Manas Garg

Moving to LiveJournal (once again)

2006-05-29T09:46:00.000+05:30

I am again moving to LiveJournal. I have already done it twice in the past ;)

This time it is for long term. If by any chance you are subscribed to the RSS feed of my blog OR you have saved it as favourite, please update your link to the following:

http://manasgarg.livejournal.com

Ashwin, this time I am really really moving it!

Body and Mind

2006-05-28T15:15:00.000+05:30

Lately, I have begun to feel that Body and mind are not two different things. They are one and the same thing only. Just like two sides of the same coin.

Is it true?

Sugarcane Juice!

2006-05-25T15:50:00.000+05:30

So, someone is trying to build a brand around Sugarcane Juice!

Reminds me of our college time discussions of selling canned nimbu-pani!!

What is reality?

2006-05-19T15:12:00.000+05:30

Do you know what reality is?

How is it defined?

Is it something that exists outside us OR it is something that we agree upon?

What is the difference between subjective reality and objective reality? Can multiple subjects arrive at objective reality?

Out of all the things that we take for real (including material stuff like buildings, cars etc and mental stuff like theories, philosophy etc), what all is real and to what extent?

Is a theory real?

is philosophy real?

Are truth and reality one and the same things?

Can reality change?

Shhhh.... It's silence!

2006-05-19T09:07:00.000+05:30

Can you hear the silence?
Can you speak the silence?
Can you touch the silence?
Can you smell the silence?
Can you see the silence?

Silence is a word but is it a thought? No, it is absence of thought.
Is it a feeling then? No, it is absence of feeling.
Is it knowledge then? No, it is absence of knowledge.
Is it an expression then? No, it is absence of expression.

Saying anything about silence means disturbing the silence.

Silence just is.
After the mind has left one thought and before it moves to next thought, silence is.

You and me know that silence is. But do we know what silence is?

Ripple's sense of humour

2006-05-12T17:50:00.000+05:30

Ripple's sense of humour gets to a high on IM chat. Here is a sample:

Manas
   I thought you were engaged.
   But your status shows available.
Ripple
   :D
   Engaged I M ..
   but not on IM
   :))

One thousand salutes to you man!

Update:
After writing this blog on the same conversation window:

Manas
  http://manasgarg.blogspot.com/2006/05/ripples-sense-of-humour.html
Ripple
  I M honored :D

An Enquiry in Time

2006-05-12T17:40:00.000+05:30

O changeless in me,
From thou emerges the time,
And in thou does it dissolve.

What is time?

There is a simple story. A man from a rural area comes down to a big city. He wants to know the time and he doesn't have a watch. Uninitiated in English, he asks a gentelman in his broken language, 'What is Time?' The gentleman turns around and apologises, 'Sorry, I am a physicist. You need to ask a philosopher.'

Let physics measure time and leave the rest to philosophy.

How do we move in time?

Our general notion is that we move in time facing the future with our back towards the past. However, the correct way of looking at it is that we move in time facing the past with our back towards the future.

An analogy will be of a train. Our general notion is that we move in time as we if are sitting in a train with our face in the direction of train movement. One by one, things approach us and go past us. However, the correct way to look at our movement in time is to imagine that we sit in the train with our face in the direction opposite to movement of the train. We don't know what's approaching us from behind. One by one things come from our behind.

So, the events in our life come from behind and move in front. We don't see them coming, we see them happening and then drifting away in the distant horizon.

Does Time Exist?

We all exist at a point of time. The entire universe exists at a point of time. If we consider that time is a straight line, we all exist at one point of it and that point keeps moving on the line.

This is an important consideration that the entire universe exists only at a point of time.

So, time is apparently a straight line on which only one point exists. By definition, a line requires two points (at the least). But because time is only one point (which is also referred to as NOW), it is not a straight line. So, time is apparently a straight line but really only a point.

How long is this point? I read somewhere that some physicists wanted to find out if time was continuous or discreet. They could go upto 1 Femtosecond (1 femtosecond is to 1 second what 1 second is to 32 million years). Even at 1 Femtosecond, time was found to be continuous. So, this point of time (or NOW) is astonishingly small. In measuring the length of NOW, we are limited by the granularity that we can measure upto and not by the length of NOW.

Moreover, a point, by definition, has zero radius. That also means that time does not exist. Time is a point, a point has 0 radius and exists only as a concept and not as a reality. Hence, time also exists only as a concept and not as a reality.

But we *know* that time exist!

Yes, we know that time exists. And we know that it exists in a straight line. So, where are the other points apart from NOW?

The other points of this straight line are supplied by the mind from the memory. We remember that there was a NOW and there is a NOW and when you connect the old NOW with the latest NOW, you get a straight line. In fact, you can also connect old NOW1 with old NOW2 and again get a straight line.

Very well. We have come quite far now. We have entered the domain of philosophy.

Time exists but only in the mind.

Time is change OR change is time?

In normal course of life, we see everything outside our mind and mind to be only a perceiver of what exists outside. But to understand the real nature of time, I urge you to shut yourself from the outside world and look completely at your mind. The conclusion I am leading you to is bold. But that is the nature of the enquiry. A bold enquiry is likely to lead one to a bold conclusion. Please be mentally prepared for anything.

We know that the entire world (as we know it) exists in our mind. If I take away the mind from you, the world will not exist for you. It's an insensible statement as I can't take away the mind from you but anyways. When you are in deep sleep, your mind is switched off and the world does not exist for you (oh, it does but it kind of does not exist).

So, the entire world exists in our mind which makes it neccessary to go to our mind to see how time comes into the picture.

There are two peculiar things about our mind. I have the conciousness which makes me aware of the NOW. My conciousness tells me that I am experiencing some event.

I am standing on a platform. A train approaches the platform, stops there for a while, and then leaves. My mind has kept the memory for the same. Memory of an event is nothing but non-abandonment of the impression that a particular event made on my mind.

I see the platform empty. I see the train coming. I see the train stopping. I see the passengers boarding the train. I see the train leaving. While all this is going on outside, what is happening to my mind? Observing all these events is modifying my mind (or in other words, it is changing the state of my mind). And these modifications of my mind leave an impression in the form of memory.

So, I have two things to deal with here (which form the time), one is the memory and the other is conciousness of NOW. Memory is non-abandonment of the impressions that past experiences have left on my mind. And conciousness of NOW is unexplainable. It's just a feeling that I am. Something that gives me constancy while all this time is apparently flying away.

For a moment, forget that there is something called time. Let's assume that there is nothing called time and it is all a misconception.

Your first discomfort will be at the fact that you know there are some memories that your mind has. How can those memories be explained if there was nothing called time? you know that things are changing in front of your eyes. How can that be explained if there was no time?

Even if I lock you up in a room with all white walls with uniform and constant light around you. You remain locked in that room for 3 days and nothing changes in the room for those 3 days. Let's say your body was made numb and you didn't even move your body at all. You will still swear by time because you'll say that several thoughts crossed your mind and you remember that fact and hence there is time. You can even tell me that approximately 3 days have passed since the time you got locked up in the room.

Last one was an important example. You didn't see any change happening outside your mind. The memories are of the changes of state of your mind. Even if things change outside your mind, what is recorded in your mind is the pattern of changes in the state of your mind.

In order to rationalize the changes in the state of our mind, we human beings develop the notion of time. If we didn't have the notion of time, how would our rational mind explain all these changes in the states of our mind?

Now, let's say while I kept you locked in the room for 3 days, I also made sure that you are in coma (or some such similar state). In that case, when you come out of coma, you'll have no sense how much time has passed in between. Because the state of your mind didn't change and it was completely switched off, you'll not know that time passed while you were lying on a bed. This is not an uncommon situation. Many times, people will fall unconcious and they wouldn't know how long they remained unconcious.

So, when the state of your mind doesn't change, the time doesn't move for you OR your mind doesn't need the notion of time OR you exist outside time.

It leads us to a very important conclusion. Time does not create change, change creates time. It is not time that causes changes. It is the change that gives birth to notion of time.

And what is a change but the modification of our mind. A tree grows outside my house. I see it growing everyday. The tree is outside my mind but the experience is inside my mind. In fact, the tree is not at all outside my mind; it is pretty much there in mind only. Because if the tree wasn't there in my mind, how would I know that there is a tree?

NOW Is Beyond Time

I don't want to leave you hanging in the air without completing the story about where does time come from and where does change come from. If you are uninitiated in the theory of non-dualism, you might feel lost here. From my side, I'll make a sincere attempt to keep things simple.

If I am moving at speed x in direction y and a ball is moving parellel to me with speed x in direction y, I would perceive the ball to be motionless.

Similarly, in order to perceive the movement of mind, this movement must be against a background that has not movement. This changeless background is provided by the Self. Not myself but but the Self. The Self is eternal and changeless.

The movement of mind proves that it is backed by the Self that provides a changeless background. This Self is called Brahman in Vedas.

While you are reading this, your mind is moving from word to word, from line to line. Its state is constantly changing. However, at the same time, you still know (for sure) that it is your mind whose state is changing. There is something that gives you constancy. There is something that tells you you are.

Usually, I would associate myself with my body or the tendencies of my mind. But if I stop saying that I am this body, or I am this mind or in general if I stop saying I am this or I am that, the only thing I would remain is 'I am'.

This feeling of 'I am' is the only constant thing about me and you. This feeling of 'I am' is the constant background on which mind operates. This feeling of 'I am' is the feeling of NOW.

The feeling of NOW is the only constant thing about your whole existence.

We have a tendency to look at NOW as something variable. We see NOW as that point of time which is constantly shifting its location on the hypothetical line of time.

But come to think of it, that NOW is the only constant thing we have got.

You are travelling in a train and looking at the land. You get misled to believe that train is stationary and the earth is moving. Step out of the train and you'll realize that not only the train is moving on the land but also, the land is beyond train. Land encompasses the entire run of train.

NOW is the land and our mind is the train. We identify ourselves with the mind and hence feel that NOW is constantly moving. Stop identifying with the mind (I know it's not easy even to conceive as an option), and you would see that NOW is constant and beyond time.

NOW encompasses time.

O changeless in me,
From thou emerges the time,
And in thou does it dissolve.

Chaos and Harmony

2006-05-12T10:33:00.000+05:30

Q: I do see and admit that the outer chaos is merely a reflection of my own inner disharmony. But what is the remedy?
M: Don't seek remedies.

-- Nisargdatt Maharaj, I am That

I vividly remember one of my experience in Bombay. I would travel 22 kms to my office everyday on my bike. On some days, the bike would be difficult to maneuver, the road would be full of potholes, the traffic would be aggressive and chaotic, the sun would be too harsh. And on another days, bike would be pleasant, road just fine, traffic smoothly flowing, and sun not all that harsh.

When I looked back and analyzed, I found that the only difference was whether I had breakfast before leaving for office or not.

How long is present?

2006-05-08T09:20:00.000+05:30

I wanted to check if someone has any ideas about how long 'present' is?

Is it one second, one minute, one hour or one day?

How do we decide that an event is not in the present anymore but has gone over to the past?

What is time?

2006-05-06T15:03:00.000+05:30

What is time?

I am not asking: "What time is it now?"

I am asking: "What is time?"

How do we know that time is. I know we all know that there is something called time. But what is the basis of our knowledge? Can it be proved that there is nothing like time? Or vice versa?

If you have any views on this, or you know some place where I can find some views, I'll greatly appreciate.

More on Fallacy of Work

2006-05-04T11:44:00.000+05:30

Would people know that nothing can happen unless the entire universe makes it happen, they would achieve much more with less expenditure of energy.

-- Nisargadatta Maharaj in 'I AM THAT'

Transition of Belief System

2006-05-03T11:49:00.000+05:30

If you take a ball and hit it on a wall, the first and most obvious thing that you would notice is that after hitting the wall, the ball changes its direction. Same is the case with our belief-system. We go on living our life with a set of beliefs and opinions heading in a specific direction. All is fine till we hit a wall on our way and we just can't move forward. That is when we re-evaluate our belief system and possibly settle down for some changes.

The more rigid the belifs are, the more rigid wall it takes to challenge and shatter them. But eventually, all beliefs can be challenged.

More often than not, we keep tweaking our belief system to keep it up-to-date with our current understanding of the world. You have a belief that one must never give money to beggers as that encourages them to do nothing. Your belief is based on the understanding that everybody is capable of doing something in the world and hence must earn his/her bread. However, one day you meet one begger and the tragedy of his life completely moves you and you feel that everybody has got different problems of life. It is quite possible that a begger got down to begging just because he faced a survival problem at one point of time. With this current understanding, you tweak your belief system and bring it up-to-date with your current understanding. So, you accept that it is ok once in a while to help a begger out of compassion as not all the beggers are the same.

So, belief system changes. With every single experience of yours, your belief system changes. With every new bit of knowledge coming in, your belief system re-adjusts itself to keep your experience, knowledge and beliefs well aligned.

Sometimes, the change is gradual and small. Sometimes the change is drastic and violent. Open the gates of a dam and see the water gushing out violently in huge volume with tremendous force. It will destroy anything that stands on its way. The same water that is so quiet and soothing on one side of the dam becomes an avataar of Shiva on the other side.

At times, this is how your beliefs change. One exeperience will come and hit you like anything. And the process of absorbing it in your belief system will trigger an internal chain reaction of such tremendous force that nothing will be left as it was.

This turnaround could easily be mis-attributed to the opening of dam gate. However, the force does not come from the dam gate which is only a trigger. The force really comes from the water that was stored. Yes, the same water that seemed to be so quiet and at ease with itself becomes the agent of destruction, the third eye of Shiva.

So, the trun around happens because gradually, over a long period of time, there was a build up of tremendous force that was lying in the latent form. Gradually is the keyword. The change is sudden apparently but gradual in reality.

Same is the case with belief system. Some times, a lot of these experiences will gather up in our Samskara which will remain to be rationalized. They are not rationalized immediately because for them you need a completely different set of beliefs and you are not in a hurry to have that. So, you just leave them in a corner of your mind unrationalized. Gradually, they'll pile up and become a tremendous force in latent form. And then one day, one experience of yours will call out all of them and you would not be the same person anymore.

Fallacy of Work [Explanation]

2006-04-26T09:09:00.000+05:30

Sahu has asked me for an explanation for the previous post "Fallacy of Work".

I think it is too much of stuff for a blog. It is more like a book material. Not a thick book but a small one. So, I won't try to be complete in my explanation. I would rather drop a couple of hints and leave it to you to build the story.

First, let's say you are screwing a screw. Is it correct for the screw-driver to think that it is the screw-driver that is screwing the screw? No. Screw-driver is only an instrument.

Let's say, you are hammering a nail in the wall. Is it correct for the hammer to think that it is the hammer itself that is hammering the nail in the wall? No. Hammer is only an instrument.

Let's say, you are typing away an email. Is it correct for the keypad to think that it is the keypad itself that is typing away the email? No. Keypad is only an instrument.

Let's say, ... forget it. Move on to next set of more complicated examples.

Let's say, you are chasing a hare on a horse. Is it correct for the horse to believe that it is the horse itself that is chasing the hare? No. Horse is only an instrument.

Does a gun kill people? No. Gun is only an instrument.

Does a police dog find out the whereabouts of criminals? No. That dog is only an instrument.

I think we have adequately established the notion of an instrument.

Now, next step.

For the remaining post I assume that you are comfortable with the concept of Causality especially as per Vedanta. These are huge topics and I am not going to touch them here. Oh by the way, if you are extremely comfortable with Causality, you already know what I am going to say.

Step out of your mind. Observe yourself doing something. What are you doing? And how come you came to do that? Let's say, you are washing cloths. How come you came to wash cloths? Because you wore them some day. Why did you wear them some day? Because you had to go to a party and they were lying clean in your cupboard and there is a social custom that you wear cloths at least when you step out of your house. I leave the rest of the exercise for you. Keep going back and finding out.

