Random discussions

The business of heels

2012-01-06T20:51:00.004-05:00

It is funny to note the symbiotic relationship between various businesses as we have them today and the apparent ignorance of the general public in helping them grow at their expense. Recently I went into a retail store and as I was strolling by, I noticed the section with all types of support pads for your feet. Nothing wrong with that. Everyone has a right to customize the shoe they bought the other day and make it more comfortable. But what caught my attention were the n number of products for making heels comfortable to wear for the women. Think of a cushion for any part of the feet and it was available. As I understand from my wife, wearing heels is not very comfortable so one would require these AND one looks very sexy wearing heels. I see the point in that argument but what doesn't make sense to me is the entire chain of events which happens once a woman starts endorsing heels regularly.

I've had the good fortune of holding a heel in my hand and analyzing its shape and form. I was amazed at the poor design of this product which was supposed to make a woman look sexy. First, the front of the heel is generally so narrow that the normal 4 toes have to literally fight for space. Unfortunately, the fight resolves only when the big toe agrees to twist in a weird way and land on top of the next toe. Have these fights and resolutions a couple of times and one can very well start to see the beginnings of bunion. Given the popularity of heels, its not surprising to see the increasing number of bunions. Wait, I have never heard a man with bunions. Perhaps we know the reason now! Secondly, the material on the inside of the heel (the portion where the foot rests) is just a piece of wood with a fancy fabric cover on it. As I felt the form of the material, I remembered the wooden footwear (khorom) that monks used to wear ages ago. I used to think that there was a universal consensus and shift to shoes that cushions your steps. But what I had in my hand was defying that universal belief. No wonder one would need extra cushions! Thirdly, the oh-so-sexy design of the heel makes it impossible to walk around wearing them for a long time. Can you imagine walking on your toes for a long time? That is what the posture amounts to when a woman puts on heels. So in comes a second pair of boring-not-sexy-but-very-comfortable shoes. One can find them without fail hidden inside the faithful purse that follows a woman everywhere. This completes my analytical tirade but I still haven't got to the business part of the story.

As I was standing in that retail store, I realized how the medical industry, insurance business, shoe industry and shoe accessory industry were having a feast together. Women are encouraged to wear heels to look sexy. But they get bunions as a result of wearing them. So they go to see their doctor who very wisely advises her to get proper cushions for her heels. Maybe getting a physiotherapy is also on the table. So another business avenue. Every medical advice costs money and that's what the insurance businesses are for. The shoe accessory business starts flourishing. But it is still not possible to wear these heels for long. So the not-so-sexy-but-functional shoe business picks up as a daily wear and also as a post-heel trauma wear.

Well, it may not be this simple but you get the idea about the connection. It is an endless loop because women will always want to wear heels with or without knowing the repercussions. It is sad that in such a design obsessed era, style and fashion are becoming synonymous with uncomfortable and non-functional designs. Any takers for the challenge to design comfortable and functional fashion? You can start with designing comfortable heels...

What will people say?

2011-08-10T18:01:00.004-04:00

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"My child didn't come first! Now what will I tell my neighbors?". What a tragedy... for the child! Poor soul, having to study and compete not for the sake of learning but pleasing the neighbors. I've heard this remorseful complaint from so many parents now that I wonder if children are mere tools to help parents boast in front of others. Agreed that man is a social creature and needs to live in the society. Does that mean that everything needs to be "approved" by the society? For some people, yes. And this is not just in academics but virtually in every aspect of daily life. "What will people say" is a very common metric for evaluating ones actions. Does this metric reflect an insecurity that you don't "belong" to the society if you do something that might be scoffed at by that society? Is this a herd mentality? We all have our priorities in life. For some people who have been brought up with the belief that what the society says is the final word, societal acceptance is their priority. For them, there's nothing wrong in living the life from their neighbor's point of view. I wonder how that neighbor lives his/her life - from their neighbor's point of view? Where does this chain end? I feel that these people are not living their life but instead trying to follow a set of rules laid down by somebody else. Parents often try to "use" their children to realize their own dreams... fulfill promises they made to themselves but could not achieve for whatever reason. As if not happy with themselves following the rules, they want their children to follow them too. Well, they learned from their parents and now they are passing it on to their kids... I sometimes wonder that it is we who make the society so why do we still want to get "approved" by it?

Let's think about it for a second in a different context. We upload our picture on Facebook and then wait for people to come and comment on it, LIKE it and show their "approval". We don't put up anything that the Facebook society would not like, do we? No, because we want to stay in the good book of the society. In a time when "ratings" of all types (product ratings, movie ratings, personal ratings, ...) help us make our decisions, it is not surprising that we start living the life which the society has given the "top ratings" or "approved". So now, if our parents say "what will people say", is that a surprising thing? Maybe not, they are seeking the approval of the society that they are familiar with. But is it the right thing to do? Probably not, because then we lose our individuality and don't think for ourself anymore. Instead, we live our life like the society wants us to. Sounds a lot like a zombie being controlled by the society? It may very well be the case :)
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Darn! The blood test was negative...

2011-07-30T20:10:00.002-04:00

The quest to have a concrete definitive answer sometimes goes too far. Especially in the field of medicine where doctors generally recommend a bunch of tests in order to "eliminate possibilities". But what happens if all the tests come out to be negative and you still have the problem? Your body definitely isn't communicating to the doctor via the tests but it is surely needs help! Unfortunately, going by my personal experience over the last couple of months, doctors seem to understand just one language - test reports. So if your body isn't speaking that language then be ready to undergo more tests because until reports give a positive diagnosis, the doctors don't really know what's going on.

The old pump house magic

2011-07-11T07:29:00.004-04:00

Every morning at 5am, the old pump house across the park slowly came to life. It was almost magic in the wee hours of the morning where the plumber ("the magician" - Sharad bhayia) somehow brought the old machine to life. A couple of attempts were always needed and of course the machine complained everyday. There was almost a pattern to the magic - press the button followed by a loud noise of a motor as if it was almost going to come apart (though not a bang but a distinct shriek), then as if with a shift in gear and change of minds (accompanied by a full throttled shriek) the machine came to life. Once in a while when it was too tired to wake up that early, the magician had to pour some water on it and try again. There was no way that old machine could be left on its own because all of us depended on our daily water supply for it. The full throttled noise reassured everyone in the apartment compound that everything was going to be normal that day and it was time for people to get up and begin their day. A silent dawn meant trouble and so one day when the machine gave up in its attempt to start the day, all the people descended down in the park to offer their advice and help the magician. This was going to be a long day and sitting across the park, I just hoped that the old machine would have enough grease to come back to life once again and play that magic tune at 5 in the morning...

The ultimate consumer

2010-12-17T07:28:00.002-05:00

Definition of CONSUME

transitive verb

: to do away with completely : destroy consumedseveral buildings>

a : to spend wastefully : squanderb : use up consumed much of his time>

a : to eat or drink especially in great quantity <consumedseveral bags of pretzels>b : to enjoy avidly : devour consumes for fun — E. R. Lipson>

: to engage fully : engross <consumed with curiosity>

: to utilize as a customer <consume goods and services>

intransitive verb

: to waste or burn away : perish

: to utilize economic goods

I was thinking about the word "consume" and realized that it was an almost perfect definition for who I (or I guess any other human being!) was. From the time I get up in the morning, I start "consuming" food & water. I "consume" news and all sorts of info in my inbox. I "consume" the services of the public transportation later on while traveling to my college. There I "consume" knowledge [although I have a little trouble thinking of consuming knowledge but we can debate about that in another post :)]. I get "consumed" by my conversations with my friends and professors. If there's a party, I "consume" more STUFF Sometimes I also "consume" my time doing nothing! So more or less, I am a "consumer" of daily life...

But everything that I have just mentioned is all about me doing something with my life and I see people around me pretty much doing the same things. That's kind of selfish, isn't it? So, is being a consumer, an act of selfishness? We get so engrossed in our daily lives that we sometimes forget that we can be more than just consumers. We can give to people around us. But that generally comes secondary to our consumer nature.

As I am thinking about it more, I am beginning to question whether its really me who is the consumer or is it my life? Is my life "consuming" me? But how can that be different from me? I define what my life is and what I will do with my life. How can it be the other way round? I just feel that as we are going on with our daily life, our life starts controlling us more rather than the other way round. Take a very simple (and perhaps cliche) example - I work hard, earn lots of money and start traveling around the country just for fun (because I have money now!). Now I have defined what my life would be like. Now in order to keep that definition, my life makes me work harder so that I am able to visit more places and I try saving up more. I think about savings before spending money on anything. My consumption pattern is overshadowed by my life's consumption pattern. But is that a bad thing? I don't know. I like traveling but I'm not in favor of the idea of promoting my or my life's consumer instincts. Maybe if I couple the definition of life as a traveller with "giving" then it will be better. But then am I "consuming" (engrossing) myself in the act of giving???

Engineering v/s Hormones

2010-11-22T07:06:00.005-05:00

It's funny to think that WE (yeah... the grand "WE" - me, you , the person in front of you, etc.) are expected to perform our best when our bodies & minds are least prepared to do so. I'm talking about the undergraduates - yup, the one in front of you or even the one you have left behind as your past. The have to deal with the hormonal craziness of a teenager and the emotional upheavals as a result as well as go through the undergrad drill and grill. Not being sure of what they want to do with life doesn't help either. All of us go through this stage and it's a weird feeling but no one seems to remember their experiences!

A typical Sunday morning start - quite atypical in US...

