Gluttony Inc: Food Tag!

So Hob my food-crazy buddy tagged me recently. So what follows here is Saket at his most gluttonous and haven't we all enjoyed gluttony at some point or another in our lives. I don't even know why they consider it a sin!

Top 25 is too long a list for me, so I am going to make it top 12.5. And I don't eat half as many creatures as Hob, so 12.5 is a good length for me. If you notice most of these things are Pune-specific, so it wouldn't surprise you that I gain 10 pounds when I go home. Then I work out for the rest of the year to get the weight off. If Nachiket is reminded of a few more things to eat thanks to this post, it would make it a more worthwhile post.

If you're not-Indian, this tells you why Indians are always slightly overweight. We just have the best-est food in the world. I tag anyone who reads this post to write a similar list.

12.5)Alphonso Mangoes
Anyone who tells you how nice other mangoes taste just hasn't had the real thing. "I pity the fool!"

12) Carribean Jerk Chicken
I miss the Jamerica shack in Madison close to Library mall. Jerk chicken is so well-done that the chicken just slips right off the bone. And it's just the right kind of spice too!

11) Gulab Jam with Vanilla Ice Cream
Don't you just love them when they're just the right texture and sweetness. My mum makes them the best.

10) Kaju Barphi
From Chitale's. :-) Their Chivada and Bakarwadi are little way down the list.

9) Chakali
Again my mommy is better than your mommy at this deep fried wonder! Also other kinds of deep fried 'bhaji'. Yummmyyy!!

8) Sabudana Wada (Fried sago fritters)
Oh this is my topmost favouritest and my mum knows me inside out.

7) Tiramisu
Oh yeah Italian is in here too!

6) Thai Green/Red Curry with Chicken
Thai... If you notice most of the things below this arent available in America. Thai is my favourite cuisine in America hands down.

5) Crisp Dosa from Vaishali's
Need I say more!

4) Rasmalai
Karachi Sweet Mart in Pune.

3) Bhendichi Bhaji with Waran Bhaat (Fried Lady Fingers with Rice and Daal)
Aaaahhhhh how I miss you my lovely bhendi. 1.5 years and counting!

2) Butter Chicken
I hate the butter chicken here in the US. Always has this sour taste to it, never neutral. My favourite is from Surya and Oasis in Pune.

1) Sweet Corn Chicken Soup
Again something you get so easily in India, but is unheard of in America. What a pity!

Nostalgia Revisited!

This weekend I started thinking about Pune and our old house in Shastrinagar and how life was so much simpler back in the day. I have to thank my parents for giving me such a normal and happy childhood. We used to stay in my parents' palatial quarters at 11 Jail Road in Yeravada. The Jail and Yeravada in the address above refer to the famous mental asylum in Pune, to which my family is no way connected to and which I didn't have the need to visit.:) But getting back to the palatial 11 Jail Road. It was this huge bungalow probably built early in the 20th century for some British civil servants. It was a stone's throw away from the Pune Golf Club, which again explains the British civil servant theory. I don't know if it seemed gargantuan because I was so small or because it truly was big. To give you some idea of the enormity of the place, I used to ride a cycle in the house as a 6 year old. So imagine this big house with humongous rooms and corridors and a wide expanse on the front and back of the mansion.

In the night I used to be scared of going to the toilet, cos it was so spooky and so far away from our bedroom. But sleeping all cuddled-up to both my mum and dad as a kid is this really sweet memory. I used to sleep in the niche created in between the two mattresses with one "ancestor" on either side. My parents were and still are doctors teaching at BJ Medical College and these were pretty fancy quarters for young lecturers.

The one problem was of not having any playmates around. Ratan Bai was this maid who worked at our house and she was almost like a part of the family because she worked at our house for a long time. Her kid Amit was my one constant companion and we played a lot of cricket together. There was a girl too.... I don't recall her name now... Meenal... her dad worked at the Department of Education, but she was always locked up in her house and we used to play through this grilled door. I was the free man riding my bike both indoors and outdoors and she was the jail bird. I remember I had this game where I created an airline and I sold tickets for plane rides to various places through the fence. Meenal used to buy tickets from me.

When it rained it was a lot of fun. I used to cycle through the puddles and watch the jets coming out of the back of my bike. And make paper boats and try to float them over the brown waters, or wade through the pools much to my mother's dismay. Lights used to go out during the storms and my mother, who was still studying for her MD in Anesthesia used to pore over here medical tomes in candlelight. She hated leaving me home alone on days that I didn't have school and I used to run behind my parents' Priya scooter or just grab her tight saying "Nako Jauuu Na!!" (Don't go!! in Marathi)

So basically given the lack of playmates (there were only about 12 houses on Jail Road and all of them with older kids) and the studious parents (my dad was also doing his PhD at the time), I had to invent my own solo-games. It is a skill which holds me in good stead even today and I am pretty happy even when I am all alone. My parents also got me pets... I had 2 messy rabbits and I loved them because they were so very cute! My parents got the honor of cleaning up the mess and I enjoyed the company of the cute cuddly creatures. Ofcourse when the ruling party in the house gets tired of being honored so much, the pets have to go and they were released in the wild spaces of Tingarenagar close to my kaka's (paternal uncle's) house. I was so sad that day!

Doordarshan was the only station that you could watch on that Black and White TV at home and I recall seeing Indira Gandhi giving a speech. I definitely wasn't precocious enough to understand what she was talking about. I remember reading about Operation Blue Star and General Vaidya being murdered in India Today. Wow I surprise myself sometimes!

Few years ago I think I was on my way to Neeraj Sane's house and I saw some of the roads that were the everyday route for us on that Priya scooter. Gunjan Talkies, Aga Khan Palace. The Jail Road Bungalows are now surrounded by high rise apartment complexes and I guess I won't be able to recognize that place as the home of my childhood. So many more memories still persist... throwing tantrums for the cars in the market... the weird sights, sounds, smells of an Indian bazaar and my mother haggling for groceries, new year's parties at our house with lots of guests.... Wonderful!

Stale News of the Week: Holocaust never happened says Iranian President

This just cracks me up totally. I am sure the actors in Schindler's List aren't thrilled about such statements from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I mean you saw it on DVD too Mr President... Would anyone make a story like that up? Why would Albert Einstein leave Germany then? And why would the German government call your statements "shocking and unacceptable." I don't understand the context in which Mr Ahmedinejad is making this statement, probably something to do with Israel, to gain popularity in the Arab countries. It sounds totally ridiculous nevertheless.

I don't trust everthing I read in the papers but I think doubting Holocaust, would be taking it too far. Frankly there is nothing I can do to double-check the veracity of any piece of news. I read it at face value and trust the person who is publishing it. The various reporting agencies act as watchdogs for each other, so I assume Reuters keeps BBC in line. Ofcourse there are exceptions like FOX.

On the creation of Israel. I came across this conversation President Truman had with King Saud of Saudi Arabia about this. President Truman talked about how the Jews have suffered through Holocaust and why Israel should be created as a way to appease a people without a homeland. King Saud said something to the effect, "If the Germans caused Holocaust, give the Jewish people a piece of Germany. Why do we give up a piece of Arab Land?" It sounds fairly reasonable and just to me. Only that the Jewish people don't consider Germany the chosen land or the land of their ancestors.

Added Noam Chomsky to my blogroll, inspired by Ashutosh. Also happened to fall upon Rahul Mahajans excellent posts on the Iraq War and general problems that I have alluded too in the last few posts.
Empire Notes

Freshest Stale News : Inuit sue US over climate policy

I've always wondered if there were lawyers among Eskimos. Somehow you'd guess that all of them are fishermen, igloo builders and snowmen with red carrots for noses. Well turns out they are suing the US government over it's anti-environment policies.
Link to "Inuit sue US over climate policy".

I would be scared too if I were an Eskimo. With climate change occuring at the current rate, we would lose our polar ice caps pretty soon. To give you some idea of the conflicting interests at Montreal Earth Summit, here's a snippet from another news story from BBC.

"Saudi Oil Minister Ali Ibrahim al-Naimi asked for more action to compensate petroleum-exporting countries standing to lose revenue from alternative energies.

Japanese Environment Minister Yuriko Koike called on developing countries like India and China, which are exempt from Kyoto, to join in the fight against global warming.

Indian negotiator Andimuthu Raja said growth and the elimination of poverty must take precedence over mitigating the effects of climate change."

So every country just sticks to it's own selfish interests and refuses to budge. America then uses China and India as examples and decides to not do anything about greenhouse gas emissions. The Saudi take on the issue is just plain stupid, pay us because we are going to lose business from petroleum. How about saving up the money you made from petroleum and investing it to grow in other directions?

Solar energy would be a boon to India. In Pune, where I lived for 20 odd years, 90% of the days are bright and sunny. India should take the lead in solar energy and start exporting cheap solar-power solutions to the rest of the world. So the trade deficit from petroleum will be replaced by a trade surplus from the new exports.

On America... Why does switching to renewable sources imply economic slowdown? The problem is that with Bush's failures in many other areas, he can't afford to change status quo on this issue and risk a loss. He has already given America a huge debt and he can't afford to hurt the economy more than he has already. So anti-global warming pacts just hit America at a bad time politically.

Best stale news award:Ode to George Bush!

