Chronicles - Cursed - Online - Barnes and Noble

I will admit at the very beginning, I am as guilty as anyone else of the thing I am about to write.

Yesterday, to entice Avni to come with me to Costco I promised her the box book set of “Chronicles of Narnia”. While in Costco we realized they were out of stock but the book set was available on their website and could be delivered home in a few days. Being still slightly old school and considering yesterday was Father’s Day, I decided to call my old time/all time favorite bookshop Barnes and Noble on Brodie Ln and they said they have it in stock.

When we arrived at Barnes and Nobles, it was as though old memories were gushing through all at once, the times I used to spend there picking out the classics, enjoying the coffee and even waiting in line for the final book of Harry Potter. Some how the fresh book smell was quite intoxicating. The place in itself hasn’t change much at all and as always has been the staff was very friendly and they had the book set we were looking for but the cost was almost 3x of what Costco was selling and one can argue that's the reason they are not growing and may go out of business (that would be a sad depressing day when it happens). Since we were in the bookstore and I wasn’t ready to spend 3x over a box set of books I had no idea if either me or Avni will read the books I asked them if they had a copy of the book “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”, a long time ask from Avni and I had been delaying for reasons unknown. They had and we bought the hard bound book and left the store.

I want to end the blog post with an appeal to all my book reading friends, Kindle and other reading apps and Amazon prime and all are great and wonderful but there is definitely great value in keeping a brick and mortar bookshop open. For one it is a great asset for the future generations and also a place where we spent our time exploring our interests and maybe even stumbled upon something that was totally unrelated to what we wanted but it expanded our horizons in other ways. Yes online is cheap and Amazon does a fine job of delivering in 2 days or even 1 day but considering books are such a tiny fraction of ones living expense the savings we make from this alone will not make you a millionaire or conversely will not break the bank either. If one plays the card of save the planet, I am sure both of us know that there are ten thousand better ways to do the same :).   

Freakonomics Dr. Raghu Rajan

I admit, I am a huge fan of Freakonomics radio and never miss their podcast (listening for the past year or so). I like the way host Stephen Dubner asks questions and doesn’t hesitate to put the guests in an uncomfortable situation during the interview process and in general always adds a different perspective to the topic at question.

Full disclaimer, I am did not live in India during Demonetization and quite frankly nor did Dr. Rajan.

So, this week Dr. Rajan was interviewed on Freakonomics radio and as with all things one of the topic discussed was the big Demonetization effort that happened in India 2 years ago. The nation was shocked at the sudden move and me personally thought that was a bold move and a much needed move to increase the tax base and make economy more transparent. Dr. Rajan did go on saying he was consulted and he had voiced his opinion strongly against the program for he was concerned about killing the parallel economy that runs on cash with people who do not even have bank accounts and also people would find a way of turning their stashed away money without paying taxes. He went on to say that the effort did destroy the economy of the cash transaction and 10-15 million jobs were lost in the process and a lot of them haven't been regained.

I agree with your comments Dr. Rajan but in what way will it be beneficial for the country to have 2 parallel economies? one formal where the government collects taxes and provides services with the money collected and other entirely out of the governments hand and no tax collected from that but only services availed? The question I believe Mr. Dubner failed to ask is about the widened tax base due to the Demonetization and didn’t the tax rates reduce in India overall? Also, what about the effect on counterfeit currencies and reduced naxalite activities (I am not talking of Pakistan supported terrorism in J and K)?, granted Mr. Dubner was interviewing Dr. Rajan with the point of view of the man who called the great recession of 2008 back in 2005 itself. Another point I didn’t really understand was when Dr. Rajan says the world has too many strong leaders and that somehow is bad for the world economy. Last one was Dr. Rajan claimed credit of his policies as RBI Governor for the current rate of inflation in India, I am not a financial expert but I thought when he was the governor the inflation was close to 7-8% and only in the last year or so inflation in India is 3-4%; Not even a paltry credit to the finance ministry Dr. Rajan?.

One last thing I believe Mr. Dubner should have realized is along with Demonetization came  with couple of other tighter controls on financial transactions, which I personally can vouch has made a difference. Example: the sky rocketing costs of real estate in India took a grinding halt and things started to become more realistic.

Maybe I am wrong, if I am then I know the one person who will enlighten me :).    

ps: I hadn’t heard him speak and I admit he has a great voice and now I know why media houses like NDTV love him.

