Paperless

Wish that word came true. Unfortunately, not everyone is comfortable about going Paperless. I am a staunch believer in conservation and practice it to the utmost extent possible. When I was at home in Chennai, I remember using the local bus-tickets for writing the grocery list when going to the market. The rear side of the ticket will be blank and this space can be used to scribble something. I believe that if I cannot eliminate the cutting of trees, I can atleast work towards reducing it.

I happened to be browsing around for some tool to place notes on my desktop. Suddenly, I felt like a fairy waved her magic wand and .....poof... I found this. Wow, such a simple and easy tool. Best of all, I can reduce the use of the paper based Post-its. My desktop looks neat as well without all those colorful notes hanging out like ears. Moreover, all the notes are so legible (good way to hide my bad handwriting). I can also include pictures and setup reminders for any to-do tasks. And all of this, right from the desktop. What could be simpler? The free version doesn't offer much of communication features, but I'm pretty happy without it.

I wish everyone could switch to digital media for storage so that we don't need paper anymore. That would ensure the existence of our forests and in turn - us.

Mother Nature's Fury

It was sad to hear the news about the earthquake in Indonesia yesterday. My deepest condolences to the people who were directly or indirectly affected by the catastrophe. 3000+ lives lost in an instant. The news made me both sad and angry. Sad at all the suffering and angry at the helplessness of man at the feet of nature. I don't think any of those people deserved the kind of fate that occurred to them, moroever, caused by mother nature. Sometimes it really scares the daylights out of me to know that we can't do anything about it except stand there and watch the destruction. Absolutely stripped of any kind of defense against such incidents, earthquakes have the tendency of leaving a permanent scar in the area that they attack. It's pretty puzzling to know that we have the technology to forecast the weather above the ground for the next 10 days, but don't have any such system for forecasting what happens below.

I was thinking about a system to reduce if not eliminate such earthquakes and decrease the damage caused due to them. An earthquake occurs when the pressure caused due to the collision of plates beneath the surface of the earth is suddenly released. We already have a map of the various faults beneath the earth and also the places where the different plates collide or overlap. If we know that there is intense pressure activity at some point along a fault line, we could try to release that pressure by evacuating the area near the fault and using explosives (probably nuclear) to cause a disturbance and thereby triggering a premature release of the built-up pressure. The task of deciding the best location to place the explosives and the area of evacuation would just be a matter of using geology, mathematics, physics and engineering. I'm no geo-science student, so my idea could be totally stupid. I was just thinking from an engineering point of view. I got the inspiration for this idea when frying pooris. Most of the times I noticed that the steam that builds up inside the poori suddenly erupts from a crack on the skin which occurs at some random point. However, I noticed that if I made a small incision at a specified point, the steam would escape from there and nowhere else. If you imagine the poori as the earth and the steam as the pressure, then I'm sure you would realize what I'm talking about.

We may try as much as we can, however, I guess certain things in life are just not within our control and we need to accept this fact. However, it is highly unacceptable to realize that we are still living at the mercy of nature. I would like to see a denial of that statement in the near future.

Practical Poetry!

Just happened to get into a romantic mood, and these lines flowed out of my mind like a stream emerging from a glacier (Oh my God, guess I'm possessed by a poet's spirit today). Anyway, this is to my love, so here goes:

If God had given me three wishes,
I would make use of only two.
First to get me a job in the same company as yours;
And second, to give the third wish to you!

-- Flavin

Overheard

I was travelling back home by tram this evening when I overheard a really sweet conversation between a small girl (age 3 or 4) and her mom. It took place in German, so I'm translating it here:

Girl: "Mommy, Who drives this tram?"
Mom: "Its driven by a nice man called the tram-driver ('Bahnfahrer' in German)"
Girl: "Mommy, can I also become a tram-driver?"
Mom: "Oh yes, sweetheart, you certainly can."
Girl: "What do I need to do for that?"
Mom: "You have to go to the office of KVB ('KoelnVerkehrsBetrieb', the local transport authority for Cologne) and tell them that you are interested. They will give you a form to fill up. After that, they will conduct some tests that you will have to pass. Then comes training, and finally you will become a tram-driver. You will also earn money at the end."
Girl: "Mommy, can we get that form today?"
Mom: "No darling, you have to first grow up and then we can do that."
Girl: "Oh ok. Then I will grow up soon and become a tram-driver. But, I am a girl. Can I do the job of that nice man?"
Mom: "Oh yes, nowadays girls do a lot of jobs that men do. They drive trams, work with machines, build houses, and do a lot of other things. So you can do the same as well."

