Enlightened

Experiencing Grief

2012-01-21T14:41:00.001+05:30

Recently my uncle passed away at my native town of Trichy. As soon as the news reached me, my wife and I got into the action mode. We called other relations, arranged for rituals, transportation etc. As we drove from Chennai, I was wondering if I am an emotionless task master.

A little later, grief enveloped me like a breeze and I cried. The sight of the dead body, his personal items and favorite food triggered the grief over the next couple of days and I didn't hold back by grief. There is a sense of satisfaction every time I experienced it. When people do not know what it is to experience, they talk. I was harsh on cousin who kept talking at the time of grieving. Grief is as normal as breathing and not experiencing it would amount to suffocation.

An important factor in Indian cultures is the presence of rituals and music that force people to grieve. Oppari (Rudaali) and other rituals (where visitors remind the deeds of the departed) are supposed to let the emotion out. Due to various conditioning, people tend to skip the experience. A friend who considers himself a very rational, held back on the death of his mother. A year later, when he visited a nearby temple, his defense broke and he let himself cry.

Life throws us a lot of situations where emotions like grief strike us. There is no escape. Except at occasions like death where rituals let you experience the emotion, we skip it. Trust me - experiencing is like breathing and so - to experience is to live.

தாத்தாவும் கப்பல் ஒட்டிய தமிழர்களும்

2011-12-24T21:12:00.002+05:30

வருடம் 1961.

ஒரு வழியாக தாத்தாவை சம்மதிக்க வைத்தாகி விட்டது. அவரும் அதிகம் பயன் படுத்தாத ஒரு சட்டையை மாட்டிக்கொண்டுவிட்டார். ரேழியில் செருப்பை மாட்டிக்கொள்ளும்போது கொஞ்சம் யோசிப்பது போல நின்றார்.

வீட்டில் எல்லோருக்கும் மிக ஆச்சர்யமான விஷயம் - தாத்தா சினிமாவிற்கு கிளம்புவது. சினிமா பற்றி அவருக்கு நல்ல அபிப்ராயம் கிடையாது. அவர் கடைசீயாக பார்த்த படம் நாகையா நடித்த சக்ரதாரி. சினிமா போய்விட்டு லேட்டாக வீட்டுக்கு வருவது இன்னும் கோபத்தை கொடுக்கும். ஒரு முறை மரியாதைக்குரிய மாப்பிள்ளையைக்கூட வெளியே நிறுத்தி வைத்திருக்கிறார்.

அப்படிப்பட்ட தாத்தா பார்க்கக் கிளம்பியது - கப்பலோட்டிய தமிழன் படம் பார்ப்பதற்கு. அவரை சம்மதிக்க அப்பாவும், சித்தப்பாவும் பகீரத பிரயத்தனம் செய்தார்கள். பரம எம்ஜியார் ரசிகரான சித்தப்பா, இதுவரை 5 தடவை ஒரு சிவாஜி படம் பார்த்தது இதுவே முதல் முறை. ஒவ்வொரு நாளும் பார்த்துவிட்டு, பிழியப்பிழிய அழுது, சிவந்த கண்களுடன் வருவது எல்லாருக்கும் தெரியும்.

கப்பலோட்டிய தமிழன் வ.உ.சிக்கும் தாத்தாவிற்கும் அறிமுகம் உண்டு. அந்த அனுபவத்தை தாத்தா சொல்ல கேட்டிருக்கிறேன்.

"நான் அப்ப மெடிகல் டிரைனி. என்னோட சீனியர் வ.உ.சிக்கு செக்-அப் செய்ய என்னை அனுப்பினார் - இன்சூரன்சுக்கு. நான் போன போது, அவர் இல்லை. அவர் வீட்டு அம்மா அடுப்பு, பாத்திரம் , அரிசி, காய் கொடுத்தா, நானே சமைச்சு சாப்பிட. (இது நடந்தது 1920களில்). அடுத்த நாள் காலையில் அவர் வந்தார், நான் செக்-அப் செஞ்சு ரிபோர்ட் எழுதிட்டு வந்துட்டேன்." இதை சொன்னபின் ரொம்ப நேரம் வ.உ.சியை சந்தித்த அனுபவத்தை அசை போடுவார் போல அமைதியாய் இருப்பார்.

வ.உ.சியில் ஆளுமை தாத்தாவை மிகவும் கவர்ந்திருக்க வேண்டும். பின் குடும்பம், பொறுப்பு என்று வந்த பின், காங்கிரசை ஆதரிப்பது, கதர் ஆடை அணிவதை தாண்டி, வ.உ.சி பற்றியோ, சுதந்திரப்போராட்டம் பற்றியோ அவர் அதிகம் ஈடுபாடு காண்பித்ததில்லை. சுதந்திரப்போராட்டம் பற்றிய படம் என்பதால் அவர் கொஞ்சம் மனம் மாறி சினிமா பார்க்க ஒத்துக்கொண்டிருக்கலாம்.

மீண்டும் 1961 . கிளம்ப தயாரான தாத்தா நின்றார். "வேணாண்டா. இந்த படம் பாத்ததுக்கப்புறம் எனக்கு வ.உ.சி முகம் ஞாபகம் இருக்காது, அந்த கூத்தாடி (sic ) முகந்தான் ஞாபகம் இருக்கும். Allow me to retain the memory of Chidambaram Pillai."

சட்டையை கழற்றிவிட்டு வெற்றிலை போட ஆரம்பித்து விட்டார். அதற்குப்பிறகு அப்பாவோ, சித்தப்பாவோ அவரை வற்புறுத்தவில்லை. ஒவ்வொரு தடவையும் சிவாஜி படம் பார்க்கும்போது, இந்த நிகழ்ச்சியை நினைவுகூற சித்தப்பா மறப்பதில்லை.

Why this kolaveri - A practical guide to anger management at workplace

2011-11-26T11:28:00.001+05:30

Pardon my urge get SEO brownie points with the title. I wanted to blog about fear for sometime, had conversations with colleagues on anger, rage, fear etc and finally the blog materialized in my mind and the title came from Dhanush.

I have heard the phrase, "mortally scared" in a few inappropriate contexts. Once someone used the term to express her reservation to travel by MTC bus, another person used it to describe the relationship with a business partner. I'd brush them aside as the effect of Americanized exaggeration. But coming back to fear, you'd be mortally scared when you are physically in danger. This is one category of fear to protect you from getting yourself killed.

And there is a psychological fear, the fear of losing your job, position, status in the society etc.

At workplace, either of the two may be used to enhance productivity or simply to get the job done. In jobs involving pure physical labor, the laborers were often beaten to get the work done. In more sophisticated jobs, invoking the psychological fear is considered to yield results. Abusive language, threat of dismissal come under this category.

In workplaces, the abused and threatened are stressed. Common psychology defines the response to such situations as fight-or-flight response. Due to the market conditions, such threats are no more effective in improving the quality of work, instead the stressed worker chooses flight as there is no scope in winning fights. If someone choose to fight in such scenario, it is usually a guerrilla war using all kinds of media - ranging from rest room graffiti to anonymous posts to mouthshut.

Top executives of today do have a reason for their rage, but targeting the fear of the subordinates hardly achieves the goals of improved productivity and quality of work. Often the rage is not followed up with a corrective action. Here is a simple way to handle it.

When poor quality of work or lack of progress troubles you, stay with the mood.
It would be a very uncomfortable feeling, both physically and psychologically.
Do not reason it out or react. Do not attempt to wriggle out of the situation by reasoning.
The uncomfortable feeling would fade away in a few minutes.
You will have an altogether different perspective to the problem.
That difference in perspective can throw up a number of options to address the situation - it may range from educating the subordinate to firing him. But it is sure that the action you take will be a good one for you and the subordinate. Such an action will be a rational one devoid of any emotional influence.

Try this and let me know if it works.

Shared dreams?

2011-10-26T18:55:00.000+05:30

"Where do you want to go, uncle?", asked my three year old nephew.
"M G Road", I said. His tricycle was the make believe auto-rickshaw. He took me around in Bangalore and even to Mysore.

He had created an environment and I agreed to stay in that environment. To us, the blue tricycle was the black auto-rickshaw and the car park was all of Bangalore.

[Small digression: When I narrated this to my son, he corrected me. It is not the environment we shared, but the experience or a dream. So, is the title.]

On a larger, real life scale, we have agreed on everything, I mean everything. Without that agreement, one won't make sense to the other.

Fire is fire for all of us, the experiences are visions of light, sensation of heat etc. Before man tamed fire, the agreed interpretation of fire could be that of a dreadful monster that burns.

There are millions of things that we have unconsciously agreed upon to live as a society. The communication would break if the agreement wasn't there. Remember the movie - 'The Gods must be crazy' where a bushmen try to interpret a coke bottle.

What if in one fine morning, we stop recognizing an object? What if we stop sharing the dream? That would be an interesting ... or bizarre?

Two views

2011-10-08T09:16:00.000+05:30

My recent interaction with colleagues and relations of my age pointed at a popular view of their worlds. My personal experience and a recent interview by writer Jayamohan pointed to another less popular view of the world. This article is a summary of my observations. It may not be humanly possible to switch from one view to another. The view is probably hard-wired in everyone's brain. I hope that just being aware of the other view might help in relationships.

Three of my recent long conversations were with people in corporate world. They viewed their role as a fighter in a war. They strategised, analyzed their own strengths and weaknesses, analyzed their opponents strength and weaknesses. A victory is well defined for them - "If I have my way, I win; otherwise I lose.". This view is applied in every relationship - between vendor and customer, employer-employee, boss-subordinate, interviewer-interviewee etc. I don't know enough about their family life to include their relationships with spouses, parents and kids. The generalization is - they are on a war in every situation; there is an "I" and the "other". The "I" should work hard to win over the other.

I have a different view of the world. There is a huge system in which the "I" have a role to play - like a gear in a machinery. Nothing more. The system functions as long as the gear performs fine. There is no victory or defeat. If the gear fails, the system fails. It might resume by replacing one gear with another. There are situations where one as an individual tries to fit in a larger system - say an organization. An interview or an interaction is just an attempt to fit the gear in the machinery. There is no personal victory or a loss. The same holds good in a vendor-customer, employer-employee relationships. The relationship attempts to be useful by having two mutually beneficial people.

The advantage of my view of the world is - there is no war - more importantly there are no losers. If a relationship breaks apart, it just means that the two gears do not work together, not that one gear won and the other lost.

I believe good systems survived longer because a larger members shared the gear-view of the world and many organizations failed because of a war view within its people.

I also realized that, it is simply not possible to switch views, especially for intelligent hard-working people. So, I stop at a blogging about it instead of preaching my view and try to have "my way" accepted by others.

Why Ayn Rand ceases to impress when I am over 40?

2011-06-10T10:37:00.000+05:30

It all started with my nephew's post of an extract from Fountainhead on Facebook. I found it hardly impressive. For the records I'm over 40 now and want to claim that I am worldly wiser. But the same text was so appealing when I was in college and during my early career. Though I didn't imagine myself to be Howard, I was arrogant about what I wanted to do. I came out of a TCS interview that I will never do COBOL, walked out of my first job because of differences with my boss. Even now I won't do COBOL, but when I walked out of the interview, I had no job, no good grades and had nothing to support my ego. (Even now, I have a secret fear that I may be forced to work for India's big "so called" technology companies. Thank God, it is only a fear.)

It is obvious that my perception changed with age. And I find it normal for a younger person to align with Ayn Rand just as it is normal for me to value collective work and greater good. Why is it normal for a young male to be individualistic?

I am limiting my theory to males. Females have a slightly different system and will keep them out of this post.

The mind has a notion of a physical self and a psychological self. Physical self starts at about 2-3 years of age when the child starts to feel "I". Till the onset of adolescence, physical self is enough to take care. The only constituent of the identity is the physical self. Academic, athletic and artistic performances play roles in the strength of this identity.

This identity is not enough to fit in a society. He has to have more strength to his identity to get a partner for procreation.

At about 12, 13, the psychological self starts. This is when the child begins to have opinions about society, politics, religion, economics etc. The observation and learnings happen till the boy is about 17-18. Then, the boys starts identifying himself with his views. The psychological self takes shape and adds itself to the identity.

This is required for social reasons. In a very simple scenario, the boy identifies himself with the clan and will be seen as someone to strengthen it. His chance of finding a partner increases, he will be seen as someone who will have children to strengthen the clan. Take an Afgan tribal as an example and you will see why aligning with jihad is natural for him. (Also note that such society wouldn't tolerate an Ayn Rand influenced individual.)

In a plural society, identifying with a caste, religion or race can be counter-productive. It would diminish the prospect of finding a partner. Also, having no additional identity would leave the boy in pre-adolescent stage. This is when boys align with ideologies of communism, capitalism etc. An example would be the societies in Indian cities between post independence till 1990.

There is a similarity between US in 1940s (Ayn Rand's Fountainhead days) and post liberalized India. Communism remained only on paper and in Kolkatta. Capitalism is established and there is nothing to fight for or against. That's when individualism appeals.

So, it is natural to be impressed by individualism for a middle/upper-middle class urban boy of age of 18-25 in India after 1990! The boy can claim to be an individualist and walk with an air of superiority. Serves the ego and self confidence, might help in finding a girl but not always.

Post 25, when the boy is a man, married and has responsibility of supporting a family, the reality dawns that individualism doesn't bring home the bacon.

Who powers the matrix? - Part III

2011-02-11T09:24:00.001+05:30

I would attribute the thoughts that we broadcast as the source of power for all these smaller matrices. As long as we process, amplify, invert and broadcast the thoughts, matrices will live. Their energy comes from your energy, transmitted as your thoughts with energy.

What if you stop transmitting your thoughts? What if you stop responding to the thoughts that come to you? It weakens, and might even die. You can't get thoughts about UFO in the busy streets of Chennai, even if you get to see and hear about them on news channels. You do not respond as an individual and you do not respond as a society. The thought doesn't get enough power to live.

But why would you respond? The core of a thought is fear. I'd like to leave it to the readers and get to the core of the thought to validate or invalidate my statement.

Fear is the carrier wave. The type of fear is a wrapper around this carrier. This type relates to your social status, location, weather, health, economics etc. If a type of fear can resonate with you, then you process it and transmit it, to be picked up by more people. If you do not resonate with any type of fear, including fear of death or total annihilation, no thought leaves you.

Your response to a thought depends upon how you define yourself. If you define yourself as belonging to a caste, religion or nationality, you will power the thought that relate to the destruction of your caste, religion or nationality. If your consciousness raises above these differences, you do not transmit any divisive thoughts.

If your consciousness has absolutely no identity, no thought leaves you. They don't even bother you. You are probably the chosen one or one among the chosen ones.

The Matrix I came to know about - Part II

2011-01-30T07:44:00.000+05:30

Read the first part here.

I guess this will be just the second part of a longer series. Before I continue, here are the disclaimers and acknowledgements.

Disclaimer 1: I can not claim ownership for the views I've presented. They are derived from a number of sources. The number is too hard to list, I'll try to acknowledge some of them. I won't be able to quote like an academic journal, but if there are inconsistencies, I am responsible for them and will try to fix them.
Disclaimer 2: The above is not the only disclaimer, more to come.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to my masters, Sri Bhgavan (Oneness University), J Krishnamurthy, creators of Matrix, the movie, computer scientists, whose insights into the functioning of the human brain that created modern computers and their software.

I was supposed to write about the lifetime of a thought, but I think history is more important. Let me narrate the history of the Matrix.

It all started as a simple network. I believe every species has its own network. A network in which thoughts - or roughly information, is exchanged. We haven't totally figured out how other species - from ants to elephants communicate. So, let's go with an assumption that a network exists for each species where basic emotions (fear - forest fire, predator, earthquake) and information (water hole, sweets nearby) can be exchanged. This network is used primarily for survival.

Humans too have this network, I call Matrix. We need a name. With this network early man could communicate and evolve his tools, before voice communication evolved. Over a period of time, the information exchanged had enormous growth and matrix had to handle lot of data. Humans are habitual exploiters.

The matrix had to respond faster, handle more information. Like any other network, it started caching them, to deliver content locally. This is nature's way of optimizing. For someone in Africa, it is enough to access information about wild animals, forest fires and famine. He doesn't need to prepare for the winter weather in Central Asia. Let's call this tribal matrix or Matrix 2.0. Tribal gods and Chieftains were like the System Administrators. They tightly managed the thoughts - with laws applicable to their society. The purpose of the tribal matrix is to ensure the welfare of the tribe - an attribute inherited from the simple Matrix 1.0. A deviant or rebellious thought wasn't encouraged. This was the beginning of the more powerful, controlling matrix.

Religious matrices must be 1.5.

Humans started communicating to this cache or the sub-network of Matrix. This sub-network was initially geographic. But as humans started occupying larger geographies, it had to divide further into regions and sub-regions and so on. So, there were village matrices and kingdom matrices, let's call them Matrix 3.

As people started travelling, exposure to different societies and their knowledge occurred. This gave rise to theories on societies, economics etc. These are idealogy matrices - Matrix 4.

The complex part is, the earlier versions continued to exist, wielding their powers on humans from time to time. People could be attached to multiple matrices at the same time. The problems of which matrix takes precedence in a situation hasn't been figured out by humans, for they have been too dependent on matrices and have given up their will to be on their own. People's decisions are influenced by the more powerful matrix at that time.

There are Agent Smiths - representatives of the millions of matrices all over the place, controlling what we get to think.

Continues....

The Matrix I came to know about

2011-01-26T08:25:00.000+05:30

The movie has been an all-time favorite of my family. Trying to comprehend the science behind was interesting one to many. To me, it is more about drawing parallel's to the mind and its working.

It all started when the question popped up in my mind - "Why do I get a thought, any thought and where does it go?"

A thought is usually triggered by a sensory event. For example, we see a red sign, an association happens in the brain between red and danger. Then thoughts take over - is it the Sensex/NASDAQ/Nikki dipping sign? is the market down today? What happened to my savings? With these questions, the thoughts would linger for a few minutes. To summarize, a thought is triggered by a sensory event, but is allowed to run given the set of facts that our brain has stored as association. Thought survives on the past facts and is about the future. For some strange reason, the thought doesn't survive the present. Let's equate a thought to an execution of a software - say playing a song or execution of a program.

But sometimes, there is no need for a sensory trigger. A thought just like that comes to you. How do we explain this? I would equate our brain to a radio or a computer that receives signals. Like a tuned radio, our brain receives only "some" signals. This is because of a set of physiological condition of the brain and some psychological conditions. I would equate it to hardware and firmware. So, our brain is more like a computer than a radio.

If a signal is received, the brain does some processing - strengthen it, invert it, modify it and transmits again. The thought signal floats around to be caught by another individual. The thought is not owned by the individuals but is survived by individuals who power it, modify it and create opposing ones. If people stop reacting to a thought, it would have died down.

This is the reason, why a tribal like thought doesn't survive the cities, where people do not respond to it. Thoughts about ghosts were prevalent a few centuries ago. Popular literature around the world mentioned them often, but not anymore, for people just stopped responding to them.

What is the lifetime of a thought? How is it born and how does it die? Does it even die like a weak signal?What is it made of? More on this in the next one.

Transcript of CBI Inquiry of A Raja

2011-01-22T20:34:00.000+05:30

For the benefit of those who are curious on the CBI inquiry that former telecom minister Raja had some time back.

Raja, knowing well that his language skills can result in misunderstanding, wanted to have an interpreter. He was also prepared by a team of experts at Chennai, before he boarded the flight to Delhi. A young CBI officer from Tamil Nadu was enthusiastic to play the interpreter role. Here is the transcript of the inquiry.

CBI Officer: Did you get any bribe from Swan and Unitech?
Interpreter: ஸ்வான், யூனிடெக் கிட்ட லஞ்சம வாங்கினீங்களா?
Raja: என்ன வாங்கினீங்களா?
Interpreter: What "did you get..."?
CBI Officer: Did you channel the money to a Swiss bank through hawala operators?
Interpreter: பணத்த சுவிஸ் பாங்குக்கு ஹவாலா வழியா அனுப்பினீங்களா?
Raja: என்ன அனுப்பினீங்களா
Interpreter: What "did you channel..."?
CBI Officer: Did you not disobey the Prime Minister?
Interpreter: நீங்க ப்ரைம் மினிஸ்டர் சொன்னத கேக்கலையா?
Raja: என்ன கேக்கலையா?
Interpreter: What "did you not disobey..."?

By now, the interpreter got a hang of the inquiry. He decided to speed up the process.
CBI Officer: Did you inform the companies about opening the licenses illegally?
Interpreter: What "did you inform..."?

CBI officer in-charge of the inquiry looked at his 100 page long questions. He asked his Deputy.
CBI Officer: I hope you have a soft copy of the questions.
Deputy: Yes Sir.
CBI Officer: Do you know MS-Office?
Deputy: [confused] Yes.... But why?
CBI Officer: Well, now you know how to structure the answers. Write some macros and fill up the answer section. We've got more important things to do.

As in other cases, with so many such questions unanswered, CBI has decided to close the case for want of details.

P.S: On further investigation, it was found that, Raja found the Chennai preparation quite ineffective. Raja's inspiration came from the comedy show he saw at his hotel room the previous night. For those of you looking for that piece of inspiration - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgANpyU48cw.

P.P.S: In gratitude, Vadivelu will be getting PadmaShri award this year. A பாராட்டு விழா for Vadivelu and Kalaignar is already planned. Invites are gone to all celebrities. Kalaignar TV will broadcast the program over 3 week-ends.

The ghost that walks

2011-01-07T09:49:00.001+05:30

"Appa, I think there is a ghost in the house.", said my five year old son. He didn't appear scared, but said it as a matter-of-fact.

The year was 2002, we had just returned from the US and were staying with my parents' at Trichy. My son, had too much of new things to see - trucks with hair (lorries with hay-stacks), all kinds of animals on streets, pampering grandmas, grand uncles with mustache like the monopoly man, aunts who would ask him to sing in Tamil. I knew it was a lot for a 5 year old to handle and wanted to give a patient hearing.

I asked, "Why do you think so?"

"Because I go to bed in one room and wake up in another. Some ghost must be carrying me and dropping me in the other room."

It was amusing. At my parent's place, the maid servant used to come early in the morning. In order not to wake up my son so early, one of us would carry him and let him sleep in another cleaned room. I explained it to my son. He wasn't impressed, my answer wasn't the cool one that he wanted to hear. We let it at that.

The next day, when I was in the bathroom, I heard someone closing the bolt from outside. I knew who it was. Later, I called out and my mother opened the door. When I came out my son was away in the living room. When I entered the living room, he saw me, he was surprised but his face lit up and said "You are THE ghost!"

My father's cough syrup

2010-12-19T14:06:00.001+05:30

There have been a few tweets from Google about teaching technology to parents. My brother and I had made a few attempts, but my parents were least interested. My father wouldn't try anything other than solitaire games and my mother is happy with her books. I used to feel that she must be thorough with all those stories, but at her age she must be forgetting a lot.

Now coming back to teaching technology, I didn't want to try again, but my father gave a chance. He complained about the cost of his cough syrup. I thought I could explain it. I could visualize the travel of that fifty rupee note from my father's pension account.

Preparing for a long story, I started - "Appa, are you proud that I am earning so much?" He didn't see any sense in my question. He appeared confused, "Why? I'm always proud of you.". I continued, "Good, let me tell you how I make so much money and that will answer your question on the price of cough syrup." He let me continue.

- "See Appa, the money you are paying for the cough syrup, is shared between so many people in between - the retailer, the wholesaler and the manufacturer."
- "Yes, I understand"
- "Let's follow the trail on the manufacturer as they get a big chunk of it. Who manufactures your cough syrup?"
He named a company, being a chronic asthmatic, he knew a lot about medicines and their manufacturers.
- "Well, this company has a lot of expenses - you know things like cost of raw materials, operational cost of manufacturing plants, distribution network, support staff, manage the market..."
- "I know about everything except the market."
I was glad I could get to my part of the story so fast.
- "See, just manufacturing and pushing it to distributors is not enough. They should know when to increase the production and where to focus on distribution."
- "So?"
- Here is where technology comes in - Your son, that is I, am a cog in the wheel that gives the information to the manufacturers about the market.
There are companies that collect market specific data about products. They load it in huge computers, programs are written in every step to load the data, process and report that data. This is called business intelligence. These programs are dependent on other programs - called databases, operating systems etc. Some of us write programs that are part of the databases, operating systems, and some write programs for loading, processing and reporting. And there are a number of people who manage these programmers.
All of us need to get paid, and paid well - to keep their parents proud. Now you know why your cough syrup is expensive."

I was satisfied with my explanation. He appeared more confused, a bit sad and said - "So, you are still dependent on me!"

My experiment with astrology

2010-12-07T21:27:00.000+05:30

I wasn't a big fan of predictions, but I surprised myself at deciding to learn Astrology from my neighbor. I flirted with palmistry when I was in college. Going all the way to learn Astrology is not something I could have predicted with my limited knowledge on palmistry.

It is one of those impulsive decisions I am known for. Last year, I decided to try my hand at learning to play Veena, it has been going on fine so far, except for the occasional guilty consciousness for not practicing enough, only when I see Rajesh Vaidhya on TV.