Kiker Market Day

I wasn’t aware of this till Avni came to 2nd grade, market day at Kiker Elementary is 1 day in December when all 2nd graders put their entrepreneurship skills to test by making things and selling them. Ok, they don’t make/sell individually but in groups of 4. Parents and school provide the supplies, kids do the work under the guidance of the teacher and parent volunteer and they get to decide the price. Who are the customers? kids, parents of kids and teachers in the school are the customers for the market day. All proceeds will go to charity, not exactly sure who and how they pick the charities to support.

Considering all the kids in grade 2 are between the ages of 7-8, I wasn’t really sure as to what to expect from this big group but I was amazed at the talent that was showcased during market day. The entire cafeteria was filled with items for sale and by the time I entered at around 15mins after the sale started some of the kids had already put out sold out signs. There were fire breathing dragons, toy cars, book marks, Christmas ornaments, stress balls, Mancala games and so on.

All items were priced $1-$3, come to think of it I don’t remember seeing anything for greater than $3. Best part, kids got to decide the prices and they got to decide when they want to drop the price and so on.

Last I heard from Avni's class teacher, the second graders made an overall profit of $3100. If one thinks in terms dollars/sqft in 1 hour it is unbelievable. 

I am very happy to report all the things that Avni's class made were all sold out before the end of the market day. It definitely was a good combination or in engineering terms a resonance of kids talents and teachers encouragement. Great job Comets. 

My only gripe, why not do this for all the grades? why only second graders? :) 

ps: sorry I can’t post pictures due to privacy reasons :) 

Girl scout market place

Took Avni the other day to her second Girl Scout market place. Last year we went as buyers only and this year around we went in as sellers/buyers. For those who do not know, the market place is where the different troops of Girl Scouts put together items like arts/crafts/snacks for sale as a group to raise money for charity. Needless to say both the shoppers and the shop owners are all kids from Girl Scouts. I really do not know the max age limit of troops participating. The total event is about an hour to hour and fifteen minutes. 

The market place things like Chex mix snacks, Christmas tree ornaments, candies, simple games and one troop was selling marble necklaces. The interesting ones like the Tic Tac Toe and ornaments were on the expensive side with prices at $3 per item. While the simple ones like snacks were for $1. Needless to say the older kids had made more complex ones while the younger ones went for easy ones.

If you have ever heard Dave Ramsey on either radio or on podcasts you definitely would have heard him say “adults devise a plan and follow and children do what feels good. I could relate to what that meant watching the kids shopping with limited budget and going from stall to stall to see if they can buy the item sold or rather if they had the money to afford the same. Needless to say kids who started with inexpensive items at the start had more money to spare vs the other way round.  

About half way through the event some of the stalls started dropping prices to make the sale happen and some started giving buy one get one offers. One example I have is of the Tic Tac Toe game which started off at $3 per item eventually dropped to $2 per and with fifteen minutes to go went to $1 per item. Even at that price they still had a lot of items to be sold. Avni felt that it was not fair, for she had bought the game at $3 and if only she had waited she could have gotten the game for $1. and $2 to spare. I wonder if this is what we in the real world call bargain buy? But she corrected herself and said the kids have put in a lot of efforts to make the game and $3 is the fair price.

This begged the question, would they have been at an advantage to start off selling at $2? (Instead of starting at $3?). Even though I was apprehensive at the start but upon closer examination, I feel for the creative work and the effort involved the item probably would have sold on Etsy for $4 a piece. The market place they were aiming for is a limited window, limited audience and with very limited budget. Tic Tac Toe was just one example another one was the candy cane chocolate sledge which also was having similar effect.

Maybe that's the lesson for them? For Avni, I told her next time around it may be worth while to wait for sometime before making a buy :).

 

Wild Wild West – Netflix documentary

Back in 2003/early 2004, I remember arguing vehemently with my friend that “Bhagwan” Rajneesh wasn’t truly enlightened and was more half baked :). I was just too stubborn with my arguments and my friend had to agree with me just to end the argument. Come 2018 the documentary Wild Wild West on Netflix totally proved to me that I was right.

The documentary is a 6 part series starts from Poona ashram through Oregon experiment and ends with the death of Rajneesh. It is a great effort with capturing the story from a lot of perspectives including the followers, adversaries, interviews from those time and era, video clips from news casts in those days and so on. 