(....Tram stop arrives.)

Mom: (Kisses her child) .."Come my little treasure, lets get down."

Wasn't that a sweet conversation?

I imagined how the same conversation would be if it was an Indian kid and mom. Just the thought of it tickled my ribs.

(Indian version)
Girl: "Mom, Who drives this tram?"
Mom: "One poor man, who has no better job!"
Girl: "Mommy, I want to become a tram-driver when I grow up."
Mom: (Slaps girl on cheek) "...Shut your mouth and sit quietly. Think about becoming a doctor or an engineer, not a stupid tram-driver."

+2 Results are out again

Today, many students who wrote the +2 exams in Tamilnadu must have felt like God on the 7th day of His creation. "Phew! Finally done with it and lucky to get away with good marks!". It wouldn't have been so for a few others. Atleast the statistics don't paint a good picture. It seems the pass percentage has gone down to 74.5 compared to 76.8 last year. The reason cited was the change in syllabus last year.

Another interesting fact to note during these exams is that the girls always top the charts. The pass percentage of girls this time is 77.1 compared to the boys who stand at 71.7. This is not just the trend this year, but has been the same for almost all the years. Girls always outshine boys when it comes to studies. But, I just gave it a thought. Why doesn’t the same percentage reflect in the employment statistics? I consider this a serious question. I know many girls who have such good educational backgrounds, but have not been given a chance to utilize the knowledge. Most of them ultimately end up in managing a home and taking care of family. I wouldn’t say this is bad, but we need to think about a feature called ‘Opportunity Cost’.

Let me explain. We know how difficult it is to get an admission into a primary school, secondary school, college, university, etc. The statistics show that girls perform better than the guys, hence manage to get admissions in their preferred institutions. Also consider the fact that a school/college/university with a 100 seats normally gets around 10,000 applications. So, ultimately 9,900 students are denied an opportunity. If we consider these 100 students (assuming 50 are girls), we can easily conclude that not all the girls in this batch would go ahead and seek employment. Most of them would ultimately land up as a housewife (I don’t say all but most). What it means is that, the genuine candidates who wanted to obtain education for seeking employment were denied of an opportunity. If the parents were clear about the future of their children then why make them get all these degrees?

I feel that the investment of time/money is not really being utilized. But what pains me more is that such people are grabbing away the chance from people who are in great need of it. We need to put in an effort to foresee the future to some extent. We need to understand that our actions are not only going to affect our lives but also the lives of others. I do not mean to say that girls should not take up education or employment. That is definitely not my intent. I would be happy to see an India which has more girls in schools, colleges and offices. This blog just voices the cries of the many girls who were denied an opportunity by others who took up theirs and ultimately landed up without doing justice to their education.

Rain Rain Go Away

Another dull Monday morning today, and what better to make it even more dull than my worst enemy..'Rain'. Supposed to be summer now, but these rain-clouds keep blowing around and pissing (excuse my language) on my head. Sometimes I wonder why would this city ever need rain when every inch is covered with tarred roads or concrete.

Wish mother nature had some better plans of keeping rain away from people like me. May be there should be a special kind of equipment in every city which could attract these clouds over them and squeeze the rain out and fill it in tanks. How nice that could have been. The rest of the city could enjoy the wonderful sunshine and at the same time also have its water supply.

Walking around in the rain with a raincoat or umbrella, the splish-splash of the watter puddles, the chocolate sludge, the spray from vehicles zooming by, oh gosh, its a horrible time. You must've known by now that the rain is an unwelcome friend in my life.

Call Center Movie

Yes, that's actually the name of the movie. A friend sent me the link and I found it to be very interesting. It's a short comedy film which brings out the tough situation that a person in the Bronx faces when his call gets routed to a Babu in India. This guy in India keeps getting calls from customers and at one point of time, he is unable to face the pressure. To check out how he handles the customers (specifically note the use of different call-center lingo) you've got to watch the movie.

Death of the Internet?

Feeling shivers down your spine? No, this ain't a page from a nightmare, but a fact of the future. The big shots are planning to control the internet. The same thing that happened to the cable TV system sometime ago is gonna happen to the internet, i.e. Conditional Access. What you access is going to be controlled based on the whims and fancies of the people who offer the connection to you.

