Arvind Thinks out Loud!

An inspiring rickshaw driver

2011-05-29T11:59:00.003+05:30

Got this email about an inspiring rickshaw driver (Mr. Sandeep Bachhe) in Mumbai - he has equipped his rickshaw very well and also does some meaningful charity in his capacity.

Here goes..

Suvendu Roy of Titan Industries shares his inspirational encounter with
a rickshaw driver in Mumbai:

Last Sunday, my wife, kid, and I had to travel to Andheri from Bandra.
When I waved at a passing auto rickshaw, little did I expect that this
ride would be any different. As we set off, my eyes fell on a few
magazines(kept in an aircraft style pouch) behind the driver's back rest.

I looked in front and there was a small TV. The driver had put on the
Doordarshan channel.

My wife and I looked at each other with disbelief and amusement. In
front of me was a small first-aid box with cotton, dettol and some
medicines. This was enough for me to realise that I was in a special
vehicle. Then I looked round again, and discovered more - there was a
radio, fire extinguisher, wall clock, calendar, and pictures and symbols
of all faiths - from Islam and Christianity to Buddhism, Hinduism and
Sikhism. There were also pictures of the heroes of 26/11- Kamte,
Salaskar, Karkare and Unnikrishnan. I realised that not only my vehicle,
but also my driver was special.

I started chatting with him and the initial sense of ridicule and
disbelief gradually diminished. I gathered that he had been driving an
auto rickshaw for the past 8-9 years; he had lost his job when his
employer's plastic company was shut down. He had two school-going
children, and he drove from 8 in the morning till 10 at night. No break
unless he was unwell. "Sahab, ghar mein baith ke TV dekh kar kya faida?
Do paisa income karega toh future mein kaam aayega."

We realised that we had come across a man who represents Mumbai - the
spirit of work, the spirit of travel and the spirit of excelling in
life. I asked him whether he does anything else as I figured that he did
not have too much spare time. He said that he goes to an old age home
for women in Andheri once a week or whenever he has some extra income,
where he donates tooth brushes, toothpastes, soap, hair oil, and other
items of daily use. He pointed out to a painted message below the meter
that read: "25 per cent discount on metered fare for the handicapped.
Free rides for blind passengers up to Rs. 50.

My wife and I were struck with awe. The man was a HERO! A hero who
deserves all our respect. Our journey came to an end; 45 minutes of a
lesson in humility, selflessness, and of a hero-worshiping Mumbai, my
temporary home. We disembarked, and all I could do was to pay him a tip
that would hardly cover a free ride for a blind man.

I hope, one day, you too have a chance to meet Mr Sandeep Bachhe in his
auto rickshaw: MH-02-Z-8508.

Not Just a Book Review - Creating a World Without Poverty

2011-03-27T20:38:00.003+05:30

Shortly after receiving his Nobel Peace Prize, Mohammad Yunus (Founder of Grameen Bank and other Grameen social businesses in Bangladesh) wrote a book titled "Creating a World Without Poverty" which goes into length on how social businesses can be used to alleviate poverty across the world - there's no need to read a book review to see if it will interest you. Just turn to the last few pages of the book where his nobel peace prize speech is - if you find it interesting, do read the book - otherwise, ask others to do what I've suggested when they ask about this book.

Here's an introduction to the idea of social businesses. Social businesses are businesses which primarily focus on addressing a social problem in a sustainable manner (i.e. businesses which will become self sustaining with the income they make after a period of time). There are quite a number of successful social businesses in the world - most of the Grameen companies in Bangladesh, Aravind Eye Care Hospitals in India, Selco in India among many others.

In his book, Yunus discusses multiple bottom lines such as profit (financial), value added to the society (social), environmental impact and others but mainly discusses how a business can never treat both the financial bottom-line and the social bottom-line with equal importance because in the end the decisions they make will favour one of them. For example, if a beverage company is looking at a way to discard waste water and they arrive at two possible solutions - one that is environmentally friendly but will reduce the margins of the company by 5% and another solution that is not environmentally friendly and barely affects the margin of the company. A profit making company which is answerable to its investors will surely choose the latter solution without a doubt.

Yunus also talks about why social businesses are the way forward - he discusses for profit companies taking a one dimensional view of human beings as robots that will just complete given tasks and discusses how non-profits and foundations are always dependent on grants and donations to keep their operations going - getting these grants and donations itself takes up a lot of time for them. I would agree with this point of view also and I think many people would.

Yunus says that social businesses should focus on benefiting the poor, especially women. I agree with him but in some cases, a startup would need to scale in order to remain sustainable and reduce the cost of the product/service in order to be affordable for poor people. In this case, the business must have a vision of addressing the poorest people of society and aggressively work towards it. There are plenty of social business opportunities which are needed (in India and other developing nations) even for people who are not poor such as quality primary and secondary schools, health initiatives and many more.

Social action forums as Yunus puts it is a place where like minded people get together and think of ideas to solve social problems and also set goals for them. This is a brilliant idea which is already happening in many places.

Last but not the least, in the end of the book Yunus discusses the creation of poverty museums so that people of the next generation see the horror the previous generation of poor people have gone through. I don't think thats enough. Films should be made about this and spread like wildfire.

Do share your thoughts on social businesses and the book if you've read it. If you are interested in starting a social business and need some funding, you might want to approach Grameen Creative Labs - an organisation setup by Mohammad Yunus himself to support social businesses.

Walking on the wrong side of the road

2011-03-20T22:37:00.001+05:30

If you're surprised at me blogging after a long time please read the post script before reading the blogpost.

The title explains it all (literally!). This is a traffic guideline that a fellow 'yatri' at the Tata Jagriti Yatra 2008 recommended me to follow. The guideline was : Whenever you're on a road without a sidewalk or a platform, you should walk such that you are facing the vehicles approaching you. In fact, its also recommended by the Delhl Traffic Police for children walking to school as the first point (see the guideline here).

Ever since I heard about this guideline, I've been following it, except when I'm with a bunch of people who aren't walking on the wrong side (its just too hard to get many people to move while they're walking, talking and having fun).

The impact is quite measurable. For one, the number of cars that honk around me are much less (this is something significant in a place like India where people just love to put their horns to test by using it all the time). Also, I get to have some eye contact with the driver, so its easier to negotiate whether I will be moving to the side or they will be moving inward.

However, like all guidelines, this must be followed properly also. You must be looking at the cars and roads ahead of you. Its ineffective if you're reading a book or browsing the Internet on your mobile phone or doing something where you aren't really looking at the vehicles coming opposite yourself. Also make sure you're walking to the left of the people (right if you're in a country where the driving is on the right side of the road) walking in the same direction of vehicles. This way, they will also be temporarily freed from the honking as you're on the lookout for them.

Do try it out for yourself when you're on the road and I'm sure you'll see the impact.

P.S : Finally, I'm taking the initiative to blog once a week on things that I find interesting. Do nudge me if I don't post - feedback and comments are always appreciated.

Rang De - Knock out Poverty in India!

2010-11-11T18:33:00.001+05:30

This is a blogpost I've written as a template post for people to share on RangDe.Org (using the Tell a friend widget on our site) - comments would be appreciated on how to make it better.

I came across this interesting page(http://rangde.org/index.htm) on RangDe.Org and thought I would blog about it.

Rang De is an innovative approach to helping people who do no need charity. They need an opportunity to become self reliant and are looking for small loans to run their businesses. Listed on www.rangde.org are such low income entrepreneurs - mostly women from rural India who are looking for microloans.

You can invest as little as Rs.100 in their business and track the progress of your investment on-line. They call it social investing as your investments will bring about a social change.

Light up some children's diwalis this time

2010-10-31T21:59:00.002+05:30

Srimaan Trust is a charitable organization. It aims to aid the economically downtrodden people of our society. It aspires to see a ray of hope and confidence on the faces of people who think they have no future on this planet. Innovative and novel means are adopted to reach the poor and help them in times of need.

Its founder Sri U.Ve. Parasara Badrinarayana Bhattar Swamy has recently come up with a very novel way of celebrating Deepavali.They have planed to celebrate the festival by sharing what they have with those in need. There are millions of children in our country who are needy and deprived of joy and peace. Srimaan trust wants to focus on a small section of such children for this Deepavali. They have organized for free distribution of sweets and dresses for the students of certain schools who are from poor families.

I feel it is our responsibility to support this cause and donate whatever we can in this regard so that me keep someone smiling on the day of Deepavali. We can afford to buy crackers, new clothes, go for a newly released movie. We have been doing this for years but they cannot give joy or satisfaction in us. Let us try to do something that will make someone else happy for this Deepavali.

This effort of Srimaan Trust requires a good amount of funds to become fruitful. So they are awaiting funds from people like us. Ideally, they would be glad to receive Rs.1000 from a person. But it is not a compulsion at all. Please contribute what ever you are able(willing) to towards this noble cause.

If you interested to contribute for this, please contact +917620364193 for more details. To know more about Srimaan Trust and their various activities visit www.srimaantrust.com

NOTE: PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO OTHERS WHO WOULD BE INTERESTED. EVEN THAT IS A BIG CONTRIBUTION FROM YOUR SIDE.

How is Rang De microcredit different?

2010-10-13T19:21:00.000+05:30

How is Rang De microcredit different?

Rang De's Impact On Borrowers

2010-08-14T15:27:00.000+05:30

Barcamp Chennai 3

2010-04-11T20:12:00.003+05:30

Although I've heard a lot about Barcamps (an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment - source: barcamp.org), This is the first time I've been to one. Yes, Barcamp Chennai 3 is my first one and will probably be something I'll remember forever.

I arrived at the venue quite early and found that most of the people present at that time were members of the The Knowledge Foundation (who were also organisers of this barcamp). I registered to talk about Rang De and microcredit second up. First up was Kaushik Ram who talked about a library that can be used to code web server back ends using Javascript.

Since I figured that a lot of people would be bringing in a lot of laptops and would have ppts, I thought just talking and showing the Rang De website in the end would do. The talk went on quite decently with the feedback I got (those present over there, do correct me if I'm wrong - I don't mind bash-ups! ). However, I failed in a few aspects.

I failed to talk about how Rang De has fit in very nicely with the existing microfinance network in India.
I didn't showcase the Rang De website on the projector thanks to Ubuntu failing to connect with the projector properly. I Could have saved my Rs. 100 of Rang De credit to show the investment process today (which I just did yesterday).

Some of the other sessions I listened to and found interesting were:

Volunteers of the Knowledge foundation (Syed, Namirajan) talking about events to conduct in the future such as Ideacamp - an event to exchange ideas and build teams, and Risecamp
A talk on element5 (Arvind Chordia) - emphasizing on energy conservation and how they want to start helping in marketing renewable energy solutions to the urban crowd.
Senthil talking about his application for people to comment on movies that are in the making in order to ensure quality movies come out
R. Vivek's "lightning" talk on some of the mistakes he made in the first eight months of his startup interviewstreet.com.
sanandnarayanan talking about his prototype collaborative mind-mapping tool
Talk on entrepreneurship and love by Ram
Himanshu, a barcamp geek talking about using LinkedIn effectively
Shymala's talk and demo of Drupal
Shiva's image-filled presentation on how to market products well

Some feedback that was discussed about Barcamp 3:

it was totally conference style, not at all unconference - everyone was listening to a single speaker rather than various discussions going on at difference places
very few tweets/live blogs on the event
not many people external to the usual chennai barcamp group arrived
no wifi setup

But at least a barcamp happened in Chennai after quite a long time which is good to see. Thanks to Ashwin and team for organising it!

Do share links to your online profiles if I've mentioned you in the blogpost (doing some crowdsourcing here - lets see if it works!) by commenting on the post. Any Links to photo albums would be appreciated too.

BSNL shows Indian government's "negligent attitude"

2009-12-06T11:50:00.005+05:30

On Nov 29, 2009, the BSNL(Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited - a Public Sector Unit in India that provides land line and cellphone services) land line in my house broke down (t here was no dial tone when I picked up the telephone). They have a 24/7 toll-free number to file complaints and once a complaint is posted BSNL says that it will be fixed in 24-hours. Sounds simple and quick right? Not Quite.

Nov 30, I filed a complaint on the BSNL Customer Care (1500 from a BSNL landline) and this is what they said:
- Your complaint request will be served within 24 hours
- You will get a call from someone within three hours regarding this complaint.

Three hours later: no call
Twenty four hours later: no dial-tone on the telephone.

Dec 1: Like a helpless individual, I called up the same toll-free number, and the staff on the other end said she couldn't do anything except for setting a reminder. In other words, she was just as helpless as I was, except that she was in front of a terminal and everything she said and does was being documented.

Dec 2, I called up the same toll-free number, but this time I was frustrated. Probably the staff on the other end had another one of her "mad customer calls". I told her its been three days since I complained and nothing happened. She gives me a number to call. I don't recall which one it was she gave me because I've gotten more than 5 telephone numbers of different people in the BSNL Chromepet (my area of residence in Chennai) and I have no idea of when I got each of the numbers.

Dec 3: After pestering some people, they suggested that I go to the Chromepet BSNL office to get the issue resolved. I go there at 1600 and they tell me they cannot come today as it was raining. However, the security gave me the telephone number of Mr. Loganathan, the BSNL employee that fixes landlines.

Dec 4: Again, I wen to the BSNL office as nobody had come to my house. Mr. Loganathan was not there again. Decided I would come back in a few hours to nag these people. I was getting mad at these people.

Dec 5: I decided that this was going to be the last time I would go to the BSNL office and if my case wasn't attended to today, I would go to the consumer court. At the office, a senior engineer gives me the telephone and asks me to file a complaint! He didn't care to hear me saying that I already filed a complaint! When I asked the security to inform Mr. Loganathan about the issue, they asked me to come back in twenty minutes. This is when I lost it (my patience that is). I asked them if they can't even communicate properly within themselves. I was determined to take this case to the consumer court as there was no use going after these people.

When I reached home from the office, my mother tells me that Mr. Loganathan has finally arrived and the problem is being fixed. My efforts finally paid off.

If anyone would like to take this as a case and take it to consumer court, I am more than willing to share the details and turn up when required. These people need to know that we will not put up with their horrible service.

For others in New colony, Chromepet, here some tips for you if you have a problem with your landline:
First complain at 1500 or 198 (toll-free numbers from a BSNL landline).
Then call Mr. Loganathan at 044-29008339.
Go to the BSNL office on 3rd main road (opp balaji medical college) and tell them about your problem.

also contact any officer in your area and ask for the contact number of the person that cares (or is supposed to care) to this problem. Keep calling the concerned person all the time.

