cricketomanac

Solomon starts school

2011-05-04T22:26:00.001+09:00

Its May, 2011, 5 months passed by without any blog, despite many blog-able events. I have been waiting for more than a month to just dispel the procrastination and sum-up all my energy to compose this post …

On 2011AD, April, 9th, Saturday, Antony Solomon Britto s/o Edward Victor Britto, started school. My friends Shin and Jeff accepted our invitation and snapped almost all the unforgettable moments. Anto, as we are used to calling him at home, and Solomon as many of my Japanese friends know him, was not nervous. In fact he looked very cute in his over-sized school uniform.

The school, hmnn… the kindergarten, that Solomon will be attending is one of the popular private Kindergarten's around. We wanted Solomon to attend a good school as most of the parents would want. Living in Japan, and not knowing the intricacies of schooling, we just took things easily. We just wanted Solomon to mingle with the local community and so initially we thought any school would do. Being a staunch catholic, my wife wanted Solomon to attend a catholic kindergarten. We found one far away from our home, but did not really like it.

When Solomon was just over 2 years old, one of our well wishers, the Tani-family, took us to Senzan youchien, which literally means “Senzan Kindergarten”, located on the scenic mountains east of Kyoto. It was love at first site. First, it is located on a scenic mountain far away from the Kyoto traffic, noise and other pollutions …

But there was one problem, it was a Buddhist establishment, and they teach each one of the kids about lord Buddha and carrying a Buddhist version of rosary is also mandatory. Initially we did not like this idea. But then there were too many positives and after many long long discussions … we just told ourselves that this is the place that Solomon would be starting his long … academic career.

But then there was another problem, we learnt that getting admitted in the Kindergarten was not easy. So we inquired with many parents of kids who already attended Senzan, and talked to the Principal teacher, and many more people who would give us some information or the other. There were many drawbacks, the first one, both me and my wife are not fluent in Japanese, Solomon too … And then I do not have a permanent job in Kyoto, so my transfer is due any time. Anyway, it did not happen for the past 3 years … So on the day of application we went a lot lot earlier than everybody and waited outside. I had diligently filled out the application form in Japanese by myself. And we breathed a sigh of relief when we received the admit card a couple of weeks later.

I dressed in my only suite, with Shanthi and attended an Interview in the Kindergarten. Solomon was smart on that day, and we passed the interview with ease. He easily differentiated a small square from a bigger one, a lengthy pole from a shorter one, and drew a circle and the interview (children’s aptitude test) was over. Actually he knew to draw only a circle, and was asked to draw one. He was lucky. We were relived and was a bit proud of him. He did not cry and was at ease with everybody, a character passed on from my DNA.

Unlike India, in Japan, schools start on Saturday, enabling parents to attend the starting ceremony without taking a day off. So, on the 9th April, we were dressed in formals, Japanese style, which means we were dressed in black. Solomon in his school uniform.

As he woke earlier than his usual waking up time of 9AM, Solomon looked a bit tired, but somehow he was coping up. He looked happy on our way. Our Japanese father, who runs this flower shop, took us to Senzan in his car.

Most of the Kindergartens in Japan allow kids to attend classes well before they join, so my wife and Solomon visited Senzan every Thursday and so he was used to many of the, what I can say rules. As most of the building have wooden flooring we need to either change shoes or remove our shoes for some special slippers.

My friend and tennis coach Shin, snapped many of the photos along with Jeff, so all credits to them.

The picture of Solomon inside my mind did not really catch up with the speed of his growth. He was already starting his school. I was overwhelmed, with a sense of responsibility, which had come as a flash. I did not even imagine that it would be this big. I looked at other kids, and many of their fathers busy shooting their kids with video-cameras. I was clearly confused, and trying to smile all times.

Solomon was led inside his class-room, where only one guardian was allowed, so I had to come out, while I was chatting with Jeff, Shin had managed to sneak inside the class and took some snaps. そろもん is the Japanese character for Solomon, and you can see this in his chair, shoe stand and desk.

After some briefing inside the classroom, where they introduced the class-teacher and the kids, they distributed the school diary, Buddhist rosary, and repeated the instructions for the umpteenth time. While all the kids were sitting diligently, Solomon, tired of sitting in a place started playing.

And after I forced him to sit in his seat he starting playing with the kids around him. In all he was not sitting in a place and by far the naughtiest in his class. As usual I was a bit worried.

After the classroom session, the kids and parents were made to sit for a long lecture, which Solomon and the other kids would not understand. It was obvious that my wife did not understand, while I did not listen.

After this the senior kids of the Kindergarten performed some kind of prayer, with flowers and things like that … I could not see it, but Shin had snapped this photo.

Shin followed Solomon to all the places, to the point that he followed him to the toilet ;-) …

After all the formalities there was a group photo session. Solomon did not want to Stand in the usual line and wanted to sit with his mother. As foreigners we always get some (special) treatment, and here too, the principal gave away her seat for Shanthi.

We have a special rapport with the principal who we guess played a big part in our admission, we snapped a photo with her,

We also snapped some photos with Shin and Jeff. The tall one is Jeff and other one is Shin and here is one of them.

We also snapped a family photo under the cherry blossoms … we will cherish this photo for a lifetime I guess …

We did not directly return home as we were hungry, so we ate Pasta and Pizza, and went to hana-pot to take a snap with our Japanese parents ;) and also took a snap with the Tanis who were instrumental in Solomon joining Senzan …

Solomon got a wonderful cake from hana-pot, and we ate it on the next day … In the cake, there is a Patrol car which Solomon likes very much. It is written, “Riromon, Nyuen shiki omedetou” , Riromon is a mistake, I think it should be Solomon.

Solomon looked a lot smarter on the actual first day of school. I will write a lot more about his first few days at school later.

Galaxy in a river …

2010-12-08T20:51:00.001+09:00

My office is in Shiga, a 15 minutes walk from Kusatsu railway station. There is a small river called "Kusatsu-gawa" which flows over the railway line, yes, it's not a typo, this river actually is over the railway line. Though, I have never actual water flow, I thought it was for some kind of flood-prevention or something ... The dry river banks are adorned with "Cherry blossom trees" and it also has a newly-refurbished-jogging track" ...

I guess the residents of Kusatsu were also bored with a dry river, and they probably wanted to fill it up with something ... On one fine day, when I was going to the office, I saw a group of people doing something inside the river, I presumed it to be some regular construction or some kind of maintenance work. What else can we assume if we see people working inside a not-so-happening-place.

But in the evening while I was returning back home, I saw the following site … a wonderful flow of candles. Yes 10,000 of them. It filled the whole river. What really amazed me was the time it would have taken to light it up. It was done manually by a group of volunteers. This shot was taken the next day, when I visited this place with Shanthi and Anto …

The following board says “7th lighting festival …”. I am working in this office for the 4th year now, and this is perhaps the first time I am seeing this. Probably, this is the first time it was made noticeable.

The following lights were made by some school going kids … wonderful …

I was happy to see the river’s simulated flow. As with any other festival it was crowded, but not like the ones seen in Kyoto so it was manageable. I had ample space to set-up tripod ;-) …

Kudos Kusatsu …

Autumn with my FCR2 ~

2010-12-01T08:32:00.016+09:00

Local and Foreign tourists flock Kyoto all round the year, and it peaks during Autumn. Having lived in Kyoto for 3 years now and witnessing the 4th Autumn after starting to live in Kyoto, I have had no interest in visiting those so-called-famous-Autumn-spots just to avoid the crazy crowd. But this year, since the arrival of my FCR2, I started visiting places that I normally cannot go. For sometimes now, starting this September, almost every weekend, I visit Arashiyama, early in the morning, with my bike it just takes a little over 30 minutes from my home if I take the scenic-yet-non-crowded road along the Katsura river.

(In Front of Arashiyama Park)

(In Front of the serene Lake Hirozawa)

I have heard from people that Arashiyama is at its best during Autumn, and when I visited it a couple of weeks back, I found that out for myself. On that day I had started off from my home at around 0730 AM, and reached Arashiyama at around 0815 AM, and Mmmaaannn !!! it was damn crowded, the parking lot in Tenryuji was already full. Despite the crowd, I couldn't stop myself admiring the beauty of Arashiyama that stood in front of my eyes. After buying my bike, I would have visited it at-least a dozen times, but this time was special. After witnessing the sheer beauty of fall colours for myself, I took Shanthi, and Solomon with me, to Arashiyama on Sunday. With Shanthi, we took more than (3x30) = 90 minutes. Her bicycle has only 3 gears compared to my 10, does that answer the reason for 90 minutes? … anyway, she enjoyed her ride too. We had fresh coffee, some hot toast, and bought some of the finest tofu …

(Shanthi and Solomon in Arashiyama)

(Our family + a neighbour in Arashiyama)

To escape from the crowded part, we went to a coffee shop near Seiryuji and after our second-breakfast, we visited the Seiryu-ji

(Anto playing inside Seiryu-ji)

Every time I visit Arashiyama, I come across a post that says, “Kyoto-Yawata-Kizu bicycle road, starts here, 45KM). After doing some research I found out that the road along Katsura is actually a bicycle trail that goes southwards till Kizugawa city, a place near the border Kyoto prefecture, close to Nara and Mie. I wanted to try this route. But then, I had a feeling that 90 KM ride was a bit too much. I decided to give it a shot last Tuesday, it was a National holiday here. I started off from my home at around 0830AM, went to a coffee shop nearby and got involved in a petty chat till 1000AM, and started off towards Kizu at around 1030AM.

Weather was fine, 15C, clear sky, wind was on my side. Except for getting lost from time to time I had fun. By the time I reached Nagarebashi, which is probably the longest wooden bridge of its kind in Japan, I was a bit tired. I had covered around 20 Kilometers from my home. Contrary to many people's guess was built after WWII

(Nagarebashi in the background)

Despite the dead flat track, riding was getting tougher and tougher, the wind started blowing randomly, and the my average speed was down. After leaving Nagarebashi and riding for some 10KM I was tired. And in the whole Kyoto-Yawata-Kizu route, except for Nagarebashi, there is nothing interesting ... Along the cycling road I saw some Huge trees, and nothing else. And when I reached the end of the cycling road, I had much difficulty in finding the following post. Except for the partly-refreshing-mostly-tiring ride, it was an anti-climax.

At this point I was dead-tired and terribly-hungry, I wanted to eat something, sitting relaxed in some restaurant. I wished I had the bike-carry-bag so that I can take it back to Kyoto by train. I started looking for a eating spot and went on for a few Kilometers, I knew that I will be reaching Nara, and yes, that was it. I just wanted to go sight seeing in Nara, except for my brain all other parts of my body objected to the idea. I grabbed a bite, of 2 rice balls, 1 financier, 1 hot dog, 1 lemon drink, and 1 Vitamin drink. I was full. I can say overloaded. Now the entire 45 odd Kilometer stretch was in front of me. Wind was clearly in the opposite direction. Precisely 180 degrees, and it would be 180 degree even when I made a 30 degree turn, it was crazy.

I started off, feeling sorry for not going around Nara, and wondering why I had to ride my bike for more than 40 Kilometers and not visit anything. Why would I do this, I really did not know, I just wanted to get back. Back home, in my comfortable little home. Wind was making the ride a lot tougher, I wished I had something to cover my ears. I could not hear anything, the ear phones from my iPod set to full volume could not beat the noise from the wind. It was very hard that made me wonder, "if this is not a typhoon, what would a typhoon be like ...". I was riding at almost walking pace, sometimes at jogging pace, and sometimes I just stopped, taking a sip and feeling my breath. And when I reached Nagarebashi, I called Shanthi to tell her that I will be late, very late, than what I had planned.

