個人檔案Neeraj Garg's Ramblings相片部落格清單更多  |  工具 說明 |
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5月21日 HopeSo angry, I can't sleep
So sad, that I can't even weep Can't fathom, sorrow feels so deep Still, sure I am, I will find a way To face the new day
With hope in my heart
and smile on my face
2月1日 Another coupletA couplet to enjoy.. (its in hindi)
Arz kiya hai,
zikr julfon ka teri, aata hai jab zubaan pe meri
zikr julfon ka teri, aata hai jab zubaan pe meri Aisa lagta hai, Aisa lagta hai,
Jaise muh mein baal aa gaya ho :)
7月3日 Tyrant alarm clock dials your contacts if you refuse to wake - EngadgetI am getting this one. This might actually help me get up Tyrant alarm clock dials your contacts if you refuse to wake - Engadget
Just kidding..no need to change your phone number, --- Yet. 2月28日 India DiaryJust came back from a two week trip to India. Typically, I would have gone for three weeks during Nov/Dec timeframe. This time was an unexpected trip, though for a good occasion, i.e. wedding of my sister in law.
Every time I go to India, I notice more and more changes, and mostly positive for India.
Currency First change for me was that I only got INR 38.4 for a USD. Last time I had gotten INR 44. So, my savings are losing value, if I were to ever decide to go back :(. Thing that did not change was the clerk that did the exchange still tried to cheat me, by giving me 38.4 instead of 38.8 as was prominently written as the price!. So next time you do money exchange in India, do use your calculator.
Transport Pollution level in Delhi has definitely gone down with all public transport (bus, taxi, auto rickshaw) switching to CNG. I always used to have sore throat while I was living in India (prior to 1997), and got sore throat every time I visited India. This time, I didn't.
Delhi finally has a metro and it has been a great success. It is run efficiently, clean and people are visibly proud of it. Minimum price is INR 6 which is about 0.15 USD. Even after taking purchasing power of Rs/$ into account, it is about less than $1.50 equivalent which is pretty good, given that the main ingredient gasoline, does not become cheaper in India.
Lots of new roads are being constructed. Finally Delhi has toll roads, and many roads are now signal free. Of course, I saw lot lot lot more cars now than earlier. All the people I know now drive a car. 10 year back, only about 20% did. While this shows prosperity, it is definitely causing problems as Delhi neither have roads or the parking facilities to handle so many cars.
I mostly took auto rickshaw. I did not even try asking any auto-rickshaw driver to accept the meter fare. Most of them quoted price which was probably 30% to 50% higher than official fare. However, it was not worth my time to haggle. They probably cheated me Rs. 20 on every trip. While it pinched, when paying in Rs, I reminded myself that it is only 0.5 USD and I have paid more than 3000$ to have this trip. So, it was not worth losing my mind over fifty cents.
Sometimes, I rented a taxi. While the transport was okay and some of them had reasonably new cars, the interior cleanliness left a lot to be desired. I was kind of surprised by that. My default expectation in India is that private property is clean and well taken care of, while the public property languishes. I was surprised that taxi drivers were not maintaining their cars well. Again, prices here reasonable, when I convert in $, about 20$ for half a day (driver/gas included)
On bus transport Bus transport is still mostly the same. Blueline buses killed more than 50 people last year. This year they have already killed more than 15, I hear. Main problem is intense competition amongst bus drivers, many of them bid for the right to run the bus for a single day from the owner. Their only motivation is to make the most money THAT particular day. Second reason is, of course, is corruption. A very large number of bus drivers, do not even know the basic traffic rules (as per Delhi Govt own special drive test), but have managed to get the driving license. Police does not enforce the traffic laws either. Instead of getting ticket, buses pay weekly/monthly bribe to traffic policemen at each intersection. There was a recent expose by press that captured more than 180 policemen taking bribes. Finally, even the honest policemen are not able to do much as buses are owned by people with political backing.
Retail Retail is changing face in Delhi. First thing you will notice is the glitzy glamorous malls that have come over all over Delhi. These malls can easily compare to any US mall in terms of glamour and carry international brands. Unfortunately, prices of goods is also comparable to US. Not a good thing, if you make 1/3rd of US salary even as a professional and much less if your job is not in demand. I actually did not visit any mall this year. Why go to malls in India? I have seen plenty in US.
Second change is retail chains. Previously all shops were individually owned. Now many chains are coming up. I saw Reliance Fresh, Subhiksha, Big Apple, Next and a few more chains within a half mile of my house. I don't think all of them will survive. It is a good change, though will be very challenging for small shop keepers for a long time. Face of Delhi will change as many of smaller shop keepers are forced to close shops.
