs to be creative with the door part. The minimum expectation would be to have very basic plastic doors instead of an open air compartment. I would hate to see a 4 wheel auto rickshaw as the basic version
However, for most practical purposes, the much awaited car would cost ~1.4-1.5 lakhs with proper doors. I think it would look a lot better than a Maruti 800 and with a 660 cc engine, should have a fuel economy of ~25-30 km per litre
Tata Motors needs to be clever with positioning of the car. The basic model is a must to get people interested. Perhaps, all advertising campaigns should revolve around the basic model – the true one Lakh car (in 2003 rupees, accounting for inflation) trying to fulfill the aspirations of millions!
Once the customers walk in to the show room, show them the benefits of buying a complete car priced at 1.4 Lakhs. What otherwise looks like a difference of INR 30 K, becomes much less significant on a per month EMI basis. People wouldn’t mind paying extra Rs 500-800 a month for safety, comfort and the feel of owning a full-fledged car!
Will Tata sell a million units a year? I can’t answer that. However, I wouldn’t bet my money on anything more than 5 Lakh units in the first few years. At some stage infrastructure constraints would come into play. Can our cities take the extra traffic?

Well, sounds like really exciting times at Tata Motors. Let’s wait and see where this phase of auto industry leads us to. In the meanwhile, I would go back to the song I started the post with…

“Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky…”

… as it looks for now, little boxes could well be eventually made of ticky tacky to further drive down cost!

The Spirit of Latcha...

2007-01-04T23:38:00.000+08:00

Long Christmas weekend, 2 years since the last ‘reunion’, few rustics back home for the December break, recent blood tests revealing acute deficiency of vibes and wing lingo, aging memory struggling to relate names with faces – did sound like convincingly strong enough reasons for Latcha to have a reunion!

After diligent dissection of map of India, a million mails exchanged on Latcha yahoo group, matching holidays, arrival and departure dates, googling for places to visit, calling up junta places for bookings, getting kela from more popular tourist spots, we finally decided to freeze the place as ‘Dandeli’ in North Karnataka as the venue for ‘Latcha Reunion’, 2006!

The trip was amazing – tons of fun. After careful deliberation, the blog topic approval committee rated the trip arbit-enough to feature on this blog! I then started off with documenting the 5 day long trip. I had typed out 7 pages, word for word – exactly how the trip went. Just when I was about to copy and paste the document to this blog, I realized that there was a need to be politically and socially correct to maintain the decency levels that this blog has surprisingly withstood since its inception. I probably needed to sensor some part of this document. So, I downloaded some fundoo ‘lingo-control software’ and then fed my 7 page trip document thinking that it would probably crib at a couple of places. The result surprised me no end with the software reducing my well documented trip to a small paragraph! Moreover, I was served a warning and tagged unfit for society in general– probably a loser with no exposure to hostel life would have coded the software. Anyways, here is what the output looked like:

“Thatha reaches Chennai Central, picked up, we discuss <beep beep beep> and then drive down to Bangalore <beep beep beep> then talk about <beep beep beep> Bangalore traffic <beep beep beep> Samar’s home <beep beep beep> Ajay joins us <beep beep beep> Ranga picked next morning from his uncle’s place <beep beep beep> breakfast <beep beep beep> highway we hit <beep beep beep> road fundoo <beep beep beep> Samar puts the most embarrassing fund of this century <beep beep beep> reached Ankola by night <beep beep beep> Next morning, chai and then our temporary navigator Samar goofs up <beep beep beep> vibes <beep beep beep> rusticity <beep beep beep> reach Dandeli <beep beep beep> fundoo lunch <beep beep beep> sac out <beep beep beep> the next best thing <beep beep beep> island visit <beep beep beep> fundoo snaps <beep beep beep> tree top house <beep beep beep> 3 hours of Dumb C with video recording <beep beep beep> new found Dumb C guessing god <beep beep beep> Ranga’s vibed up movie names <beep beep beep> movie on laptop <beep beep beep> crash off <beep beep beep> Samar with enthu for early morning ‘bird watching’ trip <beep beep beep> Samar gets a kela <beep beep beep> rest of us sac out <beep beep beep> shift to a slightly more rustic resort <beep beep beep> river water rafting <beep beep beep> forward, left, right, go-down, hit the rock, life jacket <beep beep beep> potential babes <beep beep beep> 30 kms F1 ride in local jeep <beep beep beep> evening tea <beep beep beep> Dumb C again <beep beep beep> Ajay learns Hindi movie names <beep beep beep> Thatha goofs up yet again <beep beep beep> movie on laptop <beep beep beep> sac out <beep beep beep> laptop movie time <beep beep beep> crash off <beep beep beep> early morning chai, a few clicks <beep beep beep> drive down through rustic roads <beep beep beep> play TN Express ‘Connections’ game <beep beep beep> nth order connections <beep beep beep> 20 questions <beep beep beep> female, alive <beep beep beep> next reunion strategy <beep beep beep> serious discussions for a change <beep beep beep> reached back Bangalore <beep beep beep> collate snaps <beep beep beep> next morning off to Chennai after psenti bye bye <beep beep beep> serious life discussions <beep beep beep> reach Chennai <beep beep beep>”

Turned out to be rather inefficient - 7 pages cut-down to a paragraph, thanks to the lingo control software. Anyways, the full version of the story shall be made available on yahoo group. Ranga is currently working on it as he was ‘making notes’ all the way.

While we missed the other rustics of Latcha (Axis, Bachcha, Bong, Harry, Maharaj, Maxu, Popes), we made sure we had fun on their behalf too. It was amazing to get back to the 3rd year and psenti sem days, wing-lingo, funds, vibes, rusticity, etc. The previous reunion in Alleppy (Kerala) was hazaar fun as well and it served as a reassurance that Latcha would remain a closely knit group for a long time to come. It has now been 4 years since the wing physically ceased to exist, but surprisingly, we all have become much closer post-campus. Two important factors have contributed to this – the first being the general enthu/willingness of the group to stay in touch and the vital second factor being the support that the group has been. Four years since campus days, we all have had our portfolio of great times and not-so great times, but at the back of our minds, we know that a latchaite is just a call away!

Okay, enough of gen psenti, it’s time to acknowledge and honour each latchaite for having made a significant contribution to the success and failure of this trip:

Samar: For coming up with the most fundoo statement of this century. Details cannot be shared on this blog, but Mr. Bones, wishing you good luck. You will need it!

Nene: For goofing up with the bookings in Goa. Without your goof-up, we would have never seen Dandeli. Thank you very much!

Ranga: For adjusting to ‘Indian’ rustic conditions and keeping a track of expenses and ‘interesting statements’ made. On a personal note, no one else has ever doubted my driving skills to this level, will even scores with you soon!

Thatha: For initial intention to sponsor the entire trip that got rest of us interested in the deal. Sadly, it didn’t work out that way, but still feel free to contribute!

Maharaj: For not making it to the trip and putting long distance vibes. However, given the fact that you supported me against Mote’s allegations, I shall spare you here.

Popes/Axis/Maxu: For peacefully gussing all trip related mails. Sac out!

Bong/Chotu/Harry: For finding seemingly convincing reasons for gussing the trip.

Me: For driving through challenging conditions. Junta, please allow me to add Rs 100 a day to the trip accounts. Slightly, atleast maintain dignity of labour!

Changing gears…Maslow’s theory of Driving Needs and Motivation

2006-12-18T00:18:00.000+08:00

It’s that time of the year, the end of the year, when we start thinking about the year that just went pass by, some of us think it was as good as it could have been, others look forward to a better year to follow and make necessary changes. Personifying this blog, there is a need to change gears. The branding of this blog has come under severe pressure, owing to a series of serious posts! It’s time to get back to the basics of the blog, get back to the drawing board and make necessary adjustments to the portfolio of serious and funny posts featured on this blog!

Over the last couple of days, I have dwelled about funny topics for this post. As always, I struggled for topics, it's much easier to write serious stuff, I suddenly realised! Finally, I decided to amalgamate two topics in the hope that something funny would pop up. Here is an attempt at this. Let me introduce Maslow’s theory of driving needs and motivation!

For those who need to refresh the original theory that Maslow proposed, please see this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

With all due regards to Mr. Maslow, let me now mutate the genetics of this theory that has withstood the test of time and apply it to driving needs and motivation:

Physiological needs: At the very first stage, you drive to meet the basic transportation needs. As such, you don’t care whether you drive a BMW or a bullock-cart to help you change your coordinates on the surface of earth!

Safety needs: You probably consider to be safer than local train/ auto/ taxi/ air travel. It’s probably all about having confidence in the seat-belts, the air-bag, the anti-collision bars, etc, etc. However, driving here sounds more like a compulsion and you would rather have a chauffer than drive yourself.

Belonging needs: This is when things start to get interesting and the real motivation starts to show up, when you feel the strong need to belong to the driving fraternity! Call it peer pressure, driving at this stage is all to prove a point ‘so can I’

Esteem needs: This is a fairly high-up need, when one starts thinking of driving as a career, when one thinks of driving in terms of achievements be it distance covered in a day or a how far did the speedometer stretch, etc. This stage is probably all about the 'drive to drive'!

Self-actualization: The ultimate level of motivation, when you drive not to attain something, but simply ‘coz you strongly believe that driving is what life is all about. This is the highest level of motivation, when distance, speed, power, etc loose relevance - it’s all about enjoying the feel of steering wheel, the gear, accelerator, brake and clutch!

Well, that's it for this post, didn't come out as funny as I once thought it would. But who cares!

Optimal thinking to improve Quality-of-Life...

2006-12-08T01:10:00.000+08:00

The previous post on optimal thinking left a few very basic questions unanswered. Here is an attempt to solve some part of that mystery, though not quite there yet, but an attempt nevertheless.

I found one comment very interesting - will there be enough to look forward to in life if things were all perfect? Do we need to go through times when we feel “the entire world is against me” to appreciate the good side to life? Do we need to go into a shell of our own making to motivate ourselves? Frankly, I do not know that the answer to this riddle is, but my guess is that it probably gets down to individual personalities and what we expect out of life. The good thing about any argument around personalities is that there is no right or wrong answer!

So, I thought, before we get back to optimal thinking, may be it is important to know what is the eventual goal or the objective function here? To put in very philosophical words, what’s the eventual goal of life? I follow very little of philosophy or literature on this, but what I have observed, there are many ways that we as individuals could define the end-goal of life.

From what I have heard and read, most people look for happiness eventually. But, somehow I have found it a bit too abstract and difficult to comprehend, evaluate and measure. So, here is another attempt to define the eventual goal – must say it is still preliminary and based on feedback that I get to this post, I will continue to refine it.

