Abhay's space

Apart from the obnoxious name, I always had have tons of problem with this modern day “gurus” and their programs. They however, are well connected so nobody is going to do anything about it. Maybe in a few years they will also start getting us rains.

However, I lost a bet to my father (who is big fan of this thing) and so I have to attend their basic course.

1000 bucks down the drain, that could have bought 8 bottles of Carlsberg (with some change left for other material).

Nowadays whenever I open Youtube, the home page shows the videos being watched by others in India and it is always full of one or the other soap opera or “sitcoms” or “comedy show” or “cool college life show” or “cool love story show” (quotes since all of them are basically the same crappy soap opera disguised as something else)

Seriously, have all the housewives and Lalas now learned about how they can watch those shows repeat on youtube? I didn’t know they were so technically advanced, I gotta change my prejudices.

Or is it that software engineers who sneer at such shows when at home actually are in love with such trash?

I have argued over time that living for a 1000 years will not be that bad. There will be amazing things to do.

There are tons of stories wherein the character, who has lived for a very long time because he/she was immortal*, states that the long life is actually a curse. But you know what, those stories are written by mortals who are just writing that to satisfy and reassure their readers that their impending eventual death is not that bad a thing. Wishful thinking, i say!

Anyway there is something you can surely do (apart from say knowing the result of some long running experiment and stuff), and that is read this 9 word long book. Yes it is 9 word’s story but will take 1000 years to read because of the writing technique. Details on Wired.

The cultural phenomenon against which this is a revolt, or medically known as Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is for majority part an invented (not discovered) illness. And if you happen to reach till the end of long essays linked to in previous posts, you probably don’t suffer from it.

There definitely would be prizes to guess the end of that story and save a few hundred years.

*Think of some story where an Egyptian pharaoh or some other warrior had conquered some treasure and got the magical boon of living forever.

Napoleon used to say that strategy is all about time and space and that he worries less about space because it can be recovered. How true, and maybe his deep insights allowed him to be such a great leader. I am currently having a crisis of time myself. It has more to do with discipline than lack of managing it.

Lately, I have also noticed the atrocious grammar in my communication and I will attribute that severe setback to lack of writing practice. Need to blog more.

In any case, I don’t want to spend time worrying but I wish I had wised up to a number of things years ago. The thing that people say such as “I will never change anything about my life if I had to live it all over again” seems like bovine stercus to me right now. I agree that it is valid given that some of the “wisdom” I am wishing to have got earlier wouldn’t have had that much of an impact had I been told that before. The experiences themselves have made that learning worthwhile. But still, I would be in a much better position today.

As something Red says in Shawshank Redemption* about how he wished he could have gone and told that young kid (himself years ago) about what a mistake he was making.

* It is strange quoting Shawshank Redemption. Star Wars, LOTR and Matrix are the usual suspects (pun intended, he he). Sometimes Godfather is added to the list.

A number of people I know are learning one musical instrument or other (it is more of a case of one, the guitar) and I am sure they have been doing better over time. Surely, having no such talent myself the following will make them angry but that doesn’t necessarily make me wrong.

I have said multiple times that until they have become quite advanced in their arts, I will still prefer the media players and today I read this G B Shaw quote –

“Hell is full of musical amateurs”

What immense satisfaction occurs when your idea matches of that someone lot of people think is worth listening to that another dissatisfied part of me needs to quote him again -

“The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time”

Yeah, I know I am spoilt…

Unless you are an investor in US stock markets, you can ignore most of the middle part and just read the first and last section, namely ‘The Loss of “Near Certainties” in Investing’ and ‘An Amateur’s Assessment of the Stimulus Program’. Both these sections have interesting tidbits.

Though I have talked about skipping the middle sections, it does invoke the thought about why people have lost the ability to read long essays and articles. They are usually worth the time spent compared to any sitcom or reality show that have replaced the reading.

Maybe most of the world does watch television and maybe it is more hip and gets you conversation with most people but is it really worth it? Suddenly, nobody cares for the following quotes -

I find television to be very educating.  Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book.  ~Groucho Marx

In Beverley Hills, they don't throw their garbage away - they make it into television shows. 
~Woody Allen

or any of the quotes listed here.

Yes, television has allowed dissemination of information but as Mrs. William F. Buckley Jr. would say “Are you just going to sit there and watch television all day?”

As has been mentioned multiple times that most of India competition is hype, here is an article in WSJ stating the same. Arun Shourie has a nice comment:

“…modern India has two races going on. One is a backward race of a state "hollowed out by termites"; the other a forward race of market reforms, modernization and globalization……these two races are fundamentally incompatible…..”

Why does it matter? It does so because as a nation we have wasted one of the best upswings in human history. The global economy is going to be in a bad condition for many a years.

If you say the globe wasn’t on a upswing, you should consider the fact that maybe you alone had a bad time during this period, because the stats show that half the world population have cell phones. If you see good times ahead, again that might be your own personal experience. Try to see it on a larger scale.

