Lens

No blog. Only rant. Rk rants.Shouting at a wall. Looking at mirror. Listening to echo.

Archive for December, 2005

Why terrorists struck Bangalore

with 2 comments

Hey! Looks like you are a new visitor, you may want to subscribe to my Lens RSS feed. Or my shared links Convex RSSThanks for visiting!

Why terrorists struck Bangalore Sad.

Written by Rk

December 29th, 2005 at 9:29 pm

Posted in News

Other side of outsourcing

with 5 comments

I saw this documentary (Link via: Scoble) “The other side of outsourcing” for Discovery done by Thomas Friedman (of “The world is flat” fame).

It is a must watch. I will just document/summarize what I saw and what are my reactions to it.

On one hand I was feeling very proud to be a part of a nation that is giving nightmares to the people of the wealthiest and mightiest country. On the second, when the documentary focuses on the other side, the other side that is disturbing, it saddens me. But not before I say to myself, it is all going to change and change has started already.

Let me go in the sequential manner as the documentary. Few minutes into it, I was utterly disappointed. For it seemed to think the outsourcing and BPO is reduced to call centers only. (About this particular topic, I will remind myself again that I have to document my thoughts and to link some really good links I have seen.) BPO is not just that. It sort of highlights the rosy picture of call center as lot of disposable time and lot of disposable money. Even though the other face of it was releaved, it could have been done in a more profound way. Well, there are lot of factors in call centers and no justice could be done in a short documentary.

Also at one point it greatly assumes that outsourcing is causing the westernisation. Agreed that there is money inflow and imitation is easier but the fuss about Valentine day celebration and other minor fears of westernization is not a result of outsourcing. What I mean to say is, outsourcing and westernisation as byproducts of globalisation stand at a same hierarchy, if not anything else but not definitely that latter is the cause of the former. These talk of “valentines day is bad, it is western”, “we gave KS to world but what should remain indoor should remain indoor” are opinions of certain individuals and do not represent the opinion of all. What I fear is that, given the wide audience of the channel/site, Indians will again be stereotyped to certain individual’s thoughts, just as many foriegners even today think India is a land of snakes, elephants and beggars.

Let me not digress and get on with documentary. It revolved around Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore !!) and captured the best and worst of it – but nothing particular to Bengaluru. The observations would apply to any other city as well. TF did an interview with U R Ananthamurthy, but nothing great worth mentioning about it. Then it shows RSS [not syndication, but a group of culture guardians] drills and some interviews with them. One observation is noteworthy – “World has become a market and humans are reduced to consumers.”

I was astonished to know 54% of Indian population is less than 20 years of age. So India’s face tomorrow will be literally the face of today’s youth.

As an example of glocalisation, TF mentions jadooworks. I must confess I came to know about it only now. There as a part of stress handling, employees undergo Yoga everyday. They not only employ artists to do animation on computers but also are preserving cultural heritage by creating an animated series on Krishna. Along with service industries, BPOs etc, these are the companies Americans should be afraid of , as they can steal the work from right under their noses. They can protest and get a bill sanctioned against outsourcing, but how can they stop the creativity and quality provided by companies such as these which are “creating” content as against servicing for them.
You should see the confidence to believe in Rajesh Rao of Dhruva Interactive, a gaming company. He affirmed, what we are seeing is just tip of iceberg and that tomorrow, India is going to be a super power. “We are going to RULE”.

As against the confidence of the hot blood, was the words of wisdom, experience and maturity by Aziz Premji, richest person in India. He declared the truth that we need to co-exist in this global market and that is only helpful to all of us.

Any dignitary visit to Bengaluru wont be completed without visits to two companies that are originally responsible to put India on a world map this faster. Wipro and Infosys. Rightly TF felt the Infy campus looked like a luxurious resort of Caribbean. He has not seen other buildings of Infy yet, like in Mysore etc, and he could take back a list of tourist spots in India to contain visits only to these campuses !

TF briefly spoke to Nandan Nilekani of Infy, Aziz Premji of Wipro and Ramesh Ramanathan of Janagraha.

I did not find the fears of Vimochana valid. They were only emotional and did not have right answers to TF. What villages need is better hygiene, better facilities (health education etc) but not the attitude “that cities are good only because you are used to it, villages will also be good if you get used to this”.