Coming back to my Astrology, I started with all earnestness, met the teacher on a Vijyadhasami day, gave a token guru dakshina, bought his book and two big workbooks - one as a notes book and the other as a record note. I called up my parents to send my horoscope and everyone's they know of. I searched for the horoscopes of Rajini, Jayalalitha and even Karunanidhi. Who cares if he doesn't believe in it!

My learning started in a strictly scientific way. I chose to take myself as the sample subject - that's the only subject I can claim to know. There are these planetary positions at the time of my birth. These are observations. And there rules. Applying the rules on the observation, I arrive at inferences. I cross-check it against my insignificant life and build my knowledge base.

Here, a brief intro about astrology and predictions. The predictions that you see in magazines consider about 8 parameter, that is, positions of eight planets with respect to the position of sun or moon at the time of birth. In Indian methodology, all are not planets. But, that's out of scope for this blog. For accurate predictions, the number of parameters are a lot more.

I began calculating planetary positions at different times to compare against eventful periods in my life. After a week, I realized my brain is not strong enough to handle more than one parameter. With that realization, the hope on the accuracy of my prediction disappeared.

I live in the present and like it that way - நேற்றைய நினைவும் இல்லை - நாளைய பயமும் இல்லை had been my approach to life. Astrology didn't let me be my usual self. After about 4 weeks, I decided to call it off.

I didn't gain the knowledge; but am a lot wiser!

நீங்க பார்க்காத எந்திரன் - அல்லது எந்திரி

2010-10-20T06:40:00.001+05:30

Do you know why Kamal didn't make the Robot movie with Shankar? Here is why. Kamal favored the following story over what you saw in Endhiran. The disagreement between Kamal and Shankar resulted in two things - Kamal's Dasavatharam and Rajini in Endhiran.

The title wouldn't have been Endhiram - is must have been Endhiri or Rajarama Robot.

Here is an old style review of the fictional movie:

கதாநாயகன் ராஜ் (secularly neutral, மைக்கேல் ராஜ், முஹம்மத் ராஜ் என்று எது வேண்டுமானாலும் வைத்துக்கொள்ளலாம்) ஒரு தாடி வைத்த (again secularly neutral!) விஞ்ஞானி, ரோபோக்களைப் பற்றி ஆராய்ச்சி செய்பவர். அவர் உருவாக்கிய ரோபோவின் பெயர் - சிட்டி - ஒரு பெண் ரோபோ. சிட்டிபோல் பல பெண் ரோபோக்களை உருவாக்கி, செவிலியர்களாக (நர்ஸ்) அவர்களை பயன் படுத்த விரும்பிகிறார். இந்த ரோபோக்களால் செவிலியர்கள் தொற்று நோயால் பாதிப்படைவது தடுக்கப்படும் என்பது ராஜின் குறிக்கோள். ரோபோக்களுக்கு உணர்வு இல்லாததால், ராஜின் படைப்பு நிராகரிக்கப்படுகிறது.

ராஜ் கஷ்டப்பட்டு சிட்டிக்கு உணர்வு வரவழைக்கிறான். ஆனால் இந்த முறை, மருத்துவமனை முதலாளிகள் (corporate hospitals) பல காரணங்களைக்காட்டி, சிட்டியை நிராகரித்து விடுகின்றனர்.

உணர்வு பெற்ற சிட்டி ராஜை காதலிக்கிறது. ஆனால் ராஜுக்கு ஏற்கனவே ஒரு தோழி இருக்கிறாள். (காதலி, மனைவி என்று குழப்பிக்கொள்ள வேண்டாம். ஜஸ்ட் தோழி.) ராஜ் சிட்டியை ஏற்றுக்கொள்ளாததால், சிட்டி மலையிலிருந்து குதித்து தற்கொலை செய்துகொள்ள துணிகிறது. மலையிலிருந்து விழுந்த சிட்டி, முழுவதும் உடையவில்லை. ராம் எனப்படும் ராமச்சந்திரன் (என்ற ஸ்மார்த்த பிராமணன், secularly not neutral, வில்லன்) காப்பாற்றுகிறான். ராம் ராஜின் சக, போட்டி விஞ்ஞானி. ராம், சிட்டியின் தயாரிப்பு ரகசியத்தைத் திருடி நாட்டில் உள்ள எல்லா வழிபாட்டுத் தலங்களையும் இடித்து இராமர் கோயிலாக மாற்றும் முயற்சியில் இறங்குகிறான்.

ராம் சிட்டி போல் பல கார் சேவகிகளை உருவாக்கி, நாட்டில் உலவ விடுகிறான். அவை, ஒவ்வொரு இந்து அல்லாத வழிபட்டுத்தலங்களையும் அழிக்கின்றன. கடைசியில், ஒரு விமானத்தில் ஏறி, காஷ்மீரில் உள்ள ஒரு தலத்தை அழிக்கச் செல்லும்போது, ஒரு solar flare-இல் இருந்து வரும் காந்த சக்தி விமானத்தில் உள்ள எல்லா கார் சேவகிகளையும் செயல் இழக்கச் செய்து விடுகிறது. விமானம் கீழே விழுந்து நொறுங்கிக்கிடக்கும் இடத்திற்கு, ராஜும் அவன் தோழியும் வருகின்றனர். அங்கு ரோபோக்களோடு ராமும் கிடக்கிறான். தோழி சொல்கிறாள்: "இப்போது தெரிந்துகொள் நீ கடவுள் இல்லை என்று". அதற்கு நம் நாயகன் சொல்வார்: "ராம் இருக்கிறானா இல்லையா என்பது முக்கியமில்லை, கடவுள் இல்லை என்பது தான் முக்கியம்".

அடுத்த காட்சியில் கருணாநிதிக்கு நடக்கும் எதோ ஒரு பாராட்டு விழாவில், நம் நாயகன் கௌரவிக்கப்படுகிறான். The End.

இந்தப்படத்தில், நம் உலக நாயகன் கமல் ஹாசன், ராஜ், ராம், ரோபோ என்று மூன்று முக்கிய பாத்திரங்களில் நடித்துள்ளார். தோழி வேடத்திலும் அவர் நடிக்க தயாராகத்தான் இருந்தார் - தயாரிப்பு செலவை கணக்கில் கொண்டு, யாரோ ஒரு பெண்ணுக்கு அந்த வாய்ப்பு கொடுக்கப்பட்டுள்ளது. கமலுக்கு, தாடி வைத்த ராஜ், மொட்டை அடித்து, குடுமி வைத்த, புஜபல பராக்கிரமசாலியாக ராம், உலோக முகம் கொண்ட சிட்டி என மூன்று உருவங்கள். வழக்கமான பிளாஸ்டிக் முகங்களுக்கு பதிலாக, கமல் இந்தப்படத்தில் உலோக முகம் பயன்படுத்துகிறார். சிட்டியாக வந்து, கமல் உலோக முகத்தோடு, ராஜைக்கவர பரத நாட்டியம், பொய்க்கால் குதிரை, சதிர்கச்சேரி என்று பல நாட்டியம் ஆடுகிறார். இது தவிர வழக்கமான below the waist காமெடியும் செய்கிறார்.

Selling / Buying Real-Estate - A quick guide

2010-09-25T18:36:00.000+05:30

Disclaimer: This write-up is supposed to introduce you to the procedures and is not a legal advice. Always consult a lawyer worth his salt before signing any documents. Feel free to contact me to suggest corrections or need more clarity.

We were busy during the first half of this year in two real estate transactions - the sale of our apartment and then the purchase of an independent house. After that, we got a number of queries from our friends on the procedures; so, I thought of documenting the experience.

I'll skip all the steps involved until the buyers and sellers have met and agreed on the transaction. Let's focus on the procedures alone.

The seller will have to give the buyer copies of the following documents.

The sale deed that is the proof of your purchase
Encumbrance Certificate for at least about 30 years.
Parent Documents - Documents that trace the ownership of the property / its parts for the past 30 years. In addition to sale deed, it might include release documents (that someone has given up ownership), settlement (someone was awarded), legal heir and death certificates (if any of the earlier sellers had inherited the property), power of attorney (that the person who signed the sale deed was authorized to do so by the rightful owner)
Latest receipt of property tax paid

A quick digression on what this encumbrance certificate is and how to get it. This certificate is issued by the corporation or other applicable authority that states the transactions about the property for a given time period. Any sale, release or other activity on the given property is recorded and the certificate refers to those transactions. You may get a single certificate of a long period or choose to get the certificate for a smaller duration, typically since the time the seller bought the property.

The buyer will take these, may hire a lawyer to review the documents for completeness. Usually, the buyer would need up to a couple of months to complete the sale process. He may use the time to arrange for funds through loans. Once the buyer finds the ownership and the supporting documents clean, you will go for a sale agreement.

A sale agreement is made to state that the buyers and sellers have agreed on the sale price, payment terms and an approximate duration within which the sale could be completed. Once the sale agreement is made, the buyer can take it along with the documents mentioned above to his financing institution for a housing loan.

The housing loan institution might have authorized a loan amount to the buyer (based on his income, profession etc) earlier. The authorization doesn't guarantee a loan for the specified property. After submitting the documents mentioned above, the housing finance company would scrutinize them and approve a loan for the buyer and for the requested property. This takes anything between 2-4 weeks depending upon the property type, its sale history and availability of supporting documents. The financial institution will ask for the originals of all the submitted copies for verification.

Once the loan is approved, a draft of the sale deed may be prepared and reviewed by both the parties for correctness and completeness. This draft sale deed must be submitted to the financial institution. The seller's bank information may have to be passed onto the housing finance company along with the payment amount and mode details. This will also be stated in the sale deed. Then the buyers, sellers and the financial institution (if any) agree on the date of registration.

To register, the buyer pays for the stamp and the registration charges. After Telgi and all, the stamp paper's denomination is usually a small percentage of the actual stamp duty. The remaining amount is paid as a demand draft along with the registration charges as two separate DDs. The registration charge is a percentage of the transaction amount. It has been a known practice that the transaction amount is under quoted to cheat on the registration charges. Take my recommendation - do not attempt it for it is cheating and you will have more trouble explaining it to IT department.

On the date of registration, the seller must be ready with all the original documents. Photographs, proof of identities and copies of PAN cards of the buyers and sellers must be submitted at the registrar's office. The financial institution will send its person with the checks. The registrar will verify the property details and approve a registration. This will be followed by signing the sale deed and placing the thumb impression. The document will be entered into the government records after a survey of the property and scanning of the sale deed. This takes about 2 weeks. But at the time of registration, a slip would be given with the details of the document registration (serial number). Usually, the person from the financial institution will take it and collect the originals when they are ready.

The buyer can collect the copies of the documents from the financial institution. The seller may also need the copies as sometime the bank may ask for it before accepting high value deposits.

Now the sale is over. The next steps are, changing the owner names in property tax, water and electricity departments. The sequence is as follows:
1. Property Tax: Take copies of all the documents mentioned above and attested copies of the sale deed, fill-up couple of forms in the Corporation office (or whatever authority the property comes under). The name transfer will be effective in about 2-3 weeks.
2. Water Tax: Take the copies of the sale deed, changed ownership information in the property tax (as a receipt for the recent period), fill up forms etc. This takes up to a week.
3. Electricity: Take the copies of the sale deed, changed ownership information in the property tax (as a receipt for the recent period), fill up forms etc. One of the forms needs signatures from the previous owners. So, do not tick off the seller until you get signature in this form. If the sellers have inherited the property, you will have to attach the supporting documents of legal heir etc. This takes couple of weeks to complete.

We did all this, starting last December. The legal due-diligence of the property that we bought took a good 4 months as it had all kinds of history. We had to beg at the financial institution for a lower rate as the time they had given at the time of authorization had elapsed by the time we went for registration.

The post-sale formalities went on for another 4 months and included a step of getting an updated patta. Patta is the official land record that states the property details and its ownership. Now we got all the documentation done.

The next step is apply for demolition and reconstruction. The story continues for us....

பூவுலகின் சவால்களும் காந்தியின் தீர்வும்

2010-09-12T20:11:00.000+05:30

I helped a little girl to prepare for her oratorical competition. God bless her to make a mark. The title was given to her by her school.

பூவுலகம் மிகப்பெரிது. அதன் சவால்களும் மிகப்பெரியன. தூசு, மாசு, வெப்பமயமாக்கம் என்று பல சவால்கள். சற்றே தேடினால் இவை எல்லாவற்றிற்கும் காந்தியடிகளிடம் தீர்வு இருக்கும். ஆனால், என் போன்ற பள்ளி மாணவ மாணவியரின் உலகம் எது? அவற்றின் சவால்கள் என்ன?

நம் நாட்டின் புராணங்கள்படி, குழந்தைகளின் உலகம் அவர்களின் தாய் தந்தைதான். அதாவது, நம் குடும்பங்கள். நம் நட்டைப்பொருத்தவரை நம் வீட்டில் இருக்கும் எல்லாரும் அதில் சேர்த்தி. இப்படிப்பட்ட நம் உலகத்தின், முக்கிய சவால் என்ன? பல குடும்பங்களின் சவால், அவற்றின் வறுமை, நோய் போன்ற பிரச்சினைகள் தாம். சரியான கல்வி அறிவு, வேலை வாய்ப்பு போன்றவை இல்லாதது என்று பல காரணங்கள் சொல்லலாம். ஆனால், படித்த, வேலை உள்ளவர்கள் இருக்கும் குடும்பங்களிலும் முன்னே சொன்ன சவால்கள் இருக்கின்றன.

அப்படியானால் இந்த சவால்களின் காரணம் என்ன தெரியுமா? பல குடும்பங்களில் இருக்கும் ஒரு சிலருக்கு இருக்கும் குடிப்பழக்கம் தான். இதனால் என்னென்ன பிரச்சினைகள்? அன்பும் அமைதியும் இருக்க வேண்டிய இல்லங்களில், சண்டையும் சச்சரவும் இருக்கிறது. இப்படிப்பட்ட குடும்பங்கள்தான் வறுமையிலும் நோயிலும் வாடுகின்றன.

குடும்பங்களின் இந்த சவால், நம் ஊருக்கும் நாட்டிற்கும், ஏன் இந்த உலகத்திற்கும் பெரிய சவால் தான். மது அருந்துவது, விளையாட்டாகி, பின் பழக்கமாகி, அதன் பின் ஒரு நோயாகவே மாறி விட்டது. இந்த நோய், மலேரியா, காலரா போன்று பரவி, சமூக நோயாகவே மாறி விட்டது.

இது நம் நாட்டிற்கு மட்டுமல்ல, வளர்ந்த அமெரிக்கா போன்ற நாடுகளிலும் இது ஒரு பிரச்சினை தான். நன்கு படித்து, நல்ல வேலைக்கு செல்ல வேண்டிய பல இளைஞர்கள் மதுவிற்கு அடிமையாகி தம் உடல், மன ஆரோக்கியத்தை இழப்பது அங்கும் நடக்கிறது. ஆனால், இதில் மிக வருந்தத்தக்க விஷயம் என்னவென்றால், நம் நாட்டில் நம் அரசாங்கமே மதுவை விற்பதுதான்.

குடிப்பழக்கத்தில் செலவிடப்படும் பணம் கல்விக்கும் தரமான உணவிற்கும் செலவிடப்பட்டால் குடும்பங்கள் வளம் பெறும். அந்தப்பணத்தில், சிறிதளவு சேமிக்கப்பட்டாலே வீடும் நாடும் நலம் பெறும்.

இந்த உலகத்தின் மிகப்பெரிய சவால் என்னவென்று பார்த்தோம். இதைப்பற்றி காந்தி என்ன சொல்லி இருக்கிறார் தெரியுமா?

"குடிப்பழக்கம் ஒருவரின் உடல், மனம், அறிவு மற்றும் செல்வத்தை அழித்துவிடும்.

மது ஒருவரை, தன்னை மறக்கச்செய்யும். தன் பாதிப்பு இருக்கும் வரை, அவரால் உருப்படியாக எதுவும் செய்ய முடியாது. குடிப்பழக்கம் உள்ளவர்கள், தம்மையும், அவரைச்சேர்ந்தவர்களையும் அழித்துக்கொள்கிறார்கள். கண்ணியத்தையும் இங்கிதத்தையும் இழந்தவர்களாகின்றனர். "

சொல்லுதல் யார்க்கும் எளிய அரியவாம்
சொல்லிய வண்ணம் செயல்

சொன்னது இருக்கட்டும். என்ன செய்தார் தெரியுமா?

காந்தி அடிகள் பல அறிவுரைகள் சொன்னதோடு நிறுத்திக்கொள்ளவில்லை. அவர் சொன்னதைச் செய்தவர். இங்கிலாந்திற்கு சட்டம் படிக்கச் சென்றபோது, அவர் தன் தாய்க்கு மூன்று உறுதி மொழி அளித்தார். அவற்றில் முக்கியமானது "மது அருந்தமாட்டேன்" என்பது. இங்கிலாந்து போன்ற குளிர் பிரதேசங்களில் மது அருந்தாமல் இருப்பவர்கள் அரிது. அந்த நிலையிலும், மதுவின் தீமையை உணர்ந்த காந்தி அடிகள் தன் உறுதி மொழிப்படி நடக்கவும் செய்தார்.

சவாலையும், காந்தி தந்த அறிவுரையும் பற்றி அறிந்தோம். இதை எப்படி நடைமுறைப்படுத்துவது? நாம் ஒவ்வொருவரும் நமக்குத்தெரிந்த குடிப்பழக்கம் உள்ளவர்களிடம் அப்பழக்கத்தின் தீமையை எடுத்துரைப்போம். அவர்களை அப்பழக்கத்திலிருந்து மீட்க உதவுவோம். அவர்கள் மதுவினின்று விலகி இருக்க அவர்களுக்கு மன உறுதி தேவை. அந்த மன உறுதி அவர்களுக்கு இருக்க நாம் நம் கடவுளை வேண்டுவோம்.

Endhiran and the possibilities

2010-08-01T11:27:00.000+05:30

Thanks to Endhiran and its translations in Telugu and Hindi, there will be more talk on what all can a Robot do or can't do in the days to come. As a below average student of computer science, I set out to think through what are the possibilities. Here is my serious below-average analysis of the possibilities.

The Sense of I
My favorite topic. What do humans mean by their sense of self? There is physiological self, that is one's identification with his/her body. And there is the psychological self - that one identifies himself as a Hindu, Tamil, Communist, Educated, CEO etc. I believe both are possibilities with machines. I use the term machine to refer to the Robots with their knowledge base and their decision support systems.

Physiological Self of a Machine: The physiological self is to present to protect itself - that an organism is not simply a collection of sensory organs, but something that coordinates actions between the organs. To start with, the physiological self could be defined for the first few generations of machines by their creators - the humans. Later generations may be able to build upon it and define the physiological self better.

Psychological Self of a Machine: Our psychological self got created out of factors like geography, languages, roles and responsibilities and beliefs created by generations of knowledge acquisition. The same is possible with machines. Again, the first few generations of psychological self could be influenced by the humans that created them. The human mindset has been expanding from its early tribal one. So, the machines may start with a higher level of identity. There could be US machines, Chinese, Russian and Indian machines, each dealing with the data associated with respective regions.

Collective Consciousness
It is said that the collective intelligence is many times stronger than the sum of individual intelligence. If that's the case, an advanced robot would start at a slightly higher level of intelligence than the average human intelligence. And there will be a need to connect these machines as well. As the connections increase, their collective intelligence would increase too.

Would robots harm humans?
If we see robots as evolution of humans, this is a possibility. If there was a time in history when neanderthals and humans co-existed, there was a high chance that humans might have harmed neanderthals. Fear, space and food insecurity might have resulted in the fights. Can man's fear of machines trigger an insecurity for machines and result in fights?

Brain Slow-down

2010-05-18T19:25:00.000+05:30

I was lying down staring at the ceiling fan. The fan had a circular metal piece at the center and it had the radii with ridges. When the fan is on, I can't see the ridges, but all of us a sudden I felt I'm able to see the ridges for a fraction of a second. I realized I could see the ridges when I was blinking my eyes. I wasn't sure whether the vision of ridges precedes the act of blinking or the other way around.

The theory behind the persistence of vision is still being debated or debunked. Instead of banking on a theory, I have my own explanation.

As the fan center rotates at more than 24 cycles a second, the ridges are not visible. We can compare this to the movie watching experience where 72 or more still images are produced per second to create an illusion of motion. When I blink, as the last image captured by the eye is processed by the brain, it doesn't have a succeeding image to perceive a rotating circle. So, the last image is experienced by the brain as it exists - with the ridges. When the act of blinking ends, images of the rotating circle reach the brain continuously. So, the static image is experienced by the brain for just a fraction of a second.

I think there is some amount of slow-down in the way my brain processes the signals. I had more such experiences. In one instance, I could sense the experience of sound through my left ear was delayed by a fraction a second after I experienced the sound through my right ear.

I wish I could work with a neurosurgeon to understand the signal processing of the brain with such experiences.

Morality & Mr. G

2010-05-09T17:14:00.001+05:30

From an email I sent to my brother:

Dear Bro,

We started talking about moral correctness coming in the way when you want to worship. Let me start from the childhood and work my way through on this topic. Don't expect smart one-liners or punch dialogs. This is logic.

Have you ever wondered on whether a 2-3 year old kid cares about God, deity etc. Ignore the knowledge thrust upon them. They really do not have an opinion about God. In fact, they do not need an opinion about God. Because their consciousness hasn't evolved fully and there is no "I". Their consciousness isn't limited to their physical body.

What adults think of consciousness is often their own identity. Everything you think you experience is through this identity. But what is this identity made of? In the beginning it just starts with a name - your name. Then you start identifying with your family, village, city, region, country etc. There are ideologies associated with this. Religion and Society play a big role in establishing ideologies. There are more teachings thrust upon us and learnings we get from the surroundings. Being morally right is one such teaching. Someone taught you that you should be kind, be fair etc.

As you know already, morality is a very fluid aspect in our lives, society. From time to time, this has changed. There are various levels of morality - starting from "thou shalt not ogle at other's wives" to "be kind to the old and infirm". Some change more frequently and there are conditions and contradictions all over.

By letting your actions controlled by these ideas result in conflicts. For example, worshipping is considered to be a good act and so is being fair to the old and poor. If you have to skip worshipping because of helping a poor it might cause guilty consciousness. That's a terrible thing for anyone.

Visualize these ideas as a wall between you and God. The strength of these ideas is directly proportional to the thickness of this wall. It doesn't matter on what your ideas are - image about yourself, your knowledge, your caste, religion, language. There are a few weak spots in the wall - they are your vulnerable area, your weaknesses, failures, helplessness etc. Through these vulnerable points, you can pierce a hole in the wall and feel the God on the other side. Being morally right is one strong area in this wall, hard to pierce. At some point, you start identifying yourself with these ideas. Real God doesn't have anything to do with this morality or ideas. He/She/It is far too simple to handle this stuff.

So, if you think you are fair, remember that this doesn't help in your relationship with God. It can help you fit in a society better. That's about it.

Let me come to the practical problem that we started with. Is it fair to spend more money to have a dharshan of your favorite deity? It depends on your relationship with your deity. If you can lose yourself in front of the deity, it doesn't matter what you do to get there. At that stage, your identity disappears and just consciousness exists there.

On the other hand, if you are cutting the line, you maintaing your strong identity and your relationship with your God is not worth a mention, there is bad "karma" on all counts.

On Perceptions of Indian Developers in the West

2010-03-27T16:58:00.001+05:30

In response to Ram's blog Perceptions of Indian Developers in the West

On comparing the capabilities of developers, here is a typical experience.

We took over a significant but small piece of software couple of years ago. It was written by one person in C, way back in late 1980s. Let's call him Adam. Adam had used an environment that was available then. He had no version control and no documentation. It had been backed up on another server. That was the only version available outside of Adam's machine.

Though the organization was particular about software development standards, this one was left as is - for fear of breaking anything or antagonizing Adam or both. It was a program that was closely guarded, possibly not out of any insecurity, but just circumstances. It was using Adam's own data structures, could have been rewritten to make use of databases and other libraries. But not done, for no one saw value in redoing it.

Adam got old, old enough to retire, but his service was extended year after year for three years. At some point the top management gathered strength to take a decision, decided to let him go and prepared for the transition.

We had a smart developer take over this piece of code. Let's call him Amit. He had just about 2 years of experience. If you were to compare the two developers, they would fit in the perfect stereotypes that you see in the media - one western nerd and the other Indian developer who wears flashy clothes and speaks with Hindi accent.

The surprise was, it went just fine. Offshore development brings in certain constraints that helps in better management of the software development process. We spent the first 3-4 weeks trying to compile the code in a virgin environment. For the first time, the program was compiled on a machine different from Adam's machine. The dependencies on tools and interdependencies on libraries were identified and documented. During this period, Adam had his share of stereotypical fun at Amit. Once Amit could compile it successfully, his confidence grew. He also set it up on a version control system at client's site.

In the next month, as Adam retired, Amit was confident enough to train another developer. The two developers worked directly with the other stakeholders, removing the need for a project manager mediation. In couple of months, the two developers got total control of the system, handled Level 2 and 3 of production support. Everyone could forget Adam.