I found out that the same wind that helped me during the onward journey turned into an enemy when I was returning. I was wishing, "cant they be friendly through-out". Anyway I came back home with this nice shot.

(Somewhere near Kizu ...)

After my (Mis)adventure on Tuesday, I decided to try some less crowded Autumn spots in Kyoto, that I had heard from a friend, and I took route 31 that is in the North of Kyoto and went to Iwato-Rakuyo Jinja. It was probably the best place I have visited, partly because I had the entire temple for me. At ~30 Kilometers from my home, It was not far compared to Nara, but tougher ...

(In front of Kyoto Iwato Rakuyo Jinja)

(Fallen leaves everywhere ...)

Rakuyo means, fallen leaves, and they never clear-up the leaves that fall and it remains like a bed. It was just wonderful to see a place like this. I met a Swiss guy who shot this snap, who told me, that he has visited this temple during Autumn every year for 20 years. It was not crowded at all, partly because, reaching here was a humongous task. On my way back I had food in a restaurant called, "Yama-no-Ie Hasegawa", which literally means, a house in the mountain. We can stay here for JPY 5K per person per night. I wish I can drink and stay back someday ... when Shanthi is not around ;-)

(In the midst of No-where ... Yama-no-Ie-Hasegawa)

After having a soup + cheese-hamburger + hot cocoa + some chatting with an old couple, I headed back home. Physically tired and mentally refreshed.

Giant FCR 2 and

2010-09-20T21:12:00.005+09:00

I lost my bicycle a few months ago. I was over-confident that no-body in Japan would steal, especially a not so good looking normal bicycle. I never locked it, and I felt confident that no-body would steal it, till such time I lost it, ... OK, till such time somebody stole it.

I bought a new cycle for Shanthi a couple of weeks back. The Beaute from bridgestone. It's a nice bike with a low center of gravity, obviously it's heavy, which directly equates to its stability. So, I did not have much trouble choosing it. I did put the extra seat for Solomon ;-)

The cycle is an actual beauty, the stand, is made for extra stability to bear the kid's weight, and the rear seat (carrier) is made to withstand the weight of a kid + it's seat... Besides the hand-bar has a lock which you can use for 100% stability when you park with heavy load in the front basket. Though it cost's around JPY 50K, including the child seat, it's worth every penny.

After buying it, we found out that Shanthi had lost touch riding a bicycle. So, I had to (re-)teach her to ride it, in doing so, I had to run behind her, while she was re-learning to ride. It was not fun. After about a week of practicing, she was riding well, if not perfectly well. So, there was no point in me running behind her.

So, after some thought, and hard look at our finances, we decided to buy a new bicycle for me, so that we can all go out together in eco-friendly bicycles. So, I looked up the internet for a right bicycle. I wanted a nice one, nothing less than 50K ;-) ... I was just kidding.

I just wanted a nice bicycle to go round, and after some research I bought the Giant FCR2, a 8.5Kg carbon beauty. I am yet to use it fully to write a review, but the first 2 days had been a pain in the ass, yes, the seat is very small, but it's a damn good bike when it comes to speed. I love it, except for the seat ~~

May, 24th, 2035 AD, Kyoto, Japan

2010-05-24T18:17:00.001+09:00

Alighting from the train, he felt, Kyoto was hot, but soon consoled himself as it was cooler than his “hot-and-humid” home town. He thought that the Japanese would recognize him as a South Asian; thanks to the programs of Indian in NHK most of the Japanese recognized him as an “Indojin”, meaning “Indian”. And when they did, the pride for his mother-land just showed up.

Carefully following his colleagues advice, he handed over his hotel’s address that he had printed as part of his travel-preparations, to the taxi driver. The Taxi driver took only a couple of seconds to read-understand-acknowledge back to his customer. This guy murmured, “Japanese! Aren’t they fast ~”.

He loaded his 3 hand-carry luggage, in the back-seat, suit-case in the trunk, and made himself comfortable in the front seat. Inside the solar-electric-taxi, everything looked cool. The seats were more comfortable than the best he had seen back home. He thought, unlike the taxi drivers back home, this Taxi driver was wearing a suit that would match his marriage suit, never mind, the politeness … He could hear some pre-recorded lady’s voice from a speaker near the driver seat, that stopped once he put on the seat belt and the veered into the busy lane. The driver was courteous enough to tell him, “30 meenits” with a smile. He smiled back and thanked the driver with his mind trying to figure out the fare for a 30 minutes ride in a solar-electric-super-comfortable car.

He was fascinated at most of the things he saw, working traffic lights that were mostly LED, people respecting traffic lights and traffic rules, cars without side-dents, clean roads, pavements with no homeless, and much more… It was his first trip abroad, and his mind was fascinated with everything foreign. The taxi was now in a broad road, where the inter-car distance was so large, that he thought that he had seen such a formation, only during a Presidents visit to his home town.

Having lost in the thick of things that was happening around him, he started focusing on a car that his taxi was following. It was a red colored Toyota, he could read “Noribito” inscribed at its trunk, he chucked, “Noribito, … a nick name is it!”. His boy-scout eyes would swear that the red-Toyota maintained a perfect inter-car distance. And it was exactly in the center of the road. He thought he wished that he could stop the red-Toyota, and measure the distance, and confirm it. He was awe-struck and murmured to himself, “Japanese perfection” … He tried to spot the driver through the transparent rear-glass of the red-Toyota and could see few heads in the back-set, but not the driver, and to this he murmured, “Short Japanese” …

The red-Toyota would respect yellow-signals to perfection, and was into ideal-driving. The taxi driver was getting irritated, and signed, “Noribitto”, the Indian asked, “Whaaat?!*” for which the driver replied, a “Tis-a drovibingu robotto, no doraiba-” …

Inspirations ~~~

2010-03-24T15:54:00.001+09:00

First it was Fr. Cyril, then Jeff, and then Miyuki-san, and recently I befriended another person who is planning to write a book.

These days, for work, I read Jeff’s *great* book, “Mastering Regular Expressions”. I ordered a copy from Amazon. Reading it, feels like, Jeff’s talking to me.

Of course, I have had the opportunity to chat with Jeff a few times, and reading this book was no different from those petty chats. I often read books in solitude, and it was like Jeff standing in front of me and teaching me, like a friendly professor.

I figured out that it’s probably because I know him, or something with his writing style, which is more like a story, or a friendly little gossip, a conversation.

I had always wanted to write my own book, I once started writing one, before putting it to an ever-lasting-hibernation. But, after reading Jeff’s book, I only think, at my current ability and “frame of mind”, it might be next to impossible.

Man, page-after-page, the well-written-contents, the simple-language … everything, is so great, that, I realized the 30 months or so, that he toiled, was worth all of it.

I guess, his name would last, as an icon, in the “regular expression world”, long enough, till another big-bang.

Fr Cyril, a professor at the Sophia University, Tokyo, is another great guy that I had met. I and Shanthi attended his mass in the St. Ignatius church in Yotsuya. It was a Japanese mass, and even without any judging-ability, I rightly presumed his Japanese to be fluent. So, being proud of this fluently-Japanese-speaking Indian priest, I and Shanthi went to wish him after the mass.

On meeting him, I was immediately impressed with his profound simplicity, humility … It’s not flattery, just the truth. We were newly married, and very religious, and getting to know a priest who can talk English, in this foreign land was a pleasure.

Later, after coming back home, the inquisitive me, searched the internet, and found that he had written a couple of books. I was awe struck. I guess any normal human being might not figure out his intellect, just by his looks, phoo~~ commons like me just could not, cannot.

And later, we would often go to St. Ignatius just to meet him and say, “hello” … I used to feel proud meeting him. He was an inspiration, with his intellect, humility, and everything …

Last year, I got to meet Ishida Miyuki-san, who teaches me Japanese. Going by her simple, Japanese house-wife looks, it’s probably difficult to figure out that she hold a few patents, copyrights and has written a book. And another one might follow …the most active person I have ever met ~

After getting to know these simple people in Fashion conscious Japan, I guess, even here, intellects may not look great with their attires ;-) For example, Jeff has not changed his Yellow Jacket, since the time I met him ;-).

Everyday, after work, I get tired, sometimes very tired and go to sleep. But every morning, I get refreshed thinking of these *great* people. I look forward to the day. They are my energy source, my inspiration.

Thank you guys ~~~

strokes ...

2010-03-18T17:38:00.001+09:00

I watch Japanese version of NHK news, in the mornings and sometimes during the evenings, mornings, just to know the day’s weather, and select the day’s clothes, and in the evenings for some actual news. I watch Japanese news, partly to improve my language ability and also for the news that I can understand ;-). I have cleared quite a few Japanese language exams; but still my level is, how can I say …bad.

Japan is a relatively crime free country, and even a petty robbery at a remote convenience store will feature in the national news for a couple of days. Sometimes I feel; NHK, the national broadcaster that extols money, if you happen to own a TV set, comes out with some absolutely fantastic programs, but for its lackluster news contents. The news content is dumb, and if you know the previous day’s news, you can predict 80% of the day’s news. I don’t know if NHK is to be blamed.

NHK’s stupid news was not worth blogging about, until recently when I got furious with the news that made headlines for more than a week now. 9 birds, strokes to be precise, that were protected in a sanctuary got killed by some animal, and this news made it to the head lines. Back in India, tigers make it to the news when they are hunted down illegally in sanctuaries, but not in the headlines though. Anyway, when I saw the news for the first time, I sympathized for the strokes, though I was more worried for Chile and Haiti, that do not make news anymore. But, the next day, to my surprise, I watched with disgust, an analysis report on the killing, OF STROKES MAN! And the next day, I got used to those 9 strokes, the cage, the 256 holes that were found in it, the many IR camera that works in the night, and the markings of predator’s entry found in some of the holes, and that the predator had been making regular visits, etc. etc.

Overwhelmed with disbelief and helplessness, though I didn’t give a damn for the strokes, when there were many more bloody things that happen around the world, I started making best use of the news contents; noting down each new Japanese word.

Strokes can makes it to headlines in Japan for more than a week. Vow …

Master

2010-03-08T11:04:00.002+09:00

Though I used to boast a lot when I was a kid, recently I guess I don’t, and even when I was a kid, I was not a big fan of listening to someone boast …

So, when Master told me that he would reach the finals of the table tennis tournament with ease, I summarily brushed it aside, with sarcasm. Master, as I call him, writes to me every single day, OK, every single week-day, a mail from his mobile phone, teaching me not-so-easy-to-read Japanese words. He would carefully select an article from the day’s evening edition of Asahi and write down the Japanese-reading for difficult words. I am not a big fan of writing long emails, especially from my difficult-to-type mobile phone, though I really appreciate his long-and-useful mail-lessons. Reading his email along with the “article of the day” has become a habit. So is the habit of visiting his coffee shop with Shanthi and Solomon on Saturday’s, named “Charmonee” which I guess is French, is on the ever busy “route-1”.

When I met him for the first time in a friend’s marriage, I was impressed at the first sight. Looking at his suit, and demeanor, I presumed him to be a "big shot", a great man. He gave the speech for the newly-wed. A year has passed since, and getting to know him better, he did not disappoint me, he is indeed a great man, but he was just happy (without being a big shot). He was clear in his thoughts … simple in his approach, yet from time-to-time, he utters things-that-summarily seems stupid, yet worth pondering. He was born in the same year as my dad, never married, runs not less than a 100 Kilometers a week, competes in every single marathon in the Kansai region, and plays table tennis 3 times a week, in his 60’s now. Before meeting him, I had plans to retire early.

