Chasing butterflies

Is it worth it?

2012-02-14T06:35:00.000-08:00

There is something the "Bhagvad Gita" which states something to the effect of, "Work your ass off and forget about the expected rewards".

I have been working too hard for a few months now, chasing a dream. Its not been a pain. It's actually been fun as I enjoy what I do. I enjoy making sense of disparate bits of specifications and give something working first time. I enjoy (after a hard day's work of politicking and alignment meetings) to just take a piece of analog circuitry, make sense out of it and get it to work.

These days though, I have been able to get very little of analog circuit design. It's been mostly emailing, ppt'ing, MS-Word'ing and meeting reservation-ing. It is still fun. It is still nice to make a difference and have people listen to and be influenced by what you are saying. It's nice to feel in a corner of your heart that the project will be seriously hit if you were not around.

So while I have no complaints about what I do, sometimes I do wonder if it all is worth it for various reasons.

While I have been chasing one dream, another one has come to fruition. I have held it dear to me for the last eight years. Held it close to my heart. Wept over it. Tossed and turned at night lying awake, dreaming of it. Today it's mine. Do I feel happy?

Well you can say a bit but I am frankly not over the moon about it. Hell, I have'nt even updated my Linkedin and perhaps have no intention to.

So...is it all worth it?

Ayn Rand

2011-08-29T22:10:00.000-07:00

Someone suggested I read Ayn Rand to tide over my present grief.

There are a few things though which would upset that person:

I downloaded an illegal copy. He (ok...its a he) is a fervent believer in protecting intellectual property
I dislike Ayn Rand. To me she was permanently scarred from her childhood experiences in USSR and that affect her entire world-view. I dislike the choices she made in her personal life. I dislike the fact that her philosophy does not leave room for kindness and gentleness in dealings with other people. Its all me and mine.

I am going to go read "The Fountainhead" anyway. It is strangely comforting.

I get comfort in how Howard Roark approaches each episode in life with intellect and with emotions in control.

I tried to do the same and (sort of) succeeded.

Time for breakfast at 1:00 pm

I am still here!

2011-08-26T22:16:00.000-07:00

A few things have changed. And that has led to some soul-searching on my part.

Let me write it down in bullet points like I do at work

Why do blog-posts need to be small literary affairs? I update stuff on Facebook quite often but that's because I feel lazy to type out an essay every now and then on my blog. Why does it need to be an essay?
Why do some people give me unconditional love? Why do people offer support and sympathy when I have done nothing on my part specifically for them? Is just a smile and a cheery 'hello' every morning enough? Is just a willingness to listen to them with a smile and the urge to not be in their way while they are trying to do something enough? Why do we expect so little from some and (at the oposite end) so much from others?
Why does hearing about someone else's tragedy make you feel that you can cope?
And why can't we men be internally strong individualistic creatures? Why do we run to safety and stability? Weren't we supposed to be the wild ones?

Rediffining Life....

2010-08-15T02:58:00.000-07:00

I work with three computers on a normal working day. If a history listing were to be taken out from the Firefox browsers at any of these boxes, the most visited website would turn out to be rediff.com. I must visit that website atleast twenty times in twenty-four hours. A neutral observer would be forgiven for thinking that I work for a news aggregation agency rather than a humble chip-design outfit.

We just returned from an awesome, awesome trip to Phuket. While my wife loved the sun, sand, food, people...you name it, my key impression was of an acute withdrawal syndrome. I was happy to board the flight back home and I spent an ecstatic night trawling through all the websites and blogs that I normally haunt (...and then some), catching up on the lost five days.

Which brings me to the point. Where does a distraction, cease to be a distraction and become an obsession?
There were days when our parents used to wake up at dawn, read the newspaper while sipping tea, get on with the day and then come back to catch the nine 'O clock news. Touching base with the world just two times in a day! While I can definitely imagine myself in a life like that, it would be hard.

I guess this transformation has a lot to do with how accessible news has become. You turn on the telly and you get news every hour. You switch to the net and you get news websites that are refreshed at an hourly basis (or even faster). If you are sitting at home, you are stuck to your laptop. At your desk you have your desktop computer. Outside you have your smart-phone. Its simple to open another tab and keep refreshing. Its like following the world as if it were a cricket score...

What it does to your concentration is another matter altogether. A wasted holiday. A half thought out proposal. Lesser time for important people.

All this was brought in focus for me in an article on Time this week. Anyone can see that magazine is struggling to stay afloat. It is palming off advertisements for cover stories. This week it covers an author I have never heard of and his forthcoming book that no one has read. But the key take-away was that he works on a laptop which is not connected to the internet, has no games and only has the barest essentials for him to type out a manuscript. I fell in love with the idea immediately.

Think of it. No games, no facebook notifications, no email client honking at you and ..... no news tab!

With a laptop like that, the only thing you can do is work. You can immerse yourself with whatever you are doing. You do what is important with your full concentration and if you need a break, you take a walk!