Indian developers are just as good as any other developers. The benefit western developers get is, by staying with a problem long enough. That gives them the confidence about the domain and technology. On the other hand, Indian developers move from project to project, not spending the same amount of time. It also gives them better exposure. I met seasoned architects at a client's place who were not aware on desktop sharing tools over the web or open source reporting tools.

ஆன்மீகம் அவர்களுக்கல்ல - உங்களுக்குத்தான்

2010-03-18T08:15:00.001+05:30

வியாழக்கிழமை. காலை ஒரு மணி நேரத்தை வாரந்திர(மற்றும் சில ...ந்திர)ப் பத்திரிகைகளில் வீணடிக்கும் நாள். இன்று கொஞ்சம் குறிக்கோளோடு பத்திரிகைகளைப் பார்த்தேன். நித்யானந்தா விவகாரம் அடங்கியதால், அதைப்பற்றி எதாவது வித்தியாசமான கண்ணோட்டத்தைத் தேடினேன். ஜக்கி பற்றிய இரண்டு கட்டுரைகளில் எதுவும் சிறப்பாக இல்லை. அதனால் நான் சென்ற வாரம் எழுதியதை கொஞ்சம் விலாவாரியாக தமிழில் எழுதலாம் என்று எழுதுகிறேன்.

நித்தியானந்தா போன்ற விஷயங்கள் தினம் நடந்து கொண்டிருக்கிறது. சம்பந்தப்பட்டவர்கள் உங்களுக்கு அயலார்களே. நீங்கள் மதிக்கும் ஒருவர் இப்படி நடந்துகொண்டால் நீங்கள் என்ன செய்வீர்கள்? அது உங்கள் குருவாகவோ, கடவுளாகவோ,தலைவனாகவோ, நெருங்கிய உறவாகவோ அல்லது நீங்களாகவோ இருக்கலாம். உங்களை கலங்க அடிக்க, ஒரு நிகழ்ச்சி தேவையில்லை. செய்தி போதும். அது அதன் வேலையை செய்ய ஆரம்பிக்கும்.

நீங்கள் கோழையாக இருந்தால் செய்தியை மறுக்க ஆரம்பிப்பீர்கள். அப்படி ஒன்று நடக்கவில்லை, இது திட்டமிட்ட சதி போன்றவை இந்த ரகம். சமீபத்திய மறுப்பு, கம்ப்யுட்டர் கிராபிக்ஸ் சதி.

நீங்கள் அடாவடி பார்ட்டியாக இருந்தால், மறுக்க மாட்டீர்கள். நியாயப்படுத்துவீர்கள். இந்த நிகழ்ச்சியில் இதுவரை யாரும் நியாயப்படுத்தவில்லை. இந்தியாவில் யாரும் அப்படி செய்ய முயற்சிப்பதும் இல்லை.

நீங்கள் பிராக்டிகல் மனிதன் என்றால், இதை மறக்கவோ, அல்லது வேறு ஒருவர் மீது நம்பிக்கை வைக்க ஆரம்பிப்பீர்கள்.

இவை எல்லாம் உங்கள் செயல்கள். இந்த நிலையில், மிகச்சிலரின் செயல்கள் ஆக்கப்பூர்வமாக இருந்திருக்கின்றன. சுவாமி தயானந்த சரஸ்வதி, சக்தி இல்லாத உருவ வழிபாட்டை எதிர்க்க ஆர்யா சமாஜத்தை ஆரம்பிக்க வைத்தது.

சில அழிவு நிலைக்கும் சென்றன. ஏமாற்றத்தை சந்திக்க முடியாமல், திருச்சியில் ஒரு குடும்பம், மொத்தமாக தற்கொலை செய்து கொண்டது.

இவை எல்லாம் செயல்கள் - உணர்வுகள் இல்லை. உங்கள் உண்மையான உணர்வு என்ன? வெட்கம், ஏமாற்றப்பட்ட உணர்வு, அருவருப்பு மற்றும் பல.

இந்த உணர்வோடு ஒரு நிமிடம் இருந்தது பாருங்கள். இந்த உணர்வு உடம்பில் தோன்றும் வலி அல்லது எரிச்சல் போன்றது. உடம்பில் வலி வருவதை நாம் இயல்பாக எடுத்துக்கொள்கிறோம். தாங்க முடியாத போது, வலி நிவாரணத்தைத் தேடுகிறோம்.

மனதில் இந்த உணர்வுகள் சிறு அசௌகரியத்தை ஏற்படுத்துகின்றன. அவ்வளவு தான். இந்த அசௌகரியத்தை ஒரு நிமிடம் அனுபவித்து விட்டால், அது அதன் பின் தொல்லை தருவது இல்லை. அதன்பின், இப்படிப்பட்ட செய்திகள் உங்களைப்பாதிப்பதில்லை. சற்றே வித்தியாசமாக மற்றொரு செய்தி பாதிக்கலாம். இவற்றை எல்லாம் எப்படி கையாள்வது என்று தெரிந்து விட்டால், எந்த செய்தியும் உங்களை அசைக்க முடியாது.

நம்பிக்கை என்பது ஆன்மீகத்திற்கு மட்டும் சொந்தமானதில்லை. கம்யூனிச நம்பிக்கையாளர்கள் சோவித் வீழ்ந்த போது கலங்கினார்கள். தூய்மையான அரசியல் மீது நம்பிக்கை வைத்தவர்கள், நிக்சன் மற்றும் கிளிண்டன் காலத்தில் கலங்கினார்கள்.

நம்பிக்கை வைக்காமல் உங்களால் இருக்க முடியாது. ஒரு மனிதரின் மேலோ, கடவுள், தலைவன், சின்னம், நிறுவனத்தின் மேலோ நம்பிக்கை வைப்பது, உங்களைப்போல் இயற்கையானது. ஒன்றை விட்டு மற்றொன்றின் மேல் நம்பிக்கை வைக்கலாம். ஆனால் அதற்கும் சோதனை வராது என்பது நிச்சயமில்லை. இந்தக்காலத்தில், சோதனை வரும் என்பது தான் நிச்சயம். அதை சமாளிக்கத் தெரிந்துவிட்டால், நிம்மதியாக வாழலாம்.

Coping up with the shaken-up faith

2010-03-13T13:26:00.000+05:30

Ram had written about one side of the Nityananda event. I want to focus on another aspect of it - coping with your faith shaken up. To start with spirituality is not about "them" but is about "you".

The followers of Nityananda must be really troubled by the recent events. It doesn't matter whether the event was real or doctored. The very information is enough to trouble them. When Dayanda Saraswathi's belief was shaken up, it triggered the creation of Arya Samaj. Another extreme event was a family suicide in Trichy when they realized a sick member of their family can't be cured by their belief. There are more common cases like some of my agnostic friends who have faith in the legal system. They do get shaken up when they learn that the system is not all that clean. They contemplate relocating to another place where the system isn't so badly corrupted.

At times of crisis, it is hard to keep the faith because of the flow of information from all directions, created by all kinds of people about the icon one believes in. The icon need not be a person, it could be a deity, a system or even a symbol. The world has seen enough and more desecration of symbols and the violence that follows. What is the best way to cope with the agitating mind?

The common reactions are to deny the event if you are weak, punish the offenders if you are strong or shift the faith if you are practical. If you aren't lucky, the new faith may face the same situation soon. But you got to have faith - that's how you identify yourself - as a follower of a religion, political party, legal or belief system. As long as the identity exists, faith will exist. So, not having faith (religious, spiritual or otherwise) is out of question.

To get over the crisis, just look at how you feel, you might feel restless, agitated. Be with that experience. Resist any thought that demands an action like argument, violence, writing letters to the editor, blogging etc. To experience the feeling would be very uncomfortable, but if really experienced, disappears in minutes. The next moment, the troubling piece of information doesn't affect you. That way you get to keep your faith and also not get affected by its troubles.

எனக்கு ஏன் கெளதம் படங்கள் பிடிப்பதில்லை

2010-03-10T21:03:00.000+05:30

வீட்டில் கெளதம் மேனன் படங்கள் பார்ப்பதில் ஒரு சௌகரியம் - சேனல் மாற்றலாம், ஓட விட்டு முடிவை மட்டும் பார்க்கலாம். மொத்தத்தில் எனக்கு கெளதம் மேனன் படங்கள் பிடிப்பதில்லை என்பது தான் உண்மை. ஏன் என்று நண்பன் கேட்டான். உட்கார்ந்து யோசித்தேன்.

கெளதம் மேனன் படங்களுக்கும் மணி ரத்தினத்தின் படங்களும் கிட்டத்தட்ட ஒரே ஸ்டைலில் இருப்பது போல் தோன்றுகிறது. இருந்தாலும், கெளதம் மேனன் படங்களை வெறுக்கும் அளவிற்கு மணியின் படங்களை வெறுப்பதில்லை. காரணம் இதுதான்.

இரண்டு பேரின் படங்களில் இருக்கும் பொது இழை - சாதாரண மனிதர்களின் அசாதாரண தருணங்கள்.

இரண்டு பேரின் படங்களிலும் முக்கிய கதா பாத்திரங்கள் கொஞ்சம் ஹாலிவுட் வாசம் அடிப்பார்கள். கிளின்ட் ஈஸ்ட்வுட் போல அதிகம் பேச மாட்டார்கள், மிக புத்திசாலிகள் - ஆனால் சூப்பர் மென் இல்லை. அவர்கள் சாதாரணர்கள் என்று சொன்னாலும், அப்படிப்பட்ட மனிதர்களை நீங்கள் பார்க்க வாய்ப்பில்லை. இதனாலே ஒரு ஒட்டாத நிலை இருக்கும். ஆனால் மணியின் படங்களில் சுற்றங்கள் இதை பெரும்பாலும் மறைத்துவிடும். நாயகனில் டெல்லி கணேஷ், ஜனகராஜ் கதாபாத்திரங்கள், ரோஜாவில் பாட்டிகள், அலை பாயுதேவில் பிரமிட் நடராசன், பல படங்களில் குறுக்கே ஓடும் குழந்தைகள் என்று நம் கவனம் திசை திரும்பிவிடும்.

கெளதம் மேனோனின் படங்களில் இப்படிப்பட்ட கதாபாத்திரங்கள் இல்லாததால், you are stuck with boring protagonists. அவர்கள் பெரும்பாலும் ஒண்டியாக இருப்பார்கள். தனியாக இருப்பவர்கள் மிக சந்தோஷமாக இருப்பதில்லை. இதற்கு மேல், ஒரு தாங்க முடியாத கொடூரம் - கை, கால், தலை குறைந்த பட்சம் விரல் என்று எதையாவது வெட்டுவார்கள். (விண்ணைத்தாண்டி வருவாயா-வில் சிம்பு அடக்கி வாசித்ததன் காரணம் புரிகிறது.)

நம் இயக்குனர்கள் கதைகளை மட்டும் படி எடுத்து லோக்கல் கதாபாத்திரங்களை சேர்ப்பார்கள். கெளதம் மேனனோ கதை, கதாபாத்திரங்கள், களம் எல்லாவற்றையும் படி எடுத்து தமிழ்ப்படங்களை அடுத்த லெவெலுக்கு எடுத்துச்செல்வதாக பேட்டி கொடுப்பார்.

ஆகையால்,...

Attending Parent Teacher's Meeting

2010-02-13T16:03:00.000+05:30

I'm not a big fan of parent teacher's meeting, for I have nothing much to communicate to the teacher. And my son isn't of the same kind as his illustrious uncles who had their parents visit the school more often. The usual conversation would be:

Teacher: He is a nice boy, he needs to improve on ...
I: Thank you. Does he interact with his classmates and teachers well?
Teacher: Yes He is very obedient and polite.
I: Thank you.

The meeting would end there after I sign to log my attendance. Most fathers I get to see have a similar conversation. Mothers have longer, at times irritating conversations. Since the teacher happens to belong to the same gender, she continues to answer politely. I can't imagine how a male teacher would handle conversations with mom after mom. Must be a tough job!

I had a meeting today. I knew the teacher already. A distant relation. So, I had one extra line to speak - "How are you?". Before signing off, I thanked her and her co-workers for their contribution in creating interest in science among the students. The mom, the next one in line pitched in and said - "The class is competitive". I couldn't see the correlation between good teaching and competition. To cut short any possible long conversation, I said, "I really do not care about competition, I just want learning to happen and it does. I'm fine." I got up to leave. The mom wouldn't let it go. She continued, "But competition is good, it helps the kids be successful in their lives".

I hate to stereo-type moms like that, but this one is a serious stereo type. A success for her would mean, her son / daughter's entry to IIT, the next best one would be to the second line of colleges BITS, NITS etc. A bonus would be an entry in to IIM. Their life time goal is done when the kid gets his/her campus placement in CTS and boards the flight to US. I would compare them to the owners of clumsy little cars navigating through the traffic in Chennai. Speed up, cut a few others, break a few rules here and there, bribe the cop - all for just staying ahead by a couple of hundred meters. In the absence of so-called "competition", the kids would just be fine, some of them would be a bit slow, but all of them will have comfortable lives, thanks to the society and a good education.

By introducing competition, they lose the fun in observing the kid having his own personality. The kid could be a commie, an atheist, a yogi or a naturalist, painter, philosopher, scientist and what not.

I said, "... as long as they love their lives, that's enough for me.." and walked away.

YouTube, HTML5 on Chrome

2010-01-22T09:58:00.001+05:30

http://www.youtube.com/html5 says that Chrome works with HTML 5. But this is what I get to see on Chrome.

Strange. Did I mess up anything or someone at YouTube constructed the HTML as follows:

<h3>Supported Browsers</h3>

<p>Right now we support browsers that support both the <video> tag in HTML5 and the h.264 video codec. These include:</p>

<li style="margin-left: 2em">Google Chrome</li>

<li style="margin-left: 2em">Apple Safari (version 4+)</li>

<li style="margin-left: 2em">Microsoft Internet Explorer with Chrome Frame installed (<a href="http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/">Get Chrome Frame</a>)</li>

</ul>

</div>

Google Spreadsheet - Excel Export Compatibility Issues

2010-01-14T12:25:00.003+05:30

In Google Spreadsheet, the function ROUNDUP expects two parameters - the value and number of digits. But the second parameter is optional, defaulting to 0. If you had given just one parameter for the function, it works fine until you do an excel export.

In Google spreadsheet, the formula was:

=IF(ROUNDUP('Sheet1'!B52+'Sheet2'!B52+'Sheet3'!B52)-'Sheet4'!B51>='Sheet1'!B52,'Sheet5'!$E53,0.0)

In the exported excel, it came out as

=IF(((ROUNDUP((('Sheet1'!R[24]C+'Sheet2'!R[24]C)+'Sheet3'!R[24]C))-'Sheet4'!R[23]C)>='Sheet1'!R[24]C),'Sheet5'!R[25]C5,0.0)

Really weird export. It took me a while to suspect that the missing parameter was causing the problem. Once the parameter was supplied, the exported excel looked fine.

Interview Questions

2010-01-11T10:33:00.004+05:30

Tired of being called to interview fresh graduates who can't think, I gave our HR person three sets of questions as follows. I didn't want to copy paste objective type questions. I wanted to see how they think, present etc.

Set 1

1. Write the events that happen between requesting for a web-site address in browser's address bar and the retrieval of the web page. State your assumptions on internet / intranet, static / dynamic web sites.
2. Write a function (secondLargest) to find the second largest number in a given array of integers. (Expectation is just the function in such a way it can be reused in multiple programs with the most optimal solution in any programming language.)
3. Write a data structure in C/C++/C#/Java to store folders and files in a computer.

Set 2

1. Give step-by-step instructions to go from your home to college. Be clear that a stranger to these places can simply follow the instructions and still reach the destination with no additional help.
2. Write a function (shuffle) to shuffle elements in an array of 54 entries to mimic the shuffling of cards.
3. Give the data structure for playing cards that can be used to construct games like solitaire, freecell etc in any programming language that you know.

Set 3

1. Give a checklist to help an eight standard student to prepare and attend Science / Mathematics examination without surprises and panic.
2. Write a function (fizzbuzz) to print sequence of numbers on screen. For 7 and multiples of 7, it must print 'fizz' and for 7 and numbers ending with 7, it must print 'buzz' and for all other numbers, it must print just that number. If a number is a multiple of 7 and ends with 7, it must print both 'fizz' and 'buzz'.
3. Map to an appropriate data structures, the following with explanation: Storing newspapers, On-boarding of passengers in a bus, Grading of students in a class, Distribution of product from manufacturer to consumer, Real-Estate Brokers

The expectation was, if they write something close to common sense, they can be trained. If they were surprised at these questions, they can go home, prepare and come back to give the test after a week. The second test could be a bit more difficult.

In the past two-three weeks, a number of fresh graduates walked in for the test, not one answered these to meet our expectations. They had expressed surprise, but never cared to come back.

I am worried at the state of education in this state.

Is there a thing that doesn't exist?

2009-12-19T09:28:00.006+05:30

"Is there a thing that doesn't exist?" was the question my son Krishna asked me last night. It has been his habit to listen to my ramblings before he goes to sleep. His point is - my voice gives him good sleep. And I see the reason on why I didn't become a teacher. Coming back to his question - it made me happy, for he asked a difficult question. It made me happier as I can answer this one to my satisfaction. So, I started.

"The answer in a single word is No. But let me explain. We perceive everything through our minds. Thousands of inputs from the sensory organs and a memory help our mind make sense out of what the eyes see, ears hear etc. So, to perceive something, the mind must be present. That is the basic premise.

To answer your question, we must first define what that "thing" is (that doesn't exist). You can define that thing as something not in your memory. For example, a creature with three legs, four arms, eight eyes and three ears is definitely that's not there in your mind until we defined. As we defined it, it started existing in your mind.

As per our basic premise, we perceive only those things that exist in our mind. After the above example, the strange creature started existing." He nodded and tapped his head and said - "here".

I was happy that he understood such an abstract piece of information at his age. I narrated this to my wife and asked, "Isn't he brilliant?"

For her part, she narrated an event that happened three hours before.

"I had just returned from the market, buying vegetables to last for 10 days. They were all unpacked and I was about to stock them up in the fridge, when you called. I was preparing dinner, was on a call with my aunt and there was someone at the door. So, I asked Krishna to take your call. He spoke to you and turned to me and asked - "Father asked if he needs to get vegetables or greens." There was 200 rupees worth vegetables and greens right in front of him at the table where he was sitting and still he didn't correlate it to your question. Now, tell me - is he brilliant or what?"

All I could say was - "He's like me!"

Movies Review: திரு திரு துரு துரு

2009-10-11T19:28:00.003+05:30

உண்மையில் உன்னைப்போல் ஒருவன், திரு திரு துரு துருவின் கதாநாயகன் தான். நம்மைப்போல் கொஞ்சம் சோம்பேறி, கொஞ்சம் பொய்யன், ஓரளவு பிறருக்காக ஏதாவது செய்பவன்.

உருட்டுகட்டை, பட்டாபட்டி போட்ட குத்துப்பட்டு, அவனே இவனே என்று டைட்டில் பாட்டு எதுவும் இல்லாமல், இரண்டரை சொச்ச மணிநேரம் உட்கார்ந்து படம் பார்க்க வைத்திருக்கிறார்கள். யாரும் அரிவாளைத தூக்கிக்கொண்டு "வெட்டுங்கடா" என்று அலையவில்லை. ஜீப் வெடித்து பறக்கவில்லை. கதாநாயகி ஓரளவுக்கு மூடியபடி வருகிறாள். கதாநாயகன் ஒண்டியாக பத்துபேருடன் சண்டை போடவில்லை. சண்டை வரும் நேரம், பயந்து ஓடுகிறான்; போலீஸ் அவனை காப்பற்றுகிறது.

தமிழ் சினிமாவிற்கு இப்படி பல முதல்கள். இயக்குனர் ஒரு பெண். மௌலி முதலானவர்களை வைத்து இன்னும் கொஞ்சம் சிரிக்க வைத்திருக்கலாம். பரவாயில்லை.

Spotting a site designed for SEO

2009-09-04T13:34:00.004+05:30

I wanted to run a comparison on an ISP with other options and googled about the ISP. The top results were very negative. At number 5, was this search result:

Clicking on the link, I got to a page that cried out loud that it is done purely for SEO. Some of the indicators are:

Articles will not have date or place.
Unnecessarily repeated words like web hosting, review etc and hyperlinked to equally useless content.
Poor language ("Currently, over 50 web hosting company is being review, testing, comparing, and judging.")
Disconnected title and content.
Content by anonymous authors.
Boasting of SEO achievements - http://www.globatreview.org/globat-review-after-12-months

When would companies realize that bad news about them can't be fixed by just SEO!

இரண்டு வகைத் தமிழ்படுத்துதல்

2009-07-14T16:22:00.003+05:30

முதல் வகை நாம் ஏற்கனவே பார்த்த "மெய்ப்புல அறைகூவலர்" ரகம். இரண்டாவது வகை நாம் விஜய் டிவியில் பார்க்கும் "தமிழ்ப்பேச்சு எங்கள் மூச்சு" ரகம்.

கழகங்களின் தயவால் பல்லுடைக்கும் தமிழ்தான் நல்ல தமிழ் என்று ஒரு எண்ணம் இருந்து வருகிறது. அறிஞர் (?) அண்ணாவின் ஒரு சோறு பதம் - "...ஊட்டிய உணர்ச்சிகளை உயிர் உள்ளவையாக்கிட உறுதி பூணும் வகையில் கொண்டாட வேண்டும்...." எதற்கு என்ன அர்த்தம் என்று என் 12 வயது மகனுக்கு புரியவைக்க நான் பட்ட கஷ்டம் வேறு யாருக்கும் வர வேண்டாம். அவன் இந்த காலத்து மாணவன். "OK", "like" என்று இரண்டு வார்த்தைகளை வைத்து எல்லாவற்றையும் விளக்கும் ரகம். வைரமுத்துவை தரிசித்தால் தமிழ் வருமோ என்று அதற்கும் ஏற்பாடு செய்தோம். பெரிய பலன் ஏதும் இல்லை. அண்ணாவின் தமிழ் அவனைப்படுத்தியத்தில் ஏதும் வியப்பில்லை. அவன் வேலையை சுளுவாக்க நான் ஒரு வழி செய்தேன்.

எந்த வார்த்தைகள் புரியவில்லையோ அவற்றை விட்டு விடு.
தேவையில்லாத பெயரெச்சம், வினைஎச்சங்களை விட்டு விடு.

இதன் படி அவன் எழுதும் தமிழ் அவன் ஆசிரியைக்கு புரியும் என்றுதான் நினைக்கிறேன். அண்ணாவின் உரைநடையே புரிந்திருக்கிறதே! இது கேட்ச்-22வில் யோசரியன்னின் தணிக்கை மாதிரி இருக்கலாம். பரீட்சை முடிந்து பேப்பர் பார்க்கும் போதுதான் தெரியும்.

இந்த கடின மொழி தமிழில் மட்டுமல்ல - அனேகமாக எல்லா இந்திய மொழிகளிலும் இருக்கும் என்ற நம்பிக்கை எனக்கு இருக்கிறது. ஒரு முறை ஆல் இந்திய ரேடியோவின் ஹிந்தி பற்றி பால்ராஜ் சகானி சொன்னார் - "அப் சமாச்சார் மே ஹிந்தி சுனியே". குத்துமதிப்பாக மொழி மாற்றம் செய்தால் - "இப்போது செய்திகளில் ஹிந்தி கேளுங்கள்". இது சுமார் ஐம்பது வருடங்களுக்கு முந்தைய செய்தி. இருபது வருடங்களுக்கு முன் கேட்டது: "மந்திரி நே சம்வாத் தாதா சம்மேளன் மே சம்போதித் கியா". இதைக்கேட்டபின் மந்திரி மேலும், பத்திரிகைகாரர்கள் மேலும் இருந்த கொஞ்ச நஞ்ச மதிப்பும் போனது.

என்னுடைய ஹிந்தி ஞானமும் கொஞ்சம் குறைவு.

Applications with worst UI

2009-06-15T06:41:00.004+05:30

After looking at some of the IBM products, I'm convinced that you can sell anything if you have the right connections. How else can an organization go for something like Lotus Notes!

IBM is not known for applications with good UI. I already blogged about DB2 installation a few weeks ago. When it comes to enterpricey software that runs on big servers with green monitors, nobody would care about a nice UI. But that was some 30 years ago, when most of the world hadn't heard of computers.

But Notes is an application for collaboration - that means real people will use it. Well, if the sales process is taken care of, real people will have to use it.

For those who do not know how Lotus Notes UI looks like, here are some low lights.

The Window style and font don't conform to the ones that you are used to with other Windows programs. (Note: I'm not using the term standard. Standards aren't important as long as you can find the information you need, who cares!)
To set an auto-forward, you have write some code. I'm not sure if that's VB Code. But if you have to write code to do something as simple as auto-forward, who cares if it is VB or Simula.
If there is an easier way to set auto-forward, I couldn't locate it in the past two months - weekends included.
The visual cue that you are used to in other email clients on whether it is an email or meeting invite are so poorly done that I end up missing some of the meetings.
It doesn't remember any of the addresses you had typed. You got to add them to the addressbook for it to search.
The default font is so clumsy that it feels like using a green console.