Is BJP a solution, I doubt that. They have their own issues and the like all other political parties (in the world) are corrupt. The question always comes down to is how much corrupt and how much work done despite that corruption. Striving for moral leaders is good thing but sometimes we got to do with what we have. Isn’t democracy itself the same thing? Didn’t Churchill say that democracy is the worst form of government except for all others that have been tried.

One of the books which I am currently reading is Phantoms in the Brain by V. S. Ramachandran and it talks about a number of special accident cases where patients had injuries to a certain part of the brain.

Say a bullet was lodged into the right part of the visual cortex, effectively blinding only the left view of the person. Such stories make for a fascinating read and at the same time provide researchers such VSR with data to study how the brain works. VSR consistently makes the point that Artificial Intelligence (AI) thinking of brain as being composed of independent modules (which perform respective specific tasks) is as wrong as the other view where the clusters of brain are each capable of doing everything the whole brain does. He says the truth (as always) lies somewhere in between.

The patients who had such accidents or misdiagnosed surgeries to remove parts of the brain are the peculiar cases which allow medical researchers to throw out the old notions and come up with better (and closer to correctness) theories. The question as medical science improves and safety systems in the world we live in. Imagine much safer cars and trains[1] and ambulances and first aid arrivals and the unique cases will become rarer. Where will data come from then?

VSR mentions the book The Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif and I distinctly remember the incredulity of the whole process where discoveries of causes and cures for diseases such as malaria were made. The way the researchers went about experimenting would call for ethics committee to disbar the medical professionals involved. We have come a long way since the last century. I am not saying those guys were wrong, in fact they better cared for their patients compared to them dying lonely in some outcast colonies. The thing is that it is more difficult to get special cases now in the area now.

Wonder how the research will happen for brain in future? The kind where the science will take leaps and overturn the existing academic beliefs.

[1] Richard Branson, in his autobiography, describes a train accident wherein the injuries were severely limited because of his company “extravagant” investment in building safety into train’s coaches.

Gave in. Was probably late but who cares - http://twitter.com/absaraf

Old Mahabaleshwar is about temples just as the new one is about points[1]. There   are a number of temples located at the same spot which are still worshipped here but there is one another ancient temple a bit away from the main road. A board pointed out that it is a two minute walk into the forest which I took the road and found a calm and peaceful place.

The area is not marked on tourist maps but should have been. On second thoughts maybe not. The places will then be crowded with vendors and loose the serenity. I wonder if stone and architecture are somehow responsible for the feeling one gets around such ancient temples. I should find out by visiting a few more.

The only thing British about Mahabaleshwar now seems to be “The Imperial Shop” where 4th generation Mr. and Mrs. Irani still manage the counters. The shop from inside is wonderful (the salesgirl won’t let me take any photos inside) but it full of eclectic mix of music cds, food items, books, perfumes and whatnot with sweet music playing in the background. To think of the items available, I found cans of SPAM in there[2].

One thing about visiting the place after 13 years was that everything looked smaller. The shops were less glitzy and the game shops seemed smaller, the school had reduced in size and the lake no longer looked like one that could hide a monster. Maybe it was jsut because I wasn’t 10 years old anymore.

Silly things have cropped up in Panchgani and Mahabaleshwar such as go-karting and a theme park (on a hill station??). Well maybe that is what people want to do. Sadly, it was built over the hill side where my bird-watching group would go trekking.

The old shops were still there with Dhananjay chikkiwala, Hill top ice cream, Purohit thaliwala, the upstairs frankie shop etc. The table top and parsi point are still there (where will they go, heh!).

Seeing the school was a bliss and so was meeting old teachers. The boarding schools are having a tough time coping with today’s batch of children with the issue of technology being kept away (think mobile and internet) as the main problem. It is true that generally everyone rants about the good old days but somehow it seems that maintaining tradition is certainly becoming more difficult. Wonder how will these schools reinvent themselves?

[1] Points are basically places where some British administrator loved to sit in the evening and so over years they had found 25-30 such points. All are views of Krishna from different sides.

[2] Spam is spiced ham. Famous Monty Python clip on that. Possibly the source of name for ‘spam mails’ today (see the clip to understand why)

This article in The Atlantic sums up a neat little summary of how financial oligarchy led to the current economic crisis.

Mention of JP Morgan (the man himself) reminds me of the actual coup accusation made back in 1930s when the government had cut down severely the financial industry then following 1929 crisis. The article from Atlantic might have the title “quiet coup” intentionally.

Oh come on, now he is just showing off. Yeah yeah, he hates being called tourist but would rather be called private researcher or something.

The thing about all this people privately funding their own trips is that most of them being from software or high-tech industry (which in most cases today means software, don’t argue) means that I have dreams of writing the next great software and buying my own ticket.