I define the ultimate measure as “quality-of-life” – well, it sounds just as abstract as happiness! - Just that there is a bit more of thought behind this. My definition of ‘quality-of-life’ revolves around two key dimensions with one often a trade-off to the other:

Success – Sounds too measured and profession-related, but on the contrary, success here is how we measure on various dimensions of life that matter the most to us. Each one of us would have a unique definition to ‘success’ – probably, a weighted average of personal life, career, education, helping others and society, making an impact, etc, etc.

Stress – Not the exact word I wanted to use here, I thought of ‘input’, but then after a bit of thought, decided to stick with stress. Essentially, the factor that reduces the overall quality of life.

These 2 dimensions feed into the quality-of-life matrix as shown. Before going into the specific details of the matrix and the inferences, there are a few things to note here:

Measure of success should be very internal - it is a comparison to our ‘full potential’ as opposed to how we rate vs. others. It’s not about how I am vs. my neighbour, friend, etc

The matrix is not a comparison of individual A vs. B – the points are only for illustration and if we plot ourselves at different periods of time, that would somewhat fill the matrix up.

Okay, so what does the quality-of-life matrix have to say? Here are some of the key inferences from the matrix:

We all should strive for top left corner – high success, low stress would be the ideal thing to look for. The exact opposite is the bottom right corner.

The 7 quality-of-life indifference bands have a great message. Look at points A, B and C – essentially these have the same quality-of-life, with very different approaches and outcomes. Point A is someone who is striving for his full-potential; however the resulting stress is high. Point B, is the same individual, now having a balance between stress levels and ambitions/ success. Point C, is the chill dude, low success, but low stress as well – and all 3 points have the same quality-of-life.

At different times and different phases of our lives, we would have probably seen most parts of the matrix, reflecting very different quality-of-life.

Once we have identified where we stand, this is when optimal thinking steps in. “What’s the best I could do to improve my quality-of-life?”

Let us try applying optimal thinking to some of the points of the matrix:

If I am at point H, negative thinking would mean I say “My life is doomed, any sympathy please?” Positive thinking on the other hand would result in “I hope things will be fine”.

An optimal thinker however would attack the problem is two possible ways:
One, how do I reduce my stress levels?
Two, how do I then improve my success levels in order to have a better quality of life.

It’s perfectly fine to transform from H to C right away.

Well, that’s it for this post. I tried to connect two very different things – end-goal of life with optimal thinking as these are somewhat inter-related. I understand that the entire concept is still in the preliminary stage, so would appreciate comments and feedback.

Optimal Thinking...

2006-12-03T04:16:00.000+08:00

I like to alternate between serious and funny posts on this blog – however, I will deviate a bit from that norm today - for one I know that I can easily make up for not-so-serious-posts anytime with minimal effort!

Anyways, not withstanding the sequencing of this blog, this post is about optimal thinking - a term carved out from the title of a book that I have been reading intermittently over the last few weeks.

Before going deeper into the concept of optimal thinking, let me state that I am still in process of reading the book, let alone understanding it fully or mastering the topic.

So, what is optimal thinking all about? Prior to reading this book my understanding of the ‘reaction’ world comprised of two extremes:

Positive thinking – as an individual, you try to be in a positive frame of mind, the underlying philosophy being a positive intent enhances the chance of a positive result

Negative thinking – often as individuals, we get into the negative thinking groove. Though it sounds as simple as a crib, in my view, negative thinking is often used to dissociate oneself from the outcome/situation. In some ways, we either try putting the blame on externalities or take it all on ourselves and confide in a shell of our own making

Interestingly, there are 2 major problems with the above:

Both positive and negative thinking are not based on ‘reality’ or ‘sound assessment of current situation’ – a positive thinker would say all is great, superb, perfect, etc to have an aura of positive feelings around, while thinking negatively, we simply assume the worst and feel sad/stressed about it

There is little action that results out of positive or negative thinking. Having eluded the truth, positive thinking would result in “all is great, do nothing” while negative thinking results in higher focus on emotions and stress, again leading to no constructive action – “the world is against me, I really can’t help it!”

This is where optimal thinking steps in. Optimal thinking is all about having a good assessment of the situation and then immediately focusing on two very important words – “what next?” – Sounds simple, but come to think about it, might be a bit difficult to practice. However, training one’s thought process around “the truth” and then thinking about “what next” repeatedly is all that is needed to start thinking optimally.

One key question remains to be answered though – How do we know in what frame of mind are we in? The following could help us estimate where we stand in terms of our thought process:

If our immediate reaction to a situation is “that’s great”, “big achievement!”, “nothing to worry here and stay chill”, etc, then we are probably in the “fake” positive thinking mould

On the contrary, if our reactions revolve around “I am very bad at this”, “The entire world is against me”, “Things always head the wrong way with me” or if we react to situations with anger and frustration, then probably we are wearing the negative thinking cap.

Whereas, thinking optimally, in the ideal world, the reaction should be “this is how things are” (with almost zero focus on emotions) and then immediately shift to “so, what next” or “what’s the best that I can do to …”

To sum it all up, I have tried to illustrate the optimal thinking process with flow chart in graphical format to make this post easy to understand. (see pic above)

Please do get back to me with comments and thoughts, while I will continue to research deeper into this rather interesting topic with a reasonable upside to making a difference we lead our lives.

Driving Milestones...

2006-11-12T22:23:00.001+08:00

This is going to be a very different post, but one that is of great importance to me personally. This is about my driving experiences in the past and a view to the future. To most people, it might mean nothing, just that driving is my passion and I like to register every important event and milestone in my kitty! So, all professional drivers, driving and auto-enthusiast and those having patience to read long posts, please fasten your seat belts, shift to top gear and vroooom to this very special post! Here we go...

Before moving on to the more interesting part, let me first give an introduction to how it all started…

History

As a child, all I did was to collect Leo trucks, I could spend hours playing with my trucks, I would make bridges and mountain roads and all possible difficult terrains to “imagine” the challenge of driving my truck there - from my 7th birthday or so, every year my parents would get me one Leo truck (I still remember my first yellow truck with red front and black chassis). This went on for years – every birthday meant a truck, to the extent that my parents would say “score 90% in the next exam and you will have your truck!” My lack of success at school exams meant lesser trucks than I could have had, but I kept getting my birthday trucks year after year till the time I had a fleet.

This went on till early teens – when I started to realize that my friends were having a laugh about my favourite birthday present. Peer pressure as they call it, I decided against buying any further trucks, but there was no way I would let anyone else take away my existing fleet of trucks. When I went to hostel for under-grad, I locked up my trucks and told my mom – “this shelf of my cupboard has to stay this way – no compromises!”

Getting to the steering wheel…

I actually didn’t drive till I was 18 – went exactly by the books. My parents had a simple rule for me – “Do anything till the car doesn’t move!” So while I patiently waited for my 18th birthday, I did everything possible within that set boundary limit – ranging from changing the tyre of a heavy Ambassador car when I was like 8 years old, to opening the carburetor, fuel filter and spark plugs of the Maruti when I was probably 11 years old, etc, etc…

However, my road experience started at the age of 16. Time pressure for attending a million classes for school and IIT-coaching meant that, I needed a “vandi” so that I could be on my own. I got a Bajaj Sunny – the only 2-wheeler that I could legally drive at the age of 16 and when it comes to driving, I follow all possible rules. I drove it all in city, from home to school to classes and in two years it clocked 13,000 kms! Though most teenagers would prefer bikes, I was somehow never mentally inclined towards bikes and so having my Sunny was good, but not terrific.

Finally, it was the time to get behind the steering wheel – just after turning 18, I got my license – again without paying a single extra rupee at RTO, wanted to get it on merit!

The starting of a career…

Having lived in hostel all the way, my only opportunity to drive was when I came back home. Till date, it has all been a self-learning process – all from observation than training. When I started driving, I was quick to learn the basics of driving and was what I call as “in control” on city roads rather quickly. Even today, I continue to be a defensive driver in city - slow to pick-up, I like to keep the engine at low rpm in city – experience the smoothness instead of power.

My first real highway drive was in 1999 December, from Chennai – Bangalore. It was probably my biggest learning experience as well. It took me half an hour to overtake the first truck – a combination of heavy oncoming traffic and a wrong gauge of “when to change the gear”. I was in 5th at 40kmph, of-course the damn thing will have no pick-up at such low rpm!

Anyways, I sorted that out and made it to Bangalore – felt good to have ~350 kms on my CV – now it seems nothing, but it was a big confidence booster then. Way back from Bangalore was a lot easy, I had gotten used to gear changes by then, and moved on to experiment with something known as “engine braking” to slow down the car – not many people do this, but to keep car in control while braking at high speeds, apart from brakes, getting the car to lower gears helps in keeping control.

At the end of the trip, my record stood at:
Max distance in a day : 360 kms
Max Speed : 120 kmph

My next drive was to Chennai – Kodaikanal – Munnar – Chennai, sometime in May 2000. I was so exited about the trip that I didn’t sleep the night before we were to start for the trip! We started at about 4am in the morning from Chennai to Kodaikanal - a distance of 760 kms, including 60 kms of hill drive – I probably drove for 12-13 hours that day. That was starting of a dream, when I realized, that long distance driving is not impossible. The next day was even more challenging. I drove from Kodaikanal to Munnar – the road was under construction, it was raining heavily, there was a bit of land slide on the way and it was all hilly terrain. Till today, that remains the most challenging driving experience – not in terms of distance though (might have been 300 at max). All in all, that trip was close to 1800kms and I enjoyed every bit of it.

At the end of the trip, my record stood at:
Max distance in a day : 760 kms
Max Speed : 125 kmph

Next 2-3 years saw a few more trips to Bangalore and to other places near-by. However, there was no real long drive for a long time. (I define a long drive as >600 kms in a day or more than 12 hours of drive in a day).

Joining the big league…

My driving CV was heading nowhere. I had not added anything significant to my driving achievements for more than 3 years. The ice had to be broken – 300 kms a day was by far not exciting anymore - a quantum jump was required to get my driving career on track. I finally got a chance in April 2005, when soon after convocation, a few of us decided to experience the leap jump that India had started making in infrastructure – “Golden Quadrangle”, highways connecting the four major cities had just been made then. We initially thought of going for an all-India trip, but time and budget constrains made us cut it down to a South and Central India trip. The route that we took was Chennai-Bangalore-Goa-Mumbai-Pune-Hyderabad-Vijaywada-Chennai. This trip was spread over 9 days, the odometer clocked 3500 kms and I probably drove for about 2500 kms. Full details of the trip are on a separate blog that I created then:
http://wimwi-road-trip.blogspot.com/

At the end of the trip, my record stood at:
Max distance in a day : ~800 kms
Max Speed : 130 kmph

This was the “inflection point” that I needed to believe that a world tour is not out of reach! This year in June, I did it again, this time a Chennai-Mumbai-Chennai – drove for over 3300 kms (I did allow my dad to drive 55 kms!). The road trip in 2005 had been with friends with everyone pitching in to drive, now was the time to do it all by myself.