It saddens to see that there exists a completely different world just less than 2 hours journey from Bengaluru. The place which is calm, which does not have basic necessities like running water, health, education. [Quite ironically they have fresh air to breathe as against they do in Bengaluru]. This is not general to any one city. In India (I don’t know outside), there is a great polarisation/concentration at cities. I feel this will be the biggest problem of tomorrow. Unless the wealth, facilities and population does not spread evenly, we can not claim to have developed. Unless that happens, even when we project the glory of cities, at the back of our mind we realise that there is darkness in villages. Unless that happens we can not really smile and say “India is shining.” This is where people like Mohan Bhargav (Swades) can make a difference. So I was totally surprised when the documentary ended with such an example. It gave this entire documentary a great facelift and it answers the apprehensions of the wealth generated not being used properly. It is an initiative by Abraham George who has funded a school Shanti Bhavan out of his savings of working abroad/MNC. The students there are completely at ease with computers. One girl even beat TF in speed and who would mind losing to the children!

The smiles and hopes of these children gave a beautiful look to the entire documentary. Last few scenes just arrest you and you smile back as if you are acknowledging, “Tomorrow is going to be a great and happy day, for you, for me and for the entire world”.

Ps: I have immense respect to all the people whose names I have mentioned, just that I skipped “Mr” everytime.
I apologise for any wrong references/credits.
I am begging time to allow me to read World is flat.

Written by Rk

December 28th, 2005 at 9:40 pm

Posted in News, Thoughts

Happy

without comments

These days you can catch me smiling, giggling almost anytime :D. Some small reasons or otherwise. I am generally happy (Except when I think I have not even started to study…back again to procastrinating of Engg days). I go near mirror, I will realise myself smiling. I look at monitor, I will be giggling looking at some or the other mail or if nothing remembering someone/something.

The hangover of family day celebrations is helping and adding to that is the festive season of December[vacation of colleagues]. Not to forget the visits to home is adding its own colour.

The peaceful days remind me of last year March when I led a dreamy life (you can also see that posts were considerably more then!) . Time flies…

Upon these, I am reading real good content from books or essays that have a very positive and optimistic influence on me and my energy glow must be visible I guess :) Reading brings its own pleasure!

Today I recieved the holiday list for next year of our organisation. 8 out of 10 holidays will give me extended weekends (holidays fall on Fridays and Mondays) ;-) And 2 can be converted to extra long weekends (Holidays on tuesday and thursday) !

And at the end, living the day if not to fullest but without regrets ! Life!

Ps: There are few complaints,requirements or rants but I do not want to pollute this post :)

Written by Rk

December 28th, 2005 at 8:41 pm

Posted in Life

links for 2005-12-28

without comments

Written by Rk

December 28th, 2005 at 8:40 pm

Posted in Links

links for 2005-12-27

without comments

Written by Rk

December 27th, 2005 at 8:40 am

Posted in Links

Its happening in PESIT :)

without comments

This and this .
Times have changed since the days when we were being made fun of being spoon fed.

Written by Rk

December 26th, 2005 at 11:47 am

Posted in Life

links for 2005-12-26

without comments

Written by Rk

December 26th, 2005 at 8:40 am

Posted in Links

links for 2005-12-25

without comments

Written by Rk

December 25th, 2005 at 8:37 am

Posted in Links

links for 2005-12-24

without comments

Written by Rk

December 24th, 2005 at 8:40 am

Posted in Links

links for 2005-12-23

without comments

Written by Rk

December 23rd, 2005 at 8:40 am

Posted in Links

Delicious Ambiguity

without comments

I had come across the following sometime ago and thought of waiting for a better occasion to post it. But I realise, now, that any occassion is better than other.

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity. ~ Gilda Radner

Written by Rk

December 22nd, 2005 at 4:53 pm

Posted in Quote

links for 2005-12-20

without comments

Posted manually as the del.icio.us was down.