A college development initiative

2009-10-30T07:58:00.000+05:30

The National Institute of Technology, Trichy (NITT), being a leading engineering institute in India, has students of the creamy layer (in terms of intellectual capital) of India. However, student talent remains untapped in many respects, one of them being for the development of the campus.

Hence, I and a friend of mine have embarked on a journey to set up group as the 'campus development committee', which will be a platform for students of NITT to get together to contribute to its development.

We would like to start from the academics. From talks with various people around the campus, we decided to start academic development from the entry point (of any student into NITT). The plan is to start with videos giving insight on what every department in NITT has to offer so that students clearing the All India Engineering Entrance Exam (AIEEE) can make an informed decision on what major they would like to pursue for their under graduation.

More details on the same can be found in our newly created Google Group “NITT Campus Development Committee” (link). Please give us your opinions, insights or advice on the same.

More details on the Campus Development Committee can be found here.

My internship at Rang De

2009-08-17T20:10:00.002+05:30

As I mentioned in my earlier blogpost, I did an internship in Rang De. I have completed it successfully and it was really productive and fun. A brief description of what I have done can be found on Rang De July 2009 Newsletter. I would like to thank Ms. Shirley Ghosh, Editor of the Rang De newsletter for refining what I had written. Below is what I wrote (for those who don't want to visit RangDe.Org).

It was whilst I was looking for an internship in December 2008 that I was introduced to Rang De by a fellow ‘yatri’ from the Tata Jagriti Yatra (www.jagritiyatra.org). A visit to the web site www.rangde.org had me completely hooked and thirsting for more. I immediately contacted Smita and expressed my interest.

Six months later I joined Rang De as an intern and started working on “Empower Futures", a loan scheme that aids higher education. Just as I began forming my opinions of “Another office with its share of mundane activities”, I was in for a surprise. Ram and Smita called for a meeting with the entire team. What followed was a brain storming session on how to get more social investors for Rang De. That is when I realized that I was in for a huge roller coaster ride for the next month and a half.

Since then, I have felt that I am a part of the Rang De team and that we’re all working towards its mission collectively. I've been actively involved in several of their initiatives such as the campaigns, both, online and offline, blogging and content development for the new web release. That is the most fulfilling part of an internship in a professionally managed start up like Rang De - you get to do a bit of everything and you learn a lot.

To sum it all up, the internship was highly productive and also great fun. In fact, Rang De now has one more loyal supporter and I intend to work as a volunteer particularly by promoting them on social networks and by blogging. So, see you around.

Tata Jagriti Yatra 2009 - an invitation

2009-08-07T16:37:00.001+05:30

Dear Friend,

The Tata Jagriti Yatra is a unique 18-day train journey that takes 350 selected bright youngsters across India, introducing them to extraordinary social and business innovators, the “real heroes” of our country. It is an exciting, exhilarating and exhausting journey as we travel over 8500 kms across the landscape of India. The aim is to
awaken the Entrepreneurial spirit among Indian youth, which stems from a firm belief that Enterprise Led Development (ELD), is the way
forward for a young but “developing” country like ours, especially in the current economic climate.

The interactive visits on the journey gave the Yatri’s a rare opportunity to understand first hand, the personal stories behind the successful enterprises. These included Bunkar Roy’s Barefoot College, R. Elango’s rural transformation at Kuttambakkam, the remarkable McDonaldisation of cataract surgery at Aravinda Eyecare, each leaving
left a deep positive impact on the young Yatris.

Last year the Tata Jagriti Yatra was an unprecedented success. The diverse group of Yatris learned as much from each other as from the
inspiring role models we visited. Similarly, the journey was as much an exploration of India as it was a discovery of the self.

The impact of the Yatra will continue to be monitored closely but for each of our Yatris this has been a journey of "Once in lifetime" and
many are actively supporting the next Yatra. I would like to inform about Tata Jagriti Yatra 2009 launch and registration. The registration and application is free and there are sponsorships
available for deserving candidates that get selected. Please visit www.jagritiyatra.com for more details.

Don’t miss out this chance in a lifetime opportunity. To find out more please go to the website or feel free to call me to discuss my
personal experience in the Yatra in 2008.

The summary of the Tata Jagriti Yatra 2008 can be viewed at http://ping.fm/HcdEZ

In case of any queries please feel free to contact me.

Warm Regards,
Chandrasekhar.k
Ambassador
Tata Jagriti Yatra 2009
Web: www.jagritiyatra.com
Phone: + 91 9441166143

reBlog from rangde.org: The Official Rang De Blog

2009-07-16T13:42:00.001+05:30

My blog entry on http://www.rangde.org/blog/:

The evenings of Saturday July 11 and Sunday July 12 saw the Rang De team at Globus T Nagar, Chennai with newly designed bookmarks (by Shayak of Cheese care), a big white banner, a new punching bag (painted by Diksha and Praveen) and other materials like sheets with the “Rang De Globus Quiz” and visiting cards.rangde.org, The Official Rang De Blog, Jul 2009

Please read the remaining and comment. Thanks

IIM Trichy at NIT Trichy temporarily? pros and cons

2009-06-19T13:10:00.002+05:30

Recently an article has been posted on Times of India that there has been some formal communication from the IIM - Trichy (IIM - T) committee with the director of NIT trichy asking for classrooms, hostel allotment for 140 students and staff quarter allotment inside the NIT Trichy campus. As a NIT Trichy student, I post my comments and perspective on the article:

IIM-T using NITT's facilities for the next few years is a good deal for us with regards to students, networking, mind-share etc. NITT students and IIM-T students can network to create enterprises to provide solutions to problems across the country and the world. This would also allow for a long term synergy between NITT and IIM-T students, (even after IIM students don't reside in NITT).

The article says "The prime reason for the committee to opt for NITT was because of the fact that the institute had adequate hostel and staff quarters facilities to cater to the IIM’s requirements, apart from classrooms." This is not true. NITT doesn't have adequate hostel facilities to even satisfy the needs of current students and the expanding strength. Below is the current situation:

4 first year students live in rooms meant for 3
2 second year students live in rooms meant for 1
Also the strength is increasing by the year due to the OBC reservation directive. If NITT students themselves aren't being given appropriate accomodation, how are the IIM students? If it is at the cost of NITT students accomodation, that is unacceptable.

I propose a solution, however I'm not sure of its feasibility though. A seperate hostel block could be built for the IIM students. IIM will take up the cost and responsibility of building it and NITT will give the land. Two years down the line NITT will pay-up the building cost. The reason behind this solution is that the NITT administration is slow and somewhat ineffective. However, if the IIM administration takes this up, they will complete it by 2010 for their students to study in.

Please share your thoughts.

NITT NCC T shirts - from idea to cloth

2009-06-02T14:21:00.005+05:30

Every year NCC cadets have to attend a training camp. These camps are filled with fun and tiring activities such as drill, culturals, sports, etc.

In the camps of 3TN Air Sqn, cadets from other colleges wore NCC t-shirts they designed. This inspired us to design our own NCC T-shirts.

Two cadets from my batch (Leading Flight Cadet Palleti Yugendar and Cadet Warrant Officer Aasim Hussain) designed the T-shirt (shown below)

The colour in the middle was changed to the colour on the periphery (the navy blue). A brief explanation of the design:

On the front: the IAF logo is on the chest with the name of the cadet. The left sleeve has the NITT logo and the right sleeve has the NCC logo.

On the back: The labels are as follows.
3(TN) Air Sqn (Tech) NCC - our NCC unit at Trichy - it is a techical squadron under the air wing of NCC.
22 - This number was replaced by every cadet's regimental number
'A' Flight - Under each unit each

college's flight is given a letter - NITT's is A.

We showed the design to our juniors and they liked it too. Got in touch with a supplier called Leela (based in tirupur, Tamil Nadu) and he priced the T-shirt around 250 rupees. Since this was a bit pricey, our cadets wanted to use their mess credit (known as messbill at NITT) and we had undergone a VERY LONG process to get this done. Here goes:

Two junior cadets go see the Deputy Registrar to find out the procedure to debit amount from mess bill. - Mar 18
Orders were taken from present and past (people that discontinued NCC without finishing the full program).
I went and talked to the dean students with a tentative letter and he explained the procedure. Get a letter signed by our staff advisor (Associate NCC Officer - ANO), get it signed by him, get a verification from the hostel office that all the students are on the mess bill and that they have the amounts, and then a sign from the director. We (me in combination with a few others) went to all these people below to get this done. - Mar 20
I wrote a letter and went to see Aasim at the mechanical dept (he was there when i needed his signature) - Mar 31
got a forwarded sign from our ANO - mar 31
Went to see the deputy registrar to see if the letter was written in proper format - mar 3
Went to see the dean students three times - once each on Apr 1,2,3 - finally saw him on April 3 and got his signature to move to the hostel office for verification
went to the hostel office to get the verification signature (to verify that all the cadets were on the mess bill). they found something wrong with the MIS and told me to wait - Apr 6
Went to a Computer support group staff to get our excel spreadsheet modified so that the MIS would read it - Apr 8
Went to the hostel office on Apr 9 and they lady I needed to see wasn't there.
Hostel office had misplaced the letter so I had to get the xerox copy of the letter I took (thank god I took it, otherwise I would have had to do steps 4-10 AGAIN!!). They wanted the dean's written instruction to verify students on the mess bill. - apr 13
Got the written instruction from the dean - apr 13
Got verification from the hostel office - apr 13
Went to the dean to get another sign to go see the director - apr 13
Went to the director - he asked for the registrar to sign it then only he will sign it- apr 14
Went to the registrar to get approval - apr 15
Went to the director to get his signature - apr 15
Hostel office debited amounts from mess bill and wanted signatures of Deputy Registrar, Registrar and Director to approve this - apr 16
Went to Deputy registrar to get his sign to debit amount - apr 16
went to registrar to get his sign to debit amount - apr 16
went to director to get his sign to debit amount - apr 16
Hostel office issued a cheque for the amount debited from everyone's mess bill. The signs needed in step 18 were needed again on the cheque. - apr 16
Went to deputy registrar - apr 16
went to registrar - apr 16
went to director. For this sign we had to wait for about an hour and a half - apr 16
CWO Aasim went to the bank to get the DD. They wanted a written notice from the deputy registrar to get the DD - apr 17
Went to the deputy registrar to get the sign - apr 17
Got the DD for the amount - apr 17

Expected the number of trips to hit 30 - sad that it didn't :(. Might have missed out on some trips somewhere in the middle. Hopefully some of my NCC readers catch them so that the number of trips can hit 30!

Things that weren't mentioned above were running around getting orders from students over a week (mar 25-mar 30). For that many people had put in effort from different years. Hats off to those people also!

The T-shirts finally came on May 9. The delivery was originally scheduled on May 2. The T-shirts have come out as designed but the material was a bit too thick.

I will put up a scanned copy of the letter to show how many signatures were on it when i get a hold of it.

On a more general note, this is a micro model of how things work in India. To get something done people have to be really determined and on their feet due to regulations that tire people out before they get something small done.

Personally, for me this was a good experience. When I got my T-shirt, I felt that I truly deserved it.

The uninspired youth

2009-05-29T11:36:00.003+05:30

Usually when I enter the running ground near my house I see people entering with me to start their exercise or leave the ground after their exercise. But one day I saw an unusual sight. The ground staff of the ground was trying to kick out a hungover boy. A small conversation went on as follows:

staff: get out of the ground.
boy: sir, please let me in. This will be the last time.
staff (to another staff): This boy does this everyday. He boozes in the night and comes to the ground in the morning, he never goes home. (To boy) Go home, or else I'll tell your father what you've been doing.

Finally the boy was kicked out of the ground. He was probably a student of Madras Institute of Technology since only their students get free access to the ground I went to. He looked like an intelligent student but he was a bit fat (probably gained weight to excessive boozing) and had a big beard.

This guy would have started this excessive boozing because he hasn't found any other activity in life more inspiring. This is a small instance of a large problem in India: the talent of the youth is not being tapped well enough. There aren't enough people to inspire the youth to focus their energy on activities that they will enjoy, as well as create positive change.

This responsibility should be taken by anyone a youth looks to for advice: parents, seniors, faculty, friends. But instead these people are looked down upon by the same people mentioned as bad people who will never change and that interacting with them will make them look bad in society. This mindset has to change. Everyone has some bad habit. Its just that some of them are more publicly proclaimed as bad habits and others are not.

However as people are becoming more open minded these days things are changing. This issue is open to discussion.

RangDe - share the colours of joy!

2009-05-22T15:31:00.004+05:30

Many people have asked my where I'm doing my internship so here's a brief run through on my project.

I'm working at a non-profit micro-credit organisation called RangDe. Micro finance works as follows: companies get big loans from banks and give out smaller loans at an additional cost to the bank loan with interest so the final interest rate the borrower must pay is around 20%. However, RangDe uses the concept of "social investors", that is individuals investing in borrowers in multiples of Rs. 500. This way the cost of the loan is actually reduced (interest given to social investor is only 3.5%). Also RangDe works with field partners on the ground to disburse and receive loan money. The final interest rate is around 10% of the loan generally. (Read FAQs for more information on the company).

RangDe has just started its education loan program recently. Its got a program for loans to schools for facilities and one for school students to pay their fees. They're looking to go into higher education loans. Currently they have pooled in money and given it to a catering student who needed money to finish his final year (his father passed away so there was no source of income for the family, click here for more information).

I've chosen to take up the implementation of this program for RangDe on a more systematized manner in a larger scale. As of now I've just developed the idea and presented it. After this will come the refining of the system, going down to field parnters to do pre-implementation work and implementing the system. I'm looking towards the ambitious goal of implementing the system before I leave. If I complete the goal, I would have done something very productive with my summer, devised a system that will actually help the country in the long run and feel proud of my achievements :).

So those individuals that complain about not being able to do anything for the country even though they want to, here's your chance. Ask your parents for an amount in multiples of Rs. 500 (even better - work part time and earn the money!) , invest it in RangDe instead of going to a party or a movie, and you would have helped someone somewhere in the country!