This is a crude and practical example of causality.

So, causality is a web of actions and reactions (or cause and effects). We all are just caught in this web of cause and effect.

All the while we think that we are the doer (just as the horse might believe that it is the chaser or a hammer might believe that it is hammering the nail). But we all are just instruments in this causality.

Now, you might argue that you might choose to wash cloths or you may not. However, all that it means is that you can add further causes to the web of causality. The horse may also choose against chasing the hare but that doesn't mean it is not an instrument anymore. It is still caught in the web of causality. Because after all there is a reason why you choose or do not choose to wash cloths and that reason is not outside of causality.

We, human beings, have come to believe that all actions emanate from us as if we are completely independent of everything else in the universe. But we know that we are not 100% independent and hence, there is nothing like free will. Will by itself means bondage.

Now coming to the stuff about taking one month leave from job to realize this. When you are in office, you are doing so much of work. And it would seem that "you" are doing all that work. However, if you take one month leave, you'll realize that all the work that you were doing found another instrument for getting done and has been done very well in your absence. It just goes to show that you were only an instrument for doing that work.

Fallacy of work

2006-04-24T10:45:00.000+05:30

You don't do any work.

You are only an instrument that work uses for getting done.

[If you don't believe me, take one month leave and realize it yourself.]

Words

2006-04-19T14:23:00.000+05:30

A heated argument at the lunch table.

Six people.

Dissection and criticism of reservation policy, labour policy, democracy and what not.

This should not be done. That should be done. Oh no, not that but that.

Charged up atmosphere.

Passion in the eyes and fire in the belly. Arguments, counter arguments, friction and heat.

Conclusions, predictions, allegations.

Action Items: None.

Empty words!

Words, o words,
How empty you are.
You carry a thought,
A spark of energy.
Taking birth in one mind,
Dying in several.
Not transmuted into action,
You carry no life and have no significance.
Oh, empty words,
I renounce thou!

Thin Line

2006-04-17T09:35:00.000+05:30

There is a thin line between self-respect and ego. You decide where your self-respect ends, and others decide where your ego begins...

Purpose of Life?

2006-04-06T09:19:00.000+05:30

So, you want to know the purpose of life?

Before I delve into the question of purpose of life, I would like to talk about why the question itself arises. Why is it important to understand the nature of question before answering it? Because just like your stomach, your mind also has a digestive system. Whatever ideas enter your mind, your mind must digest them in order to accept them. Otherwise, if the mind considers an idea as foreign, it stands as a solid wall and denies the entry to that idea.

So, it is important to understand the state of mind in which the question on 'purpose of life' arises. Then only we can make an answer acceptable to the same.

Usually, in your life, you go around sipping Bacardi (figuratively) and making merry. And then sometimes, you are so sad that you don't even want to be alive. Between these two extremes of happiness and sadness, lies your life. Everyday, you wake up. Perform your morning rituals, go to college/office/golf-course or wherever you happen to go everyday. You do one thing or another thing or yet another thing (doesn't matter what thing you do). Perform some physical gymnastics, some intellectual gymnastics, some indulgence and some restraint. Overall, that's what your life is.

The most important thing is that every moment, you are doing some work. Yes, every moment. Not a single moment goes when you don't do something. Yeah, I mean even while you are asleep, you are doing something. It doesn't have to be something concious. You might be doing it unconciously (like your heart beating, your blood rushing through your veins, thoughts crossing your mind). All this is work. For the sake of argument, you may argue that you don't beat your heart conciously, it just beats on its own and hence it should not be considered work.

For the same argument sake, I would ask you to consider driving. When you get from one place to another place, you say that you drove down. But out of the whole distance, how long were you driving 'conciously'? Most of the time, the car was just getting driven and different parts of your body were automatically doing it without your conciously attaching your mind to it.

Now that we have established that you are (as a matter of fact) doing something every single moment, we should move on to the next step.

Usually, most of the things that you do will have a common alignment. It could be your inspriation/aspiration of a specific period. Let's say, your aspiration is to become an engineer. So, everything that you do starts getting aligned towards that goal of yours i.e. to be an engineer. When all your activities start getting aligned towards one goal, a very interesting thing happens at a psychological level. To understand that, I'll have to digress a bit.

Our body has a rhythm which is sum total of the rhythm of all the parts of our body. Similarly, our mind works on a rhythm which is the sum total of the rhythm of body + nervous system. If every part of our body has the same rhythm, our body experiences a harmony (yes, it's music if you can be concious of it). And when our body and our nervous system works in the same rhythm, our mind experiences a harmony.

This harmony is experienced as a state of high. Look at any person who has been phenomenally successful in his domain, you will always that person in a state of high. That state of high does not come because of success. Success is just the effect of that harmony.

Now coming back to the main topic, when you work towards a goal, your entire system is in harmony and you experience a state of high. Note, this state of high does not imply high on pleasure or something. It is just a state of high if you understand what I mean.

So, you are in a state of high when working towards a goal. In due course of time, that goal will be achieved or you'll declare it non-achievable. What follows is interesting. Once, the goal-orientation is gone, different parts of your body will start getting into a rythem of their own. Which means, the music that your body and mind were playing stops playing and from a state of high, you come down to a state of low.

From this state of low, you define another goal and then again your system is music. So, from high to low and back to high, your life goes on in cycles.

It is in the gap between one high to another high, that you ask yourself 'the purpose of your life'. So, you really don't want to know the purpose of your life. You just want another goal so that you can get high once again.

You might argue that you have asked this question not only when you were going through a low but also when you were going full throttle towards your goal. I will urge you to retrospect and introspect to find out if you were really feeling high when you raised this question. On retrospect, you'll realize that for a tiny period, you had felt that it was all meaningless to pursue that goal OR that the goal was not aheivable. There would have been something that would have disturbed the harmony of your system. There are highs and lows not only between two different goals but also while following the same goal.

So, now we have established that you don't want to know the purpose of life. You just want to know how you can get to the high note that you experienced a while back. We can now look at the purpose of life. Your asking the-purpose-of-life is just a way to ask for a goal.

So, the purpose of life is .... well, nothing. Yes, there is no purpose of life. Life just is.

Don't feel that I have disappointed you. Give me sometime to establish what I say.

What is life? Life is conciousness. Because I am concious, I am said to be alive. Even when a person is in coma, part of his mind is concious. That's why the heart keeps beating and the breathing continues. Let me put it another way. If the heart beats of a person stop, why does he die? Beacuse the blood supply to brain stops and the brain dies. Brain is the center of our conciousness. It is the conciousness because of which we are said to be alive and that's why a computers and cars are not alive.

So, when we ask the purpose of life, we ask the purpose of our conciousness. But only something bound by causality (law of cause and effect) can have a purpose. Beause purpose by definition implies cause-and-effect relationship. Conciousness is beyond causality. Conciousness neither exists nor non-exists.

Cause is an effect concealed and effect is a cause revealed. These are two states of the same thing. If something has the state as the cause as well as the effect, the effect is the cause and hence that thing is beyond causality. So is the case with our conciousness.

And because conciousness is beyond causality, it doesn't have a purpose. Hence our lives don't have a purpose. So, don't ask the purpose of your life. At most, you can ask how I can get that high note once again.

You might argue that at least our body is bound by causality and hence it must have a purpose. My answer is that our body without the conciousness is just an inert object. What is the purpose of a block of steel? If you still believe that your body has a purpose, don't forget to ask the purpose of nitrogen/hydrogen/oxygen that fill our atmosphere. And also the purpose of iron, magnicium and calcium that fill our earth. And the purpose of so many other things that you have not seen, heard or even imagined. Because if your body has a purpose, all these must also have a purpose and the purpose must be the same!

I'll reiterate, neither yours nor mine life has a purpose and we don't even want to know it...

Phonetic Scripts

2006-04-04T11:47:00.000+05:30

Ripple and myself were trying to see what all languages in the world have phonetic script. To at least my surprize, we couldn't recall a language outside India that has a phonetic script. Whereas, the scripts of each and every language of India are phonetic ones.

Is anyone aware of a language outside India that has phonetic script?

My toy is better than yours

2006-04-03T10:55:00.000+05:30

As children, we all go through a phase when we claim that our toy is the best. My spiderman is better than your spiderman. My toy car is better than your toy car. My t-shirt is better than your t-shirt.

Of course, as we grow, we learn/realize that it may not always be the case. On an intellectual plane, (in principle) we agree that your toy could be better than mine.

But that is only "in principle" and "on an intellectual plane". In practise?

My music system is better than your music system. My cell phone is better than your cell phone. My car is better than your car.

And what else? My opinion is better than your opinion!

In reality, we only grow in intellect/reasoning but we never grow out of our tendencies. Hence, with adulthood, "my-toys" change but they always remain better than the "your-toys".

Getting more philosophical now...

How about saying that there is not a thing that is better than any other thing. Everything just is. "Better" is a context-specific tag. If A is better than B because A is bigger, B is also better than A because B is smaller.

Silence is golden

2006-03-31T14:07:00.000+05:30

Isn't it?

Afternoon chat with Ripple

2006-03-28T13:58:00.000+05:30

Had a pre-lunch chat with Ripple. Thought I'll share...

me: Thought I'll checkout on the web what all digital cameras are available.
There are hundreds of them there.
I just got overwhelemed.
Ripple: woh to hai..
me: Reminded me of the age we live in.
Now I know why people were happier and merrier in old times
And why stress is problem #1 today.
Ripple: haan.. ab to agar bread bhi khareedni ho to tension ho jaati hai..
kaun sa lein..
me: Earlier, if they wanted to buy a digital camera, they won't have to decide which one.
Ripple: so I can justify my impulsive buying in some way :D
me: This whole concept of 'Customer is the king' seems to be the moth eating away an entire generation.
Ripple: haan.. par isi blind consumerism se hi .. economy badhegi ..
aur hamein milega.. false sense of happiness and security
:)
isko rok nahi sakte..
apne aap ko is-se alag karne ki thodi koshish kar sakte hain..
me: We'll also get sense of sadness (uska camera mere camera se bada kaise?) and sense of insecurity (if I don't keep up with the pace, I'll not be able to maintain my lifestyle).
Ripple: isiliye false sense ...
jab tak maine uska camera nahi dekha..
tab tak to bahut khushi hogi..
:)
aur sirf uska camera mere se achchha kaise nahi..
"hain !! uske paas bhi yahi Camera ?!!"
:)
me: ;)
Ripple: "sabke paas yahi camera, badalna padega!!"
me: ha ha ha!!
Interesting thing is that this behaviour is not new.
In Vendantic philosophy, precisely this is what has been called Maya.
What we have today is just a bigger form of the same thing.
Ripple: haan..aaj camera aur gaadi hai..
pehele tha.. "arey unke ghar mein roz parathe bante hai !!"
"hamare ghar mein sirf roti"
me: ya fir, unke ghar mein to doodh ki nadi bahti hai.
aur roj roti per dher sara ghee laga ker khate hain.
Ripple: heirarchy of needs
ek poori kar .. doosri khadi ho jaati hai..
me: I think it is more like a web than heirarchy
Ripple: web kaise ? do u have choices when u satisfy one..
it just goes up..
me: If you look at it price-wise, it goes up.
Because the price goes up.
If you remove the price factor, it is just a web.
If you have a digital camera, you need a computer.
If you have a computer, you'll have mp3 which means you need to have broadbandn
Ripple: not just price.. once I satisfy my physical needs.. I start looking at spiritual needs
me: satisfy physical needs?
Can you do that?
Ripple: pet bhara ho.. neend poori hui ho.. a/c laga ho..
to soch us plane mein chali jati hai..
jaise abhi ..hamare saath ho raha hai..
waise abhi bhookh lag rahi hai.
:))
me: Precisely.
Ripple: chalna hai Anadhra meals khaane
?
me: Physical needs (or sense-pleasures as they are called), can be satisfied only for a moment.
Ripple: physical comfort I should say then
me: But comfort also doesn't have limit.
You have a house, you want a bigger one.
You have a car, you want one with power-steering and AC.
If you have that too, you want the one with bigger seats.
There is really no end.
All satisfaction of senses is momentary.
Ripple: yes we doo need that ...but there are times with most people when they say.. this is it for the time being..
me: Yes. And it is only a matter of how long that 'time being' is.
Ripple: yes..
me: In my case, I have found that 'the time being' was always far shorter than I initially expected it to be.
;)
Ripple: chalna hai khaane .. Bharati ya Bhagini
?
me: Chalo. Chalte hain.
Neeche milo.
Ripple: okay....

More on Job Satisfaction

2006-03-04T17:11:00.000+05:30

One of the most prevalent disease today is job dis-satisfaction. Almost all people I happen to know are suffering from the same. I don't know a single friend whose immunity system has not been defeated by this virus (a virus of the mind).

How does this virus work?

First, it introduces a notion in your mind that working hard is the most important thing in your life.
Then it links the concept of 'working hard' with 'naukri' (i.e. job).
Then it extends the logic to long working hours in the job (after all, how can you be working hard if you don't spend lots of hours in the office).

Now, the effect starts.

First, you get into the loop. You start spending a lot of time in the office.
Then you don't get time to do anything outside your office.
[Your personality has several facets and each and every part of it craves for expression.]
Then you don't find time to express your personality (in a complete and meaningful way).
Then the part of your personality that does not get expression gets dis-satisfied.
Then your mind gets into a fuzzy state where you say that you are not satisfied with your job and you start looking for a change. This fuzzy state causes boredom, depression and sometimes even frustration.

Why do I call it a virus? Because it spreads. See...

First you realize that you are not satisfied with your job.
Then you want to pull yourself out of this loop.
But then you realize that so many of your friends/peers are making a lot more money that you do. They live in a bigger house, drive a bigger car, have more servants, party late AND WORK LONG HOURS.
Then this whole system sucks you in.
And you exert a similar effect on those around you.

So, it spreads.

Cure? There is no known cure as yet. Because there does not exist a job where all the facets of your personality will find a meaningful expression. Nor is there a possibility for the same.

However, in alternative medicine, some trials are on. In philosophical branch that favours spritiualism, there is a procedure of producing contentment in the mind that completely and directly annihiliates this virus. Some people are in the trial phase and some success has been reported.

Hampi

2006-03-02T12:46:00.000+05:30

Went to Hampi 2 weeks back. Awesome place.

Click here for the photographs.

What is my major?

2006-02-24T09:26:00.000+05:30

I fell prey to the peer pressure and ended up taking up this (seemingly) popular quiz.

You scored as Philosophy. You should be a Philosophy major! Like the Philosopher, you are contemplative and you enjoy thinking about the purpose for humanity's existence.

Philosophy

100%

Psychology

92%

Engineering

83%

Mathematics

83%

Anthropology

83%

Sociology

75%

Dance

58%

Theater

58%

Biology

58%

English

50%

Journalism

50%

Linguistics

50%

Art

33%

Chemistry

33%

What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3)
created with QuizFarm.com

Not bad. Engineering is 3rd on the list (and it tops the list of paying jobs).

Percentage values are interesting. Philosophy comes at 100%, Psychology at 92%. And overall everything has a pretty high percentage value. I think it just shows that I like doing things in general...

More on Job Satisfaction

2006-02-03T09:27:00.000+05:30

So, Sahu believes that "Job satisfaction has got nothing do with the job content."

100% agreement.

You can be doing anything and be satisfied/dis-satisfied.

Satisfaction is a state of mind and is purely internal to our mind. Job is an external thing. We can't find what is internal in an external object.

I remember one of Kabir's doha from my school days:

"Kasturi Kundali base, mrug dhoondhe van mahi".