At the end of the trip, my record stood at:
Max distance in a day : ~800 kms
Max Speed : 160 kmph

Recent achievements…

Well, till recently, every meter of my driving experience had been in India. However, I moved to CapeTown for a short stint here sometime back and found 2 very encouraging things – 1) Right hand drive (same as India) is the norm here and 2) Indian License is okay to drive here!

I have had a chance to do 2 trips here till now. The first one was a symbolic one – first long drive outside India, but I would remember it more for scenery along the drive from Cape Town to Cape Point.

The 2nd one was an achievement. I broke the 1000 kms in a day barrier! This was a drive from Cape Town to Knysna and back. The roads here are very good and there is hardly any traffic beyond the extended city. I went with a friend here for the drive – started at around 8:45 am and we were back in CapeTown by 9pm. The entire trip was all driving, plus a 2 hour stop over for lunch and a few clicks!

I was driving a Toyota Corolla Automatic – didn’t enjoy the automatic part much, on a highway I would much rather decide when to change gears myself than be in a situation where the decision is forced on by a computer chip that tries to optimize the gear changes! Anyways, the car was really good, very aerodynamic and it felt in complete control at high speeds. I did 1000kms in less than 10 hours of driving, an idea of road conditions and the car quality perhaps.

Interestingly enough, when I came back to CapeTown, the odometer read 990kms. Didn't want this to be a "so close, yet so far", so I drove for 10kms in the city before heading back home - all just to meet the milestone. Looking back, it does sound funny :-)

At the end of the trip, my record stood at:
Max distance in a day : 1001 kms
Max Speed : 177 kmph

The road ahead…

A world tour has been at the back of my mind for a real long time now. The good thing is that the idea has started to make sense now, though I know it is still a long way to go. Around the world in quickest time would be a bit too tough to get to, but might not be impossible. These plans might involve 25-30,000 kms of driving, does sound a bit too far-fetched, but it is still possible in my books. To get there, there are a few more requirements that I need to work towards:

Testing myself for long distances a few more times and building up the stamina to take it for 40-50 days on a trot
A co-driver with high passion and energy for driving. Maharaj might just join me for the trip, given he has very similar ambitions
Logistics – would be a long process to take care of visas, permission, license rules, modifying the car to sustain for so long, etc, etc
And equally importantly, a sponsor to pay for the fuel bills and other expenses! :-)

So, does sound like a bit too far off, but hopefully in the next 4-8 years, I will give it a try. Till then, I will continue improving my driving skills, and more importantly, get an understanding of what it would take to do this. The real inspiring thing is that an Indian couple held the world record for fastest around the globe for sometime – they did the entire trip in a Hindustan Motors Contessa 1.8L. Now, I believe, the record has been broken and is currently held by some British passionate drivers!

Victoria Falls and Zambezi Rafting

2006-10-29T21:50:00.000+08:00

Not too long ago, a month back, I drove down to Cape Point over Champman’s peak and I thought, well it can’t get better than this. The view was stunning and gorgeous, tall mountains on one side and vast blue ocean on the other side. The view from Cape Point and the drive down there was by far the best view I had seen.

A month down the line, Cape Point has however slipped to second spot in my memory – the reason being a trip to Victoria Falls, one of the 7 wonders of the world. Let me guide you through the experience.

We started from Capetown on a Friday, a hopping flight to Livingstone via Johannesburg to reach the Zambia side of the falls. Before I go on to describe further, here is a crisp introduction to Victoria Falls:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Falls

Day 1 at Victoria Falls

The pictures on Wikipedia depict the falls in peak rainy season. They then swell up to 1.7 kms in width, however at other times the river is not as wide. So, we walked over dry portion of the falls (the right end of the 4th picture on Wikipedia link). We walked over the rocky terrain, maneuvering through the slippery shaky rocks - half way through I wished I had a high ground clearance four wheel drive and that would have been some challenge! Anyways, we walked till the point where we were stopped by illegal security men. The walk back was a bit more challenging with a few drops of rain making the rocks a fraction more slippery. We managed to take a few pics of the falls and equally gasping wide and tall prominent fracture in the earth’s crust that resulted in creation of these falls – apparently it was a platonic shift that took place a hundred thousand years ago. We got back to the hotel before it got too dark – a well deserved dinner and we called it a day, all in excitement for the day that was to follow.

Day 2 at Victoria Falls

Day 2, it was time for water rafting - with a rather early morning for a Saturday, we were picked by the rafting tour operator. We trekked down the rocky mountain to get to the place where the rafting was to be flagged off. In the process, we signed a few legal disclaimers that actually added to the excitement (or is fear the right word?)! I had never done rafting before, so I actually didn’t have a clue to what was to follow - add to it, my limited swimming skills and experience meant that I had to rely on life jacket a lot more than some of the others around who had done this before!

With our rafting boats inflated, it was time to step in. First 5-10 minutes were pure instructions:
“Left turn” – meant those on the right paddled forward, on the left backwards and yeah, the exact opposite for “Right turn”, “Forward” meant keep pedaling but the most important instruction was “Get Down” - we had to stop pushing forward and get to inside base of the raft and somehow try to hold on to the ropes at the outer end. The first dip in the water was useful – helped me realize that it would be tough to get back without help!

There we go, its time to get to a series of 10 rapids, most of these of class 4 and 5, a couple of class 3 rapids. A class 6 rapid is almost a waterfall, so class 5 and 4 are challenging for sure. Just to help you understand, definition of a class 5 rapid is: “Long and violent rapids. Large waves that are unavoidable, Complex course, Scouting is a must”!! Here is the description of the rapids that we went through:

The first rapid was called rapid #3, nice one to get off to a start. We pedaled forward and then went down to make the raft stable. We had survived the first one with no one falling off – that was a bit of a confidence booster! This was probably the last “unnamed” rapid.

Rapid #4 was called “Morning Glory” somewhere between a class 4 and a 5, this was a challenge. The very force with which water hit us and the angle at the rapid was scary at the first go and 5 seconds later the reaction was “wow”! The status of our raft was – No one down till now and we were keeping things nice and steady.

Rapid #5 was “Stairway to Heaven” – this was a class 5 rapid and trust me there was a lot more of aggression to this one than depicted by the name that Led Zeppelin originally thought of! Till the tip of the rapid, I thought its going to be as calm as “Stairway to Heaven”, but suddenly reality struck us hard as we went down possibly 5-7 meters in our raft down the voluminous rapid. We stayed intact and then raised our pedals in celebration and parked our raft to see other rafts fight the battle. The next raft followed the same path and as I saw them go down I was like “Did we really really manage to do that? I am putting this on my CV for sure!” The third raft however had a bit of a nasty experience with 2 of them finding themselves off the raft. We then assumed the role of the rescue boat, got to this guy and pulled him up our raft. He was terrified and wanted to leave right there – it took him a couple of minutes to relax down and be part of the party again.

Rapid #6 was “devil’s toilet”, a class 4, all three rafts made through with reasonable comfort. We still had our record intact – no one off the raft as yet and we started to believe that we were the real professionals out there!

Rapid #7 was “Gulivers Travels”, a class 5. We had to push hard to gain some momentum here to help us steer in the right direction as we went down the rapid with a strong stream of water flowing from the direction perpendicular to our motion. We were warned that the raft could overturn here - the idea to hold on to the raft for as long as possible. As we went though this rapid, we did manage to keep the raft stable, but it ended up being a bit nasty with tons of water all over – However, eventually, Mr. Buoyancy (!!) helped our raft back to the water surface.

The bottom-line however still was that we remained “all intact”. We did it in great style, going down just at the right time and making sure we hold on to our respective corners. The front portion of the raft did go deep in water and I was like cough cough by the time we came out. However, it was time to raise our pedals and scream out "Yyyooo" again. We remain unscathed!

Rapid #8 was “Midnight Diner”– a set of 3 rapids. This was challenging. We had to again pedal hard and get through the first rapid (class 3), get the momentum high enough so that we could steer through heavy forces of the water flowing in the other direction and then go through a narrow gap down to the other 2 rapids. The first one was a piece of cake; the next two were not the worst we had been though. These were class 4 rapids, so we were fairly confident and we therefore chose the difficult path on this one rather than the option of having the easy way out by the side.

So, we went down the class 4 rapid expecting to come out of it stable. However, mid way through, I suddenly found water all over me. My first reaction was that probably the entire raft went under water, so I was like clam and relaxed for a few microseconds. A moment later, I thought there is way too much water all around and I am no more on the raft. This was when the reality struck – I was off the raft and I did not manage to hold on to the raft rope!!! *#^@!” Find it funny now, but at that moment I was a bit terrified. It was all a matter of 5 seconds, I was back on water surface with life jacket keeping me afloat. And then I thought, I should do my bit and try to swim as well! That was not required though, within a couple of seconds I could see the raft again and it was easy going from there on – got back close to the raft and I was then pulled up. Phew!!

Rapid #9 – “Commercial Suicide” was a class 6, almost a waterfall and only the highly professional can do it. So, we took it easy there and got off the raft and climbed down the rocks.

Our final rapid was Rapid #10 – “Gnashing Jaws of Death” – a class 4 again, which we did with relative ease – I was probably a bit defensive this time and got down well before we were told to do so!

For detailed description of the rapids, visit:
http://whitewater.safpar.com/zambezi_rapids.htm

This was followed by around 250 meters of almost vertical climb, too tiring after the 2 hour adventure and I took a bit more time to do it than some of the others who have been regulars to gym!!

It had been 2 hrs of absolute fun and excitement – possibly the most challenging experience I have ever had. This was a big part of the reason why I moved Victoria Falls trip a notch higher than the view at Cape Point.

Day 3 at Victoria Falls

The final day started with a “game” trip to Zambezi wild life. Saw a few wild animals, a few clicks to add to the trip snaps, but nothing as exciting as the previous day. Then I got a helicopter ride of the falls and region around it. It was just amazing to see Victoria Falls from up there - the wide river Zambezi falling into a crack on the surface of Earth, the tiny particles of misty cloud-like water particles created by the very force of the falls is a sight I would remember for a long time.