2010-11-21T07:38:00.006-05:00

The darkness of the night has not yet passed by and the halogen lamps on the street are shining brightly. The silence of the pre-dawn hours is periodically broken by the call of the flying bats. The sky is trying hard to keep itself wrapped in the star-studded blanket as the sparrows and crows gradually announce the arrival of dawn. The 'dong-dong' sound of the temple bell hitches a ride with the gentle breeze. I hear more bells as the priest conducts the morning prayers. A distinct voice blows over the morning dew - 'Allah-o-akbar', announcing the first hour of prayers. The radio begins to crackle from one of the houses and an energetic female voice sputters the morning news. The sky has turned crimson red now. The sparrows start their day early and hop on the cemented road looking for worms, wary of the cat walking by. The crows are not amused by the feline presence either and make a rucus from their vantage position atop the cable TV wire crisscrossing overhead. Bang! Something heavy seems to have landed on the front verandah. I decide to jump on this morning bandwagon and pull myself out of the bed. The Sunday morning newspaper is lying on the verandah... it's quite a fat package! Looks like it decided to pick up a couple of Morning Glory leaves for me while it was on its arial route to the verandah. The newspaper bhaiya surely knows how to wish good-morning! I spread out the newspaper on the table and tune in to the happenings over the world. So much seems to have happened while the sky was trying to hold on to its star-studded blanket! The crows are still making a rucus about the cat so they obviously don't care about anything else that goes on in the world. As I flip through the first page of the newspaper, I wonder if the crows are really the wise ones. Knowing the misdeeds of a politician is not that much fun. The feline furry four legged animal is actually worth paying more attention to. I see it slip by the sunflower plants, eagerly looking for something to eat. I return to the cartoon section, chai and hot aloo parantha. There's nothing more wonderful than this trio.

Sitting on the 10th floor of a high rise apartment building in downtown chicago on a foggy cold morning makes me miss these things back home all the more. No sparrows, no crows, no cats, no temple bells, no 'Allah-o-akbar' calls, no fat newspaper with Morning Glory leaves, no morning dew, no cable TV lines... maybe its time to have some fresh aloo parantha and chai to make up for this loss!

Notebook v/s Computer

2010-10-14T19:59:00.004-04:00

I have been thinking for the last couple of days on how computers have changed us and how we do things. I'll leave the benefits and disadvantages debate for someone else but what I am really talking about is what have computers taken away from us that using notebooks afforded? I remember myself (seems like a long time ago) taking notes and drawing while listening to the teacher or reading a book. It definitely took more time but now that I think about it, there was an organic feel to the whole experience. I was actually embodying the concept that I was engaged in. When you think of it, writing and drawing are forms of gesturing. It's just that the level of abstraction is different. You are translating what the teacher is saying or what you are reading into textual and graphical form with certain kinds of hand movement. Now take the same activity and think about doing it using computers (laptops included). You translate those sayings and readings into textual or graphical representation with a series of button clicks and key presses. This will also count as gesture but something has changed here. It's a different mode of translation and you are making different body movements.

I remember my mom telling me when I was in school to "write it down to remember". And when I wrote things down, I did remember them better. What was happening? Did writing help make a new pathway in my brain?

Consider this as well, handwriting analysis claims that a person's personality can be gauged by looking at his handwriting. Hence handwriting serves as a window into a person's emotions, thoughts, basic nature and overall personality. That means handwriting is a way of expressing these dimensions about oneself. When you take that medium of expression away, does something change about the person? I have seen people say that their handwriting is not good as it used to be because they have been using laptops for a long time. So that means their handwriting has evolved (or rather devolved) as a result of using computers. If we continue with our chain of thought that handwriting is a window into a person's overall personality, does that then mean that the person has changed as well over time along with his handwriting?

I want to get back to that issue of embodiment again. When we write, we "feel" the words. We "create" the words alphabet by alphabet. When we are small, we learn to "create" the alphabets by writing them repeatedly. We then write words until we get them into our heads. Certainly something happened as a result of that act of writing things down. The only thing I can think of now is that when I am trying to learn a word, I see the word first. My brain processes the visual information. If I then say the word aloud, my auditory senses add to the visual information and reinforce the learning. If I go further and write it down, my motor senses provide another feedback and I'm guessing that reinforces the learning further. Instead if I just press the button 'a' on my computer, I have performed a different kind of motor activity which sends a different kind of signal back to my brain - when you press this button, you type 'a' instead of the message that you can 'write' alphabet 'a' like this...

I strongly feel that there is something very important to the act of writing that is missing when we type on our computers. One might argue that typing on the computer is faster and lets us engage in activities which require higher cognitive abilities. I don't disagree with them but we also need to think about what we take away from kids when we replace their notebooks with computers in this increasingly hi-tech world...

(Thanks to Matt for brainstorming :) )

What if...

2010-09-24T01:49:00.004-04:00

Drum beats, melodious music, wave of hands, rhythmic feet movement and perspiring yet happy faces... The floor was filled with people of all ages, race, and gender. There were a bunch of asian students occupying one corner of the floor while americans were distributed around the room and could be found with their Indian friends, trying to learn a move or two. Enthusiastic Indians were also scattered around mentoring their "students" diligently. Uncles and aunties were witnessing this amazing cultural exchange from the first row of the seats. Some of them even decided to jump right in the mix and show that they were still capable of shaking their legs... With loud bhangra music in the background, everyone was dancing to their heart's content. This was the first day of Incredible India musical fest in Chicago. Everyone was trying out new moves and new styles except for one girl. She kept on sitting there, right next to the dance floor, staring at all the people on the dance floor through her glasses. She seemed to be a student as she had a bag loosely hanging from the back of her chair. She had a faint smile on her face and her hands moved a little as if to follow the rhythm. She moved a little bit to get a better view of a new move on the dance floor but there wasn't much space for the wheels of her wheelchair to turn. Her fingers were crippled and her legs immobile. She moved the joystick on her wheelchair with the help of her index finger and moved to another corner to get a better view of the dance floor. She sat there the whole time people danced and rejoiced. She seemed to be rejoicing too but its very hard for me to imagine what kind of rejoicing that might be. She seemed content and satisfied with the fact that she could see people dancing at such close encounters. That seemed to be all she wanted. She might be visualizing herself dancing like that young girl on the dance floor. She might be moving her legs freely in any direction, absorbing the bhangra beats. She might be laughing and doing that head and leg move. But she might also be thinking "what if I could do that in real"... "What if I could get up now... What if I could jump up and down, run around, shake my legs, and wave my hands with the rhythm of the drums and the melodious music... "What if I could just get up and walk...". What if....

Hyeee peeeople!!

2010-09-18T09:00:00.004-04:00

The last one year in Chicago has certainly been very eventful with lots of things happening (and not happening!). But what I cherish the most are the new friends I have made here. It is amazing how strangers walk into your life and then become friends in no time... or should I say a family!
As I walked back from my college every day I crossed a cozy pub (Rick's Bar) at the corner of Taylor St and Western. With its open door and bright neon sign, it was very welcoming and used to attract me. I could see people laughing inside, having a good time. It was generally late every day and although I wanted to go through those welcoming doors, I wasn't sure whether I should or not. I guess I hesitated because I have never been a regular bar person and there was a wall around me that stopped me from stepping outside my comfort zone and experience something new. Every day I saw people with drinks, playing pool or darts, smiling and talking. Just by walking past this pub and seeing those smiling faces made me smile and by the time I reached home, I used to feel very peaceful and happy. I used to see the same set of customers everyday. The person behind the bar changed everyday but I assumed that there might be rotations. So it was the same person every other day (approximately). For some reason, I felt that it was a family owned pub. These were the people I saw behind the bar and you can see for yourself why I made that connection - a cool tall guy in his early 30's, a young vivacious beautiful girl in her early 20's (although with girls you never know their age and should never guess!), a blonde lady with a not-so-cheerful face (or more accurately - with an artificial smile) in her late 50's, and finally a short grumpy man (must be Rick) with wrinkled face maybe in his late 50's too. So there I was, it seemed like a family! Anyways... so everyday I saw the "son" or the "daughter" of that grumpy man and occasionally their mother and the grumpy father himself behind the bar. Sometimes they would also stand outside near the open doors, sharing a smoke on a cold night, cheerful as usual. And as I walked past, once in a while I thought - Maybe they have lots of problems in life and that's why they come here... but then its good that they can find happiness in this family pub!

