a mARTIAN dIARY

Was thinking of putting up all the links that I use together at a common place so that it would be useful to others too. It lives out of the blog chronology so that I can keep on updating…

Do let me know if you guys think other links should be added.

It can be found @ eEDA Engineer’s Survival Kit

Recently (ok not so recently) I read something in our beloved “Times Of India” that made me feel quite proud and I even mentioned it one of my previous posts. It was an article about how under the Bush regime India was removed from the “developing” list of companies and put into the bracket of “transforming” economies.

India was among the top recipients of US aid in 1960s when it was considered a basket case and termed an "underdeveloped country". It stood a distance fourth behind Israel, Egypt and Russia in 1994 in terms of US aid. As for the fiscal year 2008, it will not even be in the the top 20.

I had read the it in the hard copy of TOI that comes to my house and recently was searching for an online version, when one the links that google popped up was this blog by Randeep Ramesh. It is an analysis on the genesis of the TOI article and then he moves on to the same news being reported the Washington Post.

The bulk of the $23 billion in annual U.S. foreign aid goes to a handful of key countries, leaving about 120 nations to battle over $3 billion of the pie. India, for example, is one of the big losers in Rice’s foreign aid revolution. All U.S. aid to assist India in education, women’s rights, democracy and sanitation is terminated under the new system. Overall aid to India, where 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day, would be cut 35 percent in 2008, to $81 million, on the theory that India has one of the best-performing economies in the world. Under a detailed grid that Tobias developed, India is labeled a "transforming" country, in contrast to Pakistan and Bangladesh, which are labeled "developing" countries. As a result, India’s slice of aid is cut. Assistance to countries such as Nepal, Congo and the Philippines also was cut, while democracy programs were reduced in Eastern Europe and Russia. Meanwhile, huge sums are devoted to administration priorities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As Ramesh has pointed out, in the TOI view the whole “cutting of aid” is  a good thing where the Washington Post talks about India being the loser here. So the immediate question that comes to ones mind is -: is one of the pieces blatantly misleading the readers or are there two sides to the coin?

I feel it’s more of the latter since this is a case where perceptions play an important role for to answer that question we will have to try and answer other un-answerable questions like how good the Government Aid mechanism is? or how much of the current aid is actually essential?

Government Aid mechanisms are something that I have never been convinced about. I know I don’t have the right to preach from the armchair since I don’t know the actuality of the same first hand, but since the money has to go thru the same class of beaurocrats that I see every day, I can extrapolate how much of the money that would actually reach the people who it is intended for in a form that is useful to them. I remember reading somewhere that for every 10$ that comes into India as aid only 1$ or less reach the poor. I know better than to believe in such kind of statistics but still in this case I am convinced in the authenticity of that statement to some extent

I can imagine that some countries might have had powerful lobbies that must have lead to India being removed, while they are still in list, but this being the case, it is a good feeling to know that your country is no longer considered among the last set of countries (socio and econo -wise) what even be the motives behind such a classification.

It’s very easy for me to say that since I do not come under the bracket of people who are being deprived but, like I said earlier, the question of who are the actual beneficiaries of the aid programmes running currently is not very clear. But to solve this moral dilemma the idea by Seadipper at Ramesh’s blog (as a comment) seems very apt. He/She argues that the aid should take a route of charities since the Govt aid mechanisms in most of the countries mentioned are not any better.

As long as the intent and nature of the charities are credible enough, this seems to be a very good solution and I feel this should be the way to go.

Recently during an internal class on Innovation, I was inspired by a story of how self cleaning windows/cloths for sky scrapers were inspired by our very own national plant The Lotus. A classic example of “learning from unusual sources”! It was an instant hit with my mind, which loves to draw analogies.

Fast forward to present, as I was driving to office in the morning, I could see ample signs of the grand Durga Puja festivities that were concluded yesterday. During my “studying” days  Durga Puja or Puja Holidays has always be something that I looked forward to since it meant a 10 day holiday for us KV’ties and also no studying for 2 days where you would do “aitha puja”. After moving to Bangalore, the word “festivities” have had another scene attached to them in the sequence of images that one attaches to a word, a image of a myriad of flowers, cacophonous bursting of crackers and the vivid lighting associated with them. Not to suggest that we don’t have that back in Kerala, but here it is stretched to the limits (Yes I have not watched thrissur pooram which my friend assures me is much bigger) , probably due to the closer proximity of flower growing regions as well as fireworks producing region (the latter I am not sure about).