We flew back that afternoon to Cape Town, ending what had been an amazing trip. I haven’t seen too many places the world over, but for the little that I have, this was probably the best experience and view. I did give a serious thought about having water rafting as a back-up profession, but decided to stay with driving! The next post, when I get some time window, will be on driving experiences in South Africa.

Welcome back Master Blaster!

2006-10-01T09:04:00.000+08:00

This post might be 2-3 weeks too late, but as they say, better late than never. Was a bit caught up with work and travel, so didn't have a chance to get to blogger. Before this post, millions of reams of news-print, a billion journalist hours, a trillion television-hours have been invested by the world press and viewers in general - In this age of internet and blogging, I contribute to nothing more than a drop in the Ocean to this topic! - However, that by no means diminishes the importance of the topic of this post: after a 6-month injury lay-off, a warm welcome back to Sachin Tendulkar.

A marathon 141 not out of 148 deliveries, batting out the entire 50 overs, 5 sixes, 13 fours, ran just as hard as he did 17 years ago - I could go on and on praising Sachin's innings, but to sum it up, Master Blaster is back with a bang.

It might not have been the best innings that Tendulkar has played, but to me, it was probably the most important. He has virtually lost out at a year of cricket - starting from the black days of Tennis Elbow, sprinkled with indifferent form and then the long lay-off resulting from the shoulder operation. As he has accepted in his recent interviews, this was probably the toughest phase of his career - a slump in form due to injuries, commentators and experts in India sketching the end of his career (Endulkar is the term they used to grab media attention), injuries making himself unsure of the career ahead, etc, etc.

I am an ardent follower of Tendulkar - I keep a track of not just his scores, but almost anything that I can get hold to through secondary research. I have been doing this for a couple of years now - almost on a daily basis and sometimes on the hour, every hour - I end up with the following sequence of involuntary steps:

Double Click on internet explorer --> www.google.com --> type Sachin Tendulkar --> Click search --> Click news --> Click Sort by date!

What has been rather surprising over the last one year is that there are singificantly more news articles published when Tendulkar is injured than when it is "business-as-usual" for him i.e. when he is on the field and scoring runs. I could find news articles almost every half an hour on this topic - might just be someone's opinion on his elbow or shoulder injury, but so what, it was enough to help me get a picture of when would Tendulkar get back on field.

We all know Tendulkar the genius, the run-scoring machine, those 25,000 plus international runs, the consistent performer, the aggressive thinker and much of what he does serves as an inspiration, not just for us (a billion Indians), but many more around the world. However, there is much more to Sachin Tendulkar than just his cricketing skills and performance that makes him among the greatest that this world has seen. Let me highlight what in my view are three most important things that we can try to learn from Tendulkar:

The obvious: Sachin the performer - it's not just his hand-eye-coordination (a natural gift), but it's the effort he puts in - at 33, with all success behind him, he is still found spending more time at nets than younger players. At most times, Sachin has a very clear game plan based on his mental homework - bowlers to go after, when to play a subdued innings, working on his own game, etc. These are very important factors behind his success and surprisingly, it's much the same for rest of us in compeltely different careers.
The basics: When you look at Tendulkar's life on and off the field, there has hardly been any controversy that he has ever ended up with. All through the match fixing scandal, I was very sure that Sachin would never have been a part of that 'gang' in the dressing room. Crtitics have positioned his lack-of-willingness to pay tax on a gifted car in the wrong light, but to me, Sachin has a very clear filter in his mind - no compromises on ethics and basics at any cost. Add to that, he is extremely modest and clearly has his head just an inch above the shoulders - just where it should be. Again, we all can draw a leaf from it.
Communication: Getting back to the professional angle, I think, Sachin is a genius when it comes to communication. He might sound a bit diplomatic at times, but he never comes up with any provoking or loose statements. (as opposed to Warne, McGrath and likes) Infact, he often responds to criticism with 'no-negative-reaction' and instead lets his bat do the talking. I am not a 100% sure of this, but as much as I know from my secondary research, Sania Mirza and Narain Karthikeyan have had sessions with Tendulkar on two topics: 1) How to handle success? 2) How to manage media and communication? Most of us would probably never need to balance the media part, but we can probably learn a bit from the balanced well-thought way of communicating.

Phew! This has been a long post. But then, I really can't help it. Sachin probably has been the greatest influence on my life, outside the range of obvious circle. I didn't have much of sense for the first 9 years of my life. Ever since then, life has been simple - a good day is when Sachin scores a ton, rest of the days are just about average - and I have been fortunate enough to see 75 good days and hopefully there will be many more in the next few years... But, Sachin would retire one day... well, I haven't thought about my life after that!

Right to freedom of speech/expression! :-)

2006-08-26T16:51:00.000+08:00

The title of the blog speaks for itself! It has been sometime since I blogged last, part of the reason being a new job apart from the common consistent never-say-die factor governing the general inertia in life! Having said that, I have realised that the biggest threat to my blogging career is probably my lack of 'ideas'!

I was about to blog last weekend - spent good 15 minutes thinking about a topic, didn't manage to get anywhere! So has been the case today, making me question why I actually wanna blog? More so, in this world of open source (and yeah, my google backed blogger follows much the same logic), where I don't incur any cost to maintaining this blog... advertisers to blogspot make sure that burgeoning young bloggers like me don't find the incremental cost as an excuse!

So, back to square one, what do I blog about? Actually lots of stuff happening around, but nothing is worth a full post. Ahhaaaa... idea, a blog that's like a 5 minute interesting news update sounds like a plan... may be not, but more than anything else, gives me something to type without having to think...!!

Here we go: News correspondent Joseph Khanna reporting with our special guest news reader from Singapore

Politics

India' PM, Dr. Manmohan Singh has stated in his secret autobiography that Laloo Prasad Yadav should be made the next PM of India - "He has got Indian Railways to mind boggling overall profit of Rs. 11k crore and his vision would enable India to wipe out poverty, fiscal deficit, get to growth rate of 12% and overtake China by 2016". When asked to elaborate on how Laloo Prasad could get us to 'India Shining', PM Dr. Manmohan Singh said he was in high level discussions with Laloo's think tank Rabri Devi and in her view, the secret path to success would a involve step increase in India's cow and buffalo population - "Laloo kahaith hai ki bhains ka khayal rakhna chahiye... hum kahaith hain ki jitna sasuri bhainsawan ko badhaya jaye , utna desh ka bhala hoi hai"

Singapore correspondent: Cannot lah, Singapore no buffalo last time, but orredi developed.

Universe

Moving on to bigger issues surrounding us, recent discovery of relatively small objects revolving around sun have made astronomers think about the existing definition of planets. The aftermath of this discovery has made Pluto a non-planet.

This has however resulted in major discussions world around, with President Bush releasing a statement to international community - "The threat of terrorism has to be faced with courage and we stand united in this hour of need. Al Qaeda has managed to launch attacks on Pluto, severely damaging the size and solar path of Pluto. In consultation with Nasa and international community we have therefore decided to bring down the status of Pluto. These are tough and testing times for our solar system, but I request all Americans to take a white marker and change the text books of your 4th grade kids - Solar system now has 8 planets. I declare."

Astrologers world-over have reacted strongly to this change as well, with some of them claiming the relative superiority of astrology over astronomy. The International Union of Pure and Applied Astrology (IUPAA) in an official statement released "We strongly negate the view of disowning and degrading the status of Pluto in our solar system. Pluto has been a strong contributor to Astrology - whenever the bigger planets don't explain the reality, we have always believed that Pluto accounts for the difference between astrology based predictions and the real world observations. We will therefore continue to believe in the importance of Pluto for the years to come"

Singapore correspondent: Noooooo.... nooooo.... Singapore small country laah, United Nations can declare Singapore part of Malaysia orredi... Can or not? Danger laah, very lucky orredi we been till now.

Stock Market

Let's now move to our analysis of BSE Sensex - Despite higher economic growth projections, lower interest rates, Sensex went down by 4.77% points. The sudden unexpected decline has been attributed to withdrawal of FII money that has been pouring in. It is widely believed that FIIs withdraw money from Indian stock markets on Fridays so as to enjoy the weekend with luxuries ranging from a glass of wine to filling their petrol tanks for weekend trips. This was the conclusion of a very detailed behavioral pattern analysis conducted by MBA students.

Singapore correspondent: We Singaporeans invest in Fixed income only. Money lost in stock market then we cannnnoot get back. Risky lah....

Sports

In a stunning revelation to the international community, ICC president Malcom Speed has come out in open about Darrell Hair's one-time settlement offer to quit ICC's elite panel for $500,000. Further speculations surrounding the issue range from allegations of match fixing to bookies betting on Darrell Hair's future. Defending his stance in international cricket body, Darrell Hair said "I have always played the game in true spirit and my umpiring has been in line with true professional standards. I rate myself as the most committed individual to cricketing world - even Sachin Tendulkar has started to lose focus on cricket - he is probably a bit more inclined towards tennis, now that his elbow has accepted and adapted to tennis"

Singapore correspondent: I don't know lah, cable operator charges $25 per month for cricket channel.

Weather

As we move towards winter, Indian cities have started to experience temperature changes. Delhi was at a minimum of 9 degrees, maximum of 38 degrees, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai oscillating between 12 and 42 degrees. Forecast is of clear skies, except when it is cloudy.

Singapore correspondent: Yesterday my aircon thermostat failed lah, therefore temperature dropped from 24 degrees to 22 degrees in my room. Too cold lah, Singapore very costly, cannot buy blanket also... For weather forecast, we divided Singapore into 26 zones with individual temperate and expected rain fall in the next 24 hours. But no time to tell lah in this short news... I orredi told the news agency that I don't like short news.... last time also cannot...

Launching "driving and autoworld" blog!

2006-08-11T10:32:00.000+08:00

Announcing the launch of a very special blog for all driving and auto world enthusiasts!:
http://autodrivezerocool.blogspot.com/

As the name suggests, the primary objective of the blog is to discuss and document driving tehniques along with the latest in the auto world.

This primary blog, would however continue to be a bit of "post just about anything in here" kinda stuff!

'Reservation system' - can it ever be reversed?

2006-07-27T17:08:00.000+08:00

This post is something about which I have very strong views, but I shall restrict my comments to purely objective statements, as far as possible.

'Reservation' system needs no introduction - be it admission to colleges/univs, jobs, etc, etc, it is something we have learned to live with. The idea behind this 'once upon a time' noble step was to get our caste-based society to some level of equality. In principle, I totally agree with this view and I stand committed to doing my bit to make sure that as a society, we get there.