Meaning: Kasturi resides in a deer's body. But the deer doesn't know and it keeps running around in whole jungle looking for Kasturi. [Note: Kasturi has a very sweet fragrance. A deer can sense the fragrance and wants to find out where it is coming from. It is unaware that it is _the_ source of that fragrance.]

Job Satisfaction

2006-02-02T13:02:00.000+05:30

Interesting post from Sahu about job satisfaction

Job satisfaction is a pretty complex topic. I am surprized that nobody has written a best-seller on this yet and made millions [hint for you].

Even though job satisfaction is one monster that every corporate coolie is trying to kill these days. It is equally true that in our age, satisfaction in general is missing. Are you satisfied with your travelling life? your book-reading life? your physical-exercise life? your bathing life? your shitting life? Won't you like to shit in a clean, sleek, extra-wide toilet that has freshness of a new flower, scent of jasmine and Motzart playing mildly in the background, while the sunlight enters the toilet filtered through a sexy curtain? [Sorry if I offended anyone but that's fact.]

We are all the time bothered only about job satisfaction as (in Sahu's own words) "people have started identifying themselves only with their job". Hence, we always crib only for satisfaction in our job.

But the problem is bigger and broader. I think if we solve it in one area of our life, we can apply the same solution everywhere else.

Like increases Like

2006-01-13T17:53:00.000+05:30

Insanity begets insanity!

Love begets love

As per Ayurveda:

Like increases like!

Insanity

2006-01-12T17:28:00.000+05:30

Insanity begets insanity.

Two Personalities

2006-01-12T09:15:00.000+05:30

Over a period of time (in the course of my jobbing-life), I have come to possess two distinct personalities. One that is active on a weekday (i.e. a jobbing day) and another that is active on a weekend or a holiday/vacation (i.e. a non-jobbing day).

I'll call them jobbing personality and non-jobbing personality respectively.

There have been times when my jobbing personality expanded to burn my weekends and there have been times when my non-jobbing personality expanded to calm my weekdays. But looking back (and even looking at the present), I can clearly see two distinct behaviour patterns.

On a weekday, I am a busy soul. Running around and doing things and making things happen. I drive fast; get irritated; sleep tired because of exhaustion.

On a weekend, I have all the time in the world. I drive slow; spend whole day on a hammock/bean-bag; read some stuff; play with my daughter; and most importantly, I don't do anything that can be classified as work (even the work that is unrelated to my profession).

On a weekday, I wake up as a doer. Right after waking up, my mind is focused on the moment when I would leave for the office. While getting ready, I keep brooding over the stuff that I would accomplish on that particular day. While driving to office, I acquire an insanity of a kind (even if I started as a sane person from home). Oh! All those vehicles that whiz past one another and honk at one another and jump signals and perform dangerous maneuvers and do so many other insane things just to get ahead. All those vehicles instill a sense of urgency in me. They make me believe that I must also run. In fact, they make me run. Their insanity rubs off to me and my insanity rubs off to some others thus creating an insane environment.

On a weekend, I wake up lazy. And well, do nothing till I am forced by the invisible force called routine. I don't have a plan for the day. The day just comes to me. I can see every single moment passing by.

On a weekday, I am a go-getter. I listen to people to understand their point. I argue with people to make my point. I discuss ideas, implement them and have them implemented. Like an adept surfer, I surf over my day on the waves of activities.

On a weekend, I am a relaxed and dis-satisfied soul. I crave for entertainment and entertainment is what I get. I watch movies, roam on busy streets, chat with friends, drink, shop(!), read and do whatever I can to satiate my mind that is craving for some thing that I missed for 5 full days (i.e. life!).

On a weekday, I come home exhausted. I come home to sleep. And I just sleep without mentally digesting all that I went through in the day.

On a weekend, I give time to my mind for digesting the trash it gathered over 5 days. I go through a cleansing process of the mind and indulge my senses in whatever I can lay my hands on.

I am the product of today's high tech world.

I am an Upward Mobile Young Professional with Middle Class Past, Stressful Present, and God-Knows-What Future!

Bath

2005-12-16T07:05:00.000+05:30

Taking bath resets the state of mind!

Linear Progress

2005-12-10T14:23:00.000+05:30

Quoting some more stuff from 'Ayurveda: Life Health and Longevity' [I am sure Sahu will like this as it was one of his favourite college days gripe ;]

Another of the reality-forming ideas that shape our world is the idea of progress. Linear progress, the belief that the old should be progressively replaced by the new, is a concept that has developed over only the last two hundred years or so.

A progress that blindly assumes the inherent superiority of the new creates new and unforeseen problems.

Conflict and Harmony

2005-12-10T13:55:00.000+05:30

Just started reading 'Aurveda: Life Health and Longevity' by 'Robert E. Svoboda'.

A very thought-provoking book. I am still on page 6 and so many ideas have rushed through my mind. Just couldn't resist logging into blogger and write something.

Let me first quote something direct from the book. Something that inspired me the most:

The idea that the world is made up of objects that are independent of human conciousness conflicts with both the theory of quantam mechanics and with experimental fact. Far from being divorced from physical reality, ideas have a material impact on reality.

This means a lot of things but let me just pick one and talk about my experiences on that.

Let me start with a very simple question. Do you believe that number 177 is independent of number 178? Really?

Even though you can look at number 177 as an independent object, it completely depends on 178 for its existence. And of course, vice versa is equally true.

Nothing in the world has an independent existence. Even though, on the surface, everything looks independent from everything else. In reality, everything *defines* everything else.

The example I gave was linear in nature. Even in a linear context, we can see that no object is an island. Imagine something as complex as nature, human body, ideas, thoughts!

(In not so distant past,) I have written several posts with the title *object1* Vs *object2*. However, recently when I read 'Presentation Vs Content' from Sahu, I was stuck by the inherent flaw in his approach of examining Presentation and Content. He was trying to separate the Presentation from content and content from presentation. However, how can presentation exist independent of content? And how can content exist independent of presentation? That is when I wrote 'Presentation and Content'.

I found it amusing that I wrote 'Presentation and Content' because till date, I was the one who would divide the indivisible and examine each as if the other didn't exist.

There is a very fundamental difference in 'Presentation Vs Content' and 'Presentation and Content'.

Today, our mind has been trained to ponder over any matter in a very definite and dangerous way. We try to look at things 'objectively' however there is nothing objective in the world. Every observation depends on the observer, observant and the environment.

I chose the title of this post as 'Conflict and Harmony' instead of 'Conflict Vs Harmony' (even though it would seem I am talking about 'Conflict Vs Harmony'). The primary reason of choosing *and* instead of *Vs* was that there is actually a harmony even in these two (does that mean harmony is recursive? ;).

Conflict and harmony exist together (in harmony) just like everything else on Earth.

Presentation and Content

2005-12-09T19:28:00.000+05:30

Sahu raised a question whether presentation is superior or content.

I think it is difficult to separate the two. Presentation and content are the integral part of anything.

Look at music. If you define the content, there are just seven notes. All the symphonies are created by presenting those seven notes in different way.

I believe, presentation is not superior to content. It is the content.

Web 2.0

2005-10-24T22:13:00.000+05:30

I hate industry hype!

I am back on blogger

2005-10-24T13:30:00.000+05:30

After a short time on LiveJournal, I am back on blogger. Why I moved to LiveJournal? You can find it here. And why did I move back? Well, someone from Blogger team was nice enough to leave a comment on that same post that solved my most critical problem.

I still believe that LiveJournal is way better than blogger. But anyway, for now, I have so many posts here at Blogger that I just don't feel like abandoning this blog altogether.

I would really like to go back to LiveJournal if someone can show me an automated way of migrating all my blog entries. I don't feel like leaving all my postings on blogger and move. I want to take them with me when I move.

8 years old argument

2005-08-31T14:29:00.000+05:30

When Ritesh quoted from Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, I immediately knew that an 8 years old argument is going to be restarted.

This is what Ritesh quoted:

You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other.

In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.

On a Motorcycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it's right there, so blurred you can't focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness ...

To which Vishal says:

I had to reconstruct the quoted phrase: replace car with motorcycle and motorcycle with running /walking The central argument still holds - You are closer to nature while walking/running as compared to riding a motorcycle.

I disagreed with Vishal back then. And I disagree even today.

Vishal, you've got to come out of the words that Robert Pirsig has used and try to feel what he is trying to say. It is the kind of stuff I tried saying in 44 hours of biking nirvana.

It is not about being close to nature. It is not about speed. It is not about whizzing past the other objects. It is about a lot of things coming together and creating that Nirvana like feeling.

Try walking down to Pondicherry damn it!

Life, Bangalore and Traffic

2005-08-25T13:52:00.000+05:30

In this post, I am going to do a novel thing. I am going to repeat myself...

I have cribbed once about the traffic in Bangalore. And I am going to crib again.

Bangalore traffic has gone bad to worse and worse to even-worse. I think from even-worse, it can only go to worst.

So, why am I cribbing? Because this tuesday, I spent three and a half hours in my car just to travel to office and back. Now, that's A LOT OF TIME.

If you are planning to move to Bangalore, reconsider your decision. It's expensive, noisy, polluted and god-damned chaotic!!

Da Vinci Code

2005-08-17T15:43:00.000+05:30

Just finished reading Da Vinci Code. (Yeah, I am usually late on catching up with the happening books. I am yet to read my first Harry Potter).

No doubt it is an extremely well written book. I just couldn't keep it aside after I started reading it. However, I think towards the end, the author just couldn't handle the enormity of the plot and in order to lead to a very very dramatic end, created some really large holes in the whole plot.

A couple of them are here:

1. Why did Teabing involve Opus Dei for his work? He just needed one guy who could drive and shoot. He could have hired anyone for that. The Church and Opus Dei were involved just to make the plot of the novel much grander. So that people feel that there is a REALLY REALLY BIG conspiracy going on here. Well, Brown couldn't justify it in the end.

2. If Sophie's grandmother and brother were alive and safe, why the heck did Jacques sent them on treasure hunting the first place. Ultimately, the long and bloody search led them to Sophie's family. If Sophie hadn't found them, they would have anyway come to Sophie to tell her about her family. In short, the whole reason for which the novel was written didn't exist.

I think Dan Brown just messed up in the end.

Quote of the day

2005-07-25T14:07:00.000+05:30

Found this while catching up with my Quotes of the day backlog:

"Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important."

Is corporate world different?

Degeneration of Ideas

2005-06-29T14:06:00.000+05:30

Sahu is writing about how ideas get degenerated over a period of time. Actually he is not talking about how they get degenerated. He is saying that they get degenerated.

This echoed with something that I had experienced a couple of months back. I had gone to Sikkim some time back. Close to Darjeeling, there is a Japanese temple. In that temple, there is a 'stupa' which symbolises peace and harmony. Actually, it symbolises nothing as such as it is just like a tower shaped structure. The writing there says that it symbolises peace and harmony.

Seemingly, there was some man in Japan who felt there was too much of pain and sufferinng in the world. And he wanted to spread a message of peace and harmony in the world. For that, he founded an organization and raised a lot of funds and eventually built a couple of these structures across the world.

That's what his intention was.

But let me tell you what I saw there. Myself and Vaishali walked to the structure. We were reading the writing on the wall. And a 'tourist' group walked in. All but one stood on the stairs leading to the Buddha statue. The one who was left took the camera can composed a shot. One of the guy from the group shouted, "It's ok if the top of tower does not come in the photograph". The photograph was shot. They walked out.

That's what is happening eventually.

The message of peace and harmony is written on the wall. People come, read, shoot photograph and go back. But does it spread peace? And harmony? No.

What about the people maintaining the place? What are they doing to ensure that the structure continues to convey the message for which it was built? Nothing.

An ideology emerges from one person. And it spreads over to others. Everybody who joins the ideology brings in his/her own contribution. It may spoil the ideology or it may improve it or it may leave it mostly unchanged. But there is a change (even if it is a tiny bit).

In fact, beyond a point, it becomes impossible to say what that ideology means.

At this juncture, I'll point to my post on ecosystem of ideas where I said:

Ideas are like living beings. An idea takes birth amid and out of other ideas, it evolves with some contemporary, some old and some new ideas. And eventually is superseded by newer ideas.

Some ideas degenerate but some do evolve.

ISKCON, Art Of Living and The System

2005-06-26T22:12:00.000+05:30

A couple of weeks back, I went to ISKCON. I have always found it funny the way religion is commercialized and systemetized there. No problems, but I have never found it particularly religionistic because of the systemetization.

However, my last trip to ISKCON temple was an eye opener. I realized a very simple thing. You have to board the train to change the direction in which it is headed.

What they are trying to do is increase their appeal to the Youth by being hap and cool. What I always saw as systemetization was actually just corportization of the religious bodies. The feeling is the same. The intentions to serve are the same. And the deeds are also good ones. One can always argue that there are things happening under the hood but we can give them benefit of doubt and (in good faith) believe that they are not really criminals because what they are doing sounds just too good and so above human beings.

I know I am just babbling here. A couple of random thoughts forcing their way out of my mind and getting jotted (or electronized?) in this blog.

I just wanted to say that I have started seeing something about ISKCON and Art of Living that makes me much less skeptic and more of a believer in their path. These people are boarding the train to change the direction in which it is headed.

Traffic

2005-06-06T11:34:00.000+05:30

So, after a very long time, I was out on the road at 9:00 AM. Of course, as usual, heading to office. I used to travel a bit late but today I had to drop Vaishali so I left early.

And well, I decided to never repeat the mistake. Today, it took me 1 hour 15 minutes to get to office. Why? Traffic, traffic, traffic.

It is at times like this, you ask yourself very fundamental questions. Is this what I was born to do? I'll never ask my kid what she wants to do when she grows up. I know she won't be right. She'll never say , "Papa, when I grow up, I want to drive through sick and frustrating traffic for several hours a day". But that's what she would do anyway.

What a sheer waste of human capital!!

Well, by the way, the answer I gave myself for *the* fundamental question was "NO". I was not born to do this and I won't do this for my life. There are always choices one can make.

By the way, I was not the only one to go through frustration.

Achievement: Too much? Too soon??

2005-06-02T11:16:00.000+05:30

The fun thing about a growing organization is that you’ll see a lot of over-achievers and under-achievers. Also those who are average-achievers. The fun thing is the difference in their manners. It’s so obvious whether they have got rank/position too soon or they haven’t got it even after a long wait.

Over-achievers tend to be pretty casual, outgoing, visible and in general the ‘new kid in town’. It’s fun to see them because they are going through a maxima in their career and they actually believe that they have over-achieved because they are way smarter than others. They also tend to be high on motivation.

Under-achievers tend to be shy, under-confident. They have had a high opinion about themselves but they think they have got a raw deal in the organization. They have a shaken belief that they are smart. They believe (without 100% surety) that if they were in the position that over-achievers were, they would have done equally well. But just because they didn’t get the same kind of opportunities, they are not the ‘new kid in town’.

Sigh. It’s sad but can’t be helped. A fast growing organization can’t be too fair. It just can’t play by the rulebook. A growing organization’s priority is to grow and they have to take decisions which leave some people as under-achievers. Under-achievers are not created by the fast growing organization. A fast growing organization creates over-achievers by promoting some people. Creation of over-achievers creates under-achievers as under-achievers are practically the people with same calibre as the over-achievers but not in a very favourable position.

One key difference in the traits for over-achievers and under-achievers is that over-achievers tend to be more agressive in nature. That agression gives them more visibility which makes it easier for the management to pick them.

Yeah, I know the world is not fair but this is how it works.

In long run, everyone settles down with a balanced sense of achievements unless one keeps jumping from one growing organization to another growing organization and never tastes the stagnation or decline.

Haste

2005-05-31T16:50:00.000+05:30

The problem with today’s world is haste. People find something useful and then they talk about it. When everybody is just talking about it, some people say, oh, we have been talking about it for so long, let’s talk about something else. Something at the next level.

