Antiseptics for washing hands?!..ha ha...no-no...win-win

A few months ago, one of the very active members of TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) Maitree team and I were having a discussion over a coffee. The doctor in front of his name was not an addition due to a Ph.D; he's a doctor who deals with human body. However, whether his job in TCS is biological or technological, I do not know. But what I know is that he is a biology person at heart, for I could see that his outlook on all that existed in TCS, was hugely biology inclined and inspired by life.

At the discussion, he made a crisp comment about the usage of antiseptic soaps and soap solutions in our washrooms and even in our homes. He felt it was an overkill. But me being a Biotechnologist, could comprehend his concern with another dimension added.

We often use antiseptic soap solutions for washing hands after every meal, bath with antiseptic soaps, mostly to play safe/safer/safest! Here, I would also like to bring in my another persona, which is that of a business-man. The business guy in me says, that it is a long term win-win situation.
 
How? : When we wash and bath, mostly after having stayed in air conditioned rooms and offices, or even in clean homes, we don't actually carry a huge load of pathogenic micro-organisms, that needs a heavy antiseptic treatment. But we still do it. On the contrary, Nature has designed or may be the organisms have evolved, in such a way that organisms beneficial to us humans are more often than not weaker (less resistant to antiseptics) than those that are harmful. So everytime we use a good quantity of soap (unnecessarily beefed up with antiseptics), we add a considerable quantity of antiseptics into the waters, which finds its way into the ground water and also in the soils.

So, how does the bad businessman in me find a win-win in this!?

It's simply because all these unnecessary antiseptics, prevent us from getting infections and diseases, while also managing to kill the beneficial organisms in the environment. This slowly reduces our immunity against microbes that co-inhabit this world, which we must actually share with them. And while our immunity gets progressively weaker, the pathogenic (disease causing organisms) organisms get stronger as their immunity against the antiseptics become progressively higher with every cycle of their reproduction. And these guys reproduce real fast! Because, by the time we complete one session of intercourse, they will have produced millions of off-springs! And what worse, all of them stronger, while our kids are weaker!. So isn't this a win-win situation!? Your kids will buy stronger soaps, and their kids even stronger ones!!!

But the biotechnologist and the environmentalist in me writes this blogpost with a weird kind of paradoxical pain.

Too Technical?!

Usage of antiseptics for hand washing and bathing = wearing a helmet while sleeping, fearing a fall from bed and an injury.

Don't worry Nature has taken care of our immunity, nothing can possibly go wrong that easily. Relax...use a normal soap, or just water. Our fore-fathers did that, and managed to stay alive for me to be writing and you to be reading/commenting this blog.

Man....! Win-win....oh...just shut up you...

With love, Insomniac.

I kinda like this time. Silent, productive, other minds are sleeping, hence not emitting disturbing human mental waves that destructively interfere with those of the few minds that thrive at peace and calm.

I love these nights. A constant reminder of the past and the reality; a black post-it note that clings on for about 50% of each day, trying in vain to remind the sleeping minds and bodies, of a Universe that existed before the diverging dust and debris started their journey.

So after all the fun and frolic ends, it will be the night that will embrace us all.

But who is night to embrace me?! I declare ..."I chose you", remember...and its not the other way round!

love,
Insomniac

Lovely Biotechnology

 Waiting to start them all over again!

Carrying the license to play God...in a humble manner!

George Smoot on the design of the universe : Review

I Felt that this TED video was worth sharing in this blog, for I have noticed that, some minds whose thinking tries to break out of the biological limitations of the skull, and thoughts run beyond the limitations of flesh bone and lust, visit this blog often. This video is for all you such people

P.S : If you felt the description above was overtly flamboyant and an overkill, and you are someone who is possibly convinced that such people are wasting the limited carbon on the planet by assimilating it in their biomass, don't waste 19 minutes watching this video! Go watch porn!

Till the last drop vaporizes!

The statistics and history have shown that it was the war times that fuelled many a innovations to come alive. Penicillin, harley davidsons, instant noodles are examples of it!

I was confronted with the challenge challenging the very existence of humanity, in a war of two most dominant species' on earth! Man and Mosquito...

The challenge was to make the last drop of available mosquito repellant liquid in the magazine@canister to vaporize for the chemical warfare against the mosquitoes to be efficient.

Thats when I came up with this innovative war strategy to efficiently utilize the little ammunition I had to be able to survive the cold, bloody war night.

Humanity won!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

A feedback Based Iconic Interface for smart devices

Note : The important stuff of the blog starts after first three priming paragraph! So please don't loose cool yet!

A few months ago, LG mis-conducted an online competition for designers. The designers were asked to come up with a totally new rethinking of the technologies and their designs that we have presently. The example design put up on their website was something like a fan with a remote control. I felt there was something about this initiative, that was worth a praise and also worth a try. So I gave it a shot.

The funny part was that, I missed the deadline to upload the entry, and when I saw the webpage, it said I could still upload cos the deadline was extended (Good for me!), hence I uploaded happily. The date was extended once again after a few days again! I waited, waited and waited...then there came a time when I stopped checking the website for results! Not very professional isn't it?!?