However, in my view, this now has become a tool to influence vote bank, with little analysis behind what is the 'right level of quota'. Anyways, the objective of this blog is not to criticize, but to find a solution to this issue, given the current situation and constraints acting on the decision makers/society.

My friend, Ranga forwarded this article published on rediff by Prof. T. Pradeep of IIT-Madras:

Click here to view article

My post is greatly influenced by the article above. I totally agree with the view that ‘one opportunity’ in life is sufficient to make a difference. Prof Pradeep has suggested an IT based solution of providing each individual with unique identification number – this is as close as we can get to being practical about this problem.

Zooming out, lets consider another parallel problem faced by Indian society and economy – that of corruption. But somehow, I think, in the years to come, corruption is not going to matter that much. Two factors make me believe that corruption is not the biggest challenge anymore:

Privatisation of economy – right from roads, airlines, banks, grocery, etc – influence of public sector in day today life has decreased a lot and this trend is likely to continue in future. So, corruption, in absolute terms might continue to grow, but will mean lesser and lesser for all of us.
IT – Data based computer systems have reduced complexities and have increased accountability – this has helped reduce corruption as well in government services.

Now, can a similar logic work with ‘reservation system’? Answer would have been ‘yes’ if reservations were restricted to government colleges, government jobs, etc. Unfortunately, the decision makers in this case happen to benefit the most – vote bank counts and matters the most. Even with the most pure and noble intentions, a good party/prime minister has to remain in his position so as to make a difference. One easy way to influence the vote bank is to give incentives, a perfectly logical and correct way to do things in the world of economics and political science.

Given this background, I think, it is difficult to imagine why government at centre would ever take any step to rectify this problem. This is where, I think, 'judiciary' has to step in. Supreme Court has changed a city as big as ‘Delhi’. 5 years back, I used to get dehydrated in Delhi – not ‘coz of the heat, but the pollution used to leave my eyes with constant irritation and tears!! Now, Delhi is so much better – the CNG enforcement, Euro and Bharat Stage norms have changed the city – credit goes to Supreme Court for the way Delhi is today.

The judiciary needs to step in once again. This time, not to give a verdict, but to lay down a policy on reservation – it can be based on Prof. Pradeep’s suggestions of 25 years horizon with one opportunity per person OR Supreme Court can have its own team/ committee to solve this issue. It might take them months to collect data, put forward a view, debate, but all this is worth in larger long term interest of our nation. Till then, I will continue to sign petitions…

The Road Ahead

2006-07-14T03:47:00.000+08:00

I am an hour away from starting my drive down to Mumbai. Chennai-Mumbai, a distance of ~1,450 kms, I look to cover in two days with a night halt in Hyderabad.

It's all set, for once I have packed my stuff well in advance! The fuel tank is full, car serviced, maps ghoted/mugged, etc. But there is more to this drive than pure logistics.

It's my first long drive with Swift. There will be a bit of adjustments required before I feel absolutely 'in the zone' on highway. I am just about to getting used to the gear ratios and engine of Swift - a bit of a difference from Santro that I am used to driving on highways. Will probably take me a couple of hours upfront to get it right.

This drive is also important for my long term driving ambitions. In some vague corner of my dreams, I wanna break the current world record of 'around the world in 42 days by road'. That's a lot of driving and I myself know how difficult that ambition is. This drive to Mumbai and back will help me sort this conundrum to some level of comfort.

If I don't get bored and tired of driving 1450 kms in 2 days, that will be like one step towards the world record ambition. Still would remain a distant dream, but yeah, I will probably feel a bit more confident about it.

The other possible outcome is that I might just understand that World Records are World Records and I probably need to practical about things. I might decide to forget the time factor to the record and keep the aim to 'Round the world' - that would still be 40,000 kms approximately. I might get a bit more realistic and get it further down to Asia trip or a notch lower to sub continent trip. I don't think, covering India would ever be an issue. Anyways, I shall revisit my driving ambitions after this trip.

It's almost time for me to get started. I shall keep the long term goals aside and for now, it's one day, one drive. As I always remind myself about any long drive, it's not speed that matters, it's consistency and ability to drive long hours that the differentiating factor. For I know and remember the 'thought for the day' that my teacher made me say in 4th standard morning assembly:

"A journey of thousand miles, begins with a single step..."

The Unfordriven...

2006-07-10T01:28:00.000+08:00

Have been thinking of posting something on this for sometime now. This post is gonna be on diving, rather on drivers - a special dedication to the new Silver Swift :-)

I am a bit out of my creative power (watever!), so will try the old tested technique of 'plagiarism'! This post has been 'inspired' by 'The Unforgiven', by Metallica... here we go:

....

The Unfordriven...

New driver joins this road
and quickly he's subdued
through constant horns disgrace
a young driver learns their rules

with time the driver draws in
these gear shifts have gone wrong
deprived of all his routes
a young driver struggles on and on he's known
a vroooom of his own
that never what they say
try driving the wrong way

what I've braked
what I've steered
never tired of stop and go
never fast
never slow
read what speedometer might show

what I've braked
what I've steered
never tired of stop and go
never 1st
never 5th
so I dub thee unfordriven

cylinders blast their lives
to running all of his
spark plugs fire them all
acceleration is all he needs
throughout his highway drive
he's throttled constantly
this race he cannot win
the better cars out there overtake
the new driver then prepares
to learn it again…
that new driver here is me

what I've braked
what I've steered
never tired of stop and go
never fast
never slow
read what speedometer might show

what I've braked
what I've steered
never tired of stop and go
never 1st
never 5th
so I dub thee unfordriven

repeat above

vroom o vroom...

never fast
never slow
so I dub thee unfordriven
you overtook me
I'll overtake you
so I dub thee unfordriven

never 1st
never 5th
so I dub thee unfordriven
you overtook me
I'll overtake you
so I dub thee unfordriven

….

For complete version of the original song: click here

Strategies to successful... ehhh... career?

2006-07-02T16:51:00.000+08:00

At the end of the day, 'Communication', they say is what differentiates good from average, exceptional from just about okay, average from pathetic! The way 'raw facts' or in most cases 'no facts' are 'positioned' can tilt the balance of perception to any of the grades ranging from pathetic to average to good to exceptional!

I am a big believer of 'making this world a better place' and thereby, I wish to make my contribution public today. Please do remember to take a leaf out of this post - trust me, it is useful in every sphere of professional life - for a junior trying to defend his work (or lack of it) at office, someone looking for guidance on presenting to top management or to 'work around' with tough questions from the client! Without any further adieu, ladies and gentlemen, let me present the statements that can make our dull careers successful.

Disclaimer: If you are one of those backed by the relentless desire to be sincere in doing work, then please stay away!! For rest of us, these are very useful statements - in more ways than one, these are 'platform independent' - you can use them in almost any context!

Situation 1: When you have done some work, but it is far from complete

"This piece of analysis is interesting..." take a pause, count 1,2,3 internally and then repeat "it is interesting..." with a nod of head, this time!

"I agree with what Mark has said, my analysis shows similar leading trends..." now, with a look to Mark that conveys "well done mate!"

"I lost all my project files last night. Since then, I have managed to get to this stage of work... I am quick, I know! But the work I had done till yesterday evening had all possible details.. lost it all, Jeeezuz...!"

Situation 2: When you have absolutely no clue to what Mr. Boss is talking about.

"...that, in my view is dot on... I would have guessed the same..."

"...my workstream is so exciting, there are multiple ways of looking at this and I am in process of getting to the answer, looking at different dimensions in a situation that is changing dynamically... let me get back to you by tomorrow afternoon..."

"... the data is inconsistent..."

"I have actually managed to speed up on this... does tomorrow afternoon sound like a plan to discuss this?"

Situation 3: High level client/top management meetings!

"There is a huge potential to create value, unleash synergies and move up the value chain..."

"We did a lot of ground work, this presentation is only to discuss steps that would impact the project most..."

Now, two words that can be like 'wow':

"I think", well it has to be said in a different way "Aaai thiiieenk..." followed by a pause of 3 seconds, look at everyone around and people would react back with "I get that... amazing stuff"

.........

Hope this was useful! Please do experiment and let me know if it works! However, I wish you luck! :-)

To ghot or guss?

2006-07-01T17:50:00.000+08:00

This post is special, one that I would probably read a few years down the line as well. Last few months have been a bit rough, at most times crazy, but this post is to register this moment, when finally, I think, it has started to get better. Not by any means any big reason to celebrate, but, on incremental basis, may be it's just about getting better.

As I look back at the recent past - last one year or so - there is a bit of learning that I want to pick up before putting it all behind. I will try having a perspective on most things once I am out of this phase of introspection, but there is one thing that comes to my mind as I look at the big picture.

Two extreme words, denoting two ends of thought structure, have started to make equal sense to me. In the past, I have often used these words in a lighter vein, however I am beginning to understand how inter-related these two otherwise polar opposite words are:

Ghot: Originally used for academics, equivalent being 'mug' or simply 'study hard'. In my own lingo, I have used it for any situation that requires some bit of effort and a bit of 'fight'. In cricketing world, ghot is what denotes the way Dravid bats, more so on pitches where it is seaming and bouncing a bit.

Guss: Near synonym of this word is probably "take it easy" and on the extreme side "give up". More importantly, it denotes a bit of attitude, where as an individual, you don't get bogged down by pressure and take it easy.

Exact definition is not as important as the thought and more importantly, a sense of which way to go in pressing circumstances. I have been a big believer of ghot almost all the way through, as there are very strong advantages of being in this mental state:

Success and effort are positively correlated
Having tried hard, is sometimes satisfaction enough when results don't meet expectations

Having mentioned the positives, research has shown that two of the biggest driver of high stress levels are 1) Uncertainty of future 2)Expectation mismatch and I totally agree to this. So, while the state of 'ghot' has all the positives mentioned above, it does result in higher stress levels - probably not a factor to worry or ponder over in normal circumstances, but in extreme situations, stress can get to a region of discomfort.

On the other hand, the mental state of 'guss' has little upside - to not put in effort when external factors favor oneself is nearly criminal. However, when the pendulum has swung the other way, when suddenly success has lesser relevance than immediate instincts of 'hanging in there', then probably 'guss' is not that bad a choice. It would in many ways help in reducing stress levels and probably in being patient enough for better times.

As I confess, I have in more ways than one, though 'ghot' is the way to go. However, as I look back, I think I have started to appreciate the relative importance of 'guss'. Being in a state of 'guss', might have helped me to look at things in a better way, see the lighter side to things probably and that would have made a tough phase rather smooth.