One day, after Neena came to Chicago and had started going to college here, as we were walking down Taylor St., we decided to stop and go through those welcoming doors! Neena was much more conversant with pubs and I felt confident going inside with her. I knew I wouldn't make a fool of myself with her as she knew a lot about drinks, etc. So there we were, INSIDE Rick's bar!! There were a lot of hilarious one-liners on the wall around us (e.g. "Never trust a man who is not drunk" - So you get the point right?). The place was dimly lit. On the far end was a dart board against the wall and another console game by its side. There was a door which I figured led to a small restaurant next door. On the far end, but against another wall was a "juke-box" (I still don't know what it is exactly called!). There were 4-5 tall round tables along the same wall that led to the door. The main door (yes, those welcoming doors!) were facing the bar. Behind the bar, there were rows and rows and rows (... and more rows!) of bottles (of course vodka, tequila, rum etc.) of all colors and shapes that you can possibly think of. Separating these rows in half was a not-so-new cash register and below the register there were some more exotic looking bottles. The wall behind the bottles had a huge mirror (running across pretty much the entire wall). There were a couple of drink-list of beers with their prices stuck on top of the mirror. A plastic notice board hung casually at the end of the wall below a medium sized TV. There were 3 TV's - 2 huge and 1 medium sized. One huge TV was facing us when we sat at the bar with our back towards the door while another one was stuck high on the wall next to the door. So I had to stretch my neck to the left side to see it... Oh I forgot to mention the dance floor and the pool table. So once you enter the pub through those welcoming doors, you have a huge window with all the neon signs on your left (facing Western) and another row of windows on your right (facing Taylor). Then you have the bar on the left, the tall tables on the right. As you keep on walking and once you go past the bar, you hit the pool table. To your immediate left is the dance floor and immediate right is that song-box. Go past the pool table and dance floor and song table, and you'll end up playing darts and some video game. If you feel like taking a piss then the door is right next to the video game console on your left (that's the male one bro!). Of course the female one is right next to it! There is a black and white picture of the Beatles group hanging between the console and the restroom. A sign hanging above the bar mentions that minimum credit card purchase is $10 and then there are all those funny one-liners all around. "How may I help you today?" (a female voice breaks my observation spree)..... I am still coming to terms that I am INSIDE the pub - "Uhhh?"... I didn't know what to order ("A Miller Lite please" would have been just fine .. but that's so boring!). And I had Neena with me... so I just looked at her and she quickly made her mind (and mine) and we were all set (I don't remember what we had the first time... must be some margarita or something... or maybe the Irish Creme?). And then we started chatting with "Rick's daughter". She asked us if we were new to the place and we started telling her about how we had moved from Atlanta blah blah blah... I saw the same faces that I had seen all these months and they were laughing as usual, cracking jokes and pulling each other's legs. There was an old man too in that group. he didn't seem to have any teeth but he was really enjoying his beer. There he was, sitting in his usual spot - one seat away from me on my left, happily sipping his beer. He poured his beer into a glass and then had it slowly. There was another late-50's man in between us and he had a small laptop in front. He was also drinking beer but directly from the bottle (wonder what the difference in drinking styles reflects about the person). He had the CTA (Chicago Transportation Authority) website open in his laptop and he was looking at the live-update for route #49. Let me put you in the right context here. Bus route #49 runs north-south on Western and there's a CTA website where you can check the exact time a bus is supposed to arrive at a bus-stop. The Western and Taylor bus-stop was right across the road. So by checking the bus-timing for that stop, one could predict when the bus would go past the pub. So.. my man was sitting inside this pub, checking the bus timing and predicting when the bus would go past the Western facing window and then looking outside to check if the website was actually reporting accurate task. What a wonderful way to spend your time!! The young girl was talking to the customers and always had a smile on her face. I realized from the way they were talking to her that they were long-time customers and knew her well.

Everybody seemed to have their own small world but also seemed to be a part of this pub. As we walked out of the pub that day after finishing our drinks, we saw that everyone was still sitting and drinking and talking. It seemed as if they didn't have any rush to go anywhere or do anything. The only person moving was that young girl. I felt that if I were to walk in the next day, I would see the same set of people in the same place doing the same thing... as if time had stopped inside the pub for these people. Rachael wished us goodnight and we wished her the same. So Rachael was Rick's daughter... hmmm... We became Neena and Chandan instead of 2 strangers who had walked into that pub for the first time. After the wall had been broken, I wanted to go there every friday! There was something about that place that attracted me a lot. Now when I walked past that pub and saw those familiar faces, I smiled at some, waved at some and they waved and smiled back at me. Neena and I went to that pub many more times after that but not as frequently as those other people. The girl behind the bar became Rachael - a good friend of ours (and NOT Rick's daughter!!!!), Rick's son became Dave (and he was NOT Rick's son!!!), the toothless man became Franky, and the CTA bus-tracker man became Richard. There were other people who sat at the tall tables but they were kind of in the background when you sat at the bar and I never got to know anyone well. The people at the bar were a part of one family (the bar-family) and the ones at the table were the table-family.

Whenever we walked past that pub, Frankie used to wave to us and say "Hyeee Peeeople". For him we were "people" :) I have never heard anyone greet like that so it was really unique. He had a distinct voice and very friendly demeanor. Although old (late 70's), he's still young at heart. We found out that Franky worked at the Lu-Lu's, a hamburger place on Taylor. He didn't seem to have a famliy.... ummmm.. I'll take that back... Rachael, Dave, Richard, and the people in Rick's Bar were his family.

Yesterday we went to Rick's Bar again after 2 months. It was Rachael's birthday yesterday and she was so excited to see us. We gave her a bunch of pink roses and 2 chocolates and then sat down at that familiar bar. We sat at the same place as always. Richard was right there on my left but this time he was playing with a small handheld video-game. I asked Rachael about Franky and she smiled at me. After a while, Franky walked in, smiling as usual and said "Hyeeee Peeeople". The same old style and distinct voice. The same love and affection. I looked at him and smiled. He came straight towards me and put his hand on my shoulder. I was sitting at the bar and so turned towards him. He asked me - "Where have you been?". I told him that we had gone to India to get married over the summer. I suddenly realized that I had become a part of his family too and he was missing us all summer. I felt like hugging him but didn't. He smiled again and patted me on my shoulder and waved at Rachael while pointing to us. Before I could realize it, he had bought us a drink to celebrate our return to the "bar-family". He did it with such flair and style that he should have been in his early 30's and not late 70's. Rachel was also quick to notice the gesture and asked us what we would like. We had a Blue MF (I don't swear in public :P). We thanked Franky for the drinks. I was still trying to make sense of the whole situation. I had not realized that we had become a part of those people in Rick's Bar who always used to laugh, have fun, crack jokes and relax. I was no longer looking at them from outside while walking back home from college. I was INSIDE the pub, within those welcoming doors with Franky and the rest of the bar-family around me. Rachael was her usual as well. She was very excited that we had come to meet her and brought her flowers. We felt that we were at home. Franky returned to his usual seat and poured beer into his glass and started sipping. I smiled at him and he smiled back... full of love and peace. Franky reminded me of my grandfather. That's right, Franky was the eldest in the bar-family and he must have got worried when two small kids (me and Neena) were missing for two months. Maybe I am just imagining too much but then that's what I was feeling at that time... We bought Franky one round of drinks too. He was very happy and gave me a toothless smile. As we walked out of that pub yesterday after wishing Rachel Happy Birthday again, we were feeling very happy and content. Maybe it was the Blue MF or maybe it was the bar-family... Who cares what it was actually. All I cared was that we were back and had become "people" again.... "Hyeee Peeeople" :)

(18th September, 2010)

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Fun Theory to change people's behavior

2010-03-30T17:55:00.003-04:00

This is an amazing experiment. Changing people's behavior/practices/routines :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

Right to Education Act 2009 (India)

2010-02-23T12:44:00.001-05:00

Sixteen years after the idea was first mooted, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 has finally been notified, after receiving the assent of the President of India. Article 21-A, as inserted by the Constitution (Eighty-Sixth Amendment) Act, 2002, provides for free and compulsory education of all children in the age group of six to fourteen years as a Fundamental Right. Consequently, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, has been enacted by the Parliament. The salient features of the Right of Education Bill include free and compulsory education to all children of India in the six to 14 age group; no child shall be held back, expelled, or required to pass a board examination until completion of elementary education; a child who completes elementary education (upto class 8) shall be awarded a certificate; calls for a fixed student-teacher ratio; will apply to all of India except Jammu and Kashmir; provides for 25 % reservation for economically disadvantaged communities in admission to Class One in all private schools; mandates improvement in quality of education; school teachers will need adequate professional degree within five years or else will lose job; school infrastructure (where there is problem) to be improved in three years, else recognition cancelled; and financial burden will be shared between state and central government.

(source: http://www.digitallearning.in/news/news-details.asp?Title=Right-to-Education-Act-2009-in-action&newsid=16745)

To read the full law, click here - http://education.nic.in/Elementary/free%20and%20compulsory.pdf

Look within

2010-02-22T09:23:00.001-05:00

A man feared his wife wasn't hearing well as she used to and he thought
she might need a hearing aid. Not quite sure how to approach her, he
called his family doctor to discuss the problem. The doctor told him
there is a simple, informal test; which he could perform and give them a
better idea about her hearing loss.

"Here's what you do," said the doctor, "stand about 40 feet away from
her, and in a normal conversational speaking tone, see if she hears you.
If not, go to 30 feet, then 20 feet, and so on until you get a
response."

That evening, when his wife was in the kitchen, cooking dinner, he was
in the drawing room, standing about 40 feet away from her. "Honey,
what's for dinner?" he asked in a normal tone. No response! So he moved
closer to the kitchen, about 30 feet from his wife and repeated "Honey,
what's for dinner?" Still there was no response. Next, he moved into the
dining room where he was placed about 20 feet from his wife and asked
the same question. Still further, he didn't get his awaited response. He
now walked up to the kitchen door which was another 10 feet away and
asked "Honey, what's for dinner?" Again no response! So he walks up and
whispers behind her "Honey, what's for dinner?" "Steve, for the fifth
time I've said, "Chicken". "Do you have some hearing problem?"

Sometimes, the problem may not be with the other person as we always
think; it could be within us.

Let's look within ourselves before we find fault with others...

(email from Uttishthata on 22 Feb 2010)

Looking beyond evidences

2010-02-17T08:56:00.003-05:00

Scientific evidence certainly helps us in achieving the stated goal but often times we get so caught up in them that we forget to look at all the other possible outcomes. We stop looking beyond the evidences. In this context, I liked a dialog from Patch Adams (must watch if you haven't!) -

Arthur: How many fingers do you see?

Patch: There are four fingers, Arthur.

Arthur: [You are just] another idiot. No! Look at me. You're focusing on the problem. If you focus on the problem, you can't see the solution. Never focus on the problem! Look beyond the fingers. How many do you see?

Patch: Eight.

Arthur: Yes! See what no one else sees. See what everyone chooses not to see... out of fear, conformity or laziness. See the whole world anew each day.

So try to see what everyone else chooses not to see out of fear, conformity or laziness. Look beyond the problem and evidences.

Are assessments really required?

