Tabula rasa

Tabula Rasa or "a blank slate", a fresh start is what everyone hopes on New Year eve. With New Year resolutions and what not.

But a friend clearly had things in perspective when he tweeted:

A misconception people entertain about new year is that they think they can start everything on a new slate...but its never that way

Its nice to know that I am not the only cynic around :)

Dystopia

Avatar is a great movie. Read this interview to see what it took James Cameron to make this movie. The tenacity of the film maker is unbelievable. All that effort to just make a movie? But I will tell you that it was worth it. Of course, its already profitable despite its astronomical $430 million budget but the movie also represents the brilliance, the same kind for which you admire something like the Taj Mahal.

The premise behind Avatar is about Humans trying to plunder an alien inhabited moon of its natural resources. The concept is not new. Colonialism bears a striking resemblance. Heck, its happening even now.

The alien species while not technically advanced are portrayed as highly spiritual beings who live in sync with the nature around them, respecting its elements and other living beings.

Somehow, their 'quality' of life seems to be better than human's in spite of our modern ways of living. In that sense, it seems we are headed towards "Dystopia". And this begs the question:

Are we any better off now than we were some thousands of years back, when we were still hunter-gatherers?

Maybe in a myopic view, its tempting to believe that we have come far along. But in the big picture, our species are like a virus. Except, viruses are smarter. (viruses tend not to kill their hosts, for good reasons.)

As some great man said: "Civilization has less to do with advancements in how we do things and more to do with how we think."

“I don’t know which is the greater task: to decentralize a top-heavy civilization or to prevent an ancient civilization from becoming centralized and top-heavy. In both cases the core of the problem is to discover what constitutes a good civilization, then proclaim it to the people and help them to erect it.”

—Gandhi

Sab Maya Hai

My dad just told me that my school 'Chinmaya Vidyalaya' was in a controversy after someone threatened to publicize their barbaric punishment of making students stand in the hot sun for an hour or so. It was not the worst punishment because you could also get caned by Her Majesty, Maya maam, the principal, if you screwed up a little more badly.

I think "standing in the sun" punishment was conceived by Kamakshi, the mother of Maya, and also the mother of most diabolical punishments in the school. It was usually awarded if the whole class was responsible for something. Like, if the students of a class were late to "form" the assembly line, or were late by a few mins to the class.

As kids nobody felt bad about the punishment. At least I thought it was better than sitting in the class at that time. When sympathetic teachers would stand with us, we would tell them, "We are getting Vitamin D".

But later on you realize how sadistic that punishment was.

As principals, they tried to get respect through fear. Which I think was the worst example to set for the students, something which could have scarred them more than any punishments.

We had to chant the entire "Sahasranamam" on Thursday mornings, new practice that was introduced after Swami Chinmayananda, passed away. I used to volunteer for "minding" the lower classes because it was better than sitting crosslegged and chanting things that didn't make any sense.

One day, I saw my classmate, Harikrishna who was in the adjacent room, send Maya's daughter out of the class. "She was not behaving herself" he told me. Unfortunately for him, Maya was doing rounds in that corridor at that time and when she saw that her daughter was standing outside the class, she got really pissed off, asked her daughter to go into the class and summoned Harikrishna to her room where he was caned.

Another punishment was to 'run 5 times around the school ground' if you were late. This was not so bad because it was at least healthy but I would tell the P.T master that I had asthma and excuse myself from it.

We had a school diary which had just 2 places for recording late arrivals to schools. Obviously, the school underestimated the traffic situation and a slew of things that can delay things in India. The wily principal thought of this as a business opportunity and said that if you don't have a place to record the late arrival, you must buy a new diary.

When we were at 11th std, she came to know that everyone was attending tuitions and classes for Engineering/Medical entrance exams. But this was at odds with her focus on getting higher marks in the Board exams which determined the reputation of the school. So one day in the assembly, she announced a ban on attending any outside tuition. Of course the ban didn't work.

Then, she had an idea: If the students want to attend tuition, why can't the school give the tuitions after class? But the clever part was that it was not going to be free and there would be a fee of Rs.1000 for the tuitions.

Nobody joined the internal tuitions and then, she held a parent meeting which failed miserably because after that meeting, she never mentioned about it.

I know that there are worse schools but what is sad was that Maya was awarded "the best principal" award some years back. Its all an illusion.

Big Bang!