This experience somehow influenced me when I bought my android phone, though I liked LG optimus, I had this compelling feeling which never allowed me to buy it, I rather bought Motorola Backflip, and I love it!


I mentioned that I uploaded my designs right? Yes, these designs were a set of ideas that had been rolling in my right brain for quite sometime, but I did not develop an app for it, cos my left brain is not that of a coder's! In this blog-post I am uploading the two image files that explain the design concept, plus the mathematics that the design should run on.

Concept : When we use the touch screen based smart devices, the most used icons should progressively increase in size, while the least used icons decrease in size proportionately.

How : There is an incremental and decremental logic for the icon sizes to change, which works very similar to tag clouds where, the frequency of 'hits' on a particular word leads to the increase or decrease of its font-size.

Designs :  Well...You can always click to enlarge!  ;)

If you find this idea cool, please work on it! and Send me the link to the app, am waiting to see my idea in action!

The Tell-Tale Brain by V.S Ramachandran : Review

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

V.S. Ramachandran is celebrated as the "The Marco Polo of Neuroscience" by Richard Dawkins! One Genius can't be wrong about the other! can they?!

I found this book at Odyssey book store in ITPL, Bangalore. Not wasting a moment, bought it! Priced at Rs. 499/-- this I definitely felt was more precious than Eclipse or New Moon or even Lord of the Rings, which also are priced more or less the same.

Ramachandran is first among the many who diverted my lines of thinking into a more neurological, psychological and cognitive pattern. This book tagged "Unlocking the mystery of Human Nature" is definitely bound to pull many more able brains to this wonderful, yet relatively unexplored field of Science.

The teasers(which this book hardly needs) in the book cover's third paragraph inside reads,"The brain remains a mystery to us. How can a three pound mass of jelly that we can hold in our palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos?" Sounds interesting? Igniting a spark? Go ahead, make an investment.

His Robot Grlfriend, by Wesley Allison : Review

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Good start and pages went all good and sexy, but after chapter 6 the author/ daffodil/ even reader(me) couldn't know where the story was headed to and why, and the end followed my declined interest to finish the book. Down to Earth imagination!



View all my reviews

My website, REFRESHED!

Hi peeps,

It's great fun to be writing this now and then; as it gives me great happiness and fulfillment, to be informing you that my personal website www.nram.co.in , is now friendlier, more organized and sensible with respect to the information structuring. But this is what I feel it is, the website is for you to see, hence verdict is yours!

   You are welcome...
   --Ram
   www.nram.co.in 

Abbreviation Psychometry : A thinner slicing into a person's psychology.

     It all started when my father once asked in a 'father testing his son's knowledge..' tone "What is OD?". That was three years ago when I was in the second year of my college. I swiftly replied "optical density", he was shocked and a little irritated for he expected me to say "over draft". Well, I was then a biologist in the making, while my father was a banker for about twenty years. No wonder our take on the abbreviations differed.

It doesn't have to be with two people necessarily. After my college years, there is this company in India called TCS which had extreme faith in 120 of us from our entire batch of God knows how many students, and they offered us employment in our third year of college just when recession was stating to catch up! As I was waiting for the job call from TCS after completion of my Undergraduate study in Biotechnology , Government of India's ministry of Science and technology had for the 2009 batch, called the students for its fantastic initiative called BCIL(Biotech Consortium of India Limited) which gives students a paid internship in leading Biotech companies across India. I was learning big time in Biozeen for about four months.

That's when I was repeatedly using certain abbreviations like DNS (dinitro salicylic acid) and SIP (sterilization in place), CIP (cleaning in place) etc. When I joined TCS after that and started to learn web designing, which had always been my crush kinda hobby during my entire college years, the same (DNS) got reprogrammed in my brain as "Domain Name Server"!

This by itself is not a great thing to write a blogpost upon, rather its too trifle a matter! But what I felt is, this shift in the way certain abbreviations and symbols are processed by the brain, could give a very detailed inference on what and who a person is.

Like for example red could mean love for a lover, while it could also mean blood for a serial killer! These are the takes of two persons of the same symbol. But it could also be that it meant love for the person, till the day he became psychologically destabilized due to a failed relationship and it then started to mean blood! Eeewwww, but you get it right!? This is what psychometry has always been trying to analyze. To make a thin slicing of a person's psychological state is what psychometry aims at.

What I am here trying to convey is that the thin slicing can be made thinner by understanding what abbreviations mean to a person. This could lead to deeper understanding of a person's inclinations to various subjects of his/her professional or personal expertise, (@in short.. one's actual field towards which his/her brain is more aptly fit to be productive) in his/her present psychological state.

Now, the idea is open. I would love to see cognitive Neuroscience brains work on this, for I already am!

Ramrevatube ...ha ha.Yeah That's my youtube channel name!

Hi all,

Had you noticed, there is a little addition to the pages on top panel! Yeah, there is "My Youtube Page" added.
Just a place to keep a few videos that are worth more(yours) than just two eyes(mine!). Welcome there...

Spanish speaking monk from Argentina.

