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Growing Pains -- Vatsan Madhavan's BlogWhat doesn't kill you makes you stronger 10月28日 Moving soon..MM has a point. spaces.live.com is painful to use. Moving to http://vatsan.name soon! 10月24日 Life on 64-bit Vista - PrimoPDF
I needed to send a filled form for review. Some fillable PDF's are stupid -they won't let you save the form data. So I printed it to a file - as an XPS. This is on Vista. The reviewer didn't like XPS. Presumably, she is not very technically savvy. Now I needed to create a PDF. I figured it should be easy.
Err.... Nope. It won't work on 64 bit OS. Because Microsoft Document Imaging that provides the OneNote print driver is not yet available on x64 :-( I tried a few other things. Installed Aladin Ghostscipt to try using ps2pdf. The idea was to print using a regular postscript printer driver to a file. Network problems at work and other random occurances kept me from doing this cleanly, and it was all just a pain. Then a colleague pointed me to PrimoPDF. It worked like a charm. Supports printing documents as PDF, and also supports x64 printer driver.
10月7日 India and Pakistan - Born out of each other.
At a party last week, someone asked me where I was from (as if it was not clear from my skin/face/accent already!). We got talking about Madras and after some time, she asked, "Why do you keep changing back and forth between Chennai and Madras" ? So I responded, "Err... Because that place is called Madras. And they changed it to Chennai. It used to be both before, and now it's all confusing. Old timers in the US remember it as Madras, and young folks only know Chennai. My own instinct is to call it Madras when speaking in English, but I keep referring to it as Chennai also because I want to make sure that you make the association. So in Tamil, I'd refer to the city as Chennai, and in English, the place is Madras. It used to be clean and simple - context based name. Now it's so monotonous - always Chennai. Sigh! " ---------- On a related note, India is also known as Bhārat or Hindustan. Letting my mind wander a tad bit, I realized that both India and Hindustan are the same names - both names of Pakistani origin! To stretch it a tad bit, even the word Hindu (referring to the Hindu religion)has the same origin. The Indus Valley Civilization is at the root of these names. IVC eventually amalgamated into the Vedic culture and historical Hinduism. The Indus river is the longest and the most important river in Pakistan today. The river is called Sindhu in Sanskrit, and Hindu in Persian. In Greek, the river is called Indos. There - the name India is rooted in the Greek name of Indus river, and the name Hindustan is also based on the name of this river. --------- Now a bit of gleaning from Wikipedia. The term Sindhu is a generic word for river in Sanskrit ( I knew that!). Rigveda makes references to Bhāratas, an Aryan tribe. Aryans are proto-Indo-Iranians (i.e., the common ancestors of Indo-Iranians, ethnically speaking - although Indo-Iranians are, AFAIK, simply Caucasians despite the melanin differences). Interestingly enough, I haven't seen any references to the modern day official Hindi language name for India (Bhārat) being rooted in this. The name Bhārat comes from the name of a king Bharata who is (in Hindu mythology) said to have conquered all of the Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan and Persia. The word 'Bhārat' literally means Bharatas' realm. Now I'm guessing that the name of the mythical King is rooted in the old time reference to the Aryan tribe in Rigveda. ------ So really, Hinduism is a religion/culture rooted in a modern day Islamic country namely Pakistan. The various names by which India is known are all rooted in Greek and Persian (modern day Iran) words. This is an especially interesting observation in the light of the fact that there has been much strain between India and Pakistan over Hindu/Muslim differences etc. Turns out that despite the modern day bickering, India was born out of Pakistan and Pakistan out of India!! 9月19日 Weird Pizza ExperiencesAll pizza experiences are weird, because I'm probably only buying a pizza to binge because I'm not in a healthy mood to begin with... and worse, it's almost always for inexplicable reasons. Yesterday was one of those nights when I wanted a pizza. I drove by Papa Johns on 10th in Bellevue and saw this sign, "only deliveries after 10pm". It was 10:30pm and I was there... So I googled their phone number on my PPC phone and called the number. I was parked outside the store. So the store guy picks up and phone and takes my 'delivery order'. He was standing right in front of me talking - and it was like a real live conversation, except we had a glass door between us. And oh, he didn't know that I was the guy right in front of him outside the door. At the end of the conversation, I said, "Instead of delivering in 45 minutes, can you just give it to me when you're done baking? I'm right outside the door". He looked at me and went "Oh!". His face lighted up very very strangely and he looked at me in amusement and in a 'How weird is this' sort of way, and agreed. I got my pizza in about 15 minutes - a really cute gal bought it out and I tipped her for nothing. At least I got to eat a whole pizza all by myself. I hope I remember to visit the gym today...
9月11日 Peace Symbol
Interesting Story about the peace symbol at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_symbol.
ND = Nuclear Disarmament When the Hippies take over, ND becomes Peace! ;)
This post brought to you by a little gift from a little person. The Everything Credit Card
I was at Barnes and Noble to pick up a book or two... At the checkout counter, the conversation with the Cashier goes thus - Cashier - Do you have a Barnes and Noble card? Me - No. And I don't want one either. I'll just pay for what I have. Cashier - OK. Cashier - Oh, if you had a card, you'd have saved 20% on the hardback. Me - Umm.. oh well, I guess I'm in a hurry. I'll pass.