So here is a new concept I am starting today, I will be choosing what I thought was the best news story I read yesterday and bring it to the spotlight here! What with 50 people visiting this page everyday and spending 0 seconds on it, that's quite a spotlight! It is stale news because it was in the papers yesterday, but hopefully should be fun! I'll also give you my opinion on it, which as you must have noticed by now is priceless. Okay never mind that last sentence, please come to the blog again!

"Ode to George Bush" wins the debut award hands down. Here is the poem:

The first letter in each line spells out "President George Bush". Now this is what happens with you employ an army general/dictator to design textbooks. Did Musharraf choose the poem himself and then send a copy to President Bush? I'd like to think so.

I wonder which anonymus person could write a poem praising George Bush, at a time when his approval at home is 40% and approval worldwide is 0%? I think he must be a real genius, who took up praising Bush as a literary challenge... I mean singing encomiums about the biggest failure of our times is quite a task. My plaudits to him on the noble effort.

A blunder of this magnitude can never happen in the US. Gullible americans might believe in intelligent design, but they're never going to believe in a man who makes them spend $5.6 billion per month in Iraq. Yes that's how much it costs.

Coming soon to a cellphone near you...

Ever feel terrible about missing your favourite TV show, because you were "leaving on a jetplane"? Or miss that Packers game because your cable company is making repairs? Well worry no more. You don't need Tivo no more. The cellphone in your pocket will soon allow you to tune in to your favourite shows. Ofcourse if you live in Europe or Japan, you could subscribe to a DVB-H service today. Residents of America need to be a little patient. Help is on the way!

The Nokia N92 will have a 2.8 inch screen to let you watch TV. Looks cool doesn't it?! And some well-known wireless companies are tying up with TV channels to provide us with this service, sometime next year. Now you know what I want for my birthday next year. :-)

Further description:
"Finally, we have the Nokia N92, which has support for DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting – Handhelds), along with any streams you might catch with the snazz 3G connection. It’s a dual folder, similar to the Samsung D307, giving you a nice landscape orientation for video viewing on the 2.8-inch, 16 million color, 320 x 240 display. There are once again two cameras available for your snapping pleasure, with 2 megapixels in the high-res one. There is also 802.11g WiFi and the usual Bluetooth and USB 2.0, along with 90MB of storage, expandable through miniSD."

What would you do if I sang out of tune
Would you stand up and walk out on me
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song
I will try not to sing out of key

Joe Cocker's deep voice singing this amazing tune is a childhood memory I can scarce forget, the title song for a most memorable show. Those were my Wonder Years and also those of Kevin Arnold, the teenager protagonist of an ABC series called "The Wonder Years". It's amazing how you live your life through the eyes of a TV character and Kevin Arnold as average as he was, just was someone I identified with. I fell in love with Winnie Cooper through him and lived through the ups and downs in his life in much the same way. Not having any siblings myself, "budhead" Wayne and pretty Karen, were a part of my family as well.

I looked up what Winnie (played by Danica McKellar) and Kevin (played by Fred Savage) are doing now. Danica was a mathematics student at UCLA. I am not surprised... She did look the part in the series as well. Fred Savage graduated from Stanford with a degree in English. As usual a wiki link here.

I never got to see the final episode of Wonder Years. Priyu once told me about how the series ended and here is a gist from Wikipedia for the rest of you:

"Reflecting on how everyone eventually grows up and how childhood comes to an end, Kevin and Winnie have one last passionate day together before going their separate ways once and for all. Winnie goes to Europe to study art, while Kevin stays in the States, gets married, and has a son. The two write to each other for eight years. Kevin's father dies of a heart attack, and his brother takes over the family business. The fates of many supporting characters are resolved, and the narrator (adult Kevin) tells us: "Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day you're in diapers, the next day you're gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul. I remember a place, a town, a house like a lot of other houses, a yard like a lot of other yards, on a street like a lot of other streets. And the thing is, after all these years, I still look back, with wonder.""

Reading this story makes me extremely sad for some strange reason. Somehow the loss seems very personal and deep. (Though I've been through much worse...) How I wish I could be 14 once again! Here's to remembering those pretty girls I was infatuated with, those beautiful dreams of becoming an astrophysicist and reaching for the stars, to playing cricket on the terrace, to eating 'ambe' every summer, to the time long ago when I loved a girl... my Wonder Years.

Adding another classmate and friend from COEP, Milind Toke to my blogroll. Milind is this really nice guy from my class who works at CDAC in Pune on making some supercomputers.

Also do visit this blog by Aparna too, I thought it was really interesting.
http://thevariegatedsky.blogspot.com/
I haven't read a lot of Tagore, but the story from her current post is just wayy too brilliant. I should read some more.

The noisy opiate of the masses

Every morning I listen to "Forum" on KQED San Francisco, our local NPR station. Today's show was about translating the Bible, with some Bible experts talking about the difficulties of translating old texts. It got me thinking about the ridiculous extent some people take their religious beliefs to.

Concern 1 - Militant Attitudes unsuitable for the times

Violence, however wrong I may consider it, sometimes appears justified. Say a religion was born in a violent time, it is likely that the religious fathers educate their followers about the righteousness of battle in the face of injustice. However such attitudes will tend to outlive the violent period in history and cause similar violence in a protracted manner. Few people who believe in such books could magnify some small misunderstandings out of proportion and apply the same violent principles for an era which doesnt require it.

Concern 2 - Bad Signal to Noise Ratio

Language can be a challenge too. If the words of a messiah come from a time without written records, we now rely on a third person arguably fourth person's opinion of the founder's teachings.

Second there is the problem of translation. Since Aramaic is obviously not something anyone speaks these days, we rely on a translator to tell us what Jesus's apostle told some other person what Jesus said. Quite likely there will be inaccuracies in the translation because some concepts don't carry forth too well. Also metaphorical references are likely to be wrongly interpreted. Shades of Aramaic or Hebrew words from one timezone to another and one region to another may vary widely too.

In purely, EE terms, the signal to noise ratio of the final version of the religious book is rather low. The preacher's message may not even be clearly present anymore, given the number of sources of noise.

Concern 3 - Unscientific teachings

When religion starts encroaching on science things go awry even faster. A flat earth, geo-centric universe, demons and dragons.... the scientific inaccuracies in religion are too numerous. Do you really want to believe so strongly in the words of a person who lived more than 2000 years ago, who didn't even know Newton's Laws or the existence of planets beyond Jupiter or nuclear weapons ?

Concern 4 - Bribing with a Road to Heaven

"Spread my words to 10 people and you will assure yourself a place in heaven." Any religion which preaches that instantaneously loses it's divine touch for me. Seems like a very earthly quality, this desire for propagation...

Concern 5 - My Chosen People

Mrs Samant, a teacher at Loyola once said to us, "Neither heaven nor hell exists. You get it all right here..." Judgements are passed everyday and you face the consequences of your actions in this lifetime itself, rewards and punishments.
"You were born in this high caste, because you did something great in your previous lifetime." Complete BS!! The truth is you just got lucky you were born into a family whose forefathers won some wars. And now you can claim to be superior, inspite of being stupid enough to actually believe in that crap.

My final thoughts on religion... God probably exists beause we can probably never explain everything. But believing literally in the words of someone who lived in a very different time and region and preached in another language has humongous drawbacks. Don't do it!! Unfortunately the vast majority of people live their lives by such codes and are open to be manipulated by them. Our world today would be a much better place, if people used their own sense of right and wrong instead.

Animal Farm - The Genius of George Orwell

Today I read what was without a doubt the best book I have ever read. Animal Farm, is truly the work of a genius and I am glad I spent Thanksgiving weekend reading this amazing book. What got me started was this list by TIME magazine of the 100 best novels since 1923. (Why such an arbitrary date? I am guessing they want to help increase the sales of books that still have an active copyright. If you have a different guess, please post a comment.) So once again I got reminded of the fact that I need to read a lot more. I have only read 7 of the 100:

- Animal Farm
- 1984
- Catch 22
- The Catcher in the Rye
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- The Great Gatsby
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (half-way through so far)

To the uninitiated Animal Farm is a satirical novel based on Communist Russia. The animals at a farm throw out the human owners of the farm and start managing it themselves, only to find a little later that pigs replace the humans as tyrannical dictators. It exemplifies how "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". The parallels between Soviet Russia and actual events related to the Russian Revolution don't just end there. Each of the characters and events in the novel are based on Soviet history and are easy to identify. The Wikipedia article linked here gives the other connections to Soviet History.

I found many parts of the book hilarious. One of my favourites was where the animals design a green flag with a hoof similar to the red flag with a sickle and hammer. Also the way the commandments keep changing with the final commandment reading "All Animals are Equal. But some animals are more equal than others." The hypocrisy and greed of the pigs is noteworthy, not unlike that of politicians the world over. The lies remain the same whether they are about Windmills or WMDs.

Food for thought

Bip was a precocious 12 year old. Kids in the Pericone house had to take on responsibilities very early on in their lives. Child labor might be illegal in the state of New York, but at the Ambrosia restaurant run by the Pericones, it was all okay. Any other talents that their 4 kids might have were meaningless, if they couldn't be put to use at the restaurant. Bip, was mathematically gifted and at school he used to sit on the last bench in class learning algebra, while the rest of the students were struggling with fractions. Bip's dad didn't care. As long as Bip knew enough arithmetic to add and subtract the checks at Ambrosia, dad wasn't concerned.

