Can't watch cricket

I hate it!

There is no way I can watch the cricket series - shucks...

I do not know why I like cricket so much especially after we do so badly time after time...

Whenever India used to bat and lose a wicket - my friend used to sing the song "Another one bites the dust" and I used to pray that the next guy stands for sometime and then he would get out and my friend would start again - ah - i hate him.

Right now "My hopes of watching the match bites the dust."

Conscience prick!

In early 2001, in Canada, I was walking to my desk on a dull and cold Monday morning and the floor was unusually quiet. People generally were focussed with their work and did not interact too much except on a professional level, but today was unusually quiet - even the odd chirp in the corner was missing and the faces too were gloomy - kind of mirrored the cold weather outside.

I went to my cubicle and turned on the workstation and gave my customary Hi to Fady! He was unusually sober and just said "Did you hear about it".

I replied "About what".

Fady said " Renne and Fadia have been laid off".

I was shocked - Renne used to work in the cubicle next to mine. I asked - "When did this happen".

Fady said "They came to know it in the morning and Renne would come in the afternoon sometime to collect his stuff"

I was dumbstruck - did not know what to say to Fady - my head shook in disbelief. As I turned to my computer screen, I started wondering. What would I tell Renne when he came over. Don't worry buddy, you'll get a better job. And from where? The job scene was grim, recruitments had been frozen for quite a while. Recession, cost-cutting, huge losses and job-cuts were all that you heard of these days.

Met Moiz at the coffee place and he said I guess with you guys (Indians) around, they would need us (client employees) less - Moiz told it playfully but that was the harsh truth.

With the client offshoring to reduce costs, the employees at the client site who were redundant were being moved... The companies were also suffering severe losses due to the recession and that had resulted in large scale lay-offs, but then offshoring too played its bit in the job reduction by moving some jobs to India...

People may say that Offshoring is taking the back-end work and thus helping the industries to focus on exciting, innovative R&D work rather than dull maintenance work. But this is not entirely true - I have seen that atleast in the Telecom industry, some of the companies are outsourcing even key development activities offshore cause the talent in India is phenomenal and at lower costs, it is too compelling a case for clients around the world to ignore...

In our Strategic Management class, we had learnt that if you do not have a competitive advantage, then differentiation will come down to pricing and that is what was happening. We are able to provide the same services at a lower cost and therefore we were preferred over their own existing employees...

Coming back to Renne - he came in the afternoon and gave me a smile and I said a wry "Hi!". As he was talking with the others who dropped by his desk, he broke down and said "I don't know what I'll do - the job market is frozen - I guess I will just have to keep trying. Maybe I will go to a different country, a continent maybe, maybe I'll..." He lost his voice and anyway I could not hear more... I shut down my computer and quietly left for the day

As I was walking back to the apartment I thought "Did I just rob Renne of his job? Was outsourcing all about job stealing? Was our economy growing at the expense of people losing their jobs at the other end of the world" Manmohan Singh seems to disagree saying that job loss is a short term side affect and in the long term the US economy will see benefits out of outsourcing...

I guess all I can say to Renne is "Welcome to the cruel world of Capitalism!"

Swades!

Some songs are simply awesome and the more you hear it, the more they get to you - One can never get tired of them. When set in the right context and mood, the song becomes more than just a song, it becomes a powerful message, and touches a chord in the heart!

Sitting alone in my apartment I played the song - "Yeh jo des hai tera" by A.R.Rehman... It felt so good and at the same time felt uneasy too - I felt like going back to the India - the land where my friends, relatives, colleagues are... All kind of questions started cropping up - was this a great choice - was the bargain worth it and hoards of other questions . And the questions still stay unanswered...

Getting back to the song, the song has a soul and it kind of puts you in a brooding mood with each and every line making so much sense to you

This shows the greatness of the lyricist too... Always been a great fan of Javed Akhtar who comes up with really good lyrics each and everytime... Not to forget the music and playback provided by A R Rehman - he never ceases to amaze me!

Swades just proves that you have immense potential... Hope you keep composing great stuff...