On the way back, I start thinking - Wouldn't it be cool to have a credit card that partners with the nations top 20 (or 50 or 100 or 250) discount sellers like Barnes and Noble, QFC, Fred Meyer, Costco, Safeway, Airlines rewards programs, gas stations, REI, JC Penney, Bed Bath and Beyond and whatnot - simply an exhaustive list of all major regional and national chains - and make the damn thing just work. I use my Uber Smart Reward Credit card in Barnes and Noble and it automatically works the magic - and lo! I got 20% off on my hardback. And if I go to Tom Nobody's shop, I still get my old fashioned 3% cashback rewards from the credit card, and when I hit up REI, I can accumulate my reward credits from REI (10% or whatever) and redeem it at the end of the year. I think a multipurpose card would be really cool. I'd pay about a $100 annual fee to use it. I also think that it would take a lot of market research and hard work to create a plethora of partnerships and a magnetic card technology that works seamlessly with everybody's computer system and retrofits seamlessly. But whoever does this would become a market leader and it would all be really really cool. An oh, they will also pay me some royalty because I just described the idea here first ;) 9月9日 The Desert is a Hot Place
I'll try to share some do's and don'ts here. Let's start with a don't. Don't take Fish Oil capsules to the desert. They can melt into a gooey stinky mass :-(
)'( 9月8日 RainbowsLast week, several interesting things happened that I missed. 1. Full lunar eclipse (I slept through it) 2. The pre-burn of the Man during the eclipse. 3. Meteor Showers What I didn't miss was the amazing display of colors in the sky.
Supernumerary RainbowsIf you observe the first image very carefully, you'll notice that there are some visible bands of light below violet at the bottom of the rainbow. Technically, a rainbow is bounded by VIBGYOR, but this one has more colors (or more than one, err.. two, rainbows). This phenomenon is called supernumerary rainbows. From Wikipedia -
9月7日 The Beginning of RulesThe email says it all.
7月18日 Decisions - Quick, Cheap and GoodPick any two - Quick, Cheap, or Good.
Of course none of these are quite dispensable qualities when it comes to making decisions having far reachhing consequenses. The common wisdom here is that trading off quality ('Good') is never a good idea, but it is acceptable to trade off the other two variables.
But like radix sort, we can do better under certain specialized conditions? What if the cost of making a mistake is not too much? Or perhaps an erroneous decision can be quickly identified and changed before the negative impact is too much? Should you then still be a stickler for high quality and spend time and money attempting to identify the most optimum solution to a problem? I believe not. Just make the call quickly enough and let it play out. You can always change your mind if you realize that your decision wasn't the best one. You'll save yourself money and time this way. And if you are lucky, your 'gut' decision would be the right one after all.
Of course, you have to be smart to pull this off. A leader with no track record for good judgment can't risk making mistakes. And inept leader can't do that either. Neither can someone who doesn't already command the respect of his peers enough that deliberate risks like these would blow in their face and be perceived as lack of ability. And of course, if you are the good leader all your peers think you are, you wouldn't think twice before calling your decision a bad one and changing it. 7月7日 Overcoming the fear of failureThe Role of Failure in SuccessFailures are both the greatest impetus, and the single most important impediment, to success.
Passion towards a goal will make you want to overcome all that causes you to fail. The desire to succeed, when it is overwhelming, will not allow you to tolerate failures. Thus in a highly motivated person, failure can be even more motivating.
Fear of FailureThe other aspect of failure is the fear of it, or rather the fear of yet-to-be failures. Many things worth having are almost never easy to get, and fraught with perils. And many a time, we just don't take a chance because we'd rather not fall flat on our face.
How often do we pass on a great opportunity to interview for a dream job (I'll probably not get it and I'd feel worthless), or avoid starting on that weight loss diet (It probably won't work, I'll look vain, I wont' succeed and I'd feel bad that I can't be disciplined enough), ask someone out on a date (She'll reject me/say no, thus proving that I'm an idiot savant), or have the courage to pitch that new idea to your managers (it will fail, and my career would be toast) ?
This happens every day in our lives, that we come across opportunities and we let go of them, because we are too afraid to take the bull by its horn and deal with the changes that it will inflict upon our lives.
Fear of the Unknown, and The worst case scenario
Added to the fear of failure is the fear of the unknown. We can't always predict the outcome, so we fear the lack of control and refuse to put ourseleves adrift into random waters. What we generally fail to realize it is always possible to know the worst-case outcome. The worst-case scenario might be totally unrealistic, and may never come to pass. But if you can be emotionally prepared to accept that worst-case outcome, you'd already have overcome all fears of failure!
A boring storyWhen I was interviewing for jobs, I was in quite a desparate situation. I needed some job, and needed it quickly. My savings were nil, I was deep down in debt from student loans and an almost maxed-out credit card and had a part time job that was boring and for which I was way overqualified (not to mention, it paid me a pittance, but it was good experience and I had nice coworkers). So I got this interview with a great company and it almost felt like if I didn't get that job, I'd rather be drowning somewhere. To me, the worst case was that I'd probably not have a job, friends or family would potentially look down upon me as a failure (until I proved myself otherwise), I'd have to ask my family for support and would generally be in a limbo. I didn't have a plan, but I'd figured out that I atleast had a part time gig, and if I cut down on expenses etc and moved from my halfway decent apartment to a rathole, I could maybe save a bit more and eventually make even on the debt front and so on. So it would be bad, but I would survive. I knew that I would eventually find a good job because if I trusted something, it was my own ability to learn to adapt to the world. I just suspected that I was a bit slow...
