A very talented lady

A worthy minute...

Motivation and setting expectation

I realized there are two perspectives on this topic. Both motivation and expectation can be Internal or External.

Often times I find a colleague refer to a motivation that is tied to strong leadership. When you know you are being lead on a path to something great and meaningful, something that will have a big impact beyond your personal life, that is very motivating for anyone to be part of that work. Capable people yearn for such leadership in general. Other external motivators are money, power, fame, etc.

Similarly, we are driven by expectation that are set on us from time to time. We try to live up to our parent's expectations, then probably our teacher's expectations, in the rare case a boss's expectation if we find an inspiring soul in that position. We expect our children to live up to our expectation.

I often remember this Mahatma Gandhi's quote.
"The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problem."


I find this quote motivating from inside. It is a state of self-actualization to realize that we all can do even better than we do whatever it is that we do. Not for the sake of the benefits, but for the inherent value of doing the best. To be sloppy and mediocre is a choice. "To be the best" is a motivator. The expectation here is not set by any external source, but by oneself. Our conscience is the mirror of us and we know exactly how we do up on our own personal scale. Even if we may not solve the world's problem, we will be well on our way to be the best and do the best. I believe, the result of such being will yield a very productive, useful and rewarding life.

That deserves to go viral...!

Standards and Context

I have always wondered about some of the written and unwritten standards practiced in US. A joke goes like this.

A cop spots a young girl on the back seat of a car knitting a sweater and a young boy on the driver seat listening to music at night around 11'o clock. The cop approaches the car and asks what is going on...The boy replies "she turns 18 at 12 o'clock and we are waiting for that!"

Once someone is past 18 yrs old, anything goes between consenting adults in general. One sees all kinds of relationships like a 20s something guy marrying a 40s something women, a 60s guy marrying a just 18 women, same sex relationships, etc. Yet if you are the President (Clinton) messing around with an adult intern or a Governor (Spitzer) engaging in paid sex, all hell breaks and severe consequences follow.

The latest controversy is with this children's show hosted by a young singer Katy Perry.



The whole country objected to the dress of this women so much that the show has to be canceled from the Sesame Street show! If you look at the video, you will notice that the dress is somewhat edgy, but not vulgar or obscene. Yet it is banned here because this comes as part of a children's show and parents want their children to grow up free from sex and violence.

I could not resist but contrast this with some of the Indian TV shows. We recently subscribed to Tamil channels on TV to entertain my mother. It is incredible to see what our children grow up watching. The costumes, dance moves, projected personality of women in the serials and the general violence in the movies and shows are shocking. It is like people are desensitized to human feelings and pain systematically from the childhood. We routinely see images of people hurt in accidents and a crowd standing around and watching them as if it is a movie. I believe not rating our TV shows and lenient movie ratings contribute to such insensitivity to hurt and misery in life.

Pictures worth pondering...

The latest report,  known as “Trends in Maternal Mortality”, is jointly released by WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Bank

• Women in developing countries are 36 times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than women in developed nations.
• Developing nations accounted for 99% of all maternal deaths, with 57% in sub-Saharan Africa and 30% in South Asia.
• The study shows progress in sub-Saharan Africa where maternal mortality decreased by 26%.
• In Asia, the number of maternal deaths is estimated to have dropped from 315000 to 139000 between 1990 and 2008, a 52% decrease.

Another passport episode

No, this time the experience is not from me, the guy who presumably has no right to speak up against Indian bureaucracy since I live abroad. This is from a successful entrepreneur from Mumbai.

http://emergic.org/2010/09/07/passport-office-part-1/
http://emergic.org/2010/09/08/passport-office-part-2/
http://emergic.org/2010/09/09/passport-office-part-3/
http://emergic.org/2010/09/10/passport-office-part-4/

Song and Dance

Have you ever heard a song, liked it and wanted to see the video of the song...? Sometime it turns out to be a mistake! Over the years it happened to me a couple of times. Some of the best songs are poorly portrayed on the screen. This one is the latest for me. I was so impressed by the poetic lyrics of the song, it drove me to hunt for the song on youtube only to become disappointed by the way the song was picturized. I don't know what is the best way to bring on screen a song so beautiful as this one, but it ain't this way. Well, close your eyes and listen to the song first and then watch it the second time, you will know what I am talking about.

If you have any such experience, please feel free to share. I almost feel like we should collect such beautiful songs and remake them just to do justice to the poetic lyrics.

One man's incredible work

A library of knowledge on various subject matter. Talent diverted from hedge fund into education.

http://www.khanacademy.org/

Thank you Salman khan

My kids love this song!