I might be looking at an older version of the application, but not earlier than 2005. The application UI is about 20 years behind the rest of the collaboration tools. Now for the web interface part.

The web interface for the app, called iNotes is a horror. The UI has the least useful default sort order. The earliest mail shows up first.
The navigation is undefined when you delete a message in the message view. It would show a page with no context and you have to navigate to Inbox by clicking on the link.
On deleting the message, the message would continue to show up in the Inbox with a trash can to the left. I don't understand the purpose as there is already a trash folder and why can't this mail be moved to that folder?
Even on IE, there are usability problems. Pressing the up arrow within the editor will change the font. I didn't bother to try it on Firefox or Chrome which is my default browser.
I didn't expect a Gmail like interface as the app might be a few years old, but Squirrel mail would beat iNotes hands down.

Overall, I'm glad that I didn't get to use it regularly so far and I don't have to use it in the long run.

Is there Dijkstra quote on Java programming?

2009-05-29T09:02:00.003+05:30

After about seven years I got into some serious programming recently. The last time I wrote programs that mattered, was in 2002 when I worked for a start-up in a Seattle suburb. Considering that the start-up didn't really get started, I can't say my work mattered much. At that time, it was a lot of C++, ATL etc. I was getting wide eyed on things like annotation based programming and continous integration when I heard about the work in progress at Microsoft. The source of information was my co-worker who had quit Microsoft to find his fortune in the start-up.

Fast forward to last month. I landed in San Francisco as an "architect" (implied meaning: architect who would give lectures and do diagrams and do nothing useful) to kickstart a project. Circumstances forced me to get into programming in Java with Spring and all that good things Java world is proud of.

I usually abandon learning when I go through the environment setup pains. It was different this time. I got to a quick start thanks to Lenny and Denis who set up the basic things functioning. With the support of a good framework, my code was reasonably bug free until a change request came, when I tried to patch up the code in the last minute introducing a few silly bugs.

The typical development time issues I faced were mainly due to my C++ experience and MS conventions. I tend to not see the parenthesis at the end of an if statement. The operator = has an altogether different meaning. Little differences like these made the development interesting.

The boring challenge was to have all the spring configuration entries for prototypes and singletons defined properly. You miss one or misspell one, the application fails to start. From the time you complete typing the core code to the time you get it to run, there is a big lag - thanks to the spring configuration.

Though I wasn't hands on before this project, I was in touch with software development as a discipline and was glad to use tools like liquibase, splunk etc. These standardized tools make a programmers life a lot easier as compared to our home-grown solution for DB script management and log analysis in 2002. I should say life is good for Java developers.... but for one question.

Isn't the Java world taking MVC a bit too seriously? In an interview, I got into an argument with the interviewer on this. We both agreed on the need for separating out the data, business rule and presentation. I was fine having a separate function to take care of presentation details. The interviewer insisted on having a separate class for presentation. To close the interview on a smooth note, I listed the options in separating out the business logic from presentation.

Looking at the way Java applications are being developed, I wonder what Dijkstra would have said. Though we have crossed the LoC way of measuring programmer productivity, to me Java community seems to love the complexity. Look at the packages and their nestings; look at the number of classes and interfaces created even for a small problem. And mindless accessor methods - a syntactic nightmare that C# carefully avoided.

I see design patterns, most importantly MVC becoming a religion preventing any rational design decisions especially on smaller projects. I used to deal with a lot of SMEs that had requirements for a few months of development efforts. Java projects typically got issues arising out of the complexity where the developers placed logic and presentation at wrong places. We could blame it on the lack of training for the developers. As compared to that, PHP as a platform for small projects worked exceptionally well.

Sometimes, it is hard to tell the customers that your religion won't work!

In response to Science & Religion

2009-05-18T05:53:00.003+05:30

This blog is in response to Ram's blog on Science and Religion, a debate.

I see both science and religion as two tools that try to set aside the subjective experience with a more objective observation.

I choose to place my views with examples. I like examples.

If a religion preaches that attending a worship session is good for you, (medical) science preaches that aspirin is good for your heart. Both tend to apply an observed phenomenon on a small sample to the masses. Just as aspirin may be good for your heart, attending a sunday mass could be good for your emotions. In both the cases, there are side effects. Not attending a mass can induce guilty conciousness; aspirin is known to have side effects. Note that I'm not referring to the act of attending the mass or taking aspirin, but am just referring to the preaching's impact.

Rarely do we see priests paying true attention to the individual. Doctors are slightly better. But considering the healthcare in most populous countries, I doubt whether doctors take individuals seriously. Instead they try to interpret the situation with what they have learnt, in a scripture or a book.

Science gets an approval from the rationalists because it clearly has its fine prints and disclaimers. Unfortunately, the religions I know of do not have such caveats. Instead they warn of terrible consequences if you don't follow.

Religion during Galileo's period disapproved of science that wasn't in line with the scriptures. In a way, we see the same tendency within the scientific community of today, towards religion and spirituality.

Is there a serious study on religion or spirituality and its impact in the human well being? If there were any, I doubt whether those researchers are respected within the research community.

Installing DB2 Express on Windows

2009-04-26T08:21:00.005+05:30

Software Quality is in short supply - even in big shops like IBM. I can call today - a bad software day - struggled installing DB2 express on my laptop, struggled with entering timesheets in the homegrown time-tested (and patience testing) application.

Before starting, if you believe in a supreme power, pray to it. If you do not, you will start believing in one when you go through the process.

Now, it is time to share my experience in installing DB2 Express.

When selecting user login for running the services, you have multiple choices - a system account, a local user and a domain user.

Setting it up as system account will continue with obscure messages that it can't set the user's properties. Once the installation ends, you will find all applications in your programs, but none of them will work. All would show an error message with the code "DB2INSTANCE : -2029059916" and would ask you to investigate further. It simply means that the installation wasn't complete though you get to see all the applications. Fixing the installation won't work. Uninstall, restart and try installing again.
You may be lucky when trying to set it up as domain user account, but I didn't have much luck - be it an active directory or a Samba based domain controller. A coworker mentioned that it took about 4 hours to install it. The error messages will keep you guessing on what is going wrong. You need extensive experience to read the mind of the developer who created those messages. To cut the story short - give it a try once. If it fails, try the local user account.
If you had logged in as domain user, but if you try to set up the service in another local user's login, you will still get errors like that the user is not an administrator. Best option would be, create a local user, login as local user, begin the installation, give the local user credentials for running the services and continue.

After installation, add all the users (including the domain user) who need to administer the instance to the DB2Admin group. Add other users to DB2User group - using Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Local Users & Groups.

Then start FirstStep application. This is supposed to help you in creating databases. If the installation had gone fine, it might have created a sample DB in :\DB2\NODE000. When you try to create a new DB, the wizard will prompt for the DB name, its path etc. Though it refers the field as the default path, it means the drive. So, if you had installed it in C drive, leave the value as C:\ - you may try giving other drives, but remember it is only drive and not the path. If you had given a path, you will again get a confusing message that only IBM developers and testers understand.

Once the database is created, thank your personal deities. Good Luck! - you'd need it.

Review of A Wednesday & Expectation on the Tamil Version

2009-04-05T11:51:00.002+05:30

A DVD for Rs 99 is a pretty good deal for a movie of this class. As I sat to watch the movie with my son, we realized that the batteries in the DVD remote had drained out. So, we couldn't switch on the sub-titles. From time to time, I had to pause and intervene like the way Gemini Ganesh used to do during Hum Log days and interpret the dialogs to my son.

Overall a sleek movie. It is good to see such a quality production in India. Good casting for the main characters. Both Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher are great. I liked the CM character - a smart politician with a heavy Maharashtrian accent in Hindi and English. The character of the TV reporter and that of Jimmy Shergil were good too.

But, there is always scope for improvement.

The background score was too R D Burman style, could have been a lot better.
The movie continues with the character stereo types you get to see in Hindi movies - all honest cops are Rathods, Khannas or Singh. Supporting good cops can be Muslims and all the low level (or corrupt or inefficient) ones are Maharashtrians. Repulsive.

"Is violence the only solution for violence?" can be a reasonable question. But in this movie, we are not looking at the political correctness, but that of the agony of a common man in Mumbai.

Now for the expectations on the Tamil part.

Is there a similar sentiment in the Tamil context? May be - looking at the current law and order situation in the state, you may have a similarity. But the common middle class man doesn't go through the kind of terror that Mumbaikars had gone through. We have different problems altogether. So, this is something to watch out for.

On the casting, I have serious doubts on Kamal's ability to play the role of a common man. This character is supposed to exhibit vulnerability, helplessness and fear. There was a big difference in the acting of Sanjay Dutt and Kamal Hassan in Munnabhai and the Tamil version. Sanjay Dutt, in spite of having a hero like body looked so vulnerable - Kamal was nowhere near that expression.

When was the last time, Kamal played a role of a common man - Mahanadhi? After that, we saw Kamal hiding behind clumsy make-up in Indian, Avvai Shanmughi and Dasavatharam. There were other characters marked heavily by a change in hair-style, moustache, scarred face etc - not in one of them, he appeared as a normal man. He seems to be too dependant on the make-up than on the facial expression and body language.

'A Wednesday' left the religion of the protagonist outside the scope of the movie. Naseeruddin Shah can pass as a Hindu, Muslim, Parsi or a Christian. So, you really wouldn't question the religion of the character, but accept him as a common man in Mumbai. Kamal would want to exhibit his secularism. The recent photos show him sporting a beard. You can imagine the rest.

The title itself indicates that the movie would be heading in a different direction. It is titled as "Thalaivan Irukkiraan" - "There is a leader"! So, there could be scenes to establish Kamal as the Thalaivan, there could be a flash-back where he would fight the goons (stunts by Kanal Kannan), shake his hips in a flash-back to the choreography of Brinda.

At least be thankful that Crazy Mohan is not writing the dialogs!

How do you feel?

2009-03-28T11:21:00.002+05:30

When I was about 19-20, on the day of Vinayaka Chaturthi, my father was performing the pooja. My brother and I wanted to go to our uncle's place - some 15 kilometers from where we were, to watch a cricket match on TV. We didn't have TV at that time. We were rushing our father to finish the pooja fast so that we don't miss even a minute of the game. My mom was quite upset that we preferred a game over God. I asked my father - "What would you do when you were my age and got a chance to play/watch cricket?". Sounded like a good question at that time. My father didn't say anything, but finished the pooja quickly and we went off to watch the game.

Apart from this, I've asked my mom and other elders on a number of occasions on why should we do this or that - to justify my actions and inactions. The responses can be broadly classified as follows:

Some science (often supported by statistics) that no one understood were behind the rituals. An example would be scientific backing of (Hatha) Yoga.
Intangible benefits - like punya, better concentration etc. Example: Benefits of meditation as told by practitioners.
Elders said so - I don't know and wouldn't question that.

But, never once I got that answer like - "Try it - you might feel good." It is as if, no one wanted to talk about the subjective feeling, but always try to reason it. The reasons, over a period of time, were misunderstood and had become foolish rituals.

I'd attribute this is to a couple of things.

People didn't have any authentic experience in support of these theories. Even if they had had, they don't value it and use as a supporting fact.
The Western mind and the education system insists too much on the objectives to a level that a subjective experience is distrusted and seen as a lie.

The rituals are not restricted to the religious practices. There are jokes like processes designed for certifications like ISO, CMM and modern research on physiology and psychology that rely heavily on statistics.

In effect, we don't even trust how we feel fever, instead need a thermometer to prove that there is fever.

Let me see if I can play the "feel" factor with my developers - expect them to produce good quality software that they would be feel proud of. There are a lot of steps involved, but I think it would definitely be a step forward in their quality of work.

A few years down the line, I foresee the situation narrated in the beginning happen again. That time, I would find myself playing a different role - that of a father. When that happens, I might tell my son, "Try staying in the pooja - you might feel good." I'd still try to finish the pooja fast and would make my son feel happy - just as my father did!

The drama over IPL

2009-03-22T19:07:00.002+05:30

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/000200903221813.htm

I find myself aligned with the Commie view over the drama called IPL. That's a bit embarrasing.

Communist Party of India (CPI) leader D.Raja said: "We are in the election process, the home ministry tried to explain to the organisers whether the IPL management was aware of the elections or not. I never knew that the IPL leadership would be so apolitical."

He added: "The IPL is doing this for profit and when you do something for profit, you cannot expect a country to change its elections. They cannot take the country for granted. People in India have feelings for cricket, but they (IPL managers) should not exploit these feelings for profit."

The election commission, being fully aware of the security requirements for election chose to conduct in multiple phases.

It is obvious to the common man that it would be impossible for the government to provide security for the games when the elections are on. It is pathetic to see the major political parties giving out stupid or non-commital comments about the security situation and IPL's decision to shift the venue.

"This will send a wrong signal to the outside world that India cannot handle the security of cricket matches, which are such a huge public draw," BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar told IANS.

Another BJP guy said that India is not Pakistan. I wonder where was he on 26th November or when Akshardam or the Parliament were attacked. November 26th showed us that we are just as vulnerable as the Pakistanis.

Congress spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan said: "It is a private tournament organised by private organisers, it is their decision (to take out the tournament)."

"How can I comment on whether their decision is correct or not?" Mrs. Natarajan said to IANS.

Another weak comment that doesn't find anything wrong with the media or IPL's arm twisting the government. And it also ignores the fact that the country doesn't have a better security with the UPA at the helm.

Overall the entire episode shows that:

Our election process can be free of violence only with large deployment of security forces. This explains our democratic tradition.
The government - be it the UPA or NDA haven't figured out governance.
The corporate India is self-centered and cares a damn for anything other than their profits.
The media will play to the tune of the corporate India and cares little for ground realities.
People like me have blog as the only sane platform to vent out our frustration.

Nano, People, Economics and Tata's Vision

2009-03-22T10:28:00.005+05:30

Yesterday Prakash blogged about sentiments on Nano. On the points that Prakash had mentioned:

1. Bridge the status for many people
Are we looking at a more or less equal status of people because all of them can have a car? Is this the end of all differences and do we start treating people equally? Nano is just a product that would attempt to cash in on the small segment of city people that can afford a bike but can't afford a Maruti 800 or such a car.

Status differences are there and will be there. There will always be a comparison.

2. Allow people to convert their dreams in reality
The one who managed to buy a Nano would want to sell it the next year and move up to a bigger better car. So, if someone can dream of a Nano, the next dream would be an i10 or Getz or Maruti 800.

3. Ensure safe travel
Agreed. A car is safer than a bike just because you can't drive a bigger vehicle as crazily as you would drive a bike. But sir, what about the safety of the poor souls that happen to walk and cycle on the same road. Yesterday, I stopped for letting a pedestrian cross the road. She was shocked that someone could do that and stood like a moose in front of the headlights. In the meantime, I was honked and yelled for stopping!

BTW, I use my car as rarely as possible - maintaining a balance between social responsibility and need for luxury.

4. How a good segment of population will take a cautious approach before buying? They will wait and watch till the official verdict is on.
1 lakh (or advertised as Rs 99,999 + taxes) is just a marketing figure. I wonder what would be the cost of driving it that includes fuel, maintenance and insurance. Tata cars aren't known for their ease of maintenance and roads aren't designed for a maintenance free driving either. At this state of economy when the money flow is not guaranteed, people would obviously think a hundred times before committing on an ongoing spend.

My concern is, as the number of cars keep increasing, we have limited road-space in all the cities. We just can't afford to have more cars without causing major problems in environment, physical and mental health and lastly economy. In these conditions, it would be foolish to expect an expensive product to make life better for the masses.

Here are the specific comments about the timing of Nano.

Was it a good idea of Mohammed bin Thuglaq to shift the capital city? Was it a good idea to mint leather currency? Definitely yes! But every decision for a country or organization must be backed up by time.

To me, Tata's Nano and their acquiring of Jaguar, Land Rover or Corus lack the vision Tatas are known for.
If building a car from ground-up is an achievement, they have done it with Indica.
Instead of improving its quality and being cost effective in the production, Tata chose the 1-lakh car. Though the idea sounds good, it seems to be driven by ego - that we can do it.
That has an adverse impact in making fair judgment of the present conditions. I feel the opposition at Nandigram should have been seen as a bad omen for the 1-lakh car. We usually do not see resistance as a warning and Tatas are no exception.

Customer Support: Airtel, BSNL and Netgear

2009-03-06T10:39:00.002+05:30

On the economic slowdown, we decided to cut back some of our expenses. BSNL offered a flat 20% discount for government employees. My wife, being a government employee chose to switch our land line and broadband from Airtel to BSNL.

She applied, got the connection in about a week. Then we went onto cancel the account with Airtel. The day after I submitted the request for cancellation, Airtel guys called up to make an offer - a cheaper deal so that we continue to keep their connection and not worry about change in the number. I politely declined saying that I'm fine with the small effort needed in keeping people informed of the new number.

A week after we got the BSNL line, the JTO from BSNL informed us that the broadband connection is through too. He offered to help setup the connection. He didn't care to understand our current configuration and insisted that we follow what said. I decided to give it a shot - reset the router-ADSL combo (Netgear DG834G-v3) and began doing the setup. As expected it didn't work. I searched for the installation CD and tried reinstalling the router software.

Now comes the pain point. The installer indicated that the line doesn't have ADSL signals. We called up BSNL for support; they came with their own modem, tested the line and said it is fine and concluded the problem is with the router. I struggled for a couple of days with the power-off-reset-change socket-change cable cycles and decided to go for a new router. Technical intuition told me that we might be missing something and shouldn't need to get a router. Luckily we decided to hold back on buying a new ADSL+router as the price quoted in open market was almost double that of what BSNL was quoting.

After so much efforts, the techie in me had given up and decided to cry for help. I called up NetGear support this morning. Surprisingly, there were support engineers available to help outside of the standard office hours of 9-5. The support person understood that I'm reasonably technical and didn't dumb me down like the BSNL JTO. She patiently walked me through the series of steps including resetting the modem, reconfiguring a few parameters to get it to working.

What is it to be enlightened?

2008-12-27T19:57:00.002+05:30

Sujatha on Rajini Style

2008-12-22T12:50:00.002+05:30

A scene from நினைத்தாலே இனிக்கும்:

Gita sees Rajini tossing a cigarette to his lips.
கீதா: இது என்ன?
ரஜினி: ஸ்டைல்
கீதா: பொடி போட்டாலும் இப்படித்தான் போடுவீங்களா?

Windows Live Writer - What's the purpose?

2008-12-17T16:06:00.001+05:30

Windows Live Writer appears to be a dumb attempt to integrate key web applications to the desktop. Most blogging spaces do have a smart editor that allows for inserting all kinds of widgets. I'm not clear on any additional value add that Windows Writer has in this age of connectedness. Saving a local draft comes close to fulfilling one of the specialities of desktop, but Google does the saving on the server equally well.

This blog is created through Windows Live Writer.

Should I blog on Mumbai blasts?

2008-12-05T10:33:00.003+05:30

The media has gone through its opinions and talks with the experts and strategists; arm-chair analysts from the extreme left to extreme right have blogged about it. I can't come up with anything that's new. For the sake of logging, here are my comments.

The event was a result of carelessness of Indian and Pakistan societies. If lack of interest in security was India's contribution, lack of seriousness about terrorism is Pakistan's problem. Right now, India turns out to be the loser, few months ago it was Pakistan with the blasts in Islamabad or Karachi. It will go on until India takes the internal security seriously and/or Pakistan takes its home-grown terrorism seriously.

Unless the internal carelessness is addressed, there may not be much of a progress.

Any decision by the leadership on peace or war would be totally justified. They are equipped with advisers better than the arm-chair experts like me. The challenge is in the implementation.

வா ரணம் ஆயிரம்

2008-11-23T12:19:00.004+05:30

கௌதம் மேனனின் படங்கள் மீது எனக்கு பெரும் எதிர்பார்ப்பு இருந்ததில்லை. தமிழ் சினிமாவின் over-rated இயக்குனர்களில் முதல் ஆள் என்பது என் கணிப்பு. வாரணம் ஆயிரம் என் கணிப்பை உறுதி செய்தது.

படம் ஆரம்பிக்கும்போது, பெயர்கள் ஆங்கிலத்தில் வருகின்றன. எல்லாரும் அனேகமாக ஆங்கிலத்திலேயே பேசுகின்றனர். படத்திற்கு, 1000 Elephants என்று பெயர் வைத்திருக்கலாம் போலிருக்கிறது. அவ்வப்போது, தமிழில் sub-title போடுகிறார்கள். முழு படத்திலும் ஏன் அப்படி செய்யவில்லை என்று தெரியவில்லை.

சமீபத்திய தமிழ் சினிமாவில் நிச மனிதர்களின் கதையை படமாக்கினால், அந்த மனிதர்கள் மீது மரியாதையோ, அனுதாபமோ வராமல் பார்த்துக்கொள்வார்கள். உதாரணம் - பாரதி, இருவர், குரு. நான் பெரியார் பார்க்கவில்லை. பார்த்திருந்தாலும் என் எண்ணத்தில் பெரிய மாற்றம் இருக்காது என்று நினைக்கிறேன். காரணம் - சத்யராஜ், ஞானசேகர் மற்றும் பெரியார். வா. ஆவில் தந்தையின் பாத்திரத்திற்கு யாரவது inspiration என்றால், அவர் மேல் எனக்கு மரியாதையோ அனுதாபமோ வந்திருக்காது.

பொருளாதாரத்திலோ, தன் உடல் நலனிலோ, குழந்தைகளின் மன உறுதியிலோ ஈடுபாடில்லாத தந்தையாகவும் அதனால் பாதிக்கப்படும் மகனாகவும் சூர்யா. அப்படிப்பட்ட தந்தைதான் மகனுக்கு inspiration என்பது கதையின் கருத்து மாதிரி தெரிகிறது. தந்தை - மகன் உறவில், Airtel விளம்பரத்தில் வரும் நெகிழ்ச்சியில் நூற்றில் ஒரு பங்கு கூட இந்த படத்தில் இல்லை.

Romance-ஐ சிறிதும் அழகாக காண்பிக்க முடியாத அளவிற்கு கெளதம் காதல்புல அறைகூவலர். (புரியாதவர்கள் இந்த சொல்லை google செய்யவும்). அதை ஈடு கட்ட சூர்யா முயற்சிக்கிறார். முடியாத போது, காதலர்கள் I love you என்று சொல்லிக்கொள்கிறார்கள்.

முக்கியமான் காட்சிகளில் தேவையில்லாமல் fade-out, fade-in செய்வது என் என்று தெரியவில்லை. அனேகமாக எல்லா காட்சிகளும் தேவைக்கு அதிகமாக 3-5 நிமிடங்கள் ஓடுகின்றன. கடைசி காட்சியில் சிம்ரன், படத்தின் டைட்டிலை சொல்வது எஸ்.வீ. சேகரின் காட்டுல மழையை ஞாபகபடுத்துகிறது. சிறிதும் அழுத்தமில்லாத வசனங்கள். மொத்ததில் மூன்று மணி நேரம் வீண்.

படத்தைப்பற்றி எதாவது நல்லதாக எழுதவேண்டும் என்றால், சூர்யாவின் கடின உழைப்பு பற்றியோ அமெரிக்காவை அழகாக காண்பித்த காமிராவையும் சொல்லலாம்.

Continous exhibition of ignorance

2008-11-15T22:33:00.002+05:30

Gnanai is one writer who continues to amuse me. Reading Gnani makes me wonder how one part of the world can be so ignorant, churn out well structured articles in popular media and have people like me read and comment about them.

To get to the context - in Gnani's own words - "குறைந்தபட்சம் தமிழ்நாட்டில் ஒரு தலித் முதலமைச்சர் ; டெல்லியில் ஒரு முஸ்லிம் பிரதமர். (நிச்சயம் ராசா, கலாம் போன்ற பொம்மைப் பிரதிநிதிகள் அல்ல.) அதை நோக்கி நம் அரசியலை நம் மன நிலையை வளர்ப்பதுதான் நாம் செய்ய வேண்டியது."

What he fails to understand is - the Indian society is a 100 times diverse than the American society. Its diversity helps in local priorities, local leaderships and local centers of power - that can have an impact on their day-to-day life. The Indian political leadership doesn't come in the way of the common man's lifestyle, jobs etc. Indians do not believe that their PM or President is responsible for state of the society. At a local level, a Chief Minister may have some influence on the common man's lifestyle.

Indians do not see their Prime Minister as Americans feel about their President. In the US, a good economy or a bad economy is usually attributed to a President's administrative capabilities. In India, a good economy is when the rains are timely and enough. A bad economy is when there is drought - PM or President can do nothing about it.

So, Indians and Americans differ on their perception about their political leaders at a national level. But India has its share of leaders, though not political leaders in the true sense of the term - leaders who can instill optimism and pride. Abdul Kalaam definitely is one such leader, though not a politcal leader. The last political leader who could offer that kind of optimism was Rajiv Gandhi - not because of his color or pedigree. People believed in his sincerity in the 1985 elections, he was more like the Obama of today - a leader who can get the nation out of the problems of separatism and terrorism. To be fair to him, he sincerely addressed the problems and also had a vision for the nation.