2010-02-12T17:36:00.000-05:00

Are assessments really required? Who are they important for - students or teachers/researchers? Do the students really need to know what they "know"? When they are in the class interacting with their peers and teachers then they are obviously learning "something". Education researchers keep on saying that the agency of learning needs to be with the learner (e.g. Collins) but then when we think about evaluation, we find that the students are evaluated on what the teachers/researchers think they should know. Moreover, any kind of evaluation seems to be framed to ascertain how good the teacher was or the learning environment was, and this is known by the performance of the student on the evaluations. Does the student really need to know how good the teacher was? Let us argue that the student really gains from the evaluation as he/she gets a chance to measure his/her knowledge and then compare with others to determine relative knowledge or use the measurement to secure further educational opportunities (e.g. progressing through the grades, transfer from school to college, etc.). This notion of quantification of knowledge is disturbing because can the evaluator really know "everything" the student learned? The evaluations are mostly based on what the students "ought to know" by the end of the school year. So if the evaluators don't know what the students really learned and they evaluate the students on what they should have learned, is that a fair way of ascertaining which students are more intelligent than others (very often evaluation results i.e. marks are used to indicate the intelligence of the student)? Moreover, given that we know that every student is unique and internalizes knowledge in different ways, are standardized evaluations justified?

Suppose we do away with the complete system of evaluation, and let the students discover & internalize knowledge in their own unique way then how can we know whether that student can or cannot do a specific task later on in life (example write a letter to the boss)? Well, I would argue that this task later on his life also presents a learning opportunity and can be utilized as such. There is a constant push to prepare our students to face the "harsh realities of life" and we justify their schooling along that argument. Hence we keep on testing them to see if they are well prepared to move to the next stage in life and this goes on throughout the life. Maybe the "harsh realities" aren't that harsh if we stop thinking like that. But alas, the generation before the students were brought up thinking like that and so are the students now. They will do the same to their students and it will go on... Is it all in the mind? Are evaluations a way to know what's in the mind? Who's mind - the teachers or the students?

Make my child the most intelligent of all...

2010-02-07T19:51:00.003-05:00

This thought came to me when our Learning Science cohort was discussing the research study where they found that US students were not at par with students from other nations (particularly China and India). This race to be the "best" has been going on since the launch of Sputnik which spurred the US govt to invest a lot of money into educating the "citizens of tomorrow" so that they were scientific thinkers and could compete with the Soviets. With time the competitor changed and now its the Asians who are leading the race.

I have been wondering since that class discussion whether who is at the top really matters. The US wants its kids to beat the Chinese and then ..... then what? We'll have one more study which will claim that US kids are now at the top (and of course someone will dispute that claim and there will be many more studies trying to prove/disprove that). Excelling in studies is definitely important and one must strive to gain as much knowledge as possible but one must not forget that every child is distinctly different. That doesn't mean that US kids are dumb or Indian kids are intelligent but what it means is that people from different cultures have different goals and needs and these influence the way the entire community thinks and acts. For example, in India, learning is given a divine status. There is a goddess of learning. So it is automatically put at a very high pedestal and is viewed as something that will enhance a person spiritually and help him/her lead a better life. One may not hear or say this aloud but I feel it is there within each one of us as a subconscious force driving us to gain knowledge. There is also a huge social value attached to education. Educated people are respected by the society and they automatically gain a high status in the community. So you see, the motivation factor to gain knowledge is completely different as compared to US where the stress is on beating the kids across the globe. Of course these are not the only ones and there are LOTS of other factors influencing the game but for the sake of argument I've used these couple. In fact now even the Indians are getting into the race business...

So all these examples are simply to stress that every community has its own "local" needs and goals. In trying to compete with the kids across the globe we are putting too much stress on our kids at home and that is getting reflected in disastrous ways (increased suicide rates, increase in diseases amongst kids, etc.). Why can't we just settle for goals that are meaningful to each community and structure the learning experience of the kids accordingly. Why do we need to make every child on the globe the most intelligent? Some of you might be saying globalization demands that. But like we saw, education is a complicated matter... it's not just schools, kids and curriculum. There's a huge socio-cultural aspect to it which is often neglected. Globalization can merge markets across the globe but can it also merge socio-economic and cultural values? People across the globe will remain different and their differences should be acknowledged and respected. The race to be the global first shouldn't take a toll on the kids... let them play and learn at their own pace.

What's the price of evidence?

2010-02-06T10:22:00.003-05:00

For me this question is mainly situated within the context of research and hence my focus is on experimental evidence. Is spending billions of dollars and thousands of man hours worth the effort in trying to find evidence to support a claim? I was recently watching a National Geographic program where they were investigating the horrible 9/11 attack. There is a lot of controversy surrounding why the twin towers fell down - because of heat from the burning aviation fuel or because of the impact. Numerous agencies have investigated this controversy and have their stories ready for the consumer. Purdue even got a grant allowing them to model the whole incident in way that allows everyone to analyze each second of the impact from 360 degrees and find out what happened. They spent almost 2 years and (I am guessing) millions of dollars in addition to the thousands of man hours into building this excellent model from scratch. In the end they concluded that the building collapsed as a result of heat that melted the steel beams holding the tower upright. However, another agency dismissed this evidence claiming that it wasn't representative of what actually happened and started their own investigation.

There are two things that this program made me think. The first is that in cases of this magnitude, anything is possible. In fact it might be both the heat and the impact. That's kind of logical conclusion. But I don't claim expertise on that and hence won't comment on it further. However, the second point is the relevance of investing so much effort into finding evidences and then dismissing them. Evidences are definitely needed to substantiate a claim but my point is at what cost? Take another example, in education research, millions of dollars are spent every year identifying and analyzing problems and then designing solutions for them. We even spend a lot of time investigating issues which are kind of obvious (like if a kid studies in a quiet room then he/she would learn better). We also spend considerable research effort (time and money) into proving the value of a particular education technique (like learning by doing is better than rote learning... kind of obvious too huh?). My point here is not that finding evidence is not necessary or useless. It is absolutely needed but what I am asking is to consider the cost involved in the task. Is it worth the cost?

Designers as change makers

2010-01-30T11:05:00.001-05:00

An interesting series of interviews:

http://www.designwala.org/2010/01/designers-as-changemakers-part-4-ritwik-dey/

Froebel - The concept of kindergarten

2010-01-23T21:24:00.002-05:00

Froebel was a German pedagogue, a student of Pestalozzi who laid the foundation for modern education based on the recognition that children have unique needs and capabilities. He developed the concept of the “kindergarten”, and also coined the word now used in German and English.

Read more about them (pretty interesting):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Fröbel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Heinrich_Pestalozzi

but unfortunately, the concept of kindergarten was modified by most people (Dewey etc.) and the current form is a distorted version. Read more in this book (Chapter 3):-

Tinkering towards utopia - A century of public school reform

or a review of the book here:-

http://www.hepg.org/her/abstract/263

Taming the free spirit

2010-01-23T20:27:00.002-05:00

When a child is born, parents wait for the day when he will run around the house and make noise. They encourage playful acts and help the child to walk on his own feet. The child grows up innocent and playful believing that everyone will appreciate the playfulness. But with the first step inside the school, a different world greets the child. He is confronted with a strange concept called discipline. This concept is hard to understand because it prohibits running around in this strange place called "classroom". In spite of the fact that so many other chubby little friends are also in that strange place, one cannot talk to them unless permitted to do so. "Permitted" what does that mean? The buck quickly passes to the parents who are summoned by the school only to be told how indisciplined their child is. The reason - he talks in class and does not sit still. Excuse me! Isn't a child supposed to "play"? How can you expect the child to sit still? But the school doesn't care. This is what has been the norm for god knows how many years (maybe lots of decades). If the warning doesn't bring any changes, the child is promptly labelled as hyper-active child or a child having come kind of attention-deficit disorder.

Poor kids... what dreams they had, what fantasies they cherished, nothing mattered anymore. All that mattered was what the grown-ups thought was best for them. Maybe what's best for them is to just let them be kids and not force discipline upon them. Won't they then grow up to be rowdy, good for nothing, cave-men like people? Maybe they will, maybe they won't; I don't have an answer... but why not try to think of an education system that doesn't try to "convert" every child into a fact remembering, number crunching, good-boy; like everybody else. When the child was born, he was yours special, an unique gift. Why try to mold that unique gift into something common? If only they could speak up, we could have known how much they really hated the "grown-up world" that they were being trained to face.

(PS: Replace he -> she, boy -> girl, etc. at will. )

eSingularity

2010-01-12T15:17:00.004-05:00

http://mjtrout.blogspot.com/

"Imagine... A world where every kid participates on a level education system, challenging themselves and others, and achieving rewards and prizes for applying themselves, no matter what their social, economic, or geographic disposition. We can... and we will build it. "

Education 2.0, Media 3.0, blah.. blah.. blah.. sounds very nice and dreamy. Now imagine you haven't had food all day and you are hungry Mr. Trout, would you spend on /care about technology to access E 2.0 or M 3.0? And do you think teachers will welcome the idea of letting go their position of authority and becoming mere facilitators in classrooms who cannot exercise power over the students (that is what is the current state of Indian schools)?

The "American" way is not always the "right" way. Every nation has its own culture, its own tradition and a set of values that consciously/unconsciously drive the people. Before prescribing "solutions" these things need to be understood. Then only can the real problem be understood and characterized. Education is not a commodity and should not be treated as one.

What I won't use, I will donate...

2009-12-05T16:34:00.003-05:00

We generally have a mindset that we donate what we don't need. One might say - "At least I am donating!". That's good and absolutely right but think about the person whom you are donating your "waste" stuff. Think about how he'll feel if you give him a torn shirt instead of a new one. Donating new stuff is not always possible but we should always strive to do that for that will make the person receiving the donation very happy and make him/her feel that he/she is a worthy person... Think about what wonders it might do to that person's self-esteem...

I want to...

2009-09-20T12:21:00.000-04:00

I want to break free..
free from the shackles of this self...
I want to rise higher and higher...
go faster and faster...
delve deeper and deeper into the realms of the unknown.
Explore the unexplored and attain the unattained.
Quench this thirst for knowledge
Realize the absolute truth
Become one with it
Be a part of the bigger energy... unlimited... pure... calm... divine

Pick me - Click me - Educate me!