Right.... but what do you do while taking a walk? I would need to Google for that....

Oh for some programming....!

2010-02-13T03:59:00.000-08:00

Warning: Geek ahead!

When was the last time you wrote a program?

The last serious program I wrote was a Linear Predictive Coder. It was in the third year of my engineering. Eight years ago.

It was not much of a program really (going by what a lot of my coder buddies do for a living that is). It was some few hundred lines which me and Dabba at college put together in a rush of sincerity. We could have simply downloaded it off the web and tweaked it. Instead D and me spent hours at the library poring over books to understand what the hell predictive coding did and after a semester of sweat, toil and missed siestas put together something which took a perfectly intelligible audio snippet and made it sound like some guy badly in need of a gargle.

The interesting part was, it worked. It took a high bit-rate audio stream, converted it into an extremely low bit-rate stream and then reconstructed it to the great delight of my Design Lab professor. He was so delighted, that he remembered us all through and would've given both of us solid reco's had we asked.

Dabba is now Doctor Dabba (soon to be Mr. Doctor. Dabba...yes guys, he is getting married) and still does some sort of signal processing for a living.

I on the other hand went off into circuits.

Mind you, I love my job. I love making transistors work. I love the fact that my job gives me the same rush that missile designers get. Months of toil and perseverance checking and double-checking things and it all either goes up or stays down. All in five minutes.

What I do miss is the programming. I dislike the fact that I can no longer discuss the relative merits and demerits of emacs/gvim or nedit. I dislike the fact that there is hardly anything I can do on command-line using something that is free or open source. I hate it that I hardly ever see the “segmentation fault – core dumped” message.

Ok, I see it sometimes, but that means that now instead of solving the problem myself, I have to call Cadence customer support.

Yep, these days the closest I get to programming is with MATLAB. And that is mostly to plot stuff. I just submitted an assignment and my “program” basically plotted two streams. All the other intelligence was reserved to the discussion of the kinks and curves in the two plots that I had to write by hand and append.

If MATLAB could, it would've deleted itself, annihilated all its handles in the registry and crashed my computer. Its like asking Superman to do the dishes.

The frustrated programmer within me surfs avidly about the pros and cons of MATLAB, Octave, Scilab and Sage. I have half a mind to take up a really math intensive course under a sadistic prof only to have the pleasure of writing one big code in .... something. (Ok, I am taking this too far I know).

But I am afraid, after almost eight years of doing analog design, I have come to the sorry conclusion, that programming and analog design don't mix. At-least for the designers.

People always did not think so.

In my previous company, a verification guy (verification is all coding and scripting) decided to do some analog design for a change and for the next three years all the analog designers cursed the day his boss gave him analog work. He decided that a lot could be automated. And then automated it. The bosses loved it but all the analog guys hated his guts. While it created some efficiency, it threw off all the touchy-feely intuition that all analog guys need to cultivate.

Designing a circuit started to look like writing enough checking scripts. The problem was the scripts would check all the nook and crannies of the circuit but would take an entire day doing it. When the result came out, the designer would think that some minor tweaking would get the results in line only to find out the next morning that some other spec is being missed now. Simple circuits would get held up because no designer bothered to think but blindly tweaked and ran scripts.

By the time I left that organization, none of his scripts were being used. He went back to verification.

Simply said, programming and analog design don't mix. I wish they did. They don't.

And I look sadly at the range of programming compliers and mathematical programs lying in my core2duo macbook...... and write this blog.

printf(“Hello World\n”);

A new beginning

2010-01-09T19:52:00.000-08:00

Writing is a tough act to keep up. Especially so when you expect too much from yourself.
For some people writing comes as a charm. Like the ink in a Sheaffer fountain pen. Clear, smooth and beautiful. Even after it has lain rusting in a dusty corner on a book-shelf in Ghaziabad for a year.
I wish that were the case for me. Its not. Its a tortured, difficult process which goes on in fits and starts and demands heavy preparation.
Yet, sometimes, (only sometimes for me) what comes out on paper is beautiful and worth the effort.
A year ago, I decided to give up on blogging. There was heavy work-load. Both from office and from school. There was also setting up our new household and also the small pleasures of domesticity. I decided to give up on blogspot and orkut and move to Facebook and keep in touch with people via status-updates.
But over the last month, I read other blogs and articles and itch began to start writing again. I do mundane work. I read mundane books. I lead a mundane life. I need to do something less mundane for a change. I owe it to no one but myself.

So here goes.

May everyone have a happy, successful and safe 2010!

MJ - RIP

2009-06-26T22:48:00.000-07:00

D was telling me that the death of MJ is an event that can be compared with 9/11. Till your dying day, you will always remember what you were doing when you heard the news.

I was taking my early morning news fix at 7:30 AM yesterday while rubbing my sleep deprived eyes.

While I was a kid, Michael Jackson was the epitome of the American culture for me. We had this old "EC" - TV at home. It was black and white and had a manual channel change knob which I used to wrestle with everyday. It sometimes gave me electric shocks and the picture would erratically blank out leaving me with just the audio to make out what was going on.