SemMozhi Tamil Anthem AR.Rahman (HD) - The best video clips are here

This is what it has come down to now?!

I knew water problem was bad in India. IMHO this is an awful solution to the problem. It makes India more dependent on foreign resources especially such vital resources. This is not a sustainable solution. Instead we should explore cheaper desalination plants to convert sea water into usable water.

""Like so many other commodities, water is going global. A number of recent news articles have described water as "blue gold" and the "the oil of the 21st Century". Entrepreneurs are responding to supply and demand imbalance by seeking ways to transport water from countries and regions with plentiful amounts to areas in short supply," wrote Terry Anderson and Clay Landry of what is now known as the Property and Environment Research Center way back in 1999. "John Hayward, a water expert for the World Bank, commented that 'water will be moved around the world as oil is now.'"

25 / 5 = 14

Carnatic music lessons

There are many sites with Carnatic lessons. I find this one to have an excellent coverage of foundational materials.

http://www.ecse.rpi.edu/Homepages/shivkuma/personal/music/varnams/index.html

With materials like this and a local music teacher as a coach, students anywhere can set sail into the world of music.

Speaking of music, here is an excellent analysis of Ilayaraja's contributions to popularizing Carnatic music in films.

http://www.s-anand.net/blog/category/classical-ilayaraja/

Does everyone like you?

everyone...?! Here is a related question. Have you ever been in a position where you have to make decisions for or on behalf of others? Here is an explanation.

'Leading' is making decisions.
Making decisions is choosing between difference choices.
Choosing is rejecting some choices.
Rejection affect people who stand to gain from those choices.
People who lose by your decision usually don't like you! :-)

In an ideal world where everyone is equally smart and appreciate the rational behind decision making, everyone will like everyone else in spite of any loss to their income, prestige, fame, etc. Our world is far from ideal.

So if you are a leader, not everyone likes you. That is guaranteed.

Eating with hands!

Eating with hands is somewhat uniquely Indian. While people around the world invented tools like spoons, forks, chop sticks, etc, we are comfortable eating with our hands. What's up with that? We are bunch of smart people why didn't we invent a tool? We do use different types of spoons for cooking. So why not one for eating?

Last winter I realized an answer to this question. Even if the food is served hot in the plate, when the temperature outside is freezing, very quickly the food becomes cold. If you eat with your fingers in the freezing cold weather, you fingers start to hurt by the time you finish eating! It is pretty uncomfortable. Cold food in mouth goes down without much discomfort. But touching the cold food is not a comfortable feeling. So if you can pick up the food with a tool and drop it in your mouth, that serves as a comfortable meal. In India, we are used to warm weather all around the year. If the food is hot, let it cool for a few minutes and you can pick it up comfortably with your hands to feed yourself. So there is no need to invent a tool!

Incidentally, we have food like Dosa that is difficult to eat with a standard tool like spoon or fork, especially if it is crispy. Either we have to invent a Dosa eating tool or make bite size Dosas just like mini idlies.

People eat sandwiches here with their hands. So it is not completely an alien behavior. The thing that beats me is why the fast food sandwiches are so big that it never fits in your mouth. Eating a sandwich is a scene. You have to wide open your mouth to take a bite. Restaurants boost showing their sandwiches with a huge stack of stuff layered with some bread or bun on the outside. If I am going to pick up loosely assembled stuff to eat, I would rather pick up a bite size sandwich piece and eat it at once. Oh well.... perhaps we need to modernize our food and eating tools...?! :-)

Wisdom and Instinct

The good and bad in life are not black and white as in the movies. They are shades of grey. It is only after the fact, well into the future, you realize if something turned out good or bad. Randomness influences life in a big way. So conventional wisdom is subjective and sometimes one has to completely ignore it. Here are few examples of how some famous people ignored their stumbling blocks and got ahead to make history simply by following their instincts.

"Children just aren't interested in Witches and Wizards anymore." - Anonymous publishing executive to J.K. Rowling, 1996.

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" - H. M. Warner, co-founder of Warner Bros. 1927.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olson, Founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." - Decca Records executives rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"You better get secretarial work or get married." - Emmeline Snively, Director, Blue Book Modelling Modelling Agency, to Marilyn Monroe in 1944.

"The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad." - The President of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford's lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language." - The San Francisco Examiner, rejecting a submission by Rudyard Kipling in 1889.

"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." - Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878.