Would like to take this space to thank Vivek Khandelwal of IIT Bombay, through whom I've come to hear of this organisation. Reach him through his blog

In less than 200 words tell us what you would do to create a better India

2009-05-12T16:05:00.001+05:30

This was my entry for a competition to win a copy of Narayana Moorthy's book "A Better India, A better World" for the question 'In less than 200 words tell us what you would do to create a better India'

I will work towards a better India by building a network of schools (urban and rural) that will impart a holistic primary and secondary education into students. These schools will impart a holistic school education into students by implementing existing syllabi properly, improving their soft skills, and inculcating positive ethical and moral values into them to: become future leaders/drivers of development in the public and private sectors and make informed decisions regarding any issue (I.e. political, personal, professional) and will give equal opportunity for every Indian to prosper by providing a uniform schooling education across the nation. Profits from urban schools will be used to run rural schools and all schools will have basic facilities required to educate students. Incentives will be given for teachers to work in this network of schools and for villagers to come join our schools (i.e a revenue based extracurricular activity model that will allow students to earn money while studying). A good primary education is important for anyone and a good primary education system is important in any country in order to produce world class and productive citizens and hence develop in all spheres.

Your valuable comments are appreciated.

The long run

2009-05-06T13:11:00.000+05:30

And so its been a year and a few months since I started my running program. Its been a long journey and a lot of miles (literally and psychologically) too. It all started after my NCC Kerala Trek (from Jan 15 - 28, 2008 during my fourth semester) where we trekked 105km in 7 days and I reduced around five kilos of weight. I decided that I shouldn't let this weight reduction reverse and my fellow Tamil Nadu cadets (Particularly Dinesh senior - thanks if you ever get to read this blog!) suggested I go running everyday.

the running started on feb 1 2008: first day 4 laps in eleven and a half minutes. was quite impressed with myself as I never believed I could run four laps. Initially I wasn't consistent. I would run for two weeks and stop for a week due to cycle tests, tech fest work, getting up late in the morning etc. Eventually I improved my time for four rounds to approx. 9:30, ran on the periphery of the track and I started to get the rhythm of running.

My fourth semester holidays came and I still didn't run properly. I four or five days a week. However, I ran on paved road and increased my running distance. Also my times started improving. There were some good days (click to read) and some bad days (click to read) and since it was during my holidays I had ample time to blog on it.

Then came my fifth semester, the time when I got serious. I increased my distance to six laps, followed by sprints, ran almost every day, and woke up to an alarm everyday at 545am. I could feel that I was becoming more fit and my waist started reducing slowly. But as usual, during any semester there's always tests and exams in the middle when i stopped running as running and studying continuously is hard.

My fifth semester holidays comprised of two parts: a short two week holiday in Guangzhou, China and the Tata Jagriti Yatra. The first part was really good in terms of running. I ran almost every day, my times were improving, I was eating healthy food and could feel that I've reduced waist. The second part was bad. As I was in a train for 18 days just sitting eating and talking, I put on the tummy again! But I quickly reduced it within a week during my sixth semester.

The beginning of my sixth semester was a new peak. I gradually increased my running distance to 8 laps in about 20 minutes, ran 11 laps once and 15th laps on another occasion and maintained good run times and health (eating fruits like apples, banana etc and maintaining a close to proper diet). However this effort came to a halt due to health reasons (read the 3rd tip). Now just as i've written a blog post after a long time, I've resumed my jogging too. Due to the heat, gain in weight and running after a long time, I'm finding it difficult even to complete 5 laps. More on this later when things get better.

Some final tips I would like to give:
1) If you're going to start running, start with a minimum distance of 4 laps (a mile) and increase it slowly. After you're comfortable with a distance, try to improve your time. If your time isn't improving, increase the distance
2) Eat healthy food such as fruits, oats, etc. Avoid foods that don't give nutrients like soft drinks, cakes, etc
3) Wear tight underwear (for guys) if you're going to jog. I tell you this after some bad experiences (ie. pain in the private area).
4) Don't worry if you have bad days/periods. Things will improve if you keep running and thinking about what you're doing.
5) Take good rest everyday. Ensure that you're sleeping properly. That itself will take care of everything else.
6) Get up around the time the sun rises and run it out. A morning run is better than running at any other time of the day

GoGreen plan

2009-03-23T19:32:00.002+05:30

The following was my entry for a competition of NITTfest '09, an annual inter-department cultural festival at NIT Trichy (my college). The topic of the competition was 'usage of mess wastage'. comments are appreciated.

NITTfest '09 GoGreen competition

utilisation of mess wastage

By Arvind Sridharan (CSE III yr)

The topic can be divided into two subtopics as follows: reduction of waste generated by the mess and utilisation of waste generated

Reduction of waste generated by mess:

Water
- put plates students use in a small water tub (so that food on the plate is not hardened by the time of wasing) so that when washing is done less water and less scraping is required to take the waste
- Reduce the number of tumblers being used by:
  - not sipping milk/tea if possible – if this is done a set of two tumblers can be shared by many (just like a tumbler used to drink water)
  - of the two tumblers people take one can be shared amongst many (that is the tumbler that will help mix the sugar and milk/tea). This will reduce the number of tumblers used
food
- food remains from the individuals
  - a general attitude of reducing waste generated by taking only what people need on their plate should be encouraged.
- Uneaten food
  - messes can maintain a sign out list where people that are going away on weekends/holidays or eating outside can sign off so that the mess has an idea of how much food they need to make everyday. This will reduce the waste generated due to lack of presence of people. Can also be done using the SMS system in place by spider (one of our technical clubs that have a SMS server) to get more upto date information and to make the process easier for people.

Utilisation of waste generated:

food

food from people's plate: keep composting bins outside messes and put waste in it. The waste will compost over a period. Use a new bin when a bin is full and the composting period isn't over. Sawdust can be used to get rid of smells. After the waste composts, use as soil for plants.
uneaten food

this food can be given to people who would appreciate it such as construction workers, people at the REC school, or other workers in the thuvakudi area who don't get proper meals everyday. A student-cum-staff team can be in charge of this.
If the above is not acceptable, the mess can sell meals off at a cheaper rate using a marketing team. The mess can take 50% of the money and the team could take 50% of the money to improve the campus at the grassroot level.

Water:
- non-soapy water can be watered to the plants of the tree plantation program in the campus – in this way trees are watered on a regular basis and waste water from the mess is utilised properly
- soapy water can be piped into latrines/urinals of the campus

NCC@nitt

2009-03-23T19:14:00.002+05:30

this year i've mainly been concentrating on NCC as part of my extra curricular activity program. Our achievements this year and our vision is highlighted in our annual report which can be read here. Also if you have ideas to contribute, please do so at our google group.

A visit to little drop

2009-03-09T21:32:00.002+05:30

My friend told me that his mother is the principal of the Little Drops Charitable Trust's school. Since education is one of the fields I plan to venture into, I spent today's afternoon visiting the school and the old age home that runs beside it.

A brief introduction: Little drops was started as an old age home by two ex-Indian Airlines employees (Mr. Paul and his wife) who decided to take a VRS one day. By seeing some children of caretakers running around they decided to add a school. Now they have a school in the outskirts of Chennai (a village near Porur) with 600 students from LKG - 5th Std and an institute in Dharmapuri. It is run purely by donations from individuals and corporates in the form of money, food, supplies, etc. It is also to be noted that none of the incoming money is going to satisfy any officer's pockets. They have also implemented a program called Trash & Treasure which was setup to sell second hand equipment donated by people. This can be a good source of revenue and has a lot of potential to grow. Here are the snaps of the brochures given to me by my friend's mother.

I also bought a book from the Trash & Treasure so I've made my day's contribution in terms of money. Will do something in collaboration with others becuase as they always say 2+2 does equal 5.

which topic to blog on?

2009-02-27T10:29:00.002+05:30

i have a few topics i want to write on but due to limited time its hard to write on all. Will write on all over a period of time though. with the view of catering to my readers i want to know which topic (from the ones listed below) you would like me to write on first. the topics are:

1) my thoughts on the topic "India becoming a global knowledge superpower" with a brief summary of a panel discussion that took place on the same topic during Pragyan 2009, the annual technical-festival of NIT Trichy
2) the long run - some insight into my daily running program which I've been doing for a year or so
3) Tata Jagriti Yatra - a brief write up on the Nandi foundation - a social entreprise that is making a profit
4) A life of rich experiences vs a life of money

more topics will be added as I think of them.

My first post Yatra blog on the Jagriti Yatra

2009-02-08T12:18:00.003+05:30

Ever since the Yatra came to an end I've been quite busy with my everyday college life and I have my CAT (MBA entrance exam in India) coaching classes on the weekends, but finally I found some time to write on my blog on the Yatra.

I've taken a look at objectives I went on the Yatra with to see if I got what I looked for. As for the networking aspect, I networked with people but I didn't get a team for any enterprise I have in mind (although I know where to look for people to work with me on an entreprise). The insight from the role models were invaluable, especially ones like the Dabbawalas, Vijay Raghavan, Aravind Eye Care Nandi Foundation, and Goonj (these were my favorites actually). More on these Role models in future blog entries.

About the opportunities, I realized that India is full of opportunities. As Sohail Seth (by the way he's got the guts to speak.) put it in the CNBC debate in Anand, "Even if someone grew a beard and started something called the art of breathing, there would be a million people to follow it." However I don't intend to start any entreprise like that.

Learning from fellow participants - There were things I would have learnt from them but nothing strikes me at the moment. Its probably all gone down into my blood and influencing my behavior.

Last but not the least firming my principles - I have decided that honesty and integrity towards anything is always the best approach. I will follow this as much as I can. I also decided on what I would call a succes in my life. I feel that to be successful, I should have taken some issue in India and addressed it through some means (need not through entrepreneurship but will turn out to be mostly.)

Other than these objectives I learnt a lot on how social entreprise works and what kind of mindset I should have when I develop an entreprise to develop the country.

The yatra experience was something very hard to describe. 18 days in a train, taking baths at places like waiting rooms at railway stations, bogey watering pipes and train toilets, interacting with 350 people from all over the country and the world, absorbing so much information through discussions, role model vists and casual talk everyday, the oily food (although tasty, wasn't the most healthy) and many more. We probably visited (and even performed the Yatra Geet) at some of the best auditoriums in India and if it wasn't for the yatra who knows when we would have performed or even gone there? From the Taj Palace in New Delhi to remote villages in Orissa, from an aspiring entrepreneur's perspective I feel we covered India quite well.

Post-yatra the impact of the yatra is still there. I relate to different events of the yatra when I encounter different situations or people these days. The good memories of the yatra still lie within. We, ex yatris must keep in touch in order to collaborate and do wonderful things for the nation!

More on specific parts of the Yatra in my later blog entries.

some comments as a consumer

2009-01-18T20:21:00.003+05:30

this weekend i've been going out to different places around my house and i'd just like to make a few comments:

1) I had some food at hot chips.... pretty crowded... the food is good ... i suggest the mini idli... really filling and their sambar is really nice

2) I had a bad experience adding an sms pack to my telephone today.. the person at the store (not mentioning which one because he is a good person) didn't know the code for an sms pack and he recharged that amount as talktime .... so i had to pay up twice the amount - once for the talktime and once for the sms card. If some other customer was in my place they wouldn't have paid the second time around as it was the storekeeper's fault for recharging the wrong way. One thing for cellphone companies: please make sure all retailers are properly informed on your recharge policies and codes. you don't want customers going around telling retailers what to type to recharge.

blog entries on the tata jagriti yatra still to come .... the tata jagriti yatra panel discussions will be telecast on cnbc tv 18 from jan 18 from 10-11pm every sunday night for those who are interested in watching.

An innovative Pongal Celebration

2009-01-14T16:27:00.001+05:30

I returned to college yesterday from the TATA Jagriti Yatra. It was a good experience and there was lots to learn from role models, peers, places we went to and even the panel discussions. More on that in blog entries to come.

Today is pongal (also known as Sankranti in other parts of India),a festival to celebrate the prosperity of a peasant's harvest by thanking the rain, sun and the farm animals that have helped. (more information on wikipedia). To celebrate, rice is boiled with milk and "pongalo pongal" is chanted when the rice boils and rises. This is a gesture done to symbolize forthcoming prosperity. Also A south Indian dish called pongal along with other sweets and snacks are made.

Due to the late announcement of a 2 day holiday (one day - 14 jan - a wednesday was already declared but the next day wasn't) some Tamil people decided to stay back (getting back home without a booked ticket would be hard during the festive times).

A group of us celebrated pongal in Sri Ram Shankar's (my friend) room (in our hostel). His efforts included arranging his room, getting flowers, arranging the god's photos and getting sugarcane and other ingredients required to make the rice. Although we didn't do the chant and we couldn't make pongal, we boiled rice with milk and sugar and Sri Ram said some mantras. Some 10 guys were there to attend the celebration. The rice and milk with sugar tasted quite good, especially for a bunch of college guys who aren't really into cooking!

I thought this was a neat idea and want to thank Sri Ram Shankar for his initiative on this blog. Shows how much we CAN do in the hostel to celebrate festivals even if we aren't at home.

Tata Jagriti Yatra - a post before I leave on it

2008-12-21T15:48:00.003+05:30

For the past three years I've been doing something different for my new years day celebrations. Well this time I've managed to keep up the same trend. I'm going on the TATA (main sponsor of this trip) Jagriti Yatra, a trip that is intended to awaken the spirit of entrepreneurship amongst its participants.

what is it? According to the organisers, the jagriti yatra is:
".... an annual train journey that will take 350 of India's highly motivated youth (with some participation of international students) between the ages of 18-25 on a eighteen day national odyssey, introducing them to unsung heroes of India. The aim is to awaken the spirit of entrepreneurship - both social and economic - within India's youth by exposing them to individuals and institutions that are developing unique solutions to India's challenges. Through this national event we will inspire them to lead and develop institutions nationally and within their communities. " Quite self explanatory isn't it?

My application process:
I saw this poster in our college lecture hall (NITT students read "CLC noticeboard") of the Jagriti Yatra a year and a half ago and I was immediately interested in it. I went to their website and the spots were filled up. But apparently last year it didn't even happen. The first and most recent time this trip happened was in 1997 (50 years from India's independence). So from that time itself I was determined to get in for the Jagriti Yatra 2008. I applied in the summer (the application process was quite rigorous! I had to write about 2000 words. And I want to take this opportunity to say that I didn't write any bs in it!). Two months later... no communication... I emailed the Jagriti Yatra and got a letter... Yes, it was the acceptance letter! Read that on Monday morning break time and that happiness had taken me through the week! And yes, the organisers do keep saying that I was worthy of it in every letter I got (even the Rs. 32,000 sponsorship letter - yes I'm sponsored for this trip!)