Overall I would say a well balanced view of the whole episode, worth a watch. It is disturbing at some levels specially if you are of spiritual oneself is an understatement.

Here are my n things

• Rajneesh (lets call him Mr. R for simplicity) didn’t leave India but was literally smuggled out of India in secret, no one knew where he went and all his visa applications were done in secret and flight also arranged in secret
• On the flight to USA, they celebrated with champagne, as a spiritual person I thought he would be aware that alcohol affects ones subconscious self 
• While his top aide Sheila was running the show in the Oregon Ranch by trying to rig elections, poisoning salad bars, plotting assassinations and so on, as her “guru” how come Mr. R wasn’t aware?
• His aide Sheila keeps repeating, I protected Mr. R while I was in charge of his safety, would an enlightened master really need protection and from what and who?
• Mr. R secluded himself in the ranch for almost 4 years and didn’t give a single public discourse during that time, Funny part that was the immigration case against him that he didn't do what he said he would be doing, giving discourses.. As a true master were you not interested in the growth of your disciples?
• Mr. R behaves as president or absentee CEO of a company who has the plausible deniability when all hell breaks loose and blame it on the underlings in this case Sheila. 
• Mr. R has fascination for finer things and the fascination doesn’t end till he owns it, the Rolls Royce, diamond watch and the list goes on. I am not saying he should not honor his devotees offerings but can he put forth a demand? I am not making this up it is one of the episodes “at one point the Hollywood people started showing up at the ashram and started showing Mr. R the different magazines with expensive things, Sheila had limited access to these for if Mr. R sees them he would want to have them”
• Towards the end when Sheila leaves the ranch after a series of failed experiments, Mr. R acts like a child who lost his favorite toy or as a scorned lover who is not able to handle the breakup gracefully. It is truly unbecoming of a spiritual master, to an extent one can argue he had a meltdown. Really, can a guru have a meltdown?
• In the end, when the law starts closing in on Mr. R, he does the same thing he did in India tries to fly away but USA is not India and they arrest him on his way out. I make fun of Saddam Hussein for hiding in a hole, our man as hiding behind the aircraft seat when they came to arrest him. Are you so afraid of death Mr. R?
• Mr. R while fighting the case in the court apparently said “if they fight fairly then I am willing to go to supreme court but I don’t think they will and (something about body can’t handle)”, wonderful I like that, if that were the case then why did you flee in your own personal aircraft?
• His death apparently was a case of slow-poisoning and no its not the American Government but his own network and himself are responsible     

I never had a great opinion of Mr. R and this documentary didn’t help the case in anyway. At a higher level, it was, as rightly pointed out was an experiment, that didn’t play out well. It was an experiment on how far one can push the envelope in the name of constitutional rights, an experiment on what happens when one only thinks of rights and forgets all about responsibilities, an experiment on what happens when you let the mind/ego dominate the entire process and not listen to the inner guidance.   

Always good to dust off an old book

For a while now I have transitioned to Kindle books and the my new fad is to switch to audio books (I am holding myself from doing that). Of course most books I have bought off late (in last 6-8 years) are non fiction related to finance, self improvement and the usual works. But I am proud to say I have a collection of paper back and hard bound books in my own small library. Considering the amount of time I spend these days in reading any book either kindle e-books or otherwise they have been eating dust :).

Anyways, I have become an avid listener to Dave Ramsey podcasts and he has been strongly advocating people to read a non fiction book for at the least 15 minutes a day. Come to think of it, it is a great habit and my father-in-law had recommended the same to me a decade ago and I had followed the advice for a while, as with everything in life fell off the band wagon.

With Facebook turned off, Twitter non existent and NPR given a boot, it appeared I had more time in hand and decided to pickup the reading habit again. This time around instead of picking up the ipad-mini and launching the kindle app I went down to my mini library and picked up a non-fiction book.  I had bought this one more than a decade ago and never turned more than 10 pages of the same. For the first couple of days, I literally had to drag myself to keep the book in hand for 15-20 minutes before bed time but in the last week or so I got into the groove and love reading this book.