"The world potential market for copying machines is 5000 at most." - IBM, to the eventual founders of Xerox, saying the photocopier had no market large enough to justify production, 1959.

Fascinating Facts - The floating Earth

As you may know, Einstein's general theory of relativity completely changed the way we think about space and time. Instead of objects sitting in space as time tics and tocs, objects distort and interact with space and time together. The theory predicts that earth, stars and other galactic objects bend the space around them.


NASA’s Gravity Probe B satellite proved the theory's predictions. 
http://einstein.stanford.edu/SPACETIME/spacetime4.html Don't miss the great video explanations on the link.

Here's looking at you, kid...

Naked eye view of Earth from Mars - sent by Mars Rover Spirit

Leaf blower cleans dryer vent

If you understand the title, skip to the second paragraph of this article. Unlike in India where there is abundant sun throughout the year to dry washed cloths outdoor, in the North East United States indoor cloth drying equipments are a necessity. Washing machines and dryers are standard equipments in every household. Natural gas or electricity is used as heating source for the dryers. Hot air is blown in a chamber where wet cloths spin. The air absorbs moisture in the cloths and leave out of the equipment and the house through an exhaust pipe. Duct work to let the hot air exit out of the building is part of standard plumbing. When clothes dry at high temperature most fabrics leave behind fluffy cotton lint in the dryer and the exhaust vent. One of the leading causes of house fire in the U.S is the fire caused by overheated dryer vents.

Recently, I was reminded of a house fire of a colleague because of clogged dryer vent. It was time to cleanup the dryer vent since I haven't done that ever. There are ton of products out there that are meant to clean the dryer vents. I picked up one of those and found it was pretty inefficient. Brush attached to a long flexible cord goes hardly two feet inside the vent. Beyond that it is impossible to push the brush since there is no strong hold and the cord bends instead of pushing the brush inside the vent. Then I tried using the vacuum cleaner. Again I could clean up about two feet on both ends of the vent, but much of the lint is in the middle around the bend of the vent, I could see it with a flash light. After much frustration, I was about to give up.

In a flash of thought, it occurred to me to try using my leaf blower from one end. Viola! That worked like magic

The blower pushes the lint in the vent from one end and moves it out through the other leaving the vent nice and clean. The job was well done in few seconds. Not knowing how efficient this will be I ended up having to vacuum the inside of the house near the dryer where the dirt piled up. Next time I am planning to tie a plastic bag or something on the dryer end of the vent to reduce the mess. Or perhaps I should try blowing air from the dryer end.

Well, turns out Leaf blowers are much more powerful compared to the dryer fans. Long time back I learned that with the right tools, any work can get done with much less effort and incredibly well. Apparently, sometimes we have to find the right tool ourselves.

Winter and Ear Infection

Right from the childhood I have suffered from ear infections during winter. Had my tonsils removed long ago. Yet, I had to suffer through every winter at least once, sometimes more than once when the temperature remains below comfortable level. I have knocked the doors of many a specialists, internal medicine, ENT, family practice, etc. Once an ENT specialist wanted to eliminate the possibility of a tumor growth inside nostrils and subjected me to a thin tube insertion with camera and light on one end to look inside. Nothing came up out of norm. One treatment option went like this. We should put a hole in the ear drum and fix a pipe to drain the fluid that builds up around your sinus during cold temperature. This tube will be a permanent artificial fixture inside the head and prevent ear infections! Well, I wasn't sure I wanted to go for that. An internal medicine doc prescribed a nasal spray that you point in an oblique angle inside the nose and spray twice a day. A side effect of that was that it makes you addictive to using it for ever. Other than that I didn't see it work at all. And the worst of all, every time I suffered from the ear infection, I had to be on one full dose of Antibiotics that ran for 30 days a course. That means, for more than half of winter every year I was on antibiotics! The antibiotic is not a preventive medicine; it did not reduce the pain, it just helped prevent further infection, I guess. So, this gave me one more reason to hate winters!

Early this winter, I was at a local Target (a supermarket chain) and spotted a ear muffler. It looks something like the figure shown.

Every time I went out, I wore the muff. It worked like magic! Apparently, my body is sensitive to cold air getting inside the ear canal and reacts by pushing the ear drum from inside. The pressure develops into prolonged pain, redness in the inner ear and thus infection. As soon as the ear muff blocked cold air from getting inside the ear canal, it relieved me of my long lasting problem! What a simple world, that we complicate by over thinking. For the first time in many winters, I am free of ear infections this year and it happened just by pure luck! I am so thankful I found this little contraption that has improved my quality of life tremendously.