What this yatra means to me:
In the "About Me" section of this blog I've mentioned I want to be an entrepreneur. Deciding upon that took a lot from my side, inspiration from others (college seniors as well as businessmen/people I looked up on for what they were doing to the country). Now in order to develop I need a platform to rise upon. And this platform is "the Jagriti Yatra". I want to use this yatra to get some good insight from different entrepreneurs, to find some people that would be interested in working with me in my proposed enterprise/s, to see what opportunities are available (business/social) that I can capitalise upon (so far most of my ideas have come from what I've seen and what I've thought about things I see and the Jagriti Yatra is allowing me to see more - so more ideas will pop into my head hopefully), and to learn from my fellow participants - take the good from them, get and offer help to them, and to socialize with a group of like-minded people so that my principles and thoughts become more bold and firm.

If anyone is interested in joining the yatra, well next year's always there. Just keep checking up http://www.jagritiyatra.com/ and follow this year's yatra @ http://2008.jagritiyatra.com/.
Also updates will be coming in from Jagriti Yatra 2008 blog, the Jagriti Yatra blog, on YouTube,
twitter, and facebook.

The link to the blog is on my blogroll too, and the Jagriti Yatra Widget is on top!. So from arvsr1988.blogspot.com its TATA (colloquial way to say bye in Tamil) Jagriti Yatra!

P.S: Since I'll be on the Jagriti Yatra on New Years Day I would like to wish my readers an advanced "Happy New Years Day!" No need for the same to you bit because mines going to happy for sure! :)

Somebody rescue Zimbabwe!!

2008-12-13T18:10:00.004+05:30

Yesterday i was after reading about the situation in Zimbabwe and I thought I must sit, reflect and write something that will bring some attention to these people. Hopefully I've succeeded.

For those who don't know whats going on heres the situation: there is a cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe and so far 792 have died (read this article on IHT for more information) in the past two weeks. However about 60,000 people are in danger. The main cause of the outbreak is supposedly the transfer of the water and sewage management from the main opposition party to Mugabe's (the current president thats been ruling Zimbabwe for the past twenty years very ineffectively and has caused a serious problem now!).

I was just curious why the US is saying nothing about waging a war on Zimbabwe (its supposed to be a democracy but democracy isn't being practiced properly there right? Wasn't this the reason US waged war on Iraq - that is the government is not being democratic). Everyone will support it unlike the war on Iraq or Afghanistan. Very few Zimbabweans want Mugabe ruling the country and the same applies with the international community. But why isn't US waging war though? Simple. They're not concerned about democracy. They wanted to go into Iraq for oil and to Afghanistan to show their citizens that they're hunting the Al-Qaeda down (its so unbelievable how they still haven't caught Osama 7 years after 9-11). Capitalist politicians who don't really care about democracy right here.

And what about these terrorists that are so concerned about their fellow muslim population. According to wikipedia there are between 120,000 and 1.2 million muslims out of 13 million people in Zimbabwe. taking the mean figure, around 5% of Zimbabwe's population is muslim right? Terrorists' fellow muslims are being affected right? Why not attack Robert Mugabe instead of London or Mumbai or New York?

Well no one's taking action. So I did some research on what people can do. I looked up on the unicef and the Red Cross website. This unicef article claims that 17.5 million US dollars are needed to carry out the emergency operations. Anyone who wants to donate can donate here (unicef zimbabwe donation site).

To get involved with some kind of work in your area, you can navigate through the Red cross website, go to the red cross website of your country and find out how to become a member. A small fee has to be paid to become a member.

To finish off, I just hope those Zimbabweans get some proper water to drink in the end of the day.

Help those hungry people!

2008-12-11T09:35:00.002+05:30

According to an article "Close to 1 billion go hungry; food prices still high: UN" published on the Times of India on Tuesday approximately 963 million people are still hungry: that is they aren't getting the minimum amount of food needed to stay healthy.

The above figure is about a sixth of the world's population. We are responsible for each and every one of those hungry people.

Some action to take:
- So think twice before you buy some food/groceries at the supermarket. Buy only what you need and do NOT waste food at home.
- Spend some time helping some NGO or some hunger eradication program. Many corporates are willing to donate money as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility program but its the man power and the time needed to get the food to the people.
- If you encounter some farmer in a financial crisis, try to help him/her out. That will keep them out of hunger, food prices lower (if 1000 farmers are financially supported like this, then more food is produced so the prices lower).

These were just some thoughts that ran through my mind after reading that (above mentioned) article. Feel free to add your views.

tamil cinema music - copying

2008-12-05T18:34:00.002+05:30

of late (and for quite a while actually) lots of tamil cinema music is being copied from other english music or other tamil music itself without saying its a remix/remake of that song... several such examples are given below:

nepali - a song in this movie is the exact same as the las ketchup song and another song is a remake of the suthuthey song that kamalhaasan has done in his old movie
mugavari - most of the songs in this movie are exact copies of backstreet boys songs
unnalae unnalae - the june pona song is a remake of all rise by blue but i think this was told
kadhalil vizhunthen - a song in this movie is an exact copy of unfaithful by rihanna (unukena naan i think is the title)
saroja - cheeky cheeky has lots of spin offs from ayo technology by 50 cent

these are just a few not to mention many more that are around. what do we do about this? can we actually file a case against these music directors for copying songs like this?

whats the point of these people being music directors if they just copy songs? Even i can become a music director if i hire a keyboardist, a guitarist and other people and make them replicate the song.

music directors aren't making songs for free. they are getting paid a huge premium for making quality songs and copying other music is destroying the originality of modern tamil cinema music.

surely something should be done about this (these directors that are copying without declaring they are copying or using a certain song should be made to answer to the public - they should be sued). does anyone know how exactly we can file suit against them?

I was also wondering if emailing the original composer of the song the mp3 file of the copied song so that their management takes some kind of action against the music director that has copied their song.

Hopefully some law college student comes across this blog so that I can get some useful input

The MRTS at Chennai

2008-11-30T18:34:00.005+05:30

Although I have been on the MRTS a long time ago, I decided to go on it yesterday as it was on my way to my destination (lighthouse station).

For those who aren't familiar with the MRTS (Mass Rapid Transit System), it is a partly elevated railway that is built to connect parts of Eastern Chennai (from Chennai Beach - central/north chennai to St Thomas Mount - on the southern side of the sururban railway) It was commissioned in 1984 but the last phase (connecting Velachery to St. Thomas Mount) is yet to be completed.

I boarded at the Kasturba Nagar station. I entered on the side opposite the main entrance and couldn't find the ticket counter (I walked almost all the way up to the platform and then made my way back down). It was a long wait for the train. The wait lasted about half an hour so I walked around to explore the station. Each consists of two main parts: A concrete structure that was built from ground up and a metal shelter type structure that has been put where the concrete wasn't required. There is a construction flaw. The two parts haven't been merged properly so during rains, water leaks in the bit between the two parts.

The stations are too long. It seems the railways built the MRTS with a plan of using a 9-car train as is used with the normal suburban lines but they should have thought about the cost factor. Surely it would have been more cost effective (in terms of station construction and operation) to run a 5-6 car service more frequently than a 9-car service. Operating with increased frequency on this line isn't a problem as the rail lines are dedicated only for the MRTS whereas in normal suburban services express trains can use the lines (now express trains have a seperate set of lines).

The construction of stations seem to be very awkward. It would have been much better if stations were constructed in a similar manner to the Delhi Metro where the entrance from the ground is really small and the station expands upstairs. With the MRTS, there is so much area that is lying idle as they aren't near the stairs or the entrances. Also there is only one escalator to go up. There should have been more escalators at different points.

Some basic safety is not present in the stations. At the ends of the station there are no barriers that stop people from walking on the rails. Anyone could walk on the rails and jump off if they wanted to. Also in the Kasturba Nagar station (that i boarded at) there was an opening at one end. Standing there is similar to standing at the rooftop of a 3-story house and looking down. Quite unsafe.

Approach roads to stations aren't good. At the Lighthouse station, one of the exits leads straight into a relatively low-class/slum type area which not everyone would like to walk through, especially during night hours. Car/two wheeler parking facilities have not been properly implemented. Even though there is parking space, there is no shelter to park.

Also the MRTS must be completed up to St. Thomas Mount so that it runs to its full potential. Many residents of south Chennai would start taking the MRTS as opposed to existing transport such as bus.

The train ride was quite smooth and nice. However the honk of the guard was so loud and that kind of sound was not necessary at all in the semi-isolated environment the MRTS is in. Some of the stations have been built too close to each other, but thats not such a big flaw for a railway system like this.

The bottomline: The MRTS is a good project but many small details heven't been implemented properly which makes it somewhat substandard. It would be nice if the management of the MRTS is transferred to the Chennai Metro Authorities as this would ensure better station management and more safety - maybe along with some shopping facilities and some public amenities (toilets etc)!

The VJs

2008-11-26T07:18:00.003+05:30

For TV viewers down here in Tamil Nadu, watching music videos is so easy. Every channel one tunes into (apart from a few), there's a high probability they'll be getting some music video. Good, the people get entertainment, the broadcasters get ad money. But the VJs are boring and lack style when it comes to talking. They keep on rambling about some rubbish or they start making stupid jokes with the caller.

Some things the VJs should talk about:
1) the song itself: How many people would know that song X was sung by singers Y and Z? Very few. This would give the singers some credit for what they're doing.
2) the film the song is in: some interesting fact about the film that people wouldn't know (obviously there are many such facts!)
3) the sets, shooting, or any other backstage work relating to that song.

So there, thats just a few of the possible things I could think of. But there's so much to talk about in terms of music, film etc and these people just go on tv making some stupid joke or talking nonsense. Grow up VJs!

the track at MIT

2008-11-25T07:42:00.003+05:30

When i saw the MIT (Madras Institute of Technology) sports yesterday, it didn't meet my expectations - being better than the track at my college (since this was at Chennai i thought it would be better). I expected the track to be laid with proper sanding, boundaries and lanes but it was just the opposite. There was a small sand track just like a trail around a football ground. Around the track there is a walking path (more like a trekking path) with two little ponds (whether they were naturally there or actually created god knows!).

Amidst all this, there was a slight drizzle before i went running yesterday which gave me an even worse first impression - some parts of the path were wet.

Apparently people either have to be part of some club/association or pay to use it! (I haven't been paying for the past 2 days - no one was there. If they charge, I surely won't use it!). And district and state athletes use this ground to practice for tournaments!

What this shows is failure of the Institute to maintain its sport ground. Sports facilities should be built and maintained properly around the country so as to promote sports in the country and produce better athletes. Infact there should be a sports facility in all residential areas of cities/towns and as for villages they should be built with schools.

Ranganathan street

2008-10-28T20:46:00.005+05:30

This isn't some normal street where you would find a few cars parked and some people walking. It is probably the most crowded street in Chennai. The crowd is there becuase:

1) many of the cheap clothing, jewelry, vessel and electronics shops of chennai are located in this street. (ie Saravana Stores, Jeyachandran Textiles and so on).
2)This is the only link between Mambalam station (suburban train station, the dead end of Ranganathan street) and T Nagar (the main shopping area and a big residential area in Chennai).

The problem with this street is that the road isn't smooth so people can't look up at the lights (shown in the photo below) and walk because they'd fall because of the uneven road on the ground. The middle is elevated as the underground drainage has just been put there and the sides are very rough.

Becuase of the crowd it is hard for people that want to commute to mambalam station to go fast. Auto Rickshaws and cars go through the subway to west mambalam (the other entrance on the other side of the rail) to get to the station.

A solution i suggest is putting a pedestrian bridge from Usman Road (the other end of Ranganathan street -entry point to T Nagar) and Mambalam station with various entry/exit points so that those who want to get to a point on Ranganathan street can get there fast. This is very feasible with ads on the sides for cost. Any business would want to put ads on Ranganathan street as the audience is very large. Maybe it would be a good idea to propose this to the corporation of Chennai.

Trichy Howrah Exp on 17/10/08

2008-10-20T09:56:00.004+05:30

So after a few stressful days of cycle tests some friends and I decided to leave to Chennai on the Trichy-Howrah Superfast (supposedly). The tests ended at two thirty and we were in time for the four o clock train.

The train left on time. It stopped at ponmalai (suburban station after Trichy Jn towards chennai) for about ten minutes. We knew the train was going to be late just from this (logic: it stopped for a crossing of some goods train so naturally its going to stop for crossing of all express and superfast trains).

The train rocked on and on and reached Villupuram about forty minutes late. Fine we thought it might make it to chennai half an hour late at max. (rail electrified from villupuram to chennai and from chengelpet theres double line). However this is when all the delays started.

Around 1730 southbound night trains from chennai start. They come near the Villupuram area around 1930 or 2000 so this train kept stopping for each and every train that came past it. This is known as crossing. Since the rail line from Chengalpet (about 50 km from chennai) down to Kanyakumari is a single line, when trains from opposite directions meet at some station (or a point where there are two lines) one train has to wait till the other goes past it. Passenger trains give way to express trains and express to super-fast trains. However this train (Howrah exp) stopped for all expresses and superfast trains. Hence the delay. By the time the train went to chennai it was 1130. All I could felt like doing was go home and sleep.

Big deal, one train one day was this late. But this is happening all the time with many trains in India, especially in this side. Southern railways should take up the work of doubling the entire stretch from chengalpet to kanyakumari (similarly other divisions in other places) and it should also finish up the conversion of the rail link from Myladuthurai to Villupuram (from meter-gauge to broad-gauge) as soon as possible so that the east coast of Tamil Nadu is connected well by rail and there is an alternate route for trains from trichy to chennai.

Talk of bullet trains and high speed trains in India? Lets get the basics right so that we can build up on it. Remember no house is good without a solid foundation.

Lehman Brothers Internships - the chaos

2008-09-19T10:03:00.003+05:30

A week ago at this time, the day of onam, a holiday, 300-400 third years at NIT Trichy were in formals with their CV ready to go to the Lehman Brothers Pre Placement Talk (PPT as they call it here), hoping to get an internship by the end of the day.

But the hope was hopeless for many. Lehman Brothers had already shortlisted people before they even came to campus (students were required to mail their CVs beforehand). Students only got to know this during the PPT. When they went to see the shortlist (which they thought would be around 100), they saw very few names (some 25 were shortlisted) and people were disappointed. Out of those only 4 got through to get the intern. They might have been happy but now Lehman Brothers is bankrupt (read this). Still not a big issue, they'll most probably get the intern if someone Buys Lehman out right?