The one wonderful unintended consequence of my new reading habit is it has caught Avni’s attention and she wants to know what is her dad reading? mind you I have had the ipad for almost 3-4 years and have read few books through kindle app on my ipad but it has rarely spiked her interest. I am guessing a combination of her age and her own reading habits that she has been questioning me constantly about what I am reading? and wants me to explain to her what I am reading? Indeed I am not successful yet at that. 

Anyways, moral of the story is "kindle, audible and other apps are good but sometimes a good old fashioned hardbound book is a great investment too".  

Movie review Padmavat

I really wanted to watch the movie in the theater but somehow missed the boat and finally caught up to it on Amazon Prime. If I can summarize the movie in one sentence “it is plain stupid” or as I told my relatives in Kannada “ಪೆದ್ದು  ಪೆದ್ದಾಗಿ  ಮಾಡಿದಾರೆ ”.

After watching the movie Sri Sri Ravishankar gave a green light, I would have told Mr. SLB to go back to the drawing board and make it a bit more realistic. Half way through the movie I lost interest, which I rarely do in a period drama.

Here are my top N things that I couldn’t comprehend in my logical brain

• The king of Chittor is in present day Lanka to get pearls and went for hunting, why was he alone where were his body guards? the same goes for the princess.
• When Ala-uddin lays siege on Chittor first time, why didn’t he come with siege equipment?, he had an insider to help and didn’t that insider give him tips on the kind of fortress he will be attacking?
• Fine he didn’t bring first time, but the siege was for frigging 6 long months and no one thought of getting them or building them?
• Rajputs knew in and out of Ala-uddin and Malik Kafur but they didn’t know who the traitor helping him and they all act surprised when they see him.
• When the Rajaguru was thrown out of kingdom why wasn’t there anyone following him, essentially where was the intelligence network
• The king goes to meet Aladdin in his almost burned out camp, so why were the body guards not surrounding the camp but were standing 200 feet away on one side?
• Besides why did the king go without his sword?, Ala-uddin didn’t put that condition to him.
• The last battle is beyond saving, the king no longer is the king but a lover fighting to save glory of his beloved.
• The contrast they have tried to show between Padmavati and the other wife of the king seems to be drawn from Ekta Kapoor’s serials.
• Escape from the prison in Delhi is totally laughable.

There are a few more but not worth my time. In the end, if you haven’t seen it, don’t waste your time. If you have, my sympathies for you.

ಆರ್ಥ ಅಥವಾ ಅನುವಾದ (Understand or Translate)

To put a disclaimer at the very beginning, this line of thinking did not come to me till recent past. Also, this blog post is more exploratory than any conclusion I may have reached.

Growing up in India with language of instruction being English, we all were by default bi-lingual. When it came to academics parents and teachers always told us don’t just learn things by-heart or mug-up but understand and read it. That’s a great idea and wonderful concept but what did they really mean?. 

So, what does it mean to understand some concept? at the time when I was studying if I can explain what I am reading in Kannada (my mother tongue) then I have understood. But that only meant translating doesn’t it?.

I remember reading a quote from Dr. Richard Feynman that “if you cannot explain to the person sitting next to you in a bar as to what you do for living, then you do not know what you are doing for living”. That’s wonderful, if I can claim I understood it, I would say “I should be able to explain to a random person with no background in my field as to what I do for a living” .

Another school of thought that came from my daughters school is from her school Principal, her quote “I want my students to explain what they are doing and why they are doing it in their own words, if that is done then the teachers work is done”. This is wonderful too.    

One can argue that concept of understanding differs from subject to subject, for example mathematics at the basic level of addition, subtractions and multiplications is all about repetition and more repetition at higher level with fractions and all one can get some chance of explaining what they are trying to accomplish. Social studies in my extensive thought, one can only learn by by-heart for the level of understanding of the implications of whatever we study will change as we grow older, so at a young age by-heart so that when you get older you can recall and amuse yourself or deepen your understanding. 

Science is probably the only one which one can even make an attempt to understand and digest what we read and/or studied. One can understand the studied concept by setting up simple experiments, may be at home or collectively at school. 

In the end it boils down to, how would you know someone has understood what they have claimed to have studied :).

Tendencies of the mind - II

Back in the days, more than a decade ago when I did my very first Art of Living program, and then repeated multiple times, we were taught quite a few good behavioral aspects aka knowledge points, One of them appears to be circling in my mind for the last few weeks (if not months); It is the knowledge point about "Tendencies of the mind", one important tendency of the mind is to cling to the negative, other important tendency is to either completely in the past or in the future and never in the moment. I am sure the course taught a few more things.