Dan Pericone himself spent time crafting some interesting new recipes for the menu. Ambrosia had a strong reputation to live up to and Dan's training at one of the top culinary schools in Tuscany held him in good stead. Being voted the best Italian restaurant 4 years in a row was a matter of distinct pride for him. Bip was fascinated by his dad's experiment kitchen, but being the bumbling child he was, his dad had made this private kitchen a no-zone for Bip. "You've broken too many things in there already. Don't you ever dare step into that room." "But Dad can't I help you create some new recipes myself?... I have some ideas I wanna share with you." "Son, I want you to help your brothers in the kitchen. They are out there cooking all day and they could use a helping hand. Someday you'll get to create some masterpieces of your own in there, when you grow up."

Bip's three elder brothers were hard at work at the restaurant. Evenings were very hectic and chaotic times there. Bip wanted to help with the cooking but no one would let him touch anything. Bip's mum would tell him, "Sweetie, why don't you just go home and study? You're too young to do anything here." "Mum, why dont I cook some pasta... I'll do it just like it says in the recipe." Mama Pericone smiles and looks up at Bip while she's stirring some soup. "There are going to be some judges from Zagat here today. Maybe some other time. Why don't you just watch Mike cook and check that he doesnt miss anything in the recipe? Can you do that for me please?" Relucatantly Bip heads towards Mike and watches him cook. He hates having to just check other people's cooking.

Stop Global Warming

If you haven't joined the Virtual March already, please do so at http://stopglobalwarming.org.

I strongly believe in the cause myself and I am planning to make some changes in my lifestyle to be more environment-friendly. I hope all my friends here will also do the same.

For a start:
- Switch off lamps whenever you're not in the room.
- Use paper bags at the grocery store.

Cause you are the rocket scientist

So for what you've all been waiting for. My take on the Kentucky Fried Chicken Advert and probably some of the other TV commercials. I am going to make some huge generalizations, so you don't have to read this unless you want to. Also this is just my opinion... don't sue me if you work for KFC. :-)

Why does KFC produce such dumb sounding commercials?

Theory 1: Target Audience
In these times of diet-conscious well-informed people, the task of selling unhealthy food such as KFC is doubly hard. As a generalisation people with lower IQs are poor and they are also less health conscious. Any health-conscious person who has seen how greasy the General's chicken is won't step into a KFC, unless he is driving in a desert on a hungry stomach for many hours or he is being told to eat it at gunpoint or in Fear Factor. So obviously smart people aren't KFC's target audience, which explains the dumbness of the commercial.

On a sidenote, I read this somewhere, carbs are the cheapest food category. Fats are next. Proteins are the most expensive per pound. To further the classification, some cuts of beef are probably very cheap. (Cheeseburgers are much cheaper than Steaks.) The point of this was that if you are poor, you tend to eat more carbs because they are cheaper. Poor people tend to be fatter for the same reason.

Theory 2: Mnemonic Value
These days people don't watch commercials much. They just switch channels in the commercial breaks. What's more with the constant bombardment of advertisements people have become insensitive to them. For a commercial to stand out and be remembered they have to do something special. Lacking logic and jarring the viewer's mind is one method. That I am blogging about the KFC commercial is a testament to the advertizing company's genius. It has achieved it's purpose in a sense because the advertisement has been remembered unlike many others which don't get remembered.

Adding two more friends to my blogroll. Ajit Oke, engineer extrordinaire, topper of IISC and yet a thoroughly nice guy. Also a friend from Loyola Aditya Kelkar, who trained for a marathon and probably is going to run one this week. I hope to draw some inspiration from him and try the same feat this year. Wish me luck!

Return of the COEP-ians

Sorry my next post isn't about the KFC ad but about COEP. I am just happy about the news that PIET will now turn back into COEP.

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=157559

What's more is that the article talks about some interesting industry linked MTech courses as well. Telco will be sponsoring an MTech course in Automobile engineering with teachers from Telco as well. Seems like a sea-change from my time at COEP.

Awaaz kunacha? SEE-O-EE-PEE cha!:-)

Bad Advertisements - Is there a pattern?

KFC Ad

Scene at what looks like NASA offices

Bald Fat Nerd> "What are you having?"
Blonde> "KFC. It's just 4 dollars for the meal."
Bald Fat Nerd> "What?? I just paid double that amount at a casual dining place!!"
Blonde> "Hahahahhaha (stupid theatrical laugh)"
Bald Fat Nerd> "Why are you laughing??"
Blonde> "Cause you're the rocket scientist"

Would you call this ad lame or genius? Analysis on my next post.

Jarhead

Movie Review
Rating 3/5 (Average)

"The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war"
- Desiderius Erasmus

Jarhead recounts the experiences of a US Marine Anthony Swofford (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) in the First Gulf War against Iraq. It goes through his time in training and the days of the war. I have to admire the realistic nature of the whole movie. Jamie Foxx fits the role of the staff sergeant like a nice pair of jeans. So as far as the acting and direction is concerned I didn't have any complaints. The story keeps you engrossed, so you won't get bored either. For a movie that was probably shot in the deserts of Arizona, it looks really accurate. The burning oil fields and oil-rain are a horrific sight.

My major gripe with the movie is about it's timing and about some other facts in the story. It seems like an effort made by the Bush government to improve recruitment in the military given the sharp drop in the number of new recruits. So Swoff doesnt kill a single person in the movie and neither does anyone in his whole platoon. Also no one dies in this group in action. So it just smells of propaganda that way. Now I might be wrong because the first Gulf War got over too soon and so the depiction might be fairly accurate. I wonder though if there are some kids in the Deep South that take this movie as a model of what Iraq is like today and join the army. Well maybe no one is that dumb.

U2 Vertigo Tour in Oakland

I have one ticket for the U2 Concert in Oakland.
Date: Tuesday 11/07/2005
Venue: Oakland Arena
Time: 7.30 pm
Section: 215
Row: 14
Face Value: $105
Asking Price: $105 OBO

Pick up ticket from work or home. Call me on 408-533-5349.
Payment in Cash.

Sameer's new blog

This is my friend Sameer's new blog. He sketches brilliantly and you can see a few samples on this blog here.

On vacation

Just so the frequent visitors to my blog know, I am on vacation currently. My parents are visiting and I am trying to show them a good time in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Diego. We've already been to "the City of Angels" (although I wonder which Angel would want to live there) and "the City of Lights", and now will be spending two days in San Diego. So after Disnyeland and Universal Studios in Los Angeles, we will be going to Legoland today. It's been my lifelong dream to visit one of these. My dad got me a few Lego sets back when I was a kid... three BASICs and one Technic. I was so totally envious of other kids who had many more.

Anyways will post some proper posts soon.

Alarming Gas Price Increase: Have car-makers snoozed long enough?



"We promise that fuel efficiency is just as important to us as it is to you."

So goes a Chevy TV advert that talks about how Chevrolet is also giving a fuel efficiency of 30 highway mpg for some of their cars. Seems like American car makers are finally waking up and smelling the impending losses. This year has been a nightmare for American car manufacturers like Chevrolet. Just scan any newspaper and you see the following stories:

"Ford plans shake-up after losses: Reports 284 million dollars in losses and plans a significant restructuring"

"General Motors skids to huge loss: 1.19 billion dollar losses"

We all know the rigmarole. Hurricanes on the Gulf coast, damage the oil refineries, drive up gas prices. Sales of SUVs and trucks go down. Ford and GM are in deep trouble.

Don't even get me started on what a stupid idea SUVs and Hummers are. Huge vehicles that just drink a lot of gas. Have you ever driven behind one of these monsters? You just can't see the road or road signs ahead of these things. They are so big that more people die of accidents with SUVs than most other car classes. So in addition to burning more fuel and producing more greenhouse gases, these cars also drive up insurance premiums for people like you and I, who aren't even buying these vechicles. I don't know what Ford and GM were thinking. I am sure there are some really smart people there and you can see a trend of people shifting over to more fuel-efficient and reliable cars. Blame it on the Japanese car makers who are thinking smart and thinking ahead.

My Acura isn't the best as far as fuel economy is concerned. It gives about 25 miles per gallon in the city and I am really kicking myself for not buying a hybrid. What's more in California you can use the carpool lane if you drive a car that gives more than 50 miles per gallon, even if you're driving alone. So you save even more money on gas as you cut across the rush hour gridlock here in the Valley, instead of burning more fuel trying to find a decent radio station.

These days if you are watching a football game, you are bombarded with car commercials. But no matter how many beefy guys egg you on to buy a truck, or how many employee discounts they offer, "Times they are a'Changin". People don't buy SUVs and trucks unless they really are filthy rich or they are totally daft. (Does that mean dense people watch more football... well maybe I am dense then!) As Rose (played by Kate Winslet) from Titanic says "What is this male obsession with size??" Why do some men have to drive huge gargantuans to prove their masculinity?

Seems to me that GM and Ford were counting on ekeing out a market in this big car segment what with Toyota, Honda and Mazda gulping down the regular car segment. But not for too long. Thankfully Chevrolet seems to have woken up and it might end up being the only American automaker to survive these testing times.