Now this whole thinking and acceptance-of-the-worst-case thing didn't come easy. I spent several months mulling over it, and I only did it because failure was seeming more and more inevitable, so I figured I might as well rationalize it to myself and keep my sanity. But lo, it worked wonders. I go to the job interview, and for some reason I find myself not particularly wanting to suck-up to the interviewrs, nor any urge to get the job at all costs. So I start interviewing the interviewers, making mistakes and doing my own thing. Sure, I was smart, I answered questions right (mostly) and showed plenty of good qualities, but I always thought that it only worked out right because I wasn't a desparate man, or at least, the desperation never showed.
Nirvana is the answer!!I've since tried the technique in a couple of other, less drastic, situations. It works every time, at least for me. I think the key is to be capable of success, but you have to let go of that nervousness that keeps you from being the best you can, and have an attitude of equanimity. If you can get into that zone, you'll be surprised at how well you can accomplish whatever it is that you set out to accomplish. And one trick to reaching that zone of nirvana is to trick your mind into believing that you are capable of dealing with the worst that life can throw you way.
7月6日 (The end of a parenthesis ;) ?Is this even a valid sentence - the title (The end of a parenthesis ;)?
I mean, are the parenthesis in the sentence balanced or not? Does the smiley in (...blah blah ;) also act as the closing bracket, or do I need to use a closing bracket like this - (...blah blah ;) )? The last one looks stupid with two closing brackets in succession.. On the other hand, the first one feels wrong with one bracket missing.
This is such an important problem I can't believe linguists and English majors aren't already writing dissertations about!! 5月1日 Reese Witherspoon Sighting..Sitting in the Kirkland Pancake house on Saturday morning wating for our oh-so-good break...err brunch to arrive, we saw a chica who looked almost like Reese Witherspoon. Well, with what can be done with makeup these days(rather, since always...  ), she might indeed have been The Reese, but who's to say? She was sitting there conspicuously lacking in male company, I was almost tempted to wonder if perhaps it was the famed Midwest who's actively looking for a breakfast partner. Perhaps it was a tryout session that I chanced upon... Tristan+IsoldeI can't figure out why they used the '+' sign there and not simply call it Tristan and Isolde.Well, maybe it was an artistic thing... Saw this movie yesterday simply because it was there in Blockbuster and turns out to be one of those movies I'd rather not have watched. Not that it's a bad movie, but it has a sappy tragic ending. It's all these tragedies that make it big on the screen and the literary types go crazy about... Also disappointing was that the story didn't follow the outline in Wikipedia...Too little sorcery and magic, too much realism and very little love triangle drama. The movie focuses more on the moral dilemma angle and the Irish vs. Briton angle and somehow loses the more vain perspectives that make for a good popcorn flick...
C+. 1月30日 Aranmanai SiruvayalilSeattle Tamil Sangam organized a Pongal cultural program at the Sammamish High School yesterday. I’m neither a theatre geek nor too partial to little kids putting on a nursery rhyme show to enthrall the nervously watching parents – so I stay away from these shindigs. Also, I had a lousy experience last year in Portland when I was forced to endure a very badly slapped together Tamil comedy followed by an even worse showing of vocal skills by a professional troupe/band/whatever… I don’t think I cared too much to even remember the troupe’s name, but they were much hyped about and even performed in Seattle. In Portalnd, I also had to spend a few hours feeling lost in a sea of couples and children with no recognizable face around me. Thank goodness I was there with a friend, but oh, he was busy catching up with thatta’s and patti’s who were, shudder, his friends!
So when Ramesh invited me to watch Aranmanai Siruvayalil, a debut play by Indus Creations[no link], I was, understandably, a bit nonchalant. Though I was afraid that the play would suck, I was more afraid that I’d have to endure hours of badly done children’s programs. Also, given that S.Ve.Sekar and the Madhu-Cheenu menagerie happens to be the state-of-the-art in Tamil stage, I didn’t expect this one to be any better. So deep within, I was deeply frightened of leaving the auditorium with a completely redefined sense of aesthetics.
But he is an old friend and I can’t really say no to him, and he also mentioned that he was acting in the play,so I said yes. I was also a bit worried that he might actually need a cheering voice or two lest he feels too let down by the boos and eggs, and oh, he also bought my ticket, but that’s not why I went, really….J
The whole show actually turned out to be much better than I expected. The kid’s show wasn’t horrible at all. It was actually good! The inaugural song by two (I must add, cute) kids who were so un-self-conscious and displayed every sign of an impending cacophony transformed in a blink-of-an-eye into impressive sopranos enthralling the audience with almost eight minutes of complicated Tamil verse from Thiruvasagam. This awesome performance set the tone for the rest of the evening, and I found myself starting to relax…
Not every item was good. Some sucked and others I was a bit ambivalent about. Nothing out of the ordinary for any show like this one. And the less-than-brilliant ones were played out by children – so my two cents on the quality of the program is somewhat debatable. No specifics mentioned here because, hey, they are just kids! J
After some free food and some more not-so-free food, we got to the second half of the show, and the star attraction of the night – Indus creations first play titled Aranmani Siruvayalil.