As usual I met him this Saturday, and invited him for a film party in my home-theater on Sunday; he told me that he would take part in the local table tennis tournament. With an 80% chance of rain, and bunking church when Shanthi’s not around, and nothing else to do on a rainy Sunday, I thought I better go to support him. I wanted to see him live up to his own boasting and hence expressed my desire to go and support him, he was happy, and told me to come early. I asked him, “How about, 12 Noon?”, for I considered, 12 noon to be early for lonely-Sunday’s. He replied, without hesitation that he would be "playing in the finals" by the time. I could not hide the sarcastic flash from my face, though I tried hard not to show it. For a moment I thought that he was also sarcastic.

Master, as I have learnt over the period of time, never cares about sarcasm, and never gets angry. He is a character, the character. Last year, he was eliminated in the earlier rounds by a man, whom I knew. In fact, I considered his table tennis as "beatable". Anyway, with nothing to do on Sunday, I decided to go and support him. I thought, that it’s a tribute to a person who writes to me every single (week) day.

Having said all this, I myself, like table tennis, hmmnnn…I play table tennis, better than my tennis, in my own amateurish style, with my JPY 800 racket, whose rubber Solomon likes to stand on. It’s lost its shine and gleams with Solomon’s shoe marks, does not have any grip what-so-ever, yet I stood second in the Kishoin table tennis tournament. I was mostly lucky as my opponents simply lost, and eventually made me win. And in the final’s, I was pitted against an old guy, far older than my dad, and lost my mood for any competitive table tennis against the elderly opponent, and simple gave way for his victory, and after he had won, I figured out, that I would have lost even if I would have fought, for his game was (far) better than mine.

I had noted down the name of the venue and told him that I would put the GPS enabled iPhone to test. iPhone GPS is not bad, after-all, it is the first ever GPS that I am using, and I never knew anything better or worse for any sort of comparison. During the rainy Sunday, in which you hate riding your bicycle, it took me for a real-good-ride. The iPhone GPS predicted that I would reach the destination in about 45 minutes by walk, and I took 55 minutes riding my bicycle. I was definitely not riding at walking speed. I will analyze what went wrong later. But, Master and I took only 25 minutes on our way back. Master is definitely smarter than the iPhone GPS, inside Kyoto. Or I went 30 degree uphill and came sliding down ;-)

7th, March, 2010, Sunday, woke up for the 1st time at 7AM, thought it was early, and wished to sleep for an hour more, woke up again at half-past-9, and stayed in bed till 10. When I finally managed to get up, a mountain of “to-be-washed” begged me for attention. I quickly transferred the mountain into the washing machine. Thanks to the drier function, I don’t have to bother drying the clothes. Made some garlic toast, and ate it with milk, took a hot shower, for some strange reason shaved my face (though I don’t do this (even) on weekdays) … and then left home at around 11:15AM, and hoped to reach the venue before 12. After getting to know some new places around my neighborhood as I was just going in circles, (thanks to iPhone GPS), I reached the Venue, 15 minutes past 12.

Inside the big gymnasium, there was Master, standing with a grey Jacket, white gloves, and a dry unfathomable smile in his face. He was standing as if he wanted to leave. Looking at all this and adding my own creativity, I for a moment, thought, that he had lost and was just waiting for me, and would probably leave with me. He was standing with some kind of urgency in his face. He did not bother much even when I went near him, and with the same dry smile in his face, he told me that in the first round, his opponent got defeated 3-0, and quickly ran to the toilet. Urgency ... ah, my creativity.

I saw a big contingent from Kishoin (the place where I live), and the place where I play table tennis. The group from Kishoin was happy to see me, and even gave me some sweets, for they thought I had come to cheer them. But when they learnt that I had come to just support my friend, they gave a, give-our-sweet-back “you moron” look. Despite their staring at me, I ate it.

Master was running here and there, till his 2nd round match. He predicted that he would beat his next opponent, 3-0, and he did. For the first time, I saw master, playing table tennis. His table tennis, like his whole life, was smooth, ordinary, simple, neat, and gentle; it was an ideal show like the great Roger Federrer of tennis. Master never tried to win, but his opponent simply lost trying to win. Master for his part, made sure he kept the ball at play. His face did not look rash, confident, or dejected, it was just flat. During the match, he was just gently smiling at his opponent. And while I was clapping intently to support him, I felt, it did not matter much.

After the match, master came to me, and while I congratulated him, he told me that it would be difficult to beat the next opponent. He was not worried, but he just thought that it would be difficult. And difficult it was, master lost the 1st set, without any fight. The opponent was way too good. After the 1st set, for a moment, I thought, everything was over. Into the second set, master lost the 1st 5 points in a row, the opponent was 180-degree opposite to master, he would cheer himself, with “ehhhh” and then look at Master and say things like, “now-you--serve” and things like that. I thought, master is losing the mental game. But master was just trying to keep the ball in play. And into the later part of the second set, his opponent started making errors, unforced errors, and got into a shell … really … no-body could believe it. He lost the 2nd set 12-10. And went on to win the 3rd, but he lost the 4th and the 5th, 11-2 or something like that. After the game Master told me that he was lucky. I thought the guy perished in his own mind-games.

As promised earlier Master was in the finals. Having seen his game, I was no more surprised that he was in the finals. I am sure that, if I was ever pitted against him, he would defeat me, while he is just sleeping.

Master and I had earlier planned to leave the venue at around half past 2. But since the final’s was yet to take place, Master was worried about his promise. He went into the match with a lot of confidence, and won the 1st 5 points in the 1st set, and suddenly I saw some anxiety in him, and he started playing for the winners and eventually lost the game-set-match 0-3. He was different in the final game, it seemed like he wanted to win. I should never take the credit away from his opponent, who was very brilliant.

After the game, I promised myself that I would indulge myself with a better table tennis racket that Solomon wouldn’t stamp, and put in some more practice and beat the guy who defeated Master. Vengeance is it? I am sure I can defeat him if I practise 24-hours a day, for 1 whole year ;-)

We reached home at around 3PM. Master was more interested in coming back with me just to keep his promise, rather than receiving his runner’s up trophy. He is a "real Japanese" man, a nice human being, an innocent child in his sixties, who teaches me a lot more than Japanese. I used to like him, and now it’s a mixture of respect and liking.

In 2007, when I stepped into Kyoto, I would have never dreamt that I would meet so many humble, yet great people. Now I know that, there is something special in Kyoto that I would never get anywhere else in Japan …

Mortals

2010-03-04T14:13:00.000+09:00

If we shall say that, it’s hard for someone to find the way into the heart. It’s doubly hard to let them leave. In planet earth, most of the human lives are attached, with emotional attachments. Like it or not, we will have to live with it. Trying to be conservative and closing the way to you, might make things worse, loneliness. And allowing many would makes things equally difficult as allowing none.

My wife and kid are spending their vacation back home and I am living alone bombarded with emotions. Man it’s hard for me to stand, sometimes often.

There are some people who have got their PR in your heart. It may be your family, friends or your co-worker. Sometimes they are in your heart, since you respect them, or sometimes you like them, friends for example, or you love them, as your kid, Mom, Dad, Wife, Siblings, … You never miss those people you respect, for example, your manager in your first job, or a brainy co-worker that you admired. But you miss friends, and family. Sometimes it’s hazy when we try to differentiate the feelings towards a friend and a family member.

Recently, I started liking weekdays, as I am busy with work, and the room for emotions squeezes out into vanity. But once you return home, its cold, heater doesn’t help, yes, you seek warmth, and man-made heaters are useless. You miss the warmth of your family, friends, and the need to socialize. You live to perform the ever mundane tasks of making things that are faster, cheaper, lighter, etc. and all things that we think can make your company’s stakeholders rich. Mundane task, oh these mundane tasks. Sometimes there is a feeling that everything is Mundane, tennis, photography, eating, drinking, everything. Why!

Initially, I judged it as depression, till I started listening to Anto over the telephone, saying “arigato”, “potato”, and a host of non-decipherable words. They echo in my ears, long after he speaks to me. He’s a kid, and never talks for more than a minute, and his creative words, which only god and angels can understand. Sometimes, I listen intently to what he speaks, the more I concentrate, the less I make out. So these days, I just listen to the tone, which he changes with finesse. Probably, like his father, he may talk people into anything or is he an orator of some sort. Well, frankly, I have no idea. I miss him, that’s it, and sometimes terribly.

Sometimes you might assume that some of your friends might compensate these loneliness with their friendship. But, probably, you, and your heart, don’t want any compensation. They just want what they want. They never seek compensations. They don’t use their head, they are heart, the emotional part …

From time to time, I clean my home to find his table spoon, well below the TV stand, or the refrigerator, just to smile at it. I would have yelled at him, when I see him doing that, but now I simply miss those things.

These emotions, are without doubt, hard, but are wonderful. I want to cherish them with joy. But it beats me, more than often …

iPhone 3G-S (Beware)

2010-01-18T13:52:00.001+09:00

Slowly and steadily I am getting used to the iPhone which replaced my (much loved) normal phone. Though everything’s new, one thing is for sure, I will have to get used to this, paradigm shift in user interface, or should I say, mobile telephones. But, being an avid user of a (normal) mobile phone, I expect some of the (useful) features that were available in my normal phone in this apple’s version. Trivial things that made me comfortable with my old phone are no more available in iPhone, I will be listing them after some (brief) complaints on the contract related stuff …

The iPhone contract (in Japan, Softbank) in itself is a bit less user-friendly,
 The Japanese carrier Softbank sells the iPhone at a price much (much) higher than the US. Never know why? Its really ridiculous ~~~
 Previously, I used to pay a small insurance on my telephone that covered my phone against repairs, or accidental break-downs, like falling into water, etc. And, iPhone too comes with an expensive Apple care, which does not cover accidental break-downs etc. (The safety pack (Anshin pack) is no more available). So if you accidentally drop your phone, you will end up paying JPY ~20K, or JPY ~60K depending on the damages (your luck). And when I think about this (accidental fall), and the 20-60K thing, somehow I am uncomfortable handling the phone. Phooo …. iPhono-dropo-phobia is it?
 If you wish to re-pay for the iPhone in installments, then you will have to repay in exactly 24 months, and you enter into a contract for 24 months, and you need to cancel “some the contract” exactly after 24 months, not the 25th or 23rd, barring which, Softbank will extend your contract for another 24 months. And, you need to pay another JPY 9800 to break the contract. And … the beautiful (hmmm … the bad) thing is, as of now, Softbank would never know (say), when your 24 months will expire. Is it a trick Softbank?
 Once you sign your contract, there is no way out. Absolutely, no way. Funny thing is, when you sign up with them, they get your signatures in at-least 5 different places. So, you will be signing more times than, when you are buying a brand new car. Somehow this made me uncomfortable.
 One important thing, I still use Softbank, NOT because I like them, but just because many of my Indian friends (still) use Softbank, and they would kick me, if I changed my carrier. Sigh. I hate the signal quality. Once I happened to visit someone near Himeji, and there was absolutely no tower for a long-long distance in and around the area. In fact, I HATE Softbank’s signal quality. iPhone 3G only adds to the woes.

Enough of the contract, the following features that are normally available in your standard mobile phone are not available in your phone,

 Disaster warning, like earthquake warning, which was part of my earlier mobile phones, is not available in the iPhone. So users of iPhone cannot be informed of disasters.
 In my earlier phones, there used to be small (multi-colored LED), that would flash, when there is a missed call, or an un-read email message. This really helped me know about the missed call without un-locking the mobile phone’s screen. In the iPhone, there is no such LED, or any Indication, you need to check your home screen to find out.
 I like clean desktops, and in my earlier phones, I go to the Menu-bar to see the applications and perform other operations. So, when there is a missed call or something, the notification was very clear. But in the iPhone, it seems to be lost in the crowd of icons in the home screen. I think, the home screen is (very) crowded.
 Getting a App store account, without a credit card, was a night-mare. And it is mandatory for downloading applications (which you will need for transferring your phone book from your previous telephone).
 Transferring “my phone book” from the previous mobile phone to the iPhone was a pain in the Ass, really. (Especially with the procedures that I had to go through)…

Though I would never come to terms with the contract related issues, even after I signed one, I think the functional issues in iPhone are due to the paradigm shift, which apple experienced.