It was just another evening, out of nowhere a person comes to me. Dressed up in cotton khadi attire which seemed to laugh at the corporate synthetic attire of mine, and with a soul that had no fear nor expectations which was reflecting in his bright brown eyes.

He introduced himself to be a person from Argentina and that he speaks Spanish, and wants to spread the words of his Gurus and handed me this book.

Shame, I dont know his name. But, whats in a name? We all descend from Om.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

The Tell-Tale Brain by V.S Ramachandran...Lovely Book

Just bought the book I have been waiting to read. feels soooo good. my best investment i would say is this...

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Work-Life Balance

Often seen as a myth, Work-life balance was explained by my mother in a few simple terms. That sparked in me an idea to click this pic; which is exactly how my mom explained it!

This blog-post is soon to be expanded further, by adding my own theories that has helped me to maintain my balance best.

Cracked pipelines? bangaloreans show what to do!

I recently was hunting for a place to park my bike in the perpetually crowded mg road, brigade road, luckily found a place opposite to the juice junction in churchstreet, where I had to pay an enterpreneur Rs.10 per hour!

It wasnt bad, he did take care of the bike, like everyone else's till I returned two hours later.

Juice junction did help me fight the unusually hot persona Bangalore has started to carry these days! Whats worth mentioning is the garbage can(well not strictly!) Outside the fruit juice shop! I did find a moment to capture the cement pipeline which was invented to transport waste water. But due to aging it cracked, and some right brained guy/gal had painted it and helped it resurrect and serve humanity...yes, thus was born this garbage can(again, not exactly!)

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Martin Jacques: Understanding the rise of China | Video on TED.com

I recently happened to get the link of this video in my mail Inbox, because as a fan of TED.com you get the inside scoop as and when good videos are added in TED.com. The title astonished me! "Understanding the rise of China", every word of it was true. But my interest to watch the video was fuelled by the desire to understand how can the people (the basic and the most important asset of a country) be highly supportive of all the measures that the State subjects them to.

In the process I understand that its not the Government thats strong, but that the people are strong in their minds. The relationship of the State and the society is like that of a parent and child, or husband and wife, as most of what keeps the relation running and happy is more often than not 'Trust' and 'Dogmatic Faith'.

Here in India and even in the west we often have a rebellious attitude and not much of trust for the State. Yes, face it. It's true.

Look at our morning papers, the first thing we see in the media is a negative news. They don't stop there, they criticize China too, as if we are all clean and happening big time! Sarkozy and Tiger Wood's personal life is what our media likes to talk the most about and not about the great things that are happening in India or the World generally. Why is that we are dead set on seeing the wrong things and saying wrong things. Gandhi knew this Indian mentality very well, he gave the three monkeys well in advance. I guess they are dead by now!

Martin Jacques: Understanding the rise of China | Video on TED.com

Little Deeds of Greenness@Greatness

I keep looking out for little deeds, knowingly or unknowingly, committed by people, that is an act worth a praise. There is a tea shop in National Games Village, where people (educated!) litter the place with loads of soft drink bottles, cigarette's behinds! and anything that isn't edible.

The shop owner is a man of his own kind, 'punctual', 'God fearing', 'money minded', 'mature' and 'cleanliness freak'. Of these I do not know which makes him collect these bottle caps and sell them. But somehow I was happy that once in three days, these Aluminium caps start their journey to get recycled.

"Little deeds of "Green"ness, little works of clean;
Make our Earth an Eden, like the Heaven above."

Thank God Julia A. Carney is dead, but I am sure she too would be happy with me tweaking her lines ;)

The Safety in similarity

Likes attracts likes.

Waiting for the bus that is scheduled at ten at night, while I reached the bus stand at 9 due to leaving home very early overestimating the Bangalore traffic, gave me nothing but a lot of time to observe completely random people and analyse their behaviour. It was really fascinating to see the strikingly evident pattern that's visible while looking at how and why random people come closer in a completely random environment.

Here I stand in a noisy bus terminal with people impatiently waiting for their buses and some already irritated. It is these typical environments that one gets to do a lot of behavioural analysis. I was consciously not wanting get irritated at the beginning of my journey to Chennai, which was going to give great inputs for my travelogue that I am about to write next! Hence keeping my happiness levels high was a prime importance.

What I couldn't help but notice was the coming closer of four completely random people unrelated to each other. One striking commonality between them all is the fact that all these men are having ear phones plugges into their ears. Out of the four one has been thinking something very deeply for quite a long time, the other fiddling with his rubix cube bringing it to form and then enthusiastically shuffling the colors, the other noticing me noticing all of them and there was another girl who was out of the place but nevertheless closer, I presume this was because these were unrelated people and the distance she took was because she was in one way not common to all of them, she was a female.

After sometime the female seemed to have attracted more alikes around her, and like the female, they were all rich and sophisticated. Needless to say with headphones!

Another point to consider was that there was this old man who walked atleast thirty steps just to take a seat among these guys who were all lonely specimens lost in thought and music and thinking. This was of course out of place, but this gave spark to a lot of questions.