Set in a lush little village (they showed a haystack ;) somewhere deep within Tamil Nadu, this was a murder mystery solved by pure accident. The story is somewhat reminiscent of grade school when girls and boys are constantly fighting and going at each others hair. When a team of scientists with absolutely no common sense decides to install a cable TV style dish antenna a tad bit too close to the Amman temple, the Goddess gets ticked off at them and breaks their toy. The scientists bring in a consultant, who is their favorite school bully, to steal the Amman’s sacred-stick. The Amman gets mad and pricks that prick with her spear - and thus starts the whodunit style murder mystery.
It was clear that the cast of the play had put in many a long hours without which the copious dialogues all delivered in right dialect and accent would have been almost impossible. I liked the fact that the cast had an obvious chemistry going on – it made the play so much better. Whoever penned the dialogues must have been truly inspired for it was truly remarkable how well the rural dialects and the city-style speaking were all nicely meshed together. The background music score added to the dramatic effect and in my opinion was as crucial to the play as the Amman herself.
Given the quality of this show, I’m sure to jump at the next opportunity to watch an Indus Creations production. Any day, it is better than the obnoxious crap produced by the big-names in the Tamil theatre scene. But it is not simply that. The play went much beyond and set its own standard for good quality work. Now I’m not saying it was without flaws or anything. There were many jarring flaws – but those didn’t diminish the entertainment value of the play. Also, I was glad that the producers didn’t assume a dimwit idiot of an audience and try to show us a stupid comedy full of debatably-funny double entendres.
Okay, so it was a good show and was done well yada yada… So what were the failings? They kind of dropped the ball on make-up, props, scene-transitions, and oh, the story J
Painting black hair white with water-colors so obviously does not work. Enuf said.
If someone digs up an archeological artifact from under the ground, what are the chances that it’s going to be a shiny new piece of peacock statue that also happens to be the most popular piece of memorabilia in the gift shops in every international airport in India?
Next time, work harder on scene transitions. If you absolutely can not bring the screen down while you are doing some private things on the stage, then at least don’t use a flash light. Get some night vision goggles instead.
This play had a good whodunit story, but not a great one. Great whodunit stories always provide enough clues within the story itself so that a really smart reader can figure out puzzle for himself. Merely good ones take the easy way out and introduce an out-of-the-blue character who has special knowledge that leads to the catching of the culprit… My friend Ramesh was that plucked-from-thin-air character who proves Amman's innoncene and restores to her glory!
Other random thoughts –
Get a North Indian heroine who can’t speak Tamil. Then make her learn the words. Or just have her mouth the words and get someone else to lip-sync. Get some clue from the Tamil movie industry will ya? That's what sells. After the play, you can get this babe to talk in stupidly broken mazhalai tamizh to the audience and get all gaga’d over. Good publicity!
If you put up an Amman temple in the story, you’ve got to have an Amman song and dance sequence. I was disappointed that there was none. Remember Mariamma song from Karakattakkaran? Even better, get your N.Indian heroine to play the Amman in a dream song sequence… Now that would be a killer, don’t you think ;)
PR is part of showmanship. This team has no website, no blog – absolutely no web presence with the exception of personal blogs from two actors which provide almost no fodder for the interested. There is a video trailer floating around though, but that’s only a teaser – not an introduction to the cast, crew and the team. Considering the team was infested with software geeks, this is a big failing. Something tells me that when the name Indus Creations was picked, nobody bothered to run a whois search either…
Rating: 4/5.
Update: So Ramesh forwarding this link to me. I suppose you could say that shooting off the cuff remarks and then sheepishly eating those back is my speciality... PersepolisPersepolis – The Story of a Childhood 
I read a graphic novel for the first time this weekend. It is the story of times and places that lead to the Gulf War. And even though I was old enough then to read the newspapers and learn about the happenings in Iran and Iraq, reading this novel really taught me that I had no clue.
An autobiographical story by the author Marjane Satrapi, it is the story of a little girl who comes of age in war-torn Iran. The great granddaughter of Iran’s dethroned emperor and the daughter of free-thinking and liberal communists who favor western influence and an open society over a fundamentalist state, she grows up learning all about fighting for beliefs and dying for beliefs. And yet, the little girl retains an uncanny ability to be cheerful and surprises the reader every so often by her childish focus on all things unimportant like partying, Michael Jackson and boys.
By the end of the novel, the little girl who is our narrator has grown up into an adolescent youth – yet the effervescence of childishness within her is still fresh. She teaches you, very gently, what suffering the people of Iran went through while we looked at them and thought, “Oh geez! What crazies… can’t they stop fighting?”.
And just like the cover of the book promises, you do fall in love with the little girl. A bit of a heavy reading thought it only lasts a little more than half an hour, this book is eminently readable and highly recommended. 1月18日 Riddle me this, Riddle me that..Here is a riddle I wrote yesterday:
Interesting story why I wrote this. A friend suddenly acquired a poet for a stalker, and someone suggested I should hone my skills just in case I were called to be be part of the defense squad. Long story short, I landed upon Eric S. Raymond's website on writing poetry, and here is the result.