The standard mobile phone started as an extension to the basic cordless telephone. Features that were needed while we are on the move were then added to it, bit by bit, like, a pager, the music player, an email client, a mini web browser, the document viewer, a movie player, television, … and a host of applications.

Now, iPhone started as a (simple) Music player, in iPod touch and grew into a mobile phone. The only new thing they have given us is the touch panel. Now, if that is the only thing that made it unique, there are a host of other telephones like the Nokia N95, Sharp 941, …. Which are far better than the iPhone, in every single aspect.

But then, why did I buy an iPhone. Do you want to hear why? Frankly … I wanted the Nokia N95, I searched, researched, and found out that no-carrier in Japan has one. And … then I though, I would settle for the Sharp 941, the worst part is 941 is almost 2 times expensive than an iPhone.

Recession lurking around, I became a proud owner of the (all new) iPhone 3G-S …And started counting to 24 ;-)

Sayonara ...

2010-01-15T13:25:00.002+09:00

You made me hear the world, when I was away from home, and at home. The gray shade in you had been turning white, age shows. You brought me messages and pictures from friends. I always walked with you. Even Shanthi used to be annoyed if you don’t accompany me. Living in Japan, I made you silent for most of your life, but you had to listen to my conversations, and occasional blushing and blabbering. If only you knew Japanese, you would have been laughing everyday, at me, when I talk. You were not one of the best of my friend, but helped me make best friends, a lot of them, thank you. You woke me up. Sometimes I have played with you, but I should be honest, I didn’t enjoy it.

Antony liked you too. You would make him smile when he cried. You lit up even after he threw you to the wall, the floor, and every-place he can throw you to. You started again and when he walked over you, a few times. Probably, he believed that you can talk. Sometimes he saw himself in you.

I had to part with you. Mortality had got you too, or was it my greed, selfishness, ego, or what-ever. Of late, I had been thinking of abandoning you, and yesterday decided on it, and got the all new, iPhone 3G-S.

Missing Anto …

2010-01-11T00:17:00.001+09:00

Discounting anger, it’s long since I was emotional to this extent… Least did I expect this to happen. After 3 weeks of vacationing with our parents, I had to leave, my family, for work, back to Japan. After a long … long time, my eyes welled up, I was reluctant to leave.

Things only got bad when we reached the Madurai airport, being a domestic one, security used to be a bit relaxed, not anymore. Normally the procedure to board a flight in Madurai is

“ You Check-in→ Clear the Security screening → boarding”

You enter the airport to Check-in, after which you would be allowed to come out of the airport to talk to your folks who usually wait outside till such time your flight takes off. So, usually I come out after checking-in, talk to them, and bid good-bye before proceeding with the security. So, this time, I left some hand-baggage with them, hoping to collect them after my check-in.

But, after check-in, this (merciless) military policeman, guarding the airport entry, for in-explicable reasons, did not allow me to go out of the airport, to meet my parents. I was upset, as I could not bid good-bye to my family members. Shanthi’s parents had come down from Trichy just to see me off. Some how, while all these things were happening, for a moment, I thought that I would be missing Anto, very much. Shanthi was standing on the other side of the gate with Anto, and me inside the Airport. Cursing those terrorists who are the reason for this “high security”, I was still hoping to find my way out.

Madurai is a small town, hmmm…, not so small though, but small. But, somehow, I knew many people who work in the Airport. Talking to a few of them, I completed some procedures to get out of the airport, talk to my family members, and bid them good-bye.

But, after the incident with the security personnel, and the subsequent emotional flash, of missing Anto, I felt like I am going to miss, Anto very much. This thought did not strike me when we were arrived at the strategy of a month each in Madurai and Tiruchy. Shanthi and I had decided that Anto together with Shanthi will stay back for a month each with my parents and in-laws, hoping that he would get used to my parents, in-laws, traffic, noise, dust, mosquito, food, etc …

The emotional feeling would only grow stronger and stronger when Anto was enjoying innocently, watching the cars passing by, and making inviting gestures at the other kids. For a moment, I thought, he was ignoring me. Silly me! The gravity of the situation took to me.

Actually, many of our close family friends did warn me about this “missing phase”, which I could not visualize when Anto was always with me. A transit time of 18 hours in Kualalumpur helped me with the introspection. From the time he joined me in mid 2008, I had less time for him, as I was always busy, with my career, Japanese language, sports, photography, etc. I did not spend much time with him, to the point that, when I spent 3 hours with him in the absence of Shanthi, I wrote a blog. I loved him; somehow, I did not find time for him, with him. But, the past 3 weeks, without my own knowledge, I spent 3 weeks with him, all time, all day long. And, probably, he got closer to me than ever before. I had always loved him, so much… but never imagined that I will miss him, if he is away from me, for his much needed education. I don’t know, if he is missing me.

During the course of writing this post, I was wondering, if I could cut short their stay in India, may be, 15 days each or something. Looking loo…ong down, one thing is for sure, I need to get used to living away from him. He may go to a college is another town, find work in a far away country, marry and go away … But …now, its … hard, for me.

I am just wondering, how much my parents would have missed me, when I left them for work, to Chennai, to Bangalore, then to Japan, when I got married, … , I wish they did not miss me ;-) but … for now,

I MISS YOU, MY SON ANTO

背伸びをするな

2009-11-18T16:41:00.001+09:00

During the later half of the year, I almost burnt myself down. Partly owing to my self created hyper-unrealistic schedules. After coming to Japan, especially after marriage, till the first half of this year, magically, I managed (for quite sometime) to work to those packed schedules, but slowly I started feeling like that inside my head there is no more space for my brain to maneuver. Steadily, I realized, my performance started to take a nose dive. It became notable during my Tennis sessions, I lost concentration to such a level, that, I even thought of quitting it, a month or so back.

But then, I sat back, and decided to look back, at what is really happening to my life. I am not a super-man, neither have I ever thought that I am one. Despite knowing this fact, I am a bit lenient when it comes to adding “bits” of something new to my schedule. Curiosity, at its peek, I wanted to try every single thing that comes my way. Few things that I have been doing or have tried in the past couple of years goes like, Photography, Japanese language studies, Tennis, Table tennis, Marathon, rock climbing, besides studying a hell a lot of new technologies.

I enjoyed each one of the activities, and I wanted to master them all. It seems that realization follows once something notable happens, mostly with a negative effect. For me, realization came, when I realized (after being pointed out many times), that I was not even listening to others properly. At some point, I just heard only half of what people said. For example, after returning home, my wife starts explaining the things that happened during the day, and most of the times, I would not have listened to her, even a bit. I soon realized, I was not able to listen. It was something like the hard-disk inside my head became “disk full”. Not something pleasant.

Not being sure about the cause of this, “listening disorder”, I just started to check, I called off some of hobbies one after the other, table tennis was the first in the list, just because I was reasonably good at it. And then slowly, reduced the number of times I ran in a week, and also reduced the number of books that I was reading.

Results started showing up, incredibly fast. Tennis performance improved, incredibly fast. I could listen to my wife with ease, though I acted as if I could not hear ;-) … So … 2009 taught me a good lesson ~~~~ I have to take few things at a time, and never, “Bite more than what I can chew” …

Mac or Windows …

2009-11-04T20:56:00.001+09:00

Back in year 2000, I got a chance to use an iMac for work. The first impression was, “looks were far better than its underlying software”. I found it extremely difficult to use, the mouse, opening and closing applications, ejecting an USB disk, opening a drive and browsing for files inside folders, …, it was tedious for a normal user like me. Our company was trying hard to write device drivers for this beautiful (yet not so useful) computers. I thought, that an iMac would (only) fit well on a front-office. May be harsh, but that was my impression. I thought, Apple made beautiful yet unusable products. I was impressed with the iBook too, an Apple product, it looked very cool, and that was all I could say about it.

The impression has not changed, yet, probably because, I never got a chance to work with Mac again. And on top of that, I was (very) happy with windows.

I had been a system software engineer, churning out, firmware, device drivers, and a lot of test applications, everything in or using Windows. I find it fast and easy to work in windows, even today, working with a hardware team developing almost everything in Linux, but I still use Windows ;-) …

Long back, I had my own complaints, like “the BSOD”, that popped up more often than the dialog boxes that I had created. The kernel issues, (mostly documented, and some undocumented), caused nightmares. But, things that you coded, would mostly work, and if not, debugging support was good. It helped *normal*, *non-geeky*, software engineers write working and commercially viable applications and drivers.

That apart, in my earlier job, Mac related developments were reserved for geeky engineers, who were, probably, above normal. I would say they were hackers, who would find undocumented stuff, prodding the web, or reading sample code, or in the worst case, reverse engineer some of the already working code. Mac had virtually no (good) debugging support, and simple issues would take developers days to fix. Not only the development in Mac, only geeks could use it.

Mostly after the iPod’s success, Mac came into Limelight…

Bad time for Microsoft started (continued …), with the much hyped Vista, ending up not even better than XP, Windows users were fed-up and started looking elsewhere. Jobs is very good at attracting people hating MS, because, he hates MS more than his love for Apple. And good time for Apple, Many people, were bored to see the “same old windows screen”, which changed little after ~95, thought a hell a lot changed beneath. They also loved the Mac’s looks and sometimes started living with the interior. It’s purely my guess, sometimes we just get married just for the looks, and then live with the (odd) issues. Apple, flush with the cash, from iPod sales, pushed Mac to new levels. The best move was to junk the expensive and power hungry PPC and move towards cheap and low-power Intel. Eventually, they are poised to be a serious contender for Microsoft.

Will Microsoft bet its fortune on Windows 7 …

One main difference which is Microsoft’s strength and Apple’s weakness, is the ease with which a PC running Windows can be configured. Addition of a hardware support is easy, a reason why, it beats Mac by 9 to 1 in sales, even today. But this weakness in Apple is slowly becoming its strength. As hardware additions becomes difficult or impossible, Mac is more stable as there are no third party drivers. Hackers spare Mac and target the PC, and this would prompt Microsoft to release patch after patch, and suddenly the system would become damn slow, just because of all those patches.

Though I said all this, I want to try using a Mac. I would say, I really want to be a geek ;-) … For the time being, its expensive, and out of my reach. Somebody please gift me your used Mac ;-) …

Note: All the impression about Mac are mine, and I guess it might be mostly outdated.

Hanshin Vs Yakult ~~~

2009-10-05T21:31:00.001+09:00

Me, Shanthi and Anto, went to see professional baseball in Koshien, rightly so, it is called the “Hanshin” Koshien stadium. It’s home to the much hyped professional baseball team, “The Hanshin tigers”. We knew that they were idolized in the Kansai region, but we found out that it was far more than idolization. There was a “special” non-stop express train 「臨時特急」from Umeda 「梅田」station to Koshien「甲子園」station. I would say, “hanshin” special, as it was filled with **only** hanshin fans. The “hanshin tigers” costumes predominantly came in yellow and pink. I though pink was for the female fans, but I saw some men who were wearing pink.