Was this old man intelligent once? Still intelligent but just slowed down by aging? Why did he subconsciously prefer this group, when there were so many other seats available in other places?

Why did these people prefer to have have a seat by each other?

Was it because their minds perceived other people more alert and occupied as potential dangers? do they fear them? could be...

I think we all try to settle within our comfort and safety zones. All ears plugged means one of their senses of perception is occupied, hence they prefer to surround themselves or fit into a surrounding in which they see potentially lesser dangers.

Too deep into thinking in an environment which demands complete alertness and conscious wakefulness? Thats risky, hence the minds choose subconsciously a set of people who are more like us and tries to fit in quietly into the environment. The safety ring. The Similarity ring.

blogging via android!! so cool!

Its fascinating to know that people like me (who are attached to corporate computers which somehow never understand the value of blogging), can still blog with this android app!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Diwali trip to Kodaikanal. Required? not really. Enjoyed? Absolutely!

The Return of the Diwali

Diwali no doubt is an auspicious festival of India, one of its kind actually! A celebration with its purposes deep routed in history and its pride carried forward by generations that exist and those that are to come. This is what makes a diwali special. In the southern parts of India, diwali is essentially begun with a visit to any temple, small or big, near or far!

The protocol that has existed for quite a considerable period of time is that, people wake up at around 4 a.m in the morning (that is, earlier than the Sun), soak themselves up in oil and Shikakai (both of which have recently being scientifically proven to be a healthy practices!) and have a good hot water bath. Wearing the loveliest dress they can ever buy in that year, for this is the biggest celebration of the year, they get all set to fill their homes and lives with light and

sweets, all of which are auspicious elements (in scientific terms...mood uplifting properties). So essentially diwali is like a F5 to a routine life!

Q: If thats diwali why was I in Kodaikanal? when I actually must have been bursting crackers?

 

A: I work in an IT company! Getting a three day weekend is like a dream come true! It means a huge packet of time to accomodate your entire family and immerse them in engaging activity called love and sharing that we can't usually afford to do on the working days!

The Trip

Our journey (me, mom and dad) began at 7.30 p.m, Thurday. And to make a successful start at 7.30, I had to leave office at 4.30 p.m (Bangalore traffic you see!). Astonishingly I made it!

We boarded the bus, set to Palani (a temple in Tamil nadu). It was a Thiruvalluvar bus (SETC) service. Diwali season has a bad reputation for combining rains with people's plans! We too were the victims! The bus had waters in the path which seperates your seat and your snoring copassenger's seat. My mom, who is blessed with an epic-optimism and a fully functional humour, crisply made a comment that Karnataka finally decided to send some water to Tamil Nadu, and we were the privileged ones to be carrying it!

The bus started sharply at 7.30 p.m as promised! I was shocked at the punctuality, and this made me tweet the following..
 

And the bus reached sharply as promised too! I guess I am bad at writing travelogues, because I sleep really well during travel, and remember nothing when I wake up. Thank God it was a night travel, cos even if I attach a screenshot of my memories of night travel, it would still be a black

screen! so here we go down the dreamland..

After Night comes the Morn

It was a nice cool morning, with the clouds shaking off the last few remnant droplets on us, like how a dog does after a forced bathing/washing. EUREKA! I realized what I wanted! A cup of nice steaming masala chai. Consumed two just after booking a room for the luggages to rest.

 

Then quickly called up my Uncle's family who would be joining us in our pilgimmage! In about half an hour they managed to reach. All happy faces, grandly dressed up after following the strict diwali protocol of oil, bath and dressing.

The picture below is the temple, we had to climb. But having majority of the people above 35 years of age, it was rather sensible to take a rope car to the destination and it just took two minutes and Rs.15/-- to reach the top!

But before that, satisfying the stomach with a good satiety was the prime mission, we went to a proper famous south Indian hotel. It had been years since I visited one, as all that we have in our vicinity in the office campus are pizzas and burgers. Now, adding a pic of the food might not be a good idea, as I am very pathetic at food photography! But I have to add the pic of the place we

ate, I am sure it would remind you of the "Highway on my plate" kinda places!

  

While climbing up the hills to reach the temple I was wondering why is that the south Indian temple wall are always painted in the above shown pattern?!

Target Kodaikanal

Often the best strategy to plan a travel to a hill station, is to hire a vehicle run by a professional driver (preferably one who frequents the route often!). We took this strategy. We were all set to conquer the mountains!

Kodaikanal is a beauty of its own kind. Else why would the Britishers (few decades ago!) have chosen it for their summer entertainment and honeymoons! It's crisp and green everywhere, chill breeze that carries an infinite supply of eucalyptus oil aroma are a default travel package which comes with a trip to Kodaikanal.

Another best part with having your own travel arrangement is that you can choose to stop anywhere and enjoy the beauty of travel, as if you have all the time on Earth. And the bonus advantage is that you can take such snaps that can

serve as profile pics for social networks for ages!!!