It was on this television set that I discovered Michal Jackson. He had planned a concert in Mumbai (the first one which got called off) and Doordarshan used to air his music videos for a while. To my rock music deprived child-hood, this was manna from heaven. I never could make out the lyrics, at times could not see the dance moves but the music kept me up at nights.

My brother eventually recorded "Smooth Criminal" on our music system. I listened to it again and again at max volume with my ear stuck to the speaker (the music system was one of the quieter ones around). I sang the song at various times as "Everybody wants to..." or "Ubi-guchi wompchi" or something quite similar to keep track with the music. There was no internet then.

I came to college and while getting ragged I let fall that MJ was one of my favorties. The seniors quickly took me in hand, forbade me any more MJ and introduced me to G'nR, Aerosmith and Pink Floyd. It was apparently "pansy music" not suitable for Patelians.

I have since moved on to ACDC and Cold-play (and am discovering Airbourne). After the news broke, we played his songs on our laptops. It is nostalgic to listen to his songs and finally sing "Annie are you ok?", but I also realized that I have moved on and have a different musical taste now.

Michael Jackson brought a lot of joy to everyone. He tried in his own way to make things right with this world but got misunderstood and paid a heavy price. If you read his biography, you come away with the impression that he was a helpless and sad little kid till his dying day

May he finally get some rest and peace....

Why I (may) not convert to a 'twit'?

2009-06-05T21:08:00.000-07:00

I love reading magazines. After me and D got bored of the Straitstimes drivel, we decided to curtails our newspaper subscription to just a weekend delivery and subscribed to the Time.

Its quite a nice change. The only fly in the ointment is....where is the time?
Weekdays go in work, weekends (should) go into house-cleaning, meeting up at Brewerkz, and catching up on my Equalizer project....

Just been reading this frontpage art-kill on twitter and got inspired to blog. No, I am not in any near future converting to a twit. Part of the reason is that I feel too old (my 28th birthday was last week) for these new-fangled ideas and the other part is that I do not want an insistent, "What are you doing now?" thingy beeping away my attention span.

Results also last week. Got an A- and a B+ :|.

Hain!!!!!

2009-03-12T09:30:00.000-07:00

Someone please tell me how good songs and effective air-to-air missiles are related!
If you did not quite understand the logic of that sentence, you are in good company. I don't understand this myself!!!

Married....

2009-03-09T09:42:00.002-07:00

A few interesting things that can happen at your wedding:
1. You try to pull a grave (I am now a responsible guy) face all through the ceremony. It comes out looking worried and scared. Your wife is all smiles of course which leads to questions later on about whether there was a "difference of opinion" the night before..
2. You cannot eat during either the reception and and the wedding. Weeks later, while looking at the photos of the food you feel hungry.
3. You put in North-Indian customs. The wife puts in the Kerala ones. The priest decides to add in a few Kannada ones also. Everyone comes back slightly confused as to how many times we got married...
4. You wait for guests in the reception hall before getting in. The guests wait for you before they get in. Everyone gets late...
5. You lose the "mangal-sutra" just before the wedding. Rather you lose the key that keeps it in safe custody in a suit-case. When all burglary attempts fail, the brother-in-law sets a speed record to the nearest jeweller and back so that he can become the brother-in-law.

Oh well, I am married now. And I love being so....
(Notwithstanding what you say "Crazy"....)

The lost art of blogging

2009-01-08T19:34:00.000-08:00

Once in a while in the life of a blogger facing a mountainous writer's block, comes an existential question.

Why do I blog?

That's the one facing me right now. I am not a professional book reviewer. I do not watch many movies so I cannot fill my blog with reviews like I have been donig in the past.

There's much I'd like to write about the burning issues of the day but I am neither in India nor am I a qualified observer therefore my take on situations is going to be biased and hopelessly out of context. Who cares anyway....

This blog started out as (if I may grandiosly call that) a celebration of life. Not the big things but the small ones. Smelling flowers, chasing butterflies, cracking jokes, keeping the tongue firmly in cheek.

I have not stopped seeing all that's funny in everyday life but I have stopped recalling them.

Lets hope I get my funny bone back soon.

Happy New year

2009-01-03T05:10:00.000-08:00

Yeah yeah...

I have not been blogging. Too busy sorting out stuff and trying to put them into well organized dockets but it is difficult to do when your whole life is in the process of turning upside-down.

Last year I had wished everyone a nice, happy but slightly boring year. (The logic being that I had had much more excitement than I could handle and wished for some boredom for a change). This year let me wish everyone LOTS AND LOTS of work.

It would be better to be over-worked than to be idle this year I guess....

Tada!!!

Reading and writing

2008-10-02T06:52:00.000-07:00

After reading some stimulating prose, I have this tremendous urge to write.