This was very selfish of Lehman Brothers. They knew that they only need 4 people and since they had shortlisted people, they should have told only those people to come for the selection process. They wasted so many people's times which people could have used for many other things. What bad HR on Lehman's part?

public nuisances

2008-09-02T11:20:00.003+05:30

Every so often when you're in a public place, you'll see someone lying down flat in front of you in a bed of puke, someone trying to walk straight, or someone irritating passengers in a bus. Yes, Its those drunk ones out in the public I'm talking about. Its a very disturbing sight to see in a public place.

The event that struck me to write on this was yesterday in a bus. An aged man got into a public bus (that I was on) and was very unstable. He started talking very loud and I gave him my seat thinking he was aged and couldn't stand properly. However, later on he started making a lot of noise, disturbing passengers in front of him, wouldn't buy his bus ticket and he threw a glass bottle out of the bus at 4 in the evening when many two wheelers and pedestrians are on streets. After a few bus stops the conductor kicked him out of the bus which also took quite some time. Thanks to the conductor for doing that, otherwise he would have been intolerable. I should think twice before giving my seat to someone.

I'm assuming these people are drinking while they're supposed to be doing something else or they are drinking outside their houses because they're not allowed to at home. These are the only possible cases i could think of to make people come to the streets & in public transport drunk.

There should be some kind of action taken to fine these people a hefty amount for doing this or they should be booked under some kind of public nuisance case. The only way to prevent people from roaming in the public drunk is by invoking some kind of restriction or consequence.

NCC @ NITT 2008-09: A Third Year's perspective

2008-08-17T11:47:00.003+05:30

Many people asked me why I continued NCC in my second year (as I already had a year of it). At that time my reasons were: it was good daily exercise, we got to attend quality camps (especially the Kerala Trek I went to, a once-in-a-lifetime experience!). Coordination, Teamwork, obedience, discipline, and time management skills involved.

Now I'm a third year (seniors in NCC - after this NCC is only for 2 years) I can think of many reasons to stay in NCC. These include responsiblily (We are responisible for our juniors and their actions), training (teaching our juniors drill and other skills), leadership, reporting (we have to report to our ANO - Associate NCC officers and staff from the Trichy unit about our progress), and many more. I'll take the past two weeks of NCC to show you what all it involved.

First off, we had to brief the kids (the freshmen, they're like kids to us when they join college). We thought one briefing would do after posting notices in hostels but that proved ineffective. Only a handful turned up so we briefed them and told them to gather more people for the briefing to be held on the next day. The next day there was a nice turn out and people were impressed. Lots started signing up and around 70 enrolled. Not bad.

We started parades to teach first years drill for the August fifteenth parade. For a week or so the batch was very enthusiastic and everyday 50+ cadets were present and nobody complained about not getting snacks (since enrollment with the unit wasn't done, the 6 rupees that a cadet is supposed to get per parade was not given)

We had an issue at hand. Our total strength can only be 50, the number of cadets the unit will take from our college. 12 seniors continued so only 38 first year cadets can be enrolled (we have around 50 even now!). We (third years) tried talking to the unit staff and our ANO to increase the strength that didn't work. It takes time to increase strength and also even though there are vacancies (as Sastra and St. Josephs college have been taken off of the unit due to problems between unit and them) the unit won't allocate them to NITT. They ask us "What does NITT do for NCC? How many cadets do you send for RD camp? How many cadets do you send for Vayu sonic camp?"

I'll elaborate. RD - Republic day camps are for the January 26 parade at New Delhi. However, to get selected for RD camp, one must attend ten other camps from the month of June the year before. In other words from June - Feb the next year the cadet has to be in camps. This means we will have to redo one, if not two semesters here at NITT. Is that practical?

Vayu Sonic camp is a camp held at New Delhi on October 24th for Air force day. Training starts at the unit (Trichy) for a month from 6 - 11am and only after that you will know whether you're selected or not. After you are selected you have to get through 3 camps before going to Delhi. Again 4 months of a semester gone and a semester has to be redone.

I have a question for the NCC organization. Is NCC designed to coexist with college studies or to make sure students don't study at all? If one wants to attend this many camps, obviously they won't be able to study properly. This is proven in the defense interviews. Even though RD cadets from other colleges sit defense interviews, they don't get through. Why? Its because they don't have enough technical knowledge. All they have been doing is drill for 3 years straight. Sure drill is fun, but everything has its limits. Defense needs properly educated engineers and scientists, not people that can do drill with excellence. One of NCCs aims is to prepare cadets for defense (which should be the main aim). Therefore some restructuring needs to be done.

Anyways, what I thought isn't going to happen anytime soon. Therefore we were limited to. But that was the least of our worries. August 15th was a week away and we had to get 30 first year cadets in uniform. As of friday the 8th, no one had uniforms. We only get 20 sets of uniforms from the unit (2 sets for each senior that left) so we had to send the others to stitch. But that didn't settle the problem.

An NCC/army/police uniform might look like a shirt and a pant but theres so much more to it. Theres the barret which has a badge and a hackle on it, arm titles and name plates on the shirt, a belt (cadets training belt) on the pant, and NCC shoes (Which aren't so widely available everywhere). The unit only gave us 10 complete sets. The other 10 were just a shirt and a pant. We had to get the other uniform parts, make sure the ones who stitched their uniforms get the other material the unit gave (to be fair with money). Getting each item involved collecting the money and sizes from everyone, getting someone to go order, making sure its all available on time and getting the items. Sounds easy, but it took a lot of time and work to get done.

So uniforms was one thing. Then there was the drill. Just the uniform isn't enough is it? Even though the cadets just had to stamp from attention to at ease and vice versa a few times, it all takes a lot of practice. Its similar to running a 1000 miles to prepare for a mile run. We had to make sure everyone was doing drill properly - we were even correcting people on the morning of august fifteenth. But the drill pulled off fine in the end.

Usually during Independence and Republic days in our college NCC cadets sing a song or two. This time we chose to do a song along with some speeches (we wanted to do 2 songs but one group didn't prepare properly). Till the day before , not everyone was singing properly and we had to push them. Same with the speech. Cadets didn't memorize their speech till the evening of the 14th. In the end that pulled off well too. The song was too good on the 15th. Congrats to all (those in the so called the "song party"!)

Then theres the teamwork and the leadership. We seniors had to work as a team and dispute our opinions amongst ourselves. We had to have a single stance on any issue regarding our juniors, talking to our ANO or with the unit staff. We had to make our juniors look good in front of the ANO and staff and we had to make sure what the staff says gets to the juniors in a refined way. Its a middleman job, but its hard talking to people like our ANO who has such a fickle mind.

Time management obviously plays a role with any extra curricular activity and the same applies for this. Not only do we have to attend the parades, but we also have to carve out time to meet our ANO, plan for the next few days and deal with any problems juniors have after parades. People always have questions on parade days so we're always there for an extra half hour or so.

Now its time to prepare cadets for the Annual Training Camp (ATC) which consists of drill competition, essay writing, public speech, singing, dancing, skits and much more. We also have to enroll the 38 cadets which is a difficult task. Basically the ones that want to come to camp would be enrolled.

The Rain, and the rest of the Yuck!

2008-08-05T12:46:00.003+05:30

I've always been thinking infrastructure in India isn't good as it doesn't allow people to commute smoothly during rainy times - roads get flooded or waterlogged, leakages occur everywhere, and since its so sandy everywhere the sand starts to get wet and sticks on to footwear.

My thoughts have come out to be true as I saw last sunday, on my way to trichy from chennai. Just a short trip from Chrompet to Tambaram (hardly a 5km trip within south chennai) I went through a lot.

The suburban railway station at chrompet didn't have proper shelter. There are some gaps in the shelters and some parts of the shelters leak. Come on, so many people commute everyday on local trains and Southern Railways can't even put up some proper shelter for the money they get?

Since I didn't get a train I decided to take the bus. I got into a somewhat older bus and couldn't find a dry place to sit. The reason was because water was coming in from outside (there's no windows to close in those buses). Half of the seats were wet.I then reached Tambaram by bus. The bus was quite fast, but at Tamabaram the bus took time to get to the bus stop.

Tambaram is the southern most point of Chennai and is one of the bustling places these days. So the Mofussil bus authorities have one of their stops occupying one lane of the 3 lane road. Ok fine if the buses go there. But they don't. They just stop in the middle of the road blocking all the traffic. This is such nonsense. The stop is also very irritating for walking pedestrians as all of the platforms are taken up by chairs for bus passengers, there are so many bus commuters waiting to board, some state transport staff keeps shouting out announcements that some bus is coming and much more to add to the chaos.

I suggest a simple solution. Just move the whole mofussil bus stop into the railway station where the local bus stop provision has been given. Anyways no local bus goes there and stops.Because of this traffic as I mentioned I got off in the middle of the road (where the traffic started) and decided to walk for a minute or 2 to the station. This was probably one of the most unpleasant walks I've had in my life.

As I walked through the platforms and the mofussil bus stop, I spotted garbage everywhere. At least that wasn't unpleasant to the eyes. There was this smell of urine all over the place which was just SO disgusting that I almost felt like puking (I just had food an hour before i got there). And the rain didn't help the smell get better either. This says 2 things. One, Indians aren't going to learn cleanliness anytime soon! and 2, Public toilets are needed! and they need to be maintained properly too.At last I got into the station and walked up the footbridge to the train platform.

I thought all the mess was over but when I got to the train platform, I see a whole bunch of sand spread out and it all stuck to my feet as I walked through it. The railways is putting some kind of flooring for the platforms, but someone please tell them to do it without disturbing the public in these ways!

One thing I would like to reiterate:

Please DON'T URINATE IN AN OPEN AREA IN A BIG CITY. You will realize the effects of it if you go through what i have.

The "Mess" at NITT

2008-07-25T10:14:00.004+05:30

The College NIT Trichy is a mess as I see it, but theres much to write about on that. I'm talking about the mess at the messes (might sound weird to some, but this is our dining hall) inside the college.

Since this is a central government funded college, the messes were handled by government workers. However due to substandard food, our seniors striked (thanks to them! - government messes for four years is not bearable.) and the college has two boys messes and the girls mess managed by private companies (Shivas for a boys' mess and the girls' mess and Sakthi's Kitchen for another boys' mess). The rest are still managed by government workers as the college can't fire them (something like an employment contract/term i guess).

Right now, the government mess workers have went on strike so all the students in the college have been sent to some private mess. The second and third years have been allotted mess C (not that this makes sense to anyone outside this college but I'll be using these terms later on), the first years to mess A (First years have been kept separate because the college doesn't want them to interact with seniors, but obviously they will - I did when I was first year!)

Since I'm a third year now i go to mess C which is the other extreme of our college from our Hostel/dormitory (called Garnet). The college should have thought once more when they thought of this. They've made 500 people walk/go from one end to the other end of college three or four times a day (breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner) just to eat food. Might be good exercise but not when you're really hungry!

Thinking mess C is a private mess, I went in and thought it would be good. But it was very poor. On the first day I went in and got just a cup of tea (their excuse was that I came in at 9:20 and mess timings end at 9:15). So I let it go as I was late. Thanks to the snacketeria at our college I got something to eat for breakfast. For the next few meals I went during the time slot and got hardly anything to eat. Ok fine. But the mess workers sound as if we're on the wrong and they're on the right. They don't let us in without mess cards (First of all this is a stupid system. The mess system should be integrated with our college id card - having a mess card is a burden to us only).

So this is the situation. The college puts a private mess into place since the government messes are sub standard and the mess is worse. A private mess actually a company that runs a mess. They have agreed to cater food to the students (no matter whether its a batch or 2 years) or in other words, their customers. They have been providing such bad service to their customers and they don't even improve on it (a week on too it hasn't improved too much - although we're getting some food but not of good quality). They have no excuse to give us substandard food becuase each of us is paying the money for the food, we're not getting it for free (in tamil, ithu onnu anna dhanam illa, nanga kasu kooduthu sapparom inga).

If the caterers can't supply food for this many people in a small place, thats their problem. They have to talk to the college and make sure they are getting enough infrastructure to make sure they are providing quality food. Thats the idea of a business right? To facilitate a process/service for their customers. These guys haven't been doing their business right. Back to the planning books Sakti Caterers! Get your business ethics right before you start yelling at students!

Hopefully the prospective mess representative (which is to be chosen on Jul 30 depending on how many apply) reads this post or has this idea in mind and makes a difference. We'll surely support you! I can't stand as mess representative because I myself have a very low standard for food. I eat almost anything given to me.

More on the other "messes" at NITT later on.

Edit: I just had lunch and talked with a junior. It seems the caterers have been forced to supply all the students. Sakthi's Kitchen alone caters to 1700 students now, but as i mentioned again, in business, whatever the problem, there should be no compromise in the quality of the product right? Also they should have demanded the college for more cooking space (or whatever else they need) as I already mentioned. Hopefully everything resolves soon and we get some good food!

Onboard flight CZ 359/360

2008-07-23T12:19:00.002+05:30

Usually I fly Singapore Airlines to get to Guangzhou from India but this time I decided to take the newly introduced China Southern flight from Delhi to Guangzhou. Taking some flights in and around China, China southern seemed to be good (especially on the Beijing routes with the new Boeing 777s and the A330s) except for the food (well Chinese food isn't really my thing!). But my experience from Delhi to Guangzhou and vice versa made me take a second thought on flying this route again.

The flight from Delhi to Guangzhou was timed at 3:00am. I was supposed to depart on May 22 early morning, but because they took off Thursdays from Delhi to Guangzhou that time I departed on the 23rd (They didn't even telephone me to inform this. My dad happened to run into their schedule at their site and told me to look up on it at Delhi and I went to their office to change the schedule.)

Because of all the news on congestion at New Delhi Airport and securities taking so long, I decided to leave my uncle's house at 23:00 (for a flight at 3am). I was at the airport by 23:15 (very surprising as I had seen photos of long queues outside the airport with people waiting to get in) and when i went to the check in counter of China Southern, they told me to wait as they were closed (it seems check in counters only open 3 hours before departure).

The people at the check in counter were nice but they wanted to charge me excess baggage charges. I don't mind that but they didn't say anything till I asked how much the baggage weighed. But I talked to them and finished checking in without paying. Proceeding to immigration and security, I thought they were going to be very crowded as I read in the news, so I sat down to refresh my legs in order to stand for another 40 minutes or so. However I got through immigration and security within 15 minutes too!

So there I was at Delhi having to wait for 2 hours for my flight. I was one of very few China southern passengers waiting amongst hundreds of Lufthansa and British airways passengers. After walking around and sleeping for a bit boarding was announced at 2 itself (very surprising, an hour before departure boarding).