The foot in the mouth disease

Okay and now to the post you've all been waiting for... (virtual drumroll....) Gaurav vs IIPM. I've spent the past 3 hours just tracing the story from one blog to another. If you are interested in doing the same here are the major one's I'd recommend.

(Right from the horse's mouth)
Gaurav
Kautilya
Ashutosh
Ramanand
Hirak

My thoughts on this. Unfortunately this situation has been analyzed to death on most of these blogs that any thoughts I've had would just be mirroring most of these blogs. IIPMs approach to this story is best described by phrases such as "throwing an axe at one's own leg", "putting your foot in your own mouth" and other such variations of the word suicide. It just shows a lack of some basic business sense... all the more reason why nobody should want to study at a place like that. If IIPM really doesn't give what it advertizes, they should want to avoid any bad publicity. Public memory is typically really short and the story wouldn't have become this big if they had just kept quiet.

As for Gaurav, he is getting more than a few days worth of his "15 minutes of fame. I've known him since class 10, when we used to sit in the Math Olympiad classes together and we even went to college together at COEP. He isn't the same person he used to be back then, but I have to admire the way he is handling the issue.

The dilemma of the non-resident Indian guy

I try to avoid talking about personal matters on this blog usually, but I want to assert an opinion on something I'm not pleased about. It's the severe dearth of intelligent, well-read, articulate and most importantly "single" Indian women out there. Quite frankly single Indian women practically don't exist in the Bay area or atleast the circles I move around in. The odd single girl is so dense that even making an intelligent conversation is a challenge. Then the rare single girl who is capable of such thoughts, has some other annoying personal trait... selfishness, super-sentimentality and craziness to list a few. Obviously you're not surprised they are available.

Your parents don't want you to date any American girls, whether they are Asian or white or even Indian for that matter. I am very far from perfect, but some of the really smart good-looking Indian guys I know also seem to be facing the same problem. Is this the price of success? You don't really want to have an arranged marriage because finally it is a huge gamble and by now you've already realized that your parents have a very different world-view from your own. Are we just going to end up as misfits both in India and America, where we can't like American girls because they are too American and don't get along with Indian girls because they are too Indian?

Armageddon?

Has the rate of natural calamities just increased exponentially this year? Earthquakes and torrential rains in South Asia, Hurricanes in North and Central America, Avian Flu in South-east Asia on the rise. To top that there are man-made disasters too, Islamic terrorists strike in London and Bali. Ofcourse I should also include the Iraq war and the casualties daily there. I don't mean to be cynical but I feel like global human population has shrunk substantially this year.

For some reason though I think human beings are being an extreme burden on the globe. In India while medicine allows us to reduce death rates, no one makes an equally valiant attempt to bring down the birth rate. We have probably brought a large number of species to extinction in recent years. We are deforesting more regions in the world, producing more greenhouse gases... the list is endless. Even though global warming is now a scientific fact, the big superpowers aren't ready to relent and even make a conscious attempt to reverse the deadly process.(The EU is making an attempt I believe). Is global warming going to be our downfall? Would countries be willing to make short-term sacrifices for the sake of long-term sustainability? Are we going to cause our own extinction?

55 word Story Tag from Nupur

Crappy writing warning: Do not read further... you risk severe brain damage if you try to read this story.

Amit and Nikhil are sitting in a Silicon Valley Starbucks. People around the coffee shop can't figure out why these two Indian guys appear so animated and why they might be gesturing so violently at each other, and yet whispering softly enough to not disturb anyone. Young Harry is a budding Venture Capitalist, and he senses an opportunity in what obviously sounds like a business plan. The two Indian guys sporting Nvidia T-shirts look like technical wizards to him. He slowly moves closer to them and hears Amit say “I think we should start this way…”. Harry interrupts awkwardly, “I am a VC, I couldn’t help watching you guys… Is there any way I can help ?” “Oh sure” says Amit. Harry is a little surprised by his willingness. “This is the problem… one of my friends asked me to write a 55 word story and I just can’t find a way to end this story!!!”

Okay so that obviously wasn't 55 words long. So here is another attempt:

Amit and Nikhil are discussing an important problem in a Silicon Valley Starbucks. People around the coffee shop can't figure out why these two Indian guys appear so animated and yet whisper so softly. Amit suddenly breaks down and starts weeping inexorably. Nikhil says, “Amit it’s okay… you don’t have to write a 55-word story”.

Tagging:

Suvid

Sumeet

Ashutosh

Manish

Vinayak

Adding my friend Sathish Jothikumar to my blogroll. Sathish interned at Nvidia in my group this summer. He is a graduate student at the University of Texas-Austin. His blog is called "I am the alpha and the omega".

Napoleon's Buttons: A Book about Chem-History



History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
- Winston Churchill

On Nachiket's recommendation I picked up this book and I loved it. The book talks about "how 17 molecules changed history", and it makes for some very pleasant reading. This book is a treasure-trove of interesting trivia. That helps if you want to impress some pretty girls with interesting dinner conversation. Ofcourse it hasn't worked for me yet, but as you can tell it's only a matter of time before it does. ;-) If you don't believe me, here are a few examples:

- Nutmeg contains a chemical similar to a hallucinogen called Ecstasy. So if you consume excessive amounts of nutmeg, through some biochemical pathway the nutmeg gets converted to ecstacy and voila! you see "Lucy in the sky with diamonds". So now you know why your mom told you never to add too much nutmeg to your food. (Also don't blame me whether that nutmeg experiment works out for you or not.)

- The book claims that the reason why some people love spicy food is because chilli induces pain. So the body releases endorphins to ease the pain, which as well all know makes us happy. So if you're addicted to the chilli, now you know why.

- The name of the book comes from another fascinating piece of history about Napoleon. The authors claim that when Napoleon's armies reached Russia during it's severe winter, their buttons made from tin softened from the cold. So the French troops were seen holding their uniforms together with one hand and holding their weapons in another.

This last one sounds apocryphal to me, as do a few others such as one about the Antarctic explorers Scott and Amundsen from the chapter on Ascorbic Acid. But there isn't a whole lot I can do to test the verity of these incidents. It sure sounds like some interesting piece of fiction if not non-fiction. One fails to grasp the significant role that chemistry played in shaping history, and this book highlights just that. If you love science and also like to learn something about history along the way, I'd recommend this book.

National Public Radio

Hirak once mentioned something about National Public Radio in a comment on this blog. Unfortunately, I forgot to check up on NPR stations in Madison at the time. Yesterday though I started listening to KQED San Francisco and I just can't take my ears off it.

Seems to me like television caters for the masses and the public radio caters to the smart people. I couldn't have imagined so many wonderful shows existed on NPR. "All things considered" give you very high quality news. Last night at 11, they also had this quiz based on events from last week called "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me". The guests included Moa Rocca, Ebert and Roper's Roper and some third lady I didn't know. But I loved the idea of a quiz show based on current events. In the morning and evening today I listened to these shows with word games, anagrams and poetry. If you are more of a literary person, you would have liked this program with short stories.

NPR seems to have all the entertainment I ever wanted. Plaudits on such fine programming.

Badgers Beat Wolverines!!!

UW beat UM today. Happiest day of my life! :)

Go Badgers!!!

An Irish Airman Foresees his Death by W B Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Wonderful Long Weekend

I had a fun-filled long Labor Day weekend. I headed with some friends, to South Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border. It's been a big change from the drudgery of work. Sometimes the work week does take it's toll. Thankfully weekends such as these are like knights in shining armors coming to the rescue.

The most fun part of the weekend was white-water rafting. (For some reason I keep typing the anagram "farting" each time I try to type "rafting".) My first such encounter. We headed to the Truckee river rapids upstream from Reno. The rafting was very uneventful in the beginning. Jake, our guide, was a stock market trader. So much to the dismay of the rest of the occupants of my raft, we got talking about stocks... NVDA ATYT Jim Kramer's Mad Money, Roth IRAs. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, and we crossed many level 1 and 2 rapids without any untoward incidents. The higlight of the ride on the raft was our fall into the level 3 rapids. The boat toppled over me, and another person then fell on top of me as well. I couldn't breathe for a few seconds. I surfaced moments later headed for some rocks, but managed to swerve past them and finally climbed onto another boat. That was a scary minute and the people from the other boat were rather enthralled by our little debacle.

Saturday afternoon was spent on these short hikes around the lake. On Saturday night I went to the casinos on the Nevada side of the border. Caesar's was probably the only famous name that I visited. I bet 2 dollars at the slot machines and promptly lost it all, without having more than what I invested at any given point. Gurpreet, a friend who came along put in 3 dollars and turned that into 13 dollars at one point. However his winnings dwindled to 5 dollars and he decided to bail out. I had no fun gambling because I just didn't win. Divine intervention I guess... God doesn't want me to get addicted to gambling.("Rum Rama and Rummy" as they say in Marathi, the three vices ;-).. Wine Women and Gambling, I can't recall the exact English analog to that.)

Sunday evening we were aboard the Dixie 2 on a two-hour long cruise on Lake Tahoe. Learnt a few pieces of interesting trivia related to Lake Tahoe. Apparently it is about 1600 feet deep at some points. That's a scary piece of information to give on a cruise.