The other day I picked up "Unaccustomed Earth" by Jhumpa Lahiri. I picked this book along with three others and left it till the last. I am glad I did. The effect of this book has been such that for the life of me I cannot recall which the other three books I picked were....

I remember having arguments with this friend Geeth, about literature. To me, literature had to have substance: a story, a thread, a point. Geeth insisted on the other hand that substance notwithstanding, literature was dead without style. While I had no patience with anything which did not have twists and turns, he would be blissful after reading twenty-five pages about a sun-set, if written well.

I now sympathize.

Lahiri's writing does not have any twists and turns. When you get to the ending, you do not put down the story with a satisfied sigh of triumph as you see everything falling into place. Its not something which will keep you up at nights turning page after page. The magic of Lahiri lies in the way she feels the deepest emotions in a scene and puts them down in writing. This magic will make you come back and read the story again and again.

I have just finshed the second story in the collection. The first one was quite good but in the second one she, to my disappointment, went back to a semi-dramatic ending.

For good writing I now realize, one does not need to be a W. W. Jacobs or an O. Henry and conjure up an exciting ending.

Twenty-five pages on a sunset can also be beautiful.

Another riposte???

2008-09-20T09:08:00.000-07:00

Delhi: 5 blasts. 21 killed. 13th September
Islamabad: 1 blast. 40 killed. 20th September.

Both in national capitals. One only a week after another.

More "Jiya Jale"

2008-09-15T08:53:00.000-07:00

I am presently reading, "India's Unending Journey" by Mark Tully.
I have only done some fifty pages and I am enthralled.
Of late I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to change quite a few things by fighting them. I have been enamoured by the thought that given my "limitless reserves" I can beat down my opponents and have my way.
This book reminded me that the best way is to open your mind to differing views while staying true to your cause. The best way is to be humble, to accept the fact that other views might be as correct as your own. This is the way Hinduism teaches and I am after all a Hindu.

It also says (quite as an aside actually):
In his first sermon, Harry Williams describes two sorts of truth, an outer truth and an inner truth. The outer truth is all knowledge we acquire, our intellectual capital. The inner truth has a life of its own and can therefore sweep in upon us in ways we cannot control.

Take for instance something of superlative beauty - music, painting or what you will. We can indeed study and master its outside truth - how it is constructed- how it is related to what has gone before and so forth. But its reality eludes us altogether unless it penetrates us and evokes from us a response we cannot help giving.

This took me back to the experience I had a few days ago with "Jiya Jale".

I am still listening to that song while I type this.....

Epiphany

2008-09-12T08:09:00.000-07:00

I normally listen to ACDC only. It rocks. It resonates with whatever primal instinct I have in me and energizes me. If I go to some other band for a bit, its only because I need a break to remind myself how crappy other bands can be.
So half an hour ago, I was listening as usual to ACDC. I had had a hard day at work and I was sleepy. I still had some important stuff to do on the net, so I turned my Itunes on the "Shuffle" mode so that I do not get distracted by Angus Young.

All of a sudden, Itunes decided to play "Jiya Jale".
It was a moment of pure joy. Lata Mangeshkar's magical voice enveloped my consciousness, A. R. Rahman's music metamorphosed into something tangible right in front of my eyes and the Mallu lyrics gave me goose bumps and shivers.

What was it? Was it just me tired and sleepy? Was it just the fact that its something I listened to in my school days but of late don't consider worthwhile but have never been able to completely disown and now its coming back to claim me? Or was it the fact that there is something timeless about Lata Mangeshkar's voice or A. R. Rahman's music that no logic can justify or deny?

Its been 45 minutes now since that moment and I am still listening to "Dil Se"

Rock on. Sad let down

2008-09-07T01:42:00.000-07:00

After watching this movie yesterday night, I came back and checked up a few reviews on the web.Quite a few bloggers have reviews praising this movie as a signal achievement. There is a site called crazyengineers.com which has a forum thread on it. All the forum members have only this to say:
"Great/Awesome/Mind-blowing movie. Read my review here"
I am sure they have far more to say in their respective reviews but I really have'nt checked.

Now why am I adding my feeble voice to this chorus?

Because I beg to differ.

Frankly Mr. Akhtar. You are losing your touch. Dil Chahta Hai was an epic. One reviewer said, "Its not whether you have watched this movie or not (You have) but its more how many times you have watched it". I agree. Lakshya was a sensitive take on the growing up of an individual. Don was a sad let-down and only today I realized that you also had made this movie called "Honeymoon Travels". But we are talking about "Rock On"

The music is simply awesome. Its a given that for the Indian audience, something on the lines of hard-core rock music would not do. The compromise between saleability in the Bollywood context and loyalty to the rock-music genre is well done. There was something both for me (an ACDC fiend and a head-banging moron in Purple Haze) and my Dad who relaxes after a hard day's work to Classic Hindi film music. When the movie ended I was left wishing for a few more songs.

But on the other hand, I found the movie remarkably superficial.