Entering the flight I thought I could just sleep off and enjoy. But there was this very nasty smell of the toilet that was very inbearable. The aircraft wasn't a nice one as i thought it would be. It was some old Boeing 757 that they haven't even redesigned recently. There were so few passengers and I had the three seats in the row all to myself. Hence i lied down and slept off.

The flight took off at 245 itself which was good and landed in Guangzhou an hour before schedule but the service wasn't so good. I was expecting some breakfast in the morning but I didn't get any and the air crew hardly knew any English. So I went home and slept off because of a bad nights sleep.

I wanted to change dates on my return trip, but when I went to their office they didn't even know when the flights were to New Delhi. I couldn't change my date as they cut down on their international services due to fuel costs and not enough passengers. On another day i wanted to reconfirm my trip and they told me I had to do it on phone! What a waste of time and energy walking all the way to their office (it wasn't really far from my house but they should have these kind of services in their offices). So I telephoned them and confirmed my ticket and my Indian Vegetarian meal request which wasn't processed properly as I found out in the check-in counter the next day.

At Guangzhou airport the check-in queues were quite long and I had to wait for about fifteen minutes to check-in. Not such good service especially since Guangzhou is the headquarters of China Southern. I boarded the flight expecting a decent aircraft this time at least since their flights were cut down but this time too they flew a Boeing 757. I thought of boarding last as my seat was close to the front but that ended up being a bad move. People had brought more than one piece of Cabin luggage and I couldn't keep my luggage inside as there was no space. So I checked in my suitcase with my laptop, camera, mp3 and portable hard disk hoping no one steals anything (I could have complained to their ground staff if anything happened but its better to be safe than sorry right?)

This was a full flight I was in so it was really noisy too with many north Indians talking loudly in Hindi. They didn't have any newspapers or magazines too and the air crew weren't so good in English (they didn't even understand when I asked for a pen). Before take off they came to people's seats confirming a request for Indian Vegetarian meals and it was very chaotic. They should have served Indian Vegetarian meals as a meal choice onboard as many Indians are vegetarians. Not that their meal was all so great! I slept off through the flight as it was very irritating to sit in a window seat and as the flight came to an end, the stinky toilet smell started coming in. Yuck!

In the Delhi Airport, I was the last person to leave the immigration from that flight as the immigration authority was concerned about my stamp not being clear (their fault, not mine! they should put the stamps on properly right?).

Well so that was the end of my China southern experience after a long time and the minute I walked out of that flight I decided not to take China southern unless i really have to.

A look at Youth Curry

2008-07-13T09:12:00.002+05:30

Somehow I ended up at Ms. Rashmi's blog yesterday (I only added the link to her blog on my blogroll yesterday). I now feel as though I'm starting my blog once again. I first started my blog after her guest lecture down at NIT Trichy during Currents, the Electrical Engineering department symposium. (More on how i started on this post).

I don't know why, but I like her blog a lot. Not only is her design simple, she also uses a lot of links, pictures, and her writing style is really nice. While reading through her posts, theyre very easy to follow (except for her occasional hindi expressions here and there - I don't know Hindi - very bad).

I'll take her post on the smart card implementation in Mumbai as an example. The title "Smart Card, Dumb Implementation" it self is very self explanatory and simple. The reader would have been able to figure out the subject and tone of her post very quickly.

In the post, she starts off with a light introduction of what got her into a train (something like narrowing into the subject) and then writes on about her experience with smart cards and what she has observed about them. Some of the good things to note in her post is that she posts pictures wherever something might seem ambiguous.

She also uses links to refer to external articles that relates to events that she mentions on her post. This is a really good practice to do and I only realized it after seeing her blog. (So i started using links on my posts too - I posted links to websites instead of cutting and pasting their URLs in my web design links post.) Right now I haven't posted many pictures yet because not much I've posted requires photos. However I should restart the picture posting because "A Picture is equivalent to a thousand words" right?

On with the rest of her blog. She's got her twitter feed which she used to post her little thoughts that aren't big enough to actually right a post on. This inspired me to start a twitter account too. Follow me on twitter if you want to by clicking here. And I've positioned my ads on the right hand side bottom of my page just as she has - no biggie there - just keeping the ads away from the main content.

However theres one thing I don't like with her blog. She has her blog roll at the bottom of her blog which I didn't find appealing because after I finish with one blog I usually use the links to move to another to read on. But thats just a minor issue. Other than that, thank you Ms. Bansal for creating a nice blog and inspiring others.

Useful web design links

2008-07-12T15:19:00.003+05:30

As i said in the post "My Internship", I was doing some web design during my internship. I'm going to share some of the sites that helped me a lot.

1) CSS Play UK : This site has a lot of stylesheets for boxes, drop down menus, layouts. Just go to the page of the item you want, copy the source code, edit it to your likes, and you've got what you want. Be careful of what you delete in the page. You don't want to end up deleting some important styles. Just a tip for those taking drop down menu scripts and personalizing them: the div menu has to be absolutely positioned (position: absolute; - CSS syntax). Relative positioning makes other items in the page drop below upon hovering the drop down menu.

2) Matthew James Taylor's Website on CSS : This site gave me the styles I used for my column layouts. Not that I couldn't have done it but it was a easy way to get everything ready made.

3) HTML colors : This page contains the basic html colors. I don't know how relevant this is to modern day web design (many screens can display more colors) but just to be safe I just used these colors. Other html syntax references on this site also.

4) PHP site: This is the official php site. Really helps when you need to understand the meaning of a php related error and helps with function syntaxes.

5) CSS at about.com: This sub section of web design at about.com has some articles on CSS and can be a good reference for CSS related doubts.

6) Dynamic Drive: This site has lots of scripts. The drop down menu scripts i saw were written using javascript but I couldn't personalize them to my needs (something went wrong so I decided to shift to the scripts on CSS Play UK)

7) XAMPP: For windows users that want to set up their pc as a web server to test out their php and mysql, this is the easiest way to go. It installs apache, php, and mysql. No need for you to go and configure each separately.

8) If you don't know anything and would like to learn CSS, PHP, and html, go for the dummies series books on them (HTML for dummies, CSS and web design for dummies, PHP and Mysql for dummies) and then use the websites above.... Don't have to read the any of the books so thoroughly as if you're going to sit for an exam. Just get a basic idea and look back through them for syntax and design help. I'm not going to tell you how to get them as that would be illegal (bit torrent - hint hint ) right?!?

Ok now thats done! I forgot to bring my bookmarks from the office so while i was finding the sites I wrote up this post too. Killing 2 birds with one stone!!

My internship

2008-07-11T19:34:00.005+05:30

Finally one month of interning at Ranbaxy comes to an end. I'm going to start with saying all the stuff I did that wasn't work related because who wants to hear about work all the time? So here we go:

1) MSN - The first thing I would do everyday along with opening Microsoft Outlook to check my company email is msn. I'd open up msn and talk to people. People who talked to me on msn know what I'm talking about. :))

2) checking my personal email - yes i would check my yahoo and rediffmail and reply to any incoming mail

3) Cleartrip, makemytrip, and rediff faresearch - i was surfing through these sites to check up the new bus booking schemes and flight fares!

4) Facebook - ok, I really shouldn't be getting on facebook during my intern but I couldn't resist after a week or two. So there i was on facebook replying people's wall posts and all that. But facebook didn't work all the time.

5) Yahoo Answers - answers.yahoo.com is a place where people with yahoo account can ask and answer qusetions ... I was on it too ... One day i was answering mathematics questions for about 2 hours.

6) Card games - I played games like spider solitaire, freecell and hearts

7) I helped a friend of mine get an internship in the same company while i was there too! :)

Ok This seems like a lot of crap that I did instead of doing my work at the intern. But I have done a good amount of work too.

I was on a marketing and a web design project. In the marketing side Ranbaxy wanted to introduce an sms service for their prescription drug simcor ( a reminder service that would be sent as a message to people's mobiles telling them to take the pill, its a drug for people with hyperlipidemia/high cholestrol clogging up the blood vessels). My task was to come up with ideas to get people who have been prescribed simcor to subscribe to the service. After a lot of thinking, making sure i complied the guidelines, and a few meetings I had come up with a final plan.

On the website side, I first edited their existing html page by redoing links, taking out common parts and putting them in files and including them using php scripts (php is a scripting language that allows for web programming basically, pages are compiled on the server side and generated to the user end. This saves a lot of work for web developers, and i had to learn php also). After that I had to edit the stylesheets of the website to edit the colors and the fonts. Sounds simple but it takes a lot of searching through the website.

After all this, our country manager wanted a new web structure with a drop down menu and a flash animation on the homepage and all that. So I got a drop down script from the net and edited it to our needs after understanding the way it worked. Then I had designed a page inline with the Ranbaxy global page (www.ranbaxy.com) and I was sort of in love with my own design. I don't know, it just looked nice. I didn't use any tables which is what many websites use (check their source code by clicking view->page source). Instead i had used stylesheets to position everything. I was proud of myself for doing that.

So thats about it from my internship. I got a lot done (work and non-work related!) and I'm proud of myself for doing something useful this holiday.

Ok, time to go update my CV!

NCC at NITT - A cadet's perspective

2008-07-05T15:53:00.004+05:30

Ok, so NCC isn't some threatening thing that puts you off if you've read up to here. Well being a cadet at NCC at NITT (thats where i study college right now) I thought of some ideas to expand the scope of our program at our college. I wrote up a paper (not a real formal one) and emailed my fellow ncc cadets but no luck, no reply or input from them. So here I post it on my blog.

Restructuring NCC at NITT

Problem: Students at NITT think NCC is physically stressful, boring, and useless.

Cause of the problem: NCC is not being properly promoted, we are not taking the right approach to it, and the right kinds of extra-cirricular activities are not being encouraged

Solution:

Three parts to the solution, each serving one of the casues:

Promotion of the NCC at NITT
Taking the right approach
Promoting more extracirricular activities

Part 1: Promotion of the NCC at NITT

People coming from schools have a different perception of NCC when compared to what NCC actually is at our college. (they think NCC is physically stressful but it actually isn't at NIT)

Even though the ATC and RD selection camps are physically straining, other camps are not. Since we have gone to an adventure camp we can talk about this experience in promoting NCC
The image of NCC even within our exisiting student body is bad. Existing students need to see what NCC is so that their juniors don't get misguided by them
Now that NCC is only a 2 year program, it is more convenient for students of our college to join as the first two years of college has relatively less work when compared to the third year and this time can be used to develop their extra cirricular skills.

Part 2: taking the right approach

The aim of the NCC program in india is as follows:

1. To develop qualities of Character, Courage, Comradeship, Discipline, Leadership, Secular Outlook, Spirit of Adventure and the ideals of Selfless Service amongst the Youth of the Country.
2. To Create a Human Resource of Organized, Trained and Motivated Youth, to Provide Leadership in all Walks of life and be Always Available for the Service of the Nation.
3. To Provide a Suitable Environment to Motivate the Youth to Take Up a Career in the Armed Forces.

It can be said that the currently NCC at NITT is doing the above but:
- Right now all we do is drill and some preparation for independence day and republic day parades. That motivates some but not all. Therefore we have to make sure people develop the above qualities in other ways – by restructuring the NCC program to ensure these qualities are delivered to students.

The NCC program can be restructured as follows (explanation of the functions of each of the teams below) if a flight above 50 is present.
- The central team (will be all seniors) will make sure all subunits are running smoothly and are doing their jobs.
- The drill team will
  - specialize in drill
  - participate in any intercollegiate/camp competitions
  - train other students in drills
- The organisation team will
  - organize and brainstorm any event
  - update the flight on all events
  - make sure everyone has the materials and facilities required (uniforms, sports venues, equipment for culturals etc)
- The culturals team will
  - specialize in drama, art, speaking, etc
  - prepare for any camps and/or intercollegiate culturals (the more they perform, the better they will become)
- the service and society team will
  - think about service projects to be taken up in and around trichy
  - brainstorm and hold patriotic events within and around the community
  - make sure our flight is contributing to the community (blood donation etc)
- The sports/health team will
  - design and execute health/exercise programs that others can follow
  - get training from the athletics/sports department of our college to improve their skills
  - go to adventure camps along with others in the flight
- The technical team will
  - be thorough with the B and C certificate portions and will teach the portions to the others (along with PI staff)
  - undertake any project with the aeromodelling unit or help with any technical projects in college
  - maintain the NCC website and keep improving it
- Everyone in our flight will become well rounded – that is they will develop skills in all the divisions – ie a person in the cultural division will know the basic drills, be able to pass the B and C certification etc.
  - Members of each team will be in charge of making sure others gain some skill in their divison – ie the sports team should ensure people are doing some basic exercise or learning some sport, the technical team should ensure people are prepared for B and C certification, etc

Part 3: Promotion of extracirricular activities

In order to follow the structure of the NCC above, extracirricular activities must be promoted and incentive must be given for students to do well in these units of NCC
- Adequate training should be given to students who wish to pursue these activities by different clubs of our college such as (but not limited to)
  - culturals: drama from thespian society members, artwork from arts club, writing from the writers society and so on.
  - Sports from team members of different sports
  - service & society can be done with tie ups with clubs like cry
- mock interviews from social/technical clubs can be arranged so that students can start meeting their expectations as clubs are banned for first year students now.
All of the above contributes to a well rounded development of students with excellent guidance and motivation so they can progress easily and gain lots from the NCC program.

Our seniors have improved the spirit of their NCC cadets (us that is) and it is our effort that will take NCC to new heights by putting a little bit of planning and work. The planning is already done here, so just some revision and work is left! Suggestions are welcome.