A degree makes all the difference

In my fourth standard in Delhi, I was just re-doing my geometry homework and I was not too mighty pleased - I was asked to redo my homework as my right angled triangle was 89 degrees and not 90... I was mighty pissed with the teacher and when I had asked why I had to redo it, she replied curtly"Because it should be 90 degrees and not 89 degrees"

I went to Appa and started blaming the education system and how I do not like the Maths teacher and I showed him the protractor and said - "See Appa, such a small degree difference and this teacher has made me re-do my geometry homework". Appa used to be very patient and he heard my full story and got me to his side and said...

"Shyam, you know geometry is about accuracy. A degree difference can cause satellites to go out of orbit" and pointing to the roof. I looked at the roof and drew a blank expression.

He understood that my mind was not convinced as I was still feeling wronged by my Maths teacher... He said" I'll be back in a couple of minutes"... I stood waiting there - the protractor in my mouth and looking up and wondering "Why is Appa worried about satellites when I am just doing my geometry homework... " The reason I came to Appa was for sympathy and not explanations.

As I was pondering Appa came back - he was holding Amma's sewing kit and he took out the black thread. Seeing that I thought - maybe my dad thinks I am totally incompetent to study and I should start tailoring or something.... He made two long strings from the black threads and said... "Hold it"

Then he said" I will hold the two strings to the bottom of the protractor and you go to the end of the room and I will show you that this small difference in degree in the protractor makes so much of difference at the other end of the room... I slowly took the ends of the string and placed one down and placed the other right next to it... He said move the left string - i moved it a little bit... He said a little bit more and this went on - after a while he said"Stop, check the direction of the two strings" One was pointing to my room door and the other was heading to my parents room door which was roughly 3-4 feet away...

Then he said "This is the difference of one degree" I was astonished" I ran to his side and saw what he had been doing. He had made one of the strings aligned to the 90 degree angle and the other at 89. Then he

He the went on and said "Now imagine this was dragged for miles - how much the change would have happened in the direction" By now I was all ears and he went on to explain - that if the scientists at NASA made a small calculation of one degree, the satellite would not go where it is intended and that the satellite launch would be a failure... I listened with rapt attention and then quitely went to my room.

I quietly did the gemoetry homework and got an "Excellent" in the remarks section. But the real lesson I learnt was from my Dad. Why doesn't our education system teach us in a way to inculcate interest in the subject - I still don't know

All I know is "Appa should have been a geometry teacher"

Water-sports!

Weekend again... no clue as to what to do... we decided first things first - lets just rent a car. Rented a car (ideally should have been called a truck) and then came backto the apartment and we were like - What next?

Sanks and Rams were returning to India soon and decided to shop and we decided to go the outlet malls which were 30 miles away from our place... It was a nice experience but after 4 hours of window shopping - we decided that to make any justice to our coming there - we better buy something..

Ths stores were closing at 9:00 and we ran into the Reebok store at 8:50... We were not greeted with the most pleasant of smiles... the guys ran to check their shoe sizes and different pairs - one of them put their feet into an infants shoe measure instrument and his feet covered the whole of it and he looked at me and asked - "What is my size". I said politely - "Infants instrument da, you crossed that period some 20 years back!!" Finally after trying out twenty shoes, fifty different questions to the person at the store - we finally bought a couple of sneakers and headed back...

On the way we decided to check up the drinks at the wine store and we were tempted by the Gold Label bottle and minutes later - we were armed with 750 ml of spirit for the night...

Back at the apartment, as we were sipping on the drinks - the question again popped up - What next?.

One of the guys took out his laptop and started surfing and after few searches he said - Let's go rafting... We took the idea like a fish to the water and we decided that "Life main adventure ki zaroorat hain". We called the place for reservations at 11:45 pm - i am not sure they were pleased with our sense of timing. However they said that" You guys are just 3 people, we cannot guarantee your reservations. If you can get a 4th member we can definitely reserve you for the 2pm slot tomorrow"

Now how the hell do we get a fourth member - and that too at 12:00 in the night - we started calling our friends at the nearby places and finally we did manage to find a "bakra" - Saks - who said that he has no plans and is free on Sunday...