Written by Rk

December 22nd, 2005 at 3:56 pm

Posted in Links

links for 2005-12-22

with 4 comments

Written by Rk

December 22nd, 2005 at 8:40 am

Posted in Links

No surprises

without comments

Looks like there are no surprises from WP2.0, as has been mostly discussed, the improvements are underhood.
No surprises considering we have already seen wordpress.org.
There are default plugins like Akismet (but I already have spam karma) and Backup manager which too is already in place in my current stand.
Been hearing lot about incompatibility of current plugins, I am crossing my fingers and hoping that my plugins do work.

Written by Rk

December 21st, 2005 at 2:53 pm

Posted in Site design

links for 2005-12-21

without comments

  • Simple electronics tutorial
    (tags: Tech)
  • They include file-sharing, blogs, group-edited sites called wikis, and social networking services such as MySpace and Meetup Inc., which has helped everyone from Howard Deaniacs to English bulldog owners in New York form local groups. Those technologies are finally teasing out the Net’s unique potential in a way that neither e-mail nor traditional Web sites did. The Net can, like no other medium, connect many people with many others at the same time.
    (tags: News)

Written by Rk

December 21st, 2005 at 8:40 am

Posted in Links

Question

with 2 comments

“Let’s say that passenger A’s usual fare would be $1, passenger B’s is $5 and passenger C’s is $9. If all three share a cab (and assuming A and B are allowed to hop out on the way to C’s destination, without incurring any special fees), the total bill would be $9 — rather than the $15 they’d have to pay, total, to ride alone. How should they divide up the cost of the shared $9 ride? Or, put another way, how do they share the $6 of total savings?”

I came across this question in Emergic. There are various answers in WSJ but as registration is required to see the site, I could not access it.

What are your answers (apart from those mentioned in Emergic) ?

Written by Rk

December 20th, 2005 at 9:32 am

Posted in Life

Waking up to loud noise

with 2 comments

In practical sense, it is music. But technically unwanted signal is noise. I am facing the same problem that the character in Hyderabad Blues faces…disturbing loud devotional music hampering the early morning sleep. Ok, if you thought it is doing the job of alarm clock, you are wrong. Did I say loud ?, it is earth shattering. Did I say disturbing, it is infuriating. In that noise, nothing can be done even after getting up apart from cursing those souls who are responsible for it.
Pray what makes them torture trouble fellow beings in return of pleasing the Lord. At least if it was melodious and good as Suprabhatam by MS !
Oh, did I mention it is from a temple ? They seem to perfectly believe in the adage “The nearer the Church, the further from God.”, what else can justify the loudness!

Written by Rk

December 20th, 2005 at 7:01 am

Posted in Life

VISMERIZED !

with 9 comments

On Saturday in VGP resort, curtains were drawn to the week long festive mood and activities in the VISMERIZE event,a family outing of associates of our organization.
Vismerize/Dec073.jpgVismerize/Dec074.jpg
Prior to the event, the preparation and celebration had been going on in the office for the past week. After having formed 4 groups of approx 50 each, each team selected a lead and named their teams. Soon after naming themselves majaa, diShoom diShoom, Remo and PODANGO, the teams started publicizing each of them by pasting posters all around. Then it was the turn of balloons, paper hangings, Christmas tree decoration, cloth banners, colorful emails, rangoli and other designs, Welcome doll, art gallery - the list of innovative decoration and publicity stunts could give professional event managers and publicity managers a complex. No stone was left unturned to make their groups famous and to have fun and to fight against other groups! Each day it was fun to notice the new surprise offerings from each group. The characteristic of all stunts were of the processions that team members made around in the office, in their team uniform, some distributing sweets and some dancing to loud music. The get up of the entire office was changed to that of a wedding hall and obviously it made call-taxi driver to exclaim - “Is this the office I am supposed to come?”. All the teams were allocated certain amount of money for the preparations and decorations. In between all this, the teams also practised with vigor and enthusiasm for the cultural activities. Not to forget that the team meetings, deliveries too continued as usual.
Vismerize/Dec086.jpgVismerize/Dec084.jpg
Vismerize/Vismerize_007.jpgVismerize/Vismerize_004.jpg
So as a final day of the proceedings, VGP resort was chosen for one day hangout of associates along with their families. On arriving at resort, crowd finished breakfast and warmed up slowly playing & looting prizes at carnival game stores.