Anyway, as I was navigating my way thru a thick colorful patch in the road, which till yesterday was embellishing someone’s beloved vehicle in a different form factor more akin to a floral pattern than the thick muddy paste that it was now, something stuck me.

The demand and supply relation of flowers!

Imagine the normal demand for flowers is some value of X Kg per day. This ‘normal’ demand would be constituted largely by demands from temples, homes for decoration (of puja rooms and framed photographs alike) and lastly but most importantly (from the sustenance of South-Indian race point of view) aphrodisiacal decoration of tresses. Now the next local maxima in the demand vs. supply plot would come on Sundays and other auspicious “marriage” days, which may push by the X by a factor of 3-4.  And the absolute maximums would come on festival days where the demand can spiral up to 10-20 X.

Now, take another look at the commodity here, its flowers, a sweet smelling, high on water content, easily perishable commodity, which has a shelf life of 1-2 days. Naturally this question of meeting demand was not asked just yesterday and the growing patterns have emerged and other supply chain techniques have evolved to solve it. An inquiry would probably give us more insight to the patterns and “innovations” that this has brought about and if one looks closely enough we might be able to abstract and get the patterns for the same.

Now coming back to our familiar world of 1’s and 0’s. Consider a server that hosts a college website. On a normal day the traffic would be X. On the day that an assignment is to be submitted (assuming that it is given online) the traffic would increase to 2X-3X with the frantic downloading of the pdf’s before the deadline. Again on the day of the result announcement (say of a test like CAT for MBA which 1-2 lakh ppl write each year) the traffic would be (number overflow) * X.
 
Same would be case of a site streaming online media (cricket for example) on the day there is an Indo-Pak game and all the poor engineers are stuck at office (assuming that the web administrator is kind enough not to block the site)

After seeing the similarities in the two situations, can’t the solutions of the former be explored to get a solution for the latter?

Seems like a very good Initiative  

 @ SmallSteps

What can a little bag do?

• Every single bag can effectively prevent dumping of 200 throw-away plastic bags.
• Every single bag can provide a meaningful job to women who are empowering themselves.
• Every single bag can educate a whole family about environmental issues.

(I have been trying to write this for a LOOOOOONG time now….its time I stop writing  and post )

This a post I started writing while I was still in UK, but finally got myself to complete(?) it around 2-3 months after I reached back home. Even though I had expected that some things might change in this while, I never thought that that my first sentence would itself be invalidated as TOI recently reported that Washington now sees India as a "transforming" economy and longer a "developing" nation…..still here goes….

Coming from developing country like india,with  "ing" given the most emphasis , this Anglo experience has been a…hmm….eye opener of sorts. For starters let me make it clear that I would not trade by birth country for anything in the world, but that does not mean that I believe in the "mera bharat mahan" one liner and shun all that un-Indian. Of course India is great, but that greatness does not stem from the fact that other countries are not. Its greatness lies in its rich already existing culture and more importantly its ability to accept the greatness of other cultures and try to imbibe the foreign greatness into its culture much like English, the language, which now must have borrowed/accepted from almost every language in the world.

Like my (former) room mate says, I can safely say that I am a pretty anglicized  person, I guess that what 22(-x) years of watching / reading English/American (yep I finally consider myself to be knowledgeable enough to understand the diff)  culture would do to you ( x being a convenient parameter that I am unable to quantify with my current memory ) but still reading and watching on the TV is completely different from coming to the place and actually living there as "one among them". I make it sound like some government spies on reconnaissance mission don’t I? Well I guess that pretty much what I am doing in a sense, except for that fact that the information that I gather will be used only by me and for far less destructive purposes I assure you .

Deciding to stay with Little (Na she’s not little, actually she’s on the heavier side but don’t tell her I said that??? Hehe just kidding….shes actually very good looking a "headturner" ) Miss L is probably the best decision that I made after coming to Southampton. I can understand what’s running thru the minds of most people who think like red blooded males. But sorry to break the fantasy . Read On.