2009-07-10T07:32:00.001-04:00

http://pickme-clickme-educateme.org

With an estimated 10 million children not going to school, the effort required to decrease that number is huge. Here is our small effort. One school at a time.

Pick Me, Click Me, Educate Me! is an endeavor to use digital photography as a social reform tool to create awareness of the existing educational situations in rural Bihar. This project also aims to spread the joy of education and building communities for collaborative learning in rural Bihar. The value of education resulting in giving them the power to dream is an outcome of the project that the project seeks to achieve over the time.

This project serves to provide a platform to people from different backgrounds (photographers, writers, educationists, social workers, donors etc) to collaborate. It allows to utilize the work done by one group (like photographers who go to these locations and shoot), for discussion with the others who are not able to.It therefore allows aims for promoting , discussing, writing about, and finally donating (again not the prime focus) for , the issue of child education.

Pick Me, Click Me, Educate me is to provide with stories from the location, and through photographs to help spread a) value of education b) the existing avenues and facilities and c) a possible word for donation.

The project was initiated in the summer of 2007, by Documentary photographer Kshitiz Anand. This website went live on the 1st of May 2009.

Jodo Gyan - a unique initiative

2009-07-03T11:04:00.004-04:00

(source of this article- http://www.minds-india.org/images/Educationworldonline_net.htm)

A small, enterprising Delhi-based group of people banded under the banner of Jodo Gyan is engaged in the task of banishing fear of mathematics from the minds of children by devising, producing and marketing enjoyable, activity-based maths teaching-learning materials. Usha Menon, a scientist with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research’s Delhi-based National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies is the tech brain behind this independent NGO, dedicated to finding workable solutions to common problems in school classrooms.

"Education is a sector where technological innovation can make a huge difference, something all of us want to see," says Menon who together with E.K. Shaji, a social activist and former employee of Scholastic (a global children’s publishing company) floated Jodo Gyan — a charitable trust — in 1999.

In 1995-96 following a World Bank initiated literacy campaign, Menon became directly involved with education. "Literacy per se is not enough to help people who face social deprivation, so we brainstormed about teaching basic hygiene skills and basic maths. Shaji, a man of letters and strong activism thought we should provide children high- quality reading material rooted in local folklore and culture. After he resigned from Scholastic, we registered Jodo Gyan as a trust," she recalls.

A graduate of IIT-Madras who read for a doctorate in technology transfer policy without completing it, Menon is a development researcher helping Jodo Gyan in conducting cutting-edge research. "Our ultimate objective is to make scientific innovations useful at ground level. At Jodo Gyan, we address two main objectives: to develop methods and materials to enhance maths teaching/learning processes and develop appropriate context-specific strategies for education," says Menon.

Activity-based mathematics (addition and subtraction, multiplication, fractions, decimals and geometry) is taught through games, puzzles and educational toys (in the price range Rs.10-500), which are either the NGO’s own creation and adaption or sourced from similar organisations like Navnirmati and Eklavya. Moreover, Menon and her team have moved beyond mathematics and incorporated science teaching as their next objective.

Jodo Gyan volunteers showcase their technological prowess, methods and products at teacher workshops, education fairs and parent-teacher meetings and schools ranging from slum schools to top-end institutions like Doon School, Dehradun; Woodstock; Bishop Cotton School, Shimla, and Delhi Public School which use their material. Currently an estimated 1,000 children are benefiting from Jodo Gyan’s programmes. "We have to establish a linkage between old and new knowledge to make practical and conceptual knowledge valuable to young minds," says Menon.

Psychological and Physiological Benefits of Argentine Tango

2009-04-20T22:56:00.001-04:00

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http://www.tangofantastico.com/Tango-Science/Tango-Science.htm

very interesting... will write later on my own experience....

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Witnessing a robbery

2009-04-09T04:49:00.002-04:00

I'm in Boston right now and witnessed a robbery in a mall here yesterday. I'm feeling frustrated with myself that why did I take so long (about 5 sec) to realize what was going on and feelinng guilty that I was not able to stop it. What is it that prompts one person to jump and help and another to stand there and think whether he should help and others to think how he should save himself if he was in that situation?

Man Bites ‘Slumdog’

2009-02-26T23:15:00.002-05:00

It was showering oscars for the 'Slumdog Millionaire' crew this week. The movie has got some mixed reviews and from my personal experience of watching the movie, I feel that its decently good enough. However, I am not sure that it's upto mark to receive so many oscars. I think the hype created by the media helped it somewhat. Anyways, everything said and done, I would recommend that it should be watched (one time is enough) as the positive spin to the story infuses hope and optimism which make the audience feel good.

Here is an interesting perspective by a person who used to live in slums but managed to break out of its shackles - http://www.newsweek.com/id/185798/page/1

Ridiculous viewpoint or a tradition/law ??!!

2009-02-23T07:19:00.003-05:00

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/world/middleeast/23widows.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th

The latest plan, proposed by Mazin al-Shihan, director of the Baghdad Displacement Committee, a city agency, is to pay men to marry widows. “There is no serious effort by the national government to fix this problem, so I presented my own program,” he said. When asked why the money should not go directly to the women, Mr. Shihan laughed. “If we give the money to the [war] widows, they will spend it unwisely because they are uneducated and they don’t know about budgeting,” he said. “But if we find her a husband, there will be a person in charge of her and her children for the rest of their lives. This is according to our tradition and our laws.”
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Starbucks Quote of the day #76

2009-02-11T13:54:00.003-05:00

"The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating - in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life."

--- Anne Morris

The Girl Effect

2009-02-11T08:32:00.002-05:00

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Here is a great website that I came across today - http://www.girleffect.org Here's a paper related to this program:http://www.girleffect.org/downloads/Girl_Effect_Your_Move.pdf

-----
The Girl Effect is about girls and boys and moms and dads and villages and towns and countries. Here's the thing: Girls living in poverty are uniquely capable of creating a better future. But when a girl reaches adolescence, she comes to a crossroads. Things can go one of the ways for her - and everyone around her.
One: She gets a chance, gets educated, stays healthy and HIV negative, marries when she chooses, raises a healthy family, and has the opportunity to raise the standard of living for herself, her brothers, her family, her community, and her country.
Two: None of these things happen. She is illiterate, married off, isolated, pregnant, and vulnerable to HIV. She and her family are stuck in a cycle of poverty.

Start making a difference. Start the Girl Effect. It's not just a nice idea. It's the most important thing you can do.
-----

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The Way I See It #17 (Starbucks Coffee cup quote)

2009-01-30T22:56:00.002-05:00

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"The world bursts at the seams with people ready to tell you you’re not good enough. On occasion, some may be correct. But do not do their work for them. Seek any job, ask anyone out; pursue any goal. Don’t take it personally when they say ‘no’ - they may not be smart enough to say yes." - Keith Olberman

Instead, listen to your inner voice and believe in yourself. Never be afraid of stepping out of the line and doing the not-so-normal thing. There will be nay sayers, you just have to persist and have faith in yourself. Every experience, every failure, every interaction counts and gets you closer to your goal even if you don't realize it.
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Every day counts.... Every day matters..... Nothing goes waste....

2009-01-30T22:55:00.001-05:00

I will elaborate on this idea later on.......

Alternative Methods to Design Research for Experience Design

2009-01-27T08:45:00.001-05:00

New methods and approaches for experience design merge the best of traditional user-centered design and genius design. The goal is to obtain insight into the attributes of an experience that would help or delight people based on research evidence. However, the process does not rely on following exactly what users say during research interviews and instead leverages the talent and imagination of designers to look beyond what users are saying to envision creative solutions. The goal is empathetic design, or experiencing a solution as a user would.

To enable this approach, designers can consider some alternative approaches to traditional research interviews and conceptual modeling. These techniques represent extensions to both the traditional user-centered design approach and the genius approach. The list of techniques I'll describe here is not exhaustive, and these techniques may not apply to all design situations—rather they offer options for those looking to expand their approaches to user research.

storytelling and personalization
triading
games

http://uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/01/design-research-methods-for-experience-design.php

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Warning: Habits May Be Good for You

2009-01-17T18:03:00.002-05:00

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If you look hard enough, you’ll find that many of the products we use every day — chewing gums, skin moisturizers, disinfecting wipes, air fresheners, water purifiers, health snacks, antiperspirants, colognes, teeth whiteners, fabric softeners, vitamins — are results of manufactured habits. A century ago, few people regularly brushed their teeth multiple times a day. Today, because of canny advertising and public health campaigns, many Americans habitually give their pearly whites a cavity-preventing scrub twice a day, often with Colgate, Crest or one of the other brands advertising that no morning is complete without a minty-fresh mouth.

“For a long time, the public health community was distrustful of industry, because many felt these companies were trying to sell products that made people’s lives less healthy, by encouraging them to smoke, or to eat unhealthy foods, or by selling expensive products people didn’t really need,” Dr. Curtis said. “But those tactics also allow us to save lives. If we want to really help the world, we need every tool we can get.”

FOR Dr. Curtis and the Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing With Soap, such tactics offered enormous promise in a country like Ghana. That nation offered a conundrum: Almost half of its people were accustomed to washing their hands with water after using the restroom or before eating. And local markets were filled with cheap, colorful soap bars. But only about 4 percent of Ghanaians used soap as part of their post-restroom hand-washing regime, studies showed. “We could talk about germs until we were blue in the face, and it didn’t change behaviors,” Dr. Curtis said. So she and her colleagues asked Unilever for advice in designing survey techniques that ultimately studied hundreds of mothers and their children. They discovered that previous health campaigns had failed because mothers often didn’t see symptoms like diarrhea as abnormal, but instead viewed them as a normal aspect of childhood. However, the studies also revealed an interesting paradox: Ghanaians used soap when they felt that their hands were dirty — after cooking with grease, for example, or after traveling into the city. This hand-washing habit, studies showed, was prompted by feelings of disgust. And surveys also showed that parents felt deep concerns about exposing their children to anything disgusting.