So, is a complete shift required? I look to answer this in the time to come. However, my guess is not. Probably, I need to continue with 'ghot', but make sure that at the back of my mind, I know that 'guss' is probably a way to look at things when the things get tough - if not for long duration of time, atleast short time span spent in state of 'guss' might just help to relax and get the composure back. It's so much about having an option that is like:

If externalities > threshold of being good, then 'ghot', else 'guss' for sometime and ghot again!

However, I continue to look for a better solution to this riddle... for now, gusssss... as I get back to the song I have been listening all day - "It's been a while" by Staind

ennapa?... walking down the memory road...

2006-06-28T14:48:00.000+08:00

A bit of a flash back - this post is dedicated to all my school friends and to profs and teachers who over the years have made this post a possibility!

Oct 1995 - I reached Chennai and joined DAV Gopalapuram - the admission process was a bit of a challenge. It's never easy to get to a school in October, however, with help of a few contacts, could get an appointment with the principal. I was initially declined admission as princi observed that all my 8th standard marks were in '40s'!! It took a bit of explanation to get the message that well, in my school in Kerala, for some strange reason, overall marks were on 50. Anyways, with some luck, I could get admission to DAV, Gopalapuram. Otherwise would have been lucky enough to discontinue my education then.

Strange it was - to be in middle of a year, in a new environment, new people, new teachers - I was a bit perplexed. It was however my 9th educational institution in 9th standard!!! The history till then had just been perfect!!! - The first school that I went to in Lucknow - pre-nursery or so - closed down within a week, the next one lasted a month!! Finally spent more than a year in my 3rd school and then we shifted to Rajkot. Spent 3 years in one school there! School 5 was a 2 year stint in DAV Public, Patna. School 6 was Shivagiri Vidyaniketan in Alwaye, near Cochin in Kerala. Spent good 2 years in that school before shifting to School 7 - Vidyodaya, near Cochin again, for a year. We then moved to Mumbai for sometime, School 8 was Rajhans, Andheri - lasted 6 months there! School 9 was DAV - 3.5 years!!! Ever since, life got a bit more stable - spent 4 years at BITS and 2 years at IIM-A. It took combined effort of 11 educational institutions to teach me something!

Back to 9A, DAV, Gopalapuram - As new as I was then and despite being in a habit of changing schools so often, I still do take a bit of a time to make friends, more so the case then. So, for sometime, I remained the silent boy of the class! - a bit of an extreme deviation given my track record ever since! Before moving on to the teachers and profs., I will first share a very funny experience - I can't stop laughing about it even now.

The class leader of IXA then was Kutral - My first impression was - how is this guy the class leader?! 'coz to me, he did seem to be the naughty-est of the lot! In the first week, there was once a time when some teacher was absent and we had like the entire 40 mins to have fun - okay correction, they had 40 mins to have fun! Being new to the class, there had to be a bit of ragging. So, someone - now I don't remember who, probably Bhatia - told me - "you know our class leader?"... I was like 'Yeah... yess... he is the leader, right?'... Bhatia said "He is also the world record holder for swimming"... I was like.. "Yeah right, tell me about it!" I spent the next 10 mins defending "I might look dumb with these 0.5 power spects on, but I know all tricks of the trade. So, don't gimme this crap"! The discussion went on, almost the enitre class joined in! And Kutral was like - "They are just having fun with you, don't fall in the trap" - For all they told me, I was like "Yeah right... English channel... thats so so cold... I am not that dumb!!"...

Well, as it turned out to be, Kutral was and is the world record holder - for being the youngest swimmer to cross the English Channel and thereafter, my guess is that he managed another world record - "youngest to appear on every television channel as well!"... Funny incident, I still can't stop laughing... but it is all ways is a tribute to Kutral - not just for his achievements, but also for being so modest ab't it - never did he have that air of 'world record holder' around him and even till today, he remains a simple but naughty guy!

Then came the second experience - this was however over a period of time. I observed that most in our class, didn't speak the way they would to the external world! - and I didn't follow anything that they said - apparently it was all Ta Ta Va lingo! "Maditashan... (meditation) was the every second word used in the class then. The interesting fact that still remains is that I never got a chance to sit through a TTV class, but I can still imagine what the class would be like!

Days and months went by, I got more and more used to being with my to-be friends. For most of 9th, I did remain a silent guy - made a couple of friends, but my social studies marks left me with enough in life to worry about. Laloo, our Social Studies teacher was a bit more worried than I was!! To me, the idea was simple - somehow pass 9th standard - I did manage a 59/100 in my final exam of Social Studies, trust me, I was happy with that!! Little did I know that the minimum cut off to be eligible for National Scholorship Exams is atleast 60 is all subjects in 9th!

Life moved on, as I felt more and more at home in this new school, I started with my PJs - the first few days were rocking cool! Everyone enjoyed my PJs - some like Genish didn't follow much!! :-)) Others like Anta, took 2 weeks to understand! However, if an when, he understood, I did have a terrible time the very next break. Short break, Lunch break and 2:55pm break - Anta used to either solve some JEE high fundoo sums or beat me up - with a rather strange configuration - he was a master at hitting with his elbow!!

10th went by, the fun factor in life was still not there that much. However, a year later, I took ED/science group in 11th and the entire class changed. Many of my friends went to 11C, while junta joined 11A. This is when the real fun started. By some strange voluntary suicide scheme, I was the class leader too! However, I was now a chill back bencher. Actually not entirely, I was back-bench minus one, but in the left most column of the class - ideal place, much better than the back benchers in the middle columns (okay, we used to call it row then). And we did have fun! Starting from "my dear boooyz", Kandy our physics + class teacher, to our introduction to ED sir... little did I know, that this would change my lingo for life... even today, when we exchange scraps on orkut, it's often ED lingo "waffor doi litis means temmnow" "bufffalllo" "Good fameley or bad fameley litat" "wat i cen able cho chell u is litat" "pumbock"... and it goes on and on and on... I will leave the exact imitation to Lakhsman's blog - nut thinks I am 'the worrrrshhht' at this! :-((

There is tons to write about Minizaa, but I shall for now keep it to imitation only - I am sure, others have expressed their crushes on her, and since I was not part of that gang (!!!), I shall not blog on the crush part! Pullezzaaa, Anantaramanzaa do the sumzaa... Pullleezzaaa.

Jokes apart, any post on school is half empty without a sincere thanks to Sridhar Sir. We all respect him a lot - apart from the fundaes we got in Chemistry, Sridhar Sir has always been a friend to us. And more so in my case, fun time apart, it was not easy going for me in 11th and much of 12th - it's not easy to keep aims and hopes high when one is scoring significantly below the rest, but in our 1-to-1 sessions, Sridhar Sir always expressed confidence in me, gave me a few tips and that has helped me a lot.

Saitsh, the princi was a masterpiece! 'pooowerful speaker', etc, etc... again, its pure imitation, so shall leave it for other blogs :-) However, till date, the biggest united mischief was 'Paul'! It was an event that took the scales of 'Quit India Movement'. Hundreds and Thousands joined in this noble cause and we went about spreading the message of "One world, One word, One mischief, One tone, One Aim". Paul, an otherwise sane human being, far away from the mischief gang of the class, was blessed with a name, which when 'extruded' out of Kandy's throat sounded like 'Puuoo'!

It was during one of the 11th standard classes that NK started off with 'Paul'... just a hint. There was not much of a reaction to this. He said once more, and now another specimen shouted 'Paul'... it still did sound innocent. A day or two later, we started to 'spread the word'. All that was needed now, was mention of 'Paul' and half of the class would shout 'Paaaul' ' Paaaooo', 'Pol', 'Ppppoooulll'. First couple of times, teachers didn't get it. Atleast innocent Jaya didn't for sure. We now tried it everywhere, from Physics lab to ED room to every other class to Jam's class - and slowly we got to the 'expert status' in this. It was like having a massive stereo system installed, with each speaker distinct - all it needed was a small mention of 'Paul' and the system would go crazy! We even tried it once in Sridhar Sir's class!! Sir was quick to pick it and he said 'boys, comeon'!!!

Something that took the scale of Quit India Movement, wouldn't have been restricted to our class. It went on to other sections of 11th in our school, slowly our juniors and seniors bought this idea! And since we were a decent mass in IIT classes, we did it once before a Govi class. It spread like wild fire there - easy when you have 150 students sitting in a class that should take no more than 40. 'Paul' was now a brand, it was a religion that we followed, it was an 'expression', it was an 'attitude to life'. From IIT class, it spread to other schools like PSBB, I am told. Those guys knew nothing about who Paul is!! So, all of you who have had the patience to read this post till here, say 'Paaaul'!! My friend Paul, you have some popularity index man!

Moving now to IIT classes - we first started with imitating Govi - for his jokes ranged from neighbour's daughter to Bangalore babes! I haven't kept a track of all Govi wise cracks, but was fun! Atleast, I did feel a bit of competition! Then, we imitated Santhanam '...if you don't get the moles right, you misss the bussss' - the last 3 words spoken at the speed of light! Anandan was our fav as well, but I am actually bad at imitating him. So, will leave it for other blogs.

However, the biggest influence on my vocal life and I trust so is the case with many others, is TRS - Great prof for sure, but apart from that, he had the most 's' lingo on this planet earth! 'ennapa, this gets cancels', that sounded like 'ennnaaapa, this getzz canczcels' followed with a sweep of hand with his '1st finger floating'!

Before going on to other famous TRS lines, it was fun seeing him before the class started. He would rub the board with the duster to perfection - with not even a small spec of chal powder left! Then he would pick a piece of chalk, break it and use the last one-third piece of the chalk. He would stand still next to the blackboard facing the board and with a chalk in his hand, almost about to start writing. He would give himself a minute or so. To me, that sight was so so funny - it was as if a computer was booting standing still - those days, I had a 166Mhz at home, so was almost the same speed!

Back to TRS words of wisdom - "Zit on the zitter"... ennnapa plz... che che chek chek... "ennapa Aatraya Vaidyanathan, am I daaaaaancing here" :-))) "A goezzs to B's placzze, B goezzs to C's placzze, ennapaa"... and then for students like me, who were not doing too well to get through JEE, he used to call us "Caat onn the waaooll caze"!!!! "gets cancels..."

This has been a bit of a flash back! School days were fun, college life was equally cool... back to present times, it's still much the same. Till the next post, "ennnapa, plz..." blogging "getzzs cancelzzs"!!

How right is right?

