Engineers like me (but so unlike me!)

1. Manjunath

2. Satyendra Dubey

3&4. Anil and Madhu

Engineers by education - but so much more than engineers. May Manju and Dubey come back soon. More power to Anil and Madhu (no pun intended!)

Lemme know if you know of such not-so-well-known people!

Twogether - I

This is the first photo in my blog! I have been thinking of doing this for a long time now - and it took Seema's own push technology (she sent a snap of her and Pete at Pete's house in Bangalore without me asking for it) to shake the laziness and post the snap. Congrats, Seems.

Actually, it took more than that - Pete took me home from Ashram and Seems prepared onion/tomato Uttappam/Dosa and other goodies and fed me till I was ready to burst. They also dropped me off at Bikram's places. All in all, made me feel very good. And this is how I thank them? Sure!!

Pete (Karthick P.T.) and Seema are both engineers who worked with me at PoseidoN Design Systems. Seema is now with Intel and Pete works with ARM - keeping the semiconductor thread alive. All the very best to them.

Coming soon : more celebrity couples!!

nashaa hai tu, ay husn-e-aala
peene ko aatur hai ye matwala
par haath mein nahin mere pyaala
isliye pehlaa jaaonga madhushaala

(you are intoxication personified, ye beautiful one
and I am eager to drink till I drop
but alas, I don't have a glass
coz I left it at the wine shop)

The great original which I have imitated is by Harivansh Rai 'Bachchan'

and here you can find a translation of a few verses - the ones by Ramana are far better

let me end by a short praise of the author of this blog:

waah, ravi waah - bahut aala!
kyaa tune khaaya bharela karela?

(Oh Sun -you are great - so great you are past the stratosphere!)

piyo sar jhuka ke!

RRNT #1

Welcome to Angel's Revolutionary New Theory #1
-------------------------------------------------

A bird told me that all the folks she knew in the IT industry were dissatisfied. I nodded my assent but it wasn't until i got out early from office today that walking to the bus stop, an angel told me the reason by revealing to me ARNT #1 (No copyright issues with her - so feel free to publish it elsewhere)

Most people in the IT industry are discontended because they get paid hazaar and don't work enough!

Simple, yet shocking. And it's the truth. Nary a bunch of more conceited people like software engineers. We are for most part lazy - a trait we doubtless share with many more of our fellow homo sapiens, but that's not all. On top of that, we are _full_ of gas from half baked knowledge - and we demand outrageous money for it.

There is the seed for that vicious cycle - you go to a new company - they pay you more - you work a little more perhaps - but there is that gap still and you grow more discontent.

I'm sure HR knows all about this - but having no time for any D for development from their actual role of HRD, they just spend time getting the resources. Resources who will run away next year if not given enough bonus.

Not sure what the solution is - except that us software enggs do more work - but given that that is not always forthcoming, we need to perhaps give more away - after all, we can't say we will work for less, can we? Not us.

2ofu2

Beautiful day
The heart is a bloom... shoots up through the stony ground
Teach me - I know I'm not a hopeless case

With or Without U
Sleight of hand and twist of fate
on a bed of nails she makes me wait

Back in text

The love was always there in my heart - it had been relegated to the dusty corners of my mind, but it was very much there. I would always be handicapped without it. Well, not handicapped perhaps - but I would be like Gabbar without his voice. It took me some free time at work and chance question to after it - something I should have done ages ago...

Was loitering around when my SysAdmin asked me if I knew how to enable telnet on a linux system. Of course I knew - a little pottering about and it all came back to me - /etc/rc.d/init.d/network restart - NO? oops - a little 'find' told me that telnet was ready to go - only I should restart xinetd! Yes - and the two proud hands high in the office you could see were both mine!!

But, I realized this is not enough - I need to be in constant touch with muh baby - linux. And shure enuff, this blog is from Firefox on RH9! I am gunzipping and untarring and configuring and making and installing and all this is sooooooooo much fun!!

Thank God for ttys!
Long Live Linux!!

not dreamt of in my philosophy

What does it mean to be open like the sky? Free of any notions about how things must be?