That said, one other thing I realized is the tendency to categorize and label anything and everything (including itself). To elaborate, growing up in India and specially in south of India there were always few tensions between people, one had to do with  language (Kannada vs Tamil) and other with geographic location of your specific city in the Indian subcontinent (north vs south). As some one rightly put it, I became an Indian only after I left India. Living in America for almost 2 decades now, I have realized this place is no different, there are tensions between people but may be for slightly different reasons.

This made me think further and I realized, the human mind cannot and will not rest until it has categorized anything and everything around it. In the early days of civilization it wanted to categorize based on the color of skin, type of attire and then as civilization grew and expanded came  the division on occupation and with trade came the division based on location and later with the more industrial world and “intellectual” world, it became about the belief system (philosopher, intellectual, poet, activist, pacifist, communist, liberal, conservative and so on) then when the mind became even more evolved it started categorizing further and refining it even more, “fiscally conservative’', “religiously conservative”, “animal rights activist”, “women’s rights activist”, “right leaning”, “left leaning”, “extreme right wing”, “extreme left wing” and so on. Needless to say in between some where came the rich vs poor and my other favorite one “religion and culture” (I believe they exist together). I am sure I have missed a few categories and the timeline may not be perfect, but I am hoping the reader got the idea. 

It is fascinating to see the evolution of the human mind, to some extent one can argue that as a collective, human mind is evolving towards finer and finer divisions only to realize nothing exists in the end :). It’s all hollow and empty.  

ps: the game mind plays when combined with Ego is even more fascinating. I will leave it there :)

Kannada and its uniqueness

Few weeks ago I saw a video on Facebook that was meant for promoting usage of Kannada in daily life by telling us Kannada names for vegetables and fruits that we use on a daily basis like Tomato, Beets, Carrot and so on. When I learned from the video that the common Tomato is called Goodhe hannu (ಗೂಧೆ ಹಣ್ಣು) in Kannada, I was super elated, I was proud of the fact that while present day scientists were debating till recently whether to qualify Tomato as a fruit or a vegetable, we kannadigas had already done the classification long long time ago and called it a fruit. 

Then came the hard hitting realization, in the language of Kannada, no fruit or vegetable has just names in 1 part (barring a few exceptions), they always have 2 part names. The first part is what we in other languages call their names and second part determines status of the fruit of vegetable like its ripeness (ಹಣ್ಣು , ಕಾಯಿ ) or whether it grows above of below ground (ಗೆಡ್ಡೆ , ಗೆಣಸು ) or its status of lentil (ಕಾಳು ) and so on. Examples are numerous to name a few ಬಾಳೆ ಹಣ್ಣು  (banana), ಬದನೆ ಕಾಯಿ (eggplant or brinjal), ಆಲೂ ಗೆಡ್ಡೆ  (potato),    

Why is such a big deal, it is some what because other languages like English or for that matter our own Indian language Hindi doesn’t follow this rule.

Let me demonstrate with an example, take the fruit Banana 

English: banana it usually means a ripe banana 

Hindi: kela, still means a ripe banana 

Kannada: if you want ripe banana you will have to say bale hannu (ಬಾಳೆ ಹಣ್ಣು)

Unripe bale kayi (ಬಾಳೆ ಕಾಯಿ)

Leaf bale yele (ಬಾಳೆ ಎಲೆ)

Simply saying bale (ಬಾಳೆ) doesn’t mean a thing for a true Kannadiga. 

I am sure the closely related languages of Telugu and Tamil probably follow the same rules. Wonder if there are other languages which follow same rules.

Frozen vegetables

A while ago we had a discussion in our friends group on frozen stuff. We all were unanimous on prepared frozen food and the vote was a no. 

The votes divided when it came to frozen vegetables, some of us were all fresh and some others were arguing that if they are properly packed then they contain all the nutrients and hence what is the harm?. The discussion ended with Ayurveda says fresh is good. 

After all the time that has passed, couple of days ago I realized that when a fresh vegetable is frozen it is essentially dead. On the other hand when a fruit, vegetable or a green is plucked from the plant, it still has some life which is evident from the veggies ripening after being plucked or the evident fact that greens are able to fight off bacteria and other microbes for a couple of days after being plucked. 