Aditya (Farhan Akhtar) has everything in life I dreamed of while I burnt my midnight oil preparing for JEE. He has a cool job as an investment banker, a lavish apartment, a BMW, a beautiful wife, six-pack abs, and some history as the lead singer in a rock band. He also manages to have this angry/distant/reserved attitude in life which makes the society women swoon over their collective gins wondering what is behind the facade. Unfortunately behind the facade is nothing.

This is a guy who had a great band going. Then in one of the creative arguments that band-members have, he gets punched and walks out. While he does that, he also obligingly ditches a girl-friend (who all the while was only good for sundry kisses during breaks in rehersals anyway) and just vanishes.

Ok buddy.
One punch and you ditch your friends. You ditch your girl-friend after a hastily scribbled note. And thereafter you maintain this air of a man done grievous wrong for the next ten years.

Hello???
I would pick up the phone the next morning and try to set things right. Fine you had a problem with your lead guitarist but what of the other two in you band? What of the girl on your arm? Did you care for those three at all as people or were they only fillers to populate the scene?

After watching this scene, I wistfully recalled a similar scene in Dil Chahta Hai. It was great! Beautifully done! There was just the right amount of depth in its treatment. Sure every-time I watched that movie again, I fast-forwarded through that scene but without it your story does not stand!

There are some great scenes in the movie. Like the one in which Aditya's wife is cajoled into singing by his band-mates. When she protests that she only knows Hindi songs, everyone goes quiet in derision. Then Joe, KD and Rob come together and accompany her on their instruments while she sings in an uncertain voice. That was a great scene in which Sakshi is accepted in their clan even though she is very different.

But over all I found the movie a bit list-less. Frankly when the intermission was signalled, I was wondering if it was a mistake because so little had happened in the first half!

It is indeed refreshing to see Hindi movies moving away from the usual boy-meet-girl genre that had become the staple of Bollywood till a few years ago but otherwise this movie is not up to what I expect from Farhan Akhtar.

Are we too Democratic?

2008-08-19T06:37:00.000-07:00

I read about the on-going trouble in Kashmir with dismay. Whatever is happening is unfair to the Hindus and if you do not stop bending over backwards to the Muslims, the Hurriyat starts saying that Kashmiris are Pakistanis.

That made me think:
How is it that China gulped down this entire country called Tibet and no-one's been able to do anything about it? How is it that we, a country of a billion people cannot keep a valley and four million people quiet?

One silly thing I see in this entire episode is the article 370. We Indians are not allowed to buy property in Kashmir while the Kashmiris can happily buy whatever they want all over India!

China faced with this problem would have given every Kashmiri they could find jobs in Bhagalpur, Thiruchirapalli and Banaskantha while they would have filled Kashmir with Hindus from the same aforesaid places. No one would then have been able to say that Kashmir is a predominantly Muslim region and should secede.

End of story.

Why don't we do just that?

Sure the Hurriyat and the Muslim separatists would cry but I am sure this huge country with infinite resources can take care a bunch of motley old men who just want to stay relevant.

Or can she?

Block...

2008-07-24T08:08:00.000-07:00

I cannot write. Much as I want to.

Its in the nature of things that when you write, you turn out a few bad pieces, a few mediocre ones and a few (only a very few) that make you smile at the end of it.

I remember the times when I would be walking down the streets and someone would say something funny that I'd overhear and there a chain of thought would start that will culminate in a poem or a passage or something.

Now either the people have stopped being funny, or I have stopped overhearing. I still walk the streets though.

Writing is a release. Sometimes when you get going, you feel this inner block slowly dissolving. You feel light-headed and cheerful. You take deeper breaths. A smile comes on your face. I am feeling that now.

I have always made it a point to atleast start with the intention of writing a tight little thing, retain my focus and not get lost in verbiage. And today here I am writing about a block....

What can you do?
When a block strikes you.
Do you rail? Do you squirm?
Or do you stop writing
And take up something new?

The moon still rises
The sky is still blue
Your friends still love you
Yet you sit every night
Aching to write something true

You don't want to be negative
You don't want to be crass
Have you started wondering
How your writing is read
That this has come to pass?

Writing is a pleasure
Reading is a gain
Oh God please don't deny me those
Because without them
Life's such a drain

India and the world

2008-07-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

I have been in Singapore over a year now. But all through this period I have always maintained this and I believe I always will: I miss Bangalore.

But I go too far ahead....

I arrived here one year ago and one of my first impressions of the place was not of the clean streets, well-laid out boulevards and the sparkling metro rail but of the people.

They never smile. They crib.
And they are rude as hell!

I met my colleagues and heard them griping over lunch everyday. I talked to my house-mate and had him crib to me every night. Even the friends I made here took on a negative hue in their conversations with me over time. And here I am griping away on my blog!!!!

Over this past year I have thought a lot about why Singaporeans are so negative in their outlook. I lived all my life in India and met so many positive people but here after one year in Singapore I believe has shown me more negativity than I have seen in my entire life.
If one dispassionately looks at it, people in Singapore have little to crib about. They all have decent education. They all have a place to call home (And I am not kidding here. There are no slums in Singapore, no one sleeps on the streets). Even the most destitute of Singaporeans have support enough to put two meals on the table everyday.