I heard that it was recently renovated. I though the toilets were cleaner than the one’s found in JR Kyoto station. We went on a Saturday evening, and the stadium was packed. We actually got the tickets as a gift from Hatano-san, we go to the same Catholic church. It was just near the 3rd base, called the “3rd base IVY seat” 「３塁アイベーシート」. We entered through the 11th gate. As we were just entering the gates we could get a peek of the packed crowd as seen in the following photo …

Though we are kind of inclined towards “the giants”, we supported “hanshin” on that day for a couple of reasons. ① The ticket was gifted to us by Hatano-san, and ② we were not supporters of “Yakult”. In fact we did not know them. The stadium was full, and the practice had already started by the time we entered the stadium. Though the tickets had the seat numbers clearly written on it, we were lost in the huge crowd. So, we requested the ground staff for help, and he was kind enough to lead us to our seats. We were sitting very close, and the view was very good. For me, it was like watching baseball in a very big screen television, very big. I would say life size ;-) ….

I learnt that it was equally dangerous to sit close to the batters, when a foul ball, hit the stairs below the one in which Anto was playing. Everyone around started started shouting … “abunai, abunai … abunai …”, which means dangerous. It all happened so fast that I did not have any time to react. I was relieved that it did not hit him, as the ball was travelling lightning fast. After that we made sure that he is not exposed to the ball. In short, it was a nightmare for ~~ 50 milli seconds ~~

Apart from the clean toilets, and nice and comfortable plastics seats, I was impressed with the beer selling girls. They were carrying the *extremely cold* and fresh Asahi super dry like a shoulder bag … very impressive. And yes, they were wearing the Hanshin pink ;-) … I enjoyed the JPY 600 beer. It was about 2.5 times expensive.

The pink could be seen dotted in between the yellow. Actually I thought the color was a bit strong, very much like the highly emotional kansai people. I really liked the pink hat … Cowboy style pink hat. Lady cowboy, cowgirl.

Anto, always likes to play with guys much elder to him. In the stadium he found a couple of guys, probably in their teens, and he was trying to make friends with them. At first, those guys tried their best to ignore, but had to give-in to Anto’s perseverance. Here he can be seen trying to shake hands with them. It was an innings break and so those guys had some time for Anto too …

Following are some of the shots that impressed me. I was busy looking after Anto, watching the match, drinking my beer, and gazing at the high tech stuff in the stadium like the LED displays, but managed to take some snaps.

Anto saying cheese …

It was fun, despite our support, hanshin lost …

Great grandson of an engine driver …

2009-07-21T21:26:00.001+09:00

Hmmm … actually our family had something to boast about, my dad, my dad’s elder brother and my dad’s dad were railway engine drivers. Though I would have loved to be an train engine driver, I ended developing some device drivers, something to do with driver, and living up to our family tradition …

Actually all engine drivers tie handkerchief in their head like how Antony is wearing … So I guess my dad would be happy seeing his grand kid in this pose. In a way, I was happy too. For me he looked like an “engine driver”. But he may not end up wearing a handkerchief even if becomes one …

Talking about drivers, he makes some very nice pose with the cooking utensils, so when I see him with the vessels I used to tell Shanthi that he may probably become a “nice chef”. To just enrage her, I sometimes use the word, “cook”.

Actually, the other day, we went to the barber shop, for Antony’s hair cut. The barber for some reason told us, that Antony will make a nice barber … Visibly Shanthi was upset. For my part, I was calculating his monthly income if he becomes one … ;-)

Part II

2009-06-02T21:45:00.001+09:00

It seemed that he just wanted to leave Teja’s house, I guess he just wanted to go to a place where he can find mom, or probably he just wanted to play. If it is mom that he was looking for, then I will be in trouble, so I decided to divert his attention and took him to the common play area in the apartment. Luckily, there were 3 more kids already playing there, all three seemed to be of the same age group, probably around 10, and playing football.

For some strange reason, Solomon likes football, probably due to the size of the ball. He immediately started cheering those three, and started pointing at them with both hands and was “seriously” telling me something. I only wished I could understand. He was telling something like clu-clu-la-la-pa-pa-la-la-… and making a lot of facial expressions. He was probably saying that he could play better, once he is 10, or was it just my impression. For once I thought that those facial expressions were transmitted from my DNA …

An old lady who passed us by, stopped and talked to him for a while, he was not particularly interested in her, but … intently looked at her, probably wishing that she can tell, where his mom was. We spent around ~25 minutes sitting and watching. All this time Solomon continued to talk to me. Suddenly for some full 25 minutes I thought taking care of Solomon was fun, and somehow easy. After 25 minutes he started making his moves, he wanted to go for the ball. After all he is a boy, I thought. I would let him go, those three kids never cared for him, but Solomon only cared for the ball, and he even managed to reach the ball twice, and once he reached, he would take it and give it back to those kids. He would clap his hands after giving back the ball. Solomon cheers himself every time he does “something good”, for example, when he “correctly” throws the garbage into the "dustbin”, or if he can switch on the television. But sometimes his thinking of “something good” does not match with “what is really good”. For example, he would cheer, when he throws something down the balcony. Amusing for him not me (and also Shanthi).

Suddenly, another girl of the same age group of those three kids showed up, and all four went away to the another part of our apartment building. It seemed that they were practicing some new kind of “kids skate board”. Solomon was not very much interested in the skating stuff, probably this not from my DNA. I love skate-board …

We came back to the play area to find their foot-ball. He was very happy as he can have the football all for himself. We both started playing with it for some 10 minutes. He looked exhausted, but continued to play. So to get him some rest, I carried him and we both went round the apartment once. While we were walking around the apartment, his face changed again, probably he started looking for Shanthi again … So, I decided to take him to Teja’s house again. This time I wanted to feed him something.

We both went back to Teja’s house. She was already eating, so I thought it would be easy to feed him. Once I started feeding, he started taking some 3~4 mouth-full very fast. And suddenly after that started spitting the food. The frustrating part of taking care of him, sigh! The smooth ride with him for sometime had come to a grinding halt. Though he looked a bit tired, he wanted to go out again and started crying. At this moment, Shanthi called to inquire the status, he was still crying slightly. Shanthi was a bit worried that he was probably crying all time. Bad timing.

My friend, Nanda, decided to try and amuse him with soap bubbles, and it worked out. At first he was afraid of the bubbles, but after seeing Teja playing with it, he joined her in the fun. Both of them were pumped up and they were laughing very loudly. Again, while all this was going on, I relaxed. I was worried that he was not eating, but happy that at-least he is enjoying. This bubble stuff went on for more than 20 minutes.

These days Teja is in “toilet training” and do not wear diapers, so when the soap bubbles were all around, Teja suddenly stopped when she saw some of her excretes on the ground and started crying. In-fact she was not wearing her under-pants too. Solomon was clueless, he looked at me with a strange face. For a moment I was clueless too … But I decided to give Teja some space and took him outside the house again.

We both headed out to the play area, again. Those three kids were still playing on the other side of the apartments. The had left behind the balls they were playing with. So, Solomon decided to play with the ball. He took the ball far away from me and would throw it, I ran and picked it up for him, he enjoyed this sequence. So we repeated this many, many … times. Both of us were very tired. It was already ~3:10 PM, I was hungry. So I decided to take him back to Teja’s house. This time though, immediately after reaching Teja’s house, he started playing with her. I decided to relax for sometime while he was playing with Teja. For a moment I thought that he was not thinking about this mother, and … at this moment the calling bell of rang …

When Teja’s mom, Lavanya attended the door, it was Shanthi, I could hear her voice. In a flash I thought it was a moment of relief. But when I realized that I had taken care of him for more than 3 hours. I was happy.

Three hours with Solomon … [Part I]

2009-05-26T07:26:00.001+09:00

I like challenges, but taking care of Solomon for three hours when his mom is away was no trivial. For long, she wanted to visit a salon and waiting for Solomon to grow up. Shanthi’s flower-arrangement-teacher [Rieko] had promised to take her to her friend’s Salon. After consulting with me, they decided to go on last week Sunday at last. Rieko-san told me that Shanthi will need about an hour, and once inside the Salon, I will not be allowed with a kid anywhere near her for it was too dangerous [I could not imagine why?]. It’s dangerous probably due to the blades, steam, etc … Anyway, the best and challenging part was, taking care of a 1 year old for ~1 hour. But when the time came for them to leave, I decided I will stay back home with Solomon, which means that I will have to take care of Solomon for 3 hours [1 hour each for Rieko and Shanthi + travel time] …

When it was time, I took Solomon to the parking lot, to bid good-bye to Shanthi and Rieko. They were leaving in their car. Till the time we all reached the car he was happy, probably thinking that we are all going together, somewhere. Once we reached the car, I stopped back with him, and Shanthi got in, he was still smiling, and when Shanthi and Rieko started waving their hands and telling me to take care of him, the expression in his face changed. I could not decipher, but it was strange and cute. For once, it seems that he thought his mom was playing “hide and seek”. So when we returned home from the parking lot he checked every single room, including the toilet, bathroom and balcony. After 10 minutes he stopped his search, I would never know what made him stop. At this point his facial expression changed, it was like, if not in the house, then where IS she? … I was enjoying all his strange faces. Super-imposing my guess over it. For a moment I thought I will pull out my camera and snap these moments. Those faces left a very deep impression in me that I decided not to disturb the inner picture with a photo (selfish me …)

My goal: Make sure, he does not cry for a minute, and just repeat the trick (loop for) 180 times. It looked simple. The time taken for me and Solomon to return home from the parking lot and his search inside the house had consumed some 12 minutes. We had earlier decided to take him to his friend, Teja’s home, which happens to be in a different building inside the same apartment complex. So to start off, I spent around 2~3 minutes in making him wear his shoes, going to the elevator, playing with the elevator buttons … We took another minute or so walking to Teja’s house. All these times his strange face remained. Looking at his face, I started feeling sorry. I only wished if I could get a peek into his feelings. After reaching Teja’s home, he started looking around for his mom, again. I guess he would have thought that she is playing a big time hide and seek … But it was not, he found out that she is not in there, too, so he wanted me to take him out, immediately. I was hoping he spend around 30 minutes in Teja’s house … sigh !!!

(will continue in Part II) …

Masked madness ...

2009-05-19T11:09:00.002+09:00

Sucked into the group behavior, when panic stops the brain cells from functioning, when all the news continuously tell you about the 150 people who are affected by swine flu, and when your office administrative staff formally tabulates your family health status every other day, when your mother inquire about the flu-outbreak, I am a little confused. Frightened will be right word. Should I take some precautions? Can I take some precautions? I decided to take some, starting with a mask.

Yesterday I left office after 8 PM; the medical shops near my office were closed. I knew that the convenient stores sell masks, a bit expensive, but they sell. So I went to a convenient store near my office and found out that they used to sell 3 types of masks and ran out-of-stock on all three. OK, I guessed that most of my colleagues would have bought them on the way back. But wait, if I said most, which is around 3000, which means, we need masks for around 3000 people. That is a lot of masks. With the panic going on, I should have known that masks will never be available, I gave-up after visiting the 22nd shop. Well, till the madness stops, even normal people who need masks against hay fever will have to … wait.

Did I just say madness? :-)

So after this failed attempt scrambling for a mask, I realized that blood was indeed flowing to my brain. Being a techie, I thought I will do some cyber-scramble. I checked Amazon and a few more websites. And after some 45 minutes of browsing for a mask, I gave up. There seems to be too many geeks in Japan, every single mask in Amazon was out-of-stock. The mask makers will have a ball. Will they?

Tired of searching, I thought what will happen if I don’t wear a mask. I even started thinking, if indeed masks are any helpful. They may help, but not prevent, entirely. It seems that we need special masks, that which will prevent virus from entering them. And it seems that those masks are expensive and rare. Today, I saw many people wearing normal masks. And many of their noses protruding out … What can I say …Time’s the healer. Are these masks just a moral support?