Finally, marketing has changed. Previously, the most I would see is a sale with percent discount. Now, I see all kind of weird stuff, buy 1 get 1 free, 50 + 49% discount, and these offers are heavily advertised.
Cricket Cricket is the national sports of India. Not officially. Officially hockey is the national sport. However, very few people actually care about that. Cricket is what India plays. Finally, cricket is being organized in India not by "regional teams" controlled by babus, but on the same style as NFL in US, where private individual own team and bid for top players. This will definitely commercialize it more. There were articles in the newspaper, why some of the cricketers got higher bids, cause they have longer hair, which made them more appealing for advertisers! I call this Anna Kournikova effect :). However, this should help root out corruption and nepotism. After all, a private owner can't afford to have a sub-standard player on his team.
Food: Surprisingly raw food prices have not risen much. However, there is very wide range in prices in restaurants. A road side kiosk will get you a meal in 10 Rs, a reasonable old style restaurant will get you a meal in 50 Rs and a new style e.g. restaurant with A/C will easily cost you Rs. 150. This is not in a five star hotel. Living in the US has reduced my immunity to food borne illness, so I did not dine out much and stayed with new style restaurant when I did.
Entertainment: TV definitely was a big disappointment to me. I only saw two kind of programs, Indian rip off of US reality shows (American Idol etc.) or family soap opera. Reality shows were actually more watchable than family based soap opera to me, while I don't watch any reality shows in US. Problem I had with family soap opera was · Substandard acting: It all looked fake to me · Very unrealistic story line: In almost all of them, some of he family members are evil and scheming/plotting/poisoning and others are pure and good. There are no grey characters, there are no dilemmas. Just pure evil and saintly good. · Exaggerated Drama: Almost every 3rd scene will have some dramatic sound, with lights flashing on the character face and the same scene repeated 3 times to show the shock. This was really disconcerting. On the embarrassing side, while I detested these exaggerated dramas, I have to admit that I did become engaged in the story line and probably would have started watching them.
On the positive side, I like the fact that content is local (even if sub-standard or plagiarized) and they are not just re-serving foreign content in India.
Salaries Salaries have definitely gone up in India for professionals. And, to my surprise, hottest sector is not IT. It is real estate, where people are expecting 25% raise in the real estate sector.
Overall it was a good trip. 12月12日 I got a patent!Just happened to find out that the first patent application that I filed long long long time back was actually approved in March 2006. No one told me! I just happened to find about it accidentally Here is the official link Method and system for automatically interpreting computer system performance measurements. Maybe I will order a patent plaque.
Neeraj Jinxed or Lucky?Some weird things have been happening to us lately. Thankfully they did not harm us that much. Now I am having a tough time deciding whether we have been jinxed or some guardian angel is protecting us from much more grave harm! Maybe it's both Here are details of some of the things that happened within last couple of weeks
Neeraj 7月20日 Windows Live OneCare 2.0 goes betaThe product I work on, Windows Live OneCare 2.0 is now in beta. You can download it from http://get.live.com/betas/onecare_betas
Try it out and let me know if you like it. I am the PM owner for firewall and Printer Sharing components.
Neeraj 10月20日 Why are certain these illegal?Why is selling drugs illegal but selling "cheese" is not?
Given how many people die of cholestrol related diseases, cheese might be deadlier than "drugs". My guess is that "cheese" is a matter of choice, we believe that people have the capacity to say NO to cheese. In case of drugs, however, given the addictive nature, humans lose their ability to choose. Well, I am sure I have seen some ads for cheese, that proclaim, you can't resist its taste :) I guess they should have a health warning on them.
Why is selling your organs illegal?
After all, it helps a dying man survive. I think the question here is exploitation. We believe, that poor will be "exploited". Now, aren't the custodians of the law making a "choice" for those folks here. After all, if I have to ever make a call between dying of hunger and losing one kidney but still living, I will not want to die of hunger. Unfortunately, custodians of the law believe otherwise. At least, when you dying of hunger, they feel, you are not getting exploited
What about roaming naked in the city?
It does not really harm anyone except the person who is exposing him/herself to the elements. Well, I guess we find it "disgusting". Given how big the porn industry is, I am not entirely sure about that. Even if we were to accept that, should law be protecting us from disgusting? Law, Morality, Ethics and ReligionWhat is the right thing to do?