Example: ajax. We have hardly seen enough applications for this technology and now InfoWorld wants to talk about what’s next. Come on. Let it settle down first.

This haste leads to a hype. Hype leads to bloated expectations. Those bloated expectations lead to a skewed perception that the ‘new kid in town’ didn’t deliver. This perception of failure leads to disillusionment. Those who talk start talking about something else. Those who do continue to build interesting stuff. After some time, when the hype and disillusionment is over, new fantastic applications get written and launched.

Now, the expectations match the reality. Reason? Whatever change the technology was to bring in has been brought in. Nobody is hasty now as there is nothing to be done and hence nothing to be talked about.

This reminds me of something that Tolstoy said in War and Peace. And Hugh Prather said in Notes To Myself. If I find myself arguing very patiently about something, I can be sure that I am not convinced. In other words, when you talk too much when you don’t have enough knowledge.

Mind Trick #3: Obligatory Amusement

2005-05-27T15:28:00.000+05:30

There are some activities in your routine that are neccessary for life (e.g. eating, drinking water). You don't have to make an effort to maintain them throughout your life. Then there are activities in your routine that are neccessary for a civilized life (e.g. brushing your teeth). These are also rather easy to maintain. And then there are some that are neccessary for keeping in harmony with your external environment (e.g. coming to office to work, having dinner with your wife, playing with your child). These are also very easy to maintain (though you may want to avoid them some times but they are easy to maintain anyway). Call them obligatory activities.

After these three types of activities, there are activities that you want to push into your routine for your amusement. For example, reading, jogging, listening to music (and by listening to music I don't mean that you listen to music while doing something else like jogging/cooking; I mention listening to music as an activity by itself wherein you just spread yourself on your bean bag, close your eyes, let your head fall back a bit and listen to music). These activities are hard to maintain on a daily basis.

The for-amusement activities are hard to maintain for multiple reasons. The chief reason is time. 24 hours - (necessary activities + civilized activities + obligatory activities) == too little time to do any damn thing.

If you want to have an activity for amusement, there would be so many other activities that would compete for the same time slot. For instance, I go for jogging in the morning. So, I can't browse in the morning as the same time is utilized for jogging. If for a day, I get a strong urge for browsing, I won't go for jogging. Also, I can't party in the night or watch movie till late night as I have to get up early in the morning and I prefer sleeping well on a daily basis. So, if someday a friend invites for dinner, next day, I am not going to jog.

So, as you can see, any activity that is for-amusement is hard to maintain. And that's why sustaining them over long term means a lot of effort.

So, what happens if you don't put in much effort to sustain them. Simple, you won't be able to sustain them. If you go for jogging every mornning, soon a time will come when you'll go out for a short vacation and your jogging is cancelled for 5 days. Then you'll take 2 days to settle down in your house and work, your jogging is cancelled for 7 days. If you don't go for jogging for 7 days, you'll again need that extra push (i.e. inclination+energy) from your side to resume it. Which will not be there for some reason. And you'll stop it altogether.

Now, even more interesting is when you put in the effort to sustain it. Let's say you make sure that you continue to do it for 1 year. Great! 1 year is a long time. Now you have got used to jogging in the morning. You *must* jog everyday because if you don't jog, whole day you'll feel that something is missing. You won't feel that fresh, that energetic, that normal. You would immediately resolve that tomorrow, you must go. In fact, you might jog in the evening itself to make your day normal.

You know what has happened? Your for-amusement activity has become obligatory. Your jogging is not something that you do everyday to amuse yourself. You do it to continue feeling normal. You have further reduced the time available for your amusement!!

Blogging @ Multiple Places

2005-05-26T13:26:00.000+05:30

As I mentioned earlier, my wife has started FoodBuzz, a food company in Bangalore. And I write a blog there.

If you like reading this blog of mine, you would also like the one at FoodBuzz. Here is the RSS feed.

I have been busy.

2005-05-08T23:34:00.000+05:30

If you were wondering where I have disappeared, well, the answer is nowhere. I am pretty much where I have been for a long time. Just that I have been quite busy.

Vaishali (my wife) is starting a food delivery outlet in C V Raman Nagar area. Her idea is to deliver food to office staff in Motorola, i-flex and TI in Bagmane Tech Park. She is starting with lunch hours and depending on the response, she'll decide how to extend.

Anyway, I was talking about where I had disappeared. So, I have been helping her setting up the operations. And I do that by spending more time at home taking care of my daughter. I also developed a website for her so that people can place an order online. Check it out here.

Contrary to my initial impression, creating a not-very-bad website turned out to be a fairly decent amount of work. I was surprized to see that there are so many technologies involved in such a small work. At the same time, all these technologies provide so much power that it's a pity we don't see good web based applications. I have not even scratched the surface and I am already overwhelmed by the breadth and depth of these technologies. I hope we'll see much better applications (along the lines of gmail) in the future.

Now, I'll ask you for a favour. Go to FoodBuzz and try it out. I would appreciate any comments on:

what's wrong with the site so that I can change it.
what's right with the site so that I make sure I retain it.

Thank You.

Ads in RSS feed

2005-04-29T12:49:00.000+05:30

Google is bringing AdSense to RSS and Dave seems to be mildly against it. In fact, some people have resolved that they would unsubscribe a feed if it has ads.

I thought about it and here is my stand: I don't mind that as long as they are non-obtrusive. Which means, if there is a pop ad from a feed, I'll surely unsubscribe. If an ad is inserted right in the middle of the content (may be as an entry itself or as if it looks part of the entry), I'll mostly unsubscribe. But if it is non-obtrusive (as Google puts ads on its result page), I am pretty much fine with it. In fact, I don't see anything wrong in it.

Putting ads in RSS is just as good/bad as putting them on websites. If you visit websites that have ads, you should not have any problems with ads in RSS. These are just two different mechanisms that the content developer is using to deliver the content to you. And what is the content developer expecting in return? Some money. What's wrong with that? If Kottke quits his job and runs kottke.org full time so that he can deliver some pretty good content to you, why do you mind him making some money?

I believe, Ads in RSS will have the same kind of dynamics as they have on the websites. People won't really start unsubscribing RSS feeds just because they contain ads. What will matter is the value of the content and to what extent it gets diluted if mixed with ads.

Can Gmail win over Outlook?

2005-04-27T16:13:00.000+05:30

After I started using Gmail, I got pretty confident that if Google was to offer the Gmail core to enterprises (as a replacement of Exchange/Outlook), Microsoft may have a hard time. The primary reason being that Gmail delivers its rich functionality and a very good UI through a browser which makes it work across the platforms. After all, the whole argument that has always been given against web based applications is that they can't have rich UI. Now, it's there. Rich and fast and secure too.

But today I realized one weakness that Gmail has over Exchange/Outlook: plugins. I don't see a way how you can write Gmail plugins to extend. Ok, most of the people don't use plugins. And Google will make sure that it has enough features to serve your purpose in more or less all the situations. Still, it would be so much better if one could extend Gmail in their own way by writing plugins.

As far as my understanding of web applications goes, there does not seem to be a way to do it now. Maybe, going forward, next versions of HTML (XHTML?) and JavaScript will allow that to be done. But that will still take a couple of years to be developed and supported.

It will be interesting to see how Gmail evolves.

While I was vacationing

2005-04-16T15:22:00.000+05:30

I am back from my vacation. And I see that the world hasn't really changed in past 2 weeks; just a couple of events here and there and that's about it. During my vacation, I accessed Internet only once and my cell phone was mostly out of coverage area. So, you see, it was a real vacation; not only from work but also from every other activity of my routine life. A break as it is called.

Yes, I'll be sharing photographs. I shot 6 rolls, so, I expect at least 6 photographs that I could share with ya folks.

And most probably, there will be a story too. I want to write one but am not too sure if I'll be able to. A story (the 44 hours of nirvana kind) demands a lot of time and solitude and I may have none of them. But let's see. It will entirely depend on how forcefully the story tries to come out of me.

Insiders Vs Outsiders

2005-03-31T14:52:00.000+05:30

For everything that is cult-like, there is a tendency among people to get divided in insider and outsider argument. Insiders are those who are following the cult and outsiders are those who are not. A couple of examples of this cult like stuff are: open source, blogging, army etc.

It is interesting to see how differently insiders and outsiders see the same thing.

Insider: Blogging is great. It is going to change the world and the way we live in this world. This is the best possible thing that has happened after fire was discovered.
Outsider: Blogging is full of shit. It is a way for some kids to come online and express their supressed emotions to faceless/unknown people. All bloggers will eventually go to a mental asylum.

Insider: Open Source is great. It is going to change the world and the way we live in this world. This is the best possible thing that has happened after fire was discovered.
Outsider: Open Source is full of bullshit. Some kids write some software somewhere, throw it open for anybody/everybody to change and feel happy about it. You can't build great/secure/big/ software with open source.

In the debate between insider and outsider, nobody cares about proving one's point. Nobody cares about substantiating one's claims. It's mostly fallacies. A statement of what they have concluded. And their conclusion statement has an emotional overtone. They talk in extremes; they talk in terms of black and white.

However, this is not how Insiders and Outsiders start. To begin with, there are no insiders and outsiders. Consider blogging. Were there any insiders or outsiders before blogging was born? No. It's interesting how the insider Vs outsider thing starts. For the purpose of illustration, I'll take example of blogging.

When you introduce the topic of blogging to someone, the response would most likely fall into one of the two categories: 1. it sounds interesting 2. it sounds absurd.

The first category of 'sounds-interesting' people try blogging. The second category of 'sounds-absurd' people don't try it. The first ones become insiders as they get into blogging and start enjoying it. The second ones become outsiders as they don't get into blogging and can't know what it is about.

And then the insiders and outsiders have conversations. In those conversations they have arguments. The arguments start as mild ones but they get stronger. People take a firm stand and start believing that the other side just doesn't get it. After a while, the reason is destroyed. People have already formed an opinion (insiders as well as outsiders) about the people on the other side of line.

The world gets divided in black and white. What both the sides forget here is that the world is not black and white. It has shades of grey. And more importantly, it is full of colors.

More Blogger

2005-03-30T22:57:00.000+05:30

Looks like Blogger is doing some upgrade. Or it is experiencing some problems. Or both. I am having a tough time blogging. But I am determined.

Jo bhi karo, khoob karo

2005-03-30T22:46:00.001+05:30

This is what Soni once said, "Jo bhi karo, khoob karo" (whatever you do, do it excessively). And that's how I am blogging today (after a very long silence). Not that I didn't have anything to write. It's just that I have been too held up with other matters of life (like work ;).

So, today, I am in a mood to talk. And I am talking. And don't worry, I am not drunk.

That reminds me that in the hostel days, the guy most thoroughly drunk would loudly claim that he was not drunk. The statement "I am not drunk" meant that the person is thoroughly drunk.

That was a digression though. Just a memory of old days that crossed my mind because our thoughts are linked.

I particularly wanted to say that I would be on vacation for 2 weeks starting this saturday. I am going to Sikkim which I have heard is a very very beautiful place.

I have been writing up Mind Trick #3 by the way. It's just that I am not getting the time to do it. And remember when someone says he/she is not getting the time to do something, it means that he/she doesn't feel like doing it.

Too much of random stuff for this blog. I guess it would be fun to read this entry after a couple of days. I'll see if I can figure out 'then' what I was thinking 'now'.

Fallacy

2005-03-30T22:38:00.000+05:30

Dr. Michael C. Labossiere has done a wonderful job of documenting types of fallacies. I want to learn each one of them by heart so that I can use them in arguments against the person resorting to any of these fallacies.

Myself: A site like AbsoluteHousing must provide RSS feed of locations that become available for rent.
Other Person: Of course, you would say that because you are blogger.
Myself: Your statement can be categorized as Ad Hominem fallacy.

Blogger

2005-03-30T22:32:00.000+05:30

Blogger has changed the home page. And it looks ugly in Firefox. Ashwin had asked me to use LiveJournal right after I started blogging. And I told him that I had grown so old that I had developed a resistance for change.

Too bad. Should have listened to the veteran. Now I have put too much content on Blogger to migrate.

Innovations in feed aggregators

2005-03-18T12:33:00.000+05:30

Microsoft is entering into feed aggregation with start.com (via Vishal). They seem to have taken a clue from Google (innovate the UI) and they are completely revisiting the aggregator UI in start.com.

However, the design of start.com is also based on the mailbox concept. You have some folders. You organize the feed in different folders. You select a folder and it will show you what all feeds are organized in that. You click on a feed and it will show you what all new stuff is there.

I agree, the interface is richer and much more sleek but the concept is still the same.

Personally, I agree with Dave on the design of feed aggregators. RSS feeds are not emails and should not be treated as such. I really liked the River of News approach. Let the blogs flow like river and you can watch them sitting on the bank. I would propose two enhancements here:

1. It should provide a dam kind of facility where I can block the river and release water in a controled fashion. So, I could say release 10 blogs and then 10 more and then 10 more. There are times when I want to watch all the blogs. At such a time, I don't want to get overwhelmed by having 100 or so blogs on my browser screen.

2. I should be able to pick up gems from the river and put them aside. Later, I can collectively take some actions on them (like collective bookmarking, or write comments or respond through a blog). This way, I won't have to break my flow of consuming information.

Yahoo! 360

2005-03-17T11:25:00.000+05:30

So, I see that Yahoo is very close to launching 360 degree now. I am happy. Not that I see myself using it in near or distant future. But because (I hope) it will force Google to enhance Blogger which seems to be so much outdated now (when compared to Liverjournal/Typepad).

Mind Trick #2: The right hemisphere wins over the left one

2005-03-11T21:20:00.000+05:30

Having jogged for a while and having finished all the basic stretching exercises I regularly do, it was time for stomach exercises. Which meant I had to lie down on the grass. [By the way, if you don't have the background, every morning I go to Cubbon Park for jogging. I have been doing it for almost 2 weeks i.e. right after I realized that I have to shed the extra Kgs I have put on OR buy new jeans with different waist size.]

Anyway, so I had done the jogging part and was through with the exercises bit and it was time for me to lie down on the grass and start the stomach exercises. Though I do it everyday, today I found it particularly distasteful to lie down on the dry grass and pick a bit of dirt all over my body. And I thought, 'let me not do it today; from tomorrow, I'll get a mat and then do the stomach exercises'.

What's the big deal you would ask. Where is the mind trick you might wonder. Hmmm. Patience. I'll tell you. Have a bit of patience.

So, I had almost made up my mind to call it a day and was about to leave the exercise field, when a thought crossed my mind. The thought was more of a question that I asked myself. "Everyday I lie down on this grass and get dirty. But it is only today that I find it so extremely distasteful. What's the deal here? Why didn't I feel the same way yesterday?" And guess what. I knew the answer.

I have always found the stomach exercises boring. So boring that I never want to do it. I have never understood why but it is boring to me. But I can't tell myself that it is boring. Because I'll never accept this excuse from myself for not doing stomach exercises especially when my ponch has become all too visible. So, I have to find different reasons to convince myself. Yeah, that's funny. First, I have to convince myself for not doing it. Secondly, I have to find some valid reasons as I won't accept any shit from myself. 'Boring' is not a good enough reason for not doing it.

So, this was an example of 'giving yourself wrong reasons'. If I look at my day and look at all the decisions that I make during the day, I find so many instances of myself giving wrong reasons to myself ;)

Why do I do this? And why do *you* do this (well, believe it or not, you are as much human as I am)? I think our brain is divided in two parts. One (right hemisphere) tells you what you want/like/prefer/inclined-to and the other one (left hemisphere) tells you what should/must/ought-to. The first one is your gut/instinct/feel and the other one is your learning/experience/reason/rationalization. More often than we realize, we find ourselves in a situation when the two parts differ in their verdict on an activity. One will say 'yes' and the other will say 'no'. We have a natural tendency to go by what the right hemisphere feels like. But we have been systematically taught and trained to go by what the left hemisphere reasons. And in the middle of these two hemispheres lies an activity whose fate is to be decided by the winner of the two.