Hill station has this bad habit of covering herself with mist when you lech at her! And this mist was fast approaching towards us, but we somehow managed to still lech at Kodaikanal! The place we stayed was the "Holiday Home" for Canara Bank employees (my dad), and I must admit it was "THE" HOLIDAY HOME. See it for yourself...


  
  

Above except the falls pic: "The Briant Park"
The Waterfall shown here is "Silver Falls"...Bath there if you dare!

Checklist

Now here is a checklist you can print out, Memorize or 'whatever'ize, when you go to Kodaikanal.

• A nice set of winter wear, if you are going in Offseason (November to December) and if you are thin skinned! Proof?!..Look at this tweet...!

• A Really good camera, trust me! You can gather a lifetime of memories in a few days.

• Kodaikanal is famous for homemade chocolates, so make sure you buy lots and lots of it to give it to your friends, or save it all for yourself (Don't forget to hit the Gym later, for these chocolates are really pure and fattening!)..and the tweet is here...

• Buy some Eucalyptus oil and Honey, just before you leave.

• And on the way back, halt at a place called "Oothu", where you get all the spoils of Kodaikanal fruits like plums, "ice cream" fruit etc. at a really reasonable price.

• One final word..."Don't spend hours Googling the places to visit in Kodaikanal, go there,

  be there, Explore her"...Doesn't matter if you miss a few places, Kodaikanal's got plenty!!!

I will always miss ya Kodaikanal! I surely will!!! Catch ya very soon!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Of Whom is the Rajyotsava?

Rajyotsava is not a festival, it is more than a festival or celebration. It is an attempt of a people of one state, to appreciate the qualities and uniqueness of their people and their land. To appreciate one's own culture is something the new India is forgetting to practice. Some of us consider ourselves to be more American than Indian! But in a way its true, as what we are is what we eat, and don't we like to eat lots of American foods?!

Rajyotsava is celebrated in Karnataka, by the Kannadigas (The Kannada speaking natives, just like Punjabis are from Punjab and Tamilians are from Tamil Nadu, both of which are states in India)...I say this, for my beloved readers from other countries.) India is like your mobile connection provider's tariff plan! You just have a lot of choices and options and superbly tough to comprehend!!!

And now for my Indian friends, especially the ones who stay in Bangalore, Karnataka.

In my work place, a few days ago, we had one senior person from the testing team who expressed his feelings about this project we are all working on, BIG TIME! He said, he was proud to be involved with such a project which is going to shape the culture and the economy of the UK and its people. The project name is PADA (you must have read quite a lot about this in the newpapers...The pensions...automation...NEST etc...yeah...the same one! ). The senior person in a very crisp and articulated English (with which we survive in the IT industry in India and manage to make money for our living) expressed, "I don't know how many of you can relate to this, but I...at some point of time in my life...may be after ten years will say, I WAS A PART OF THAT PROJECT, and I am proud of it, that's the reason I don't mind coming to office on weekends, may be even you should", he added the last part as he was the team lead...now that last line was a motivation strategy!

MY FOREIGN READERS :: The above paragraph is just another example of Indians' dedication and India's commitment to deliver your projects..."A good reason" to invest your money in India and its work force. We still have many such people in our projects.

So why name this post "Of whom is Rajyotsava?"

The simplest answer is, in another hour I will have to leave for office and start working to deliver the project as promised. Thats our commitment to the NEST people. For which I am going to office on Rajyotsava, I AM A TAMILIAN. But I still miss Rajyotsava celebrations. I don't want to work today.

Question: Why would I miss this festival, being a Tamilian?! This is very much a Kannadiga festival.

Answer: I completed my Bachelors in Engineering, in Bangalore and got a job in Bangalore. I have been in Bangalore for 6 years now (thats a considerable period of time). And I see every single festival of Indian states being celebrated in Bangalore with the same enthusiam as it would happen in the state to which that festival belongs to.


Don't we have to appreciate the fact that we (Tamilians, Keralites, Telugites, Marwaris, Punjabis, Saurshtrians, Northies, Nepalese, Pahadis, Maharashtrians etc... sorry if I missed any, add it in this post's comment (if you feel so!!!) ) are living happily in Bangalore? Has Karnataka denied us any of the luxuries? We,( atleast I ) feel more at home in Bangalore, than my own birthplace . We merrily buy properties in Bangalore, dance in its clubs, drink in its pubs, binge in its restaurants, stay chilled in its weather! What else do we need to celebrate this city?

This is exactly why I say, Rajyotsava is not a Kannadiga festival. "It is more of our festival". The festival of those non-natives of Karnataka, who have made their lives in Bangalore and have had the best of what Developing India had to offer them just because they live in Bangalore.

But again, no time to appreciate such great things, when people are proud about working for UK and asked us to work on Rajyotsava (Mine...A Tamil Bangalorean's festival). So I will be leaving to office in sometime!
The least I could do was to encrypt this thought into a blogpost and this is for that REAL THING I am proud about, "India, Bangalore, Diversity...and Indians!".

I might not have done justice to this topic...In that case, or may be, even if thats not the case...
"YOUR COMMENTS ARE WELCOME" :)

If All is Well, Then why so serious?!