I do not think Indians are confused about caste or religion when it comes to recognising leadership. BJP chose to field Abdul Kalaam not because he would be their puppet, instead it believed that Kalaam is apolitical and is a leader well respected by the people and the office of the President. BJP also had the important portfolio of defence ministry handled by George Fernandes - a popular trade union leader!

Event at a local level, where leadership has influence on people's lives, caste or religion does not come in the way of electing their leaders. There are other factors in the Indian Polical dynamics that matter - definitely caste and religion are not. A big Hindu majority state like Maharashtra did have a Muslim Chief Minister - A.R. Antuley.

Google Chrome - Impressive

2008-09-03T21:11:00.003+05:30

I stayed up late last night just to get a glimpse of Google Chrome, but had to postpone the download to today.

On download and install, like many users around the world - got a 0xc000005 error. For long time Microsoft devlopers, it is a well known access violation error. After a short search, I got to know about the conflict with Symantec Endpoints. Though this appears to be a config issue of Symantec, I choose to tweak the start-up parameters of Chrom to include --no-sandbox to work around the error.

The pages loaded pretty fast as I tried with Gmail and Google Docs. Other sites like rediff downloaded equally fast. For a browser that loads each tab in its own process, it is fast.

I like the details for nerds (about:memory) and compare with other browsers. Chrome uses relatively less memory, but its mapped VM is a lot higher.

On usability, I think it is one notch about Firefox. There are a number of minute details that I'll be learning over the course of its use in the next few days.

In spite of the initial hiccup, so far I'm impressed with Chrome.

What is to experience?

2008-08-31T20:11:00.003+05:30

This is an often repeated topic by the Nityanandas, Jaggi Vasudevs and JKs. Still, there is nothing wrong in I, being a common man like you, repeat it.

The context of this topic came up during a once-a-year meeting I have with my brother. The meetings usually span about three days when we cover topics ranging from music (his favorite subject) to films and literature. He being a fan of www.itwofs.com, had problems in appreciating music that he knows is copied. To him, good music is one that is original (as far as his knowledge goes).

I see this as two different activities - one is the listener's experience of the song, two being the problem of plagiarism. By knowing that a certain music is copied shouldn't come in the way of experiencing the music. Rahman's rendering of "What are you waiting for (Album: Vandemataram)" and "போறாளே பொன்னுத்தாயீ" (Album: Karuththamma), were expressive of the respective moods. I happen to hear a fast paced party song in the same tune. I don't care to know the source of the song. Should you not experience the melancholy of the Tamil rendering because Rahman is not the original "creator" of the music? The problem is, the mind comes in the way and passes judgement on the work, preventing a real experience.

As a small exercise, when you hear a song, watch for your thoughts. Are they about the instrumentation, lyrics, the visuals or the people associated with it? If it is none of them, you are probably experiencing the music.

The second part is about plagiarism. I'm not getting into the details of music plagiarism. It is known problem, but does't deserve the kind of attention it gets from music lovers. I do not believe that anyone can claim ownership of an intellectual property - be it a creative idea in science or arts. To give shape to an idea, there is human effort involved and that deserves a reward. That is, a musician gets to be paid well for a good rendering of a song. He doesn't have the right to prevent or restrict the rendering of the same music by others.

More on my views on Rights, Copy Rights, Open Source later...

P.S: Typos and errors in Kannadasan's work I referred in my previous post have been fixed. My apologies for the copy paste errors from an unauthenticated source. Please feel free to add a comment if it is still incorrect.

More on freedom

2008-08-23T19:15:00.004+05:30

Friend Nag responded to my earlier blog on being free. His comments were:

1. Brain will never give up its superiority (functioning) until it cease to exist or the functioning is stopped. Let us assume, the brain evolves to attain freedom, by then it would've realised to stop procreation to ensure freedom. I'm unable to foresee such a evolution process. Well, if it turns out to be true, that will be the end of man kind, as procreation will stop.

As for any creature, expanding itself, is so primal, I really doubt that can happen. If it were to happen, then freedom comes with human extinction.

2. The way I see freedom is, when everything becomes an abstract and you don't see the cause and relationship and not affected by what is happening around. That could be the state of bliss. This state of bliss, could be attained by a few percentage of the human race and not by all.

Still freedom will be achieved by all, in their own definition and not in a common parlance.

Nag has got it right in relating the identity or the mind to the procreation. But what I see as freedom is, a state in which the mind is not the master, but a part with equal priority as the other senses. Just like the other organs, the brain will take part in the process of procreation, but the primary motive in the process will not be lust (arising out insecurity).

The state of bliss is a great one, but we are not born just for bliss. It is good in small doses. In a state of bliss, it is very likely that the body is passive. As we are born with sensory organs, I see the purpose of life is to experience and not to stay in a blissful state for extended periods of time.

Here is a quote from Kannadasan in support.

பிறப்பில் வருவது யாதென கேட்டேன்
பிறந்து பார் என இறைவன் பணித்தான்

இறப்பில் வருவது யாதென கேட்டேன்
இறந்து பார் என இறைவன் பணித்தான்

மனையாள் சுகமெனில் யாதெனக் கேட்டேன்
மணந்து பாரென இறைவன் பணித்தான்

அனுபவித்தே தான் வாழ்வது வாழ்வெனில்
ஆண்டவனே நீ ஏன்? என கேட்டேன்

ஆண்டவன் சற்றே அருகினில் வந்து
அனுபவம் என்பதே நான்தான் என்றான்.

Unlike a blissful passive state, there is a great active state where the mind (rather the influence the abstract identity) doesn't influence the action. This is a state where your actions are not influenced by who you are, but what the situation demands. Since there is no bias towards an identity, the actions are for a greater good.

I plan to write more on some ways of engaging your "mind" and be free for a moment or two. More on that, later.

Real Freedom

2008-08-17T20:43:00.002+05:30

On India's Independence day, here is my attempt write about real freedom and to demystify the philosophy on Maya, self etc.

Imagine the brain as a computer (crude, but simple to explain) with all its CPU and buses; the sensory organs being the peripherals. One important difference is, there is an experiencer - that is you. When inputs come from the senses, the brain processes the inputs and there is an experience.

Now add the complexity of memory. Memory evolved with humans and it has been a pretty useful one, just like the computer's memory. It is able to remember more, information gathered over generations is stored better resulting in more complex ideas and innovations. With its evolution, the memory managed to get a higher priority over the inputs from the senses. In computer terminology, we can say that the bus between the memory and the CPU has higher capacity than the other buses.

The experiencer explained in the first paragraph is more and more dependent on the memory. In fact, the experiencer identifies himself / herself with the memory acquired. So, people have macro identities with their nationality, religion, caste and micro identities like name, education and profession. These are nothing more than assertions in the memory. This is what we mean when we say "I". My understanding is - the eastern philosophy refers this as "Maya" - a bunch of abstract thoughts and the lack of real experience. Almost all our thoughts and actions are influenced by these identities. There is definitely better life if we have lesser influence of these identities. Imagine a world without so many divisions!

What does it mean to be free?

When a child looks at a thing, there is just an experience of seeing. The mind doesn't intervene in the interpretation of what is being seen. To understand this better, listen to Bharathi's "காக்கைச் சிறகினிலே".

Can you be really Free?

From ancient times, people have been attempting to get rid of the influence of this identity and be free. The interesting part is, the mind gets stronger with every serious attempt to reduce its importance. For example, if a prophet or a saint finds a way and disseminates his experience, it soon adds to the assertions and forms a cult or a religion with rituals. It is impossible to create a student as enlightened as the master for the simple reason that their physical brains are different.

With the current knowledge and technology, it is almost impossible to permanently set aside the dominance of the memory, for this is a physiological condition. Some have the physiological condition where they are able to see memory as just another source of information and are able to dissociate the experiencer from the memory.

I see the modern Gurus having this condition. Please see this as no more a specialty than what an athlete has - an extraordinary physiological condition. Good poets are another group who go through the experience without the disturbance of the mind. At times, when this is not possible, alcohol or narcotics help.

Powerful inputs from other senses sometimes can help in reducing the importance of the memory and in turn the identity - like the vision of a favorite deity, smell of a few flowers, sound of conch, bells and chanting. Another crude parallel - as the aroma of your favorite food triggers the secretion of saliva, bile juice etc.

As the brain and in turn the mind evolved to its current state, it is also possible that the brain evolves further to be free. With improved understanding of the functioning of the brain, more interaction between the scientists and leaders and coming together of the various cultures, I think it will be possible for normal humans to be free. The process would be more of a physiological evolution than a religious one.

தசாவதாரத்தின் கதை

2008-06-29T11:58:00.004+05:30

1955 ஆம் ஆண்டு. தென் தமிழ்நாட்டில் ஒரு கிராமம். சுதந்திர தின கொண்டாட்டம். குழந்தைகளின் மாறு வேடப்போட்டி.

வக்கீல் சீனிவாசனின் 8 வயது மகனுக்கு நேரு வேடம் போட ஆசை. அம்மாவுக்கும் மற்ற அக்ரகாரத்து மாமிகளுக்கும் குழந்தைக்கு கிருஷ்ணன் வேடம் போட்டு பார்க்க ஆசை. குழந்தைக்கு வண்ணம் பூசிக்கொள்ளவோ வெற்றுடம்புடன் தோன்றவோ பிடிக்கவில்லை. குழந்தையின் ஆசை வென்றது. வெள்ளை வெளேர் என்று நேரு உடையில் மார்பில் ரோஜாவுடன் குழந்தை மேடை ஏறியது. பல்வேறு காரணங்களினால் வேறு ஒரு குழந்தை பரிசை வென்றது.

நம் கதாநாயகக் குழந்தைக்கு ஏமாற்றம். கிருஷ்ணனும், அக்ரகாரத்து மாமிகளும் தான் தன் தோல்விக்கு காரணம் என்று பரிபூரணமாக நம்பினான். கடவுளையும், அக்ரகாரத்து மாமிகளையும், பின்னர் சுற்றியுள்ள மனிதர்களையும் பழி வாங்கத்துடித்தான். மாறுவேடமே வாழக்கை என்று முடிவு செய்தான். அவனுடைய பழி வாங்கும் படலத்தின் முதல் வெற்றி 1997 இல் கிடைத்தது. அக்ரகாரத்து மாமிகளை ஓரளவு அவமானப்படுத்தும் முயற்சியில் அவ்வை ஷண்முகி வெற்றி பெற்றது. நம் நாயகனுக்கு இன்னும் திருப்தி வரவில்லை. நண்பன் ரவிக்குமாருடன் சேர்ந்து இந்த உலகை பழி வாங்க அடுத்த வாய்ப்பு - 2006 இல் தசாவதாரத்தை தொடங்கினான். பல்வேறு சோதனைக்குப்பிறகு 2008 இல் ஒரு வழியாக படத்தை வெளியிட்டான். ஊகித்திருப்பீர்கள் - அந்த குழந்தைதான் நம் உலக நாயகன் கமல ஹாசன்.

ஒரு நல்ல கதைக்கு ஒரு one-liner வேண்டும். நீங்கள் பார்த்து ரசித்த எல்லா படங்களுக்கும் இந்த ஒரு வரி கதை சொல்ல முடியும். இந்த ஒரு வரியில் இடம் பெரும் கதை மாந்தர் தான் கதையின் நாயகர்கள். நவராத்திரியில் - "வீட்டை விட்டு ஓடிய பெண் சந்தித்த ஒன்பது பேர்." - கதாநாயகி: வீட்டை விட்டு ஓடிய பெண்; மைக்கல் மதன காமராசனுக்கு - "இளம் வயதில் பிரிந்த நான்கு சகோதரர்கள் இணைகிறார்கள்." - கதாநாயகர்கள்: நான்கு சகோதரர்கள்

தசாவதாரத்திற்கு அவ்வாறு சொல்ல முயற்சித்தால் - "12 ஆம் நூற்றாண்டில் கடலில் போடப்பட்ட பெருமாள் 2004 இல் உலகைக்காக்கிறார்." அல்லது "அமெரிக்காவில் திருடப்பட்ட கிருமி நாகப்பட்டினத்தில் அழிக்கப்படுகிறது". கதை மாந்தர் பெருமாள் அல்லது கிருமி. கமல ஹாசனின் கொள்கைப்படி கடவுள் வேடம் போட முடியாது. கிருமி மிகச்சிறியதானதால் கிருமி வேடமும் போட முடியாது. அதனால் இடைப்பட்ட எல்லா வேடங்களையும் போட்டுள்ளார் கமல ஹாசன். பக்கத்தில் உட்கார்ந்திருந்த என் மகன் யார் கமல் என்று கேட்டான். குழப்பத்தை தவிர்க்க - எந்த முகமாவது பிளாஸ்டிக்கால் செய்தது போல் தெரிந்தால் அது கமல் என்று விளக்கினேன்.

பல வருடங்களுக்கு முன் என் டி ராமாராவ் தான வீர சூர கர்ணுடு என்று ஒரு படம் எடுத்தார். தலைப்பின் படி, கதாநாயகன் கர்ணனாக என்டிஆர். அடுத்த மிக முக்கியமான பாத்திரம் - துரியோதனன் - அதுவும் என்டிஆர். இரண்டும் எதிர்மறை பாத்திரங்களாகப்போனதால் அருச்சுனனாகவும் என்டிஆர். மகாபாரதக்கதையில் என்டிஆர் தவிர வேறு யாராவது கிருஷ்ணனாக நடிக்க முடியுமா? அதனால் கிருஷ்ணனாகவும் என்டிஆர். கிட்டத்தட்ட அதே அளவு புத்திசாலித்தனத்தில் இருக்கிறது கமலின் தசாவதாரம். ஒரே வித்தியாசம் - கமல் பல முகமூடிகளைப் பயன்படுத்தி, பாத்திரங்களுக்கேடையே வேறுபாட்டை காண்பிக்கிறார். முகமூடிகளுக்குப்பின் கமல் இருந்தால் என்ன - கல்லாப்பெட்டி சிங்காரம் தான் இருந்தால் என்ன?

கடவுள் பற்றி கமலின் குழப்பம் தான் கதை. விஞ்ஞானி கமல், கடவுள் இருந்தால் நன்றாக இருக்கும் என்று சொல்கிறார். சுனாமி போன்ற அழிவுக்கும் அந்த இல்லாத கடவுள்தான் காரணம் என்று சொல்கிறார். குழப்பத்தில் இந்தப்படம் பாபாவுக்கு இணையானது. பாபாவைவிட அதிக வெற்றி பெற்றால், இதற்கு (கருணாநிதி பாஷையில் சொல்வதென்றால்) "அவா" செய்த விளம்பரம் தான் காரணம். அல்லது ஆஸ்கர் ரவிச்சந்திரன் செய்த புண்ணியம் தான். ஆளவந்தான் படத்துக்குப்பின் தாணு கிட்டத்தட்ட நடுத்தெருவிற்கு வந்தார். அந்த கஷ்டம் யாருக்கும் வரக்கூடாது - ஆஸ்கர் ரவிச்சந்திரனுக்கும் தான். அதனாலாவது இந்தப்படம் ஓடினால் சந்தோசம் தான்.

அறை எண் 305ல் கடவுள்

2008-05-18T17:41:00.002+05:30

நேற்று தான் ஸ்ரீராமுடன் பேசிக்கொண்டிருந்தேன். லகே ரஹோ முன்னாபாய் போல தமிழில் சீரியஸ் விஷயத்தை லைட்டாக யாரும் சொல்லவில்லை என்று நினைத்திருந்தோம். ஹாலிவுட் போல உண்மையாக ஆன்மீக செய்தியுடன் தமிழில் யாரும் படம் எடுப்பதில்லை என்ற என் குறையும் தீர்ந்தது.

காதல், இம்சை, வெயிலுக்குப்பிறகு ஷங்கரின் பட்டறையிலிருந்து மற்றும் ஒரு நல்ல படம்.

ராம நாராயணன் படம் போல கடவுளை கோமாளியாக்கவில்லை. இதில் கடவுள் அற்புதம் செய்கிறார் - ஆனால் யாருடைய பிரச்சினைக்கும் அந்த அற்புதம் தீர்வாகவில்லை. அற்புதங்களால் பிரச்சினைகள் தீர்வதில்லை என்பது தெளிவாக்கப்பட்டுள்ளது.

நாத்திகம் பேசப்படுகிறது - மிக அழகாக. ராம கோபாலனோ, வீரமணியோ, வேறு யாருமோ வழக்கு தொடர வாய்ப்பில்லாமல், தெளிவாகவும், உண்மையாகவும் நாத்திகமும் ஆத்தீகமும் பேசப்படுகின்றன. பிரச்சாரமில்லாத அன்பை மையமாக வைத்து, எப்படி படம் எடுப்பது என்று கமல் ஹாசன் கற்றுக்கொள்ளலாம்.

கடவுள் முன், மரணங்கள் நிகழ்கின்றன. கடவுள் கோபப்படுகின்றார். கக்கூசும் கழுவுகின்றார். விண் மட்டும் கடவுளன்று; மண்ணும் அஹ்தே (இந்த எடிடரில் ஆய்த எழுத்தை எப்படி கொடுப்பது என்று தெரியவில்லை - மன்னிக்கவும்) என்று புரியவைக்கின்றார்.

இதைத்தவிர சிம்புதேவனின் நையாண்டிகள் - ஹெலிகாப்டரில் நெத்திலி அம்மன் துணை, சுந்தரேசன் ஸ்டிக்கர், திருவல்லிக்கேணி பால் வீதி என்று பல.

சில காட்சிகளில் சந்தானத்திற்கு பதில் வேறு யாரவது நடித்து இருக்கலாமோ என்று தோன்றுகிறது; மற்றபடி நல்ல நடிகர் தேர்வு. மிக முக்கியமாக ஆர்னால்டு என்கிற கடவுளாக பிரகாஷ்ராஜ், நாத்திகம் பேசும் ராஜேஷ், மொக்கையாக கஞ்சா கருப்பு, மானேஜராக பாஸ்கர் என்று பல நல்ல காஸ்டிங்.

காதல் செய் என்று ஒரு பாட்டு - சவ சவ குரல் மற்றும் இசையால் வார்த்தைகள் எடுபடாமல் போகின்றன. மற்றபடி பின்னணி இசை பரவாயில்லை. பின்னணி ஒலி, பிராப்ஸ் போன்றவற்றை கவனித்து பாராட்ட, இன்னொரு முறை பார்க்கலாம். பின்னர் டிவிடியில் நிதானமாக பார்த்து பாராட்ட வேண்டிய படம்.

ஷங்கரின் பிற படங்கள் போல இது பேசப்படாது. ராம நாராயணன் படம் போல மினிமம் கியாரண்டி கொடுக்குமா என்பது கூட சந்தேகம் தான். ஆனால், இது தமிழ் சினிமாவிற்கு மிக முக்கியமான படம் என்பதில் சிறிதும் சந்தேகம் இல்லை.

அஞ்ஞானப் பக்கங்கள்

2008-04-12T17:54:00.002+05:30

ஞானியின் ஓ பக்கங்கள் : தமிழ் நாடு தனி நாடானாலோ அல்லது இந்தியா ஒன்றியமாகவோ இருந்தால் தண்ணீர் பிரச்சினை எவ்வாறு தீரும் என்று என் சிற்றறிவுக்கு எட்டவில்லை. இந்தியாவும் பாகிஸ்தானும் சுமுகமாக ஓரளவு பிரச்சினையை தீர்த்துக்கொண்டதற்கு, அவற்றின் அரசியல் அமைப்பு மட்டும் காரணமில்லை. தீர்க்க முடியாமல் இன்னும் பேச்சு வார்த்தை நடத்தும் நிலைமையும் இருக்கிறது. சண்டை பெரிதாகாமல் இருக்கக் காரணம்: இவை செய்திகளில் அதிகம் வராமல் இருப்பதே ஆகும்.

ஓர் நாடோ, மாநிலமோ தனது அண்டை நாடு அல்லது மாநிலத்துடன் கருத்து வேறுபாடு வரும்போது, அதைத் தீர்க்க, காலம் காலமாக வெவ்வேறு முறைகளை கையாண்டு வந்திருக்கின்றன. சில நூறு வருடங்களுக்கு முன், அவை சண்டை இட்டுக்கொண்டன. வென்ற கட்சியின் கருத்து வென்றது.

கடந்த நூறு வருடங்களில், இரண்டு கட்சிகளும், தமக்கு மேலே உள்ள ஒரு அமைப்பிடம் சென்று முறையிட்டு தீர்ப்பு கேட்டன. அது ஐக்கிய நாடுகள் சபை, அல்லது மத்திய அரசு அல்லது நீதி மன்றமாக இருந்து வந்துள்ளது. முதல் இரண்டு அமைப்புகளும், அரசியல் கட்டாயங்களுக்காக நியாயமான தீர்ப்பை வழங்க முடியாமல் இருக்கின்றன. கிடைக்கும் தீர்ப்பு, பலமுள்ள கட்சிக்கு ஆதரவாகவே இருந்துள்ளது. அதாவது, might is right.

நீதி மன்றத் தீர்ப்பு பல நேரங்களில், நடை முறைப்படுத்த முடியாததாக இருந்து வந்திருக்கின்றது. ஏனென்றால் நடை முறைப்படுத்த வேண்டியவர்கள், இந்த இரு கட்சியை சேர்ந்தவர்கள். அவர்களால் எதிரணியின் நியாயத்தைப் பார்க்க முடியாது.

சமீபத்திய வழக்கம்: போராட்டம், உண்ணாவிரதம். இரண்டுக்கும் பெரிய வித்தியாசமில்லை. முதலாவது ஹிம்சை, இரண்டாவது சுய ஹிம்சை. இரண்டும் அஹிம்சை இல்லை. காந்தியைப்போன்றவர்களின் உண்மையான சுய ஹிம்சை ஒரு விதமான emotional blackmail. சமீபத்திய உண்ணாவிரதங்களில் உண்மை இல்லாததால், அது ஒரு விதமான பொழுது போக்கு மட்டுமே.

பிரச்சினையின் மூல காரணம்: பிறரை தன் போல் எண்ணாது இருத்தலே. கர்நாடகமோ, ஆந்திரவோ, கேரளாவோ தமிழ் நாட்டின் பிரச்சினையை சற்றே உணர்ந்தால், (புரிந்தால் அல்ல - புரிந்து கொள்வது மனம் சம்பந்தப்பட்டது, உணர்ச்சி இதய பூர்வமானது), சற்றே இறங்கி வந்து, மனமுவந்து பிரச்சினைக்கு தீர்வு காண முடியும்.

கேரளாவின் கம்யுனிஸ்ட்களோ, ஆந்திர கர்நாடக சோசியலிஸ்ட்களோ, தேசியவாதிகளோ இந்தப் பிரச்சினையின் ஆரம்பமாக இருப்பது, so called "சித்தாந்தங்களின்" குறைபாடு.

When can we set aside our fragmented minds, live by the heart?

I knew psychology without knowing that it's psychology

2008-04-12T06:50:00.004+05:30

I asked my 11 year old son on where he lost his geography notebook. He was clueless. It wasn't new for him to lose things and look lost in front of me. Last month it was geography book, another day it was another book and so on. In the first year of school, he used to lose pencils and erasers so frequently that we always bought boxes of them.

Like most dumb parents I too tried telling him on how I used to take care of my possessions. It just struck me that I didn't have too many things to care for. Until 3rd grade, all I need to carry was one notebook for Mathematics, 3 or 4 books and a slate. That's all. The number increased gradually, but some kind of laziness prevented me from carrying more than 10 items to school until the 12th grade.

And now, I stumbled upon the 50 year old psychology theory on the limited capacity of memory.

And how did I arrive at this information to blog about? I was reading on a technology blog, that talked about interviews, linked to Microsoft interview, remembered a riddle I got to hear in an interview with i2 technology guys (that I didn't answer and didn't get a job at i2), checked up on what i2 is upto, and eventually landed at the psychology page linked above.

It is an interesting exercise to see how the mind links information. But "seeing" your mind working is a gift.

Remembering Sujatha - belatedly

2008-03-08T08:31:00.004+05:30

முத்துக்குமரனை கப்பலின் மேல் தளத்தில், ஒரு பலகையில் நிறுத்தி சுட்டு விட்டார்கள். சனிக்கிழமை வந்த குமுதத்தில் வந்தது செய்தி. செவ்வாய்க்கிழமை, சுஜாதா தில்லைநகர் மகளிர் மன்றத்தில் பேசப்போகிறார். ஒன்பதாம் வகுப்பு படித்துக்கொண்டிருந்த எங்களுக்கு ஆர்வம் தாங்கவில்லை. ஆனந்த குமார், ஸ்ரீகாந்த், பரத்வாஜ், சுஜாதாவை சந்திக்க முடிவு செய்து விட்டார்கள். Agenda: முத்துக்குமரனுக்கு என்ன ஆயிற்று என்று தெரிந்துகொள்வது. முதலில் எனக்கு போக ஆசையாகத்தான் இருந்தது. ஐந்து நிமிட சந்திப்பு சுவாரஸ்யத்தை விட மிக அதிகமான சுவாரஸ்யம் படிக்கும் போது இருப்பதாலோ என்னவோ நான் அவரை சந்திக்கப் போகவில்லை. குறையொன்றுமில்லை. ஆனால் இப்போது, சுஜாதா இல்லை என்று நினைக்கும்போது, மிகப்பெரிதாக என்னவோ குறைகிறது.