Even from a purely logical point of view it’s the best decision, why? think of the alternative, I live in Southampton for 3 months, with very less Anglo contact , visiting all the places enjoying the scenery and seeing all things….but at the end of that the learning’s I would have would be substantially less that what I have made now. But staying with her, the discussions I have had with her have in a way expended my views on….to quote Douglas Adams…..“Life, universe and everything else”….. by injecting elements/viewpoints hereto totally alien and unimaginable to a Indian like me. But beyond every shred of logic and reason, the reasons that makes me glad that I choose it is that  I got to meet and know a wonderful person like L, who I know will remain a friend for life.

Part of this post is being typed in from a Southampton City council library, which offers free internet and a wide selection of good book I might add….and all that FREE! . I am not saying that it’s a huge deal but me being a connoisseur of all things free, its will surely stick out as one of the “experiences” during my brief English interlude.

Sru has always said that I am a person how always thinks about big things in life and in the process miss out the little things, Probably she’s true about the old me but I think over time, her repeated nagging has had some effect as some of the most clear tings in my memory are mostly small, silly incidents. There was this one time that I was trying to get into a Subway at Portswood for the first time. Maybe I was thinking about something else, but I was going on pushing a door which has PULL written right on top and after a while the person standing behind me wonder where this buffoon is from stepped up and pulled the door It was a really embarrassing moment which took the full fun out of the 2.49 pounds I spend on a chicken tirekeani(?) sandwich.

Also initially when I moved in, the room I got was just cleaned and the bed sheets and another thing cloth, let call it the “X” was lying on the bed. Now X was a two layer cloth which had dimensions similar to that of a bed sheet. Closed inspection would have revealed to me the similarity the of its structure with a pillow cover and I would probably have guessed out the use. But lets say I was not very observant. So taking X as X( a unknown thing) I thought that’s its just a strange type of bed sheet and put it on top. I thought to me obelix style “These English are crazy…tap…tap…tap”. For first few says, my roommate and landlord Miss L saw it, but was confused as to whether or not it would be polite to ask me. But later she mustered up enough courage (?) to asked me why I was using X in the way I was using it. Turns our X was something that was called duvet and I was being a real dufus

Moving on to other things, another strange (?) thing I noticed is the freezing culture. Probably its not right on my part to expand a habit I saw with a person (L) to the macroscopic level and generalize it to the whole of English populous , but if I remember correctly, Miss L said that its pretty common there. Kitchen is probably the place where the probability of finding me in house is least (expect for some snack raids) but still I feel here we don’t have dedicated freezers to freeze cooked food for one month or so. (Correction some so my INDIAN female colleagues (Great Miss J and gang) confirmed that they make their poor parents cook and pack food for them for the whole month and freeze it and thaw it as required and eat (ugh!) )  

The English seem to have no qualms about distributing free pamphlets. No this is not your usual “Free* Computer Class” pamphlets that your get daily morning courtesy your paper-walla, but really good ones, not limited to 3 colors and with “information” you can use and collecting them was a temporary hobby I took up there. Anywhere I went, some info or the other was available as free pamphlets and I would jump to get a pamphlet on football stadium with the same vigor as for one on 19th century art and literature.

An aspect(s) of English life that I have seen poked at time and time again by “American” sitcoms – the extremes – the courteousness of English people and the extreme hooliganism on the other side. And the funny thing is the hooligans are really nice people too ???. (Probably hooligan is a wrong word but I am sure that my English brethren will forgive me for my limited vocabulary). My experience on my Everton Trip are testament to that.

One thing that I regret not having got a taste of is the Pub scene in UK. My dear Miss L had invited me a lot of time, but I declined conjuring up a variety of imaginative reasons which in truth were just a cover up for my insecurity. My insecurity of being judged as an Indian (even though that I knew would never happen since L’s friends were the most friendly people I could have hope for (and more)) and also the fear of conducting a experiment whose results can be very unpredictable (me drinking alcohol). But the party we had at our place for L’s friends was as close as it got

To conclude, I feel that I have had a lot of learning’s, experiences etc which would take me ages to put here and a lot of them were tacit and cannot be put on paper, but the it suffices to say that the infusion of a totally different culture has affected my mindset (for the better I hope), expanded my views and has left a footprint that will survive till my death (you if believe in afterlife then too)

And if you ask me to name the two best things that happened while I was there, I would say with out a blink my Everton Visit and getting a friend like Miss L