    Millennia ago, the intelligent race of humans was not so intelligent. They were just another kind of animals who were moved by two important factors/purposes of survival, hunger and reproduction (the collective responsibility of the a species to sustain the species).

Then with progressing generations, there came the kind of humans who were unhappy with the present state of things. They re-thought everything, leading to raw food becoming Processed food, the animal colonies gained strength in numbers leading to civilizations, kingdoms and governments, caves became homes, trees became furnitures, metal and petroleum from deep beneath the earth became zippo lighter!

Then a word was coined. "Technology".

To this day the range of activities and products that come under this umbrella term is increasing in geometric progression.

My friend caveman after being with me for a considerable amount of time (from the time I started blogging!), he has picked up some lingo from me. Seriously.

He asked me..."Dude, I invented fire and made my life easier, I could store cooked food for longer periods of time and eat them when I starved. Fire made my life easier"

I was thinking why was this bearded freak saying this to me.

Then he went on, "You have this black colored box which you open in the morning and close at night, another piece of stone that you constantly keep touching now and then in different places...blah blah blah.."
I interrupted. Freak... that's a laptop and mobile phone.

He asked me what do I use them for and I told him, "Look you freak, these things are beyond your understanding, these things make my life easier, I communicate (I mean, talk) faster and louder(in terms of distance)", I could somehow feel this guy was understanding it cent percent, after all he was the dude who invented fire!

Then he started to go into his deep state of thinking, which to an untrained set of eyes would look like a retarted person meditating. And in a moment he snaps back coming near me..."Oh, freak", I say, "don't you ever do that sudden action as if you are gonna hunt me, ever again...I mean EVER, Damn...". Then I calmed down, and asked him what the hell did he realize, wich made him jump with energy?

Then this guy asks me.."If your boxes are supposed to make your lives easier, then why is that you carry it always? in car? and on bed during sex why do you touch the box as much you touch the female? while having food?... but still you say there is work pressure, you are always tensed and have hardly seen you smile or laugh heartily. Don't you compare my fire, with your box...I'll eat you for my next dinner, I warn you."

All this was fine...but finally he called me by the same name I had called him always..."Freak"

Hmmm...now how do I react?!

Are Smart phones really smart?

On the roads, when a girl walks past us with an air of attitude and beauty, spreading the sweet perfume of her’s in the air, we make a silent mental note of it. Then later we talk about her to our friends and say “Dude, she was like Aishwarya Rai da…my God, the image is still there in my mind”.

That’s how the mind works. Can’t help it. We often associate the things that manage to capture our attention to the Best ones that prevail/exist. (Now, please don’t argue that Ash might not be the best, there is always a Jolie…that was just a metaphor!) Similar patterns of subconscious analysis and comparison can be found in the way we perceive smart phones too.

Let me tell you how.

HOW? my favorite mechanism again…”Questioning”…
 
Q: What is a smart phone?
A: Simply put, a phone/connectivity device that defines simplified and intuitive ways of achieving the same goals, which in other “not so smart” phones would take about 5-10 different buttons being pressed in various combinations!

When we say smart, it can again be compared to a person. If the looks is all that ever mattered, then they must be called handsome/beautiful phones and not as smart phones.

We call a person smart looking into the real potential the person has got, not just by the looks. Of course looks matter too, but not as much as the functional aspects. Looks should essentially incline towards the ergonomics of the device.

Unfortunately, our Aishwarya Rai (BTW, Ash… if you are reading this post, I am not offending you by these mentions in this post, you are the best mechanism that can take me closer to the Indian minds…thank u for that.) kinda mindset  makes us terribly addicted to the notion that a QWERTY and loads of internet connectivity options is what makes a smart phone. Well, in a way yes. These can be compared to Hrithik Roshan’s dressing style, but the question is, is that all he is? There is more skills to him right?

Q: So…What is a smart mobile (in my humble opinion)…?
A: Its the stuff inside buddy!

I would call a device smart, if it can exhibit those little differentiating elements that a smart person would have over an average person.

So here is the checklist:

LOOKS :
1. A very robust keypad QWERTY or a really smart T9 logic backed normal keypad.

2. A display that which is visible at most, if not all angles.

3. A good hold feel, what good would be a beautiful/handsome girl/guy if you can’t hold her/him all day?!

4. A headphone jact which can fit a generic headphone pin (3.5mm), in short the supports should be more standards specific. Why would a smart company want to trap me into buying their headphones and accessories till I get fed up with the device?

5. Make it robust, just because I call it a smart phone doesn’t mean I am smart user, I will sleep on it entangled in the headphone wires, I will spill coffee on phone ( I update my tweets when I have coffee or lunch …mostly), I am an outdoors person so please do something for the dust and moisture.

Feel: In designer’s lingo we call it UX (User Experience). The device should be smart enough to cater the most complicated of services like email’ing and document creation/editing with utmost ease and intuitiveness. If reaching any point/target in the menu takes more than three clicks or taps, please lets not call it smart, its then just another wanna be smarty! Imagine…what if you save half a second everytime you move across the menu? YOU JUST RECLAIMED YOUR LIFE MAN!!!