Alas they are just a dream. However, I leave with an excellent speech by man who gave teddy bear it’s name, with a famous abstract:
Citizenship in a Republic: The Man in the Arena

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

I am ashamed. I have been that timid soul. The least I can do is shut up.

I guess it is a series of wonderful quotes for now.

This one comes from Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair article on collapse of Iceland’s economy:

“he was a tourist, and a tourist can’t help but have a distorted opinion of a place: he meets unrepresentative people, has unrepresentative experiences, and runs around imposing upon the place the fantastic mental pictures he had in his head when he got there.”

Of course the quote itself is independent of the article and just a thought around travelling.

From a TED talk:

“Life is a sexually transmitted disease with 100% mortality rate”. So the idea is that after self-preservation, live it to it’s fullest.

I don’t but what is wrong with giving free advice.

Yesterday, Saaransh was talking about how it is rather offensive to Turkish carpet-sellers if the customer doesn’t try to bargain with them. I remembered reading a Jeffery Archer story on how a really huge discount could be obtained on such carpets.

The thinking then proceeded to memories of going to sabzi mandi and cloth shops with mother to buy stuff. Most of the children of middle class families have had this experiences where one encounters this long deal making before buying anything. In a way, though being aware that money is important, the long bargain time meant less time for us children to play, watch tv or even just relax on the couch. So, when the big retail stores started opening it was an easy shopping experience and took less time and there were fewer (not none) concerns on authenticity and quality of products.

However, even now the money pinching attitude still leaves a feeling of guilt and the mind works to think if there is some other place where I could go shopping to get better prices. Now, this is true for many cultures around the world (whether they be prosperous or poor) and though this is kind of intuition, the model needs validation with actual data.

Coincidentally, I started reading Kishore Biyani story of Future group “It Happened in India” wherein a Ananth Raman, a professor at Harvard, stated how even western societies where Farmer’s Market prices are same as that found in the supermarket, people still have this psychological need to go buy certain things only outside in such markets. I have had a very limited shopping experience but it seems that Big Bazaar continues to be the best value[1] store out there in India.

One thing about very advanced countries (in terms of standard of living) was wondering as to how their Farmer’s Market got organized. Unlike India and other countries, the society wouldn’t have accepted a bunch of people coming together in public places and leaving it dirty afterwards (with the wasted produce and/or other disposables). How is that tragedy of commons prevented is still a mystery but having seen such a market in Ballard[2] in Seattle, which looked something like this:

The interesting part about the Farmer’s Market in Ballard was (I couldn’t shop there as we were getting late for lunch) that when we passed by the street after lunch, it was difficult to be sure that the market had even been located there.

Somehow, the question is still open as to “how does society become so civilized that they still stick to the romance of the yore, where you have the farmer directly selling the produce, practically at the normal rate of a supermarket, enjoy the Sunday experience of shopping there and when the market closes, there is no garbage and the street is as clean and beautiful as any other day?”

[1] value seems to be least offensive phrase today for inexpensive or cheap

[2] Ballard is the region which I would describe to be the very European like due to its Nordic heritage and it is evident in the way shops are located and the architecture etc. One of the places we wanted to eat in, was closed, called “The Madame” and as you might have guessed, the novelty was the building was a whore-house in the old times.

"Suppose President Obama asked citizens to exercise more, smoke less, and eat healthier foods to reduce healthcare costs......"

 

"...I think people would feel happier knowing that exercising and eating broccoli was part of something larger than their own health...."

 

"No movie now needs to be good. You just take a popular cast, spend tons of money on trailers, item numbers, marketing and put it up in hundred screens across the metros. By the time, Monday arrives, you would have recovered the costs and made a profit over the weekend. No need to worry about excess glitz as you don't have to care for rural customers anymore."

"On seeing raunchy JPEGs of Paro on his computer, Dev breaks into a grin and Anurag stealthily switches languages, having his hero say 'Paro, main aa raha hoon' instead of its English, inevitably innuendo'd counterpart. "

When Jill Souble did this global warming song at TED, I never could understand the punch-line. I thought that maybe it is some kind of insider joke/cultural reference[1]. How stupid of me, it was simply that NY is bloody freezing in January ( no I am not cussing, blood actually freezes at –2 degree Celsius):

This is the first trip to US, nah, first one outside the country. There are have been many observations and I hope to make a number of posts of them.

All I have to state for now is Times Square has created a kind of exception for my bill-board rules. Billboards are horrible in my opinion and the cities should get rid of them. Times Square has them in a more aesthetically pleasing manner compared to say Hyderabad or Nagpur. Lot of other parts of NY do not have them which is very good.

[1] It has always been a contention of mine that books, movies, etc contain a number of references which, if the audience is unaware of, they end up missing on the enjoyment. A friend of mine tore me apart for stating that she had not fully understood subtleties' of HHGG.

I think my bed is haunted. It has made sure that I spent the last 3 days sleeping to cover up the 15 days I was out of station.

January is 20 days out so February…*shudder*