2006-06-22T23:46:00.000+08:00

This post deviates a bit from funny and auto world posts that my blog otherwise is full of. I was reading through the blog of my friend Maharaj and read something on religion and stuff and I was impressed. This post has nothing to do with that, but that did motivate me to put in words something about which I have been thinking for sometime now.

A disclaimer before I go ahead - this is nothing more than just a thought. The real world might appear to be far from this, but nevertheless, it's just another way to look at things.

I have sometimes looked at statements like "Country X is a highly cultured country" and wondered does it mean that rest of the world is not cultured? I thought about many ways of defining culture, but finally bought the one that wikipedia says - "theoretical bases for understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity" - in a very broad way, it is the value system of population in general. Now, the definition of culture is not that important to rest of thoughts I have in here.

Let me start with an example. I went on a short 10 day training trip to US in Oct. 2005. As excited I was about being first time in US, I was a bit perplexed as well. Right from immigration counter to taxi to people in general whom I met, appeared to be a fraction arrogant to me. My immediate conclusion was Americans are arrogant and highly extrovert! - based purely on the following observations: 1) People spoke in a tone not considered 'courteous' in India 2) The language used was direct as opposed to some inherent 'respect' that is possibly found in India 3) People communicate every possible feeling and they go on and on and on! Too extrovert for my liking!

Yeah, having seen this, the easy immediate conclusion I could draw was people in general are arrogant and extrovert!

Days passed by, I actually didn't think about it while at training. On my return journey, I had good 20 hours on flight and I was running through the entire experience. And I again said, well it was nice being here, but I found people arrogant and extrovert.

But is that really true? Or is it all my perception? Since then, I have been trying to solve this conundrum and have had little success at this. The interesting aspect comes in when I think 'who would my American friends call arrogant and extrovert?' - That then got me thinking that probably people there too would have this relative comparison among themselves? So, are all these things relative? Or is there an absolute measure to this? Stretching the argument a bit further, is there an absolute good or bad? Or what is good in one society would be totally bad in the other? And if this is true, what is the driving factor to all this?

By no way, have I understood this to any level of comfort, but my take on this is:

Our 'perception' and 'judgement' of 'good' vs. 'bad' is probably based on the way we look at the world
The way we look the world is driven a lot by what we consider as the values that we stand by
Our core values are a direct function of the way we have seen things around us and in some ways what we therefore accept as good or bad based on repeated experiences
Now this is where culture steps in - or in very simple terms, the values, beliefs and representative common thoughts of entire population.
The implication is that 'culture' in one part of the world could be totally different from 'culture' in another part - driven by circumstances, history and a bit based on how leaders and heroes of the land have lived.

Well, this is some ways helped me answer why I thought my American friends were arrogant. I am a big believer of 'law of large numbers' - in a qualitative way though - and the version that I present is that 'given all factors equal one large sample of population should be exactly identical to the other large sample'

However this doesn't seem to be true with my experience - so should I possibly visit again and meet a lot more people? I can, but my guess is that I will come back with a similar conclusion. And this is where the first part of the law steps in - 'given all factors equal'.

To me this is what defines culture. The way we think, our beliefs, our sense of right and wrong is possibly driven by 'culture' or 'cumulative experience of the society that we live in'

Ofcourse, as individuals, we are all different. And these observations are nothing but deviation from the mean or trend in any sample. Qualitative statements somehow don't convey the meaning in an appropriate way. Let me get put in a bit of flavour with some numbers being pumped in.

Let's take "Good" Vs. "Bad" and see how to apply it numerically on different cultures. I can't seem to think of a decent example... hmmm... okay, recently there was a survey conducted by Readers Digest in which Mumbai was rated the 'rudest' city in the world (http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/jun/20mum.htm). Interestingly enough, one of the 3 factors taken into consideration was - how often shop assistants said 'thankyou'. I am not trying to defend Mumbai or India here, but one clear obvious reason is that in India, saying 'thankyou' is not considered a must - there are other ways in which courtesy is recognised, while cities that ranked high probably did have the general 'culture' of saying thankyou.

Now let us say that out of 10 observation points, people in Mumabi said 'Thanks' 3 times while in the 'city A' that topped the list on an average out of 10 observations was say, '8 times'.

So a person in Mumbai who never says thanks is considered rude, may be. Someone who says 'thanks' 3 out of 10 times is average and someone who says it 5 times on 10, is like 'wow! there comes Mr. or Ms. Courteous'

In 'City A', someone who says 'thanks' 6 times on 10 is like considered 'rude', 8 is average and 10 is the 'Mr. or Ms. Courteous'

Now our Mr. or Ms. Courteous from Mumbai happens to visit 'City A'. What reaction would he face there? With 5 thanks every 10 times, he or she would have been 'amazing' here in Mumbai but would be considered 'rude' in City B!

I believe, this is true across every dimension of human behaviour and values. To stretch it further, in some ways the basic sense of 'right' and 'wrong' can also differ on 'culture' that we have imbibed. Well, the implications resulting from this, in my view, are:

'Right' or 'Wrong' is a subjective issue - it depends a lot on the world we have seen around us
The above difference in perception can result in conflicts between individuals from different cultures or backgrounds
It is therefore important to adjust for these 'cultural shocks' while dealing with different people
The challenge is in doing these adjustments 'dynamically' while interacting with different individuals - would be very tough to implement, 'coz in a split second, we need to consider the world and view of the other person and then respond accordingly.

However, there is a flip side to this. It in some ways implies that we should accept anything and everything? How do we distinguish between the 'perceived bad' from 'absolute bad' is a major challenge that I have been thinking about for sometime. I would welcome and appreciate comments, suggestions and thoughts on this. Please reply to this post or mail me with your views.

Vrooooom.... test driving the B segment!

2006-06-21T16:19:00.000+08:00

This post is gonna be a bit different - well, actually, it's inherently different, not because blogspot helped me with addition of maggi hot and sweet tomato chilly sauce to this post! - It's about test drives of a couple of cars - essentially based on 5-10 minutes of test drive and nothing more. Infact, I am told, Auto India recently did come up with an edition with test drives. I will probably read that up once I am done with this post - to cross check how true Auto India is :-))

Indian automobile market has changed a lot over the years. It started with automobile industry being made open to MNCs - pre-IT boom days (pre-Y2K), auto boom was the only thing that went on positive side of analysis of Indian industry. Things have changed since then. The result is a wide range of models to choose from and the satisfaction that Indian models are launched in parallel with worldwide launch - sign of things to come for our country that aims to become a global small car manufacturing hub.

We were looking to change the Santro, so were essentially looking for a replacement in almost the same segment. Santro has done wonderfully well over the last 6.5 years, however seems to lack the punch on new highways. Although the car would mostly be driven in city, I thought that the new car should probably be a fraction better on highways. So, before I got down to test drives, understanding specs on the ground, talking to dealers, in some ways, the choice was narrowed down to Swift, Getz on one side vs. Santro and Indica on the other. Santro I have driven a lot, have tried the 1.1L version too, so in some ways knew enough about the car.

The first car that I test drove was Hyundai Getz. Internally, it looked impressive, though externally, I am yet to find any major distinguishing element in Getz - was just about okay in terms of looks. It felt like Santro - yeah yeah I know there is a light year of difference, but that's what my initial reaction was. However, as I slipped into the driver's seat, the impression started to change. The engine start was smooth and the gear shift to first was impressive - the gears were real smooth. The real difference was when I managed to get some acceleration going - it was quick! - relative statistics of 0-60 pickup would prove that, but it was real impressive. The engine was very smooth and easy! Driving the car was a pleasure, smooth gear shifts, a highly responsive engine that didn't crib with any high decibel sounds did sound perfect. Road handling was decent. I for one, did not find suspensions to be any better than Santro - though the dealer did tell that there it is supposed to be superior. Space inside was just about okay. Overall verdict - Santro + great engine, great gear shift. However, I thought it was an over priced car and at some stage Hyundai will need to cut prices to compete with Swift and friends.

I did take a round of new Santro - had driven new Santro before, so knew exactly how it would be. The 1.1L engine provides sufficient power, the suspension system felt almost the same. There was not much to know further about Santro, so I kept the observations down to minimum basic - and it therefore takes a smaller proportion of this post! There is one comment that I need to make - 7-8 years in India and I am still not sure if Hyundai has ironed out the air-conditioning system. Getz and Santro didn't feel at any stage sufficiently in tune with cooling requirements in India, more so in Chennai. Its probably a trade off with fuel efficiency, but driving comfort is a lot dependent on the effectiveness of the air con and being a Hyundai fan, I would like to see that corrected at some point in time.

Now over to the next car - the car that I had in some ways decided to go ahead with. It's Maruti Sukuzi Swift. Everything about the car looked perfect till then. The sports shape of the car is obviously a big big plus. In addition to that, it looks overall neat, with certain special design elements that had made Swift the car of the year internationally - launched in India almost in parallel with it's global launch, Swift based on all reviews was the car here to stay for sometime. I have been impressed with other factors that have gone in branding of the car - the fully devoted marutiswift website was a great place to get a perfect overview to the car and the relative comparison of different models. With VX model priced at 4.8L, Maruti, I think has positioned the car perfectly well in India.

With this background, I started the test drive of the car. The interiors of the car looked just right with more than sufficient leg room and head room - did feel a bigger car than Santro and Getz - I might be wrong here, as this perception is based on the design whereas actual dimensions sometimes work out to be different. Into gear 1 and the car did have some pick-up! That was impressive, really was! I am inherently a low rpm driver, but didn't mind pressing the throttle on this car. I was test driving the top end model of the car with automatic climate control - the air conditioning did look very effective and the ride comfort was good. I will look at the stats at some stage, but I think Swift is a bit heavier than Getz. I would feel that as it did glide through the potholes and the suspension response was reasonably good. However, I was not entirely convinced on two factors: 1) The engine smoothness - didn't feel that smooth as the Getz that I test drove 2) In-cabin sound level. Again, this finally comes down to refinement and build quality. This is what my top of the mind judgement was, however reality could be a bit different - it all depends on how old the demo cars where - the dealer told me that it was 6 months old, with every day some auto freak like me trying to push the car to it's limits! Overall I was more of less satisfied with the car. At same price point, would have chosen Swift over Getz for superior design, though engine ride was a fraction better with Getz. However, with the corresponding model of Getz being a good 40K more than Swift, there was hardly any decision to be made here.

This was day 1 of test drives - infact day half to be exact as I spent the first half of the day in travel to Chennai. By evening, I was much convinced that it is Swift. The plan for day-2 was to reach some level of comfort with the car, may be test drive once more and then look to hunt for the dealer that could give maximum discount.