Now, with all this background, we can look inside the brain and see what goes on there.

I go jogging for the first day. My right hemisphere says that stomach exercises are boring. My left hemisphere says 'boring or not, I must do it anyway'. I am a man of reason. I follow reason. I interpret what the right hemisphere says in the context of reasoning. The right hemisphere says that 'exercise is boring'. I interpret it as 'exercise is boring and hence I should not do it'. My left hemisphere says 'but what about that fat stuck to your stomach'? I conclude that the argument by right hemisphere is weaker. The left hemisphere wins. I go for exercise. While doing the exercise, my right hemisphere maintains a distasteful feeling within me because I chose to do it against its wishes.

So, every morning, I have this argument in my right and left hemispheres and the left one always wins. But the right one manages to keep a distasteful feeling throughout the activity. This sense of distastefulness keeps accumulating over a period of time. And boom! Guess what happens one day!!

One day, eventually, just before I am to start the activity, I get a feeling of revulsion at the thought of exercising. The feeling says that it is always very distastefule to exercise. I interpret the feeling as 'it is always very distastefule to exercise *here*'. Notice the extra word 'here' I add to what I felt. And because I am a man of reason, I must find a reason for this too. And instead of looking inside what makes it so distasteful for me, I look outside. I look for external factors. I notice the grass and dirt. And my left hemisphere says this is the reason I don't like exercising here. I don't like getting dirty basically.

This is absolutely wrong. It's the job of my right hemisphere that does not wish to exercise (for whatever reasons; may be people are lazy by nature; I don't care; it's not relevant here). My right hemisphere has systematically led the left one to find a reason for not doing exercises.

Ha! The right hemisphere wins!!

Honey Valley Estate: Oh, it's awesome!

2005-03-09T10:04:00.000+05:30

This weekend, I went to Honey Valley Estate. Spent 3 nights and 4 days there. Good place. I *do* want to write about this trip but at the same time, I lack the time to put down everything. But something is better than nothing and nothing is better than nonsense, here are some random musings that is less than the full thing but more than the nonsense.

1. I came to know about this place from Anand. He told about this place around a year back and then around a week back. The way he described was 'you can't go all the way there by your car. You'll have to park your car at some distance and they'll come and pick you up by their jeep. It's in the middle of a forest/mountains. It's a good place'. Ok. So, I didn't take much notice around a year back but this time around, I was looking for some place where I could take my wife (well, lately she has been angry with me because I do most of my travelling without her ;). So we went there.

2. Even after booking at honey valley, we (me and my wife) were reconsidering our decision to go there and were actually planning to go to Kodaikanal instead. Now, that would have been one of the most stupidest thing to do ever. Of course, we realized it only after going to Honey Valley. Anyday, it beats the hell out of a place like Kodaikanal or Ooty. Note: This statement is not applicable for all. It is mind-bogglingly foresty and mountainish. There is no Mal Road, no boating, no Pizza, nobody selling mineral water and carrots at *points* overlooking a valley. It is as good as pitching tent in deep forests on a mountain; only better.

3. It has overtaken Anandgiri (at Ooty) on my list of nicest places to laze around.

4. No photographs this time. The batteries in my camera went dead withougt shooting a single photograph. I just refuse to learn some things. This is probably the 10th time when I couldn't shoot because either I had no batteries or I had no film. Though, if you want to see how the place looks in Monsoon, check out the nice stuff Ashwin has written about that place.

5. I was planning to stay there for 2 days followed by a day at Talcauvery. But I extended my stay there and didn't go to Talcauvery. Reason? Oh well, I didn't feel like leaving that place.

6. In California, you get to see a bigger ratio of Indians/Others than at Honey Valley.

7. It was amusing to see how we felt about the place on different days. On the first day, we were excited and were talking about how fantastic it was. The valley view is so beautiful. The forest is so deep and green. The weather is so pleasent. It would be so great in the rains. Etc etc. On the second day, we stopped talking about it but we were very conciously taking notice of our surroundings and were getting bemused by them. On the third day, all the beauty around us was just there. We were not conciously looking at it, or praising it. It was just there for us and we were idling/reading/talking.

It is very difficult to say why I liked that place. It is similar to how I felt at Udupi when I biked down there from Bangalore. And it was similar to how I felt at Anandgiri in Ooty. The first thought that crosses the mind on arrival is: 'Ah, this is good; let's unpack and laze'.

Google AutoLinks and absurd love for the ambiguous

2005-02-28T11:54:00.000+05:30

With AutoLink feature, google has for the second time sparked a controversy (the first one was *relevant* ads on gmail). And some people have actually liked it. Let's look at the reasons:

"It's not a service I'd use, but I believe that it's the kind of service that is vital to the Web's health. The ability of end-users to avail themselves of tools that decompose and reassemble web-pages to their tastes is an issue like inlining, framing, and linking: it's a matter of letting users innovate at the edge."

Ha! Cory, did you even look at the _feature_ carefully enough? Probably not because as you yourself say that it's not a service that you'd use. Oh well, why bother about forming beliefs regarding something that you don't think you would ever use? If you try to speak on a matter that is not of importance to you, the result is a meaningless babble (just like this blog entry of yours).

AutoLink is innovation but not at the edge and most certainly not by the users!! It is innovation by Google that has been implemented at the edge as they don't have any control over the core or the proxies. Users don't have any control over it (except specifying whether they want it or not)!! How about Microsoft extending their proxy to do web page modification so that the page is modified before it gets to the browser? Or Cisco modifying their routers so that the page is modified before it gets delivered to proxy? Or all those colocation companies modifying their *infrastructure* so that pages get modified even before they leave home?

"And so on -- it's my screen, and I should be able to control it; companies like Google and individuals should be able to provide tools and services to let me control it."

Does AutoLink let you configure whether to go for Amazon or some other publisher? Does it let you select what to rewrite and what not? Does it let you write the rewrite rules?

The problem here is not what AutoLink is or does. The problem here is what AutoLink means and can become...

Blogging is like Jogging?

2005-02-25T10:41:00.000+05:30

For long, I have not bee blogging. Well not much. Not the way I used to. I was away from the internet world for a week. And after I came back, I just couldn't bring myself to blog. In fact, whenever I thought about writing a blog, all this blogging stuff seemed so remote and so unreal and so unnatural and so out of my routine life, that I was kind of surprised that I was doing it at some point of time.

And today, I started writing. I wrote something. I felt good and now I am writing something more. And I guess I'll write something even more. Now all this seems quite real and natural and it feels pretty good.

And that made me ask myself if blogging is like jogging. You find it real, involving, exhilarating as long as you are doing it. In fact, you can't imagine a life in which you don't jog/blog. And once you are off your routine for a couple of days. You can't relate to it. You can't imagine that you were doing it. You can't believe that you were taking time off to do it. You find it funny that you were compromising on other activities to do this one.

And again, when you are back, you are back.

Mind Trick #1: Indecisiveness Over Choices

2005-02-25T10:10:00.000+05:30

Here is a situation. You need to make a choice between A and B. You are extremely indecisive about which one to pick up. A sounds just as good as B and B sounds just as good as A.

Let me take a real life situation to make it sound more real. You want to eat. Your first impulse was to eat Pasta at Little Italy. But immediately, you got another impulse to eat Dal Makhani at Tandoor. And now you end up in a state of indecisiveness. You want to eat Pasta just as much as Dal Makhani and you want to eat Dal Makhani just as much as Pasta. And you have to make an absolute choice and you *have* to pick just one. Well, you won't say, 'Let me eat Dal Makhani today and tomorrow I'll eat pasta'. No. The impulse is to eat now. You won't have the same mood tomorrow.

What do you do? How do you make the choice.

I'll tell you the method we devised in our college days. But before that, let me say something that you probably didn't realize in this state of indecisiveness. Your inclination is not equally divided over the available choices. You'll have a small percentage more on one side. Just a tiny bias towards one choice even though both of them sound equally interesting. It's just that you can't see this bias. Don't ask me why you can't see this bias. I don't know. It's just that you can't.

So, here is the method to find out which choice has got your bias. Toss a coin. If it's head, you go for A (or Dal makhani). If it's tail, you go for B (or Pasta). Don't be put off so soon. I am not finished yet. So, you toss a coin. Let's say it's head. So, it is decided that you would go for A (or Dal Makhani). Here is the interesting part. If your tiny bias was actually towards Dal Makhani (i.e. if you really at the core of your heart wanted to eat Dal Makhani rather than Pasta), you'll go to Tandoor and have Dal Makhani. However, if your bias was for Pasta, you'll suddenly change your mind and choose to eat Pasta even if the coin chose Dal Makhani for you.

Not convinced? Well, the reason it works is that you don't detect that you have a tiny bias to eat Pasta because you haven't made the choice yet to not eat Pasta. But once it is decided that you will *not* eat it; once all the cloud of indecisiveness is over; once you have started heading towards Tandoor, your heart cries and calls out, "Hey, I want to eat Pasta only".

Still not convinced? Well, try it sometime.

Creativity

2005-02-23T07:35:00.000+05:30

What some people don't realize is that creativity and mechanical methods are enemies. I can't say how one can be creative (if one is not so in the first place) but I surely know how to kill your creativity. It is by following methods to that boost the creativity...

Life and the stuff packed inside

2005-02-17T12:33:00.000+05:30

Philip has put a great perspective on life expectancy...

...how many tsunamis worth of human life were being lost on a continuous basis because of poor public health in countries such as Mali where the life expectancy at birth is 45 years. My response was that he should add in a calculation of the equivalent lives lost doing personal computer system administration. For example, if I wanted to upgrade my desktop PC (vintage 2002) it would cost me a week of time re-installing applications such as Adobe Photoshop and my flight planning tool. A week lost to sysadmin is actually worse than a week lost at the end of one's life when one would be less vigorous.

The question then arose "What sorts of activities in a Western society are so boring that they should count as a reduction in our life expectancy?" Friends at dinner immediately offered "doing taxes" and "sitting in a traffic jam". Are there others? And do we have so many that our useful life expectancy is substantially reduced? And could it be reduced to the point that some African men might have more hours of actual life available to them than American men?

What if you don't enjoy your work at office? What is your life expectancy?

Welcome to Indian Riding Conditions

2005-02-03T22:33:00.000+05:30

This is in continuation to 44 hours of biking nirvana. It was initially part of the same post but at the last moment I decided to separate the two. This has some of my thoughts on why people find it so difficult to adjust in India after they come back from US.

While riding through the interiors of Karnataka, many times we take roads that are not national or state highways. And sometimes, we have rode on roads that are not even on the map! And that's the kind of road we were riding on when we were heading to Chikmagloor. Which made me think about something that I call Indian Riding Conditions. This is just a name that I have given it. You can call it something else too. What provoked me to think about this was a meeting I had with a person who has recently come back from US. He was back after spending 5 years there and if you don't know it already, 5 years in US is a long time to change the conditioning of your mind. He was kind of dejected with all that India had to offer to him. Not big stuff like salary and career. Rather small things like he couldn't go around on his bicycle here as he could do in US or that the things here are not so systematic. That reminded me that most of the people who come from US share this sentiment. Vishy and Ripple, I think, are the only people who never had any problems after moving back to India.

So, I was thinking about this guy and the others I have known. I concluded that these are not snobbish people. These are all very nice people. And some of them quite humble too. So, why this dejection? What is it that they are looking for? It is not the same country it used to be 6 years back. It has better infrastructure, multiplexes, Pizza Hut, broadband, better electricity supply. Only the traffic conditions have worsened but that's a world wide phenomenon. So, provided that they have a much better lifestyle than they could even think about before going to US, why are they a dissatisfied lot? For instance, this person I met recently. He had two mountain bicycles that he got from US and his source of dejection is the question 'where do I ride them?'. Well, for me the answer is as simple as 'anywhere' but that's not the case with him.

And well, here I believe is the answer. I cooked it up on that road that is not on the TTK and Lonely Planet maps. The road which is just wide enough to accommodate a mini bus and there is no chance you could overtake a vehicle. The road which is used by bicycles as well as big trucks alike. The road which has all the pits and holes in the world. The road that doesn't have any milestones, directions or any other form of any sort of useful marking. This road and the traffic on this road is the answer! Simple.

Now, I can see why this person is dejected. He probably had a SUV in US. Over the weekend, he'd put his cycle in his SUV and go to a place where the US government has made bicycle tracks. You'll see bicycles and only bicycles there. No car, no bike and not even a truck is allowed to get there. He'd ride on that track (in fact, there may be many of those tracks with different levels of difficulty). Come back to his SUV and go home.

Now, let's look at what he'd do in Indian Riding Conditions. First ,there are no official bicycle tracks. So, he has to start by asking himself where he could go. He won't find any information on Internet (so, even though India has broadband it's pretty useless for his purpose as there isn't much India specific content out there). If he can answer this first and most difficult question, he'll probably put his bicycle on top of a bus and tie it up with a nylon rope to get to the place where he wants to bicycle. The roads are bad and he can't have any idea of the difficulty level beforehand. He'll be harassed by the cars, Sumos, Buses and Trucks as for them he would be small nothing. And after all the labor when he is extremely tired, he has to take a bus back which doesn't have a cycle stand.

This is the reason. He has a mental picture of how bicycling should be done. And he has some very pleasant experiences associated with that mental picture. However, after coming here, he has to ride in Indian Riding Conditions. What he does? He tries to fit his mental picture into Indian Riding Conditions without actually changing that picture. But the environment in which his mental picture was formed and the environment that has created Indian Riding Conditions are completely different. End result is that it is impossible to fit that mental picture in Indian Riding Conditions. What follows from here? He clings to the mental picture he has. Indian Riding Conditions won't change just to accommodate his idea of bicycling. He is dejected.

You would say, "Come on. He can't be dejected just because his idea of bicycle riding cannot materialize here". I am sure this is the thought you would have. Well, I have an answer ready for this. His bicycle is symbolic. Indian Riding Conditions is also just another symbol.

When he comes back to India, he has a mental picture of every thingy, every system, every process that touches his life. And he has heard that things have changed here and they have changed for better. Things *have* changed in India but he can't duplicate his US experiences here. He has a picture for everything that touches his life. And he has pleasant experiences associated with it. He doesn't want to change any of those pictures. Indian conditions for all those things are different. Those mental pictures can at best be sweet memories here but not something that you try to duplicate!

Do I intend to say that India is a bad place after all?

No.

I don't mean to say that India is a bad place. It is a different place. Simply "different" (yes, with double quotes and optionally caps). The problem is not whether something is good or bad. It's a problem of incompatibility. The Indian Riding Conditions are incompatible with bicycling experiences in US. Period.

[Note: I can write at length about the fun of riding here which is difficult to duplicate in US but I just don't want to play a patriot for now...]

Spam in del.icio.us

2005-02-03T18:55:00.000+05:30

People have already started spamming del.icio.us. At present, the general method seems to be to tag the site with all sorts of words so that anybody taking feed for a specific tag gets that site.

It means that even for delicious, I'll have to start relying on popularity index. The problem that I talked about here.

Cc Lists and Blame Game

2005-02-03T14:11:00.001+05:30

How many people (on an average) do you keep on your Cc list for all your official mails?

This one was easy. So, let me ask a difficult one. Why? Why do you put so many people on your Cc list?

Is it only for keeping them in loop? That's what I also used to think. But sometimes I feel there is another purpose. By putting so many people on the Cc list, you avoid taking full ownership of what you are saying. The Cc list tends to signify a couple of things: 1. the people in Cc list agree with what is being said, 2. if there is anything wrong with what is being said, then the people on Cc list should intervene now (otherwise, the blame will be shared).