SO the trick, Dr. Curtis and her colleagues realized, was to create a habit wherein people felt a sense of disgust that was cued by the toilet. That queasiness, in turn, could become a cue for soap.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/business/13habit.html?pagewanted=all

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Back to the future

2009-01-17T18:00:00.001-05:00

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The military industrial complex is getting ever more complex, lately pursuing one of the lessons of the Iraq war: the Pentagon’s announced need for a robotic pack mule with the moving legs — not wheels — and stamina to haul a squad’s equipment up and down the worst battle terrain. Mules and donkeys were military beasts of burden for centuries, and they still are in some armies working the rougher parts of the world. But the Pentagon is seeking a robot version to go with all the night goggles, pilotless drone aircraft and other gadgetry of high-tech warfare.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/opinion/17sat4.html?th&emc=th

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Some Best Practices in Teaching

2009-01-15T21:48:00.002-05:00

I recently read a paper (Comparing Classroom Enactments of an Inquiry Curriculum: Lessons Learned From two Teachers; The Journal of Learning Sciences, 16(1), 81-130) by Sadhana Puntambekar (Associate Professor, Learning Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison). The study reported in this paper made so much sense to me, specially in the context of teaching the kids in Noida (India), that I want to put down some of the interesting points here for future reference.
(...the topic of discussion here are pulleys and physics associated with them)

1. Connecting prior learning to the current topic:
This basically refers to the practice of bridging the gap between the existing knowledge and the current knowledge by encouraging students to share what they knew about pulleys and relating this knowledge to other machines that they had already learned about. Sharing of knowledge also helps establish a "common ground" / shared knowledge base.

2. Generating goal-oriented questions:
The final goal of the class/session is kept in mind and a discussion initiated that encourages the students to generate questions. The most relevant questions generated by the students should then be used to structure the session. This is helpful because (a) it makes learning more meaningful for the students since they are now solving problems/questions raised by themselves and (b) helps the classs focus on the big picture and work towards solving that.

3. Connecting concrete experiences with abstract science knowledge:
Children learn best when taught in the context of concrete examples. Yet majority of the science teachers like to teach abstract concepts and leave the onus of forming connections between the abstract and concrete concepts on the students. A classroom discussion can help form this connection -
- Keep the big picture in mind
- Ask the students specific questions that encourage them to think in the right direction towards the final goal (big picture)
- Repeating/ Re-iterating the connections between abstract and concrete so that the connections are internalized by the students.

4. Integration of activities within the unit:
All the activities (atleast within the unit) should be connected coherently and weaved into a story that relates to the final goal.

5. Connecting concepts:
It is important to relate all the concepts/principles to one another in order to form a coherent picture of the goal. "Knowledge Centered " environments help develop an integrated understanding of the concepts.

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The price of beauty...

2009-01-15T12:32:00.003-05:00

This is a real study done by Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html) -

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin;it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousand of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist.Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over,no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people.

The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour:
Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

Technology Enhanced Active Learning (TEAL @ M.I.T)

2009-01-13T22:48:00.004-05:00

Came across this really nice piece of article in The New York Times (Jan 12, 2009) about a new way of teaching at MIT. Here are some interesting excerpts from the article:

Dr. Wieman noted that the human brain “can hold a maximum of about seven different items in its short-term working memory and can process no more than about four ideas at once.” “But the number of new items that students are expected to remember and process in the typical hourlong science lecture is vastly greater,” he continued. “So we should not be surprised to find that students are able to take away only a small fraction of what is presented to them in that format.”

Lecturing in 26-100, she said, she [Professor Sciolla] could only look out at the sea of faces and hope the students were getting it. “They might be looking intently at you, understanding everything,” Professor Sciolla said. “Or they might be thinking, ‘What am I going to do when I get out of this bloody class?’ ”

Old school:
“There was a long tradition that what it meant to teach was to give a really well-prepared lecture,” said Peter Dourmashkin, a senior lecturer in physics at M.I.T. and a strong proponent of the new method. “It was the students’ job to figure it out.”

The problem, say Dr. Dourmashkin and others in the department, is that a lot of students had trouble doing that. The failure rate for those lecture courses, even those taught by the most mesmerizing teachers, was typically 10 percent to 12 percent.

New way of teaching:
At M.I.T., two introductory courses are still required — classical mechanics and electromagnetism — but today they meet in high-tech classrooms, where about 80 students sit at 13 round tables equipped with networked computers.

Instead of blackboards, the walls are covered with white boards and huge display screens. Circulating with a team of teaching assistants, the professor makes brief presentations of general principles and engages the students as they work out related concepts in small groups.

Teachers and students conduct experiments together. The room buzzes. Conferring with tablemates, calling out questions and jumping up to write formulas on the white boards are all encouraged.

The question is if this is really the way to go in terms of how classrooms of the future should be structured. The two state-of-the-art TEAL classrooms at MIT cost $2.5 million!! At this cost, how many schools/colleges can adopt this model? Can there be a low-cost model/implementation of this concept? The concept of hands-on learning is definitely fool-proof and is the way to go, but we need to come up with more viable means of implementing it. The technology involved in setting up an environment that facilitates such a hands-on interaction needs to become more affordable. Till that happens, do we have any alternatives or should we simply sit and wait for that day when technology can be bought cheap? If we fail the students of today, then we can only dream of cheaper technology because they are the ones who will be developing the technology of tomorrow.

Read the full article:-
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/us/13physics.html?_r=3&hp=&pagewanted=all

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3 words for 2009

2009-01-12T08:32:00.002-05:00

I received this mail today from the Uttishthata group. I think it makes a lot of sense.

Three-Word Phrases, can be tools to help develop every relationship.

There are many things that you can do to strengthen your relationships. Often the most effective thing you can do involves saying just three words.

When spoken sincerely, these statements often have the power to develop new friendships, deepen old ones and even bring healing to relationships that have soured.

The following three-word phrases can be tools to help develop every relationship.

Let Me Help:

Good friends see a need and then try to fill it. When they see a hurt they do what they can to heal it. Without being asked, they jump in and help out.

I Understand You:

People become closer and enjoy each other more when the other person accepts and understands them. Letting your spouse know - in so many little ways - that you understand them, is one of the most powerful tools for healing your relationship. And this can apply to any relationship.

I Respect You:

Respect is another way of showing love. Respect demonstrates that another person is a true equal. If you talk to your children as if they were adults you will strengthen the bonds and become closer friends. This applies to all interpersonal relationships.

I Miss You:

Perhaps more marriages could be saved and strengthened if couples simply and sincerely said to each other "I miss you." This powerful affirmation tells partners they are wanted, needed, desired and loved. Consider how important you would feel, if you received an unexpected phone call from your spouse in the middle of your workday, just to say "I miss you."

Maybe You're Right:

This phrase is very effective in diffusing an argument. The implication when you say "maybe you're right" is the humility of admitting, "maybe I'm wrong". Let's face it. When you have an argument with someone, all you normally do is solidify the other person's point of view. They, or you, will not likely change their position and you run the risk of seriously damaging the relationship between you. Saying "maybe you're right" can open the door to explore the subject more. You may then have the opportunity to express your view in a way that is understandable to the other person.

Please Forgive Me:

Many broken relationships could be restored and healed if people would admit their mistakes and ask for forgiveness. All of us are vulnerable to faults, foibles and failures. A man should never be ashamed to own up that he has been in the wrong, which is saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

I Thank You:

Gratitude is an exquisite form of courtesy. People who enjoy the companionship of good, close friends are those who don't take daily courtesies for granted. They are quick to thank their friends for their many ex-pressions of kindness. On the other hand, people whose circle of friends is severely constricted often do not have the attitude of gratitude.

Count On Me:

A friend is one who walks in when others walk out. Loyalty is an essential ingredient for true friendship. It is the emotional glue that bonds people. Those that are rich in their relationships tend to be steady and true friends. When troubles come, a good friend is there indicating "you can count on me."

I'll Be There:

If you have ever had to call a friend in the middle of the night, to take a sick child to hospital, or when your car has broken down some miles from home, you will know how good it feels to hear the phrase "I'll be there." Being there for another person is the greatest gift we can give. When we are truly present for other people, important things happen to them and us. We are renewed in love and friendship. We are restored emotionally and spiritually. Being there is at the very core of civility.

Go For It:

We are all unique individuals. Don't try to get your friends to conform to your ideals. Support them in pursuing their interests, no matter how far out they seem to you. God has given everyone dreams, dreams that are unique to that person only. Support and encourage your friends to follow their dreams. Tell them to "go for it."

I Love You:

Perhaps the most important three words that you can say. Telling someone that you truly love them satisfies a person's deepest emotional needs. The need to belong, to feel appreciated and to be wanted. Your spouse, your children, your friends and you, all need to hear those three little words: "I love you." Love is a choice. You can love even when the feeling is gone.

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Live your dream

2009-01-11T22:04:00.001-05:00

Came across this interesting article a while ago.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7821979.stm

"...flying car from London to Timbukt.... a British adventurer will set off from London on an incredible journey through Europe and Africa in a souped-up sand buggy, travelling by road - and air."

Designing for the emerging market

2009-01-11T17:19:00.003-05:00

Interactions recently published an interesting article on designing for the emerging market. "An emerging market is generally defined as one that has not yet fully developed but that has a middle class vital enough to attract goods and services from developed-and increasingly globalized-economies."

Some interesting snippets:
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The most serious mistakes designers make in preparing products for emerging markets usually occur before they even set pen to paper. Failure to understand the target market covers a multitude of sins, but sometimes unfamiliarity with the target market results in a stunningly fundamental oversight.

Case in point: Kellogg’s bid for a place at the Indian breakfast table.