Though the dark clouds in the morning put fears about good proceedings of the events and the plan, there was pleasant dreamy weather for half the day thus allowing gathering to enjoy the time. During which the attendees were split into 4 teams Kadale kadale,Pal pal,Murukku & Inji morappa and numerous fun events were conducted. These events were designed mostly to involve family members of the associates. To say that kids and spouses got involved would be an understatement, they enjoyed thoroughly and they turned out to be fiercely competitive. Several rounds of games were entertaining as well as pure fun. The groups were just waiting for an oppurtunity to run near the stage, oppurtunity to break into dancing, oppurtunity for photo sessions!

The cricket match happened probably without many spectators as other activities and lunch happened in parallel to cricket. Sivakasi team won the match hands down after having set a target of 10 runs in as many overs by the opponents Ghazini team.

Shortly after the lunch, the awards recognizing contribution and long service were given away. The clouds which had so long observed the activities came down and caused hindrance to the further scheduled events which mainly consisted of cultural activities’ competition among the groups. After a delay though, with out withdrawing, the competition started and continued in the hall.

Group Song: majaa & diShoom diShoom were very close to each other & to the prize. While majaa got more applaud, it was presumably to splendid, unimaginable performance (dwarf dance ?- how else do I call it) that went on alongside the singing. So singing per se, diShoom diShoom might have been ahead, more so because they discarded the conventional background music and sung without it. This exposed their singing abilities - like co-ordination(sync), timing - and rightly took away the Oscar.

Dance:When the compere said PODANGO set high standards for the dance competition, I felt he was exaggerating. For me the race was already over & won by PODANGO. But great performances were given by both majaa and diShoom diShoom that it was extremely difficult to point to one team as winner. Majaa took home the Oscar.

Skit:We like and enjoy making fun of ourselves, don’t we ? This was clearly displayed in skit shows all of which referred to VSO or software industry. Each team received good cheers and laughters from audience but PODANGO & Remo were slightly ahead of others in the race to Oscar. PODANGO eventually won it.

Additional round of talent show was reduced to a no-show by the fantastic bridal round fashion show by Remo. Other teams did put up a good show - like mimicry & sounds by PODANGO, Dos and Don’ts (civic sense) silent acting by diShoom diShoom and fun show by majaa. 5 pairs of bride-bridegroom wore spectacular attire and attracted increasingly loud cheers from the crowd. Remo, swept everyone by surprise in this act which was rightly termed as stellar show by the compere, and laid their hands on oscar.

“Vismerize” the name of the event suggestion won majaa team an another Oscar.

Uniformity Oscar award was given to diShoom diShoom who not only received the attention for their dress code (military) but also stayed & moved in groups. PODANGO were in yellow shirt, sleeves folded, with lungi and looked very ethnic. majaa were with a Sherlock Homes hat and a matching black coat imprinted their names on the back and majaa icon on the front. Remo were with an unique dress printed Remo and rose, and marked lips continuing to flaunt lover boy image.They also wore a mask, put colour on hairs near forehead and tied colourful wrist straps.

“summa nachchanu irukku majaa” slogan coupled with their cheer leading won them the award for the same, though they faced stiff competition from diShoom diShoom, PODANGO and Remo.

Pre-event publicity Oscar went to diShoom diShoom.

Best team Oscar was shared by majaa and diShoom diShoom as both had won equal number of Oscars.

It was a jovial experience, with all people irrespective of their positions joining and sharing the fun. It was interesting to note Managers and Sr. Managers taking active part & even participating in the cultural activities (which meant they spent good amount of time in preparation too - given the high quality of shows). Oh! not to forget they suited the dress code perfectly & took part in the cheering process & publicizing process (procession around the office).

Footnote : 1)Some of the very few selected photos are here.
2)This is an impersonal account.
3)Click on the image for bigger versions.