எத்தனை பேருக்கு inspiration? அறிவியலுக்கும் உணர்வுக்கும் இடையே நடுவில் வாழ்ந்தவர். உணர்வுகளை சரியாகப்புரிந்துகொண்டு ஒரு பார்முலாவைக்கண்டுபிடித்து கதைகளும், திரைக்கதையும் வசனமும் எழுதியவர். தான் special என்று உணர்ந்தும், எல்லோரும் சமம் என்று நடந்து கொண்டவர்.

பல நாயகர்களைப்போல இவரையும் சமூகம் மறந்து விடக்கூடும். மறந்து விடுவோமோ? சந்தேகம் தான். புதுமைப்பித்தனையும், ஜானகிராமனையும் மறந்து விட்டோமா என்ன? மறந்தாலும் மறக்கவிட்டாலும் அவர் இல்லாதது குறை தான், குறை தான்.

Taare Zameen Par

2008-02-10T19:04:00.000+05:30

Yesterday I watched the movie 'Taare Zameen Par'. A good movie, very different from the 95% run-of-the-mill movies churned out by ?ollywood. A good attempt to bring to light some of the ignorance on learning. So, it would be unfair to focus details on where are the storyline slumped.

I have observed a lot of kids go through the state of lack of fine motor skill at various points in time. Adults also go through this problem temporarily due to lack of sleep or some medication.

I have seen a cousin, a very smart kid, often misspelling words when she was about 7-8 years old. Her parents and teachers were intelligent enough to see the actual problem and didn't fret over the "silly mistakes". Over a period of time, she was fine.

My son wasn't comfortable buttoning his shirt or tying the shoe-lace until he was about 9 years old. I tried teaching him to button his shirt when he was five and both left the training frustrated. He would always prefer shirts with no buttons and trousers with elastic. He started writing late and developed a very bad handwriting too. A correction program had to done when he was 10 years old. We also introduced him to games like pallankuzhi to help in fine motor skills and math.

A lot of these are hereditary. The problems can be traced back to the changes we have had in our education system.

The motor skills begin to develop at around 5 years of age. But most kids in India are in schools from age 3, trying to write.
Learning to write often started with writing it big - using a stick or fingers and write on sand or grains. In India, we don't have enough space to write on sand or grains.
Kids do not learn to write in mother tongue, but start with English - where the spelling doesn't always correspond to the pronunciation. This adds to the learning difficulties.
Rhymes and recitation help in learning more than reasoning and prose. Primary education system in India, doesn't given enough stress on this. (Remember the days when you would sing addition and multiplication tables in your mother tongue. They also helped to some extent!)
Games like pallankuzhi (பல்லாங்குழி) help in fine motor skills. Nondi (நொண்டி) is an outdoor game that helps in mind-body coordination. Do kids play these nowadays?

I hope I'll do something to improve the learning process at various levels .... planned for next year.

Purpose

2008-01-28T06:07:00.003+05:30

I have been waiting at La Guardia for the same amount of time, it took my travel from Detroit to La Guardia. I approached the ground transportation help desk to see if I have any options if the shuttle I booked doesn't show up.

The previous day, it took me a few hours to research on the transportation options from New York La Guardia Airport to Raritan in New Jersey. I won't have much time as the flight's scheduled arrival is at 8:15 AM and I am supposed to meet my business contact by 10 AM. I have less than two hours to cover some 65 miles that includes New York traffic. Considering how bad a driver I am and my difficulty in switching near vision to far vision to keep track of maps and road signs, I chose to take a taxi or a shuttle. I searched for limo services, taxi rates etc and finally booked a shuttle. I wouldn't say my decision to go with that shuttle service can be backed up by good research, but at some point I just booked it without delaying further.

Back to La Guardia. I called the shuttle service for the fourth time to check whether I can cancel the booking as they are so delayed. The meeting that was going to be delayed was important one for me and my company. I'm surprised that I wasn't angry or anxious but was just following up. The operator apologized that the shuttle is stuck in traffic and the delay was inevitable. I promptly emailed my contact at Raritan that I'd be delayed - one of the nice things we learn in client interaction, called "setting expectation".

The van finally showed up at about 9:15, the driver apologizing repeatedly. Shuttle drivers are usually friendly and they tried to get into a conversation. He talked about New York traffic and accidents and gave a glimpse of his knowledge about New York geography to get onto less traffic route to get to my destination on time. One street in Brooklyn had a lot of camera wielding people moving on all directions.

"News guys!" - I said.
"Oh here is the place where the actor who died yesterday used to live...", said the driver. He continued, "Don't you think the news feeding on someone's sorrow is a bad thing?"
"Yes, but it is the same all over the world. There are people who are disgusted by such attitude and there are people who want to make a news out of every event."
"Sir, the dress, food and lifestyle can be different across nations, but the values of people are the same across the world. By the way, my name is Arnie, as in the Governer of California, so that you can relate the name."
I introduced myself.

"Sir, do you believe in rebirth?" He didn't wait for my answer and took it for granted that people from my part of the world accept rebirth as a fact of life and continued. "The west and the books of Jews, Christians and Muslims do not talk about rebirth. I think it is a natural phenomenon that answers all the question about our sufferings. The church and other central organizations want to control the beliefs and so they don't allow room for discussions on rebirth."

I just smiled, I have no on this. Arnie continued, "I think on rebirth gives us chance to improve and win over fear, anger and hatred."

Now I have a comment. "You can't win over these, because you are these. The very identity you have - that of an Anglo Saxon living in New York will create a fear of things - things that are not you. Fear of the terrorists, fear of gangs in the city will be natural as long as you hold the identity. Realizing this will free you from the perception of fear."

The conversation went on and on till we reached NJ. To me, my visit did not serve the purpose until after 3-4 months when I got a chance to work with the client I met on that day. I hope my visit served some purpose for Arnie - more than the salary he earned on that day.

Google's transliteration application for Indic languages

2008-01-22T07:40:00.000+05:30

Compared what Microsoft offered through www.bhashaindia.com, Google's transliteration application much better. Considering the IME runs on the client, it could have been a lot better in detecting Tamil (though the IME is available for many Indic languages, Tamil happens to be a bit difficult one). For example, to get ன, you have to type the letter n followed by _ (underscore) within a second or so. With a small rule set and /or a dictionary, it could have detected the letter based on the context as Google does.

Google does even better. To differentiate between kuril and nedil, most IME expected the users to use upper case. It has been a fair expectation. But it is also the users' common practice to begin a sentence in English with upper case. On transliteration, this caused a needless error and correction. With Google, typing 'Oru' or 'oru' results in a transliteration to 'ஒரு', which is a common word. Google also shows a context menu with other possibilities like 'ஓரு' and 'ஒறு'.

More to come as I explore.

My association with associations

2008-01-14T20:28:00.000+05:30

I haven't been associated with any association for most part of my life. I had no option but to take active role in the association of the residents of my building. Reasons: I was the first one to move in and so had more contexts and an office 5 minutes away from home. So, I became an obvious choice to be one of the office bearers. The association is more of an administrative one to handle receipts from residents and payments to service providers like water supply, security etc., It is no more than a clerical job for the office bearers. Most importantly, the association would never involve in activities like petition to various government bodies or demonstrations or some such things associations are usually known for.

I stayed away from any other associations as I do not believe in collective bargaining. We have so many caste based associations; religion based ones, political party affiliations and social networks to choose from. My strong opinion about such groups is - they are more interested in their rights than in their fulfilling their responsibilities. There is this caste based association run by businessmen of the caste I was born in. Every year they meet and demand reservations for their undeserving caste. Thankfully they haven't managed to find a political leader who would do something about this demand.

The recent association I came across was started by the residents of the area I live in. They had a news item in the local newspaper about traffic changes. I had some reservation about their plan and decided to attend the meeting on Sunday to voice my opinions. The meeting was scheduled to start at 9:30 AM but didn't start till 10:30. Until then, it was some socializing and introductions. When the meeting started it was clear to me that this is another association for collective bargaining and has nothing to do with integrity or reason.

About a month ago, more street lights started showing up near my building. It was clearly in excess of the needs. It is true that we can use some light, but sodium vapour lights at every 50 feet are a bit too much. In the pre-meeting introduction, I came to know that the area association was responsible for getting this done. I thanked the association guys, but I thought it was a bit unfair to have so many lights when the rest of the state is suffering from frequent power cuts. So, here is a clear sign of collective bargaining working to the advantage of the residents and to the disadvantage of the rest of the state.

A few months ago, Chennai traffic police decided to restrict the number of exit points from our area to the main road. The reason was, with more vehicles entering the main road from our area, it was choking one of the important junctions. The association wanted to open up more exit points to the main road. My point was - the residents are responsible for more traffic and their demand is not fair if we do nothing to reduce the traffic from within the society. My view was clearly ignored as it needed some introspection and adjustment, which are difficult.

I can live with opposing views and can understand how democracy works. But I can't be associated with groups exhibiting hypocrisy. So, yesterday's first meeting is probably the last one I attended.

To Mumbai, Pune and back

2007-11-28T18:41:00.000+05:30

After almost 8 years we went to Mumbai and Pune. Both the cities are still attractive in patches. After all, I lived in those cities for a few years and can't just hate them.

What's new
More fly-overs, more air-conditioned cars were common for Mumbai and Pune. Mumbai as usual, exhibits poverty and wealth that strike you on the face. One big positive is the highway between Mumbai and Pune. It is truly world class in quality and maintenance.

From Dehu Road to Aundh, for every hundred feet that is one new construction. The advertisements promise silicon valleys and such western paradises right along the slopes of Western ghats.

Pune, for its part has its traffic increased a hundred fold. In spite of fly-overs and automatic signals, traffic was bad from Aundh to Cantonment area. Everyone was on the edge and city looked so different with rude drivers. Pune city now has many multiplexes and shopping malls. I didn't have enough time to visit any of them. We managed some time to visit the old city for shopping.

What hadn't changed
The old city remains more or less the same. Appa Balwant Chowk (ABC) has the same book shops I've seen about 20 years ago. The narrow roads and the chawls remain the same. Autos are still cheap. I would have paid more than twice, had it been Chennai. Even the air-conditioned cab between the airport and Dadar in peak traffic costed me just Rs 200 - can't think of that in Chennai.

The greenery of Pune University is still in tact, though I saw some ugly new concrete showing up here and there within the campus.
The ubiquitous red paan stains are always there in every building I saw.

After all, Pune and paan stains are as natural as Chennai and greedy auto drivers.

Purpose of a translation

2007-10-05T12:41:00.000+05:30

If you have boarded a flight from Chennai's Anna International Airport and you can read Tamil, you might have noticed a sign "மெய்ப்புல அறைகூவலர்". Ever wondered what it could be?

If you can read English, then you can make sense of what this means - yes - it is "Physically Challenged". I can't imagine who can come with such a dumb translation - that too from English to Tamil in Tamil Nadu.

A physically challenged person who knows only Tamil has no use of such a sign board in Tamil.

India is marching ahead

2007-08-10T16:35:00.000+05:30

I thought it was a joke when I saw the link with the text "Start a New Life with SecondShaadi.com". I thought one of the NRIs with a good sense of humor wrote a blog, making fun of Indian "match-making" aka dating sites. I continued to believe that this is a joke when I saw the Copyright note as "Pahwa KBS. All rights reserved." I thought the author is smart enough to coin a last name - first name combination that sounds like "bhakwas" - or rubbish in Hindi.

After careful analysis, it dawned upon me that this could be serious business. The CEO is from some management institute, must have done his due diligence before starting a venture. Who knows, there must be venture capitalists who might have done their due diligence before funding it. It could be a simple number game. They must have thought - "About 10 million Indians get married every year. Of this, if 5% are remarriages, we have a business of 500K people who are looking for a product to cater to their needs. That will be our product". (Disclaimer: All numbers here are purely fictitious.)

But someone thought of purely Indianising the dating market. The major matrimony sites launched brands to cater to various ethnic groups. There are still fragments to be captured and so Mr. Pahwa came up with his secondshaadi.com.

Be prepared to expect the launch of gayshaadi.com and lesbianshaadi.com soon. AFAIK, these are remaining fragments.

Rajini for President

2007-07-24T06:54:00.001+05:30

I read this article by Rajeev Srinivasan on Rediff - A whiff of the Manchurian Candidate.

Rajeev suggests a few names for the President of India. Here is my serious recommendation:

Rajini Kant - And here are the reasons.

1. Hardworking: Against all odds, he worked his way through to be the highest paid actor. (What's wrong in being an actor?) Even at the age of 57, he works to make money for the people who invested in him.
2. Integrity: The man is known for speaking his mind. Read his interview with Balakumaran some 30 years ago. He doesn't try to be some who he is not.
3. Simplicity: Ask anyone who has met him.
4. Hindu Values: Not the Bajrang Dal kind of Hindu values, but the ones like his respect for the land, values and beliefs.
5. Wealth: He is rich. Another reason in addition to the above for communists to hate him. That's also a qualification as per Rajeev.
6. Intellect: He knows at least 5 Indian languages.
7. A symbol of national integration: - a Maratha born in Karnataka, successful in Tamil Nadu and known all over the country - well almost.

As an update, I doubt if Rajini is good enough to be a leader based on two instances:
1. Made a provocative speech when the Kodambakkam group staged a one-day fast for Hogenakkal water project. (I heard Kamal and Vijayakant made sensible balanced speech. )
2. After making such a speech, in spite of protests in Karnataka, he didn't apologize immediately, but chose to do it only when there were hurdles to the release of Kuselan in Karnataka. After all, collection is more important than conscience.

Sivaji Experience

2007-06-30T17:05:00.001+05:30

Photon organized the Sivaji show at Abirami. All employees got tickets to the movie yesterday. I managed to collect a few more for my family from abstainers.

I like Rajni and Shankar movies for the sheer experience. Sivaji does a lot more than just fulfilling this expectation. The crowd was great. The situation was just right for a Rajni movie. Pardon my crude comparison - the energy is comparable to the one of the crowd to 'Govinda' chants at Tirupati or the Arohara chants at Palani. For them Rajni is a God, so the comparison is not all that crude.

First opinion was - I loved the experience, wouldn't mind watching it couple more times.
Now to the details - It didn't touch like a Mudhalvan or an Anniyan - for the hero is not a common man - but a superman.

The movie is probably more perfect than the earlier movies in terms of details. The attention to detail is mind boggling. In the song 'Sahana', there is a piece 'theneer kondatho'. The visual had Rajini and Sreya having tea - in a transparent cup - without milk. The shot lasts for about 1-2 seconds. Still, the detail is so good that I can remember it.

Sometime last year, the small club house adjoining the tennis court near my house was painted.
A board with the sign "Velachery Police Station" was placed. For the next day and a half, the area had festive look. Rajni, Manivannan and others were there shooting a police station scene. When I watched the movie, there is exactly one reference to Velachery - Vivek mentions that TamilSelvi is from Velachery. The scene shot in my area comes for about 5 minutes, mostly indoor. For a second or two, just to set the context of the place there is a shot showing the outside of the police station. The shot didn't show the name board that I mentioned. Well, the point I'm trying to make is it just shows the attention to the details. It also means why this was the most expensive movie ever made in India.

I hope to collect the DVDs of Shankar movies to train people on what it means to show attention to details.

Everything about the movie is worth writing about - be it Rajni, Shankar, Sujatha or Rahman - upto Muthkalai who appears in just one scene. The casting is perfect for the side roles. Shankar probably is specializing in the casting of government employees. Right faces are picked for them, the auditors, the hit-men and the cops. Shanmugarajn (Peykkaman of Virumandi) is probably specializing in the corrupt cop role!

Home Wireless Network - My experience

2007-06-27T10:47:00.000+05:30

I have a my primary home computer for the past 11 years. When I take work home, I needed to connect through the primary computer to access the Internet. Way back in 2002, when I had this requirement, I setup a home network with a twisted pair cable. I was excited with my learning of crimping and other basic skills in laying network.

Now that the technology is old, and I felt the lack of mobility an issue. I can't watch TV and check my mails sitting in the living room. And I got used to the wireless at work, I wanted the same comfort at home. I searched for a device that would work with the ADSL connection I have with Airtel. I came across Netgear's DG834G router that has a built in modem for ADSL. I was a bit worried about the compatibility issue. Airtel usually supplies a Chinese or Taiwanese hardware that doesn't have signed drivers. Though Airtel customer support confirmed that DG834G would work with their ADSL, I was skeptical. I even thought of getting a router from them. They quoted some Rs 5500 to be paid in advance and a lengthy routing of the request to get the wireless setup.

I decided to take a chance with my limited knowledge of ADSL and router. I bought DG834G from IT Depot at Adyar for Rs 3750, set it up myself in less than 10 minutes. It is an overstatement to call the operation a setup. It was much easier than that. It works fine and I had a lengthy 2 hour phone conversation over Skype immediately after setting up the wireless network. It went perfect without any glitches. The default settings ensure good security. The only issue I had was probably a mix-up in the package. Though the package claims that the power supply pin is localized, I got one that looked like it was designed for Singapore or Europe. I needed an adapter to use it with my spike buster.

I think this post will be useful to anyone who wants to signup for Airtel's broadband or setup wireless network at home. If you are mildly tech-savvy, there is no need to rent a non-standard ADSL modem or pay the exorbitant fee to setup the device.

Deepak Amin - The Boss

2007-06-24T17:56:00.000+05:30

Where there is so much hype about Sivaji, The boss, Deepak Amin comes to our mind. Deepak's story started like Sivaji's. He returned to India after being a Technical Lead with Microsoft for about 6 years. He returned sometime in late 90s and setup a software company called 'Indicus' in Mumbai. The web has many documents about the energetic CEO of the companies - Indicus and vJungle - both non-existent now.

But I know Deepak as a boss and a great human being. He too tried to work with the biggies of Mumbai and Gujarat to do something to help the poor. The systems and the people running it believed in maintaining the status quo of corruption and exploitation. Read more of it in his article that inspired hundreds to return to India.

By the time I began working for him, he had settled to a small business called Indicus and stayed away from the bad guys. But even then, occasional hafta collectors and Ganesh Chaturti organizers would show up at office to collect money. He handled them politely in some cases and not-so-politely in a few instances. I do remember him for the charity he organized to help the poor children go to schools and colleges. The kids were even invited for the company's annual day as they were treated as a part of the Indicus family. I still remember the gratitude in their eyes for Deepak.

Right now, he is the CEO of Covelix.

Deepak Amin's article that inspired many to return to India

2007-06-24T17:37:00.000+05:30

For the sake of quick reference, I post this much read article in my blog. The person who wrote this was Deepak Amin - by boss at vJungle and Indicus. It was written sometime before 1998 - that was when I decided to return to India and contacted him.

"A quick background: I went to the US many moons ago (1987 to be precise) seeking the proverbial American Experience trudging the standard route of undergrad in IIT, postgrad in the US, summer job,H1, job in software co., Mexico for visa, etc. You know the schpiel. Worked at Microsoft for 6 years and decided to return to Bharatland in late 1995. Set up www.indicus.com and started churning out code from Mumbai. Been at it for about a year now.

Returning to India:
Having come back and ensconced myself very comfortably into India, and having met several others who have tried this, some successfully and some others not so successfully, I'd like to aver that there is one and only one thing that you need to have to pack your bags and take the boat back to desh: an ATTITUDE. Period. You should really want to come and live here. As soon as you start applying the logic that most of our analytical minds are wont to do, you're hosed. Oh, the pollution is so bad in India! Jeez, it's so crowded in Mumbai. Holy cow, look at the traffic in Bangalore. Mein gott, my kids don't have any open space to play soccer. Hey, there's no private place to take my girlfriend on a date. Forget it bete, then you should just stay back in the US. You should have the attitude that whatever you can avail of in India, you'll make the best of it.

To illustrate this with a real life example: Another friend was once telling me at work that he was really serious about returning to India and that infact, he had even calculated in detail how much he would need to earn to have a decent standard of living in India. Cost of a house, cost of owning a car, cost of milk, school fees, etc. He had come up with a neat Rs. 15,000 per month (a couple of years ago). As soon as you start going through this exercise, you're history (unless you've saved up a good pot of greenbacks, in which case, please ignore my email altogether). You need to think the other way around. You should manage with whatever you make (within reasonable limits ofcourse). You should deal with the pollution, because that's just incidental. Same with the traffic, --do-- for soccer and ditto for your girlfriend/boyfriend. As expected, this friend never returned to India.

professional life
OK, now let's deal with professional life. Mind you, I took the entrepreneurial route, that too in Mumbai, so my views on this will be heavily biased. Applying them appropriately to a regular job life in some other city/village is left as an exercise to the reader. I decided to start my own software company. Believe you me, it's been ..um.. character building, to say the least. I started Indicus Pvt. Ltd. and being the regular stupid NRI (yes, I vehemently believe that NRI's are consummate suckers when it comes to dealing with the Indian business climate, usually only initially though), I went about trying to do things like a decapitated chicken. Ofcourse, I learnt very quickly the folly of my ways and rectified them as best s as I could. I first tried to get into some very big joint ventures and immediately ran into some big gun minister and minister's cronies who quite blatantly asked for unearthly bribes and comfortably and politely threatened to ruin my business if I didn't oblige.

On the contrary, they heard through the grapvines about my efforts & interests and they contacted me on their own. Introductions, phone calls, emails. Yes, technology is being used even there. I was outraged, livid and yes, completely stunned, not so much by the corruption itself, but by the blatant nature of it. I refused to get into this mess and decided to not pursue this business at all (ofcourse, there were other reasons too that came up later on that didn't make the business possible, but they're moot to the current discussion). If there was one thing that I was crystal clear on, it was that I wouldn't pay bribes and promote corruption. I didn't come back to India to indulge in such profanities. I can go on ranting about these kind of miserable wretches until eternity, but then I'd be digressing. So let's get back on track.

OK, so I decided to go back into my shell and start really small. We've rounded up a really smart, dedicated and passionate bunch of people to take on the world. Wait! Did you think that I wouldn't have to deal with corruption just because I'm starting small. Hah! The postman came to us and said, "Saahab, aap humko khush rakho toe hum aapko khush rakhenge". He was promptly thrown out of our office. So he promptly forgot to deliver * any* mail to us for two months. Finally showed up during Diwali with all the company mail of the past two months and said, "Saahab, Diwali kaa bakhsheesh?" We didn't give him any. Sent multiple letters to the main p.o. about our problems. Fortunately, someone out there decided to relent and our mail has been coming in..oh.. rather regularly I would say. Same kissa (story) with our telephone lines. The lines were brought up to our office. But the phone instrument was. Then the phone instrument was installed, but it was disconnected from the central office because some random letter had to be sent. And then the *same* line was used again, "Saahab, aap humko khush rakho toe hum aapko khush rakhenge....(you get it)". Amazing. Are these guys related or what?

Nope, no bribes from here buddy. We cribbed, sent letters, went to the office every single day, sent our peon to the c.o. everyday for about a month and then finally got the telephone line through. Phew! Now Indicus can start thinking about doing business over the internet. VSNL, well, that's another story, for another time. Talk about retrogressive thinking! The builder of our office, the electricians, the water supply, the carpenters, ....are we having fun yet? ... the registrar's office for company registration, the RBI, the banks (yes, international ones too, so don't nobody give me no "phoren" crap!), the Export Promotion Council for Software, et cetera. OK, I'm getting bored and so are you guys probably. There's too much to write. Let's cut this down . Amidst all this, we were busy whacking away at coding, developing business, hiring, etc. Short end of it is that we've finally reached steady state. Express Computer has expressed interest in writing about all these trials and tribulations.

So what, am I some sort of a masochist? Au contraire. I'm having a whale of a time. It's a rollercoaster ride, and I've always been a sucker for rollercoasters! What we're attempting to do at Indicus is very different from what most of the software companies here in India are doing. We don't get into the fray for selling our services for $11 per man hour to General Electric. We're collecting a bunch of smart, committed and passionate guys with a very high level of integrity and who don't care to take the next boat to Umreekland or to Barbados (believe you me, that's the rave these days). We are attempting to build products and technology. And we will attempt to get into the global market. Mind you, we're nowhere close to achieving it yet. And yes indeed, there are other companies out there who are attempting to do the same. The point I'm trying to make (before some idiot out there starts lambasting me for peddling my company) is that it is possible to do great work from India, it is possible to find companies who want good (and even phoren) experience. There are a lot of people who share these dreams and principles that I am writing about. We have had *incredible* support and feedback on these issues not only from others in the industry and the especially the press, but also from a lot of the students in colleges in Mumbai (during our campus recruitment drives). The ingredients are there. The quality and the quantity is there. Just the right focus and bingo....we'll have a movement!

Um, let's not get too philosophical yet. So what about those of you seeking jobs in India? Yes indeed, there are tons of companies in India who will be more than happy to employ you. The biggest advantage that you'll have is that these companies can rest assured that you don't have your sights on some American or European company to "jump ship". Yes, your phoren experience is certainly valuable, but don't let that get to your head. There are a lot of people here in India (I speak for the software industry) who are very intelligent and very savvy too. The classic problem that returning NRI's face is that of demanding special attention just because they're NRI's. Remember what I said earlier about "managing with what you have". Take advantage of your experience et al, but don't expect to get the red carpet when you go next time to check your baggage in at the Indian Airlines counter. Doesn't matter if you have a funky accent. Most yuppies from "Downtown" Mumbai will have it too (the "Oh Gaaad, it's soo haht todjay!" variety).