“Kellogg’s set up a branch in India and started producing cornflakes…What they didn’t realize was that Indians, rather like the Chinese, think that to start the day with something cold-like cold milk on your cereal-is a shock to the system,” says Indian cultural critic Homi Bhabha. “And if you pour warm milk on Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, they instantly turn into wet paper [4].”

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Wider populations in emerging markets need simple solutions with the right price point. When Procter & Gamble introduced disposable diapers into the Brazilian market, it went in with its top-end model, which failed to sell. Only after offering a less-sophisticated diaper, half the price of the top-end version, was the company able to grow the market [9].

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Nokia, the leading manufacturer of mobile phones in developing economies, puts years of research into the markets in which it sells. It keeps a full-time design staff dedicated to studying the practices of users at work and at play. Recent Nokia models have featured a multiple phonebook to support phone sharing-common among emerging-market families-as well as dust resistance and a user interface in up to 80 languages. The phone is also equipped with a prepaid tracker to cater to the vast majority of emerging-market users who use prepaid service plans.

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Conventional design methods are fine for conventional markets. Founded on familiar use patterns, cultural values, and market expectations, the processes and techniques keep designers well within their comfort zone. Successful design for emerging markets, on the other hand, requires radical innovation. It demands culturally sensitive and sometimes unorthodox approaches that can throw a designer off balance. But it’s only when designers transcend conventional thinking about product design that they come to really understand their target market and users and create more lasting and valuable products.

Read the full article:

http://interactions.acm.org/content/?p=1205

I, Me, Myself....

2009-01-10T12:35:00.003-05:00

We all have a very natural tendency of worrying too much about ourselves. Chicago Sun-times had an interesting article a while back where the author highlighted how "[w]e spend an enormous amount of time worrying about ourselves, but not an awful lot of time caring for ourselves. Caring for ourselves means thinking very seriously and carefully about the conditions under which we're living our lives, and how others are living theirs, and taking instruction from the way that others have lived their lives." (http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/1347078,CST-EDT-open24a.article)

We become so self-obsessed with ourselves that we forget that there is a whole world to care about and we are just a part of it. Thinking about self is a natural instinct because without that thought it would be hard to survive and protect our interests but when it becomes an obsession, things become a bit different. You start feeling as if the whole world revolves around you and everything should happen as you want it to be. We forget to look outside and care about the people around us. Our own problems and issues become (or more appropriately - appear) so big and important that we fail to acknowledge the fact that these problems are experienced by everyone and you are not the only one going through them. At that time, you wonder how everybody around you can neglect your problems and carry on with their lives. You keep on worrying about the problems again and again and again.... with no solution in sight. Somehow our mind gets a sadistic kick out of trapping us in this endless/solutionless loop of thinking about your personal issues. We feel that we can find a solution by thinking about these problems while I feel that it is best to pause the thinking tape for some time and focus on the outside world.

It's time like these that I feel that we should shift our attention and start thinking about how we can help the poor beggar around the corner, the haggard looking man down the road, emaciated and quivering child two blocks away, or the cold and hungry woman who must be somebody's grandmother. Look outside, people have suffering and problems which are of a much larger magnitude than our own personal issues. We should never pity these people because these people have learned to endure their pain and live with it. Call it acceptance of destiny, fate, or god's will, these people have made truce with their life and know that they will have to endure through it. Such a submission is not what I recommend but what can you do with an empty stomach? Have you ever tried to face an uncertain future with an empty stomach out in the chilling winds with no warm clothes on? On what basis can you hope that things will be alright soon? How do you define "alright" here? How can you think about long term future when you do not know if you will live through the next ten minutes? Experiencing these is difficult and I cannot even imagine how these people live through it. Pity will not help. What will help instead is if you act on your emotions. I love a quote by Dalai Lama - "It's not enough to be compassionate, you must act". This encouragement to act forces us to get out of our nice and cozy life, stop the useless circular self-obsessed thoughts, and helps us appreciate how small our problems are as compared to the ones these people face.

I have often felt that in helping others, you help yourself. In other words, while you are engrossed in the task of helping a person, you suddenly discover a direction in life which holds possible solutions to some personal problems which you had been thinking about for a long time. Swami Vivekananda said that “The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.”

Reach out, touch someone's life today and let them touch yours. Do this for sometime and then see the magic that happens. You will feel that you are a part of a bigger plan that encompasses the universe and experience a warmth in your life.

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Blank document

2008-12-18T21:30:00.002-05:00

Ever wondered 'how to begin' or 'what to write' when you are given an empty page with nothing on it? It's hard because you have to first figure out how to structure what you want to write. This is particularly hard for novices (in any area). I will give an example from the area I am most familiar with - Programming. For example, if a novice is given a blank editor and asked to write a program that produces a specific output, the first thing that crosses his mind is "what do I start with" ?(I don't remember the references for this.. will pull them up later on, but I can say this thought is for real because I also went through it). It takes time to get used to syntaxes and the general structure of the program (references later on) and till then a blank editor is always scary.

The same can be said for any new document that needs to be filled. If you are told to fill all the details of your taxes on a blank document, how are you going to start? How do you know what all is expected from you by the document processor (in this case the tax dept. and in the case of programs - compiler/interpreter)?

That is why, all such documents have questions or visible place holders that convey clearly what information is needed and where. These documents are commonly called 'forms'. Although, now I'm not sure why Visual Basic calls it's blank canvas Form. The word "Form" generates the image in mind that it will have place holders in it conveying how the information needs to be structured.

Clearly, learning from these "Forms" and providing a good template to scaffold the programming skills of a novice is the need of the hour. There are editor wizards, but you have to have a certain level of expertise with the language before you can start using them. Can't we come up with something that is intuitive and provides enough support to help a novice begin?

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It's different !! - A new school model

2008-12-18T12:16:00.003-05:00

When Dee Thomas and her colleagues got together 15 years ago to design a new high school, they knew there was one thing that had to go: The bell. Thomas said that everyone agreed that the constant interruption of classes caused huge amounts of strain. Moreover, it's just not natural, Thomas said.

"You don't go into your job in the morning and say, 'OK, for the first 42 minutes of my job, I'm going to do the math part.' And then a buzzer goes off, and you do the social history part of your job. You don't do that," Thomas said.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15322289&ft=1&f=1013

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Quality of education in India - A study

2008-12-17T08:08:00.005-05:00

"According to an ASSOCHAM Eco Pulse (AEP) Study “Comparative Study of Emerging Economies on Quality of Education’, India was ranked at the second last place among seven developing countries in terms of education quality as it score minimum points in primary, secondary, tertiary and demographic parameters as compared to other six emerging economies of the world."
http://www.assocham.org/prels/shownews.php?id=1815

This is quite disconcerting and reflects the urgent need of focusing our attention on this critical issue. I'll write on this more later on....

For the full report visit -
http://www.assocham.org/arb/aep/quality-of-education_nov_2008.pdf

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You don't need a reason to be happy...

2008-12-02T23:22:00.001-05:00

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-> Where the hell is Matt?
Every time I watch this video, it makes me smile :)
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-> What is happiness, and how can we all get some?
Excellent talk by Matthieu Ricard on Habits of Happiness. Watch the video

Google Tech talk by Matthieu Ricard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_30JzRGDHI&NR=1
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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-> Want to know what it really takes to succeed?
8 steps to success in 3 min. Excellent stuff !! Watch the video
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- Enjoy life as it comes and never fear. You FEEL what you WANT to feel.

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C O N F I D E N C E !!!!!!

2008-12-02T18:29:00.000-05:00

I received this short story by email today morning. Really liked it .. so decided to put it up here...
(Source - Uttishthata@yahoogroups.com / www.uttishthata.org)

When Henry Ward Beecher was a young boy in school, he learned a lesson in self confidence which he never forgot. He as called upon to recite in front of the class. He had hardly begun when the teacher interrupted with an emphatic, "No!"

He started over and again the teacher thundered, "No!"

Humiliated, Henry sat down. The next boy rose to

recite and had just begun when the teacher shouted,

"No!" This student, however, kept on with the

recitation until he completed it.

As he sat down, the teacher replied, "Very good!"

Henry was irritated. "I recited just as he did," he

complained to the teacher. But the instructor replied,

"It is not enough to know your lesson; you must be

sure. When you allowed me

to stop you, it meant that you were uncertain. If all

the world says, 'No!' it is your business to say,

'Yes!' and prove it."

The world will say, "No!" in a thousand ways.

"No! You can't do that."

"No! You are wrong."

"No! You are too old."

"No! You are too young."

"No! You are too weak."

"No! It will never work."

"No! You don't have the education."

"No! You don't have the background."

"No! You don't have the money."

"No! It can't be done."

And each "No!" you hear has the potential to erode

your confidence bit by bit until you quit all

together.

Though the world says, "No!" to you today, will you

determine to say, "Yes!" and prove it?

Have a positive day!

Nurturing Ideas Into Actions

2008-12-02T01:40:00.002-05:00

Okay.. so it's time I wrote down the "good" ideas before they vanish into thin air. The funny thing is that these ideas come to your mind when you are the least prepared to attend to them e.g. one day before your final exams or when you've just woken up from a "perfect" sleep and have no clue what time or day it is !! (maybe Murphy's law..).

With each idea, I will try to break them into sub-components that seem more achievable. The final goal, as the title suggests, is to put them into action.. try them out. And I want everyone to participate and own these ideas.

IMPORTANT: If you don't have any ideas i.e. NO-IDEA about anything, you are probably the best person here because you will get lots of different ideas to pick from :)

So here goes:-

1. I want to make a public space that allows participants to discuss their ideas in a collaborative and active way. These ideas SHOULD be about doing good to others and can include lots of stuff. I will begin with some and leave the field open for more -
- something that you saw today that want to rectify
- some good act that you saw today that you want to emulate
- some problem you faced today and you have an idea about how to avoid that
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example:
-> I saw a person providing food to lots of homeless people in my neighborhood. I want to do something similar...