Compare that with what I saw in India. Creaking infrastructure. Rampant poverty. Major crime and a duplicitous political class. But why are Indian among the most optimistic people in the world? (Apparently some study established that. A similar study also established how vegetarians have higher colon cancer risk!)

I believe this has to do with how the two sets of people view the world.
Indian have seen tremendous growth of late. They feel that they are more in control of their lives. With the passing of years, the government has slowly but surely started to withdraw from the strangle hold it exercised in the Indian's daily life and my compatriots are seeing that their world is changing with more opportunities for them.

Out here in Singapore, there is no such growth. Salaries rise at 5% per annum (if you are good).
Jobs are drying up because on one is investing. But all these are cyclic factors.
I believe the overwhelming reason is the fact that the government touches the life of every Singaporean everyday in myriad ways. And it functions in a fashion which looks highly arbitrary.

This colleague of mine was complaining to me the other day about how the government has valued all the trees in Singapore at SG$ 1 Million each. "Based on what?", he shouted.

The taxi companies put a 30 cent surcharge on taxi fares due to rising oil prices. "Do the 30 cents go to the Taxi driver who is actually filling up the Diesel or to the Taxi companies?" asks my colleague. No one answers that. "Who owns the Taxi companies?", I ask. He shrugs and says, "The government owns everything".

Now I as a dispassionate observer find nothing wrong per-se in any of the above decisions the government took. But what queers the entire thing is that you hear only the government line on all these things and nothing else. There is no one to ask the questions my colleague raised and no one to answer them. This gives the facade of arbitrariness to the entire system.

This to my Indian sentiments is anathema. In India we are used to discussing and arguing at length about non-essentials. This fantastic Nuclear deal that Dr. Singh got for us has got stuck in one such quagmire to my immense despair. But all said and done, you can accuse the Indian state of being slow-moving, in-efficient, bureaucratic and corrupt. But you cannot accuse it of being arbitrary and dictatorial. I sometimes think that some dictatorial streak in the Indian state would be actually good for us all but it might just end up taking away from us Indians the feeling of empowerment we have.

Enough political science funda. Good night all.
Been off blogging for a while now. I hope to be back with renewed strength now!

Events...

2008-05-20T09:05:00.000-07:00

Sometimes life just turns topsy-turvy.

Over the past few weeks mine has. While I was looking very smugly at the future earlier with a certain idea as to how its going to shape up, I am looking at it with a sense of wonder as to how quickly things can change and how one should never plan too far ahead lest everything comes unstuck.

Updates:
1. Moved to a new apartment. With rents out here touching new heights, I have taken a shady place and made it live-able by making some investments
2. Moved to a new office, out of the dump we were in previously. Fantastic place.
3. Developed a new hobby of resuscitating very old computers and making them work-able again (I am talking of 486 -level machines with 4 (as in 1-2-3-4) MB of RAM.) Fun stuff
4. Made a few new friends
5. Almost lost a few old friends
6. In the process of taking up abstinence
7. Broke.... :)
8. Really pressed for time. None for blogging, books, cricket...even friends

Tata Nano featured in IEEE Spectrum

2008-04-21T08:38:00.000-07:00

Its here

Nice to see that finally people around the world are sitting up and taking notice of what Indian engineering talent can do. IEEE Spectrum is a magazine least likely to write junk and it was nice to see something familiar in it for a change.

If you notice carefully, on that page two different cars are featured. One is the Tata Nano and the other is a Jaguar. Both from the Tata stable.

Oh well. Jaguar has been an acquisition and not something to be so proud about but still...
(Psst Psst...I did not quite like the reasons why that Jaguar has been featured in that list. I do not want sundry slots opening in my car when I wave my hand...)

One day in China....

2008-04-11T22:26:00.000-07:00

I like blogging. I like putting down on this piece of "property" I have on the internet experiences, anecdotes and opinions. Its my way of communicating with the friends and well-wishers I have been fortunate to have across the globe without unnecessary hassle. Its nice to let them know of the newest scrape I have been in

A few events though do happen to me which are too painful to recall and sometimes I am tempted to bottle them up inside me. But they need to be told because I will be doing people a disservice if I don't warn them of what might be their experience as well.

Like what happened to me in China this week.

I was supposed to be in Shenzhen (China) this week. Shenzhen (if you have not heard of it) is a metropolis right across the lagoon from Hong Kong in Chinese sovereign territory. I was supposed to attend a business meeting there. The plans were made in a rush and I had to scramble to get air-tickets and hotel rooms. I had checked up on the Visa regulations and they appeared to be a breeze. Shenzhen is an SEZ. All Indians have to do is land up and queue up for a visa on arrival and they are given a single entry 5-day Shenzhen-only visa. No hassle. No questions asked.

