Power outage @ VA

An hour or two of thunderstorm late night on friday, knocked the living daylights out of the DC metro area. The northern VA area where i live, we lost power at around 10:30pm on Friday. Its past 10:30 am on Sunday morning, 36hrs later, we are still out of power.
The pic below is from Panera Bread store in Tysons Corner, my temporary home. Also home to a long line of people, who are trying to get some food, an electric outlet to charge the phones and other essential devices and also surf the internet, the only social life many of us seem to have these days.

I observed a peculiar facet of us, human beings. At first, all i wanted was power (electricity) so i could get some food to eat and hot water to bathe and clean. When i had access to this, from a friends house, i was peeved that there was no internet and or cable. Am sure if cable or internet was available, i might complain that it was slow or there was nothing good on it. Somewhere in the middle of all this, i also lost all my battery charge on my cell phone. Guess how depressed and depraved i should have been.

Men (human beings), you cant have it and you cant have it.

Gopuram to an Emblem

A few years back, i was traveling from Madurai to Thenkasi. I had caught the early morning flight from Chennai, and hence was enjoying the bright morning drive with my window down. Long drive meant chit chat with the driver. I was also enjoying my first few glimpses of this part of Tamil Nadu.

Srivilliputhur is enroute. The gopuram of this Andal temple was towering above the many small hamlets and buildings surrounding it. It is one of the tallest (second tallest) temple towers in Tamil Nadu. The town is also apparently famous for its paal-kova.

I was straining my neck out of the window to soak in the entire height of the gopuram, when the driver asked if i wanted to stop and visit the temple. I would have loved to, but i passed, for want of time. To be fair and consistent, i also denied his offer to stop and pick up some of the famous paal-kova. Although that was a little bit more difficult choice to make.

It was then that the driver announced, "the gopuram from this temple figures prominently in the Emblem of Tamil Nadu". I was racking my brains to recollect the emblem. I did a double take from the window of the car, trying to comprehend what the driver had said. I must have seen the emblem a million times, specially on the side of PTC buses and also elsewhere, but never really noticed the gopuram in the emblem.

While i quickly forgot the place and location soon, i never forgot this connection. It took me until now, to lookup and locate the name of the town, temple and gopuram again. Unfortunately the government sites do not carry a lot of information about the emblem and its creation. There are references to the emblem in the temple town's website. But that's just a one liner. Most other references are far and few, and difficult to authenticate.

The only real good thing that my search threw up, was on the creator of the emblem. Artist, R. Krishna Rao, asserts to have designed the emblem for the State of Tamil Nadu in 1949. The emblem and its design was in the news recently, because of its overtly religious symbol.

Girls outshine boys

This year too, girls outscored boys in the XII exams in the state of Tamil Nadu. This has been a reoccurring theme every year, for quite sometime. I dont quite recall a time, when boys ever scored more.
When i saw the picture below in The Hindu, i was suddenly filled with a sense of pride and happiness.

Susmitha from Namakkal topped the exams by scoring 1,189 out of 1,200 marks

Small town girls, reveling and partaking in their friends success. If every small town shared similar success and girls from these places truly know their place in society, what a better place this world would be.

Yet, it is disheartening to note that this self-confidence is left by the wayside of life. And we remain forever a male dominated society, reducing women to mere vassals in a larger scheme. I long for this situation to change. Many ills of our society are driven by the male ego, and hence i feel the world would be a better place without that.

Looking forward. Hoping these cheering girls would lead that change. Good luck to Susmitha and all those girls who successfully took on this years class XII exams.

PTC

Three thousand new buses in Tamil Nadu. Excited on seeing this news, i wanted a quick peek at the new buses. Only to find this picture below. Now that leaves me wondering, what is new about these buses !

I would thought new buses would look something like this below:

Democrazy

Its not real. Its just a crazy demonstration. There are no rights, limited duties and most importantly, the answer must always to be the question "Ask not what your large corporations can do for you? Ask what you can get the country to do for the large corporations?".

Facing the Voters in 2012
Patrick Chappatte - International Herald Tribune

A whole bunch of fools, the crazy part of the democrazy, are going to vote, thinking they can make a difference. All the best.

ICICI Security Services (Formerly called ICICI Bank)

Below is my favourite ICICI Screen. I see this screen most times i try to logon to ICICI Bank account. It is difficult to determine the exact cause of this phenomenon. Recently i have noticed that its appearance and chances have increased manifold.