Day-2, I take my Santro out with a list of all Maruti dealers in town - to get the best possible deal. On the way, I happened to visit Tata motors showroom. I wanted to have some understanding of Indica and a bit of Indigo. Actually, I haven't kept pace with changes in Indica since it's early days. Those were times when I used to follow Indica very closely - as it was one car developed from scratch in India and I felt proud that it was just about there in terms of product features and quality with the international competition. Way back in 2001 or 2002, I had gone to Delhi for Auto Expo from Bits with a couple of car crazy friends. We did see Indica v2 and another variant then and it did sound impressive. Now, Indica had changed - the new version XETA was like 'wow'. At 3.6L for the fully loaded version, it was attractive. I took a test drive and the 1.4L engine felt a bit better than Santro. After the test drive, I could suddenly see the price difference between Indica and Swift and the impressive XETA was almost there at the top in my books. However, 2 factors again went against this. 1) Indica till now has a lower resale value - probably due to build quality of earlier models 2) It is somehow associated with taxis, as Indicab has been a huge success.

Confused as I was, thought it was best to visit a Swift dealer again. I test drove Swift again, the 87bhp power, the sports car design and the stamp of international car of the year were reasons enough to pay the premium over Indica. So, it was SWIFT again - now it was down to getting the colours, etc right. Swift comes in with some real cool colours! - I actually like the black Swift as much as the other variants like silver, blue, dark grey, etc. One special feature in Swift that enhances the sports car image is the black A and B columns (or is it B and columns?) - well these are actually the metal panels that front doors close to - this black did go so well with silver that it made the decision a lot easier for us.

Rest of the time in Chennai, I spent on the process part - negotiating with the dealer, booking the car, dealing with finance companies to get the best EMI per lakh, etc, etc. Next morning (day-3), I went to the accessory showroom to get a few extra fittings. I am actually not a big fan of accessories - i so much like the original look of the car and like to preserve it for as long as possible - to the extent that I am a bit against the concept of sun films in cars - I like the original marginally tinted glasses that cars come in with. However, I wanted to fit the SWIFT with a music system that would be in line with the engine power!

SWIFT, as per estimates, should be delivered tomorrow. I am in Singapore now, so will probably have to wait a while before I can get behind the wheels of the new car. A long drive is surely on cards next time I get an opportunity!

Giving it a start...

2006-06-14T13:02:00.000+08:00

First time blogging aimlessly, however, thought its worth a start...

Over the last few days, I have had all the time in the world for myself - to the extent that I have often gone to the nearby beach and have done a bit of google search to find out if is it just time or even tide has come to a standstill?!

This is when the mechanical engineer in me woke up. I have been out of touch for sometime now. There was once a time, when I used to read 'Auto India' the day it came to stalls, I knew the stats of most Indian cars right from technical specifications to monthly units sold - now haven't seen the mag for nearly a century (a bit of hyperbole, make it a couple of years). However, to say the least, it was interesting to get back to my roots.

The first part was a bit of search on passenger aircraft fundaes - at BITS, I didn't take any course in aerodynamics, nor in basics of aircraft. Probably the only funda I knew was pressure difference (Mr. Bernoulli had a theorem for this!) and the resulting lift on aircraft wings. Having done a bit of travel off-late and with a bit of luck, I have managed to get window seat on or behind the wings, got my curiosity going ab't how does an aircraft actually work. Everytime when the engine goes full blast while take-off on the runway, I feel a bit proud of being a mechanical engineer - in an age when innovation has shifted to other fields (Comp Sci, Elec) and the core mechanical has now shifted more towards nano fundaes and materials in general. So, eventually did ghot up some fundaes on aircrafts, wikipedia was a big help. However, with a few questions answered and other avenues exposed, my knowledge gap has further widened - hopefully one fine day will get a chance to speak to a pilot and download all information!

The second stage of getting back to roots happened kinda yesterday. Santro back home is having some pending maintenance and probably its time to change the car. So, I started off with a bit of search on current models in market, tech specs, features, looks and ofcourse the 'cash-outflow'! The final decision not withstanding, I am enjoying this process of learning the stuff all over again. Engine BHP, multi-point fuel injection, inline 4-cylinder, compression ratio and gear ratios is driving me nuts. And when I saw the gear ratios of Swift was slightly taken aback - it was 0.9 for 4th and close to 0.7 for 5th - thats a lot of overdrive - slightly more than Santro and I was thinking how would it have an influence on the performance. Then I saw, the engine is actually a power house - 87BHP of raw power and probably that has helped in higher overdrive of higher gears. I would wanna test drive Swift, coz another interesting part is that there is a huge difference in ratio of 1st gear and 2nd. Probably it implies that is a high speed engine with good lower end torque. In normal english, it implies that for city drive, 2nd gear can have a wide speed range. I need to test drive swift now...!!

I saw ABS somewhere and said, I know I know it all. Its has something to do with braking at turns and it is a bit of controlled electronic braking. Just when I felt confident of "I still understand the basics", my friend Maharaj came on chat - this dude, having done elec and instru in Bits is now doing masters in automobiles - so, its always fun. I thought of 'vibing' about my 'sudden return to form', but was thunderstruck when maharaj mentioned something called 'ESP' - I was completely taken aback! There was a sudden depreciation in my self-worth as a potential automobile engineer! Went back again to my friend wikipedia to ghot up 'ESP'. But...

So, was an interesting day, when once I thought 'I know it all' in Auto and then there was a sudden transformation towards the end of the day when I realised that 'the auto world has moved ahead'. With a dent to my auto ego, I decided to switch off music and crash!!

The effect of emotions

2005-08-14T11:41:00.000+08:00

‘I don’t give a damn’, ‘I know this is not good for me, but I like it the way it is’. These are many decisions that we tend to make often, however when we look back and give it a thought, often we realize that we have stepped out of the ‘logical world’ to a world governed by our emotions. However, the positive side to it is compelling enough for us to forget the negatives – positive emotions make this life worth living – somehow we all want to differentiate ourselves from machines and robots.

Before going in deep into what I have been struggling with for sometime, I want to give a logical overview to what made me think in this direction. I took help of a very close friend for this: mathematics! - another example of emotions, though positive.

In many ways, life to me should be governed by linear programming – we keep allocating our resources or making decisions in a way to maximize the objective function. <click here to know more about LP>. Now this objective function is extremely subjective as we all have different goals in life, different ways to look at what we consider as good and a different picture of ourselves sometime down the time line. So, I will leave this debate out of this discussion, but our maximizing function could be anything – getting to certain position, being a CEO of a top notch firm, doing maximum good to humanity, making difference to the way people lead lives, inventing something that could change the way we live or simply being a balanced person successful in most arenas of personal life without being exceptional at any.

I believe that the above is something extremely personal and would range from person to person, probably differing by the stage of life we are at and the cycle of success and failure we have been through. So, what is common is that we all have or rather should have a maximizing function governing our lives, but the coefficients (could be zero for variables that don’t mean much to us) that each of us assign to the above variables are a matter of personal choice and the perception of our picture of the ‘ideal life’.

Now we move to defining the constraints to the linear problem. In the LP of our lives, the constraints could be many like our intellectual ability, the opportunities in the place around us, our input in terms of pure hard work, our prior commitments to other spheres that act as a constraint, our resources (sometimes monitory) that we can afford to invest in to get future gains (e.g. education) and then our emotional balance. There are many other constraints that we can think of, however the discussion from now on would focus on our emotions. However, given that there are so many other factors/constraints that can limit us from achieving our "full potential", why should be focus on emotions?

There are two reasons for it in my view. One is that we only work to improve the constraints that are within our ‘locus of control’ or very simply, we can bring about a change in factors like emotions and cannot go all the way to improve the GDP and education opportunities in our respective countries.

The other reason and the motivation behind this discussion is the very nature of LP. Now, let me demonstrate the LP that I was talking of in a very simple one dimension world:

Our objective function:

Maximize x – let it be a very simple objective function

The constraints being:
x <= 10 – say for intellectual ability
x <= 20 – say for the amount of input we can put in
x <= 15 – say for the opportunities available
x <= 30 – say for our prior commitments towards family, etc
x <= 4 – for our emotional balance

The solution to the above simple LP would be x=4. So, when we look back at other factors, we have achieved only 40% of what our intellectual ability promises, 20% of the input that we can provide in, 26% of the opportunities made available to us, 13% of prior commitments and 100% of our emotional capability!

The above example is to demonstrate the effect of one constraint, in actual ‘LP of life’, there would be many dimensions/variables making it complex, thought the understanding of relaxing a constraint would remain the same.

The above ‘efficiencies’ could have looked a lot better if we had somehow made the constraint of emotional balance a bit softer. i.e. someone with better emotional balance could have utilized some of these externalities in a better way.

There have been many theories that have tried to reduce the effect of negative emotions. One of these is ‘detachment’ – in lines with care about your input and not exactly the rewards that you would get. This sounds good to control negative emotions, once you are not deeply involved emotionally, the outcome will not ‘hurt’ you in anyway. But, I have never been able to follow this, not because I cannot ‘detach’ myself, but because I feel the drive and the motivation would die down if the final result if kept out of the equation. This is true in my view as there are many critical decisions that we need to make in pursuit of any goal or objective function and without the focus on the outcome, it is very likely that lesser important things would grab our attention, or with obstacles on the path, we might not have the perseverance to go all the way without keeping in mind the outcome.

Given the draw back of the above theory, in an ideal world, I would want to follow the ‘modulus function’ – wherein, the positive emotions stay the way they should and I have internal mechanisms to counter negative emotions. It is much easier said than done. In the last few months I have tried to hunt for ways to get to that state, but it is not easy. And this probably is the motivation behind this discussion.

In my view, there are many things that come in the way in achieving the ‘modulus function’ state: the biggest problem that I think in these situations is ‘ego’ – if it was not for our own ego, it would have been so easy to just let go the negative emotions. A lesser word for ego is ‘self respect’ or the need that we all have to be ‘counted in the scheme of things’. I have been trying to find answers to this puzzle. It would be great if you could help me with this with your views, suggestions and an answer to the ‘ego conundrum’. I would also like to know if the above logic of looking at ‘life as LP’ is the most appropriate way. The other way is to look at it as a regression equation, wherein one variable/constraint cannot have as big an effect as in LP.

Please mail me your views at anupammathur11@yahoo.com or reply to this post with your comments.

My Blog!

2004-09-24T16:18:00.000+08:00

Hey all,

Welocome! will soon update this one!

~anupam