We got up early in the morning (7ish - had slept only at 2) and we were all groggy - but the plan was to leave our place at 8:30 - finally we did at 9:30 - then picked up Saks (who lived 20 miles away) and that is when Rams said - "Hey i left my purse, license etc.. at the hotel... " We controlled our expletives and said - "Lets quickly go back and pick it up then"

So after 1 and 1/2 hours of driving, we were at where we began - outside our hotel - we decided we must hurry and then decided to catch some lunch at Udupi - considered to be a decent Indian restaurant - We all had our mouth watering at the thought of eating south indian food :) ...

When we arrived there, all the people were staring at us. The rest of the people had all dressed in traditional attire - dhoti's kurta's and we were a bunch of guys in t-shirts and shorts and sandals!!! The manager came and asked - Have you come for the party - and we uttered the wrong words - No. Seconds later we were politely sent out of the hotel. Sanks said that he felt a boot near his posterior, but none of us looked back.. We were really dissapointed and now were very hungry and I heard my mind saying " So close and yet so far"

However the manager was gracious enough to agree to take our orders - only thing was that we had to take it as a parcel... We were very hungry as we hadn't eaten much the night before and therefore we readily accepted it... Dosa's, sambar and chutney vanished in 15 minutes flat and we were off to Duluth... we were 120 miles from the rafting place and we just had roughly 2 and 3/4 hours to do it

Rams definitely would give Narain a run for his money anyday at the Grand Prix - he reached the place in 2 hr and 15 minutes - this was after taking a break of 10 minutes in between...

We were ready to raft in an hour - we had put the life jackets, signed forms stating that "We chose to die on our own and no one forced us into it" and nervously sat on this blue rubber device which they called the "Raft" - Sanks excalimed "How do we continue to remain on this thing". Yours truly said - "your guess is as good as mine". Basically we were sitting on rubber logs that ran horizontally across the raft and we had nothing to hold!!! We started thinking that this was not such a good idea after all...

Lot of instructions were given as to how not to raft - I guess we heard it as how to raft because 10 minutes into the water - we were circling at the same place where we started and were shouting at each other saying that the other person was doing it wrong... Rafting is about team work and that was exactly what we were not doing too well here.... A couple of instructors decided to intervene when we started pointing the paddles that we had at each other - they must have thought that we were more interested in the paddle form of sword-fighting...

Lot of instructions flew in but we were not able to control this animal of a blue raft - it just refused to listen to our paddling... finally we grappled with it and with nudges and pushes, reached the first rapid.. we were the last to reach there - the rest of the group had reached there quite a while back and they were all looking at us and thinking - what the hell were they thinking when they decided to try rafting out!!

The first rapid was fine - the raft did bob sideways a bit and water did come into the raft but we were basically fine... We obviously were mountain climbers in our earlier lives because we just loved the rocks and kept hitting our raft into all the rocks around ... At the second rapid we were supposed to circumvent a huge rock that was in the wate and flow with the current... we went right over the rock and the raft dived down - I was sitting at the front and I was like - what the hell have we just done... Rams in the back was half standing up and Saks at the back, who was steering stood up completely... and we nose dived in - thankfully we surfaced soon and the count on the raft was still - 4 people - alive and trembling...

After this we went an rested in a corner and we saw lot of people jumping into the water and splashing around- and we decided that lets all jump in as well - the thing that we did not know was that getting out of the raft into water was easy not vice versa... After a while when we decided to get into the raft - I found it physically impossible to get in... Sanks, who was in the raft all the time was finding it difficult to pull me up, as he was quite a lean guy... however he managed to lift me after a few attempts and much to the amusement of the other rafts... we quicly got the rest in as well - and the other rafts were all passing smart comments amongst themselves... We sheepishly headed to the next rapid

The next one was a short waterfall... I was like - Are we going down a waterfall!!!... The rest in my raft also froze - we all started staring at Sanks who had made this great plan - was it worth it - paying 40$ to get killed!!! This was not our idea of adventure - not mine for sure...