Not willing to take anything for granted, i call the friendly neigbhourhood customer service specialist, of course the one who is responsible for ICICI. I have noticed a few things, about them, from this call and from my experience in the past.

• They are not friendly. Even common courtesy of hello, good morning, and or evening is stated so fast, one wonders if they even mean a word of it.
• Rarely in the neighbourhood. They are usually located in Gurgoan or some other far surburb of a large metro, usually very fluent in Hindi, with decent grasp of the english sentences they are trained to utter. 
• Customer Service according to them, starts with a 'No'. And if possible will take 24 to 48 hours to activate. 
• The only thing they are a specialist of is saying "It is for your own security". Or may be, if pushed "Please provide me your details, so i can authenticate your profile".

I have never seen a bank who is more bothered about my security, than their own. What is the use of a user-id and a password, if you have to provide additional authentication every-time you log on to their system.

The customer service specialist who appears on the phone, after repeated authentication of yourself, starting with the 16 digit debit card number and the 4 digit pin provided only to you, in a special secure envelope and cover. This is sent you separately from the plastic card to ensure zero abuse.
You would think that, after having spent a lifetime entering so many digits on the phone, that when someone says hello they know who you are and some relevant details. Thats not always the case, and most times you may have to begin again by providing more information, your name, address - full postal address, right down to the last digit of the pin code, registered mobile number and email id.
In the past, i have been advised after a long call wait, and entry of all relevant information. Sir you have reached the local banking line, the NRI special line, can provide you more detailed information regarding your NRI account. My pleas of "no i dont want special information", and only "wanting normal information", would fall on deaf ears. At this point they would simply repeat what they told me before.

Invariably everything i have always wanted done, was very secure and cannot be accomplished, because in some way it would compromise my security. I am wondering if ICICI should start operating our RAW and IB. They could help, considering all the years of expertise built on defending their bank from their own customers.

I am used to the good old days of being greeted by an account manager, clerk, teller, etc. So a small mistake in your signature, bad handwriting and even lack of funds were not a problem that couldnt be overcome. Like the video, from an advertisement that runs on Indian TV channels, sometimes "peeche account number likho", can work wonders.
I am also familiar and happy with the internet banking. I have used citibank, chase and bank of america in the US. The service over the internet is based on a paranoid design. They do allow the user to change email ids and passwords without a slew of harassing questions. Its also possible to make a mistake and recover, without having to endure the same. 

Prosperity Measured

Saw this interesting table/graphic in The Hindu, this week. The title of the article will be the matter of another blog. What is interesting is the progress that India has made in the acquisition of material wealth.
For quite a many years i have been reading and hearing that Indians are typically spiritual and have a better understanding about material wealth. I quite believed then, and this is  good proof now, that we were spiritual only because wealth was non existent in India, up until the fag end of the twentieth century.

The prosperity ensued by the crass pursuit of capital, has helped bring out the true human spirit, greed. I first heard this, many years back, in my economics class, greed is the biggest driver for a prosperous economy. So i guess the wheel has begun moving, and remember, there is no getting off. Enjoy the ride fellow Indians.

 

Lost millions in Apple stock

I am sure the news that the Apple stock hit 500$ per share and zoomed past it, is all old news now. However, no one seems to understand or comprehend the amount of money that could have been mine.

Ya. My bright instincts told me buy the stock when it was in double digits. I did. And some even brighter set of instincts told me to sell the stock when it reached or touched 300$. I did. But i cheated, and sold only half of what i held at that time. Well, so i made a killing in that sale. Only to curse my instincts soon after. So the AAPL stock has set new highs, just short of the 550$ mark.
I could have been a multi-millionaire now, only if i had a few millions to start with, and more importantly a set of instincts that actually worked. Damn it.

End your Fast, Anna

Amul's topical advertisement, apt as usual. It gains more credence, today, after the Lok Sabha passed a version of the Lokpal. Its clear that the government of the day is not keen to address the issue of corruption.

Anna, break your fast today, the country needs you to fight again. The issue is far from solved, in fact, the war has just begun.

7 Billion today

The world population will cross 7 Billion today. There is a lot of news and hype that the 7th billion baby will be born in India. The graph below (courtesy UN) shows why. In less than 10 years, India will be the largest, the numero uno with respect to population in the world.

Population Projections for India and China - United Nations

Below graphs show a bit more details, the different parameters related to the population metrics for India.

We have a long way to go, before we can control our population and turn this thing around.