Going back to the public space, here's how it "might" work:
a. People pool in ideas without being afraid of being criticized
b. Discuss ways of putting those ideas into actions
b. Everybody sees those ideas and suggestions and comment
c. The idea draws other people (co-located or distantly located) to participate in executing that idea
d. A plan evolves on how to get it done.
e. It gets done!
Simple? Not really.
What's the motivation? Why would people participate? -> (Answer) The group consists of people who WANT to do good. They wouldn't be here if they did not. So they are pre-motivated :)

[[ I don't have anything more to add to that right now and I have NO-IDEA how this will get done ]]

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2. Bringing textbooks alive (the name says it all.... make learning fun and engaging for children) - But how?

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3. Learning in an immersive environment

a. hmm... this might make learning fun and engaging... seems like a direction
b. using experience prototyping for creating immersive learning environment
b1. what constitutes an immersive feeling/experience?

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4. The next three ideas came to me as part of the project for the Happy-Healthy-Home class:
(contents removed... to be included after some refinements)

In retrospect ...

2008-08-09T00:05:00.000-04:00

Well... time really flies! Today, I completed my 1st year of stay in the US. I remember how in my first job, me and my friends used to count the days leading to completion of the first year! After the first year, the excitement vanished and the 'anniversary' day just became another day. Perhaps the same will be the case this time too.

While going through my old e-mails, I stumbled across an old e-mail that I had written exactly a year back to my dad. It was written during the first week of my stay in US and the registration formalities were going on in the college. I had written to dad about the new country, new faces, new culture and new food. I had been a bit frustrated because all I saw everywhere were either Burgers or Salads! I was eating all sorts of foods with weird names which made no sense to me. And to add to the potpourri of experience, people's accent seemed strange. Why would anybody pronounce simple words in such complicated ways that required an inexperienced poor soul to relax his facial muscles every now and then! It's altogether a different matter that virtually everybody on street you made eye contact with, greeted you. So I had to greet everybody back and that in itself was a herculean task. Ultimately I had to resort to looking at the road while walking! I kept on thinking about the same thing happening in India. Try greeting everybody you meet on the street and you will never reach your destination. You will either spend a good deal of your time greeting strangers (not to mention the strange looks that you will get from them!! and they would even keep a safe distance from you because of this strange behavior) or you will need a doctors attention because in your enthusiasm, you greeted a lady who did not take the greetings in the right spirit and raised a ruckus and you were at the receiving end!

But, we are not in India and in this new country, this is what people do, so this is what I'll have to learn. So here we were, building a greeting stamina and also at the same time noticing the in-difference that was a part of the greeting. "Hello! How are you doing today?" is as casual a remark as brushing your teeth! I noticed that people do it more out of a habit rather than a genuine concern. Some even asked me how I was doing and went away, leaving me speaking to myself. So, after some of these strange encounters, I gathered that I should just say 'Good' and move on. It took my some time to say 'good' quickly so that it was spoken before the person left.

Ok. So greetings over and now is the time for some 'Thankya'. What is that?, you ask. Well, that my friend, took me some time to figure out and finally after some pattern matching and context specific investigations, resembled "Thank you". I don't blame this adaptation of the good old two words. It soon became clear to me that this was also a victim of the excess like the "How are you doing?" mentioned earlier. Infact, the answer to this question should ideally have a "Thankya" at the end. Gosh! now I had to fit this with the 'Good' too !! As if life was less complicated with just the 'good' ! Anyways, another thing to learn...

One thing that changed for me after reaching US, was the definition of BIG. Starting with cars, I felt Honda CRV was big, luxury car but on the roads here it seemed like a middle segment 'also available' car. There was (and still is) something here that makes burgers real big, a glass of coke - HUGE, trucks/macks - Giants and Interstates - WIDE. I won't go into details about the content of cheese in the burgers which made the consumer beat the XXL size.

Here I was in a country, where you end up spending the equivalent of 1000 Rupees on just a week's groceries, where an electrician probably makes more money than the software professional (if he charges 400$ just to "look" inside the meter-box, I don't see why he won't be earning more than the software guy), a place where a carpenter and plumber can change professions and become dentists (not a bad choice I must say! Instead of wood and Stainless Steel rods, they just need to deal with some flimsy calcium structures. That too, just 32 of them at max!).

Infact, the dental treatment is so expensive that flying to India, getting ALL your teeth removed, and flying back to US might be a cheaper option. But I was prepared for this and had my teeth double checked before coming. What I wasn't prepared though was the condition in my health insurance which stated that in general it did not cover Dental treatment costs. The only situation it covered was when my wisdom tooth would break and half of it would be inside my gums and it required an extraction. At that time, my insurance company will graciously refund me my dental expenses. Well... Something is better than nothing.. and I can use this as an excuse to visit India.

Speaking of dental health, one more thing comes to my mind. If your lips are dry and they crack, you might have skin cancer and it might be a good idea to count your days because that's what you will find if you do a quick US google search (results vary according to geographic location of the search) with most of your symptoms. You are either terminally ill or should have been dead by now. Ok, google might be a defaulter in this case. So we go and see a doctor because we are sneezing and the first question he asks is - "Did you get the flu shot?" ... The WHAT ?? "Flu Shot"? You guessed it, vaccination against common cold. Sounds a bit strange, doesn't it? Coming from India, it sounded rather hilarious to me. Why would anybody feel the need to get vaccinated against common cold? Duh!! stupid question!! Obviously to prevent yourself from getting sick and loosing valuable productive hours in office. Yeah... but did anybody pay attention to the fact that the virus mutates very fast so you will have to get yourself vaccinated virtually daily? Oh well! Now that is a nice business strategy. Make a vaccine that needs to be taken frequently so the medicine companies atleast have a fixed source of income. To make profit or break even, they might make you take the TB medicine (especially if you are from Asian country and have an innocent cough once in a while and were naive enough to go to the Health Center) just in case you had TB (although you exhibit absolutely no symptoms). To make some more profit, they might do an x-ray of your stomach for a stomach pain instead of OR in addition to an ultrasound, when all you needed was just 'Pudinhara'.

And did you know, houses here have more cockroaches than there used to be in India. And why wouldn't there be more. When you make houses of wood, you are bound to have pesky little things running around. Why fear ? 'Pest Control' is here? All they do is put some useless sticky pads in the house with the hope that the cockroaches (and even rats!!) will walk over them and get stuck! If they did get caught like this, I must say they were a disgrace to the Roach/Rat community and didn't deserve to exist anyways. So here we have lots of sticky pads in the house and all they trap are the loose hair and dirt on the ground. Thanks Mr. Pest Control for helping me keep my house clean of loose hair and dirt but, the cockroach just tasted my cornflakes.
Oh ya, don't be surprised to hear a house blown away in the wind. When you make houses of wood instead of cement and concrete, you cannot expect it to hold ground.

So, as you set your foot on this $$$$$ land, let me welcome you to a country where 30 minutes of power outage is enough to raise a national alarm, drought is declared even when lakes are full of water and taps never run dry, water-fountains (that's a word I had to learn when I was dying of thirst) aim water at your face and you have to suck water while most of it runs down the drain, and inspite of so much water wastage, wiping is preferred over washing and 'Z' is ZEEEEEEE while the digit Zero is often called 'O' (alphabet O).

What am I still doing here inspite of all these things? Well.. Every place has its own pros and cons and there are lots of pros (seriouly there are.. doing Research (MS/PhD) being one of them)... But right now, I don't feel like writing down the pros. I'll leave that for some other day. Or better still, come experience it... the land of $$$$ awaits you. (Or should I take off a couple of $$ in respect of the crumbling US economy and global slowdown).

- Shandon, Jandan, Shanon, Chhhaaa .. WHAT??, Chan Dan, Dyaasgyooptaa, CD
(sorry.. these are not multiple authors but US variants of my sweet name/surname that I have had to listen to till now)

My first snowfall...

2007-12-17T08:02:00.000-05:00

well... I've always wanted to start my own blog but somehow couldn't find the time for it. As I begin my trans-US vacation (actually zigzagging across the US airspace), I felt this would be the best time to pen down my experiences... So here we go ...

Reached DuBois (near Pittsburgh, PA) on Saturday (15th Dec 2007) after giving my final exam that morning. I really cannot believe that the first semester got over so quickly! It feels just yesterday that I arrived in Atlanta (August 10th, 2007) and begun my experience of a completely new world! The last semester was a roller-coaster ride of sorts and I'll dedicate an entire blog to it later on. In short, it was the most happening 5 months of my life so far... and I look forward to more of it :) .

In DuBois, I'm staying at my aunt's house in Treasure lake and the landscape here is awesome! The house is almost in the middle of a forest with dove-tail deers frequenting the neighborhood! As soon as I entered the house, it started snowing on Saturday. Today it's Monday and it's still snowing! Well.. to tell you the truth, in the beginning it was fun watching the snowfall (oh yesss... this is my first snowfall!!!) but now it's become a bit frustrating because IT'S NOT STOPPING !! Yesterday, I helped uncle clean 1 inch of snow from the driveway and stairs and now another inch and a half is there again !! I guess people here devote half there life to shoveling snow from their driveway... because by the time you finish shoveling, another layer of snow has started accumulating!! Anyways, the place is very beautiful and as long as I have my Nikon D40 to convey my story :) , I don't have any complaints.

That's one inch thick snow that me and my uncle spent the whole morning cleaning... now it's there again !! Frustrating.. isn't it??

Frozen while falling...

That's one of the dove-tail deers. A group of 4-5 deers frequent the house premises and it's amazing to watch them move about!! This is what you call 'living in harmony with nature'... don't bother them and they won't bother you.

That's them... watch the moves [:)]

More pictures can be found here -

http://picasaweb.google.com/dasguptachandan/Pittsburg?authkey=609kMnJk6k8

enjoy...