Pictures from the trip are located at http://community.webshots.com/user/saketjamkar

Katrina and the Waves

Hurricane Katrina is such an antithesis in itself. Such a pretty name and such a gruesome horror she left in her wake.

Just a few observations... I've been watching the news stories about Katrina on NBC, CNN and Fox. Is it just me or does it seem like only African-American people are stranded in New Orleans? I mean the rare white people you see there are old people who probably didn't watch the weather reports or tourists. It's not completely surprising either. Pardon my generalization (I probably don't know enough about Southern states), but poor people are more likely to be the African-Americans. The white Americans down South are well-off in part, because their ancestors employed the poor African-Americans as slave laborers at some point. I've heard that some blogs claim that the only reason why such a mess happened in Lousiana was because all the poor people who didn't have a car or couldnt afford a full tank of gas were black, that things might have been much better less chaotic had a calamity struck in the Midwest somewhere. I don't know how to argue with that. Natural disasters seem to be racially prejudiced in the South too. Katrina killed more poor people than rich.

Some tourists have had some tough luck. They landed in New Orleans and then their flights out of New Orleans got cancelled. The rental car agencies ran out of cars and the tourists decided to just sit bravely in their hotel rooms. My feeling is that nobody anticipated that Katrina would cause the levees in New Orleans to break.

Hindsight ofcourse, is 20-20. My prayers for the people enduring hard times in New Orleans. Most of us have had such priveleged lives that we can't imagine dealing with such things. It probably just takes a Richter 8 earthquake on the San-Andreas for me to be in a similar situation... and such seismic calamities can't even be predicted very accurately.

Welcoming my good friend Suvid Nadkarni to the blogging world. Do visit Suvid's blog
Straight from the heart for some thought provoking posts.

Also this weekend I took part in the Vibha 10k Run. It was an event to help raise money for underprivileged children in India. Visit their website here.

Pay It Forward



I cried today. Movies rarely bring tears to my eyes. But luckily for me, I watched a masterpiece that evoked such an emotion in me. "Pay it forward" is a movie about a class assignment that social studies teacher Eugene Simonet (played by Kevin Spacey) sets his students. Mr Simonet asks his 11-year old students to come up with an idea to change the world. Quite a daunting demand to make of his 6th grade class, isn't it? What's even more interesting is that one of his students actually manages to come up with a revolutionary idea.

While some people decide to use the power of exponentiation to make money, Trevor McKinney (played by Haley Joel Osmont) comes up with a different pyramid scheme to make the world a better place. May be I was not blessed with such brilliant mathematics teachers when I was 11, but the whole concept itself sounds too extraordinary for a child to invent. Trevor decides to help three people with some serious problem in their lives. The three people in turn should now play good samaritan to 3 more people. The rule is that you don't expect anything in return.

Now I admit the movie is predictable in parts and is really dark in others. Some others might find the whole idea too quixotic, but do give this movie a try. I saw it on TBS on a Saturday afternoon, so they'll likely show it again sometime. I feel motivated to read other books written by Catherine Ryan Hyde. This story does have a Paulo Coehlo-sque touch to it. Kevin Spacey, Haley Joel Osmont and Helen Hunt do a fine job with their acting too. So now because you heard of this movie from me, you have to pay it forward and tell 3 more people about it. Carpe Diem!

Book Review: Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track



Thanks to the Santa Clara City Library, I read the latest book about Richard Feynman no sooner than I heard about it. The book is a collection of letters from/to Richard Feynman compiled by Michelle Feynman. I read a lot of the letters from Feynmans MIT, Princeton and Los Alamos days. Michelle also talks about her father in the prologue and his absent-mindedness.

His love letters to Arlene reveal a side of Richard that's hard to imagine in the other books. Some of the missives to his mother trying to explain the reasons for marrying Arlene, dying from tuberculosis, are also included. The most moving letter is the one Richard Feynman writes to his dead wife. It is probably the saddest letter I have read.

Another surprising thing I noted was the number of Indian students who wrote to Richard Feynman. I counted around 10 letters in a very quick scan. The Feynman Lectures in Physics seem to have made an impact on the lives of students the world over.

Although email has improved the speed of communication across the globe, somehow there is a bigger loss hidden behind this agility. Seems to me email isn't as conducive for collection/storage. I remember losing atleast two email addresses in the past. One hotmail address that I never accessed for about 5 years now and the wisc.edu addresses which I lost on leaving UW. Also I tend to delete email right away on most occassions, to avoid clutter. Arguably I haven't recieved any email worth cherishing in the past many years. I think if one sees somebody's handwriting, it makes you want to keep communication more than reading Times New Roman's creations.

Photo-Blog

Found this link on Hob's blog.
http://test.weblogs.us/

Also while you're at it, you might wanna look at photos I took here.
http://community.webshots.com/user/saketjamkar

I don't take pictures half as well as the guy above.

Don't I know you from somewhere??!!

"Hey! Don't I know you from somewhere? Aren't you from Bombay?" an over-excited voice says behind me at the bookstore. I turn back and look at an Indian guy I've never seen before and never really want to see again either. "Well actually I'm from Poona...", I say. The other guy goes "Oh okay... you know you look exactly like this friend of mine from Bombay called Rajeev. What's your name?" I am all befuddled and go "Saket". "You're not going to believe this I have this friend called Saket who works at Intel. Where do you work?"....

The conversation goes on and the stranger tries to make random connections with you, trying to rouse a feeling of kinship in your heart. Another of his friends comes around and then both keep talkng about things. People ask you a lot of questions. If you're naive you might end up thinking, "What nice people, and such a small world! There were so many things I had in common with them." Ofcourse if you kind of have an inkling what this could be about, you just bolt and run away from anyone super-friendly.

Amway, Quickstar,... the names change but the fundamental concept remains the same. Some really smart guy who understands human psychology uses certain human weaknesses to make money. People get fooled for a while and things work fine. Each person who gets duped, tries just enough to recover the money they spent on becoming a franchisee. Occasionally some people try much harder and take up fleecing gullible people as a profession.

This oft-repeated ploy has been tried on me at every big store I visit. IKEA, Borders and many others. I am totally sickened by these non-Egyptians trying to make a pyramid. Money as an end in itself is the worst motivation a human being can have. Luckily I haven't been dumb enough not to fall for this stupidity in the past and hope to keep it that way in the future.

Bombay Rains

Mumbai(Bombay) lashed by rains. Found an image from NASA that shows the rate of precipitation. Looks scary doesn't it?

Check this webpage from NASA Tropical Rain Measuring Mission.

I don't know this guy but I loved what he had to say:

"Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum"
[I think that I think, therefore I think that I am]

American Media Bashing

For the past many weeks each time I watch CNN, there is this one news-story that is always being reported. "Natalie Holloway lost in Aruba for 15 days...30 days... 52 days". America get over it!! I wonder why the media is so fixated on this story. So the girl made out with a guy and wasn't seen thereafter... Reporting it may be once or twice is fair for a month. Devoting 10 mins to the story everyday, is just plain badgering. Don't get me wrong, I know it's unfortunate and her immediate family must be going through hell, but CNN please have some sense of proportion.

I have a theory about this piece of news though. I think Michael Jackson bribed some of these news channels and brought Natalie Holloway to the spotlight. Think about it... missing girl comes to the forefront, weird paedophile is relegated to the back pages. Sounds completely logical!

May be it is George W Bush who is pushing his own failures in Iraq into obscurity. Devote more time to the missing blonde girl and people will stop paying attention to the hundreds dying in Iraq every week. Apparently the ratings for FOX News have fallen by 58% since the November elections.

Newspapers in America are rather strange too. Local news is so prominently reported that one wouldn't imagine that a world outside the Bay Area existed. BBC News is the one beacon of hope in the vast wilderness of bad news coverage. It has become a part of my staple diet of sorts now. I am certain that the BBC News webpage is immensely popular among Indians but if you haven't visited do give http://news.bbc.co.uk a shot.

My own recent discovery in the Bay Area is Radio Humsafar. It is an AM radio station that broadcasts in Hindi and Punjabi. 1200 AM.. The broadcast signal is a little weaker than the rest of the stations, but it's good to hear an Indian language on the radio waves. Plus with the amount of advertisements and pop-ups that inundate your screen on the Times of India website, alternative sources for news about India are always welcome.

Intel V AMD : Nasty Intel Compilers!!
"In AMD's recient anti-trust lawsuit AMD have examined the Intel compiler and found that it deliberatly runs code slower when it detects that the processor is an AMD. "To achieve this, Intel designed the compiler to compile code along several alternate code paths. ... By design, the code paths were not created equally. If the program detects a "Genuine Intel" microprocessor, it executes a fully optimized code path and operates with the maximum efficiency. However, if the program detects an "Authentic AMD" microprocessor, it executes a different code path that will degrade the program's performance or cause it to crash."

Gun Germs and Steel

I have referred to the book here on many occassions, though I haven't been patient enough to read it. So if anyone is interested in watching a National Goegraphic TV show about the same Pulitzer winning book and Jared Diamond's theories please visit:

http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/

Please support you local PBS station!

Inspired by Sumedha...