So yea, please if you have any suggestions, please post. Also anyone you know thats in NCC please tell them to take a read at this. Your comments are always welcome. By the way, hats off to you if you reached this point! No, I mean it, seriously.

blogging - the process

2008-06-26T09:43:00.003+05:30

These days I'm finding it quite difficult to write on the blog. Its mostly because I'm in a routine daily with my internship and the running and all that. And plus even if I do think of something to write there is such a longgg process to undergo after that. I mean its just typing and clicking post on your blog but behind the scenes theres a lot. Here's what:

1) The material - What you write about needs to have some kind of rich content on it. Sure you can write on some passerby thought that you had in mind for a second or so but thats not going to give a good post is it?
2) Even if you have some good idea to write about, you have to get some good information regarding that topic, otherwise readers are going to think you're ranting on with some weird thought you had in your mind.
3) After getting all this information and consolidating thoughts you have to think about how to write it up, what kind of visuals you're going to put on your post (Which i haven't for quite a long time, should start though) to make it rich in content.
4) As you type the stuff out, sometimes some things sound really corny. Gotta think about how to re word what you've written.
5) Posting - this is the easiest step thanks to blogger :P

And here I am, finally with something decent to put up on my blog. At least I feel its somewhat decent and hope others feel the same way I do.

blogging in china

2008-06-21T18:19:00.002+05:30

ok guys.... this only applies to readers that have some idea about the internet at china but anyways i'll brief you up on it ...

basically most of the internet connections at china are the ADSL given by china telecom. there are other connections for education institutions, offices etc. in guangzhou there's also a cable connection..

anyways...i mentioned on another post that I couldn't get onto blogspot without a proxy with the ADSL. However with this cable internet I can get on to blogspot and hence I could revamp the page (i couldn't under the proxy with the ADSL connection!)... so anyone in Guangzhou, if you want to use blogspot, switch over to cable!

Finally... but not so nice

2008-06-21T13:47:00.003+05:30

If you don't want to read about me not writing for the past week skip over to the ---- section

Finally after a week I come online to blog ... I didn't write due to a variety of reasons:

1) pretty occupied with my internship and I don't feel like sitting on the pc coming back (I sit in front of it the whole day!! can't take more at night)
2) Couldn't think about anything to write.

Well I'm back with things to write about (more like something!).. I highly doubt you all care about what i just said

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

Yesterday i was watching MTV.... I usually watch it to catch up with the latest music and download anything good I hear/watch

Although the music is good the videos seem like some kind of soft porn (seriously, I'm not joking about this)... Its really disturbing to watch, especially when I'm in front of your parents and other people. They don't say anything but I feel this kind of guilt that makes me wanna change the channel to something like the news. I hope most people get what I mean.

So, what does this mean? That many of the music videos that come out are full of glamour and nothing else? Well not quite, but the chart toppers are always like that and music channels like MTV only play these music videos. And the lyrics are like that too!! Can't people think of any song that has nothing other than sex and wanting to grind and check the bartender to make a hit song? Its not like all songs have to be of this concept to become a hit.... There are songs that are not so dirty that make it to the hits too right?? I think artists just want to take it the easy way around.... People shouldn't accept this... they should demand good music with QUALITY LYRICS....

Well anyways enough of MTV. I'm going to go back to some 80's tamil music.... much better than sex and grinding and glamour...

All this being said, you know sometimes even i can't help it. Songs like smack that and I Wanna F**k you by Akon are some of my favorites.... but I know I'm trying ....

being on the watch

2008-06-14T09:07:00.000+05:30

An sms conversation:

at 5:45
A: Hey you going to that dinner today? you wanna go by metro together?
B: ok cool... what time?
A: About six forty five?
B: how bout six? going early's better right?
A: I still gotta get ready man. Six fifteen sounds good?
B: Ok fine sounds good

at 6:05
A: ok i'm ready. gonna leave in a minute
B: ok ill start now.. see you at the metro station

at 6:20
A: hey where u at?
..... no reply
... A picks up phone to call and sees B coming in..

That was a whole bunch of sms'ing so that we could meet up and go together for dinner. Something to show how much mobile phones are sewed into our lives. Probably these days I always send about ten or twenty messages on the mobile phone to call friends out, discuss meeting places, ask them where they are and inform them about my whereabouts.

If it takes so much communication for us to sync, imagine what it would have been for our grandparents or even their parents when they went out with their friends when they were this age. They probably would have had to have everything planned the night before (in contrast with an hour before nowadays), made sure they made it on time so that the other person wouldn't be worried (well they could have used a pco to call up their friends house, but how many people had telephones at home?) if they didn't turn up.

Whatever said, newer communication technologies have helped us these days but at the same time it is bugging sometimes. If I was in the situation of person B i would have been so irritated to get calls and messages every minute or so if I was a bit late. Things don't go perfectly all the time do they? So people should be a little flexible in timing. give everything a few minutes more than expected and everything will occur smoothly....

The 3 mistakes of my life...

2008-06-13T14:48:00.000+05:30

No, this is not a blog on the 3 mistakes I've made in my life ... My life probably has more like 300 mistakes...

Anyways so I finally finished reading Chetan Bhagat's third book "the 3 mistakes of my life" after a month of its release. I should have bought and finished it much earlier but for me this is really something big as I've never bought a book and finished it this fast. I finished most of the book in about a day (200 out of 250 pages). This might not be a big achievement for regular readers but for me it is.

So i posted a comment on Chetan Bhagat's blog about the book and it read like this: (crap I had it on my copy memory but i copied something after that!! will paste the original comment after it appears on his blog, for now i'll write up an approximate of what i actually wrote!).

Dear Mr. Chetan Bhagat (had to be formal here because he's no friend),

Firstly i would like to thank you for making me a reader of all your books. I never used to read but your books have made me read. I've read both your books and I read this book within a month of its release which i've never done.

The 3 mistakes of my life was a good book. it was released at a good time, a time in which India has many entrepreneurs coming up and has a good business touch to it. The whole love story in the background of everything was very nice and the character vidya made me visualize a beautiful indian girl that I would like to marry/love (come on, I'm a guy too!).

However it would have been better if govind narrated the story till he committed suicide. Also the love scenes should have been a bit more subtle as it was kind of obvious what the two were up to.

I don't know how true the story is, but if its true i would like to know what happened to Govind, Ish, Vidya and Ali. Did Ali make it to the Indian team?

Mr. Chetan, thanks for the opportunity for me to comment on your book here. I know you don't have time but if you do it would be really nice if could visit my blog and comment at http://arvsr1988.blogspot.com/. Thanks once again.

Cheers,
Arvind Sridharan

So thats more or less my opinion on the book and my comment on chetan's blog. Imaging Chetan Bhagat commenting on my blog!! That would be cool man!! Well I can't hope for too much but still its a wish.

So what are you waiting for? Go buy the book (yes buy the book, its only 95 bucks, don't download it, support Chetan like this. If you can't afford 95 rupees don't worry, Chetan will forgive you) read and tell me how you think it is!

threesome tag

2008-06-13T08:59:00.001+05:30

Ok, this is the first time i'm getting tagged so I'm gonna do this fun exercise

3 Joys:
1. traveling around (within a city or to other places)
2. chilling with friends
3. watching an excellent film at a good movie theater (something like santhosh subramanian at sathyam theater chennai)

3 fears:
1. fear of India rotting away due to bad politicians governing the country
2. fear of not being able what i want to do in life
3. fear of slipping out of my principles

3 goals:
1. to start up my own company and help those who didn't get to grow up like me
2. to make maximum use of my time in college from now on (in terms of learning, building contacts)
3. laying out a foundation for a stable and good future (yea, i guess its important) whether it be getting into a good MBA institute, getting a good job or getting into defense or whatever else

3 random surprising facts:
1. I'm starting to enjoy my college life
2. Its a very small world.
3. With every positive comes some other negative

3 current obsessions:
1. becoming healthy and fit
2. anything to do with business, civil aviation and entrepreneurship
3. hot girls (yes everyone, I'm a guy, its natural isn't it?)

3 ppl who make me laugh:
1. karthick S (aka kuks at NITT)
2. santhanam the tamil commedian - his comedy is just too good i tell you
3. my friend calvin (as of now hes the only guy i can think of thats makin me laff these days)

3 things i hate:
1. people being selfish to the extreme (yea everyone is selfish but yourself isn't the only thing you should be thinking about)
2. people who don't listen to the whole thing when your trying to say something
3. people who think in a conservative way

3 things i don't understand:
1. why people want so much money
2. how people can live/get through without ethics or morals
3. how people can just accept things the way they are

3 things am doing right now:
1. talking on gtalk
2. listening to music
3. writing this blog up (thats a bit obvious right?), well thats all i'm doing though

3 things i can do:
1. i can work hard - yes i mean it, i can
2. run a mile without stopping - yes i can do it these days!
3. i can type about 40-50 words per minute

3 ways i describe myself:
1. chill
2. big
3. considerate

3 things i can't do:
1. live without a pc
2. follow things without questioning them
3. draw

3 Things I Think You Should Listen To
1. everyone (yes listen to everyone that talks to you and don't neglect anyone as a piece of useless crap)
2. the news - yes be informed of whats going on in the world
3. your instinct - yes ... follow your instinct helps sometimes

3 Things I Think You Should Never Listen To
1. a lecturer at NITT taking a class (man thats like the worst of English you can ever hear, as usual there are exceptions)
2. anyone preaching a religion to you
3. people openly talking shit about you. (oh no i swore!! )

3 Absolute Favorite Foods
1. dosai!!
2. bread toast
3. chapatti

3 Things I’d Like to Learn
1. hindi - yes i would like to go around india without having a communication problem
2. better photography
3. doing whatever i do to the fullest

3 Beverages I Drink Regularly
1. tea
2. sapota juice (at the juicy of nitt)
3. paneer soda (yes i do drink that every so often)

3 Shows I Watched as a Kid
1. mickey mouse
2. Tom and jerry
3. Scooby doo.. :) :)

I tag :
1. No one cuz this one's pretty hard to do so I don't want anyone to

kadhal website ondru (look at the last question, hence the title)

2008-06-12T08:26:00.002+05:30

Rules:
1. Put your MP3 player on shuffle
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. You must write the name of the song no matter what. No cheating!

try it out ... read mine along as you do urs.. it'll be boring reading it just like that.

IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY?” YOU SAY?
"you don't know" - eminem
uhh ... its more like i don't know not you don't know.

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
"dance dance" - fall out boy
no my personality has nothing to do with dancing...

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
"baby don't go"- Fabulous ft Jermaine dupri
uh that doesn't answer the question although thats what i would be thinking if i was dating some girl

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
"keep on calling"- akon
keep on calling.... yes i want people to talk to me on the phone all the time right? i'm not a telephone guy

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
"get it right" - jennifer lopez ft usher
yes my lifes purpose is to make it right - the way i like it so to speak

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
"get low"- Flo rida
nope... not at all

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
"good things"- Rich boy
more like good times with me i guess.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
"new york city"- young jock
lol what the heck

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
"don't matter"- akon
i like this answer... how does it matter man??

WHAT IS 2+2?
"pictures of you"-the last goodnight
hmmm ... probably has some hidden meaning in there.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
"Sweet escape"- gwen stefani
that would have been a good answer for the next question but not this one... besides i dont have a best friend really

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
"yedho ondru"- laysa laysa
first tamil song.... besides i dun like anyone now ...

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
"shut up and drive"- rihanna
lol .... not bad...why do u care??!? hahaha...

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
"ulaga nayagan"- dasavatharam
i wish!

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
"push"- Enrique Iglesias
ok thats kinda perverted

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
"anbe sivam"- anbe sivam
ok i don't really know.

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
"ayo technology"- 50 cent ft timbaland
i don't think this is really a dance song .... plus its more like a club song than a wedding song

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
"o maname"- ullam ketkume
hmmm not bad i guess

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
"shake that"- eminem
ok thats not really the greatest of my interests i guess

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
"azhinna"- enakku 20 unakku 18
doesn't make sense.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
"lost in love"- I15
i don't think so... more like lost in friendship man

WHAT SHOULD YOU POST THIS AS?
"kadhal website onu"- dhenna
uh no...firstly my blog has nothing about love in it and this is not a love website!

Road safety

2008-06-11T18:01:00.000+05:30

.......300 have died today in India... not due to a railroad accident, not due to a natural disaster, but due to road accidents says the BBC.

Yes, being an Indian, I can fully understand what they are talking about: Bad road safety in Indian roads.

1) Indian roads are substandard - Roads are being constructed but they have potholes and aren't strong enough, so whenever a driver finds a good road stretch they take it all out on those and speed to the maximum. How bout smoother roads enabling a streamline flow? Also road builders should make sure they are putting proper signs and proper barriers at sharp curves and dead ends.

2) Pedestrian crossings please!! to the NHAI or whomever builds roads and highways, Its not enough if you just build a highway right in the middle of nowhere that divides a city/town/village into two. There has to be pedestrian crossings (footbridges/subways) every 100 or 200 meters and flyovers every kilometer or 2.

3) Improve public transport!! Build more means of public transport (metros, buses, trains) and make the existing ones more convenient so that it takes people off the roads (cars, private vehicles) and on these modes of transport. Public transport is such a good place to work for. Come on people, take it as a business and get people off the roads. I guess people working aren't even as interested as I am. Give Chennai's public transport in my hands and every corner will be covered! :)

A show on Indian road safety is due to be aired on bbc a few times this week. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b00c3xkz.shtml?q=india&start=1&scope=iplayersearch&go=Find+Programmes&version_pid=b00c3vcm if you wanna watch it online, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/6571807.stm for a brief article)

There's an NGO called Arrivesafe (http://www.arrivesafe.org/) that was started by Harman Singh, who was in an accident 11 years ago and got paralyzed neck down. Although this site has lots of information on road safety, theres nothing much on what people like you or me can do and how we can help the NGO out.

This blog post isn't going to make Indian roads any safer but at least I have voiced my opinions and solutions and hope this helps somehow or the other.

blogging on a jogging slowdown

2008-06-11T07:56:00.000+05:30

so on my last post i blogged on a good jog session (see the post titled "the jogger's mind"). However in life I guess not everything goes good. With one good thing will come another bad thing.

Yesterday I had one of my worst days jogging. I could figure the jog was going to be bad as I couldn't get the breathing rhythm right at the beginning (breathing in with the nose and out through the mouth), I was tired the whole day since the morning (i went in the evening whereas usually i go in the mornings, didn't get good sleep the night before) and I didn't even take a nap in the afternoon.

My jogging times increased too. First round increased slightly so i thought it was ok as i was jogging a bit towards the outer end of the ring at the stadium.... second round was a pathetic increase and the end (a quarter of a round more) was a really bad increase. So thats my jogging slowdown for you. Yes, I'm on a energy crisis you could say! :P....

These days my ankle starts hurting a lot in the middle of my jog too. Its slowing down my times.. gotta do something about it... any suggestions anyone?

the joggers mind

2008-06-07T17:16:00.000+05:30

"breathe in and out and move it all around, step one to the left and one to the right"

no no... i just mixed up my jogger mind with the mambo number 5 lyrics..