However we saw the first raft go - In a second they just vanished from the water surface... and we were like - how the hell are we going to do this... Rams had quickly started saying his prayers and we repeated all the gods names that we knew... It was our turn soon and we went slowly rafting and hearing the directions that the instructors gave... In seconds we saw that "this short" waterfall was not "such" a short one - the raft dived into the water and the experience was quite amazing... we just went into the water - the whole raft got nearly submerged into it and in a couple of seconds came out - the raft rocked violently from side to side before it came to a standstill. We had successfully held on and moved to the safety near to the shore - It was just too awesome...

Then we had a couple of miles to raft and our arms were getting sore with all the paddling - As usual, the rest of the boats had dissapeared in the horizon and we were still battling with keeping it straight... Our arms were really sore and our speed had considerably come down- Rams threw his arms up in despair and said that he is giving up and he cannot paddle anymore - A couple of glares from us set him back to paddling.... We reached the shore - lifted the raft and put it into the bus that would take us back to where we started...

It was the most amazing experience - I have gone on roller coasters... adventure rides... dropped from heights... but rafting a boat all on ourselves with no instructors on the boat was a truly exhilirating experience...

Art of Teaching

The word "Teacher" instills different kind of emotions in people - and the emotions depend on the subject the teacher used to take. For example - I used to "adore and respect" my "Maths" teacher, was "scared" of my Sanskrit teacher (his cane used to be like a sword in the hands of a samurai - brr...), mixture of both for my Physics professor at IIT coaching class...

Null Hypothesis: The inclination of a student to the subject is inversely proportional to his fear and respect quotient for his teacher :)

But can the teacher make a difference - Can I disprove my Null hypothesis?

To disprove I have to take a case of a person who hated a subject and still liked and respected the teacher of the subject.

I decided to look into my school days and I remember a teacher from high-school days - my Biology teacher who also was my class teacher

I took to Biology like an Ostrich to flying - basically I never took off!! And the teacher used to keep asking me questions in the class and I used to have a blank disinterested expression and a readymade answer - I don't know Ma'am.

But the difference between her and the other teachers was that she never ever taunted me saying that I was going to be a failure in life or something like that. She just used to ask me "Why don't you study despite being an above average student (me and above average - ahem...she must be kidding - not after my stellar Bio knowledge surely).

I told her bluntly - "I don't like Bio, Ma'am - I don't have the time and patience to study volumes of Bio. I want to get into IIT for which I am preparing and the sole reason I came to Chennai - I dont care about my CBSE results as they do not matter in IIT"

She took it pretty well - she used to even sanction my half day leaves on pretext of headaches, stomach pains etc.... (our school was really strict about it) and she would smile and say "some test in your IIT class, is it?"

Since she was so understanding - I never had the heart to not to listen to her during her classes - she was a fabulous teacher - was very clear in explaining Bio - which to me was always Greek and Latin otherwise...

I realised that I was one of her favourite students - not because I was good in Biology - it was far from that.. There was a strange bond of understanding - which is what made me respect her a lot - Even though I disliked her subject, she understood that different students have different preferences to different subjects and it is not necessary that everyone has a same passion to the subject as she had...

To date, I have not seen one person say that she was not a nice teacher or a nice person - everyone used to like her and she was the most popular teacher in the school for years... and I guess she still is!!

In conclusion though I have disproved my Null hypothesis, I would say that - For an average teacher the relationship still holds good... but the person who can make his/her students respect him/her irrespective of the student's inclination is what makes a truly Outstanding teacher...

Better late than Never!

Have you had a friend you have never talked to - never seen in flesh and blood...

Well I have a friend who is just like that - I met her in the early 2000's and well the friendship is on a different plane - we are diametrically opposite when it comes to demographics - I am indian, she is spanish - she has lived in LA, me in India - we actually come from the opposite sides of the world! - though thankfully we do not think that way

Having pen-pals is really beautiful and special - it is an unexplainable bond that ties you with them.

People say that you cannot make friends with someone you do not meet - it is stupid and it does not make sense... It does not have to make any sense to me - i have a good time mailing my pal and reading her mails... And as long as the feeling is mutual that is all I care about...

I finally called her a couple of days back :) - better late than never!