India is a land of so many sciences for which courses are not conducted in most universities. Vedic Mathematics is one of them. Ayurveda is definitely on its way back. But how do you explain this:

Found out that The Art of Living volunteers were going to clean a temple in Tirusulam, Chennai. Me joined them. After cleaning the temple, we had food and sang a couple of Bhajans, when rain started pouring down. There was a Swamiji who applauded the good work we had done and asked us to meet him. I planned to just do Namaskaar and be off - nothing prepared me for what was to come.

It was getting late and the car in which I was to go was about to leave. I told people I would leave without meeting him but they insisted that I meet him. Some took a lot of time and some were done fast. I noticed that everyone was telling him their name and what they did. I prostrated and told him the same.

He said - "Continue with your present job. You have changed two jobs already - let this one continue till you get a really good company". I was shocked because I had been contemplating going to Bangalore to get a job. He then continued "It will be a little slow - learn as much as you can - you had chances of studying further but you are not doing anything about it. you are moody, temperemental and adamant. You had a bike accident where you didn't remember anything"

By now I was quite shocked by what he knew and at that time he rattled off a lot of stuff in fast Tamil which I didn't follow (I don't understand Tamil very well) but I did understand what he ended with - "What's the use of me talking - you will not understand all this..." - this was the clincher. I was laughing - there was some shock still but I could sense his situation - here he was, telling all about a person he knows just the first name of - and that person not understanding most of it!!

Anyways, I managed to ask him a question - "should I study further - and he said - "Do it - you have been talking for 3 years!!"

Very exciting for me - also pattern breaking. I am quite interested in 'sciences' that predict an individual's characteristics, future etc. - be it Numerology, Palmistry, using blood group etc. - but this really takes the proverbial cake! Nothing but pure intuition working here...

Of course, after the incredulity wore off, I started to reflect on what he had said - whether it could have been deduced just by my age etc. - and I can come up with a reasoning on how he could have done it - but then I'm reminded of Einstein -

Any significantly advanced science is indistinguishable from magic

Free Falling (part II)

The song in the title was not on my mind on Friday afternoon when i did it - the pristine-ness of the surrounding pretty much emptied the mind of most frequencies. Sunny day - not too warm - and the relief of having a complete day off work made the long trip to the Mile-Hi Sky Diving center quite pleasant. Yup that's what I did - a free fall from 13,000 ft.

It doesn't last long - a minute of free fall and 3-4 of chuting - but it was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life - maybe #1! Momentary fear soon turns to euphoria and I was screaming most of the 50 free fall seconds... the parachuting was great fun too - in a way, it was required to complete the experience - my guide David taught me how to pilot the chute (what - you thought I jumped just like that? -it was a tandem jump). It is quite simple and a lot of fun! I was still taking it all in when I landed... Can't wait to do some more -

As the guy who gave me the lift back mentioned - it can be quite a high - in more ways than one...

The Sky Diving center

If you know of places that do similar places in/around Chennai/Bangalore - let me know!!

p.s: A link I forgot for the previous blog
The top 500 songs according to RS

Desk-bound to des - bound

Me coming back to Des and I feel great - I'm sitting cross legged, sipping cold Ishi Gawa coffee in Tokyo's sparsely populated Narita airport, listening to 'Bizarre Love Triangle' (By New Order - #21 on all time 500 songs according to Rolling Stones) - and I'm feeling as good as I have felt in a long long time.

I am feeling rested and enthusiastic after a 10 hr. flight into Narita - actually feel like working!! Travel does this to me... Managed to catch the film version of 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' and the purely star-sugar fuelled 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith' on the plane...

Japan and India have at least one thing in common - prepare to squat down to download - Tokyo toilets are like old indian ones - long time that I saw those in India... should get one for my house!

Haven't blogged for some time as well - let me recollect some highlights of my trip and make uip for the absence...

what colour is your name?

Musta see this:

http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/050222_synesthesia.html

how much more of sense stimuli these guys must be having!! So each of us taste, look and smell different to them just by our names!!

how much more sense does numerology and related stuff make now!!

There are definitely more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of of in my philosophy!

Stop crying, fer cryin out loud - start scrying!

And then there is this problem...

Man on top of 200ft mountain with 150 ft. of rope and a knife. At 100ft., there is a hook and a place to stand. How does the man get to ground??