(the mambo number 5 lyrics
Jump up and down and move it all around.
Shake your head to the sound, put your hands on the ground.
Take one step left and one step right.
)

"breathe in and out.... left right left.... yes thats right... keep going..." was what ran through my mind when i started losing energy in the middle of my jog..

Today was a special jogging day... something was set up for the beijing olympics ( i couldn't figure what though)...

while i was jogging, people waved hi to me ... thats probably the first time someone i don't know has waved hi to me while i was jogging.... pretty impressive huh? maybe there should be some kind of association of joggers that promote jogging/running to everyone...yea preaching or whatever u call it.

usually after my jog it takes me about 5 minutes to recover and get to my normal breathing pattern... but today it took me barely a minute to recover.

right when i recovered me someone with a micro-phone and a video-camera came... thats right.. someone was gonna interview me on tv.... pretty nice... first time in my life i guess.... can't remember any other instance being interviewed on tv.

well anyways this is how the interview went: (q- the interviewer; a-me)

q: "are u participating in this activity?"
a: (what activity?? i had no clue what they were doing ... i thought they were all gathered to see some famous chinese guy or something!) "whats the activity?"
q: "people are going to run to beijing here"
a: (there were so many people and i thought this many people to beijing???!?? so i said...) "no, i've come here for summer so i gotta go home"
q: "Well what do you think of these kind of activities"
a: "I think its good promoting this kind of stuff these days in a world that is competitive in terms of studies and companies"
q: "what is your idea of sports?"
a: "sports is a way to become more healthy by physical stress and team work"
q: "do you play any sports?"
a: "right now i just jog every day, but otherwise i play sports for fun"

so thats how it went basically... so after the interview i asked if this many people were running to beijing and she said the majority were just running one round of the stadium ... what the heck...i ran 2 rounds everyday...double that amount... so i tried to find out how to participate.... by the way they were from gztv (gunagzhou tv - english division)

everyone had this kind of card, i didn't. A guy told me to wait so i waited... meanwhile another guy took a photo of me... so lots of coverage of me for doing nothing.... and finally they closed the gate down so i couldn't go for the run.... boo...

anyways so that was a good day of jogging .... and i made my way home after starting my day jogging.

walking through the metro

2008-06-06T09:55:00.001+05:30

After taking jogs in the mornings I walk through the metro station nearby to cross the road (here in Guangzhou, China). I could feel the AC and started walking with a big bunch of people walking to the exit from the turnstiles. Everyone (including me) was walking in a streamline flow and hopped on to take the escalator (I took the stairs, being on an exercise session) and went to their respective offices on the road. After getting out I thought to myself "why couldn't suburban stations in chennai be this convenient?"

Hopefully someone in southern railways sees this post and considers taking up some kind of action (a very big hopefully there!).

Suburban stations in Chennai (especially the very crowded ones, mostly all of them as so many people take the train at Chennai) should have at least two or three footbridges from the stations to the ground level and escalators should be installed in all of them at least on the upward direction. In order to be eco friendly escalators with auto-turn on sensors should be installed to save electricity. In fact revenue can be made by posting ads on the escalator at entry and exit points and a tv screen can be put above so that people can watch the ads as they go up (tilt it a bit so that its viewable from ground up).

Even major express train stations should take on this. Not only should escalators and more footbridges be installed, but walkalators should be installed as a walk to the coach at the rear end from the footbridge usually takes about 10 minutes and this is physically straining on the traveller (They should have thought about this before putting tiles and platforms at stations like chennai central and salem junction!).

These are small additions in terms of cost but in terms of passenger convenience they make a big difference. As I mentioned before, hopefully the Indian railways takes this suggestions. Oh and maybe turnstiles for tickets as opposed to random checkers to check all the tickets?

ubuntu 8.04

2008-06-03T14:05:00.000+05:30

Finally i recovered my computer and installed ubuntu 8.04. I wanted to recover my computer because 1) it was full of junk and 2) because most of my space was allocated to my windows partition and I wanted most of my space to be allocated to my linux partition. Well anyways enough of that.

I had some problems while installing. When i tried installing by inserting the cd and booting from it sometimes it would just hang at the ubuntu display screen and if i pressed ctrl+alt+del or something like that it would display a squashfs error. So I decided to do the media test to check if my cd was working properly and tried again. This time though, unlike other times i loaded the desktop first and then decided to install.. Don't know if that changed the way things worked.

So anyways after installation all is well now but these software updates and applications aren't downloading at a decent rate from the hong kong server as i'm in china near hong kong(The download rate ranged from 2-6kbps even though my downloads on firefox were much faster). Now I'm giving the test for the best server (administration->software sources if you use ubuntu). Amazingly the best server from my house was Taiwan and the software downloaded at some 260kbps. Thank god for that, now i can install my updates pretty quickly! :)

Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy hernon as its also known) also comes with firefox 3 beta 5. Its pretty slick I tell you. There are a lot of subtle changes but they make a difference. The addons and downloads interfaces are changed slightly to allow for more accessibility of files and now instead of typing urls, if you have used facebook before just type facebook on the address bar and a list of all facebook related pages appear with the title of each of the pages. Pretty neat i say.

With ubuntu 8.04, so far so good. 7.10 itself was good but again little changes in this and this is a bit more stable i think.

Maintaining the posting frequency

2008-06-03T14:00:00.000+05:30

I've been really bad at posting on my blog these days. Mainly its due to procrastination. Posting takes up at least 10 minutes so sometimes I feel as though I don't want to sit and type for 10 minutes. Also when posting, I have to sit and think through my thoughts and get them concrete so that I can write them out in a coherent manner. So since all takes time and thought, my laziness just puts it off to later. I hope other bloggers understand my feeling. So from now on i should be posting at fixed intervals. At least twice a week should do now as I'm on holiday. Hopefully i follow this timing.

Posting after so many hurdles!!

2008-05-27T10:06:00.000+05:30

So I thought I would return to my house in Guangzhou, China and start posting frequently but guess what? After i landed i tried http://arvsr1988.blogspot.com (my blog URL) and it didn't work. Yes, the chinese authorities are back to work blocking blogs. I even tried getting to my blog through the usual webproxies www.hidemyass.com and similar ones and even that didn't work. So wondering how I'm posting now? This is how:

I went to yahoo answers (http://answers.yahoo.com) and asked how to get around this blocking business and it seems there are proxies dynamically being created in this yahoo group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewFastWorkingProxies/) and through one of these proxies I have arrived at my blog and posted now! Yay. One of the benefits of being a member of yahoo.com i guess!

arriving at chennai central

2008-05-15T11:25:00.003+05:30

Early in the morning at around four my train pulls into Chennai Central Railway station slowly and swiftly. Everyone's tired after a night on the train, but upon getting off you realize you have to wake up as you have entered Chennai, a bustling city. Cellphones start ringing continuously, footsteps of people walking so fast are heard and everyone just wants to get to their destination as soon as possible. Yes, thats city life for you.

As soon as we walked out of the station, a whole bunch of Autorickshaw drivers surround us asking if we need to take an auto. One of my friends asked how much it takes to go to DMS (about 3 ks from the station) and the guys ripped us off charging us 135 rupees (the rate at the prepaid stand was 66 rupees, so obviously he took the auto from there). The thing I don't understand about these auto rickshaw guys is why they try to rip people off. Mostly people know what the standard rate is to go to a certain place as they know it from someone of that area or they themselves know the rate. So if these guys are going to rip people off they're not going to get any customers. Why don't they just play it fair and charge the standard rates? If they do this they'll get customers easily and they don't have to waste their time. As in the case of chennai central these guys waiting outside could just wait at the prepaid auto stand where they can be sure of customers. These guys represent the nation perfectly, where the bulk of people don't like to work or accept any change in policy and the other few good ones are suppressed by these bad ones.

Well thats it with the auto guys. And so my friends went home while i crossed over to the suburban rail and made my way home on the beautiful trains of chennai.

garbage everywhere

2008-05-15T09:54:00.006+05:30

Probably if you live in India or you have been to India, you probably see one thing everywhere. Garbage.. Yes, its everywhere and its very saddening to see. I don't know why the government doesn't set up a waste management system. Don't they find it irritating at all to see garbage everywhere? They want to improve the tourism in India but even tourists spots are filled with garbage. I just went to Yercaud (hill station in Tamilnadu) and even it was filled with garbage along the lake area (photo on the top left). However the government isn't the only one to be blamed. Even people are to be blamed. In Chennai Central station there are dustbins in many places but people don't look for dustbins and just throw away their garbage on the rails (second photo on top left). Something should be done regarding this waste management. Perhaps someone can come up with some kind of waste management system that can be converted into a business (this would help keep the country clean and get some cash circulating). Or maybe even a very heavy fine that is enforced properly by some monitoring body (that can only be put into place if there are proper disposal means everywhere.)

21G on a sunday evening.

2008-04-20T21:05:00.002+05:30

I was very surprised as i had to wait more than 10 minutes at the Mylapore tank bus stop this evening(just a few hours ago). Well i expected longer than the usual 2 minute wait as it was a sunday today but i didnt expect a long wait (as i had today). According to the electronic display on the bus stop the bus was supposed to come at 2005 but one came at 1955. ok enough of the intro.. The bus was damn full and I managed to squeeze into the footboard. Nothing unusual for the frequent commuter at chennai. . . . So i was listening to my music and all of a sudden i hear a lot of noise through my in-ear headphones. I take them off and i see that it was a fight between two adults (of separate families, thank god no internal family affairs being disputed in public... thats the last thing we want in a MTC (metropolitan transport corporation) bus). ok so basically the problem was that the little kids (who were very small) were being smashed due to the heavy crowds. So everyone was watching it, even the guys who were sitting down. One of those people could have been considerate to get up and offer them a seat. Unfortunately i didn't get the opportunity to do this as i was a standing passenger who made my way from the footboard into the bus! :). So afterwards the crowd reduced and all this came to an end, but the point is there should be some code of conduct followed by people traveling on public transport which should include the following:

- giving seats to elderly, handicapped and parents with infants if there are none
- Going inside to the middle of the bus when there is a large crowd
- holding others luggage (bags) if there is a very big crowd and the bags are being smashed.

and so on...

I'm hungry!! I sure do deserve something to eat after getting good exercise from using the Chennai MTC. Tata for now!

Cycle tests at NITT

2008-03-28T19:39:00.002+05:30

...And so went the second cycle test of this semester. Down here at NITT (and in many other engineering colleges of India) we have something called cycle tests. There are two cycle tests per semester and followed by that is a semester examination. In NITT 2 cycle tests are worth 20 marks each, assignment is worth 10 marks and the semester exams are worth 50 marks. This is what the administration call "continuous assessment". Cycle tests are spread about a month away from each other. So one would think that we would be studying every day's class notes and be well prepared for the tests. But thats not true. In fact, most students study the night before the test, either by mugging the concepts or just loading the stuff into their short term memory (so they probably forget the stuff the next day). And the questions they ask also are very bad. For subjects like thermodynamics, one of my friends today was saying that they had all theory questions and no problems at all. Come on thats not thermodynamics! The evaluation is also pretty bad. Faculty don't really give marks that you deserve and take off huge chunks just because you made a small mistake. Getting back to the studying in the last minute, its obviously because very few people are interested in the subjects. Some were forced to take it due to AIEEE ranks or family pressures, but the majority weren't. The faculty here deals with a subject in such a poor manner that even someone interested would become uninterested in it. Obviously there are exceptions but I'm not naming the good ones and the bad ones. So I always want to start off early and take the subject on myself for every cycle test but it just never happens as I just don't have the slightest inclination to open the books and read. This is what happens with everyone and so they study at the last minute. The college's academic system has to undergo a major change: more marks should be given towards assignment related work (not just assignments in which we handwrite the book over again) and a much better faculty would do us all good only. So if anyone is interested in coming to NITT and studying, I highly doubt you'd get studying in this type of atmosphere. Hopefully at least for the next cycle test I deal with the subject properly. Well at least thats what I've been saying for the past three semesters (6 cycle tests)

Tamilians laugh at themselves

2008-03-23T20:23:00.005+05:30

Yesterday on NDTV 24*7 there was a news report on Abdul Kalam appreciating vivek for his comedy as he sent out social messages to people through his comedy. So I then paid attention to the comedy that vivek made in comedy clippings and movies on TV this weekend. Many of the jokes vivek actually make are about us tamil people but he does it in such a subtle way that it doesn't make us think like that. However people take it blindly as a joke and they laugh at it. The catch is that they don't realize that they're part of the people he is making fun of. Ok maybe not all jokes make fun of every tamil person but some joke or other must apply to a particular person. But we don't realize this and we keep laughing and laughing at our own society and culture.

Trichy skies

2008-03-21T18:45:00.004+05:30

For the past few days, as I walked towards my hostel(dorm) I noticed something. The skies were so low (the pic). It used to feel so good, as if you're walking towards the sky or as if the sky is right in front of you and you just have to take a step or 2 to catch it. I wonder why the sky appears to be so low. Maybe because of the humidity, maybe because of the low pollution. But whatever it is, the sky appears to be much more healthy and good looking than it is up here in Chennai or how it used to be back in Guangzhou, China (GZ as they call it). That's one real big reason live outside the city
: the freshness and the clean air. I really appreciate it and I hope many other do too. You can actually feel the difference in weather and air quality if you live in a place like NIT Trichy or some other place outside in the suburbs especially when you go to a city or a congested area.

CT Studying time

2008-03-21T08:19:00.005+05:30

And so its cycle test time (CTs as we call them at college). Yes, cycle tests are next wednesday (March 26) at NITT. These are tests that are one hour long and count for 20% of our final grade. They come twice a semester (2 cycle tests a semester). People usually start studying for them about a week before the tests and some of the brainy ones, 3 to four days before. So I have to start studying.

My blog

2008-03-18T19:55:00.008+05:30

Yesterday i attended a guest lecture on blogging by Ms. Rashmi Bansal, editor of the JAM (just another magazine, not Just a Minute if you get what i mean :P) on blogging. I wanted to get to know what the benefits of blogging actually were so I went. First she gave a general overview on blogging which was perfect for newbies like me and she then went on to assess people's blogs. During the guest lecture itself i decided that I would create a blog. I had a vague memory of creating a blog some four years ago which is what that previous "test" post was so i tried it today. And so here it is! My blog, Arvind Thinks out Loud. I want to use this blog to put out my views on anything i see or do, so that I can actually be heard by others as I'm in a place (NIT Trichy) where not much discussion, speech and freedom is given in terms of what you say to others (meaning the faculty and staff etc). Hopefully I can make a good footprint online and get good input from others on what i think.