Wise Man Say... 08.03

There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

- Anon

Technorati Tags: Random Thoughts

Wise Man Say... 07.03

He thinks it's a halo but it's just a swollen head
Anon.

Water, water everywhere?

I have just had a rather interesting, and instructive, weekend. First, on Saturday, I had a super frustrating meeting with the developers of this condo I am buying during which they tried to explain to me why, yet again, the closing would be delayed for two months. But that's a story for another time.

I came home from the meeting with the builder to an announcement on my building's PA system saying that the water had been shut off. Apparently, some idiot municipal worker doing some repairs had ruptured the city's water mains. As a result, all of Jersey City where I live and neighboring Hoboken and Union City had no water for about 30 hours starting Saturday forenoon through Sunday evening. Then on Sunday evening, just as the water came back on - brackish and blood red, lightning struck the transformers of my building complex and the power went out - for something like four hours.

Why was this interesting, let alone instructive? Because I was so completely and utterly unprepared for it!

In the five plus years that I have been in the US I have never been in a situation where there was a water outage (one time in Ithaca, the water pipes in my apartment froze but the landlord was able to crank the boiler to get it working pretty quickly). Not only did I not have any means to store water, the thought had never occurred to me. I had a couple of bottles of Gatorade and a bottle of Blue Moon beer in the house but that was it for the aqua supply, and since at that point I didn't know how long the outage would last I didn't want to use them for anything but drinking. I went to the store to get more water but it seems that while I was fighting with the builder of my condo, people had been making a run on water.

Then things began to shut down - restaurants and coffee shops first, the mall next and a few hours into the outage, it was like a curfew. So now I couldn't cook or wash. I suddenly felt really thirsty. I immediately instituted a "if it's yellow, let it mellow..." policy for the loo and after a dinner of bread and tuna, went to bed. The next afternoon, when the water finally came back on, I had perhaps one of the more satisfying craps of my life!

Back home in India, we got municipal water twice a day, two hours at a time sort of like a doctor's prescription. We had buckets and bottles, pumps and filters and three storage tanks - one on the roof, one sunk into our garden and one above the kitchen sink. Our daily schedules revolved around the availability of water - you were 'strongly' encouraged to do any bathing, washing or shitting between the hours of seven and nine. If you missed the morning window, then you were done for twelve hours. But we were prepared for any water emergency. If we didn't have water in my home in Delhi for 30 hours, I don't think anyone but my Mom would have even noticed (and I am not being sexist here - Mom headed the water police at home. Fact of life.)

It's the same story with electricity - back home we have candles and lanterns, inverters and generators, hand held fans and chiks on the windows. And for most of the summer load-shedding, there is a schedule and we know how long the outage will last.

Me? I sat in near total darkness for four hours. The only candle I have is in the bathroom where it performs more of a... um... odor removal role (and after 30 hours of mellowing, it had its work cut out too!) Everything in my apartment switched off - the computers, fridge, oven, microwaves, TV. The elevators had stopped working so my option, if i wanted to leave the building was to walk down 27 floors. So for the second night in a row, I had bread and canned tuna for dinner. But this time I cracked the bottle of Blue Moon.

Movin' On

So after a year at one bank and a year and a half at another - while actually working for the same firm all the time - I'm finally employed by a bank! Third time's the charm, eh? (And if you find all this moving about confusing, think of me - I lived through it!)

I am absolutely ecstatic about this new job! My new company sits at the very top of the investment banking food-chain, they (aggressively) recruited me (which does wonders for any self-esteem issues, believe me!), the money is better than good and I work on Wall Street (no, actually on Wall Street!). This is the culmination of a dream.

But... This is my fourth job in a relatively short career of less than a decade. To put it in perspective, I have already had more jobs than both my parents have had in their entire working lives of almost 70 years, taken together. I wonder if this is only me or are we as a generation more restless and less easily satisfied? One really close friend of mine went all the way from India to Australia and back looking for professional satisfaction; another is so sick of her job and so stricken with wanderlust that she would rather work a low-end job on a cruise ship than continue to do what she is doing; a third prefers the 'publish or perish' rigors of academia to her former career as a high profile corporate consultant.

My best friend in the world went from being a town planner to a software salesman to a tech-support guy to a line-cook to a journalist to a blogger. And he is the most blissfully happy, most content man I know. Which only goes to show...

Well, I don't know what it goes to show. Maybe that the perfect job or the perfect career does exist and you just have to keep looking till you find it.

Anyway... I have a new job and couldn't be more kicked about it! I just hope that this will be home for a long time. If not, well then... watch this space.

Wise Man Say... 07.02

Recharge your Batteries

Check out these rather nifty NiMH rechargeable batteries from USBCell that have built in USB hubs allowing them to be charged through a computer rather than a conventional charger. They come in AA size and have a 1300 mah rating.

These batteries make perfect sense for someone like me who does a lot of photography and a lot of traveling. I can already charge my BlackBerry and my cell-phone through my laptop and anything that allows me to ditch another charger is a bit of all right in my book.