Hmmm. I guess I read something like Politics oriented software development

George Bush is Great. And Why Not?

2005-02-03T09:15:00.000+05:30

Don't you think George Bush is great? No?? Think again. Still no? Ok, let me ask you something else. Do you think Alexander was great? Yes. Then why not George Bush?

What made Alexander great? That he conquered many countries, killed a lot of people who had never bothered him in his life, looted the rich and poor alike, burnt down the cities, villages and fields, ruined monuments so on and so forth.

Alexander wasn't behind any development in art, culture or technology. His contribution to philosophy and spiritualism was exactly zero. He didn't create any benchmarks of administration. He had no notion of ethics, fairness, values and manners.

So, if he was great, so were Napolean, Hitler and even George Bush! And why not?

44 Hours of Biking Nirvana

2005-02-02T22:31:00.000+05:30

Hmmm. We have reached the city. The trip is over. Overall, it was a good trip. Quite tiring but good nonetheless. I feel like writing about this trip. Don't know why. I had so many trips last year but didn't feel like writing about anyone. This was special in a way. May be last year I had too many of them and hence none of them was special. This one was after a long time and it turned out to be a pretty good one.

I should slow down a bit. These guys are stuck at the signal. I'll let them catch up first. In the meantime, I can start telling the story. May be I'll start from the starting. Start from what I was planning for this weekend.

I was planning to go for a bicycle trip from Ooty to Mysore. 160 kms in a day. Should have been a good experience especially considering that the weather today is beautiful and very apt for bicycling. But I didn't have the enthu for cycling. May be I had planned it too much in advance and stripped it off all the spontaneity which happens to be the most fun part of a trip. Probably another reason was that so many people showed initial enthu but everybody withdrew. Except Ripple who didn't withdraw but didn't seem to have the enthu too. So, I also lost the enthu and cancelled the trip. Instead I did the default thing for a free weekend, rode my bullet to a far off place.

Yeah, I can see these guys now in the rear view mirror. I can resume the normal speed. Bangalore looks pretty green. Greener than most of the places I rode to this weekend. How come I never noticed that this road from IISc to Sankey tank is so green? Probably because whenever I ride through it, I am preoccupied with getting to some place. Add the chaotic traffic to that and well, the end result is I never noticed that it's a green and beautiful road. There is little traffic now because of sunday and I am in a peaceful mood conciously looking around for beauty. And that's why I must have noticed it now.

I have observed that the biking as an activity can be classified in some broad categories:

1. Get There Biking - This form of biking is primarily concerned with getting to a place. You get onto your bike and ride off to some place to run errands or to meet someone or to do some stuff. Your mind is preoccupied with what you are going to do once you get to the place you have started for.

2. Leisure Biking - A beautiful place. Scenic and serene. That's mostly the place where you do leisure biking. Your concern is not getting to the place you are getting to. In fact, the thought of reaching the destination is somewhat distasteful as the journey will be over. This kind of biking is limited to short distances as not all the roads are scenic. In fact, some time try Bangalore Mysore road in scorching heat. Leisure is the last thing that will come to your mind.

3. Thrill Biking - Speed. Sharp turns. Overtaking. Quick maneuvers. You have a thrilling time while biking. You are completely focused on what is there on the *road*. Zoooom, whoooosh, chiiii!! This is thrill biking.

4. Stress Biking - Ever went from Kemmangundi to Hebbey falls? Probably they planned to make a road there but just left the project after cutting the hills. It's a hilly road with all the twists and turns, ups and downs. You won't see any sign of tar and there loose stones (bigger ones) on the entire road. After riding those 12 kms to hebbey falls and back, my rear wheel had lost its circular shape and my hands were all red and aching trying to keep the handle straight. This is stress biking. It's a torture device for the machine and a challenge for the man. Note, there is a little bit of thrill invovled here. But it's mostly challenge and stress.

5. Endurance Biking - This one is like a test of endurance of man. How much discomfort can your body sustain? Me and Ripple once did 1000 kms in three days. 1000 kms by itself is not a big figure but we did it on the worst roads we have ever seen and in the worst heat that has ever hit us. And we were doubling! By the way, once Ripple told me that a bunch of guys did Pune to Hydrabad and back continuously. That's endurance biking.

6. Biking Nirvana - This one is not a separate biking category as such. It is more like a sum of all of above and much more. Biking Nirvana is biking for the sake of biking. Not to have the thrill (though you do have thrill), not to have the leisure (though you do leisure biking), not to test your endurance (though that can happen eventually). You ride to ride. You like a turn, you take it. You like a road, go on on it. You like the forest, stop and take rest. You find it funny how the paint of a milestone has faded away, you shoot a photo as memoir and move on. You don't have much of a plan. It's a rough blueprint. I am starting on this road to begin with and would probably go to a place X and I need to be back in 3 days so that I can go back to office. That's all the plan you start with.

The reason I liked this trip so much was that it was in last category. And I was conciously aware of it. This thought stuck me while cruising from Mangalore to Udupi. I wonder if Robert Pirsig presented some similar stuff in 'Zen and the art of motor cycle maintenance'. I don't know. I don't remember after 7 years what all he said about biking. What I do remember is that more than biking he was saying something else which he considered far more important but most of the people just took it as a biking book.

On the next signal, I should tell Ripple that we'll be taking left before Windsor Manor as that road is shorter. The signal is quite close now so I'll indicate that I want to talk to him.

While riding to Udupi, I was in a reverie of a sort. Of course I was attentive to riding and aware of all the tankers coming from the opposite direction and and I was watching for any Sumo/Qualis that comes from behind. But above all, I was riding. I was cruising at 80. And when you are cruising at a constant speed, your mind is flooded with all the random thoughts. Some fragment of memory or some observation about your surroundings or some deep pondering on an otherwise meaningless subject. By the way, this is one interesting aspect of riding. All this while, you'll be thinking one thing or the other but after the ride is over, if someone asks you what all were you thinking, you'll be at a loss. You'll wonder what you were thinking and then just manage to say 'nothing'!

So, my mind was full of some random thoughts and then this one thought of different types of biking stood out. And I started pondering over different types of biking. Even after reaching Ududpi, while we were relaxing on the beach under the shade of a short coconut tree, if Ripple had asked me what all did I think about, I would have thought for a while and would have said 'nothing'. But I *did* think but just that thoughts were random and didn't have any organization. And these thoughts continued to be so till the night in Chikmagloor where I joined the pieces together.

Aha! Bangalore Bistro!! It's a nice place. Sometime, I'll come with Vaishali here. For now, I'll keep the program as decided and head to pizza hut only. Cunningham Road being one way from the other side, we'll have to go around it via Millers Road and Queens Road.

We decided to have Pizza for lunch as it has become a symbol of modern urban life. Not that everyone in bangalore goes around eating Pizzas to have an urban life. There is a reason and a little bit of history why we treat Pizza as a symbol of modern urban life per se. Long time back, in my college days, we did a trek to Samsi Jungle in Himachal. There were 5 of us (including me and Sahu). Once the trek was over, me and Sahu wanted to use the remaining vacations for going to Kullu-Manali, whereas, two of the other chaps had had enough of mountains, jungles, dust and hard life. They wanted to go back to Delhi and do some urban stuff like eating Pizza. Later, Sahu made a joke out of it and eventually me and Ripple started treating as a symbol.

"Get us a 12" pizza, half of it Veggie supreme and half feast with garlic bread."

"Anything thing to drink sir."

"Yeah, one mountain dew, one pepsi, one nimbu pani."

"Lemonade."

"Yeah, whatever you call nimbu pani."

"You have ordered for a 12" pizza half 'n' half with Veggie Supreme and feast with a portion of garlic bread. One Mountain Dew, One Pepsi and one Lemonade. Your pizza will take 15-20 minutes. blah blah blah."

I hate this mechanical speech. But then if I speak the same stuff over and over 100 times a day, I would also lose the naturality in my voice. Anyway, we are here to have Pizza out of a whim (and Navin is not even aware of why me and Ripple desired Pizza so much), and while we wait for the Pizza to come, I can go on with the story of past 44 hours.

So, having cancelled the original cycling program, I still had to do *something* on the weekend. While Vaishali and Aarushi are not here, the house looks too empty. I *had* to go out. And what could be better than a long bike ride; just for the sake of a bike ride. For making a program, you need someone who says "Let's go" and another one who says "Yeah, let's go". In our case, I tend to say "Let's go" and Ripple always responds with "Yeah, let's go". And once it is decided that you are going, some other will show interest. Some out of those may actually join and the rest will opt out for various reasons (including enthusiasm). Navin was the guy who joined us in this trip and Chakri opted out because his shoulder had just healed and it was not advisable for him to go on long rides.

It was Navin's first trip. And for a first trip, it was a hard one. On the first day itself, we rode throughout the night. The road was good and that was the only consolation. But riding throughout the night doesn't really sound very romantic to someone first time on a long ride. And so was the case with Navin. Of course, we didn't plan to ride through the night. It just happened that way. Our original plan was to leave Bangalore at 4:30 PM on friday, reach Sakleshpur by 9 PM and stay there for the night. Leave for Udupi saturday morning via interiors of Karnataka (instead of taking the Mangalore highway). And be back by sunday night (or sometime on monday if we find ourselves short of time). So, that was the tentative plan. What road we'd take from Udupi and where all we'll spend time, where we'll stay on saturday night; all these things were left undecided for runtime decisions.

But whatever little plan we had, that also went awry as we started at 6 PM instead of 4:30. We reached Sakleshpur at 11:30 PM and we couldn't find any acco. The staff in all the hotels was sleeping and responded with just two words 'room illa' (i.e. no room available). I believe that it was out of sheer laziness that we were not given a room there. The staff wouldn't have liked the idea of being disturbed from deep sleep. And it wouldn't have surely been their idea of hospitality/professionalism/work-culture/blah to show us the available room, make neccessary arrangements (i.e. providing extra bed, towels soap etc), opening the register and making an entry for us. They would rather choose to continue sleeping and that's the choice they made anyway.

Well, let me be honest here. We did find one place in Sakleshpur where we could stay. And Navin was desprate to sleep there (he was a first-timer for a bike ride), Ripple was inclined to sleep there and I was *determined* not to spend even 5 more minutes in that room. It was dingy, stinking of alcohol and overall a very very shady place. We decided (or let me say I forced everyone) to move further till we find a place to sleep.

And here rest of the plan went awry. There was no point of entering the interiors at midnight looking of an acco. We had to abandon the original plan of reaching Udupi via interiors as we wouldn't have found any acco before Udupi itself. So, we moved towards Mangalore looking for a hotel whose staff is not too lazy to give us a room. And we didn't find such place before Mangalore.

"Hey, I am already full. You can take this piece.", I said. Hmmm. Navin didn't protest. I am sure he knew that the piece was too small to be cut in halves. We'll go to my house first so that I can take my cloths from Ripple's bag. And after that, warm water bath and relax!

Hmmm. Nothing feels better than relaxation after a long journey. And in Mangalore, we could find a hotel with clean white bedsheets and a big well lit clean bathroom. It was cozy and we could crash on the comfortable bed. We slept for four hours straight. That was the relaxation we had at Mangalore. Enough to keep us going for the next day's journey.

Our plan was disturbed. It wasn't so disturbing for us as we didn't have much of a plan to begin with anyway. We were to bike and that's what we did; before and after Mangalore.

Ride to Udupi was great. It wasn't scenic. And the sun was harsh. But we had a good time riding to Udupi. For one, it was a welcome change to ride in the day as the biking was effortless. Also, we could experience more of that Biking Nirvana for which we were out on the road.

On the way to Udupi, I thought about a lot of things. It was mostly random in nature. I'll get a thought and for a while I'll follow its line. Just then, I'll see a milestone passing by which will evoke completely different thoughts in my mind and I'll start following those thoughts. And then I'll see an old man pushing his cart loaded with lots of misc stuff and that will evoke some past memories and my mind will start floating in a fantasy. My mind was smoothly moving from thoughts to memories to fantasies. The movement was mostly so slow and smooth that I could notice it and be amused too. Sometimes, I would think about something. Sometimes, a thought will involuntarily cross my mind. And I'll observe this new thought with amusement; sometimes relinquishing and sometimes sticking to the old one...

It's biking nirvana. I can't describe it. Any attempt would be futile because if you haven't done it, you won't know it. Simple.

"We did 880 kms in 44 hours. That averages to 20 kms per hour. Pretty good amount of biking.", Ripple calculates and discloses to us.

Yeah, that's pretty good amount of biking we did. The only time when we preferred leisure over biking was at Udupi beach. Udupi beach is niether commercialized, nor virgin. It attracts very few tourists and none of them comes close to the beach in a sunny afternoon. It is mostly free of all those beach side stalls that sell nimbu-pani (i.e. lemonade), coke/pepsi, bhutta, nariyal pani and all the other stuff that you get at crowded places. At the same time, there is a pretty good resort right on the beach that is clean, green, airy, and open. So, you get to enjoy a clean beach, free of all the crowd and all the commercial vendors selling stuff to the crowd from a sea facing restaurant.

Udupi turned out to be a pleasent surprize. The feeling of pleasure was hightened because at any point in our journey, we didn't picture ourselves having a good time there. Before we reached the Udupi beach, Udupi was just another dot on the route we were taking. We were not going to Udupi. Udupi was on our route. That was the difference. So, whatever good time we had at Udupi was a bonus.

Ripple wanted to stay at Udupi. And I understood why. It's difficult to describe it but it's kind of this. When you get to a good place while biking, you should just stop and relax and enjoy the place you have reached. You should forget that you still have a long journey in front of you. When you are in that state of biking nirvana, all that seems important is the present moment and how you feel at that time.

But Navin was not enthusiastic about the idea of riding 450 kms the next day. He was interested in distributing the distance rather uniformly over the time we had. And because the idea of getting back on road was not at all distastful, we left the Udupi beach and headed towards Chikmagloor.

The ride to Chikmagloor was again mostly Nirvana like. This is the ride during which some initial notions about Biking Nirvana started emerging in my mind. I have been riding for a couple of years now. And I was trying to find the single common element in all my rides. The chief question for which I was looking for an answer was 'what is it that prompts me to go on these long rides?'. The answer I got. First a vague and then a definite shape emerged.

"Anything else sir."

"No. We are done.", said Ripple.

Eating Pizza was a good idea after all. It's good that people didn't notice or care about our state. Among all these people with clean faces and clean cloths, we look like not part of the civilization. Anyway, we were fine once we were sure that Pizza Hut staff doesn't care about our condition.

We left Chikmagloor at 6 am on sunday and headed to Halebidu via Belur. The ride to Belur was fantastic to say the least. For one, the road is very good. It's not scenic but it's serene. And we could catch the early morning time for riding. The time when the night is over but the day is yet to begin. The time which paints the country side in a bluish grey color. The time when your surroundings look so fresh and yet a bit lazy. I hate myself to say this but it was like the time when BIOS is just loading the operating system. Too bad a joke I guess...

Halebidu was another good experience. I have been to Belur before but not to Halebidu. It was in ruins but much more majestic. It reminded me of 'Second System Effect' as described in Mythical Man Months. Looks like after making Belur temple, the king got too ambitious. He wanted a much grander temple to be built with much more sculpting. The project overshot the time estimates (I am sure he didn't have budget constraints ;) and it couldn't be completed. Historically speaking, there are other reasons why it couldn't be completed.

The ride from Halebidu to Bangalore was again a very smooth one. Good road, little traffic and just right weather. It's sunday afternoon and we are back.