This is called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Starting in late 2003, astronomers pointed Hubble at a tiny, relatively empty part of our sky (only a few stars from the Milky Way visible), and created an exposure nearly 12 days long over a four-month period. The result is this amazing image, looking back through time at thousands of galaxies that range from 1 to 13 billion light-years away from Earth. Some 10,000 galaxies were observed in this tiny patch of sky (a tenth the size of the full moon) - each galaxy a home to billions of stars. -- Source

Looking at that picture brings in a perspective on how little we really are.

So, why not swing for the fences in the little time that we are here, because in a few years, nobody is going to care, whether we failed or not.

“Almost everything you do will seem insignificant, but it is important that you do it” -- Gandhi

The Wonder Years

This Calvin toon brought back some memories from school and college.

A running joke goes like this:

"Suppose you have only 1 hr to live. What would you do?" A prof. asks a student.

"I would go to college and sit in you class. It always feels like an eternity.".

I joined Chinmaya Vidyalaya in 3rd standard.

We were taken to school by Velayudhan, who would cram 11-13 kids in his auto-rickshaw. He was a nice guy because when he dropped us late and the principal shouted at the kids in English for being late, he would shout back in Malayalam, leaving the principal with no option.

In the first week at my new school, as we were standing in the assembly for a school prayer, a butterfly flew close by. Dileep, my new friend in the new school and I tried to catch it. Sadly, the vice principal saw it and summoned us to her room.

"I will bang your heads against each other if you repeat it" she shouted and told us to go back to classes.

A few years later, our school relocated further off and we had to take a couple of buses to reach the school.

Kacheripady was one stop before the final destination and a lot of school kids would be standing there waiting for the bus. The school principal used to see us as she traveled in her "Tempo Traveller" and she was angry one day that nobody standing there, acknowledged her.

"You must greet when our vehicle passes!" she ordered in the assembly session one day.

The next day, when the van passed, every school kid in the bus stop promptly shouted, "Haaaaaaaarriiiiii Om, Maam", in a tune, which was perhaps more embarrassing for her because she told us to stop it the next day.

High school was fun. Oh, I remember the buses "Maryland" and "Jithin", the last hope for those who want to reach school in time, which all of us late goers would wait for. It seemed the bus drivers somehow wanted to get us to school in time because they always drove like mad men and we, in the last seat in the bus had to hold on so as not to fall off. The bus would usually reach the place just 5 mins before the school call for assembly and then we would have a run to cover the kilometer long stretch from the bus stop to the school.

College was better. You only had to aim for 75% attendance which was still tough sometimes if some lectures always happened in the 8/9 AM time frame. 8 AM was hard to make if you wanted to eat breakfast too. But I had a trick up my sleeve, called the "last minute dash".

If I was late to the class, I would make a dash for the class in the last few meters up to the class and give an impression that I was literally "running" late. The professor would think that this guy ran to attend my class and feel good about and allow you to enter. Bonus Tip: If you come late, always pick the front seats.

There was one professor with initials "SP", who was a little strange. After entering the class, he would take attendance and then spend 10 mins cleaning the blackboard. It appeared he wanted the board to be as clean before he wrote anything. This often presented a good opportunity because when he was looking away, you could slip out of the class, something which we did often in his class. Sometimes, the room would be half empty once he finished cleaning the board but he usually didn't care.

My reading habits improved when I was in college because, it was more fun to read novels in class than hear lecturers read from text books.

Then, there was this guy called Prakash who was a repeater. Prakash was 2 years our senior. But he was the kind of guy who made it look "cool" to be a repeater. I liked Prakash. He used to be my companion in the back benches.

One day, someone dared him during a class. The dare was this: Walk up to the podium of the class, pat the lecturer on the back and then walk off the class.

Prakash's reputation was at stake. He thought about it for 5 mins. He got up, walked up to the podium where the lecturer was writing on the black board. And then, he patted on the back. The lecturer, taken unawares, was shocked. "What are you doing here?" he shouted.

But then Prakash whispered something to his ear and walked out. Later on he told us what he said: "I am not feeling well. Can I leave the class now?"

Obama is hope

Intrigued by Obama's idealistic vision that he often paints in his speeches, his unflappable demeanor and charisma, I wanted to learn more about him.

"Is Obama just another politician who is really good at politics or does he mean what he is says?"

I read "Dreams from my father", the autobiography that he wrote after a publisher approached him after he became the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review, which explains a lot into why he thinks the way he does and I am happy that the book very much reaffirms my faith in Obama.