(Do post in u'r answers, even if they involve Mithun/Rajni type of jumps - Realistically though, one can jump 2ft. w/o needing a wheelchair for rest of life)


That absolute classic Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

has something to say about this in Chapter 22.

Here, he talks about Henri Poincare - philosopher, mathematician, astronomer
--------------

Poincaré proceeded to examine these critically. Which facts are you going to observe? he asked. There is an infinity of them. There is no more chance that an unselective observation of facts will produce science than there is that a monkey at a typewriter will produce the Lord's Prayer.
The same is true of hypotheses. Which hypotheses? Poincaré wrote, "If a phenomenon admits of a complete mechanical explanation it will admit of an infinity of others which will account equally well for all the peculiarities disclosed by experiment."
--------------

(we can try an infinity of possible "solutions" - but how to get to the one that works??)

--------------

Then Poincaré illustrated how a fact is discovered. He had described generally how scientists arrive at facts and theories but now he penetrated narrowly into his own personal experience with the mathematical functions that established his early fame.

For fifteen days, he said, he strove to prove that there couldn't be any such functions. Every day he seated himself at his work-table, stayed an hour or two, tried a great number of combinations and reached no results.
Then one evening, contrary to his custom, he drank black coffee and couldn't sleep. Ideas arose in crowds. He felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination.

The next morning he had only to write out the results. A wave of crystallization had taken place.
-------------

I struggled with the rope for 2-3 days and on the next day I decided I would not *try* and gave it up and sat there, unthinking

Suddenly the visual solution just flashed for a split second with an "Of course!!". what was left for me was just to verify it.

So, instead of crying over it, maybe you want to try scrying, a la Kekule?


All the best!

specialist vs. generalist

A discussion in office made me realize that I (and maybe some others too) think of myself as a generalist. Maybe I even take pride in it.
I want to know about many subsystems in my project. I want to be able to play many instruments. I want to be with many girls. I want to be a writer, musician, singer, entrepreneur, actor and spiderman.
Yet I am d>none of the above.

So what am I doing wrong:

Laozi tells the secret of success is to be a specialist (It's a cartoon - will take seconds to look/read)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0385472595/ref=sib_rdr_prev2_ex3/104-6804031-7899169?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S00B&j=1&ns=1#reader-page

This blog has started social networks and an anonymous group!
Mama - Don't let your baby become a generalist:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/001978.php

Erwin Scroedinger and Jose Ortega Y Gasset's comments on why a specialist can easily become a demon (from Knowledge Management Research Group):
http://kmr.nada.kth.se/cm/generalist-specialist.html

Hope we all be what we were meant to be.
Hope we all can accept what we are.

Our Hearts Should Do This More

I sit in the streets with the homeless

My clothes stained with the wine
From the vineyards the saints tend.

Light has painted all acts
The same color

So I sit around and laugh all day
With my friends.

At night if I feel a divine loneliness
I tear the doors off Love's mansion

And wrestle God onto the floor.
He becomes so pleased with Hafiz
And says, "Our hearts should do this more."

'The Gift - Poems by Hafiz The Great Sufi Master'
Translations by Daniel Ladinsky

what results from this?

S. came by and asked for help on a problem that he had to fix 'by today'. He didn't want me to help him analyze the problem. He wanted me to show him how to fix it. Seems that his boss has told him that he expected a fix in 24 hours. So S. is totally not thinking about the problem, but about the result.

Manager dropped by soon after and asked whether I was working on the showstopper problem. When I started to tell him what I was doing about it, he cut me off and told me that we need to solve all the problems by 22 Apr. That is 2 f@#$^%$ weeks off!
I think that most managers are an afraidy-goose lot - because they don't know what happens day-to-day (It's so clear from the way their eyes get glassy and aloof when you tell them what you are trying). Since they cannot understand what the employee is saying, they switch off and talk about their requirement, which is oviously the result, i.e. fix of the problem.

Was reminded of the words of HCL's new President (he started yesterday). and mentioned that Results was one of his top 3 priorities. Action and Passion being other 2. A. and P. are useless without Results, he said. Is that because action and passion are not easily measured?