The downside is that one might have to carry a portable USB hub around, but most people I know do that anyway and now you can think of it also as a universal charger!

I got four of these babies a couple of weeks ago and so far they’re doing just fine. The batteries, at $19.95 a pair at Adorama, are slightly more expensive than conventional rechargeable batteries but then you don't have to buy a charger so they actually save you money. They take about 5 hours to charge for the first time but charge rapidly for subsequent uses. In my completely unscientific tests (on a Canon Elan-7E SLR and a Canon 580EX flash unit) lasted about as long and performed about as well as regular NiMH batteries.


Pictured: USBCell AA 1300mah NiMH Rechargable Batteries

Republic Day - A "Celebration"

As we celebrate the 57^th anniversary of the formation of the Indian Republic, I cannot help but think that the tradition of exhibiting India's military might on Republic Day has gotten old. When the tradition first started we had just become independent and we were weak and certainly undeveloped. At such a time to project strength through a display of military prowess perhaps made sense, just in case someone else got the same idea the Brits had. The USSR, equally perceived as weak and impoverished after the Second World War, had used the massive displays in the Red Square to show the world that they were a Superpower and we could do the same thing.

Now, 50-odd years later, we are ready to sit down at the main table, and have been for a while. We are one of the world's top 5 economies with the world's second highest GDP growth rate. We are a solid democracy and have been for 99.97% of our history as an independent nation. We are at the forefront of the latest technological revolution and the 21^st century is being talked about, around the globe, as the Indian century just as the 20^th was the American century. When we talk, the world listens. We don’t need a show of our military power for the world to take us seriously.

Given these facts, that we continue traditions that are part Soviet-style demonstrations of our military machine and part Colonial hangover of the Queen's (King's) birthday honors list (all those Padma awards) are anachronistic at best and indicative of our continuing insecurity at worst. I mean, if the military parade on Republic Day is meant for a foreign audience, then a) they are more focused on our economic prowess and b) those who would do us harm presumably have some estimate of our military power (if they don't, then it makes even less sense to display it in public!).

If, on the other hand, the parade is primarily for domestic consumption, then shouldn't the cultural aspects of the parade – the folk dances, the floats, the school bands - be given more prominence? It is, at the end of the day, a celebration of the Republic and shouldn’t celebrations be, I don't know - fun?! What is more celebratory – row upon row of grim faced soldiers and the latest missile technology marching past or the dancing and color and the general cheerfulness that accompanies the latter half of the Republic Day parade in Delhi?

Not that I have anything against military parades per se. If the same military parade that is held on January 26 is held instead on December 16, it would not only be contextual, but also topical. Why December 16, you ask? Because that, almost forgotten, day is Vijay Diwas – the anniversary of the surrender of the Pakistan Army in 1971 and the creation of Bangladesh (incidentally, the largest surrender of any armed force, ever). Should not the military showcase its strength and give its gallantry awards on the day of India’s greatest military victory as a free nation?

After all, the Republic or its independence was not won by force of arms, was it? In fact, we pride ourselves for having won our independence by doing the exact opposite, i.e. by eschewing a force of arms - perhaps the only colony in the history of the world to do so! Why then isn't the peaceful overthrow of the (then) world's greatest colonial power and the cohesive existence, as a nation, of the world's most ethnically and linguistically diverse polity the primary focus of all our national day (Independence Day and Republic Day) celebrations?

Wise Man Say... 07.01

"My favorite animal is steak."
-Frank Lebowitz

Naming Names

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet."

-- William Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

We all know that Bengalis have a penchant for sticking their kids with some of the weirdest monikers known to man. And as if that weren't enough, they then compound matters by tacking on even uglier "pet" names to the already atrocious names, thus ensuring that generations of therapists will be kept busy (the world's psychiatrists owe us some acknowledgement - "I would like to thank Pocha and his parents for putting my own children through college" - but that is another post).

A case in point is this rather funny, and anonymous, take on Bong nicknames, (the infamous "Daak Naam!"), which has done the rounds of the email forwards, including me. All I can say is that when Ronojoy and Anurabha are used as used as examples of "good" names (pun intended) spoilt by nicknames, you know that things are bad indeed.

But... Bengalis of the world take heart! The absolute weirdest Bong name has nothing on the names of children in a friend's elementary school class in Dallas, TX. Here are some of the winners:

• Courvoisier – Even when Emmanuel Courvoisier was setting up his business in the 19^th century, this only worked as a family name. Today, it is as clear a confession of a drunken hook-up as there ever was. Maybe someday she will have a brother called VSOP.

• Miracle Omega - The boy decided to go by his middle name because he thought the first name was too girly. Let’s face it – when Omega is a better option than your given name, super atomic wedgies and being stuffed in your locker are going to become part of your daily existence. As for the career in the military, forget it. Just hope that your HMO covers extensive therapy.

• ABCDE - pronounced Ab-si-dy. What can I say - just how lazy must your parents be if they are not even willing to go through the entire alphabet for your name?

• Pleasure du Jour - 'nuff said.