Now my question or dilemma is, how important is for the plant to have some form of life left in it for our consumption? or rather does it make a difference apart from the taste? 

Pragathi and the slip ups :)

Yesterday I was attending a charity event of Pragathi a non profit organization that spear heads providing education in underprivileged areas of state of Karnataka. 

All great, hats off to their efforts and the scale of their work is just mind blowing, all was  good till they started talking about their new initiative. The initiative to teach English to underprivileged children along with Kannada and math is definitely an appreciative incentive. 

The narrator for this new initiative started with his and his partners journey to India and they visited a village near T. Narasipura in Mysore district and they visited a colony of “untouchables”, he  translated to Kannada "ಹೊಲೆಯರಗೇರಿ", the narrator mentioned that it was not all dirty but pretty clean, in that location lived the winner of the scholarship who is the daughter of a child bride whose dad passed away while she was young. The presentation narrated the hardships the mother faced after her husbands death and despite all odds how she has managed to bring up 2 well educated children.  The narrator ended the story with how the essay winner girl in question cannot achieve her full potential and that is solely because she lacks knowledge of English language and we can make a difference in lives of such people. 

Wonderful, I am all for this initiative and I have heard time and again from my dad about one of our own village boys who is unable to secure a job despite being an under graduate degree holder himself and reason being he cannot communicate in English.

The question I have is, what impact the presentation would have had if the presenter hadn’t mentioned the girls caste? The funny part is that the narrator failed to name the girls village or her name but was first to highlight untouchability.

Considering we are in 21st century India and we have had freedom for last 60 years and enough government sops in the name of caste, including but not limited to cement roads in their neighborhoods and affordable housing under different government schemes, are they really truly still untouchables?

To top it all, the girls brother holds an under graduate degree and is currently unemployed (I don’t understand how is it even possible, but that’s a different topic). Where and how did he study? or for that matter the girl who wrote the essay. is she being discriminated for being an “untouchable”? if yes how did she even write an award winning essay?

Considering the presentation was made here in USA in a 3rd country and mostly to Kannada people, could they have not used better words?

Is Pragati for all its forward and progressive thinking wants to go backwards by naming the caste of the person who is smart and intelligent?

Maybe I am over reacting but considering I have lived in USA for last 18 years and have attended multiple such charity events be it from AID or ASHA or Art of Living among others, I have always heard words like underprivileged and economically backwards but never the blatant mention of ones religion let alone caste. I always look at politicians from India specially from Congress party and call them pseudo secular's but this small incident yesterday made me realize such people are not 24 hours by flight away but much closer than I imagine.

I am hoping it was just a slip and no special intent behind mentioning those words.

Printer Cartridge update 2

Remember my post on refilled cartridges back over a year ago, shortly after I published the post the ink went dry and this time in month of August I went ahead and bought new cartridges. 

I am happy to say, they lasted almost 14 months, they went dry couple of days ago. In the end of this experiment, my conclusion is refilling a cartridge is worth while once, twice or max thrice beyond that one is better off buying new cartridges. 

Everything I ever needed to know, I learned in Kindergarten . . . .

No, not me saying but my daughter’s class sang in their end of year graduation party. Yes it was a sweet and sour moment, sweet for the 22 kids spent almost 10 months of their lives, 5 days a week and 7 hours of their day together as part of a class with the very wonderful Ms. Andrea Bredl (Ms. Bredl for short) and they are ready to move on to next level. 

I am amazed at the transformation Avni has gone through the school year, besides academics (reading, writing and math), she made lots of new friends, performed science experiments, attended field trips and plays, performed in a play, played in Kinder Rodeo and so much more. Oh did I tell you, she pulled off a very successful surprise mothers day party in 2017? and more importantly it was meticulously planned over a 3 week period.

I am thankful to Ms. Bredl for making my daughter a science enthusiast and more importantly a gardener. Evidence, here is the crystal she grew using borax powder and the lima bean plant she grew from seed at school and now thriving in our backyard.

Congratulations Avni on your graduation.

School uniforms . . . .

Back in India during my school years, we always wore uniforms to schools and there were special occasions when we were allowed clothes other than uniforms. As much as the uniforms were a great idea for it showed "equality" among students (not mine, some teacher in my high school days had portrayed it) . On the contrary, parents had their ways of showing their affordability even in the plain bland uniforms and of course it didn't bother us kids at all.