Written by Rk

December 19th, 2005 at 8:27 am

Posted in Life, Weekend

Whats making difference?

without comments

I just now read the hilarious post on Indian Idol by Vinod G, though hilarious it addresses important issues - that of making viewers getting stuck to the show and making them idle and giving them an impression that with a mobile they are all powerful.
After glancing at one or two episodes I never ever watched a single episode…but always wondered when everyone spoke about it as if it is a BIG unheard event which would change the fortune of the country. I sighed when even prominent bloggers wrote page long description and analysis about the singers and the show. I felt many times that I might be missing making of a great star or unearthing of a genius and what ever be the case I felt inferior for not being able to strike a conversation about the next singing genius of India. Forget conversation I did not even know the names of the singers. And I never was able to understand the fascination and the ratings this show received.
I was a fan of Saregama during the times of Sonu Nigam and during initial times of Shaan. (After that I do not watch the show, so no comments). Saregama did unearth good talents but the show never became as famous as Indian Idol.
The power to vote out the participants is so dear to viewers ? Or is there something else ?

Written by Rk

December 18th, 2005 at 7:10 pm

Posted in Life

Dumb charades

with 2 comments

This is a game I never knew of before my PU. But in PU(SYJC) along with A,K,V,A we started playing this in the PG(patli galli) after college or when we bunked the college. I was clearly an underdog there in terms of the signs or the awareness of film names. As a sidenote I am average in any game I play in terms of talent, but I make it up in terms of intelligence and quick learning. For example, in case of this game, though the knowledge (awareness) of film names were not that much I made some intelligent guesses. We used to play the game so much that after a certain point of time we ran out of all names and we almost predicted the way the other person would enact given a particular name.

Then, during the North India tour and during other encounters which happened quite frequently over few years, I enjoyed (introducing and) playing this with my brother and cousins -A,M. During the above, it was mostly English and Hindi film names, but with my brother and cousins it was Kannada or Hindi names. By coincidence or otherwise(rigging), I and M turned out to be the partners everytime. We hit off to be a great pair in terms of understanding. Though we were strong we got stiff competation everytime and A and my brother managed some gem of unimaginable acting coupled with great humour to level the scores. I and M were sort of so unmistakably familiar with eath others actions that the fun part slowly faded out but their acting kept up the spirits and joy. The game used to go out of sync if anyone else joined us.

Despite this rich experiences, when I saw college level competations, I figured, in comparision, my game was gully cricket as compared to international one dayers. But I was good enough to pull out surprises in informal gatherings like college picnics and was completely noticed during Goa tour. But again, I could only rely on abilities of acting and imagination rather than the awareness of the names.

That fear always kept me away from competation (of any level), and thus I shied away from the office competation too.
On Diwali eve, this game was held and 10 groups participated. I just remained a spectator. 4 rounds (Film names, Books-Authors, Idioms/Phrases, A mixture of all) were conducted.

I should say I was familiar with 8 out of 10 names! When passed to audience I could grab two prizes for guessing these:

1) Child is the father of man.
I didn’t phrase this exactly but I was close to it.
2) The chain is as strong as its weakest link.
Well, the credit for this goes to KVN Sir who had mentioned this during analog communications class.

What helped me in knowing many answers are:
Of late I frequent to book shops (even though I do not read as much), I am aware of quite a few authors and books’ names. Secondly, the GM quotes have helped me much.

I felt very bad for myself that I did not participate in the competation, but was happy that remaining in the audience itself I had won 2 boxes of crackers/sparklers.

Written by Rk

December 16th, 2005 at 8:04 pm

Good Morning!

with 2 comments

I have been sending Good Morning! mails everyday morning containing one quote. It all started when someone else used to send me mail with a quotation. I just used to forward the same to other pals of mine. But over the time, I started sending them myself.

Initially I toggled between images and text but certain servers block/remove images and then a decision was made to send only the text.
Apart from very simple decisions like “one quote”, “everyday that I come to office”, over the time certain other decisions had to be made. Like, no anonymous quotations. Send only to office address (many do not check non-office address regularly). Another simple rule I follow is to read, understand, (unless in rare cases, agree to it) and then send them. Many times, friends mailed me back asking for the meaning, understanding it beforehand made it lot easier. Over time I have refined the address list too, adding some and deleting some addresses. I fixed the format also - Comic Sans font 10 size.

I have been sending these mails for close to 2 years now. From the day of inception, I guess I have sent the mail each day I have come to office (except during the change and not on holidays/weekends even if I come to office). So it has sort of become my attendance to my pals! The day there is no mail, they can presume I have not come to office.