Hint: Try to solve for she (rather than the obvious I).
I just added a creative category to this blog. I havn't checked, but something tells me that I don't have more than one entry in any category...
1月7日 A Case for the Bad GuyA Case for the Bad GuyWe need bad guys. Without them, the world would be so full of average people that we'd all go nuts enduring the monotony of hero-lessness. Yeah, no bad guys - no heroes either! And I'm not talking about the average, mediocre bad-guy who knowingly walks away with the extra dollar the store-clerk mistakenly gave with the return change, or the guy who dings another car backing out his own and drives away furtively glancing for witnesses and heaving a sigh of relief finding no one. These are just small time wannabes who wouldn't do anything big and stinky, but the net effect of these wannabe crooks can be big. But if all we had were these itty-bitty annoyances, we'd not need big police forces and complicated laws. You'd just appeal to the head-man of your village and either tongue-lash the offender or reimburse the affected guy from the community insurance pool. That simple! Reality is bad. So people binge on pot and chocolates in a valiant effort to escape it. Reality is bad because there are Real Big Mean Crooks everywhere. So the system is overwhelmingly complicated. Good Guys sometimes get trampled to death for innocuous mistakes - mistakes which the village headman would have simply pardoned with either words of stern warning or those of understanding sympathy. So how can reality be made better? The answer is to have a bit more of the Really Big Bad Guys. Heroes are bound to emerge, and the distinction between Good and Bad would be so clear that every individual will be forced to make a conscious choice - to be good or bad. I figured all this out after watching Unbreakable. Really, Cartoons and Comic books have more to them than what is obvious from the surface... 10月27日 Typing and DatingWombat is such a kindly soul, he has just offered to show me the tricks of The Trade. It probably involves a few field trips and a copious supply of fine wine and classy dining all paid for by my AMEX card.
This reminds me of the time I learned typewriting (What a detour! Wonder if anyone can top my effectiveness in turning dating talk into the clunky chatter of manual typewriters.Oh well, I guess a little bit of flashback is in order)
I was in 11th grade in one of the famed high schools in the city. Given that private high schools are run for profit in the true capitalist spirit, the owner-cum-ruler strategized a new strategy - start a typewriting institute and charge the unskilled dead-end types moolah for what was essentially, even in early 90's, an inconsequential and somewhat useless skill. Now I'm not saying that Wombat is trying to sell the world something entirely useless, but the part about the unskilled dead-end types and charging moolah still hold..But I digress. Back to my exciting story..
For very obscure reasons usually involving bribes to government officials at several levels, starting a typewriting institute ain't easy. First you have to buy typewriters and find a large room to put them. You also need desks and chairs, not to mention A4 size white-papers. Being a high school, they already had all this "infrastructure" (I'm slowly starting to figure out why the hell they could charge such large sums of tuition.. sheesh!). The room was called "exam room" or something (because the exams were typed and cyclostyled there). Now the next step is to apply to an obscure government department for permission to start the above said institute, and probably give the said government officer some 'gifts'. Of course, this was easy and lo and behold, our typewriting institute had begun. But wait! Something was amiss! Oh, they needed students.
Governmnet rules exist to make government employees rich so their families could flourish and prosper. This is public service in its purest form, for the government employees are the public. The first round of appeasement only gets you a learners license. To get a permanent one, you've got to prove your mettle (and give some more gifts). That is, the Institute (notice the capital 'I') had to train a minimum number of candidates successfully in the mystic art of typing the typewriter and pass the government conducted test at the end of one year. The government would then consider the Institute worthy of permanent existence and issue a permanent license. The trouble was that there were no students.
The headmistress figured she could draft a few idiots like me into the Institute. We were all entering the Computer Age and really needed to learn to type (Of course she was right. I'm blind-typing this blog right now. But I don't think she was truly after my betterment. It was the AMEX that mattered..
 ). But no, we wouldn't take the bait. I knew one-finger-typing just fine, and most of my classmates were supremely indifferent to her pleas and all the inventive coaxing and cajoling. It was more important to us to keep our cash than learn a useful skill. We'd probably even have paid those Rupees happily to a different typewriting institute, but wisdom (read 'crystallized pain') had tought us that light never comes out of black holes... and we all knew we were already studying in one! Finally, 'they' decided to throw good money after bad money. To protect their investment in the first-year-trial-license, the Institute fees were subsidized and we were even told that the school would pay the exam fees and we'd all get free tutoring and a Government certificate at the end of it all. Now anything that spells f-r-e-e was too good to let go, so we fell for it. One year later, we wrote (typed!) the exams. I even typed the exam for my pal in the next seat. Sadly for him, I was using a different brand of typewriter, so he probably flunked the exam because the examiners were adept (a rare thing really!) at noticing the difference in the fonts. I never got my certificate though, mostly because I'd left town for good and never did bother to collect it. I didn't care much because I knew to type - and that that is all that really mattered.