"Dreams from my father" is a book on his search for identity. Born to a Kenyan father and a white American woman from Kansas, Obama's is an extra ordinary journey. Through his travels to Indonesia as a young boy and Kenya before he joined Harvard, Obama understands that the dreams of someone in the third world is no different from someone in America, a dream for a better life. This is the foundation for his respect for other cultures and countries and people of other faiths.

Trying to come to terms with his race, he does community service for 3 years, trying to help a black neighborhood in Chicago stand up on its feet.

In the last part of the book, he tries to understand his father, who after his studies in America, returns to Kenya to contribute to his country with great ambitions but gets disillusioned with the bureaucracy and the politics, and loses after trying to fight the system.

My favorite passage is this extract:

“I dropped to the ground and swept my hands across the smooth yellow tile. Oh, Father, I cried. There was no shame in your confusion. Just as there had been no shame in your father’s before you. No shame in the fear, or in the fear of his father before him. There was only shame in the silence fear had produced. It was the silence that betrayed us. If it weren’t for that silence, your grandfather might have told your father that he could never escape himself, or re-create himself alone. Your father might have taught those same lessons to you. And you, the son, might have taught your father that this new world that was beckoning all of you involved more than just railroads and indoor toilets and irrigation ditches and gramophones, lifeless instruments that could be absorbed into the old ways. You might have told him that these instruments carried with them a dangerous power, that they demanded a different way of seeing the world. That this power could be absorbed only alongside a faith born out of hardship, a faith that wasn’t new, that wasn’t black or white or Christian or Muslim but that pulsed at the heart of the first African village and the first Kansas homestead– a faith in other people.

“The silence killed your faith. And for lack of faith you clung to both too much and too little of your past. Too much of its rigidness, its suspicions, its male cruelties. Too little of the laughter in Granny’s voice, the pleasures of company while herding the goats, the murmur of the markets, the stories around the fire. The loyalty that could make up for a lack of airplanes or rifles. Words of encouragement. An embrace. A strong, true love. For all your gifts– the quick mind, the powers of concentration, the charm– could never forge yourself into a whole man by leaving these things behind…

"A faith in other people". Being part of the system to change the system. That is perhaps a lesson that Indian US returnees who give up quickly when they go back to contribute, can learn: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/business/global/28return.html

ITs not glamorous anymore

Its interesting to see IT companies in the bottom shelf of the "Top Tech Companies to work for" list. Infy is at number 7 in the Worst companies to work for category.

Lowest-Rated Tech Companies

Rank	Company	Company Rating	CEO	CEO Approval Rating
1	Xilinx	2.3	Moshe Gavrielov	12%
2	Affiliated Computer Services	2.4	Lynn R. Blodgett	21%
3	Hewlett-Packard	2.4	Mark V. Hurd	22%
4	Avaya	2.5	Kevin Kennedy	24%
5	Real	2.5	Rob Glaser	12%
6	NVIDIA	2.5	Jen-Hsun Huang	52%
7	Infosys	2.6	Kris Gopalakrishnan	35%
8	Nortel Networks	2.7	Mike S. Zafirovski	2%
9	Perot Systems	2.7	Peter A. Altabef	35%
10	Dell	2.8	Michael S. Dell	28%

Source: http://gigaom.com/2009/12/15/which-top-tech-company-to-work-for-not-google/

The problem is not with the IT companies but rather with the people who join them with the wrong expectations. The fact is that IT work is getting commoditized and no longer needs the brain horsepower for which it was once respected.

IT companies these days prefer low risk, low margin maintenance projects to high risk high margin application development which tend to be interesting to engineers who always want to work on cutting edge tech. This automatically makes the manager or management more important the engineering.

As one manager put it "Coding is not the big deal. It is all about managing profitability. Getting work done at the lowest cost.", trying to make it sound interesting to be a 'manager'.

So, IT companies are no longer "engineering" companies but more like body shopping, staff augmentation/hiring companies. The engineers are no longer assets "who walk into the office each morning and walk out in the evening" as it used to be once.

The managers as used as they are to their high paying boring jobs of making excel sheets and reports cannot understand why someone doesn't like their work.

"Not doing something because it is not interesting is not an excuse. We are serving the client and we must ensure customer satisfaction in whatever they ask us to do" as some 'senior' manager said in his town hall meeting to which a friend whispered "Just because I know how to sweep the floor doesn't mean that I am going to sweep the office floors".

As one would expect, employee morale would be low. Its not the companies fault because once you are a public company, you need to chase the money. The problem is with the disgruntled employees themselves who continue to work without trying to find other suitable jobs.

As some great chef said "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen (and the gene pool)" :D