Since I was flying in through Hong Kong, I checked up on its visa regulations as well and they were also a breeze. Just land up. Your passport is stamped a 14-day visa.

So my itinerary was going to be:
1. Land at HK
2. Clear HK immigration
3. Take a train to Lo Wu check-point on the border between HK and Shenzhen
4. Get a visa on arrival at Lo Wu
5. Clear Shenzhen immigration
6. Take a taxi to the hotel
7. Attend the meeting
8. Go back to HK after three days
9. Take the flight back to Singapore

Simple enough.
Or so I thought....

Getting into Hong Kong was simplicity itself. Landed up. Queued up for immigration. Got my passport stamped. Also got a smile and candies from the lady at the immigration plus detailed directions to Lo Wu.
I double-checked the directions to Lo Wu at a bus counter and the lady there was all-smiles and insisted on escorting me to the elevator and gave me detailed scribbled directions.

Got into the Bus to this train station. Got to the train station without incident. Caught the local train to Lo Wu and there I was.

No hassles in clearing the HK immigration. Walked over across no-man's land to China. Asked for directions to the visa issuing office. Filled the form (very simple...no photo necessary), got the cash ready and queued up.

When my turn came, I handed everything to the lady at the counter. The lady at the counter looks at my passport, says, "Indian Passport" and hands it to a policeman. The policeman comes out of the counter, bids me to follow him to complete certain procedures. I follow him out. We walk back to the no-man's land. He hands my passport to another officer who notes all the details down using a scanner and then hands it back to the first officer. The first officer now hands me my passport back, points towards Hong Kong and tells me, "That's the way to Hong Kong. Thank you very much. Go back!"

For five seconds I felt like a bomb had hit me. I was too stunned to react.

I collected my wits and asked him what the matter was. He repeated his stock phrase, "That's the way to Hong Kong. Thank you very much. Go back!". I asked him again. Then this guy pushed me to Hong Kong and said the same thing. I walked back towards HK, then decided to try again. I walked back towards Shenzhen and now this policeman caught hold of another of his colleagues, and they both summarily blocked me and prepared to man-handle me. No further words came from them.

Deciding that I could do nothing, I called up my Shenzhen colleagues and told them of the situation. Since I was still in no-man's land, both the guys kept watch over me and given any provocation would have literally kicked me out. I walked back to Hong Kong feeling like a complete waif.

I did not know where I was going to sleep at night. I had no plane tickets to get back and I was depending on my credit card to bail me out of any cash crunch. Plus I was spitting mad!

The Hong Kong authorities were not surprised to see me ejected out of China. They were pretty helpful and let me in. I called up my Boss and let him know of the situation. My colleagues in Shenzhen, Singapore and UK were very helpful in calming me down and helping me to figure out the situation. I caught the bus and train back to Hong Kong airport, took the first flight back to Singapore and was back in less than 24 hours of leaving Singapore.

It appears that China, angered by the anti-Tibetan protest in India had unilaterally decided to revoke visa on arrival to Indians. And while doing that, they very helpfully refused to tell anyone about it. Plus they brought into play their customary rudeness, high-handedness and arrogance.
In response to all this, India in a spirit of non-violence, world peace and brotherly love to their Chinese Communist brethren did precisely nothing. Actually, the government in West Bengal banned anti-China protests! But of course! They were acting on orders from Beijing...

Had they told me of the situation in Shenzhen I would have been angry but would have understood. They simply ejected me out like a ruffian.

And to add insult to injury, I called up the Indian Consulate in Hong Kong. There some guy picked up the phone, impatiently listened to my account for five seconds and shouted at me asking what I expected him to do. Then he politely banged the phone down without waiting for a response. That's ok. I never expected any help from Indians anyway. Had I spoken in Chinese he probably would have been more polite out of his brotherly love.

Guys, two lessons:
1. Never go to China
2. Never expect any help from your own government if you are in any trouble

When I got back to Singapore my conversation with the immigration official was like this:

O: Welcome back to Singapore Mr. Saurabh. Do you have anything to declare?
Me: Yes, don't go to China!

This evening in Singapore

2008-03-18T08:01:00.000-07:00

This last weekend I had an appointment with one of my friends here in Singapore. It was early evening. Just the right time to land up in Brewerkz and get a pint going. So I was hurrying off from my apartment to the mrt station.
On the way to the station, there comes a long alley-way. I got in that and at the exact same time in the opposite direction, got in a gorgeous looking Indian girl.
Now there are lots of Indians here in Singapore but out of some freak of nature, very few look any good. Now I feel that Indian women are one of the most beautiful in the world and therefore that is quite a disappointment.
What was not a disappointment was this particular girl. Tall, dusky, well dressed, slim. Smashing combination.
Now I am 'seedha-saadha' guy. Here I am in this long alley way. Here is the girl in the long alley way coming from the opposite end. No one else in sight. She is beautiful. My spectacles are the right power. I proceeded to pay her a compliment by looking at her quite appreciatively.