The Institute never took off, I think because the skills involved could be self-taught easily and didn't matter much in the long run anyway. It is so much like conversation skills. It only matters until find a chikca. After you land a catch, you don't have to talk much, and only do the listening.
Also there was tuition fee involved, and noboby likes to pay. There was also this matter of reputation of the Institute. It was such a pity nobody but the people running the Institute thought they were any good!
So Wombat, what do you think should be your key takeaway from this story? I think it should be pretty clear by now that to start a successful school, you first need to find students, and then offer them free lessons. If you are really good, they will spread the word and you'll become rich in the second year!
Update (9 pm) --
Wombat's response:
10月12日 More thoughts around the IIPM storyThree things are very bothersome to me as the management-gate scandal unfolds ---
1. The MSM is completely ignoring this issue. Oh come on, if you don't think this is news, go look at technorati. I didn't expect this of at least Indian Express. They jump at every opportunity to 'break the news'. I still remember the time after my 12th grade Physics exam when IE reported that the exam was going to be conducted all over again because it was considered 'too difficult' and some kind of stupid debate in one of the legislative houses (I forget which, I suppose they are both equally stupid to have even bothered). Of course, the news turned out to be patently false.. But I digress -- the MSM has completely ignored this burning issue. Wonder if they still think they are going to get big ad bucks from IIPM next month. Maybe IIPM will take out a 'legal notice' (link, link) style ad next time to warn the whole country that anyone spurning IIPM by wating to enroll in Engineering or an arts major is consequently defaming IIPM, so they owe them bazillion Rupees!
2. We have very few champions for the freedom of speech and expression. Yeah, we have the blogosphere now, but other influential forces aren't pitching in. At least, they definitely haven't yet! I've been noticing too many instances of suppression of free speech going on in India. I wrote about one here. And there have been some other recent news about a film actress getting into trouble for airing her views on pre-marital sex, and now a bunch of bloggers being served legal threats because they wrote something that a few goons don't agree with? Sigh!
3. The Educational infrastructure in India is so rotten from within that IIPM could even exist and flourish. On reflection, this is definitely not surprising. The state itself does very little in terms of quality control. It prefers to instead play around with girls dresses! My experience comes primarily from Tamil Nadu, but I bet it is the same everywhere. First, Engineering colleges were under the umbrella of the University of Madras, but could do whatever they wanted to do as long as they taught the same curriculum. There were no ratings, the individual colleges could hire idiots to teach and charge a fortune, and while the system sucked, there was at least hope for a better future. Then two years ago, a whole bunch of Engineering colleges were allowed to go "autonomous" and declared as "deemed universities", which meant they could dole out their own worthless degrees. Who the hell cares for a degree from 'Sathyabama Educational Trust' ?? And who guarantees that there are even some minimum standards followed at these colleges? Well, UGC is supposed to supervise, but we all know how that works, don't we?
It's a pity that several honest and guillible students of IIPM from past and present have gotten royally screwed along with IIPM itself - because their degrees are now worse than worthless - in my books and many others', it is a downright liability! But I'm glad nobody has so far shied away from calling IIPM's bluff to protect the innocent yada yada...
And Oh BTW, Wikipedia has an entry on IIPM. What infamy to have earned overnight! They've just found themselves a permanent place as a part of the wealth that is human knowledge by doing the simplest thing anyone can do -- by being stupid!
10月11日 Count Your Chickens Before They HatchThis is a classic ID-10T error scenario. Except, it is gone way out of hands. Who the hell writes a book called "Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch"? Huh!
Rashmi Bansal wrote an article in the JAM magazine exposing IIPM's credibility, err I mean, the lack thereof. Gaurav Sabnis linked to it, and got hassled to no end. Then IBM/Lenovo got threatened (Gaurav is (was) an IBM employee) the classic Desi style with the "take the blog down or we will burn Lenovo laptops" theat, so Gaurav decided to keep his blog put but resign from IBM because he loves his employer and doesn't want IBM to take any flak!
Why did IBM take the copout route and happily go along with Gaurav's resignation plan? They are a big company and can handle a small PR fiasco pretty easily. At least, I think they should start backing up Gaurav now and get him to work for IBM again - and do that quickly.It is clear to everyone that Gaurav is right and IIPM is just being a goon from around the block. It's a pity IBM doesn't have the will to do the right thing! It's not too surprising though. I guess almost any other employer in IBM's position would have wanted to wish away the whole thing.
There is also this whole free speech angle to it which is quite disturbing. Why can't people speak their mind and be left alone for that? It's good to see the blogosphere putting up a worthy fight. It would be fun to watch how the bad guys fare this time around.
Another disturbing thing I noticed is all the vile and nasty comments showing up on Rashmi's blog, several of them threatening her personal safety. Hopefully, the cops around her area are really earning their living by doing a honest day's job and not just munching peanuts off their conveniently large belly!
10月9日 On dissent and dress code"Caught in a quasi-ideological web of its own making, the Anna University is now finding itself increasingly isolated on an issue which, had it been handled more sensitively, could well have earned it cheers instead of the increasingly-vociferous jeers. "
I have no
 Regression --
For a nation that produced one of the earliest woman Prime Ministers who was not a dummy, this trend is a scary regression. The old-man VC is arguing that scantily dressed women are a distraction, and their dress sense doesn't befit our culture. In response....