Software: Now we are talking business! This is where I wanted to come until now! The software is the real deal, and can very well be compared to the brains of a smart person. I would not make the slightest compromise on this!!! No bugs, No hanging, better memory management please…after all  a smart person manages stress with ease right?! So should the smart phone do.

Extended services:

1. I would like to buy not just the phone, but the services that come along with it, every single using moment I wish to be reminded of the fact that I am using a device, the makers of which, make it a commitment in making me feel that I am a king (hey…I don’t claim myself to be a king! Don’t gimme that look,please!…corporates call customers the King right?! that’s why I chose the word.)

2. I wish there should a personal cloud space for me when I buy a smart phone for synchronising (now that includes a good server as well!) all my data (be it relevant or irrelevant…that’s immaterial when striving to cater the best services).

3. Proper scheduled updates and patches of softwares to help my mobile stay smart. Any smart person would know the value of continued learning, just like them the smart phones can/should never afford to get obsolete.

These are the expectations of an average Indian guy, fresh out of college into the software industry, with money to buy phone/s and services (also called “your potential customer”). Make something quickly for me, I am all ears!

Quick Conclusion :

• A smart phone is not just a QWERTY mobile with Fun-filled components.

• Its the inside stuff that matters the most, in real world they call it software!

• After the sale, I should not feel like an obsolete dumbo…the services do matter.

• Remember : Holding a smart mobile, doesn’t mean I am smart.

Stop Downloading, Start Uploading*

Stop Downloading, Start Uploading
—Jay Bradner.

Welcome to twitter era, where people largely emote in terms of tweets! Unlike great old works like poetry, literature, dramas etc tweets don’t have the luxury of attaining permanence in hard bound print forms for eternity, but they rather choose to stay as short little yet powerful words, wandering in the Internet, just showing up themselves when someone looks for them.

Did I mention powerful?! I did it because, tweets are the way we generally think. Ranging from pain to pleasure, we often wind up the message in less than 140 characters. Not convinced…?
Touch something hot?..Ouch!
Want to express love?…I love you..
Dismay/astonishment?..OMG
Every other feeling including the ones above?…Fuck..

So not astonishingly, every now and then great works of intellects are born in tweets and fade with timelines. One such tweet was “Stop Downloading, Start Uploading”.

This was a message from Jay to the high school students at graduation. I would say what a statement of vision. Internet is a mechanism truly democratic, it is populated by the people, for the people, and is presently of the people! and all that what we call constitutes Internet oops… (I sound like an obsolete techie now!) Web 2.0 today is the culmination of the data (uploads) by the people, who were/are mostly from the developed countries, who were lucky enough to have decent Internet access, at a very early point of time. Ours is a developing country, and our optic fibres are progressively carrying more and more data everyday, seems like a good sign to me!

With all this discussion on “Stop dowloading, Start uploading”, it is worthwhile to see throught the right spectacles, what the early Internet access and uploading phenomenon helped these developed nations achieve.

The greatest thing is about the data in Internet is not just data in itself. It is a culture uploaded. A subtle form of soft-power establishment. British council through its libraries worldwide, wields it soft-power by establishing cultural relations. We all speak English, eat American, Italian, Lebanese, Chinese range of foods, prefer French wines, trust German engineering, Indian software services! etc. All this constitutes judicious use of soft-power, advertently or inadvertently. So, essentially what we see in Internet is what they show us, which is actually that which they want us to see! I mentioned “inadvertently” already, I don’t mean to say all this is done deliberately, it just happened and is happening, and all that I am calling for is to see the huge benefit that can emerge out of practicing a simple thing from now on, the benefit of which will arrive as a geometric progression, in simple terms -exponentially. After-all, in Internet, information is contagious!

So what can we do?
It is a must that we accept that India as a nation has its own problems, ranging from poverty to corruption, there are lots of people who still need to be fed, there is a huge mass that needs to be vaccinated to fight diseases of the future and an equal mass that needs to be educated to fight the social/cultural diseases that will come up in the future. All the above problems, need to be addressed with careful, diplomatic plannings, often requiring political intervention and will. So that very much distances techies like you and me from these issues!

So, what can WE do.

By WE, I here mean the privileged few like you and me, who have access to Internet, who have email addresses, who communicate ceaselessly with our devices. We can’t touch lives, we can’t change rules by which our nation runs, but we definitely can break all these barriers and utilize this medium called Internet which is very easy and which is so much our playground.

My dream is an extrapolation of Jay Bradner’s Vision. My dream is..

Every school student, college graduate has a blog, or better, a website for himself.

To tweet the emotions, to come up with good emotions, don’t forget that we are uploading cultures!

Colleges and companies should have a place in the forms asking for personal websites and blogs, just the way we have mobile numbers now, I don’t think that was there two decades ago.

Students start giving links to their blogs and websites in their resumes, enabling their persona to break the confines of a boring black and white resume, just the way they want to break the confines of a dull, unchallenging job.

The up-loaders should provide appropriate tags, as the Web 2.0 loves tagging, for managing itself. Oblige and Web shall love you too!