Science @ the movies

I watched "Batman Begins" for the second time this week at the IMAX. It is a spectacular movie and I think I liked it better than Spiderman. The dialogues are especially witty. But I couldn't help noticing a logical fallacy. Something to do with the microwave emitters in the latter part of the movie. Microwaves have the ability to vibrate water molecules inside objects. Thus if a strong microwave source comes close to us, we would get baked because our bodies contain a large amount of water. Secondly, the Batmobile is such a huge and bulky vehicle that it makes me wonder what gas mileage it gives and if Batman can ever be seen at a gas pump complaining about high fuel prices in Gotham.

Sidenote on mainstream movies @ IMAX... Don't go there! I dont think the medium is designed for regular movies. Scenery looks great and real and so do the first person pictures. But a dome theater is unsuitable for viewing people's faces and fast moving fight sequences. During some conversations people talking to each other are about 180 degrees apart and you have to twist your neck in both directions to see the people responsible for the words.

I also saw War of the Worlds this week. It was a good movie but definitely not as brilliant as Batman. I didn't particularly like Tom Cruise's acting and I thought some of the alien devices were unusually primitive. I mean a race that is capable of the feats shown in the movie definitely would have invented infrared vision to count the number of people inside a room.

On a sidenote, I think Steven Spielberg didn't do a great job with the conclusion of the War of the Worlds. The reasons for the alien defeat are so subtlly introduced that even smart people don't understand them.(Case to point Sumeet and Manish). I don't want to be the one who divulges the suspense of the movie. If you came back from the theater feeling ripped off and don't understand why the aliens die, think about this. When the Spanish Conquistadors reached South America, Mayans were wiped out because they weren't immune to the viruses that the Spaniards brought along with them.

Guten Tag!
Okay I got book tagged by Nupur so here goes:

Total Number of Books I own: about a 100

Last book I bought:
I bought two during my last trip to the bookstore:
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: Haven't read it yet and I haven't heard a lot of good things about it.

Catcher in the Rye: I've read this one before and it has such a lot of trivia connected to it. Mark Chapman was reading it around the time he killed John Lennon, It's fairly depressing, so it doesn't surprise me.

Last book I read:
1984 by George Orwell if you mean read completely.
Currently I am reading Brighter than a thousand suns by Robert Jungk.

Five books that mean a lot to me:
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach - I think this book influenced me a lot as a child. It was the first time I was introduced to the idea of perfectionism and I found it fascinating. The story of how the pursuit of one's dreams can result in being ostracized by society.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - Again a very motivating book. Talks about a shephard boy and the power of dreams. It kind of taught me that resting on one's laurels isn't the way to live life. Learn to dream big. Best summarized by Shaw in these lines: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle - One of the finest mysteries I've read. I loved Sherlock Holmes when I was in Loyola. I read virtually everything ever written about Sherlock Holmes by class 10. I wanted to take up forensic medicine as a profession. Well that was another time.

Surely you're joking Mr Feynman - Incredibly interesting book. Richard Feynman is a rolemodel to me. I am going to sound awfully cliched with this, because I've seen a lot people mention this book in their tags so far, but I think his life is an example of how to live a very complete life. Here is a nobel prize winner in physics who played the bongos, sketched, played pranks on people, taught at Caltech, brought to light Challenger Shuttle failure.

The Great Escape - A world war 2 thriller. It is the book that the famous movie is based on and it describes how POWs in Germany hatched a plan to escape. It goes into really fascinating details of how they hid the tunnels they dug, how to make uniforms and IDs out of regular materials, make them look older and such. This is that rare rollercoaster ride in 300 pages.

Tagging along:

Sumeet

Ashutosh

Hob

Manish

The merits of melanin

Something struck me as really queer the other day when I was talking to this American friend. Most people categorize me as South Indian given my dark complexion (although my family is from Western India). So this American friend also knew about the increasing amounts of melanin as one goes from North to the South in India. But when we continued talking about India further I realized that he had also assumed that South India must be less developed than North. His assumption that dark skin implies technological backwardness came as a little surprise to me.

I tried analyzing that issue further and I guess that's the trend that we find globally. Areas inhabited by white caucasians, be it America, Australia or Continental Europe are more affluent than others. The poorest countries in the world are from Africa, where people's skin colors are the darkest. Mongoloids are probably just as good or better than South Asians... Japanese people ofcourse are among the most affluent. People from the Middle East are also among the wealthiest. So if my American friend thought what he did, I guess he didn't realise that India is among the only exceptions to that rule. Southern India is industrially and economically superior to Northern India inspite of the lighter skins found up North.

I've partly read this book called "Guns Germs and Steel" which talks about why Europeans dominate the world today. The author summarizes his theory in the title, Gun Germs and Steel. It makes me wonder.. Had the invention of the gun been first made in Africa, would people have made similar judgements about light skinned people? Would the world be dominated by companies selling suntan lotions rather than sunscreens? ;-) Would matrimonials in India have read "smart dark and well-educated"?

Long weekend in Southern California

Los Angeles is reminescent of Bombay. Huge, crowded, unclean, polluted... I have a zillion adjectives that fit for both. This weekend I visited Hollywood and Santa Monica in LA. Hollywood is such a hip sounding name, but the reality is so far from what one imagines. It's one of the most run-down looking neighbourhoods I have seen. California is replete with such contradictions. Silicon Valley is far from the cool sophisticated sounding name and Hollywood is a similar let down. Santa Monica Boulavard doesnt deserve a song but Santa Monica itself is quite scenic. The beach looked a lot cleaner than Monterey although the waters werent particularly enticing.

Sunday I was in San Diego at Sea World. The highlight of the visit is the show of Shamu the killer whale. Now it is fairly obvious that there are about 5 killer whales doing the tricks. But all of them are called Shamu... What's worse is Sunday was Shamu's birthday. I wonder which Shamu's birthday it was. But I must say all the Shamu's did some fabulous tricks and got some poor unsuspecting tourists completely drenched.

The other peculiar thing I did this weekend was visit each of the great schools in Los Angeles. Devang's friend Pranav gave us a tour of USC. One instantaneosly recognizes USC from the scenes of many Hollywood flicks. Apparently Steven Spielberg was rejected by the USC film school and he now teaches as a visiting professor.

I got a tour of Caltech again from Nachiket. I'd love to go to grad school there, but I don't think I have the credentials to be accepted.Another life time may be.
Finally we had dinner at a Mediterranean place outside UCLA. I was too tired to notice anything around me. I don't know why Arabs call their food Mediterranean. The Middle east doesnt border the Mediterranean, apart from Palestine may be. Egypt fits the bill too I guess... But so I smoked some hookah and ate some hummus and drove in downtown LA at 2 am for a third night in a row and got away unscathed.

Living from weekend to weekend

Three months into work ennui has begun to take its toll. You start counting days until the next weekend arrives... weekdays pass by very speedily and you wish they passed by even quicker... you wait for Friday and then freedom!!! I wish weekends passed by a little slower. But time just flies irrespective. I wonder who came up with the idea of having a 5 day work week. Why not 4 days of work and 3 days of bliss?

This weekend was one of the nicest weekends in quite a while. I went to Monterey which is about an hour away from home. The drive was really lovely, and my new car didnt fail to please. I tried out all the features that I never did before. Cruise control, the manual sports shift, the whole nine yards. The beaches of Monterey weren't the best I have been to. Goa outdoes Monterey by many a mile... Try Wagator beach if you're headed there. But it was the first time I took a plunge into the Pacific ocean. Lay on the sands for a bit and soaked up some sun too.

That was followed by a kayaking lesson and many layers of protective clothing later
I was out pushing my paddle and having a great degree of trouble maintaining a straight line. The Pacific was far from calm but the kayaking was a fun experience! Sea otters were swimming around me and I didnt want to pique them by bumping into them. Luckily I didn't... I wanted to head to the nearest nude beach.. ;) but it wasnt near enough, so I just had to ogle at the otters and sea gulls.

I really felt like having a margarita after that ride in the kayak. Unfortunately cocktails werent being served until much later so I had to make do with a glass of white zinfandel and a bowl of clam chowder.

Star Trek: A Eulogy

I love Star Trek. I am a big fan of the original series. This weekend thanks to the Cupertino Public Library I got a DVD set of the first season of Star Trek. It took me back to the days in class 10 when I used to stay awake until 1130 pm to watch one episode of Star Trek every weeknight. My parents disliked the fact that their son was so addicted to a television series in a very crucial school year. But it was one of the most intellectually stimulating experiences I have had in my life... I guess only a nerdy person who loves the sciences can enjoy Star Trek.

My favourite episodes were the Menagerie and The Arena. Even though the situations one encounters in an episode of Star Trek are other-worldly, the final solutions to the challenges are fairly down to earth.. something geniuses should be able to figure out if put in the same circumstances. I am not saying I am one, but it did make me think.

The more recent versions of Star Trek just don't please me as much. Although the special effects are much better and the images appear more futuristic, the stories aren't as good and the actors aren't as convincing. Ofcourse I haven't seen that many episodes of Star Trek : The Next Generation, so I can't be the best judge of their quality.

Mindless Pondering

I don't know how ace bloggers like Ramanand and Gaurav manage to keep their posts free of grammatical errors and typos. My blog is inundated with such faults. When I do write a post I do it in a fairly hurried manner. I guess one doesn't want to leave visitors with a feeling that this blogger lacks erudition. I read my own posts later sometime and feel embarrassed at things I write. So some people might notice that my posts keep getting edited a little every week. Ah well....