We walk towards each other
I look at her
She looks back
Our eyes meet
I smile
She smiles
We come closer

Suddenly the penny drops and I realize that the particular jitter issue I had been seeing in the newest silicon could be due to missing de-cap! (Cannot get into too many specifics here)

My expression suddenly changes from a complacent welcoming smile to one of "Eureka!!!". The only thing I did not do was say out loud, "OHHHH!!!!"

Her expression suddenly changes from a modest 'come-hither' to one of shock. She took me for a freak, quickened her steps and started looking this way and that for possible help.

I forgot about Brewerkz, landed up at work and figured that I was right!
She went her way and probably breathed a sigh of relief once I was out her sight.

People at work were extremely delighted both by the theory and how it came about.
My boss very nicely offered to finance my trips to Little India. He figured staring at Indian women gives me million dollar ideas...

Oh well....this is probably the first time a chip has been debugged by looking at girls. I think I should do it more often....

Seven things no one wants to know...

2008-03-15T23:49:00.001-07:00

I have been tagged by this crazy girl in Bangalore. (eee tag-phag ka howat hai bhaiyya???)

Anyway the deal is that I have to list down seven random (but sufficiently interesting) things about me. Here goes:

1. I am addicted to books. Cannot live without them. For other people home is where they hang their hats. For me home is where I keep my books.

2. I love reading about the Second World War. Most of it is boring but the Eastern Front has this insane attraction for me. I have read everything about it I could lay hands on, watched every movie I could find and I keep dreaming about visiting the places where all the carnage happened. Uncharitable souls have commented that I love reading about it because of the scenes of widespread cruelty to women and children that are manifest in accounts of that action. I thought about it and for a while I got pretty scared about that analysis. Then I realized that that could not be true because the battle I most love to read about is the Battle of Stalingrad. For all the cruelty, this action was fought by professional armies who to an extent respected the laws of war. I guess its the nihilism of the entire episode that attracts me. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. (More about that in another post I guess)

3. I take people for granted left right and centre. But on the other hand I value my relationships immensely. I would do absolutely anything for my close ones. That includes family as well as friends. People sometimes go out of their way to help me. It is a source of continual wonder to me and makes me very humble and proud to have such friends....

4. I love taking trips. I love slumming it out. The best trip to me would be to a jungle. To get to it I would hitch-hike rides. When I get there I would sleep under a tree. I hate big cities. I feel Man-kind would have been better off not coming down from the trees in the first place.

5. I listen to bands in relays. One month its ACDC and ACDC only. The next month it will be only Aerosmith. Now I am listening to the "Foo Fighters"

6. I am extremely casual about money. I cannot stand people for whom its the sole and ultimate aim. (Their approach to life is not wrong. Its just very different from mine). I hate questions about how much I earn. I don't ask them. I hate answering them.

7. While I was in Bangalore, one evening, I very seriously considered throwing it all away and joining a Buddhist Monastery in the Himalayas. I am not that crazy (or stressed out) now. But I ABSOLUTELY LOVE the Himalayas. I should. I am named after them.

I am not going to tag anyone in return but yes people in my blog-roll, go ahead and see if you can part with such random secrets. This is fun to do.

Reminiscing while down with 'flu

2008-03-10T06:03:00.001-07:00

I have 'flu.
Again.
Anyway, while in bed, I recall the GLORIOUS week I spent in Malaysia with a few of my old and new buddies. We went all over the place. Johor, Kuala Lampur, Penang, Kuala Lampur again, Taiping, Penang again and then finally I made my weary way back to Singapore
all by myself while my ex-boss got on with work in Penang.
A few interesting things I did in Malaysia
1. I realized that "Kanan" in Malay actually means "right". Now finally I met some sensible people who know that I am ALWAYS right!
(This says that the toll booth is on the right)

2. I had a full body massage along with an Irishman. The lady who massaged me was this cute Chinese girl. Pretty, lithe, slim. I wondered what she will be able to do and told her patronizingly to give her best. When she got started, I was knocked out. She packed some punch!
3. We went to the Sepang racing circuit. Missed a training race by twenty minutes.
4. We slept in a hotel which looked out on the Penang bay. Beautiful view from the 32nd floor
5. I bought a soft-toy in a KL mall. Its a giraffe with a very amused, bemused and innocent face. It sits on my desk and reminds me of my expression while I debug circuits....
6. We sampled Malay food. What I get in Singapore is sawdust compared to that.
7. I took at walk in the dead of the night and went to look at the Petronas Towers. One picture is etched in my mind. The Petronas towers visible in the sky, hookers soliciting just below them.
8. Took endless walks in KL and Penang. KL is a mess. Noisy, busy, crowded. Penang is an oasis in comparison. Colonial buildings, quiet, cheap.
9 Drove endlessly all over the Malay Peninsula
10. Walked from Malaysia to Singapore. Malaysian check-point was neat and tidy. Singaporean check-point was a mess.

Now I need a tissue...