Personal life:
You'll face the maximum problems on this front, if at all. When I was winding down in the US, I was quaking in my pants about this aspect of India. To give you another quick rundown, I'm a rather outgoing, outdoorsy kind of person. I love to party, dance, hike, climb, travel to exotic places, eat exotic (veg) food, play squash, work out, etc. Am nuts about snowboarding. Been skydiving, bungee jumping, dinosaur bone digging, gold prospecting, you name it. Loved to go for broadway shows, operas, film fests, roller coaster rides. Suddenly I find myself in Mumbai, living at home with parents, *all* friends in the US or Europe and nothing but crowds, cows and carbon monoxide around me. My only companions are my misplaced interests and radical thoughts about society and life in general. And they're not helping. Eeks! But then "Passion creates possibility" (quoting Lynn Hill). A lot of these e things can be done in India too (perhaps more easily in some cities than others). You can go dancing (Copa Cabana is one wild place!), hiking, climbing, traveling (yes!), etc. No you can't go snowboarding for the day to Mt. Crystal or for the weekend to Snowbird. But you can go skiing easily to Aouli, UP.

There is a plethora of really good films (not the trashy commercial types), some great plays, etc. Sorry, no operas. Occasional broadway plays produced locally. Lots of foreign films at British Council type places (NCPA, MaxMu, etc). One real problem in big cities like Mumbai (I've heard the same about Delhi) is that you don't get memberships to (health) clubs at all. Even money can't buy them. They're closed for life for new members. Great. So I gave up squash and got into running. Hey, they even have an International marathon in Pune (participation levels of 10,000+). The other problem is that unlike in the US, you cannot just jump into your car, go pump some weights at the local health club and come back at night to spew out more code. Doing something like that out here at least in Mumbai is an ordeal. So you end up not indulging in most of the activities.

The biggest problem that I faced when I came back to India was adjusting to living at home with my parents again. Don't get me wrong, I love them to death and all that mushy stuff. But having lived completely independently from age 17, I found it hard to come back home and start living at home with my family. Not used to people asking me when I'll be back, whether I want to eat, people waiting for me to have dinner and I not going home at all because on an impulse I decided to stay back in the office all night, late night partying, etc. My advice (if you care for it) is to not underestimate this problem. Particularly for those of you who are married. Wives typically get very used to living an independent life in the US. If you come to India and start living at home with your (spouse's) parents, you're suddenly subject to a whole lot of social obligations that you don't really like. ex. cook, clean , meet random relatives you don't give a damn for, etc. And it takes a lot to change the thinking of older people. Of course, I'm not in this latter situation, but I know of people who threw in their gloves and returned to the US because of this.

All in all, I'm very pleased with personal/social life. Again, it's the attitude that's the saving grace. Make the most of what you *have*, don't expect what you *had*. Note that it is very possible to get things done efficiently in India . You will be amazed at how organized crime and corruption is. Grease the right palms with the right "weight" and sit back and watch the wheels churn before you, in complete harmony with your desired goals. This is true of a lot of other countries too. Wherever there is an inefficient and pernicious system in place, there is a parallel system that is set up to "bypass" " it. However, it is possible to say no to corruption and inefficiency. Infact, there are large sections of the government that will surprise you with their efficiency and integrity. Things will eventually get done, perhaps even immediately. But typically you have to pay a "price" for it. Either money/services directly or a lot of time (=money) and patience! The currency is yours to choose. My choice is clear to me. And so it is for a lot of my other friends and colleagues. We are all trying to find strength and encouragement in numbers, and as each day passes, we find newer, fresher and more energetic blood wanting to join the crusade. Indeed, it is possible for you to feel passionate about rattling the society here, about shaking the very foundations of an industry and about jolting the country awake. For that is exactly what is needed (IMHO). And a lot of us are attempting to do that, in our own small ways. Not because we came back to India with lofty dreams from the US of A, but because we came back to India and share the dreams of the teeming millions who have been in India much longer than you or I. And yet their hopes of seeing change are so much higher than ours. The sheer determination of the common man in India to survive against such overwhelming odds is mind-boggling!

The Indian system:
This may surprise you, but it works! You need to work a little harder to see it work, but dammit, it works. You may moan about corruption in the traffic police, or in the railways, or the registrar's office. But believe you me, if you *write* to these departments, things will_ happen. Once you write a letter of complaint, the government s is bound to take action on it. It may take a week, a month or even six months, but I assure you that you will hear back and action will be taken on your complaints. But you need to write. Most people don't do this and then bitch about the ineffective government. Yes, this can be made more efficient, but it works. Again, you may complain about Enron facing problems in India and how the people here are making life miserable for it, etc. But abstract out the pros and cons of Enron's woes. Look at it from the system's point of view. Here comes a company. They made some business and "education" proposals. One (part of the) govt. was kosher with it. Another set of people decided that they weren't. So they got the courts to stop them. So Enron lost 2 years. Things got thrashed out finally. The legislative in the country provides a forum for people to bring forth their concerns. The executive ensured that their concerns were addressed. This is precisely the role of the system. It works. I personally wouldn't want to trade that *freedom* to voice my concerns for anything in the world. Not efficiency, not wealth or prosperity. You may disagree with my concerns, but heck, you can't take my right away to have them addressed. Nothing in the world is worth my freedom. This past one year has undeniably proven to me that India is really a free country, much more e so than that paragon of freedom: the United States. We can debate the merits of this statement till we drop dead, but I don't have the time or the patience to do that. Perhaps another time.(I used Enron just as an example to illustrate my point.)

A couple of random thoughts on equally random topics: Standard of living in India (pure, unadulterated materialistic approach to life): I have only one succinct comment to make about this. If I were to live as a middle class man, I'd probably live in the US. However, for the upper middle class, and especially the rich folks, India wins hands down. Very simple reason: If you have money in India, people *really* listen to you. Orders of magnitude more than in the US or any European country. You are king. There you have it Your Highness.

Sacrifice et al: Please guys. Spare this junk about how much you had to sacrifice when you left India and how much you are willing to sacrifice to return to the motherland (violin in the background). Sorry to disappoint you, but you get no brownie points for that. You left for the US of your own accord. Nobody held the gun against your head and said, "Listen buddy , you had better go to America and buy your Accord and follow it with a two-car-garage-house then a 40 in. multiframe TV and mow your lawn every weekend or I'll blow your brains out, gotcha?" And the same thing about "The Sacrifice" being made when you leave America and return to India . C'mon guys. Wake up and smell the coffee. No one in India is going to give you any sympathy for it. I left the Indian social fabric for the aggressive individualistic American pursuit of wealth and knowledge. I subsequently left Pizza Hut's Veggie special for Ghasitaram's pani puri. Sounds like fair give and take to me. So what's the big deal?

Before you take the leap to return to India, think hard about why you really want to be back in India. Are you coming back for the love of the motherland? Think a little harder about how much you really love the motherland. Take all the factors that I've only briefly touched upon in this mail and recalculate your love. If you don't have your head screwed on right about this issue, you're going to become one hell of a bitter nut after you get hit with the barrage of hassles in India. Or are you coming back because you need to take care of your parents? Think again. Chances are that you'll have a difficult time acclimatizing to the home/family scene here anyway. Moreover, how long is that going to last? Additionally, can you manage this remotely? If you're still convinced that this is the right answer, then do it. This was one of the reasons I decided to come back(though not the primary reason) . Or perhaps you want to come back to India because you can't bear to have your children identify themselves with America before they do with your relatives back home in "mera gaon, mera desh"?? Perhaps it's a better idea to just reconcile to the idea and stay back in the US (assuming no other reasons). What's wrong with being American?

Lastly, those of you who are still thinking just of coming back to India, just for the sake of thinking that, or those of you who have decided to settle abroad: you don't have to feel guilty about your decision. America is a great country (as great as it is evil too). There are a lot of things that are fantastic about it, as probably with most countries. Once you've decided to live there, get comfortable with the concept. Let go of your senti thoughts about returning to India one day. This particular lie repeated multiple times will *not* became the truth. It's not going to happen. The sooner you reconcile to that, the happier you'll be. Ditto for your spouse and kids. Call yourself American and be proud of it. The worst is when you're living in America and you've got your mind partially in India and you're not moving your fat derriere to do anything about it. Dhobi kaa kutta, na ghar kaa na ghat kaa.

This past one year in India has been like a roller-coaster ride.... in pitch darkness.... without seat belts! I call it perennial l adrenalin gush.. Nothing to beat it!"

--returned one"

What is the best size for a blog article?

2007-06-04T13:47:00.000+05:30

I got a link from Ram on his most recent blog; I began reading it and skipped a few paragraphs here and there. After I posted a comment to his article and re-read his blog, I realized I had missed some key information from his post earlier. Because of that my comment didn't sound right. I do not know how to edit a comment, so I left it as it is.

This brings me to the topic of the day - what is the best size for a blog article? Most of my blogs fit within one page of the monitor with a resolution of 1024X768. My blog has links to the right of the article and a lot of blank space around. So, I'm a man of few words.

Does it mean that my blogs are more of summaries of my views that details? Is it good to have long, multi-page blog? I don't know.

I lose patience with online articles and emails that are more than a page long. It either means that the author uses too many words to explain something simple or that there is a lot of information which is irrelevant to me.

What do the very few frequent visitors of my blog think?

More on the limitations on processes...

2007-05-31T10:33:00.000+05:30

A few days ago, I cribbed about the process for process sake. More today...

After CMM, I heard 6 Sigma is the next buzz word for consulting companies in India. The idea is to ensure quality with a process that can be repeated. My view is that this suits the hardware industry a lot more than software industry. And I strongly believe that Indian software industry uses it as a marketing feature. How else can you explain the extended working hours of employees and delayed projects? Shouldn't quality of work reflect in quality of life?

For comparison purposes, I would split the car or other hardware manufacturing into two main functionalities - design and production. My understanding was, a process definition and practice would address quality concerns in manufacturing more than in design or inventive thinking. But when it comes to software, it is hard to separate the software like that. Design of software continues to flow into the lines of code and the underlying framework and OS. It is virtually impossible to ensure repeatability as the problem each software tries address may be different. The solutions can also be different even if the problem remains the same. A single smart developer can offer 3-4 solutions to a fairly trivial problem.

If you want to ensure quality honestly and not marketing sake, you would probably look at the theory of program proving and such sources instead of software engineering. Since the current set of processes are defined by Managers who were engineers, it is not likely that they would look at pure Mathematics for quality.

The US software industry is probably better off with more people with in-depth understanding of the science of programming. A well written program from MS or Sun can be a good sample in teaching programming. I am not referring to the hodge podge of programs MS includes in the tutorials and samples shipped with .NET and other libraries.

In spite of better designs and processes, there is often a divide between the customer facing product management and the technology groups in many companies. Surprisingly the designs and processes which were solutions at one time are parts of a problem at a later date. More on this and TRIZ later....

US techies 10-times more productive than Indian

2007-05-28T19:02:00.000+05:30

US techies 10-times more productive than Indian
If the above link didn't work, here is the gist:
Wipro's earnings is $50K per employee while top US IT companies make close to a million dollars per employee.

First some questions:

What is the ratio of expenses vs income per employee in the US and India? There may not be such a big difference in this criteria.
When talking about IBM, Dell etc., does the statistics include their operations in India and other countries or not?
Does the statistics include the contract workers or consultants for US companies?
Would American companies have the same efficiency if the cost of outsourcing increases?

I am fine with Indian companies generating less revenue per employee as Indian companies contribute a lot toward employment and overall spread of wealth.

Process, People and Innovations

2007-05-24T21:54:00.000+05:30

In Indian software industry context, ISO, CMM have been the buzz words. They were used by the consulting companies to score a marketing point and in the process, also brought in some organized way of working. I am not a big fan of process for process sake and I'm going to bitch about it in this blog.

Way back in 1995, when I worked for a relatively small consulting company in Mumbai, I was asked to write the test plan after I finished all the development work. There were two problems: 1. Usually developers are not the owners for test plans and 2. We were making a mockery of the process by writing the plan when the product was about to be launched. When I protested, my boss said that the organization is going for an ISO certification and it has to be done. Better late than never was his argument. I didn't argue further and complied. But that gave an idea on what process and quality mean to people.

When I was in US, consulting for a number of companies, there were hardly any documentation. Process was there, but was very subtle. Check-in comments and notifications, code reviews were all followed not for the sake of them, but as a standard practice.

After I returned to India, I worked for one of the top 5 consulting companies in India and faced a lot of documentation for the sake of ... documentation. I hated the work. The Manager was not a fan of efficiency or brilliance in software design and development, but liked to define useless processes on and on. I quit the company within 6 months and joined a start up and started implementing simple processes - like reviews and simple plans that could be followed.

In the past few years I come across a number of candidates who have experience in CMM Level 5 companies and know nothing about innovation. They are rendered as the next generation of sophisticated clerks by the respective organizations. British rule left us with systems that were designed to suspect people supported by processes run by clerks. CMM rule is doing the same to our Engineers killing any innovation. I doubt whether a piece of the process was designed to fix a problem after it was "experienced". Processes are blind following of rules defined by impractical Managers, copied from one organization to the other. They generate loads of documents that no one reads after the first month.

To be continued...

Giving up on Microsoft

2007-05-10T11:16:00.000+05:30

Giving up on Microsoft

Like Jeff and Mike, I started programming with MSC 6 and used almost every version of developer tools from MS, including MFC, ATL and a console based editor called PWB for Programmer Work Bench (I would like to call it a People's Work Bench for its simplicity and utility). At times, I strayed into Open source for more practical solutions. For our organization, we chose Linux based server apps like Samba domain controller, Postfix / Sendmail mail servers and portals based on Liferay. We had time to play around with these and weren't willing spend money on Windows and Exchange servers. I chose Lucene on .NET over full text search as we needed search to work remotely. And Lucene seemed to be a lot more fun to develop than FTS. But I would always choose the developer tools from MS over Open Source tools. Even if Eclipse offers a plug-in for C#, I would consider the express editions of C#/ASP.NET a lot easier to use if cost is a factor. If I have the luxury of spending a few thousand dollars, I will always choose MS developer tools.

At one stage in my career I wanted to work for MS. And within a few months after I was rejected, I was scared of competition from MS as they could build a better product faster and market it easier as compared to the product I was working on. From time-to-time, I might choose between MS and Open Source, but I can't hate either.

For those who choose one and hate the other, don't blame it on MS or Open Source. Blame it on your upbringing that doesn't allow you to stay in shades of gray but expects you choose between black or white.

Effects of sleep deprivation

2007-04-18T11:31:00.000+05:30

I have always tried to get as much as 8. hours of sleep for I know the subtle side effects of sleep deprivation. These subtle effects cause huge damages. Sleep deprivation is the reason behind most accidents between midnight and 4 AM.

For those with less awareness and didn't know about this, here are some symptoms of sleep deprivation.

1. Lack of coordination between the brain and the organs. This manifests as biting of tongue when eating, tripping while walking etc.
2. Increased frequency of déjà vu. Déjà vu is nothing more than minor malfunction of the brain. With sleep deprivation the frequency of déjà vu experience increases. If you felt like a psychic, get over it. It is just an effect of less sleep.
3. Black outs. As an event happens, the brain switches off for a fraction of a second to process inputs from sensory organs. This results in an experience like watching a movie from a scratched DVD.
4. Signs of OCD - obsessive compulsive disorders like doubting if you locked the door, switched off lights etc. This is because, the brain may not have registered the action due to some kind of black outs mentioned above. To compensate for this state, the mechanism to doubt and question kicks in.

SEOs - The new pornographers of the web

2007-04-09T01:31:00.000+05:30

SEOs - The new pornographers of the web

The business managers in my last job wanted to give a good push on SEO to reach a wider audience, read higher page views. One part of the organization's web sites managed more page views by doing a number of changes suggested by the SEOs. The sites I managed weren't doing that great for many reasons - the primary reason being the pages do not change much to force the crawlers to visit the site more often. The belief was the more frequent a crawler visits your site, the chance of your site showing up in the first page of Google's results. The second important reason was - we just didn't have good content. That was an e-commerce site. Until the SEO buzz, getting good content from vendors means, getting a nice photograph of the product and nothing more.

In addition to the stand-alone e-commerce site, we were selling on Amazon too. Amazon's guidelines on the content gave me a good idea on what is important. I came to the conclusion that fixing the content first is the first step towards better performance is search results. Fixing the content is not easy considering the constraints from the vendor (poor detail, spelling and language) and from the application (limited fields / length).

I chose to get the content fixed with changes to the application and setting expectations with the vendors. This is better than running behind a phantom called SEO. I believe good detail and user experience are more important than search engine optimization. Translating this to brick-and-mortar model of businesses, the efforts are better spent in designing your shop in such a way that people can find the products they need easily than to put up huge hoardings to drive people to you shop.

Google Desktop plugin for Outlook - Side Effects

2007-04-05T17:02:00.001+05:30

I installed Google Desktop in every machine I use. I love the Ctrl+Ctrl to reach any document or email in the fastest way possible.

There was a third party plugin for Outlook some time back. I used it for some time and then realized it was hanging Outlook and the system. So, I uninstalled the plugin. But the recent version of Google Desktop comes with an add-on for Outlook. I guess this comes from Google itself.

Of late, I began experiencing problem opening an appointment from the Calendar. I do not know if Google tries to sync-up with Google Calendar as we use Google apps for domains for our emails and domains in our organization. I can see the contents of a meeting request in the preview pane, I can accept the request, the alert would show at the right time. But when I try to open the item, Outlook would report "Cannot open this item for reminder. Operation failed."

After googling for sometime, I bumped into a solution that suggest to switch off a plug-in. The procedure is as follows:
1. Close Outlook.
2. Open it in safe mode by typing ""C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE" /safe" in the Start -> Run box or command prompt.
3. Go to Tools -> Options -> Other tab -> Advanced Options button -> COM Add-In Manager -> Uncheck the item "Google Desktop Outlook Tool bar" and click OK.
4. Go to Tools -> Options -> Other tab -> Advanced Options button -> Add-In Manager -> Uncheck Google Desktop Search Outlook AddIn and click OK.
5. Restart Outlook.

Let's hope Google fixes it in the next release of Google Desktop.

What is bad about Reliance or Birla in grocery retail

2007-04-05T17:01:00.000+05:30

There was this program on Showtime - Penn & Teller's BS on Hating Walmart. The theme was, it is fashionable and nonsense to hate Walmart when Walmart is doing so much for the community in terms of low cost goods and employment for unskilled. Can this be extended to India? Are Reliance and such big shops good for the communities? The answer is no.

Walmart opens shops in every place where there is scope for selling cheap goods. They probably won't open shops in glitzy malls. On the other hand, the big chain of grocery stores in India open in clearly upper middle class area. In Chennai, I see them in places like Anna Nagar, Egmore, Adyar and TTK Road. Even within these places, they stay away from lower income group areas. So, their aim is not to offer low cost products to needy community. The number of jobs they create is far few as compared to multiple small sized grocery shops catering to same number of customers.
Every time such a big shiny shop opens, they threaten the survival of traditional grocers and vegetable vendors. I find myself thinking like a commie here and with a reason. Even as big shops offer some employment, they kill the entrepreneurship of small time traders by pumping in more money. I think India's economy was kept alive during the days of socialism by this small-time business people who managed to sell products made by equally small scale businesses. They were probably below the radar of socialistic governments and their controls.
A company like Kevin Care (with products like sachet Velvette shampoo) could come up just because they could sell through the regular grocery store. I do not think, a Food World or Trinetra would care to sell sachet shampoos from an unknown manufacturer. At some point, bigger shops need to care about margins vs shelf-space and can not support smaller businesses that make things like packaged food items with low investment.

I would compare the big shops to the organized religions like Islam, Christianity and Communism. They all offer some good stuff to start with. You can't complain about the teachings of prophets, messiahs and thinkers. They are probably fine. But they deny the option of alternate views and dissent by the sheer power they had acquired by setting up an organization, getting influential people to support it and marketing.

I would pay extra to keep the street corner vegetable vendor in business. I would probably do some impulse buying to encourage my grocer to compete with Trinetra opened in the same street. We need these small businesses to survive and flourish for the good of the people and the country.

Jobs in India

2007-04-04T07:03:00.000+05:30

Joel's Jobs In India had just two job postings since it was announced a week ago. Joel says there is a good set of visitors from India for his blogs. Still, two postings in one week doesn't sound good. The reasons on why Joel's blogs get so many readers and the postings are so few:

1. The readers are usually middle management in large organizations and top management in small organizations. The middle managers of large companies have no say in where the organizations should look for candidates. The top managers of small companies do not post jobs in portals, instead they look for resumes in portals and call them.
2. Large organizations do not care much for the software skills of the candidates. For a fresher, they look for candidate with over 75% in engineering in any branch. For 2-3 year experienced, they look for the basic criteria plus the candidate should have worked for 2-3 years (not necessarily software development). For middle and senior management, there are far fewer requirements and they get filled by consultants. The HR for these companies are not going to post ads in Joel's job site.
3. In the past few years, it has changed from candidates applying for jobs to employers soliciting candidates that they source from job portals like Naukri.

In Indian IT job market, it is the quantity that matters. It is no different from a sales job. The HR makes 1000 calls, schedules interviews for 500, 200 attend, 20 clear the technical interview, 10 accept the offer and 5 join. I may be exaggerating the numbers, but the fact is - to get more people, you just need to start with a higher number.

In another context, Joel mentioned that the best programmers aren't looking for jobs. Those looking for a job aren't likely to be the best was his argument. I do not understand what changed between that comment (2 years ago) and now.

Udit Narayan and Tamil songs

2007-04-03T22:43:00.000+05:30

Mukundhan commented about Udit Narayan's voice and pronunciation here.

I thought Udit Narayan's voice was a good fit to Prabhu Deva in Kaathalan. After that, I can't think of any other song where there was such a good fit. Remember paruvayillai in Run! I do not understand why north Indian singers who aren't pronouncing well should sing in Tamil. This includes Sukhvinder Singh, Sadhana Sargam (best of the lot) and Adnan Sami (well, he is not an Indian first, but that's not the point).

SPB mentioned it in an interview that he introduced Sukhvinder Singh in Telugu, and later in some other movies he didn't think that the singer did well with pronunciation. It is possible that most new male singers in Tamil and Telugu are highly influenced by SPB, Yesudoss and TMS. This probably forces music directors to look out for fresher voice. That explains why Udit Narayan and Sukhvinder Singh sing in Tamil. For the same reason, SPB and Yesudoss were used in some Hindi movies.

Gone are the days when the entire media laughed at Yesudoss for singing 'Therukkoile' instead of 'Thirukkoile'. I do remember our folks in Mumbai commenting on SPB's accent (note, not pronunciation) when singing in Hindi.

Now, we accept bad pronunciation by singers just as we accept Chennai girls' Tamil spoken with English accent. How's it in the North?

Blogging about blogging

2007-04-03T02:37:00.000+05:30

Since I love Google Analytics and I was curious on how many visitors I had to my blog, I set up a GA account for my blog. The results I see assure that I am not Joel Spolsky. I noticed that a fresh grad working with me gets a higher traffic to her blog. That's what a link on her blog on how much the content is worth.

The results on GA indicated an interesting information.
If you blog about a current affair (like song release of Sivaji- the movie), there is a chance that your blog may get some new visitors. I got just one. On other days, I get the usual co-workers and ex-coworkers visiting my blog.
It is essential that the blog must be current. I blogged about the dark matter after reading about it on Slash Dot and Time magazine. My blog was about this article and Rig Veda. I had a surprise visitor who used the keywords for which my blog appears 3rd in the results.

Well, I do not write for eye-balls. I write because it is one way scratching my brain itch. After I write about what I wanted write, the thought disappears and doesn't bother me any more. It is just like writing a letter to God about your sorrows to feel better.

Sivaji Songs

2007-04-01T03:29:00.000+05:30

It is probably not legal. But sites like oosai.com have the songs from the movie in streaming format.

I don't expect Rahman's music to be catchy in the first listening. You hear it again and again and start liking it. Of the six songs (seven if you count the two versions of 'Sahara Pookkal Poothatho'), just two stay in memory. 'Sahara Pookkal Poothatho' by Udit Narayan, Chinmayee and Vijay Yesudoss, Gomathi Sree is probably the best of the lot. The song is not great, but is at least good enough that the tune stays in memory after the song is over. 'Vaaji Vaaji...' by Hariharan and Madhusri is slightly fast paced, catchy and could be a hit. Madhusri's voice reminds me of Lata Mangeshkar's current voice. Nothing more to write about it. The song 'Kaaveri Aarum...' by SPB appears to be the usual Rajini's opening song. My father would comment as - 'தெவச மந்திரம் மாதிரி இருக்கு'.

On hearing the songs, I feel A R Rahman is getting old. When was the last hit from him?
While typing this blog, I heard some of the songs a second time to get the lyrics. Hey.. I like them. Hmmm - Another Rahman's album here.