Managed code seems to be catching up …

2009-05-14T14:19:00.000+09:00

Warning: This is an article intended only for the geeks, so stop here if you are not one.

I first started writing embedded software in assembly. I would not even term it a language, because, every single instruction was translated into an op-code, 1-to-1, nothing less. The firmware (stylish name for embedded software) developed using assembly was in total control. I mean it, total. There was no abstraction what-so-ever between the programmer and the hardware. At any point of time, every single register, every GPIO (General Purpose Input Output) ports were in our control. All our named variables were global. This control somehow translated into our confidence, sometimes arrogance. Those days we assumed that programmers who lacked knowledge of the hardware developed firmware in C. On one fine day, I got impressed with the compensation offered by another company that was developing firmware in C. Getting impressed with the salary; I quit the holy-assembly, mostly for-ever. But long after that, even today, I think those early assembly days were the best. Or … is it yet to come.

Development in C started badly. I knew C, in mostly like a paper driver who can drive, by the books, obviously I lacked experience. During my job-interview, I correctly answered most (all) of the questions on assembly language and got ~70% for C. The guys who interviewed me thought I would master C quickly. Somehow, I managed to score 4.8-out-of-5.0 in a test conducted by brain-bench for C. Those guys even sent me a certificate, embossed in golden color, now the best part, it was free. But over a period of five years, the golden emboss faded, but I learnt more of C. I started developing applications using C, then wrote some device drivers for windows, and finally after a couple of years of slogging, mostly maintaining others code, I started developing some really cool C code. I heard that C was more portable; it was, to an extent. I also learnt that embedded software is all about creating nice-and-compact-and-fast data-structures, and learning some cool compiler directives that will give you complete control over placing your code and data. In a way, I understood, I was writing some so-called-portable source code, in a high level language. I swear, in those days I never tried its portability though. I realized that for larger embedded applications, C was a good development platform. I always heard from my seniors, and also believed for myself that, c++ and embedded software were enemies. I would have sworn this over a bible, even without any experience programming in C++. I hated the language.

I was told to port the OS and write embedded software using Linux. Back then, I was a DOS-and-Windows guy, who never really understood, that free software, like Linux, will actually work. I assumed that the “Open source Linux”, will never be as cool as windows. When ever I go to the testing lab, I stared at those good looking Mac boxes wondering if, it was an ice box for beers. Man, I hated its mouse. In Linux, there were no MSDN type manuals, mostly not even some basic documentation. One more secret reason I hated it was; there were many junior programmers in my company, who knew more than me. And so, I comfortably termed it as a “not so practical” language. I quit the Linux development, and also the company and moved on to some other RTOS in some other company. For a long time, with the momentum in C, I continued with C, till I was asked to look into an ECMA compiler for a Television set, possibly to re-write it. Back in 2007, the ECMA compiler for Linux was written entirely in C++. For countless number of days, I just read and read the source code. As far as C++, my brain was closed. My gray-cells won’t change, even if I wanted to.

The C++ development continued and after developing in C++ for almost a year I learnt that I was not a C++ guy. I could not think in C++, partly owing to the many abstraction levels between the C++ codes and the converted assembly. When I wrote firmware in C, for each line of the source that I wrote, I could easily visualize the assembly instruction. Essentially I can see through the C code. But in C++ I could not, worse, Frankly, I did not try. And that was the end of C++. In a way, till today, I did not need it.

I thought, I can earn a living writing embedded software using C, till I retire. But my safety net was shattered today when I learnt that “managed code”, like C#, .NET, etc are on their rise. I knew about C# from the time it was released, back then, I had assumed that it was meant only for those application developers. I even picked up a fight with one of the guy who was talking about “boot-loader development based on managed code”. Frankly, I do not understand how, a boot-loader can ever be developed using “managed code”. Worse, I do like the idea of developing a boot-loader in C# or .NET. I do not see any advantage. I am an emotional guy who likes to live close to the hardware, and like less number of abstraction and hence need to write code that can do just that. And as of now, I think C is the one. But it seems that at the end of the tunnel, C#, .NET etc are pushing very hard. I can feel it. Someday, I may learn it, and probably would even master it, if-only I feel it is useful. Oh my gray cells, won’t you please co-operate.

Nostalgic flash ...

2009-05-11T17:29:00.002+09:00

From time to time I go through this, “nostalgic flash”, as I have come to name it. I call it a flash as they creep in from nowhere, and many times divert my concentration from the work. Today, was yet another day, I was busy at work during the dull part of the afternoon, waiting for the clock to tick 5, and suddenly a “nostalgic flash”, and it flashed-in a couple of guys, whom I considered, were very good students, they excelled in their studies and grades.

We can define a “nostalgic flash” as the time, when my mind is wavers over a time period, and a few “nostalgic human faces” just flash.

Often, nostalgic flash is accompanied with an urge to contact the faces that flash-in.

I studied with those guys sometimes during the mid to late ~80’s. So I only know their names and their father’s names. I got a chance to meet one of them once after I completed my schooling. While I undergo a nostalgic flash, I just remember faces during a particular period of time, for example, the time period when those guys studied with me in my school. Sometimes nostalgic flash takes me for a ride, to those days when we went out together, to those roads we used, our bi-cycles, the mischief, small talks, and this list is usually varied. Astonishingly nostalgic flash lasts only for a short time, may be 15~20 minutes. But my mind would have flashed about many things. And once I am out of a “nostalgic flash”, I would have just experienced a lifetime.

Sometimes, it makes me feel sad, even miss those guys. I use to feel sorry for all the lies I would have told them, or for the troubles I got them into. After this flash ends, I used to wonder, how silly I was, would vow to win control over the “nostalgic flash” and ultimately remove it from me. I don’t like a “nostalgic flash”, especially when I experience it in the midst of my day’s work.

Today I was reading an article on “lay-off” which emphasizes on “social networking” as a way to find new jobs during lay offs. Back in early 2005 I lost touch with much of my contacts from India, owing to my transfer to Japan. Till 2006, December, even with the high overseas call rates, I managed to maintain contacts with a select few of my good friends. Presently it’s almost non-existent. Probably this article on “social networking” stuff triggered today’s nostalgic flash or what? …

I googled to find something about those 2 guys, who appeared in today’s flash and found a linkedin page for both of them. I would like to send them a message. By the time I decided to send a message, the “nostalgic flash” was over. It was my manager, he was complaining about a license that I was using, and meant for some other department. He wanted me to fix it, immediately. Now, I had to “come out of the nostalgic dream”. Thrown out! I decided to send those guys a message after fixing the issue. But after I fix the license related issue, I got into my famous “procrastination mode”.

I decided, in principle, with no timeline in my mind, to ping them “sometimes”. With the insane schedule that I am into these days, the “sometimes” usually waits for another timely “nostalgic flash”, especially when it happens when I am close to my computer, or a telephone, and also have some free time. Compared to 2005, rates for overseas calls have reduced by more than half. So money is not the issue here. Time, which is becoming more and more a rarity in my day-to-day life, has definitely taken a toll on my social network. Is it probably one more reason that I get into more and more “nostalgic flashes”.

I get to think that Indians are more nostalgic than anyone else?
Is it my limited knowledge on other nationalities?

At least I don’t remember many Hollywood movies based on nostalgic themes. In my mother tongue, Tamil, most of the movies reflect nostalgia, emotion, fear, and all the stuff that I consider evil. There was a movie, “a nostalgia exploiter” called “Autograph” which was a huge box office hit. T’was no surprise, I enjoyed the movie. In fact I saw that movie many times and even bought the DVD to see it secretly. I am sometimes ashamed to reveal that I am nostalgic. Probably, it reflects the emotional me.

Now, phoo …, am I emotional. I guess I am, but does this trigger a “nostalgic flash”?

Accidental wave or what? …

2009-05-09T18:47:00.001+09:00

After Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Motorola, IBM, … is google going to be “the next great company”. Riding on the internet search, or to be specific the connected community band-wagon. Guys at Xerox PARC created computer network for an entirely different reason. It makes me wonder, is google yet another case of an “accidental empire”, or did the “Sergei & Larry” combo really though this is coming. Personally they come next only to “Jobs & Woznaik” combo, probably,…

Guys at the Palo Alto Research Center, PARC, created most of the innovations that “happened” in the computing arena, I would emphasize, the personal computing arena. For me it is difficult to understand, that Xerox, that created PARC, did not reap *any* benefit from innovation from PARC. The concept of Mouse, GUI, Networking, and much-much more came just out of a single lab. Companies like Apple, Microsoft, used the researches from PARC to the max.

For some reason, many geeks, hate Microsoft. They just think, Microsoft, is a selfish company that just wants to make money, and care a shit about any research. From the time IBM started using MS-DOS (which was not developed by Microsoft), many people think, and probably they are right, that MS, like some of its founder is crooked. I cannot think of anything big that came out of Microsoft. They just perfected some of the technologies that lay around. And suddenly, with the advent of internet, the open source revolution, it seems that, finally, its times for the giant to bow--->out.

As we all know, Google, that started as a search engine company, right, but now …, with a heavy purse they are into many things, slowly hurting Microsoft. In those early days, Microsoft, would simply over-power any software company that competed with them. The trump card was always their operating system, the monopoly. But now, it seems that the gold lies in the internet, and for some reason, Microsoft lost it, I mean, lost it to Google. Now, only trying hard to patch up by buying yet another ailing company yahoo. Google, it seems is trying to do everything to kill MS. Hitting its cash cow, MS-OFFICE with “GOOGLE-DOC”. I personally tried using “GOOGLE-DOC” and I can tell you, that it is no way near MS-Word, or Excel. As of now, GOOGLE-DOC lacks even some basic feature. But if Microsoft is afraid of this, I think there should be some reason. Now “googling” is a verb that means searching.

Will Google kill Microsoft, I don’t think so. Microsoft will probably die on its own, as they have ran out of ideas and started chasing the leader. This time, their chase, might well end in vain.

Apple, that got noticed by many non-geeks, only after the i-pods, was a company that was envisioned by a passionate guy. They created some nice looking computers, which were less visible to the main-stream world of cheap home computers, but only till apple released the legendary iPod. If a single product can change the fate of a company, it was iPod. It was yet another accidental moment, the rush of spark inside Rubinstein when he saw Toshiba’s tiny hardwire, has created a wave. Sometimes I wonder, if apple is just starting to forget its core business. Probably, they are also strengthening their PC business. Guys from apple think it is “Mac business”. They frown when they hear the word PC, as it a copyrighted thing that belongs to MS. Yeah, in a way, it belongs to guys in IBM. Who sold out their PC business to Lenovo. And riding on something else.

Recently I have been reading a lot about the history of computers and software. And I just think, it was all created accidentally.

Flower arrangement by Mrs. Truly …

2009-04-21T22:28:00.001+09:00

Last week flower arrangement by Shanthi different and nice …

And this simpler one …

Rajini style …

2009-04-20T22:03:00.001+09:00

I got (actually bought) the Tamron 17-50, F2.8 lens recently. I was touting about this lens for a long time … I bought this sometimes back, but I did not have any time due to my work … Today I just though of posting this “Rajini style” of Anto … :)

Down under there seems to be less money … or is it?