Looking back the school uniforms had both strengths and weaknesses

• It always was a night mare right before the end of summer and a mad rush to the special stores selling school uniforms or rush to our favorite tailors to get them stitched right before the school started.
• If by any chance you made a mess of that uniform, you essentially had nothing to wear to the school next day (who would keep multiple school uniforms)
• It made discrimination much easier than you can imagine. For ex: between 2 kids one with a random school uniform and another with "good" school uniform any misbehavior the "good" school uniform attracted harsher criticisms and if needed punishment or viceversa
• When we have multiple schools within walking distances of each other, for teachers they served the purpose of identifying our kids and other kids
• It did serve as an economy booster and kept the tailors and cloth merchants/makers in business
• The school density at some point became so high in Bangalore that the schools were finding it hard to differentiate their uniforms from others and were playing all sort of tricks to keep it that way (like adding a tie, changing shoe color, making the shirt to a tad different shade)

One can argue, the economics of the day demanded school uniforms for it was easier on parents pockets. I argue differently it wasn't the economics but the ability to differentiate between schools is what drove the school uniforms existence and the reason they are still thriving in urban India.

Now the question what prompted this post? Today was second round of  Lemonade play at school and for that all kids from kindergarten were dressed up in blue and white while the teachers were in blue and black. So, Kiker elementary had some uniform for kindergartners today :) . 

Kejriwal and EVM tampering

For the elections in UP among other states, AAP claims the polls were rigged with the EVM (electronic voting machines) and they even had one of their nerdy MLA to build up a mock EVM and demonstrate in the Delhi assembly as to how it can be hacked. I was very keen to understand the modus operandi and did watch the video on NDTV. For starters media got it wrong, he never said swap the motherboard. His contention is “there is a code that can be programmed to any EVM that will make sure all votes balloted will be counted in favor of one party only and no others”, he further goes to say “depending on where in the ballot list the party to be favored is listed the code will be different” and to quote his own words “tampering happens on election day after 10:00am and code will be entered by one of the party workers and not 2 days before when the EVM’s are mock tested in front of all contesting parties” .

I appreciate the MLA taking his time to build a mock EVM (sad, he didn’t get a loaner from election commission) and his effort and eloquence with which he explained the whole process. I am sure this is just a hoax and here is my data to prove it.

Assuming all above said is true, let’s take UP elections there were 403 seats and close to 2095 candidates from 20 odd parties contesting. For the whole of UP, there were 306 polling HQ’s and each had an average 400 or so polling booths and if I assume 5 EVM per polling booth it would be a total of 612,000 EVM to be tampered with.

So, I would need at a minimum 500000 (assuming some will vote multiple times) men/women (registered to vote) who are extremely disciplined, trusted and can be handed the code to enter to each EVM to be tampered. Again from the MLA’s own words the code is different depending on the serial order of your party on the ballot box and hence I cannot blanket distribute a code for all of them. So, we would need a minimum of 100-200 different numbers to be circulated among these folks.

For sake of argument, any party needs to win half the seats to be in majority. That could cut down the requirement to 310,000 add to that the collusion with the election officers in each polling booths and the hierarchy needed to maintain this many people in line and to expect not a single one of them come out to the media or threaten to come out on media. 

Are we kidding ourselves, even the Indian army cannot handle this kind of massive effort stealthily. One can argue the election happened in phases even then the number of people required to pull off a scam like this is truly mind boggling, I don’t understand why no one in the media is raising this question? 

Parking and parking

The Indian store on William C near Walgreens in setup in a real tight and heavy traffic area. Good for them for they seem to be getting great business and at the same time bad for us for the parking limited and those available are meant for extreme compacts let alone minivans. But that tight parking doesn't seem to bother lot of us for more than once I have witnessed a minivan trying to fit into a compact space, one time some guy parked his Odyssey so close to my sedan that there was literally 4 inches between the cars.

Yesterday was the peak when a lady squeezed her minivan between 2 cars hoping to avoid hitting one car but in the process got herself jammed with the car on the other side. She got so badly stuck that there was no way for her to getout without causing considerable damage to either her car or the other parked car.

I think the problem is 2 fold, one is our in built greed to park right in front of the store and walk the minimal distance to get in and out of the store. Second is the banning of one time use carry bags by the City of Austin. More than likely people forget their multi use carry-bags (like I do 100% of time) and our local Indian stores unlike HEB doesn't sell either.