Oops. I forgot to show the left indicator. Good that Ripple and Navin now remember that we'll be taking left from here for my house. Oh, I am dying to take a hot shower. It's 3 now. The house will have some dust on the floor. But that's ok. Shanti will come tomorrow to clean it. I can live with dirty floor for a day. And I'll give the rolls for development today itself. I'll post them on flickr. Nice site for sharing photographs. I think I'll use tags for my photographs. Guess, I'll use halebidu and udupi tags. I can also use boat tag for the photographs of that blue boat. Hey wait! How fast my mind has switched its line of thought. From biking nirvana to flickr.com and folksonomy. Did you see? I just took this turn here and I got the feeling that I have reached home. I got the feeling that the trip was over. And well, my mind stopped thinking about biking nirvana; all those random thoughts just disappeared and I have a very clean picture in front of my eyes about what am I going to accomplish in next couple of hours.

Well, I guess, it's time to wrap up the story. When I started telling the story, I planned to explain biking nirvana through different experiences of this trip. I planned to delve deep, express and make you feel it. I planned to rip it apart and show you different elements of this state and how all these elements come together to form the state called biking nirvana.

But now I have decided against it. Why? Because however hard I try, I'll not be able to do it. Because I'll not be able to make you think what I thought, make you feel what I felt, make you see what I saw. To see the country side covered in morning bluish grey color, to face the warm wind on your face, to feel the cool wind in the green cover of forests, to have deep ponderings on random subjects and random thoughts on meaningful subjects, you have to get on your bike and ride. That's when you can know what Biking Nirvana is...

[All the photographs of this trip are here]

Long Tail of Content

2005-01-26T10:04:00.000+05:30

World Wide Web is vast. And overwhelming. It has so much of content. Content that is factual information, exciting ideas, deep thoughts and so many tools. Tools for using the content itself, for doing some fun stuff, for doing some serious stuff, and for doing nothing too.

In isolation, a piece of content is useful or useless. Interesting or boring. Relevant or irrelevant. Factual or baseless.

In isolation, a piece of content is either of interest to you or not. And if it is of interest to you, you should be able to reach it. Grab it and consume it.

Everyday I go to the World Wide Web looking for information that is of interest to me. I look for the new information that has been created now and may be of interest to me. I do this by surfing popular sites like CNET, InfoWorld or by subscribing to the RSS feed of popular blogs. I also go around looking for information that has existed for some time now and I have suddenly become interested in it. I do this by going to Google and keying in words that I feel represent objects of my interest.

More than half the content that I tend to reach is not relevant to me at the moment I reach it. And I don't think I ever reach more than 1 percent of the content that is relevant to me. 1 percent is a randomly chosen number that signifies smallness of the relevant content that I reach Vs the largeness of the relevant content that is actually available.

When I do Google, it shows me that the results for my search are in 5 digits or 6 digits. I hardly ever go beyond page 2 and never beyond page 5. I look at only those pages that are popular.

I follow mostly the popular websites and subscribe to the RSS of mostly popular people.

Going with what is popular has a price. I mostly don't reach what is relevant but not popular. Popularity is a measure of just popularity and not relevance. Popularity merely increases the *chances* of relevance but does not guarentee it. Because popularity of a piece of content, in general, depends on the source of the content, how many people agree with the content, how many people respect the source of the content, popularity of the supporters of the content, the presentation of the content and relevance of the content in the context of overall subject. All this excluding the delibrate attempt to increase content popularity by doing search engine optimization, link exchange, paid promotion etc. So, as you see, relevance of the content is just one of the many factors in determining its popularity.

But I reach the content through popularity index.

And there lies the long tail of content on World Wide Web.

Technorati Tags: content, long, tail, long_tail, longtail, web, internet, popularity, search

Tagging Blogs; What For??

2005-01-16T16:48:00.000+05:30

Technorati has launched a service for tagging blogs. And David Weinberger has covered it very well here. I agree with him on a couple of counts but mostly, I see his post overenthusiastic.

Some stuff that he has mentioned:

Technorati, a site that indexes 4.5 million weblogs, is now enabling us to sort blog posts by tag. This is way way cool.

This is exciting to me not only because it's useful but because it marks a needed advance in how we get value from tags.

Just slap a tag on something and now its value becomes social, not individual.

First, I agree with David that this service is way cool. However, I have my doubts about the immediate usefulness of this service. And I wonder if even the Technorati guys have any definite idea about how these blog tags will be used and what for.

He is correct in stating that categories are not tags. Before we talk any further on this, I feel this statement should be reversed and made "tags are not categories" because we are talking about tags here and not categories.

So, tags are not categories. They are more like context in which the tagged information is relevant. And to be more precise, they are more like context in which the tagger (the person/machine that tagged them) considered tagged information to be relevant.

Tagging information has two primary uses (as we have discovered so far):
1. Getting to a piece of information. So, when you tag a piece of information, you are making a statement that the given information is relevant in these contexts. Once tagged, people looking for information that is relevant in a given context can use the context specific tags to get to it. They can be looking for it in real-time (e.g. through RSS) or they may be doing a search later on.
2. Locating people who share your interests. So, if two people are using the same tags to tag the information that they are producing/consuming, the chances are that they have common interest here.

But I believe that blogs cannot derive the same kind of value from tags as photographs and bookmarks. Reason? Because blogs have enough context within them that can be picked up by search engines.

So, let's say you have a photograph of one of the tsunami hit areas. What will you tag it? 'tsunami, devastation'. Let's say you bookmark a URL of an article on the devastation caused by tsunami. What will you tag it? 'tsunami, devastation'. Now, let's say you wrote a blog on the same topic. Do you need to put tag on it?

As is evident, search engines can't parse a photograph and tell you what it is about. Photographs represent information that is opaque for machines. Search engines can't parse a bookmark (well, they can but they don't) and tell you what it is about. Bookmarks are just pointers and you can't make a machine know what a bookmark is all about. However, blogs are different. Blogs are information. Search engines can and do look inside the blogs and find out what they are all about. Here, tags are not much more than keywords. I can go to pubsub or technorati and watch specific keywords. And I am sure if the blog authors are going to tag their blogs, those tags will come out of the keywords only.

Hence, I feel that the usefulness of tags is not clear as of now and they are just what David has mentioned them to be: way way cool. I believe that foklsonomy today (just like everything else in the Tech world) is heading towards the peak of Inflated Expectations in Technology Hype Cycle.

Technorati Tags: technorati, tags, taxonomy, folksonomy, hype

Hey, I am tagging my blog as it's cool and it may turn out to have some use eventually ;)

Does your application do the right thing in the right way?

2005-01-11T13:16:00.000+05:30

You and me have applications that do the right things. But how do we know that those right things are being done in the right way?

Am I not speaking English? Let me be verbose then.

So, you have tested your application and you think it works. Which is a fair assumption to make considering that all your test cases have passed. Except that the assumption is fatally wrong. Did your testing also ensure that the right thing was done in the right way?

Let's say you have a function 'int multiply( int a, int b)' which multiplies a and b and returns the result. If your test case does

if( multiply(2, 2) == 4) { pass(); }

Can you be sure if it is doing a multiplication or addition inside? It is doing the right thing by returning 4 but is it reaching the conclusion 4 in the right way? I agree, that it's an overly simple and completely dumb example that I have chosen but it is the best I could find to illustrate the problem. Anyway, you can always modify your test case to say

if( multiply(2, 2) == 4 && multiply(3, 3) == 9 && multiply(4, 4) == 16)) { pass(); }

Now, you have significantly reduced your chances of misjudging the correctness of multiply() function. So, let me give you another example which is niether so simple nor so dumb. In fact, you will see that in the example I am going to cite now, all the inputs will always give the correct output without doing the right thing!!

Before the example, I need to build some background. The background is neccessary to introduce the application which will do the right thing in wrong way. I have recently developed an application called d-compiler. It's a distributed build system based on peer-to-peer technology. This application is interesting, useful and different (from dmake, distcc and electric cloud). I'll not get into the details of this app and just focus on what is relevant here: doing the right thing in wrong way.

d-compiler keeps a list of machines that are running d-compiler daemon ready to execute remote compilation jobs. So, when I do make, make will invoke d-compiler instead of gcc and d-compiler will send the compilation job to another machine. Now this is important: if no peer machine is available OR if the peer machine just hangs, OR if there is a protocol error during communication with the peer machine, d-compiler running locally will perform the compilation.

All was fine till recently when I discovered that the build had become a little slow. On further investigation I found that the d-compiler on my machine was not using all the peer machines for compilation. Reason: my latest feature addition had introduced a bug which would lead to protocol error between d-compiler machines. But I would never detect it in automated testing because the test case was to give local d-compiler a file to compile and get a compiled file back. Which will always happen because if the local d-compiler cannot get it compiled by a peer, it will compile by itself.

d-compiler was correct and incorrect at the same time. It was black-boxically correct as in it would take the input a .c file and give back a .o file. But it was white-boxically incorrect as it was not able to get these files compiled on the machines that were very much available.

So, whether my test case says:

if( correctly_compiles( file.c)) { pass(); }

Or it says:

if( correctly_compiles( file1.c) && correctly_compiles( file2.c) && correctly_compiles( file3.c)) { pass(); }

My testing is a failure because I'd never discover the BUG that keeps the functional behaviour intact but makes my application completely useless.

This incident has really started troubling me. I'll never have enough confidence on this application as I'll never be testing it extensively. And there *are* some real reasons for which I'll never test it as extensively as is required to get *that* confidence.

To begin with, developers are not testers. I just don't have the attitude to believe that there are bugs in my code till I observe otherwise. Which means, I have natural inclination for not testing the code that I have written. I know it's wrong. It may even be sinful. But that's how things are and I am fine with it as I consider it just human nature.

So, I don't have a taste for testing. I don't like this mechanical thing of creating a scenario, performing some action and then checking the log files to make sure that things indeed went the way I intended them to do.

Secondly, I have written this application for hobby. I have limited time to work on it. I developed it because it was fun to do so. I extend it because I find it useful and would like to take it forward. Unlike the initial time, the ratio between time-to-develop and time-to-test has become really small. Initially, I used to spend most of my time developing d-compiler and very little time to test and hence, the ratio was high. It was so because there were so many things to be developed and hardly anything to be tested. However, now it is different. Today, d-compiler *does* what it is built for. Any new feature/functionality/bug-fix requires very small code change. But it requires a plethora of functionality to be tested under horrendous number of scenarios. I don't have the time to do it. And even if I had time, I would not do it. Because it is boring to do so much of white box testing. And I have many more things to do that are much more fun. The end result is either I extend d-compiler and give away the change without much confidence (not acceptable) OR I don't extend it at all (not good).

The only way I see out of this situation is automation. However, automating the white/grey box testing is a dream today. And doing it for a distributed system is a distant one. I thought about it, googled it, asked it, discussed it but all in vein. People in past *have* shared this sentiment and have attempted to build a tool for automated testing of distributed systems. But none of them seems to be good/proven. Though I didn't give it up, yet couldn't make any progress. The trouble is not developing a tool that can do automated grey box testing. The trouble is that even the model that can be used for automated grey box testing is not clear. Can there be a generic model like JUnit that can be employed in the grey box testing of all sorts of systems OR one has to build custom tools specific to applications? Should the Testing System be an independent one closely observing the System Under Test OR the Testing System should be laid on top of and coded with the System Under Test? How does a testing system like this evolve with the evolution of System Under Test? There are just too many fundamental questions to be answered here and many more to be asked.

So, here is the problem. You and me have applications that do the right things. But how do we know that those right things are being done in the right way? And how do you create a testing environment that scales with your application?

I am thinking about it.

Public wiki for product documentation?

2005-01-09T20:03:00.000+05:30

Jon Udell throws an idea (via Tim):

"The problem is that vendors, for the most part, do a lousy job of encouraging and organizing those discussions. Here's an experiment I'd like to see someone try: Start a Wikipedia page for your product. Populate it with basic factual information, point users there, then step back and let the garden grow."

To say the least, the idea is very appealing. In fact, when you read it, it sounds too obvious to be a big idea (or an idea worth talking about). Whether it really works or not is something that we can't predict as of today. And I am sure someone out there is going to try it out as the idea is too obvious to be ignored.

However, I feel that Wiki can't become a replacement of forums. Wiki by product users will be an un-organized and distributed effort which will have the answer to my specific problem only if someone cared to proactively put it there.

Let's for a moment visualize the real life scenario. The product comes out, people start using it. There are P1, P2, ...Pn problems with it. I can be facing any of these as soon as I start using the product. There is a strong possibility that not all the problems with their solutions will get documented at Wiki promptly. In that case, I'll have to resort to a forum where I can directly raise a question, bring people's attention to it and get an answer. It is also possible that I am facing a problem that none has faced so far. In that case, a forum is a very valuable tool as I can launch a discussion about various strategies for solving this problem.

In other words, Wiki is a dynamic method of capturing static information. Forums is a method of discussing and creating new information. So, Wiki can/will substitute the forum archives but not the forums themselves.

The Effect Of Blogs

2005-01-07T10:46:00.000+05:30

Someone made a comment about my recent post on Ecosystem of Ideas:

"Wow! You really think so? For me blogs have meant that finally I can get the right kind of info (mostly fun stuff) from the right source without being hampered by the strings of traditional info delivery systems like newspapers, TV, books etc."

What blogs _are_, what blogs _mean_ and what is their _effect_ are three different aspects of this phenonmenon that we call blogging.

Blogs are online journals. Journals of your ideas, feelings, thoughts,activities and whatever else you choose to put up there.

Blogs mean... Well, they mean very very different things to different people but let's say they mean modern info devlivery systems, tremendous marketing force, democratizing force of Internet, so on so forth.

Effect is something very subtle. It's more like an undercurrent that you can't see without drilling deep down. It shows up very gradually, bit by bit. It's subtle to the point of invisibility.

So, creating a new platform for supporting 'Ecosystem of Ideas' is an effect of blogging phenomenon.

I would really want to talk more about why and how of this effect. But that will be an essay and not a blog. And it would take a couple of days and not a couple of hours. Because the way effects are subtle, the causes are even more subtle. Catching the causes responsible for an effect is extremely difficult. And catching the correct ones is even more difficult. It takes time, and patience. Maybe some day...

Ecosystem of Ideas

2005-01-06T15:42:00.000+05:30

Let's say you have an idea. And why not? I have so many of them myself. So, you'll also definitely have some. In fact, you might have many ideas. But let's talk about one of them. Anyone.

How do you express it? Do you categorize the elements that form this idea? Or if it's a complex one, you create a hierarchy out of it?

Do you think ideas are so flat that you can put its elements in flat categories? Do you think you can organize your ideas in a hierarchy?

Before we try to find an answer for these questions, we need to look at the anatomy of an idea.

Is an idea an island i.e. does it hold by itself. Can an idea be so complete by itself that expressing it does not require expressing, mentioning, referencing any other idea? No. When you look at an idea closely, you'll see that it uses so many ideas as foundation, so many as pillars and so many as roof. It is strongly linked to some ideas and weakly linked to some other. A close look at the expression of an idea reveals that it is an expression of a primary idea that has been built on top of and with support of multiple secondary ideas. And when you look closely at a secondary idea, the secondary becomes primary.

In other words, the ideas are linked to each other in a web like fashion. They link to each other and are linked from each other. Our mind traverses from one idea to the other through these links.

In fact, more than forming a web, ideas form an ecosystem. Why I say ecosystem? Because ideas need each other's support for their expression (which is as good as their existence). In fact, they are so dependent on each other that more often than not, an idea A cannot be even conceived without conceiving ideas B, C and D. Ideas are like living beings. An idea takes birth amid and out of other ideas, it evolves with some contemporary, some old and some new ideas. And eventually is superseded by newer ideas.

And I have really started liking blogosphere. It provides an extraordinary platform for ideas ecosystem. Blogosphere is not about expression. It is not even about publishing. It is a giant leap in the direction of getting ideas together so that they evolve and reach adulthood much faster.