A name like Simon, John, Smith, Jason is so very close to Internet, you see these filled in by default in the text boxes intended for filling in your names. Why not Krish, Raghav, Ram etc!?! Provided we think more than providing just software making and maintaining services, and come up with more original home grown ideas which the Web 2.0 would love to accommodate, or better celebrate.

How can we do?

Q:How do you eat an elephant?
A: One bite at a time.
—from "Eat That Frog" by Brian Tracy.

Start with one upload per day, minimum being a tweet, maximum being a video of some fun or serious activity of the day.
Upload options: esnips, plinky, twitter, scribd, stumbleupon, facebook, tumblr blog, wordpress, bloglines, linkedin, etc…in simple terms…HAVE A FACE IN INTERNET. An entire population of a country like India, into Internet, filling it…see the potential?

How can we do?
You think upon that…! and add a comment. I will be commenting my ideas as well. Looking forward to your bright ideas. Trust me, I will Execute them!

The Indian Doppelganger syndrome

Gandhi was a man who saw this coming very clearly. Thats why he gave us the "Three Monkeys", that say "See no evil, Say no evil, Hear no evil", but my education taught me that saying bad things meant using dirty words, and may be now they are teaching see no evil means pornography...but it took me 23 years of introspection to understand what this man wanted to convey. He says, say no to negativity and be more open towards positivism! What a visionary within that puny man.

The common wealth games are up and running, we have finally delivered the promise, not much to the world's awe but to every Indian's awe! "shame"... Everyone of us who watches Indian news channels and reads Indian newspapers must have seen the dark gloomy clouds that the media positioned over the CWG site in Delhi. In fact for a moment they convinced me to think against my own country, and make me blurt "WTF is happening here man...such a shame"?

That is exactly when I realized that I have this Doppelganger syndrome like all other Indians. We all in this country have a propensity to love our country and behave as if lacking patriotism is a crime (well... In a way it actually is ;) ), but the big picture is that it is very superficial. I would compare it to a boyfriend who makes it a point that he says "I love you" to his girl every single morning and night to reiterate the fact that they are in love and they better not get diverted with someone else!

 "We are Indians", "we love India", "mera Bharat mahaan" etc, we love saying this, don't we?! The same superficial Indian curses everything we got in India, from politicians to film making...here is a check list! See which one you use the most...?!

1. These roads...God knows what the government is doing with all the tax money.

2. Hopeless politicians, they are just keen on making money...clearly they confused politics to be a career option, that requires no educational criterion to get employed/involved in it.

3. Education system in India sucks big time...don't know when all this will change, exams exams exams...all that we try to do is to act like a USB memory stick, and forget the processor in us!

4. The younger generation has hardly any values, God knows where India is heading to with this generation that loves casual sex and drugs, the generation that which sleeps late and gets up late.

5. The petrol price is high, and this traffic makes my cash flow into the atmosphere through my car's ass.

6. The television channels are so bad, the programs are so offending, is the government watching?

7. Who sends me all this advertisement messages, calls from banks and messages from Dr.Batra's? why isn't TRAI concerned about all this at all, BTW what are they concerned about actually?

8. What films we make?! yuck...have you seen Guy Ritchie's, Danny Boyle's, Quentin Tarantino's, Martin Scorcese's movies? Thats the real deal man...When will we ever have movies like that?

9. Stop expecting more...this is a blogpost, not a research paper! The next point is the best one!!! our favorite! and the last one...

10." Common Wealth Games :( " say no more...ha ha

We have clearly got so much negativity about our own country. But let me help us get to the roots of it, through my favorite mechanism..."Questioning".
?    Q: What is a country?
?    A: You, me and similar things put together.

?    Q: Where is the problem?
?    A: How much did you pay for your kid's schooling, medical or engineering course fee (I mean the Undocumented money!) ?
?    How come paying extra Rs.1000/-- gets you a fancy number for your bike and Rs.4000/-- for your car? Did you get the bill for it?!
?    Did you get the bill for the single strip of paracetamol you bought recently?
?    Did you demand bill for the fuel you filled in your vehicle's fat belly?
?    ''congratulations'', you just did your bit to screw up the system! HOW???
?    -->>> You didn't get bill, the money went undocumented, government got no tax, Government is angry, cos it never knew that you got your stuff, and paid money for it, because Government never got its share, so she decides to support herself by making your commodity costlier, so that the little taxes that manage to reach the government gets proportionately larger in magnitude.
?    By the way, forgot to ask...how will you repay the education loan for your kid who is still unemployed because of the poor education quality that was thrust upon him? especially when your paycheck is so miniscule? when was the last time a bribe supported this cause?! ;)
?    Got a fattened medical bill from hospital for claiming it from your office?..Hmmm...now we start stealing from the employers haven't we? Now...the employer is angry, so lesser claims encouraged, you are now enraged! can't help it!

Can't help it...because this vicious downward loop is here to stay, till when we have this syndrome treated. Wanna know whats the best part?!

Nobody but ourselves can treat this syndrome.
Did you just say..."conclude fast"?! Fine...

Just for a change...U do that...