The American Way: Upto the minute forecast

2007-03-31T20:33:00.000+05:30

Another cold day, here at Farmington Hills, MI. It looks like it might rain. I am stuck in my hotel room on this Saturday too. I have no car as I my US driving license expired a few years ago and I do not have an Indian driving license. The place is a typical suburbia with little public transportation facility.

My co-workers staying in the same hotel want to go out for lunch. I think it is fine as I'm getting sick of my own cooking and reheating of frozen food. For every decision after that, you need an extra information, called weather. Should I wear the thermals, should I wear just a sweater or do I need a jacket? Can we go by taxi or just walk the distance? You need to know the weather before you venture out, be it by car or by any other mode of transportation. In tropical countries like India, there is not much to decide. At best, you may have to carry an umbrella if think you need it.

So, you need to know the weather. What is the best way to know the weather? I find myself going to my Google Home page, check the temperature and plan accordingly. I find it absurd when I can feel the weather simply by getting out of my hotel, I am so dependent on the systems that predict and tell the temperature. I think systems like this are useful for some part and then they begin dictating our lives. This is probably unique to the US.

More on how systems affect sensible way of living later.

Quality goals in Minutes of the meeting document

2007-03-30T02:50:00.000+05:30

After a meeting today, I shot off the minutes of the meeting as an email. The content was limited to the attendees, decisions made and subsequent tasks. I noticed my project manager creates the MoM as a Word document, places it in a folder for the project in a file server. I wonder what is the right approach.

Mine ensures that the notes are visible with no extra effort. The recipients can always search for it in their emails; Google Desktop would index it and the purpose of the minutes is served. Everyone is informed, and the information is available whenever needed.

What about the project manager's approach? The information is always there, but do people read it and comment about it? I doubt. This is probably the CMM/ISO kind of quality. Not my kind!

I didn't know painful it would be to use Visio

2007-03-29T20:08:00.000+05:30

The task is simple. Make changes to an existing activity diagram created in Visio. The changes small, remove a few activities and related connectors. Add a decision and connectors to existing activities. Sounds very simple, easy to understand etc.,
When it comes to resizing, I don't know why it gets so complex. I agree I didn't read the bloody user manual. But GUI is supposed to make it easy that you don't need a user manual.

All I'm trying is to position a few text by the side of connectors and decision objects and resize the objects so that they look similar to the ones that exist already in the diagram. To move a text, I need to click on the object first. Did that and no complaints on that. To select the text block, I need to click on text tool in the tool-bar. Why don't the right click menu or the UML diagram tool has any link to this?

To resize the object, I removed all the protections Still it resizes proportionally. I do not know how to change this behavior.

Text label attached to a connector do not show up. Moved it, selected it, I could change it, but not see it after I'm done with the move, selection or change.

The only other UML tool I had used - long ago was Poseidon based on ArgoUML engine. It was a good product for its price.

By just piggy-backing on Office, a crappy product like Visio can survive!

Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

2007-03-24T18:52:00.000+05:30

Now I'm in the US, my evenings are spent in front of TV like most Americans. I try to limit my interest to couple of re-re-...-re-runs of Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond. Occasionally I channel surf during commercial breaks. In one such surfing I bumped into a game-show / quiz program - Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

My initial reaction was, it is another program for stereo-typing. One participant was an African American woman who thought US is in the Eastern Hemisphere. Another was a blond who didn't know how to get the radius from diameter. As there was no defined political correctness or incorrectness about jokes on blonds, there were jokes on blond dumbness. The anchor person didn't get such a freedom with the African American woman.

The aim of participant selection looked as if, it is make fun of them. May be that's what guarantees viewership!

On to more serious thoughts. I compared the questions with the curriculum I'm familiar with - that of CBSE in India. I ignored the localized History/Geography questions. Coming to Math, I think Indian kids do not do Algebra so early in their schools. From my school days to my son's, I see arithmetics getting maximum coverage in India's schools - rightly so. I think it is sensible and practical to do arithmetics in early classes. In India, I haven't seen a grocery store boy who are usually school drop-outs, using calculators!

My uncle who is a teacher for about 40 years, compared the academics in India and US. "In India, everyone is normalized to the average. The brighter student doesn't get much extra information to move up faster. Dull students get support from the system with annual exams that can be met with enough cramming. The American system allows for the brighter students to learn more, faster. It helps them become entrepreneurs, scientists naturally. The dull students just drop off to flipping burgers."

On comparing the affirmative actions in respective countries and its effectiveness, I think the Indian system is better in a way that it helped a lot of under privileged students to land in decent jobs and raise to the level of middle class. In the process, India lost some bright students to US and European countries in the brain drain. There was also slower growth in terms of quality of life, infrastructure and wealth. But, I think that's ok. I'm sure a generation of under privileged have come out of the shell and are doing better. That gives an assurance that Indian system is working.

My comments to What is happening with IT

2007-03-18T23:17:00.000+05:30

My comments to What is happening with IT

I used to think that our attitude toward white man is the reason, for stretching our work-times for client calls. But I came to realize that we are a service oriented country and that’s the way we are.

I had been on the other side of the outsourcing line where I outsourced a project to a vendor. The vendor worked just like any other software company; the developer showed up over weekends to finish project etc., There is nothing about white man or black man.

I do agree with you that our youngsters have no concept of fun outside of work. This worries me. I worked with a developer who felt very sad when the organization announced 5 day weeks for 2 and and 4th week every month. He had nothing to do on a Saturday. At some point all the consulting companies encouraged these people to virtually live in office without realizing the negative effects of it. We all will come out of it.

As far as comparing Microsoft and Infy, I do not think Infy is a loser. Infy had created a good amount of wealth for its employees just like MS. Infy didn’t get into lawsuits over monopolistic business practices. Infy’s product called Service will be a popular product for generations. Infy chose a market where innovation means better processes, better people, better quality. MS chose a market where innovation means tangible products.

BPO wants the real you

2007-03-14T16:26:00.000+05:30

BPO Wants the real you

This is ironic. There is a section of BPO that lives by impersonation. The tele-sales or customer support done from India does accent training and changes the names to suit the market. If a corporation can fake a superficial identity of an individual, it is business strategy or tactic. If the same is done by an individual, it is a crime.

Dark Energy - Dark Matter

2007-03-13T06:28:00.000+05:30

Out there is an article on "stuff" that is out there, but not perceived. I could have been an physicist with my B.S in Physics (cleared Properties of Matter in the third attempt). But I am not even an arm-chair physicist as I just do not have the required number of connections in my brain to comprehend papers like that.

But this is an interesting one. Bhagawan once said, "The manifested is knowable and the unmanifested is unknowable." I'm sure the scientists mentioned in the article would agree. But what is this unmanifested?

Rig Veda says - (from Sacred Texts web-site).
1. THEN was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
2 Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider.
That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
3 Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.
4 Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.
5 Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder
6 Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
7 He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.

The dark (meaning unknown - not dark as black or negative) energy can manifest itself as identifiable matter or energy. Then the known Physics can take over to measure and explain it. Physics has matured in the past centuries to see that matter can be energy and vice versa; Physics accepts unpredictability and so on. We will be humble enough to say that there exists something that I can't see, feel or measure. We will one day realize that we are not different from "it", but a just manifestation of "it" with some set of properties.

As long as some properties could be defined, we are in the realm of material world where gravity is just natural to try to get back to the oneness from where everything started.

vJungle and Google Apps for your domain

2007-03-09T09:32:00.000+05:30

Some eight years ago, there was this start-up called vJungle, setup right next to a Microsoft building in Bellevue, WA. The company targeted small and medium businesses for its product - a suite of on-line applications from email, calendar, document repository to payroll. It had everything and more that Google Apps for your domain has now. Well, almost everything. It didn't have document or spreadsheet editor as part of suite. Other than that, it had a chat window within the browser, a web-site creator application, domain name registration etc., The company had the vision for the product - all that a small business needs. It had the people who could pull it off. It had the processes and the culture from Microsoft as the engineering and management team was predominantly ex-Microsoft folks. It was going fine in 2000 and the fall started in 2001. Funding was hard to come by and then 9-11 happened. After a lot of struggle it was acquired by an European company which also didn't do well.

I feel vJungle was a bit too early for the days. It integrated with a payroll processing company based at Texas, an e-commerce product called Kurant and with fax processing service provider. Each service integration was unique, but I guess that was probably the start for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). There was also use of XmlHttp which is now called as Ajax, but am not able to recollect which service of vJungle used the technology.

Overall, it had everything to make a useful good product - the team, technology and culture. What it lacked was the clarity on how to make money with such a product. I guess this problem is still unresolved. Though Google offers these apps, I am sure, Google must be funding this division with its hard-earned money from Adwords.

The other reason why vJungle didn't take off was the bandwidth limitation of those days. It was the days of 56K, and most small businesses wouldn't have had a T1 line.

I usually do not think of the bygone era, but vJungle makes me a bit sad as vJungle's target market is still there to be serviced.

The Great Indian Bargain

2007-03-08T09:23:00.000+05:30

I had four international relocations between India and US in a span of some seven years. Tasks in almost all these relocations had a line item - "Sell off stuff that you can't carry". This line item gave me a lot of experience and insight into the mind of the bargaining customers.

It was the last big relocation that gave all the interesting experiences. Selling my household items in the US was a bigger task simply because there were more items to sell. I went through the normal grind of posting ads in Indian grocery stores and Microsoft's intranet through a friend.

The probable buyers came from the usual ethnicities - Indian, American and Chinese. I would consider the Americans as the most reasonable customers. When the price I quoted didn't meet their offer, they just moved on. They probably had more important things to do than extract a bargain. Successful transactions were completed in less than 5 minutes. One executive from Microsoft even gifted me couple of software titles as he was impressed with my selling price. In all the transactions, the cost of time spent on the bargain should be more than the actual savings they would get. The American customers just gave a higher priority to their time.

The experience with some of the Indian and Chinese was a bit different. The difference was, they had all the time to do the bargain, while I had less time to sell them off. Even after settling for a price, one guy paid $500 less for my car and I had to ask again to get the full amount. It was like, he could save $500 if I was too polite to ask for it. By that time, I had enough experience that I realized there was no need to be polite. Sale of furnitures and some toys went through worse experience. The buyes always asked for more and wanted to pay less. That was the time when the 'Yeh Dil Maange More' was the popular slogan. For some items, I didn't want to go through the sale just because I didn't want to waste my time and decided to donate to charities.

Moral of the story was: If you want a good bargain, be prepared to spend more time. In other words, time is money.

A few years later, I find myself getting into a situation where I have to apply this learning. When I quit a job, the employer decided to hold back my last month's salary. Let me not get into the details of it on why I am on the fair side of the situation. This blog is not about that. This is about how we treat time w.r.t money.

For me, the amount is high enough that the time and effort I spend are worth it. So, I would hire a lawyer, pay him a percentage of the settlement I would get and try everything to get my money. In the process, to be cost effective, I will try to maximize the settlement. For example, I would try to recover the money I spend for the legal process, charge interest for the delayed payment etc.

What surprises me is my ex-employer's attitude towards time and money. The money they owe is indisputable salary and not a negotiable commission or some such thing. So, there is no monetary gain out of the issue. Even before the situation gets into the legal process, all the key people had spent a lot of time on the issue without making any progress towards a resolution. If we were to consider the salaries of these people, the cost of the time lost in the arguments and discussions is plain intangible loss. The time would have been better spend on what is good for the business.

I came across another set of top guys, each one's net worth was more than a few million dollars. These guys spent an hour of their time discussing whether to buy a phone in India for $3 more or to buy it in the US at a cheaper price. It was just one piece of phone and the difference was just $3, still they chose to spend an hour's time discussing that.

It surprises me that we Indians give so little importance to time and such a high importance to money.

OOP - POO

2007-03-07T17:03:00.000+05:30

Your code OOP or POO

Since I started with functional languages and programmed in Pascal and C in my first couple of years of experience, I didn't get too carried away with OOP ... for extended periods. The obsession usually lasted for a month or so before I got practical.

The other day, I interviewed a guy who has been a business analyst. He had all the technical jargons of the past 10 years in his resume. If he could show some UML, I would have considered him for an analyst role. If he could write code, I would have considered him for a tech lead role. If he could do both, I would have him take my job. The person threw bull and jargons at me at an alarming frequency. Every sentence had stake holders or components or some such shit that are candidates for stop words in a management meeting.

Since he started talking about a requirement for logging, I asked him to design a logging system. If he could just copy Log4J, I would have been happy. If he could write a simple function declaration, that takes a bunch of relevant parameters, I would have been happier. He kept talking about it for full 45 minutes with out writing anything.

I thought he could be a Manager in some ISO/CMM type company and wished him good luck.

Let me try writing a declaration for logging.

void LogIt(int level, string systemName, string errorMessageFormatString, Object[] params);

The first parameter could be cleaned up by using an enum with values from {Critical, Error, Warning, Info}.
The second parameter can be used for source file name, or a combination of both.
The third and fourth parameters work together like the String.Format function.
The function is not supposed to return anything or throw exceptions. I recently came across a java application that couldn't report the actual exception as it threw one more exception in logging the error.
If you want to OOP it, encapsulate it in an interface with more complex logging function. There could be multiple implementations of this depending upon the mode of logging - display, file, event log, email alert and what not! And it is no more simple.
With C/C++ macros, this could be even simplified... with some dirty macros.

Is there a simpler logging?

Death for 3 AIADMK men in Dharmapuri bus burning case

2007-02-17T19:01:00.000+05:30

Death for 3 AIADMK men in Dharmapuri bus burning case

Finally... Now, let's wait for the next set of drama. Will Kanimozhi and other human rights activists oppose the death sentence? Their argument had been 'death sentence doesn't prevent repeat of crimes'. Let's not get into the childishness of this argument but return to the question 'Will they oppose it?'. They might. As we all know our political parties do want to be restrained by a fear of such punishments. Who knows - there could be day when someone in the ruling alliance want to commit the same type of crime.

They might choose not to, as none of the criminals in this case seem to belong to a minority community. Human rights in India means, mercy to the criminals from minority community.

Will the families of these criminals be allowed to meet with the President? I felt betrayed when the President gave audience to the family members of Afsal Guru. For an article by Francois Gautier rediff, I wrote to him as folllows:

"I disagree with you on Hindus having a Sikh Prime Minister and a Muslim President. To most Hindus, the Prime Minister and the President are Hindus too. I am surprised at your definition of religion. Just because Mr. Singh sports a turban and a beard and Mr. Kalaam has a Muslim name don't make them non-Hindus. Their understanding of the culture, their value system are essentially Hindu."

By the time the verdict is to be implemented, there could be a new government at the centre, state, a new President and a new political climate that might allow for a repeat of the Afsal Guru clemency drama. Anything can happen - it is India.

I am sorry for the Americans

2007-02-16T07:14:00.000+05:30

This is my 5th visit to the US. Like a few other trips earlier, I landed on a cold cold winter. Earlier I had entered the US from Boston's Logan. This time, it was Detroit. My team of developers huddled in a van and drove off to a hotel in the southern suburb.

After dropping our luggage, we drove to a grocery store to pick up some snacks and essentials. Everytime I visit the US in winter, I make it a point to buy an anti-static spray. This time I had a laptop and didn't want to damage it with static current from my hands. The stores hadn't changed much, more or less the same set of products I saw three years ago.

I spent a lot of time watching TV in the evenings after returning from work. It is sub-zero C outside. Two news items that caught the attention yesterday.

Two old men had died when they were clearing their driveway of snow. No doubt this is a sad event for the respective families. People need to be totally insensitive to make a news out of this. A common observation in such news items is - there must be a villain in the story. One lady blamed the blizzard for the death. The man had had three bye-pass surgeries, was over 70 years of age and a mildest strain could have been fatal for him. If it were not the blizzard, he might have died when mowing his lawn or just watching football.

To blame someone probably comes naturally to many. My son started attending play school in the US when he was three. He could hardly speak a full sentence in Tamil or English. But he managed to learn - 'tis your fault' within the first month. This trend goes all the way up the career path where Managers always want to assign a head to a failure. This has caught up in Desi land too. I don't blame the lady in the news item or my son or my boss - assigning a head as a reason for failure gives a nice closure to the problem. So and so screwed up and there ends the matter. Even in the ancient period - 'புள்ளும் பொழுதும் பழித்தோர் அன்றி உள்ளிச்சென்றோர் பழியலர்'.

The reason I find this strange is because of my ability to see the whole instead of the single failure. An action happens with so many factors that we don't give credit for. If my team released a successful product, every team member, the employer, the market and the economy and in turn the man on street - are all behind the success. Similarly, if it fails, one of them might not have helped the success. In that case, just accept defeat and move on.

The other event that happened yesterday was the job at Chrysler. For someone from India, where such a massive job cuts aren't common nowadays, it is shocking. I am really sad for the people who would be jobless and have to wait for the dole from the government. The consolation is, there is at least a government that will care for them for some time.

Back at Photon

2007-02-02T14:16:00.000+05:30

About a year and half after I left Photon, I joined back yesterday. Photon has changed a lot in terms of facilities. It is one of the very few companies in Chennai that has best wireless connectivity. A Dell Latitude was getting ready for me as I completed the formalities with HR and introduction sessions.

Everyone from tech lead level and higher has a laptop with a good configuration. It contributes immensely towards better productivity.

With every language and platform getting more complex, not depending on the Internet can adversely affect the ability of the developers to solve problems faster. Photon has realized that and so, there is unrestricted internet connectivity for every employee. This is something Photon can be proud of. I had worked with a few other ISO / CMM level companies where getting connected to the net is a major problem. You have to navigate through various levels of systems to have some net connectivity.

Photon's processes are also a lot different from the other companies in the same space. The processes are defined not for the sake of it, but are designed for following. There is still a lot more to do; I hope they will happen in the coming months.

The workspace is a big improvement from the cramped offices at Adyar. Here is one more area where I would prefer some more improvements. The current setup probably suits the developers who often get into pair programming. For senior developers and leads, who do design, I think they would need more peaceful environment to think.

Overall, it feels good to be back among the hardcore techies with high energy.

Tata Sky Customer Support

2007-01-24T10:01:00.000+05:30

Some time back I had blogged about Tata Sky's customer support (I'm impressed). The experience with them in the past month makes me post a correction to the original blog.

As usual with the cheap Chines remote controls, the replacement I got from Tata Sky failed within a week. It looked some kind of paralysis where controls on the left hand side of the remote wouldn't work. Seems like the remote control has a dysfunctional brain of its own. I complained to Tata Sky about a month ago. As reported earlier, the customer support persons were very courteous and promised a replacement as early as possible. I made 4 or 5 more calls and every time the support person was extremely courteous. But that's all to it. I didn't get a replacement remote control.

Looks like they are out of stock but the call center people will have no clue. All they can do is to take my call and forward it to some agency and hope that agency would fulfill. Too bad they invested so much on an unreliable piece of hardware.

On comparing SCV and Tata Sky, there is no change to my opinions on both. With Tata Sky there is at least someone to take your call, answer and escalate.

From my side, I sit closer to the TV and the DigiCom box and use the buttons on the box instead of the remote control.

நான் ஏன் மதம் மாறினேன்...?

2007-01-22T17:28:00.000+05:30

தருமி: 55. நான் ஏன் மதம் மாறினேன்...? 3

An interesting blog. Good writing by all participants. Since questioning is not often encouraged in Christianity and Islam, I guess Dharumi's "thought process" is more interesting than a Hindu questioning.

In the realm of mind, all questions will be there. Allow them as they exist only in the realm of mind. When questions can't be answered by books or introspection, the mind gives up and enlightenment happens. You become free from all bindings.

Then, there is a rebel mode that happens when the bindings are gone. But slowly and surely one sees these bindings as something within the mind and He stays more conscious. One can even play with these bindings and see the mind deriving little pleasures. This is the active state of being. The Gita talks about the active state with enlightenment where the sthita-prgna performs his duties without attachment to the effects of it.

When enlightenment happens, in the passive state, it is not possible to differentiate between living and non-living, good and bad, God and Evil. That is the state of being God. At that level of consciousness, God is not someone or something sitting in a far off universe watching you; God is something that you are, you experience and the experienced.

Until one reaches that state of consciousness, allow for all debates on God and see experience of futility of the concept of God and that of the debates.

Airtel - Is there someone out there to manage their sites

2007-01-11T16:30:00.000+05:30

Search for airtel broadband on Google or just click the link airtel broadband - Google Search.

You will come across at least 4 sites - airtel-broadband.com, airtelworld.com, airteltelephone.com and airtelbroadband.in. I don't know why an ISP needs so many sites with so little information. I am trying to find out a best broadband usage plan and none of the sites have this information. Some of them just do not respond and some show jsp / jrun errors.

It seems too many people outsourced the web site creation for airtel. Here is a company that doesn't care what their web presence is. I guess their sleek commercials give them the confidence that they can run a business successfully with bad customer service and support.

Scott Rosenberg: What Makes Software So Hard

2007-01-09T11:39:00.000+05:30

Scott Rosenberg: What Makes Software So Hard

The hardest part is not making software but explaining to Managers on why software development is hard.

Recently, I took over maintenance and enhancement of a piece of software from a junior developer who left the organization. He had made less than reasonable decisions on where to store some options. His decision was based partly on the business Manager's input and partly on lack of experience and guidance. The business guy had wanted a page in which he would be able to enter gifts that we recommend for various occasions. The developer chose to keep the occasion information at page level and have corresponding numbers attached to the product set at the database level. This is not the best decision, but considering the time crunch and the push from the Manager, the developer went with this decision. Over the next few weeks, the requirements got more complex - there are occasions where you need to get the age of the person involved, where the person lives and so on. The developer kept patching it up and then left the job. I hope this project wasn't the reason.

When I had to maintain the system, I did some cleanup and moved the occasion information maintained at the code behind level. Now comes the next request. It is to add a new occasion. The business guy thinks that adding an element to a drop-down is all that we need to do. He is not able to think in abstract to define requirements. The usual way he works is, I show a UI and then he wants changes. This time I decided to move the information further behind to the database level. Before I do that, I am waiting on what more information should we look for and do a total redesign.

That's how software development works.

Handling attrition in SME

2006-12-28T11:11:00.000+05:30

I have come across a few instances where a large number of employees from a division quit within a short time. Though I didn't face the problem myself as a boss, I was part of the group that quit once - just once. The reasons range from better job market to low morale. Here are some thoughts on what the management can do about it.

1. When a key person or more than one person from a team quits, stop; think if you are doing anything wrong. The person might be leaving for any reason - the management needs to take the employee's reason with a pinch of salt. Rarely employees tell you what is wrong with you. They tend to be nice and usually lie.
2. Some of the mistakes that management end up doing are - share the work done by the employee who left among the remaining ones, putting more pressure on these members to complete the work and pressurizing HR to recruit more.

Sharing work is fine as long as the time allotted for completion is extended appropriately.
Giving pressure would happen involuntarily as management would like the project to complete on time or sales maintains the pace. In instances where possible, extending the deadlines or relaxing the targets would be the right thing to do.
Pressurizing HR without ensuring that the team is adequately staffed and skilled will cause more unhappiness in the HR team. Soon you will be seeing an exodus from HR. The first thing to do is to help HR ramp up on the skills and resources or begin outsourcing some of the recruitment activities.

These mistakes help in worsening the situation.

3. In divisions where the attrition is high, find out if the working conditions are normal. Smaller organizations do not have a process to address employee grievances. In many small organizations, employees don't have a chance to complain about their bosses with a confidence that they will be listened to and addressed. In cases, where a single boss micro-manages everything and there is no hierarchy, no employee would tell the boss that the conditions aren't right. Especially in cases, where the top manager is involved in every employee's daily tasks, there is no chance for an impartial observation of the situation.

4. It is comforting to list all external factors like good job market as reasons for people leaving. It just ensures that your ego stays unhurt. So, just be aware of this tendency and be reasonable in including such factors.

5. If the problems point to poor working conditions like office space, facilities, timings or accessibility, be sincere in addressing them. Speak to the employees that the situations can be addressed. If possible, involve them in a solution - like help find a bigger place, suggest timings. If the problems point to a person, work on informing the person of his / her shortcomings and help in improving on those.

The most difficult part in handling the attrition is - seeing your shortcomings and addressing them. I'll try to locate a few who managed it and write about them in the next few months.

Technical Writing and all such talks

2006-12-26T18:33:00.000+05:30

Technical writings and software documentation

It seems Naveen, Ari and Shivan won't get to a conclusion. For relatively small SME projects, following a good coding habit is the most essential requirement. The cost of documenting the project could be too prohibitive for the SME. Consultants can give a value for the money by just following standards as per the language and environment.

This makes it imperative for the developers to be disciplined on whatever they are doing; that doesn't come right away when you work for small projects. It is like a circle, where bigger projects bring in discipline - developers have to gain experience with smaller projects to enter bigger ones - smaller projects need discipline (more than bigger projects where minor deviation from standards here and there won't matter much).

Tough cycle to break; but will try that!

Traffic lights coming down in city

2006-12-22T13:42:00.000+05:30

Traffic lights coming down in city

Chennai added a large number of traffic lights and cops in the last 12 months - An indication that we are becoming less considerate to other road-users!