Distraction --
He is making several assumptions, which are all wrong, proving his colossal ineptitude!
Ass 1. Distractions are bad things.
Ass 2. Scantily dressed women are a distraction (Ha!) Ass 3. He thinks that he understands the definition of 'scantily'. So what if there are distractions? Drugs, TV, Cinemas, Cafeteria, Email, Pornography, Internet, Alcohol, Cigarettes, any member of the opposite sex -- they are all distractions. There are more,too. Growing up being a full fledged member of the l33t league of nerds and geeks, I can vouch for it that a library full of fiction and computer magazines can be a libido arousing attraction! So who cares if one more is added to this list? Girls exist, and they can be distracting. That's life, and that is how "it is supposed to be".If the sexual tension between guys and gals vanishes away into a bland nothing, it would be a really disastrous and a really bad thing to have happened! We would have on our hands, say in a generation or two, a sterile society sans loving couples and families. This distraction he is talkign about is innate in this species. It is not cultural, and there is no reason for it to change!
And regarding the specific point that scantiliy clad women are distraction -- Of course, they can be distracting. But they don't have to be! The VC doesn't realize this, because he has never been on a campus where scantily clad women were all around him, that they don't have to be distracting at all! It's just a trick of mind actually. Learn to look at girls as girls and not fuckable realdolls, and you'd have learned to be a bit less distracted by their attire. Frankly, I thought the girls in a Garba event I attended yesterday
night were much more distracting that the ones wearing skin hugging g-string-revealing teeny-weeny skirts during my university days!
And oh by the way, if I can see her thongs, she is (maybe) 'scantily' clad. Armpits don't count! If you don't agree, you are already a misfit in this world. So please start researching your suicide options quickly. I hope you know how to use a mouse and Google. Leave a comment if you need tips on seach keywords.
The Culture Theory -- Many successful cultures have always demonstrated a knack for integration, assimilation and growth. The several sub cultures in the Indian continent seemed to have been very good at this. It is such a surprise that all of the cultures in the subcontinent resemble each other in several ways, and have all learned new customs from each other as well as from outside influences. So what's India's de facto national language? Of course, English. What are we arguing about? Dresses that were originally western. Is there a chance in hell this stupid VC will let guys wear 'traditional' clothes to college? I'd have loved to wear a 'veshti' and go to classes topless with just a 'thundu' on my shoulder. The VC, I'm sure, would have freaked and taught me a lesson in 'professinalism' and suggested that I buy myself dress shirts and some nice shiny shoes. Bigot? I might be going soft here! What next, a ban on nose rings because it is not originally 'Hindu' and 'Indian'? And oh, he may even want to know if they shave their legs and what not, and insist on making them use 'traditional' means like a turmeric shower every day. The fact is that we are assimilating a new culture here, and growing our own too into an as-yet-unknown new form. And you can't just dictate what can and can not be taken in and integrated into our lives. Different people like to learn and adopt different ideas and practices, and the argument for 'preserving the status quo' is only put forth by scared nincompoops who have a vested interest in the status quo, or are only too keenly aware of their own ineptitude in dealing with changes and want to keep the world from changing for their own stupid comfort. Societies and cultures change and grow - you can't mess with that fact. The Freedom of Expression angle -- India does not have a constitutionally guaranteed freedom for expression enshrined as a fundamental right. So I won't argue this angle. This makes me sick, and I do wish we had this as a fundamental and inalieanable right.
And oh don't argue with me when I say we don't have this right. Judge for yourself.
Article 19(2) of the constitution: "Nothing in sub-clause (a) of clause (1) shall affect the operation of any existing law, or prevent the State from making any law, in so far as such law imposes reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred by the said sub-clause in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence."
Sub-clause (a) of clause (1) is "freedom of speech and expression". 19(2) takes away what 19(1)(a) gives. It makes it possible to make any number of laws infringing on the right to freedom of expression, and guarantees that those laws will trump the fundamental(??!!) right to the freedom of expression. Also, it makes it clear that the AU VC is just fine in imposing these stupid rules in the name of 'morality and decency'. The bottom line is that this dress code fiasco could well be quite legal and enforcible! 9月21日 SecularismThere are two meanings of Secularism really, regardless of how the dictionary and the encyclopedias like to define it. The most prevalent form of secularism is the notion of complete indifference to religion as applied in any non-religious context like politics, public life, education etc. Eg – USA (arguably) strives towards this. This is the explanation as seen in the entry in Wikipedia.
The other form of secularism is treating all religions equally, and keeping religion out of public sphere somewhat selectively. This is observed in pseudo (?) secular societies like India. Great effort is put into ensuring (arguably, again) that people from all religious backgrounds feel ‘equal’ and ‘included’ and ‘not discriminated against’.
So yeah, in most parts of the world, if an organization conducts religions activities (even if they are giving a chance to many or all religions), that org is unlikely to be perceived of as secular except in countries like India where the common meaning of ‘secular’ is somewhat different and non-standard.
Someone said that since most people in the world believe in God in one form or another, removing religion completely in the name of 'freedom of religion' doesn't seem right.