2009-04-20T21:57:00.001+09:00

Recently I felt my career was moving well below the bottom of the OSI layer. I started my career poking around products like, drivewizard, swissknife, etc … All of these software extensively used the ASPI (Advanced SCSI Programming Interface), defined initially by Adaptec, now unceremoniously discontinued. Though these applications directly interacted with the storage media, they were user-land applications, privileged not more then the “internet explorer”. The IDE was VC++. My job-title was VLSI design engineer. And I was longing to be one, but was just happy or had no choice but to write these application. I got bored in 3 months time, and protested with the management, who were gracious enough to allow me to write firmware. I did not last long in this company, as the company of my dreams came calling … SCM Microsystems …

It was here, my real career started, I started working on Manufacturing test application, then I wrote WDM (Windows Driver Model) device drivers, and after toiling with drivers and applications for almost 2 years I started writing embedded software for 8052 based digital media readers. From then on, I wrote embedded software for more than 7 years, spanning SCM Micro, ROHM, EPSON, Canon, OMRON, … etc … until recently I started working on Image processing and very recently … VLSI design. Yes, 10 years after being offered a job as a VLSI design engineer, today I am designing (testing to be precise), some neat next generation hardware. I am a learner, and so it gives me immense satisfaction when I find that I am learning something new … Off course all satisfaction due to learning will make you happy if it helps your bank balance. The trend in India is, embedded software engineers are paid better than application developers, and VLSI design engineers are paid better than embedded software developers. I just thought that this trend might continue if I go even a step down, start working on ASIC backend … Placement and routing :) …

I was only shocked to learn that, in Japan, VLSI design engineers are not paid any more than embedded software engineers. And worse, some guys working with say, iPhone, earns more than a guy slogging with gates and verilog. So I was stuck … the satisfaction of this new education may not help my bank balance. But it gives me immense satisfaction, when I can say, I know how (High level software code) is turned into (Assembly language code), I know how the processor will react to the assembly language code, and I probably can implement the hardware to execute the assembly language code, and know the gate arrangement, … I wish I know the transistors that make-up all those gates … phoo … I have reached the bottom, almost …

When I was working for Onspec, I have often heard about this guy Larry Jones. I never got a chance to meet him though. I heard he made a whole working processor using transistors, and showed every engineer from the company who visited our US office. Back then I use to think, what a genius of a guy … Probably in some more time … yours truly is another Larry in the making … Thanks Shockley …

Happy aren’t they …

2009-04-09T22:55:00.001+09:00

Yesterday, I was sitting in my office’s 4th floor cafeteria, which overlooks the office gates and an adjacent railway tracks. It was exactly 5:00 PM, and majority of the employees were already leaving. Thanks to the slowdown, companies no more allow any overtime, so employees are made to leave early. But for the big time manager others (are made to) leave. The railways tracks heads towards Kyoto on one side, and Nagoya on the other. I felt a bit nostalgic when I saw trains filled with people.

Many questions flashed, are those people happy to go home? How about their spouses? Do they actually go home? or hang around in cafe or a bar, before going home. Do they miss their overtime? Looking at their faces I could not tell anything. Probably the gates were very far for me to look at their faces. Anyway, as always they were all briskly walking out of the gates.

Looking at many people leaving, I was happy for them. Somehow I always thought, the Japanese missed out many things when it come to their family. They work very hard, and will be very happy when they are busy at work. They hate to be free, or leaving early. So it seems that the government made it mandatory for companies to mark a day or two in a week as no-overtime day. I only wish these people go home on those days, but most of them go straight to isekaya’s where they drink, drink and drink … till they are drunk and go home late. Probably well after their usual returning times. The government’s plan has helped those bar’s nonetheless …

For me, my company neither pays me overtime nor under pays me when I work for less than 8 hours. Its flexi-time and I always enjoy going late and returning back early :)

Temptations …

2009-03-17T22:09:00.001+09:00

Recently, I am suffering from a kind of temptation, that makes me wonder if this temptation is right or wrong. It mostly happens when I am trying to lookup for something in Wikipedia. The other day, I started reading about Doug Englebart then → Vannevar Bush then → “As we may think” then → hypertext, at this point, I stopped. This temptation to read as much as I can, is filling my head with a lot of things. Some of thing may be less useful (garbage). Its interesting to know varied things, but all of us have limited knowledge, limited energy and finite amount of time. Recently, I am busy with Work (and at work I study VLSI Design, Perl, Image processing, … everything is new to me). Hobbies include photography, blogging, reading others blogs, learning Japanese, and tennis. Strange it may be, but I feel, I am reading way too much and I feel most of them is not so useful.

The Google reader is a nice tool for keeping track of the latest news or your favorite blog posts. The number of unread articles mounts to something like 200, if I miss to open the reader for a couple of days. My reading slows down on weekends, and on Mondays I just “mark as read”, most of the news articles. But somewhere deep down my mind, I feel a slight remorse flushing those articles. I manage to read some of my favorite blogs though. I feel like someone has painstakingly compiled those articles and flushing without reading … is kind of injustice …

At this point, I asked myself a question, what and how much can I read. It was a tricky question. Because from my childhood I had been advised to read more, and now I want to prevent myself from reading more. It was a strange feeling. I started wondering how big shots like say Bill gates manages his emails. It was really funny to know that he receives 4 million emails a days, off course mostly spam. But even then, that's a lot. Ballmer once said,

Speaking at a Microsoft event in Singapore, Mr Ballmer said: "Bill Gates (is first) because he is Bill Gates. Bill literally receives four million pieces of e-mail per day, most of it spam."

"Literally there's a whole department almost that takes care of it," he said.

Coming back to the topic. I mentioned in the beginning this article written by Vannevar Bush’s, “As we may think”. Though it did take away a couple of hours from my life. It was a nice read. I thought V-Bush was trying to be more like an oracle. He was predicting how things wound shape up in the “computer age”. The one thing he kept on repeating was, “the way in which people would refer to technical articles would change dramatically”. For example, back in good old days, if I decide to publish a paper I would travel to the library, and search for the relevant journals. And then read through each and every topics available, and then try to read some of them that seems to be relevant. The “keyword hit” normally took a long … long time. He predicted, and correctly so, that people would have access to information “readily”.

This readily available information is too tempting, is what I think. The inquisitive cells in me, wants to read more, and more. The hypertext web-pages looks like a maze of never ending links, that obviously enables me to know new things. Now, I start to think, some of the knowledge is not needed.

These days, we are also overwhelmed with information. For example, today, I was trying to read some article about a specific detail in verilog. And the number of results was just astounding (around 30 that exactly matched my query string). Just looking at the title most of them looked good. Now, how would I know which one is better. Reading one of those webpage would take me around 30 minutes. I will have to go through each one of them, till I am satisfied. In the worst case I would need about 15 hours. That’s a couple of working days. Phoo … fortunately, the 3rd article matched my need. And it took me around 2 hours to understand the issue that I was facing.

Now, how can we rate these article. If the world continues with these flurry of information, how and who will rate them. If we cannot rate it, will the user have a problem with more choices than none. Is it in a way same as no choices?

(courtesy www.xkcd.com)

These mundane tasks …

2009-03-10T23:38:00.001+09:00

IT Engineers get bored if asked to work in a single project for more than a year. I am not immune to this syndrome either. Its boring to work with the same technology for more than a couple of years. I know someone, who wrote JPEG decoders for ARM7, DM270, and after his work with DM320 he vowed not to work on JPEG decoding again. I know few guys who get bored soon with a certain technology and want to work on new technologies. Is it a bane of R&D, or is it the extra inquisitive cells, or is the fast paced world, or is it the changing food habits, environment…, the list is longer. IT stalwarts, like, Doug Englebart, Alan Kay, … who live to this day feel that innovation is in itself dying. So, are we inquisitive without innovating?

Those guys who worked in good old days, for example my father, who worked in the same job, repairing steam engines for a couple of decades, and when the steam engines were shelved, he worked as a train driver for a decade. In his professional life, he did not do anything new, for decades. He for once never complained to me about seeing the same type of steam engine everyday, or watching the same railway track passing by, while driving the train. They were probably bored, not to the point of complaining to their bosses, or relatives. And never did they seek a job change. Its not only with my dad, its probably true for many of our dads. Public servants, for example a postman working in the same locality for a decade. Does he think, his job is mundane. And even if he does, what will he do. What can he do? … They do not have those professionally trained HR people to counsel them when hit with boredom. How did they manage the mundane routines … everyday.

If those drivers, bartenders, chefs, and all of those non-IT, non R&D workers can cope up with the same work for decades. Why not IT people. Imagine, if you are given a job of watching stars that fill the sky, and paid a handsome salary, will you take it up. Probably, if you don’t have any other else that pays, and start starving. Are we making a point here, are we getting bored, just because we are highly paid, and always have option to change. Imagine the case, a starving child, lets say in Africa will definitely eat any palatable food that is offered. Now, is it applicable to a child from a developed nation. These days, we can choose from options, to quit, to find a new job. Those wooing job portals, the job consultants, the greener pay packages, always attracts us. Even after all these options, the universal anxiety follows entropy.

I have developed a strong respect to those people who did their mundane jobs, with perfection, for decades. They did it, probably out of their own will, and less for some kind of recognition. The rewards in the form of salary for those people are comparatively less. Is it one another reason they are not bored. Is the pay-work imbalance boring the engineers of these days. What is it?

Worse, some software engineers complain, when asked to document, or test some application that they developed. They think that developers develop, and test engineers test. Technical writers document. It will be great, if we learn to do the so called mundane jobs with perfection, is this where leaders are born?

Daffodils – by William Wordsworth

2009-03-09T22:54:00.001+09:00

最近、日本語でブログを書こうと思っていましたが、自信が少なくて中々出来なかった。

今日は、詩人のWilliam wordsworthが作ったDaffodilsを紹介したいと思います。Daffodillsって喇叭水仙です。

ある日Wordsworthさんが海岸に行ったとたん、沢山喇叭水仙を見ました。喇叭水仙が風で動いているのを踊っている様に感じて、Wordsworthさんも喜んで、Daffodilsを書きました。

英語版

単語

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of the bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

wandered→ roamed
o’er→ over vales→ valleys
crowd→ lot, many
A host→ (large) bunch
beneath→ below
Fluttering→ movement in the wind

twinkle→ shine
never-ending→ very very … long
margin→ shore
glance→ look
Tossing→ shaking sprightly→ happy

Out-did→ beat sparkling→ shining
gay→ happy
jocund company→ joyful company
gazed→ looked little thought→ without thinking

oft→ often
pensive mood→ deep thoughts
inward eye→ mind
bliss→ joy
pleasure fills→ happiness

Latest from Shanthi ...

2009-02-28T09:12:00.011+09:00

Shanthi learns flower arrangement from Rieko of Hanapot. Usually its on Fridays. Yesterday she made a nice horzontally and veritically arranged flowers, which was captivating. So I decided to put in my blog,

Also, sometimes back (I forgot when), she made some earthenwares by herself. It also has all our names written in it. For me it looks more like monolithic age pottery ;-)

英和説－1

2009-02-26T12:47:00.000+09:00

去年の日本語能力試験を合格してしまいました。良い結果は日本人の友達が日本語を一生懸命教えてくれたのである。なので”現物で支払う”と思って、英語を教えようとした結果は英和説 [EIWASETU]

今日の言葉は“Pay in Kind”
日本語で直訳はしたら、現物で支払う

先に、日本語で例を見てみましょう

ある事情ではJohnと田中が話をしています、

John：この日本語の文章を訳してくれない
田中：もちろん、見せて
｢田中さんはJohnさんが持っていた文章を訳しました｣
John：ありがとう田中さん、報いたいですが
田中：現物で支払ってね～
John：えぇ。
田中：何時か、私に英語の文章を訳してくださいね

上記の会話を英語に訳して見ましょう

John：Can you translate this Japanese document for me,
John：You know I cant read Kanji
田中：Certainly, can I see …
「Tanaka translates the document for John」
John：Thank you very much, how can I pay back?
田中：Pay in kind
田中：Sometimes, translate some English document for me

Definition: Language

2009-02-25T20:22:00.007+09:00

One of my friend recently talked about "Japanese fortunetellers," and it seems that many Japanese visit fortunetellers often. My friend happens to visit a fortune teller who also happens to be her friend. How nice, she gets to know her fortunes for free. Normally, me and my Japanese friend exchange language (Japanese - English), and we choose a topic for debate and learn during debate. Last week, it was "Japanese fortunetellers". Some of the things she told were really interesting (and sometimes funny).