As human beings, we have so many different rule books to follow. There is the "law", varying from International Law, Federal Law, State Law, City Law to the "law" instituted by many resident communities. There is religion. There is conscience. I am not sure whether morality is somewhere covered between "conscience" and "religion", or is it something very different. In addition to them, we also have "tradition", much of it is not written.
So, what is the difference? What activities should be governed by "law" of the Government? What activities should be left to "ethics" or "morality" of the person?
Even before we try to define these, we have to answer, why are we even trying to define those rules? What is the purpose? After all, till we know what the purpose is, we can't really know whether we did it right. Well, I am going to make a guess. And I think to certain extent, there in lies the difference, between law, religion and tradition.
Here is how I will define it.
Law: Set of rules to allow a collective of individuals live together happily
Religion: Set of rules for an individual to be happy
Even as I wrote them down, I realized, that this definition is not going to make lots of people happy. After all, for many, the definition above makes "religion" a personal choice. A majority of people do not think religion is a matter of choice. To them, it is THE TRUTH. It is what God said, we should do. It is not a matter of choice at all.
CrueltyLet's say you have been captured. The opressor asks you to choose one amongst the following
a) He is going to dip you in bucket of blue paint. Not to kill, just to color you and amuse himself
b) He is going to kill you swiftly and eat you
Which one do you think is more cruel? Well, for me, it is a no brainer and just to make sure we are on the same page, let me state it..it will be option "b"
Surprisingly, this is not how TV reporters view the world. Last year, there was a story on the local TV, where a person was being condemned for "cruelty against animal" as he had colored some "chicks" (yes, creature that come out eggs) blue on easter and was selling them. Now, I am not saying that it was not distasteful/cruel. But what is surprising to me, is that there is no story about people who actually kill chicken. I am sure that is much more cruel 10月8日 Some old poetryThis is something I wrote, in 1995.. and it was impromptu...one of my friend asked me..why have you started writing poetry..and my answer was
Dard jo beh raha hai banke zehar rago mein meri,
Jaane kyun log usko key dete hain shayri
Life, fairness and faithAs a kid, I often heard phrases like "Life is not a bed of roses", "who says life is fair?" At a purely semantic level they made sense, but never really sunk in.
Many times, when bad things happen I still say "Why is it happening to me? I never wronged anyone". But slowly it has dawned on me, that the phrases above are the answer. Life doesn't care about being "fair". After all, innocent people die in terrorist attackes, young kids die of disease, nice people get cancer too, and careful drivers get killed by drunken drivers. So, there is no such natural law about life being fair.
Now once you accept that, it becomes difficult to reconcile with faith, where we really want to believe in a loving, omnipresent, omniscient, fair God. If He exists, how do you explain all the bad things happening to good people. Well, one conclusion you can draw is, there really isn't any such God. There may or may not be a supreme force, controlling and guiding world, but as a minimum, that Supreme force doesn't care about being fair.
In Hinduism, I guess people pondered about it and came up with a line of reasoning, that still works. You see, "good people" have only been good in this birth. They did "bad deeds" in previous births, so they are paying the price now. There still is hope. Once you pay your debts to Him, you can do "good deeds" and have a better life. Another way people explain is by saying "This is His test of your faith/character". I guess, if you do not believe in re-incarnations, that is the only other explanation for good things happening to bad people, that is still consistent with concept of a loving & fair God. By the way, you don't get moksha/nirvana/bliss by doing good deeds. Good deeds can get you a better life, but you are still trapped in cycles of life & death. To really get moksha you have to realize real nature of supreme force, which as per ancient Hindu texts, is called Brahman. Most people think of God as basically a human with super powers.
We anthropomorphize Him, cause that is the easiest way for us to understand. We can make him do favors for us by praying to him. Most prayers, at least the one I have seen, basically say, God you are so powerful, you have done such great things etc.. They do not seem any different than flattery/bribery to me. On the contrary, Brahman is a supreme consciousness, without any attributes. The only way to understand attribute of it is, that no attribute fits it. This is illogical as you in logic for any attribute an entity either has it or doesn't have it. Anyway, like lots of stuff like quantum mechanics where an object is really wave form and theory of relativity, it is complicated and non-intuitive. Anyways, coming back to bad things happening to good people. I am really interested in knowing if there is any other theory other than "payind debts for crimes that you do not know about" or "test of character" that are consistent with a loving/fair God.