After reading about it I felt like someone just shoved a gas-mask over me with a valve-controlled tube supplying air from outside. I've become so dependent (I know many have) on the internet that it's almost second to oxygen in terms of importance. I definitely wouldn't want anyone controlling the air that I breathe, so why should anyone do it for the internet? Moreover, the internet is not owned by anyone, so why this change all of a sudden? Has someone discovered a business case out of all this?

Anyway, I feel anything that affects the internet today is almost on par with a global catastrophe. Not convinced? Then check this to know more.

Sparking Static

Zzzzzzaappp.....Ouch! That is probably the 1724th time that I've been zapped by this phenomenon called Static Electricity! He is the first guy who wishes me every morning when I touch the office door handle. That reminds me of Peter from Office Space (1992 version), when he gets so irritated with the zapping from his office door handle every morning that he finally decides to drill the whole handle out. I wish I had that much liberty to do that.

I don't remember being affected so much by static when I was in India, it's only after coming to Germany that I had to meet with this crazy stuff. That's partly due to the fact that Germany is a cold country, so we need to wear warm clothes most of the time and those are good agents for collecting charges when they rub against each other/the body. The shock is not harmful as plugging your finger into the socket at home, but it does scare the daylights out of me. There have been instances when I've hurt myself by banging my elbow somewhere due to the reaction to that shocking experience.

I planned to eliminate this misery so I read through the internet about a way to prevent the sudden reaction and found that it could be minimized if I held a conducting object which made contact with my body over a larger surface area. I planned to check this out, so the next morning, before I could touch the door handle, I took my key from my pocket, held onto it firmly and approached the handle very carefully. Just as the tip of the key was about 2 mm away from the handle, I saw a bluish-white spark zapping between the key and handle. I was like Yeeeiieeekkkk! But, wait a minute, I didn't feel anything. Yippeeeeeeee, I felt like proclaiming what Archimedes proclaimed years ago.

I imagined my problem was solved, but I was proved wrong in a few minutes. I imagined that I got discharged completely, so I went in, settled down at my desk and went to the coffee kitchen. I touched the tap and Zappppppp...Eeeoouccchhh! Oh my God, I wasn't completely discharged after all. I touched the tap again and this time nothing happened, obviously I got discharged at the tap. I got my cup of coffee and went to my desk. I touched my laptop and Zaaappppppp....Yeeehhaaaaaa! At this time, my mouth was brimming with filth that was waiting to be dumped out. This was getting to be crazy. Oh God please save me!

Through trial and error (the way engineers work) I found out that my laptop and the tap in the coffee kitchen are oppositely charged. So if I get discharged at one place, I get charged at the other. My understanding was proved right by the key technique. I was amazed (shocked infact) to find out that my key sparked both at the laptop and the water tap. This has just gone over the limit now.

Solutions to the problem? Well, I would consider wearing rubber gloves, however I hate the stink of rubber. Wish I had some special kind of goggles (or something like that) with which I could see 'Charge' and determine if it is the same charge as my body or not. It could possibly include colour coding to determine the potential so that I can know if its gonna be mild or strong. Anyway, till some bright Spark comes up with a good idea, I've got my good old key to save me. If anyone has a better idea please do share it coz I would like to know about some permanent solution.....Zaaaaaappppppp........Yiieeeooouucchhhhh. Sorry, my colleague just discharged himself through me.

Yippeeee I've got my Blogspot!!!

Phew! That was a tough decision to make. To have a blogspot or not. But, I guess it isn't such a bad idea after all. I've managed to muster enough courage after seeing my friends appearing to be Pros on this relatively new territory.

I decided to name my spot as Virtual Vindaloo. Virtual for obvious reasons, and 'Vindaloo' to have a connection with my cultural roots. My mother tongue is Konkani (for those of you who have no idea of it, it's spoken along the western coast of India; around Goa, Mangalore) so I wanted to bring in a cultural 'taste' to this blog. For all those who guessed that Vindaloo is the name of a microbe on Mars, here is something to enlighten you. Personally, I just love the food cooked in a traditional konkan home. Especially the fish and pork mmmmmmmh!

I need to thank my friends Anu and Arun for giving me the courage to start my own blog. Hope I could cook up a special Vindaloo for you guys. Anyway, now that I've got started, I hope I am successful in making this blog as tasty as possible.

Tumcho Flavin!

(That's konkani for Yours)