It's 1.0: The Turnaround Time

2005-01-06T13:23:00.000+05:30

There is always a time in the life cycle of a software when it is under furious development. Everybody is adding code left, right and center. The mantra is 'Got Code, Will Submit'. The mere existence of code is a qualification for submission. Does it work? Well, kind of. I just tried doing foo in as rosy a scenario as possible, and it happened. Ha, that's how the 1.0 is developed.

This time is extremely short. And there are reasons for that. Number one is that the time available for releasing 1.0 itself is short. And reason number two is that once the product goes to a customer, this time never comes again.

Let's call it pre-1.0 time.

And don't argue that you have worked on a project where this time lasted till 3.0 OR it was as shortlived as 0.5. 1.0 is symbolic here.

Then there is a time when the mantra changes from 'Got Code, Will Submit' to 'Got requirements, will write specs, will get them reviewed, will write a design document, will get it reviewed, will write code, will comment the code, will get it reviewed, will update the implementation document, will get it reviewed, will write unit tests, will get it reviewed, will execute the unit test, will fix the problems, will ask permissions to submit, will provide clarifications why something was done in some way, will hopefully, eventually submit code'.

Again, your mantra may be a little different but don't argue. As this is also symbolic.

Let's call it post-1.0 time.

Reason for such a drastic change? The focus has changed!

To begin with, you want your software to be developed. Once it is developed, you want it to work. Once it starts working, you want it to keep working, and you want to keep a proof for later that from your side you made every possible attempt that it continues to work, and you want to ensure that anyone from the development team can leave and you can hire the programmer next door to replace the loss, so on and on...

See the difference?

What I find the most interesting is that this trunaround happens in an hour or a day. And even if it's a week, it's short.

Design and Architecture

2004-12-23T15:04:00.000+05:30

I wonder how I missed this artima blog. It's an interesting way to present the difference between design and architecture.

Technical Ladder Trap

2004-12-23T13:04:00.000+05:30

Technical Ladder Vs Management Ladder: Part 2

In Part 1, I talked about the possible directions that a techie's career can take. In part 2, I want to look at the dangers of falling into what can be termed as Technical Ladder Trap. The technical ladder trap is nothing but a way to gradually become useless as a techie. How do you become useless as a techie? Going back to the economics introduced in Part 1, you become useless when there is a struggle between your Y (the money that your company earns because of you) and your X (the money that you are getting from company). In other words, your X is growing, Y is stagnant which puts a pressure on the ratio that must be maintained between the two. In yet other words, you have started drawing more money from the company (or intend to draw more money from the company) without increasing the value that you add to the company.

There are multiple ways one can fall into this trap:
1. Getting lost in the nitty-gritties of technology and not focusing on what's important for the technology consumer i.e. your company's customer. So, you think that given 2 weeks time, you can develop and implement an algorithm that can significantly cut down the start-up time of your application. But does it matter to your customer? May be the customer is fine with the startup time but is really concerned with the response time? Irrespective of the coolness co-efficient of your algorithm, it's just a waste of time for you and waste of money for your company.

2. Limiting yourself to low end of technology development value chain. Granted you can do quick work in Python. But can you grow up to write an application in Python? Can you make a scalable/extensible/insert-your-favourite-word-here type of design in Python? Can you exploit the availability of free tools in your system? Can you exploit the heuristics to make optimizations?

3. Limiting yourself to a small subset of technologies. So, you are good at Java. But can you see that a small portion of your system will do better with C because of performance gains. And another small portion will do good with scripting because of productivity gains. Which part of the application should be multi-threaded, which part multi-processes. Do you use RMI/XML/SOAP/whatever-new-thing-comes-in for your inter process communication? Different technologies have different strengths and weaknesses. They are developed with different goals in mind and the one you know may not be the best for your purpose. Also, technologies become obsolete almost as fast as they gain prominence. You have to keep the learning process on.

2004-12-22T10:55:00.000+05:30

Objects and Languages

Jim Waldo has been in deep thoughts about objects and their dependence on languages.

"I want to ask the question of whether objects are something that we can believe in without believing in the objects of a particular kind expressed in a particular language, or if there is something more abstract about objects."

I believe, only the state of an object is independent of the language but niether the expression of that state nor the interaction of the object with others is indenpendent. We can notice this even outside programming paradigm. Let's take the case of a piece of iron. It has a state that is independent of all the languages of the world be it English, Hindi, Japanese or whatever. However, when an observer looks at that piece of metal, his/her mind will choose one language and start thinking about that piece of iron in that language. This thinking will primarily be a description of the state of this iron piece and its relationship with its surroundings. Here, the language he/she is thinking in makes a profound impact on what that objects becomes to the observer.

To summarize, only the state of an object is independent of the language that too as long as it is not expressed.

2004-12-21T15:59:00.000+05:30

Design and Testing.

During all these years I have spent in tech, I have observed that design is considered an activity for development and deployment. You sit with a white board and design your system around scalability, performance, modularity, blah, blah. Nothing wrong with it except that they miss out one very important thing: Testability. So, design is an activity with far reaching effects on development, testing and deployment.

The testability of a system merits design consideration as it plays important role in tackling two very hard and real problems of software development.

1. Time and Resources problems: Testing needs huge number of resources and tremendous amount of time. The easier it is to test a system, the smaller is the cost to test it. The cost advantage is seen in terms of resources as well
as time.

2. Stability and Functional problems: Not only that the time and resources are expensive, they are also limited. In the real world, testing gets fixed amount of time, and whatever bugs can be found and fixed in that timeframe are the ones that make it into the release. Essence - if your system is hard to test, chances are most of the bugs will not even be discovered before the release.

Now, it would seem that I would start advocating stuff like extreme programming. and Test Driven Development. Oh, it is such a natural thing to do while stressing the importance of testing. But I am not in that mood. And I am not in that camp. Period.

2004-12-17T13:04:00.000+05:30

Evolution of a Programmer.

Long time back, vishal gave me a funny and completely true perspective on how a programmer evolves after entering professional life. I just can't help sharing it here (especially after I alluded to that evolution in my previous post Technical Ladder Vs Management Ladder.

A programmer, in fact any techie, goes through three phases of evolution:
1. Jackie Chan - You are young, smart and energetic. Even though you can fight, you mostly dread the enemy (mostly the powerful ones). Your fights tend to go on longer and you are mostly beaten up by the enemy. Only towards the end, do you get a control on the situation. You don't use any sophisticated tools for fighting, you do it mostly with hands OR whatever you can lay your hands on (including broom).

2. Bruce Willis - You have developed a passion for fighting now. You have learned to use tools that boost your productivity by killing enemies faster. Also, you keep a tight control over the enemy right from the begining. But you still can't do it without getting hurt. You are so involved in fighting that you have blood running down your face and you run bare-foot on glass pieces.

3. James Bond - This is what you eventually become. Calm, fast and effortless. You have equipped yourself with an array of extremely sophisticated tools. With these tools, you can not only kill scores of people by just turning the cap of your pen, you also know how to keep yourself unhurt. Finishing a task is just a cinch for you. And by the way, you have also learnt to indulge in non-technological pleasures ;)

2004-12-16T16:52:00.000+05:30

Technical Ladder Vs Management ladder - Which one is for me? Part 1.

A fundamental question at 4 years of working life. Isn't it? Ok, you may be asking yourself this question at 2 years of job-age or 6 years of job-age. But like it or not, there is no escape. As so many people (mainly job consultants) say, "It's your career and if you don't control it, someone else will."

Am I here to tell you which one is for you? No. Am I going to give an objective comparision of the pros and cons and help you take a decision? No. I assure you that I won't leave you in any better position to decide than now. Hopefully, I would at most make you consider it an important decision with some interesting observations. Still, with me? Good, let's start.

No one can doubt (including myself) that there are n possibilites in which one's career can develop and take a tangible form. But let's not bother about the nitty-gritties and let's discard the rare cases when we are out to discuss the *most probable* career directions. As Joe Marasco says in 'Three Phases of Life':

A simple model that people can understand and apply and that works eighty percent of the time is more useful than a complex and hard to use model that works ninety-five percent of the time.

1. There are those students who get excited by anything and everything that can be called technology. Their career direction is clear right from the begining (even though the career path is to be laid out).

2. And then there are those who find technology unhappening/uninteresting/not-cool/not-my-cup-of-tea. Producing technology is no fun for them, but using and selling is. They go on to become MBAs and the likes.

3. Then there are remaining poor fellows who enter techie job because they have studied technology at college. They are 'out' to make a career in technology without knowing/understanding what career they can make out of it. Whether they are good at it or bad is beside the point. What matters is they are 'in' there without having a clear understanding of why and without a notion of what-next!

Ok. So, they jump into technology with great vigour. They learn a lot of things, produce some good things, shoot the stars off the sky and become valuable to the company and in general, like so many other people, do well in their job. They earn applauds and two ladders are thrown down from the heaven in appreciation of their good work. One is called Technical Ladder and the other Management Ladder.

This marks a turning point in one's career. In my experience, even though the process is gradual and you can see from far that these two ladders lie in your path, you don't notice them. And then one fine day, you suddenly realize that you have got to make a choice.

Before I proceed any further, let me dive into a little bit of economics. Why economics? Because economics is what takes you to office everyday even though you would have preferred sitting on that cozy chair in your living room and sipping beer whole day. You might be tempted to argue that you go to office for doing good work and not for drawing pay-cheque. But the fact is the only reason you go to office to do all the cool work rather than sitting at home and doing even cooler work is that you get paid for going to office. So, you go to office for money and work hard for more money.

That's your side of the story. Let's see from your companies' side. Why is your company paying you money and is willing to pay even more in future? Because for every $X you get from company, the company makes $Y. Let's say (just say) Y == $2X. It could be $1.1X or it could be $11X, but let's say for this particular case, it is $2X.

Now, when would your company be willing to increase X? There may be multiple reasons like fear of losing you (nobody knows/understands your code, your project is close to completion and the company can't afford losing you for some time, X is less than the market rate anyway), you have laid your hands on some trade secrets that the company can't afford going out etc etc. Irrespective of the total number of circumstances, there is one reason that always outshines all others and that is (hold your breath) ... you increase Y!

Hmmm. So, If you increase company's Y, company will increase your X (may not neccessarily be in same order but that's the rough calculation). Even though it sounds all too obvious and dumb, it is the most useful and often forgotten principle of career growth.

Let's take a close look at this principle now, If you were drawing $1 per month, the company was making $2. If you want to draw $2 now, you should help the company make $4. For $4, the company should make $8. So, there are two conclusions that can be drawn:

1. X will increase only if Y increases. Something that we have already established well enough. 2. The increase in Y will be always be a multiple of increase in X. It means if you want 1 more dollar, you'll have to earn 2 more dollars which is 1 more than what you want draw. But that is the case for every single dollar that you want to earn. So, if you want to earn 4 more dollars, the company has to earn 8 more dollars which is 4 more than what you are earning. This is called 'value addition' and is the most widely known and least utilized principle.

This is where the fundamentals of economic theory take back seat and we talk about how they apply in our day-to-day job.

Any techie would go through the typical evolution of Jackie Chan, Bruce Wills and James Bond. When you start working, you are Jackie Chan and are drawing $1. Soon, you learn how you can avoid being beaten up and easily overpower your enemy. You evolve to become Bruce Wills and start drawing $2. After fighting the enemy again and again, you become so adept at it that it becomes a cinch for you. You could kill scores of people just by turning the cap of your pen. All your work looks so perfect and you do it so effortlessly! This is you as James Bond of technology drawing $3 (or may be even $4).

Here you are as The James Bond of technology; perfect and effortless. The biggest challenge facing you now is how do you start drawing $5. You are already close to perfect at your work. So, you can't do it better than you do it now. You are already fast, so, you can't finish your job any faster. Basically, there doesn't seem to be a way for you to increase Y anymore and hence, your X has hit a glass ceiling!!

Fortunately, life is not so harsh. There are still ways to increase that Y but it would require you to take a fresh look at your job description. You can change broad job definition from 'going out in open to kill' to something like 'leading a team of other James Bonds in Making' OR 'developing new techniques of warfare' OR 'strategising a war' on and on.

Let me summarize all this economic sense and its impact on your career. You can't remain a programmer forever if you want to draw more and more money out of your company. You have to move up in the value chain and change your job definition almost as soon as you become good at it. It's a never ending cycle and it hits you for the first time at approximately 4 years of job life.

So, what is it I was talking about? Ah, the career directions for techies OR better still Crossroads at Year 4...

From here, your career can take three general directions (oh, it can take n directions but we'll consider only 3 to keep our model simple):

1. Technology Guru. These are the guys dev teams go to before they start the work on a complex project. They are also highly sought after by teams that completely mess up a project and are trying to figure out ways to fix the mess. All of us have read about them, heard about them, seen them and may be even worked with them. And believe me, not all of them are eccentric and very few of them have pony-tails.

2. Product Management. What if you were to tell James Bond, 'Mr. Bond, you have killed enough enemies. Why don't you now go around the world and meet country leaders/warlords to understand their pain areas. We can then do profitability analysis and develop new products. And you could take the responsibility of getting those products developed and selling them to different countries'? That's product management for techies.

3. Project Management. Much more often than not, it is an outcome of your indecisiveness. Very few people choose to be project manager. Most of them just become one. Why? Because it seems to you the 'natural evolution', though in fact, it is the path of 'least resistance'. You enter job and learn to write code. You get some experience, you learn to write good code. You get more experience, you write twice the code with half the bugs in same timeframe. Then? That's your saturation point. You can't justify increase in that hefty pay-cheque you are already drawing unless you beat your saturation point.

Nobody will ask you to become a technology guru in exchange of pay-rise. You become one out of your own choice (and hard/smart work). Nobody will ask you to get into product management. You get into it out of your own choice (and hard/smart work). So, your company says: Ok, now that you can't do it any better than you are already doing it, why don't you take this bunch of guys who can do it better than they are doing it now and help them out. So, you are given bigger work with some deadlines and you make use of your 'team' to get it done. Which means you listen to their complaints, answer their questions, clarify their doubts, teach them how to do it as good as you can do it, prevent them from leaving, press them for finishing, on and on and on...

I might have made 'Project Management' sound like a terrible thing to do but as a matter of fact it is not at all like that. And some people do choose to get into project management and it is as good a choice as the other two. The only sad aspect of this direction is that most of the people just get into it without realizing that they had a choice AND they could have done something else.

I am at the end of this blog entry now. I am sure (as I stated early on) that after reading this blog, you are in no better position to decide which ladder is for you. Well, that was not the goal and you won't know till you try it out anyway. However, I am sure you now understand that this is a decision you can't avoid unless you don't mind the path of natural evolution and become a project manager (which is, of course, not a bad thing at all).

Going forward, I hope to write some more interesting stuff on this topic. Again, not to help you make a decision but to help you understand what this decision might mean.

Ultimate law of Flyovers

2004-10-06T13:36:00.000+05:30

"Construction of flyovers keeps cumulative inconvenience to travellers constant"

Proof:

We have to first consider 2 basic laws:

1. Construction of flyover at one point shifts the bottleneck to
another point. However, the next bottleneck may not be that severe
when the flyover construction gets over.

2. Traffic increases with time.

We can derive from law 1 that there would be some relief after the
construction of flyover BUT NOT complete relief as there is another
bottleneck next to the fly-over point.

We can derive from law 2 that the next bottleneck *will* become as
severe as the previous one as traffic increases over a period of time.

Put law 1 & 2 together and you get: Any relief from fly-over is small
and short-lived. Offset it with the extra inconvenience that you went
through during flyover construction.

And what you get is the ultimate law of flyovers: "Construction of
flyovers keeps cumulative inconvenience to travellers constant".