So, solution to the cars getting damaged is for the Indian stores to start selling multi use carry bags :).

He came and we meditated

I remember during the last days of my tenure as Secretary for the Austin Steering Committee, we all were furiously working on a proposal to bring Sri Sri to town. At that time when we thought we almost had him coming, it got cancelled and then it changed again.  In short it was very chaotic at the micro level but with all these chaos came the much needed visit of Sri Sri to Austin (almost a decade later).

Yes he did make it to Austin this time, he addressed a gathering ~1000 people; with his usual innocence and charm he won over many more hearts than we ever imagined. There was chaos at the registration desk, there were concerns of “we need to usher in 1000 people in 25 minutes and make them comfortable”, there weren’t enough water mugs for the guests and all such small things. But there was one faith in me that kept saying, “this event is for Sri Sri, an enlightened soul, people will come, they will have a good time and this event will be long remembered” and I can have my registration lead to vouch for it, everything from the registration and ushering went as smoothly as it possibly can. All were seated, comfortable and ready to listen. The live music by Austin’s own Vishaal Sapuram was divine and while the MC’s were doing their best to keep the people entertained and engaged, the sun shone through when Sri Sri walked on to the stage. 

The meditation, the talk and the Q and A was addressed to an audience of close to ~1000 people yet the message felt as personal as though I am having an 1-on-1 conversation with him. He truly has the skill to bring spirituality down to a common man and make us feel we all are one with the bigger self. The lightening moment for me was when he said “make me a promise to look at everything from a bigger picture view”, at that moment I dropped all the complaints I had about the chaos, confusion, need-to-know information sharing and all negativity in general. It didn’t matter at all, it was all good and always good. The other best one was answer to an audience question “what is the sign of maturity to you?”, he said when all questions disappear that is sign of maturity.   

The best part for us was when his flight developed mechanical issues and he had to stay an extra night in Austin. I did get to witness him in a very personal setting and in an even more personal space when I was awarded the opportunity to drive with him to his hotel room. Since I am in the mood, one major take away from the intimate car ride were his words “you can’t put your hand in the fire and expect it not to burn you for you are a good person”, I will leave it to your interpretation.  

What is Focus

Focus, is to have your very good friend working out with you in the early morning hours and she repeatedly tries to greet you (3 times specifically) and you don't even notice that, let alone acknowledge her, for the only thing going on in your mind is, "will my left knee hold up till the end of the workout, was all that rolling worth it?". 

How easy is it to get hacked?

The below incident happened to me and is true

Other day I was getting back to my office from lunch break and my phone rang, the number that popped up was a 1-800 number. I usually ignore these kinds of calls, but to my bad luck I answered. The caller on other side had a very very thick accent and said he was calling me from AT&T and they are conducting a survey for customer satisfaction and so on, he also mentioned that there is a bill credit of $x per line for taking the survey. Considering I have been with AT&T for more than a decade and have been happy with their service, I was more than happy to answer a couple of questions. Towards the end of the “survey”, he mentioned I would be receiving a message with a number and I should repeat the same back to him to process my credit. I did receive the number and faithfully repeated the same to him. He said thanks and good bye and I did the same.

Once I came to office, I saw a series of emails that my account has been locked and need to be reactivated before I can use my phone. The idiotic me thought this was a hoax and when tried to call my wife it went to “AT&T Fraud Department”,  I cut the line and re tried with the same result. At this point I didn’t have a choice but to talk to the AT&T fraud department who explained to me the following

• Some one was trying to hack into my account and buy a phone on my account
• There is a pin number that is established between me and AT&T which should never be given to anyone at anytime
• There are apps out there that can make a phone call to have come from any number of your choice
• AT&T never calls people for a survey
• I have to go to the AT&T store with 2 forms of ID (DL and credit card would do) to get my account re-activated. Which I faithfully did and got my account back.

In retrospect, there were lot of red flags that should have triggered my defense mechanisms. For starters, the call came to me, I didn’t make the call; the guy on the other side had an extremely thick accent (even for outsourcing, it was bad), the bill credit of $x/line is ridiculous considering I have had to fight tooth and nail to get even $4.99 back from them. 

Of course all of these are hindsight, which in most cases is better than 20/20.