I still haven't finished reading 1984. I read it these days while wading in the pool at the Hamptons. The doctor ordered me to walk in the pool for 1 hour to mitigate that knee problem I mentioned a few posts ago. It has done wonders...the reading. Winston and Julia just got caught by the Thought Police, but I haven't had the time to find out about the horrors they endure because of the tonnes of work that I have to do this week. The book must also be rather pissed off at my picking another mistress, "Catcher in the Rye" without putting an end to the last one. I've read that book before though. I'd like to reread some books now after my vocabulary took a quantum leap post GRE... so I am planning to read Catch-22 again too. Lots of things on the agenda... When will I get the time to do all of them, I wonder?

Quick Egotism

- I am going to watch the new HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie this Friday. I am soo looking forward to it. I am skeptical about its quality, but I am such a big Douglas Adams fan that I just have to go on the first day irrespective.

- I had the bestest Indian food in Silicon valley yesterday at a place called Dasaprakash. Crispy dosa, lovely chutney and fresh idlis reminescent of Vaishali in Pune. If anyone of you ever comes to Santa Clara, be certain to look around San Tomas and Homestead.

- I finished reading the Da Vinci code. Thought it was rather interesting. It got reallly slow in the end and I skimmed through many pages in the end. It is extremely instructive at some points and bordering on pedantic at others, so the movie screenplay writer wont have such a great time. I wish there were some way to know the truth about Mary Magdalene, but well maybe we will never know.

- I am reading George Orwell's 1984 now. Now that's a really well-written book. I think the idea that George Orwell is trying to convey is not only that communism is stupid, but compared to a communist society, capitalist nations are Utopian. It is a tad depressing at some points so far, but I think it is fairly fast paced. Also there are some really memorable one-liners... I am planning to post my collection up here when I am done.

Incompletitis

I've been bogged down by this strange ailment ever since I was a child. I don't know the root causes of this condition but I just don't seem to be able to finish things.

Take my last few attempts at reading books. I read about half of 1984 by George Orwell... I liked the whole premise of the book and the way it is written, but somehow I havent been able to complete reading it. Too many things happened (moving to CA, new job and the like) in the interim and the book just slipped from my to-do list. Currently I am reading Dan Brown's Da Vinci code but I think the pace at which I am reading it has been rather slow. The most I can give it is about an hour to two daily. When I try to read it late in the night after work, I tend to nod off rather easily and I have progressed less than 30 pages on most nights. Ofcourse thats in the absence of TV, which eats up most of the 4 free (yet awake) hours I get everyday. I started reading Harry Potter but lost the book mid-way and never found out how the story progressed.

My father used to call me "Arabha-shoor" in Marathi which translates literally as "Start-Brave", or someone who is really inspired at the start but whose enthusiasm dwindles faster than the speed of light. I took up Tennis and left it in 6 months. I started going to NCC when I was 8 and then put a halt to that in 4 months. Even during my bachelor's I remember, I had great trouble to get to the last pages of a chapter. Some parts of any chapter never got the privelege of being read by me. I started every chapter with renewed fervor but never really followed it through all the way.

If anyone else has experienced this, do let me know... would make me feel a lot less like an anomaly.

Lymphocercoma of the... knee

I went for a 10 mile hike on Saturday. It was an amazing climb to these mountains south of San Jose called Rancho San Antonio. I met some like-minded fitness-conscious Indians (and a chinese lady) and I had some of the best conversations I have had in recent memory. There were some biologists in the group and the field is so different from the trite engineering I am familiar with, that it produced a lot of stimulating discussions.

Unfortunately I descended the hill very rapidly that day. Both Devang and I had some pain in our knees from that trek. Unfortunately I followed that up with the alpine ski machine at Gold's Gym on Monday. I joined Gold's last week in my effort to become leaner and fitter but thats a whole different saga. I ended up hurting my knee and the doctor told me today that I have patello-femoral syndrome. Essentially my knee cap is rubbing against the bone below. It is also called runner's knee apparently. It is rather astonishing that a chubby athlete like myself chanced upon this malady.

So I am writhing in pain for a large fraction of the day and the doctors from Kaiser Permanente are being fairly nice. I forgot to tell them that my parents are physicians too... Likely I would have got some preferential treatment from them. A lady dracula at the lab sucked out many vials of blood from my veins. When I asked her "Are you from Transylvania or something?", she gave me that cute but queer smile sans fangs.

My dad ofcourse as usual is the genius among doctors worldwide. He told me which muscles to exercise and instantaneously it had a soothing effect on the damaged knee. It's only when we lose the function of some minor organ do we realise the magical creations that our bodies truly are. For a second I even start wondering if evolution could really have engendered such a masterpiece.( I am not a Bible-smacking christian from the South btw!) Another wonderous thing is how a miniscule 200mg tablet can ease the troubles of a 162 pound soul!

One order of sacrilege please

I accidently ate beef last night. Call me a stupid "cow-eater" but when I read the words "Chile Colorado" on the menu, I didn't think that it would contain beef. Rajas remembers having French Fries at McDonalds after landing in Chicago for the first time. His version was "So in 30 mins of landing in the US, I had already consumed beef."

So why do I want to avoid beef and consider all other lifeforms expendable? Well I think it's one of the only things I do differently as a Hindu. Followers of Islam are fairly rigid about not consuming pork but frequently non-vegeterian Hindus have no qualms about eating beef. I remember this Muslim friend at GE who couldnt stand the sight of pork but mockingly asked me how long had I been in the US when I refused beef. When he heard the response "2 years", he retorts "Oh all my Hindu friends eat beef... give yourself another year!" I was so agitated by that remark. Why the heck would I disobey my religion more easily than you would yours?!

In the last few months I have met a very wide spectrum of Indians in the US, with different eating habits/taboos. The most extreme was Nupur who is lactose-intolerant and is Gujju. So in effect she's vegan and I can't imagine how hard it must be for her to meet her daily protein requirements. Then there is Devang, my roommate. Earlier he ate all mammals one encounters on American menus but suddenly turned vegeterian. Non-vegeterian Indians like me who avoid beef in deference to the respect for cows that Hinduism propounds, are yet another species.

There are two questions that I ask: First, why do vegeterians consider plant life any less valuable than animal life? When you eat a plant aren't you killing something? May be biological science might soon discover about the feelings of plants somewhere. So as there is no way to survive without hurting another lifeform, might as well go all the way and devour all animals.

Second question: Why are cows more sacred than chicken? May be killing one large animal is better than killing many small ones.

My new Acura RSX

I love babying my new car. I forgot to mention that I did end up buying that Acura RSX I was talking about some posts ago. I shower a lot of attention on her... Park her in the closed garage everyday, fill the most expensive high-octane fuel, drive carefully not speeding too much (referring to it as a female). It is a real pleasure to drive that babe, I have to say ;). That's the one thing I look forward to every morning and evening.

Work doesnt change much. Its pretty much the same old same old. Food is starting to get to me like some of my friends had predicted. Well although the names for all the dishes are rather fancy, more often than not it is all rather bland. Moroccan chicken was a prime example of this. So I go down expecting a real treat... but turns out its just some grilled chicken with a yellow fluid sitting on top of it. It wasnt bad mind you, but an Indian palate sets a very high standard for spice. Indian food Thursdays are so worth the wait. Samosa, Naan, Pulao, chicken, garbanzos...yumm!!

I've started playing games again. Last night I played the Call of Duty demo again. It's great fun!! I don't have a mouse on my keyboard so it makes it a lot harder to play a First person shooter, but I like the challenge. It feels realistic, although I have no idea what the World War II must have been like, but if I had a guess this would be it.

Last weekend I went to Santa Cruz to the mystery spot. So I shall write a post about that soon enough. That was followed by my first ever visit to San Francisco.

P I E Pie? Why? Cos its PI(=3.1415) Day

Is life to be lived only on weekends? Work days are a part of life too and thankfully I havent let the Monday blues get to me in the past three weeks at work. At GE I was perpetually bored being unchallenged for quite some time. It was only in the latter half of the co-op assignment that I got assigned some interesting work to do. Before that I was just testing the electronics on dishwashers and refrigerators for most parts and trust me it wasn't a pretty occupation.

The one bright spot this week was on Monday 3/14, the PI day treat at Nvidia. The caterers from Aramark can't be expected to be that geeky... ofcouse I never thought of it myself either... makes me think I am a nerdy jock. But 3.14(pi) and 3/14(March 14th ) and Einstein's birthday occuring on the same day are like a nerd's dream come true. At Nvidia they come aplenty, precisely the reason why I don't feel out of place here. And one of the kind souls here decided to celebrate PI day and kept 4 pies in each floor of every building here. I had a slice from the banana cream pie and one from the apple pie.... nice excuse to forget about that diet you were on... Pie Day YAYY!!!

I started wondering if I could invent an "e" day, but unfortunately the Romans didn't think of coming up with a 71-day month. I could have fed the whole company some eclairs.... okay bad joke...nothing can really be as poetic as PI now, can it?