There seems to be enough pressure against following the Bhagvad Gita tenet - Put your efforts, do not worry about the results. At last some inspiration to follow it!! :)

Differently - abled

The politically correct term for children who are unlike most children we see is 'differently abled'. The term for children from this group was, till recently, 'mentally challenged'. And before that the moronic 'mentally retarded'.

The obvious thought came to me - we are all 'differently abled'. Some paint well, some dance well, some act well, some code well... Does this mean that all normal children expected to do the 'same' things?

Was listening to a wise man expound on how happiness is different from comfort and how we have been 'taught' the wrong language of happiness. He says, quite simply, that we have been taught that a car, a job, a girlfriend will bring us happiness when all what they bring is comfort (With a little thought - even these don't come without the baggage - worry).

One more interesting point he made was that most of us live in 'ruins' of accumulated thought - not alive to the present.

which brings me to the response i gave to a girl who asked me for gyaan - 'Never put off until tomorrow who you can do today'.

HA...HA...

cheerio all,
ravi

And in the red corner...The king

The tamil film industry seems so far ahead of the competition in most areas of the art. There has been a spate of hatke (off the beaten track) movies in the recent past. Seems like repression in some sections is leading to more creativity in others.

Pithamagan, Veerumandi, 7G Rainbow Colony are some name that spring to mind. Of course, I am no Tamil movie freak. And this blog is not about Tamil movies either.

Tamil film music has been eagerly heard since Illayaraja's times (By a lot of other language music directors too ;). Hip-hop, rock and reggae sounds are now commonplace and as accepted as pure Carnatic raga based flourishes. But this is not about the whole industry. It is about one man - people in the know have called him Asia's Mozart and a melody genius but surely the best compliment is that he is a worthy successor to the great Illayaraja.

New wannabes (Illayaraja's son - Yuvan Shankar Raja and Harris Jeyaraj are having huge hits these days) are heard everywhere from the latest DJ consoles to battered autorickshaw tape players but only one man comes close to perfection, and that is A.R. Rahman.

When listening to his songs, more often than not the mind is awestruck at how he manages to not only get great melodies, but also mould them into such complete products, technically. Varying singers(Lucky Ali/Adnan Sami) and instruments, he has stood above the common accusation of having a lot of his songs sounding the same.

And all this came from that small peek of genius in the song 'Ale Ale' from Boyz, where, in the second antara (manal muladhum sarkarayaa or something), Chitra Sivaraman begins her second line *slightly* early with a high-pitched Naaaa - electric!!

and when i let go of the thought of how superb he is, i am transported into a state of ecstacy. Enough said?

Recently heard:-
1. Dance anthem: Fanaa from 'Yuva' - i remember not liking this immediately until Dada told me Neha said it was too good. Get up and jump!!
2. Remix : The classic 'Thottaal poo' redone by ARR in New.
3. Emotion: Yenge Enidhu Kavithai from Kandukondaen.

Which are your favourite Rahman songs?

Shooting from the lap

Yo - this blog is from a special place - moi laptop! whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Yes - my very own Toshiba Satellite. It is v.v. cool and I just love the idea of writing/coding/browsing sitting the way I am.

I guess there will be more frequent blogs. And more frequent communication with friends and family. And a more knowledge-able me.

Raise your glasses all,
Cheeeeeeeers.

A (new?) understanding

New Year everyone - not stating the fact. that is my greeting. May we all get the energy to see things anew - fresh, as each new moment is.

Something that was bothering me for some time now:

"For instance, if somebody is getting in touch with the sense of autonomy that comes with the experience of Being--the sense that one's existence is autonomous from one's mind, from one's thoughts--that sense of autonomy may be perceived by the ego as autonomy from other people," Almaas points out. "If a married person is feeling autonomy, they may start wondering if they want to stay married. Or if they have a job, they may wonder if they should leave that job and start their own business. When what they really need to see is that they're autonomous just by being who they are. That's where a teacher can be important. Because if a person doesn't realize that autonomy is an Essential aspect of being, they will interpret it in their accustomed ways."
www.ridhwan.org

Folks - more updates on Amtrak trip to California and first ice skating experience comin' up. keep it tuned right here.