Personally, I have not totally given up on my faith. I still go to temple. I pray daily. After all, what do I lose, except little bit of time. But my day to day thought process and actions are not really guided by concepts of previous/next birth. I wish, I still had that strong belief, as it would have made it much easier to sail through rough times. It is harder to accept that "bad things" happened just by chance to me and I had no control over them. It is harder to do the right/moral things cause there really is no "after life" or "next birth". It is even harder, as being an engineer, I like things to be deterministic & causal. Finally, I hate to feel that I really do not control my destiny. There are so many random things that can happen.
But, then I remember, what my friend said to me once, "Do not say, you have NO control, say that you don't have total control".
9月18日 Some poetryKar liya kabool hamne, zannat yahin, dozakh yahin
Ek tere hothon ki hansi, to dooza teri aankhon mein nami
Translation
I accept that both heaven and hell are here on earth,
One is smile on your face and other is your moist eyes 9月2日 Bought a new Toyota Camry LEWe had an accident about 10 days back. Thankfully no one was hurt, though our car was declared total loss. Finally, after two weeks of research and indecision, we bought a new Camry yesterday. 8月18日 InterpretationsI have noticed for a long time that the same behavior can be described by two words with close meaning, by one person in negative sense and another in positive. For example:
In a similar vein, the same action done by two different people will be interpreted very differently.. for example let's say a person took a biscuit and let a dog take half the bite of it and consumes the other half himself. If he is a rich person, people will say "see how much he loves his dog, he even shares his biscuit with his dog". And if he was a poor person, people will say "that wretched person will snatch a biscuit even from a dog's mouth"
I actually noticed an incident that also showed very clearly how our own biases results in totally different stories about the same incident. Here is what happened. Our neighbours used to have a small place in the house reserved for prayers. They had pictures of various God there. In addition, they used to put their money for charity there. That is, every month they will add their quota of charity money to a pot. Whenever there was a charitable cause they wanted to support, they will take money out of that pot. One day, their house got burgled. A theif entered and he happened to enter the "prayer room" and he took the "charity money". However, he rattled something and woke up the household, so he ran away without stealing anything else.
People summarized the incident two ways
"God could not save even His own money" {e.g charity money was God's money}
"God gave up His own money to save the family"
No control vs Total ControlBack in IIT, in a very very tough course called Theory of Computation I got a really bad grade inspite of the fact that I had worked really hard for that course and I believed I had solved the questions in the major exam correctly. In my belief, the professor has misinterpreted my solution and I wanted a chance to explain. Professor refused. His argument was that it will be unfair to other students who have left for summer vacation and did not get a chance to explain their solutions. I was very frustrated. There was not only the frustration about not getting the grade that I believed I deserved, but of feeling powerless, of having no control over my destiny. It did not matter that I worked so hard, something random happened and I lost my grade.
This was when one of my close friend, Krishna commented, something that I remember to this day, "Do not say that you have NO CONTROL, say that you do not have TOTAL CONTROL over your destiny". When I thought about it, it made sense. After all, I have got the grades I deserved in other courses. Even in this course, I got a lower grade, but at least I had passed the course. If I had not worked at all, I would have flunked it.
8月2日 Knowledge and WisdomThis story was in my Sanskrit book and I believe this is from one of the 2000 years old "vedas", so hopefully there is no coyright violations.
Once upon a time, 4 students graduated after compelting their studies for 15 years. Three of them had gained lots of skills and advanced super powers. Fourth one had done poorly and not gained those superpowers, but he was wise. When they were traveling through the jungle, they encountered carcass of a lion. Being compassionate, they decided and decided to make it alive.
With their knowledge they started working deliberately
First one, put all the bones together to create a skeleton
Second one added the muscles and skin
Then the third one came forward. At this point, the wise one tried to stop them, pointing that once the lion comes back to life they will not be safe. When they did not listen, he requested them to wait till he climbed a tree.
Once the wise one had climbed the tree, the 3rd graduate, brought lion back to life. Being a lion, the lion did what lions do. Lion killed the three graduates.
Moral of the story is, wisdom is more important than knowledge. It is not enough to just have the powers, but you also need to know how and when to use them
Six blind men and an elephantThis was a story that I read as a kid.
There were six blind men around an elephant. One who could only feel the tail of elephant said "it is a rope". Another who was standing near the legs said "it is a pillar", another who was felt the back of elephant said "it is a wall"...I forgot what the other three said, there was something about trunk being a hose, ears being the "fan" (not the electric one) etc.
I have seen so often happen in real life when different people are coming from different perspectives and defining the problem differently. Sometimes when we are lucky, we see the elephant and it is a very rewarding "aha' moment. Unfortunately, far too many times, we never listen to other people and never "see" the elephant |
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