‘Most people in the world believe in God’ is not a fair argument, because the statement implies that the situation is simplistic and obvious when it is not. ‘Most people’ is a debatable phrase, because some countries, notably China, are officially atheist. Not to mention that many religions have a concept of ‘sacred’ but don’t quite involve ‘God’. Also, the degree of belief in God varies widely from one extreme to another, and any measure of central tendency does not indicate an overall ‘strong belief’ across the globe. This is also why both ‘free of religion’ and ‘freedom from religion’ have become important in many societies (while keeping intact the personal freedom to practice or not).
9月17日 10 Downing Street, PuneApparently, 10 Downing Street is off limits. Not just the Prime Ministers residence, but even the namesake in Boat Club road in Pune doesn't admit ordinary folk like me. Reason for disqualification? I'm a single guy who didn't bring a date. Ha!
After close to a week of being jetlagged and doing lots of work, I decided that I needed to chill . So off I went looking for a hangout with music and some crowd. After some google-searching, it seemed like TDS, as it is called around here, is the hippest joint around. Being the egomaniac that I am, I figured I'm really hip and trotted off to Boat Club road all dressed up dandy. I did show some foresight though. I called 'em up and asked what they had going on in the night. They had special DJ's coming in from Timbuktoo or wherever to entertain us all, so please come by and enjoy the show. I bet the guy on the other end of the phone was some kind of a moron, or maybe he was too busy eyeing all the chicas he completely forgot that there is this small thing called being actually helpful!
So I show up there and the door is blocked by almost 8-10 bouncers!! Wow!! The guy who spoke with me was polite, but there was this air of brusqueness about him it made me cringe. Then he tells me that only 'copules' are allowed inside. What the hell!!! It's a goddamned pub, and only couples are allowed? Okay, fine -- its a private place, and they can make up any rules they want. They own the rule book, but what a completely lousy job of making known the rules they've done! The guy on the phone doesn't say anything, and their website has no info about it. It's not a cheap place either, or inexpensive. Without lots of moolah, no one can even get close to that place. And for all this posh nonsense, they can't get their fucking act together! It's not like guys staying over at Sun'n'Sand know the local customs or anything. What a lousy way to start the weekend.
I was talking with a friend about this, and she told me that 'couples only' really means 'no single guys' and everybody else was actually welcome. She is more experienced than I in these matters. I should have asked her for sage advice first. My bad! And leaving aside all this BS, I just got reminded of why the rules are the way they are around this part of the world. As always, I'm only left with a bit of bad taste in my mouth. Usually, it would have left a lot of bad taste, but it seems I'm getting more and more desentized to it. Not having to see this stuff everyday also helps, of course! 9月10日 The Tumbling SpannerAfter listening to how my crashed car has been declared a total loss, and my dev box crashing one day before I was about to fly out to Pune (and keeping in mind that I'd taken a fall at the skate camp trying to fly off from a launch ramp), my boss remarked, "You seem to be crashing everything. So what next? A bird crashing into the propeller?". He was close (and he might yet be proved right - I still have 4 more planes to catch!)
As the Enterprise shuttle turned into SEA-TAC airport, I noticed unhappy Northwest Airlines employes holding placards that went like "Are you sure your NW flight is safe". Not having read any news about NWA in the last...er..forever, I simply ignored them as unionists taking out some stupid ire at the management. Turned out they were deadly serious about it!
As the crappy Amsterdam to Mumbai plane took off, I tried to switch on my reading light by flicking the switch on the handrest. It didn't work. Damn! I've been suckered, and I want my money back. This plane doesn't even have a personalized menu-based entertainment system, and the movie they're about to show (Guess Who!) is a silly comedy (in other words, I've already seen it!). I wanted to read my Sci-Fi Anthology. Little did I realize that it wasn't only me who was facing difficulties. No one could operate their seat electrical switches. No way to switch off already-switched-on reading lights, and no way to call the attendant by flicking a switch. Many passengers had to sleep with a light shining on their beautiful faces. And I just read my book with the help of the dim glow from all those reading lights no one seemed to want :D
I went by the kitchen and started chatting with a stewardess. As I was about to throw an empty cup into the garbage and pick up another cup of water, she stopped me and offered to fill my already empty cup. She said, "Let's not waste the cup. NW is in trouble so let's try to economize and recycle". That was my 'Aha!' moment. Images of NWA employees holding placards near SEA-TAC, a stewardess with decades of experience considering early retirement who wants to save a cup of plastic, non-functional seat electricals -- Of course! Grumpy NWA mechanics did this deliberately! Not only this, the difficult to start entertainment system in the 330 from Seattle to Amsterdam was also likely the handiwork of unhappy ground crew. I asked the air-hostess what she thought of my guess, and she agreed with me without blinking an eyelid. Ground crew-men are being downsized and crew from Delta and other airlines being borrowed to make up for the crew on strike.
Then the nasty thought came to my mind -- what if there was a loose nut somewhere, or a freely tumbling spanner banging around the landing gear? I kept the thought to myself, but an overzealous and unhappy employee could easily do something like that! I still have two NWA planes to catch - I wonder if my boss' prediction is going to come true anyway -- but perhaps it will be a tumbling wrench instead of a cute birdie! Oh let's wait and watch.
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The Peace Symbol
The Semaphore N
The Semaphore D
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