There have been many queries of sources of the quotes. I could not point to one particular source (and always told the golden egg story !!) - as I used to pick from someone’s signatures, or from some forward mails. Other times it used to be from the books I read. Initially it used to be from other GM mails (as I told above), but it used to get repeated or it made no sense to me or it was irregular. For a short period I had subscribed to a quotation mail group which was quite irregular and then it finally stopped. The occassional forwards contain quotes which I do not forward..but pick each one to be sent everyday!
Then I chanced upon a book and then some sites (via Google), but not one source has been consistently used for considerable time. Because those are always grouped in terms of their quoters(Einstein) or in terms of their nature(success,love etc).

My personal favorite quoters are Einstein and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The thing about these people that I like is that their quotes are consistently good.

Reading the quote has been very enriching experience for me. Quoting someone always enriches,leverages the talk, conversation or writing. Some quotes are very straight forward and needs no explanation or justification while others require a minute of thought.
But even the obvious ones help in resurrecting the thought and sometimes reminds of the forgotten obvious.

I was thinking of this routine for sometime. I get some thoughts, I make some explanations, analogies or something when I read a quote. Since my format of GM has been one quote, I had no place to put it and it fits perfectly to be a post here! It will not be regular but rarely I will just make a post! (Will be under category “Quote”). (On a lighter note, inspired by these quoters I also started quoting under myOwnQuote category so that when I become quotable people will have ready reference!)

My GM mail has achieved what my personal mailing could not achieve wrt few people - strike a conversation. Make them reply. (Indirectly too- unrelated to the quote- the gm mail has served the starting point of a conversation..it is like reminding people that I am still around seeking attention and trying to break silence)

I have derived great happiness over the GM sending exercise. It might be a very small effort but I get delighted when someone complains I did not send it on time. When someone says, that quote made his/her day. When someone says “Thanks, that was great!”

This has happened over and over again. And everytime I feel humbled because I realise I do not deserve the thanks and that I am just a link between them and the great thoughts already left for us.

An earlier post related to quotations

Written by Rk

December 16th, 2005 at 7:35 pm

Posted in Blogging, General, Quote

Mumbai Navigator

without comments

Mumbai Navigator
Our very own Google Transit

Ps: del.icio.us is down when required for the past 2 days which is forcing me to create these separate posts.
Yesterday I saw interesting comments in their post which detailed power failure:

1)Yahoo is copying all the links to MyWeb2.0 site! In the mean time, you are fooled to believe it’s a power failure! Good that i made a offline backup yesterday!

2) del.icio.us: Where are you? I miss you.

3) Seen anyone in a Google t-shirt with a pair of wirecutters recently?

Let me also document some shortcomings I am facing from del.icio.us:
I have some probs with delicious….
1)The character limit is 255..of course they did not intend their software to be used for blogging but just bookmarking I tend to write a lot of comment for the links…
2) Html is not supported…again a blogging feature …to link something else in the comment.
Oops Ps ran more than the actual post!

Written by Rk

December 16th, 2005 at 7:06 pm

Posted in Blogging, Links

Man who isn’t here

without comments

Written by Rk

December 16th, 2005 at 9:34 am

Posted in Links, News

links for 2005-12-16

without comments

  • This is a must read if someone thinks “What is the big deal with tags”. The folder almost single handedly was responsible for the shortcomings in the Blink which could not become del.icio.us. The site lists reasons why Blink could not become del.icio.us inspite of having advantages like - large no of users subscribed,money, being there first. The article describes how product design matters, why folders suck & how simple things pay off more than complex ones.
    (tags: Interesting)
  • It is all about icon…..read this too
    (tags: News)
  • Might be an old one…but have you seen this resume…from Steve Jobbs of Apple ?
    (tags: Fun)
  • I just felt like a kid presented with a box full of chocolates….absolutely surprised and delighted, confused which one to pick, holding few in both hands. I want to dance in joy. Anyone who goes to that site via link I provided, should credit me when you use the theme..ah I am kidding..just tell me which theme is nice.
    (tags: Blogging)

Written by Rk

December 16th, 2005 at 8:38 am

Posted in Links

links for 2005-12-15

without comments

Written by Rk

December 15th, 2005 at 8:38 am

Posted in Links