Weekends in the Bay Area have been a lot of fun. One thing that both my roommate and I are enthusiatic about, is exercise. So we go swimming, jogging and gymming frequently. Then there are some nice movies to watch... ofcourse some crappy one's have to squeeze in as well. Eternal Sunshine was an example of the earlier and The Aviator of the latter. There is good food to enjoy. Mexican and South Indian last weekend and Chinese and Thai this weekend. It is a rather full life and the pleasures are incredibly guilt-free, given the efforts one has put at work during the week. Indulging in sloth, pride, gluttony....followed by the virtues of industry, humility, austerity and what have you.

Email Address Changes

My wisc.edu Email IDs have been disabled. So if anyone wants to reach me please email me at saket AT uwalumni DOT com or saketj AT yahoo DOT com
Replace DOT with "." and AT with "@" when youre trying to email me.

If there are spiders which can extract email addresses from that too, I am doomed. My yahoo account couldn't be spammed any more than it already is.

Also my CAE homepage is defunct now. So no more fancy pictures online or exhibitions even.

First week at work!

I joined work this Monday and it has been an interesting week so far. Everything is new so there is a lot of excitement in the new discoveries I make. I have been staying almost 12 hours at work for the past 3 days and surprisingly it isn't as tiring as I would have expected. The campus is the prettiest that I have seen with futuristic buildings shaped like space-ships abutting landscapes vaguely modelling the company logo.

The cafeteria called the "Nth street cafe" is heavily subsidized (50c per meal at the most) and I find myself there at noon and 7 pm trying something new each time. The food isn't as tasty as I would have liked but everything is clean, efficient and abundant healthy food choices available.

People at work have been really nice and I've had meetings with the VP, Director and my manager, everyone welcoming me into their fold. I won't say anything about what I am working on but it is a really interesting project and should keep me busy for some time.

The deal is though that once I am back home there isn't much time to do anything else. Watch TV for an hour, go to the gym for an hour and then its time to sleep-or-I-wont-wake-up. Looking forward to the weekend. Might go to Sarvana Bhavan, presumably the best Indian restaurant in the Bay Area!

And the Oscar should go to...

I just finished watching "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". It is a brilliant movie and no matter what impresses you in a movie, be it acting (Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet), direction (Michel Gondry of the amazing music videos), screenplay (Charlie Kaufman from Adaptation) there is something there that is bound to impress you. I am scared to a certain extent that my feeble writing skills aren't going to do justice to such an excellent movie, but it definitely deserves an attempt. It is a tight rope that I have to walk here now. I don't want to divulge information that would spoil the movie watching experience for anyone, and I want to write something interesting and possibly convince you that I have some grey matter up there.

The premise of the story is that a company called Lacuna Inc has discovered a procedure that enables a doctor to erase unwanted memories. The easiest way to make an incredible idea believable is to place it in the most familiar looking surroundings possible. So the setting of the movie is very contemporary and if you've lived on the East Coast in the Boston area, you aren't going to have much trouble in picturing yourself as Joel or Clementine.

I am not going to lie about this but there have been times in my life when I wished there were a way to erase unwanted memories. In some sense I think I have managed to erase some people from my mind to as great an extent as possible. I really don't believe in wallowing in misery and sitting there pining for someone. Part of me considers romantic feelings rather mawkish but I do admit it would be rather nice to fall in love again. I've never tried recalling any memories of a happier time because I consider it pointless, but I admit some other people might want to do that. Personally this is the happiest I have been in a long time and I wonder if I really want to ruin this with someone new. ;-)

The storyline though takes this theme of erasing unwanted memories and gives us the writer's opinion about relationships...essentially that "It is better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all". The ending I think is a little off, but I think only an anonymus author can really do justice to the ending. Inherently the writer is bound to become famous and his ex is bound to see the movie, so that does limit what the writer wants to do with the ending. (Of course if I created a piece of art like this, I'd be shouting out to the world, bragging about my creation.) What I take back from the movie is this... Even if you don't have a "Spotless Mind" with no sad memories you can still have "Eternal Sunshine". I don't know why "Eternal Sunshine" wasn't even nominated but if I had a vote for the best movie of the year, this would be it.

To San Diego and back

So I did drive down to San Diego with two of my friends from UW Madison, Devang and Yogesh. The two of them will also be my co-workers, so they will likely be my companions at lunch for the next few years. The drive down I-5 was fairly straightforward. It took us an incredible amount of time to get through LA because of the grid-lock and thankfully the weather wasn't as bad as we had expected. Driving the powerful Chevy Impala rental was fun and the GPS system helped us drive to many places with ease.

San Diego is a very lovely city. It looks a lot like a vacation town with palm trees, beaches, massive streets and quaint Mexican-style architecture. The terrain is slightly hilly which makes for a lot of scenic drives and majestic vistas. I also have a lot of friends who work at Qualcomm and just meeting up with everyone, playing cards until 3 am, bantering each other was cool. We went to Coronado Island and the drive on the long bridge had one of the loveliest views I've seen.

The drive back was fairly uneventful although marked with a lot of rain. Today I checked out Toyotas and Hondas. The Honda Civic was much better than the Toyota Corolla... the new Corolla seems to be very noisy and bumpy and the Honda much less so. The Camry and Accord were quite comparable but I liked the Accord better because it looked a little nicer. I'll be taking the Acura RSX for a spin tomorrow but so far I am inclined on buying a Honda Civic Coupe. Sumeet, I am sorry if I am buying a really regular car but most of the brands you mention dont have showrooms around here. Renault, Cooper, Lotus... Subaru, Mitsubishis have lower resale values so thats out. Audi too expensive. Fords I dont trust enough and low resale, mileage again. So just the normal desi car seems the way to go for now. Will try test driving an Audi but I don't think I cant afford a brand new one.

California Dreaming!

In an amazing twist of fate I am now moving to the Bay Area to work at a cool company that makes graphics cards. It has been a very busy final few days in Madison and I am going to miss this awesome place like crazy, but it is time to move on. Madison has been my home away from home. Anyone who has been to Madison knows that if there is one livable place in the Midwest, it has to be Madison. I could go on singing paens about the lovely capitol, the lakes, the Monona terrace and the pretty university, but maybe I'll do that another time. I am going to miss Nivedita more than anyone else. She has been my best friend and closest confidant for sometime now and I know hard it is to make really good friends.

Santa Clara is the perfect location for an Electrical Engineer like me. The weather is perfect, there are lots of other engineers around, there are plenty of Indians and Indian food places. I already have some friends there... Also I am patching up with my ex, always a plus. My ex-roommate that is ;-)... I haven't liked staying alone that much and Devang is a fun and interesting character. He will drag the geeky Saket to some nice and interesting places. I haven't been this happy in a very long time and if I believe in Zen-ism I wonder how long this will last. Maybe having low expectations helps sometimes... This blog has never been about philosophy and I will keep it that way.

And so I reach San Jose on Friday and then we are heading to San Diego. We are thinking about making a pitt-stop in LA. It is kind of like a "Sideways" (the movie) of our own. Speaking of Sideways... that was an awesome movie. Very funny and somehow sounds autobiographical (not mine, the author's). I am not much of a wine connoisseur... I have had some Chardonay and Zinfandel but I have trouble even distinguishing between simple wines and I am the last person who would know a good wine from a bad... My guess is I have only had cheap bad wines if the one's served on planes and Olive Garden are anything to go by. The great part about the movie are these deep connections/analogies that the characters draw between wine and life. Well so this week I am going to buy a new car and hopefully shortlist apartments for April. I want to buy a nice pretty looking sporty car like an Acura RSX but we'll see if I actually go through with it.

The inexpensive laptop and cellphone

I had spoken to Sumeet and Nachiket about this idea to create a cheap computer costing around 100$, which would be a great educational tool for schools in small villages in India. I was considering having FPGA-based processors with Linux OS and such. The hassles were with the assembly language because Intel is definitely not going to allow me to use theirs. Ofcourse I am making this sound a lot easier than it actually is... There are too many software and hardware issues that I can think of from compilers to board level design and I bet there are a million others I haven't even begun to imagine.

Well all my good ideas have already been thought of in most cases. So when BBC News ran a story about an MIT professor who has come up with the idea to do just that, I wasn't all that surprised.
Read cheap computer story

There are other things about my business model which I cant disclose for security purposes...;-) I had a means to get really cheap labor. Well I could still somehow compete with him if I had the money and time to invest in this project, but Mr Negroponte will have a headstart of many years over me now. By the time I will have some time and money to invest in this venture it is going to be a little late. But let's see how this works out. This was kind of an idea of mine to have a self-reliant India making its own home computers. But ah well...

There is another thing I have been toying with for a while now. One of the perspectives that people have of outsourcing is that it is new-age colonialism. So the British bought cotton from India at reduced prices and then sold the cloth to us at high prices. Similarly companies like Texas Instruments (TI), Intel, AMD buy cheap labor from India but they sell us the cellphones or processors for the same American price. The know-how to design these devices exists in India but there are many other problems with manufacturing them. Also a first time indigenous manufacturer will have low sales volumes because of the lack of name recognition and that makes these devices too expensive for people to consider them viable.

But I am hell-bent on precipitating the Revolt of 1857 in 2005 and so I'd like all engineers in say TI India leave TI and start their own company. They make their own designs and sell them to Nokia at much reduced prices and yet make more money than what TI USA was paying them. So we cut the middleman TI USA. Apparently though I've heard that this month some of the best experts in the Broadband division at TI India have left and started their own company. And it makes me happy.