School of fortunetelling: It seems that there are many schools that teach fortunetellers. And as one can understand the fees seems to be very high.
Language used (frequency spectrum): It seems that they communicate in the Electromagnetic spectrum, with cosmic bodies, some of which seems to be knowing our fortune

The words Language and Frequency spectrum, impressed me and led me to some more (re)search. It seems that, all living and non-living things in this universe are communicating in a form or other, we can understand if we can listen to it. Literally it means, the objects around you, like for example, a tree, insect, sun, moon, your umbrella, pen, pencil, eraser, ..., etc are all communicating to you, in one way or the other. We can involve ourselves, only if we know its language. Sounds strange, right!

How do we define a language,
Definition-1: A systematic means of communicating by the use of sounds or conventional symbols (this definition is inadequate for our fortuneteller)
Definition-2: A language is a dynamic set of sensory symbols of communication and the elements used to manipulate them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon. (this is from Wikipedia).

After reading a few definitions on languages, I had to make up my mind that our definitions are limited to human languages. Even for this (small) subset, our definition seems to be inadequate. For example, we use a lot more than symbols and sounds to communicate. Or does it again depend on the definition of symbols. Kind of getting complicated, and philosophical.

It also seems that (good) fortunetellers can infact read your mind. Some speculate this as a trick called "cold reading". But some people say that the oracle read your mind not from symbols, but by the frequency of your thoughts. Now what is the "Frequency of thoughts"?. Physically it means the perceivable (electromagnetic) waves that emanate from our brain cells. Till recently, I was of the view that modern computers together with some super expensive sensors that can sense ultra low power signals from our brain, are decoding the grey cells functions. But, it seems that we can determine these signals with less expensive technologies. Foretune telling.

My friend went on to the extent of presenting me with a Japanese version of a book on cold reading. In Japanese it reads something like, "uranaishi", fortuneteller. I am trying to read it with my limited Japanese *language* ability. Progress has been very slow :-(

I dont believe in fortunetelling period. But recently I am reading more about some part of brain that human beings seldom think of using, and many saints and gods use it to perfection. And this brain can work wonders for those people. Probably these fortunetellers are using that part of the brain.

IF - Rudyard Kipling

2009-02-23T13:01:00.002+09:00

Whenever I read a nice poem, I try to share it with people I love (know). In my schoolboy days it was mostly my mom. Today I read Rudyard Kipling's IF. I have heard about this poem when I was in my 10th grade, but never got a chance to read it. And it (IF) had to wait till today, and I guess, I happened to read it at the right time.

-- Enjoy, this wonderful poem --

[IF]

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

Cleared JLPT Level 2 ...

2009-02-17T20:58:00.007+09:00

Yesterday I got the results. scored ~70% while the pass criteria was 60%. I was happy. But .. after letting the reality settle down, I felt, probably I do not deserve it, yet. My conversation skills is not yet to standards. Sometimes when I am in meetings talking to customers, I scamper for the right word and freeze :-( ... so these marks do not reflect that.

Anyway like my Hindi (where I hold a degree), I also have a certificate in Japanese. What is even worse, I sometimes confuse between Hindi and Japanese words, because I know both of them a little (50-50).

My favourite Japanese songs ...

2009-02-13T21:16:00.004+09:00

Today I thought of writing down some of the Japanese singers I like. The first Japanese song that I liked was "Sakuranbo" by Otsuka Ai. I thought she was cute ;-) ...

And after that I also liked a few songs of Ayumi Hamasaki. But then I could not remember the title, or find it in Youtube. Few Japanese does not like her though :-(

And then I started liking Ken Hirai, he is good looking and his voice is also good. I liked his songs like "Hitomi wo tojite", "Pop star", ... nice voice ...

I also Konayuki by Remioromen, ..., I dont know much about music, though I think the music is very good ...

I like Angela Aki too, she is also very good ... the song was sung for the video game, FINAL FANTASY ... I also like her songs like rain, home (furusato..), ...

Recently I like Ayaka Hirahara, she also looks cute ;-) ...

The list is long, so I had to cut short ...

SriLanka-13 Vs India 11 ...?

2009-02-12T20:56:00.006+09:00

Cricket, India played a 5 match one day series against Srilanka. India won the series 4-1, besides winning the only T20 (Twenty-Twenty). It was very nice to watch the Indian team playing with a lot of spirit and confidence, against the Srilankan players and their umpires. It was not a slip in writing, yes their umpires. The newspapers mentioned that the umpiring was "just not upto standards", but if we are putting in an unparliamentary statement, they were just lobsided.

Sachin was given out LBW (Leg Before Wicket), 3 times in a row, all wrong decisions. The (little) young master is a great player and even a greater "human being", he just did not show any sign of frustration. I was just raging with anger. If the Srilankan umpires thought, as in good old days, Indian batting would collapse after Tendulkar's departure, then it was proved wrong. The *real* Indian batting started after Tendulkar's unlucky dismissals. Raina, Dhoni, Yuvaraj, Yusuf, ... impressed with their bat. Zaheer, Praveen and Ishant, impressed everybody with their length bowling. In Munaf, the Indians have found someone who can boul line and length everytime (some call him the Indian McGrath). Anyway, the umpires decisions did not affect the outcome in anyway. Team India just overwhelmed the Srilankans in all aspect of the game.

In the last game, the T20, the umpires went mad, I lost my cool, when the umpire did not give LBW a couple of times, when the ball was pitching in line and was about to hit the middle stump. I thought, as in the one dayers, the Indian team will win comfortably. But there was a (slight) hiccup in the middle overs, and it made me think for sometime that the umpires won it atlast. The SL-13, had some fun till the Pathan brothers decisively swung the bat in India's favour.

Truth always *WINS*, and this was proved once again in the India-SL match.

Setsubun [節分] prayers with Oka-san, & Oto-san

2009-02-10T22:06:00.007+09:00

Last year I had a chance to attend the Setsubun celebration at the heian shrine with Jeff. But this year, I was not able to attend, since the festival was on a weekday, and setsubun is not (yet) included into the long list of Japanese holidays. Oto-san of Hanapot, had invited me to attend the setsubun celebrations with his family in the evening, so I accepted the offer. The plan for the day was to visit a couple of temples and then eat some special food.

After a busy day at work, I came back home a bit early and we started off by 7 in the evening for Dai-san's house (Oto-san's friend). On reaching Dai-san's home, we placed all our belongings and started for the temple. The first thing that struck me, there were a lot of shops selling things of the 60's that made even Oto-san nostalgic. They were selling things like Candy, Takoyaki, Fruits coated in candy, Candy with face in it, and all of it. It was as if I was attending an Indian festival, with a lot of shops lined along both the sides of the road, filled with Japanese people. Nice experience.

After reaching the temple (I didn't note the name ;-)) ... it was more fun. We made some special offering on that day. One such thing is shown in the photo. The inscription in the mud plate reads something like the following (from right -> left), Britto's family, made up of a 33 year old man (that is me), a 33 year old woman (that's shanthi), and a 2 year old man (boy, Antony Solomon). After lighting a few incense sticks and praying, we offered this plate along with some Mame, and some cash to the temple.

Shanthi was very busy filming the events, in fact she made a very long video of all the celebration. Please enjoy ...

Now, after visiting the temple shown in the video, we went to one more temple and prayed there for the ladies, and then walked back home.

After reaching home, we started ate maki-sushi, specially made for setsubun. We had to face North-east and eat it in silence, praying for a happy year ahead. I immediately grabbed the oppurtunity to pray for the global ecomony ;-) ...

(Both photos and videos captured using the Sony TG1 by Shanthi)

Developing free software as a profession?

2009-02-05T11:11:00.004+09:00

For some time I was wondering how in the world, someone can devote all their time for developing free software. In planet earth, we need money for food, clothes and shelter. The couple of bloggers that I follow regularly are in fact full time bloggers (Jeffrey Friedl, Jeff Atwood), who also do some work to keep themselves busy, which (as of now) doesn't pay anything. So, recently when he wrote this blog, "Lightroom Plugin Development: What To Do When a Hobby Becomes Work", I was a bit disappointed.

One because, I wanted to be like them someday. Two because, atlast he was frustrated to work for free. I could understand his frustration because, I always have had a feeling, "how in the world can someone develop software for the community for free?", save the gratitute that people show. Everybody, including me, no matter how much they (we) have, always look for money, in return for the work they (we) do. I personally think, Jeffrey should be paid for all the good works he has been doing for Light-Room, either by Adobe, or by the people who use it. But, this feeling is because, he reflects some of my own feelings.

So I set out to find, how in the world, guys like Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, et al, get paid. For one it seems that Linus Torvalds works for some company, but I could not find how Stallman is getting paid, but he continues to live :-) ...

The one difference between people like Jeffrey and Stallman, is that, Jeffrey made only the deliverable public, this means, he can be only responsible for maintaining it. As everyone in Software Industry know, the first release is just the beginning, maintenance phase(s) follows. The length of this maintenance phase depends on many factors, but invariably very long. In any case, its too much of a responsibility for an individual, who has personal commitments too. To the contrary, the people in the GNU world, just delivered the source, and deliverables public. This allowed a community to maintain and take things forward.

I am not sure, if Jeffrey will ever make the plugin source public, this may reduce the responsibility that he holds. But if he just wants to make a few bucks to keep up his hobby. Now, I have a problem, I do not have a credit card, and so cannot pay online ;-) ... I will soon try to find a solution to pay him.

What do you guys think about this? Can programmers develop 100% free softwares for the community. Is it just another form social work for the computer geeks (who mostly have enough money) ...

The forest that cannot stand straight ...

2009-02-02T21:08:00.006+09:00

Parishioners from the Kujo church conducted the holy mass last Sunday's at the Kohitsuji center for the disabled in Kameoka. On last to last Sunday mass announcements, I heard about the mass in Kameoka. I had been to the Katsura catholic church which is in Kameoka earlier. It is very beautiful. Thinking that we are heading for the same church, we got a ride from a friendly parishioner who had car. On an earlier occasion when I went to the Katsura church, I had missed out a fantastic photo-op, this time around, I was smart enough to take a camera.

It seems that I had missed out an important part of the announcements. The parishioners were in fact going to conduct a mass at the centre for disable in Kameoka. Now, it was a surprise for me and Shanthi, though we were happy to attend mass with those specially-abled people.

We went to the main hall and suddenly (Tatebayashi「立林」-san) mentioned in the photo below came into the room, I didn't know how he could manage to come in, on his own. I was surprised that he can steer his own vehicle. As you can see in the photo below, his legs were non-existent, hands unusable, I was wondering how did he manage to steer his vehicle.

I realized later, after seeing him closely. He was using his cheek and mouth to steer his vehicle. The following photo shows, Tatebayashi-san using his mouth to steer the vehicle.
He was very lively, his voice was loud but less clear, for me it was understandable. He inquired with the other Japanese person who accompanied us about my nationality, and after learning that I am Indian and my name is Britto, he immediately told me, "Namaste Britto-san". That brought a world of respect for this man. I wondered how on earth did he manage to learn the word Namaste. Just before the mass started, he started asking me a few questions, like which part of India I am from. He was not satisfied when I simply replied that I am from the southern part. He insisted on knowing the name of the city. And when I told him that I was from Madurai, he was visibly disappointed that he did not know Madurai. Anyway I am sure he will read about it.
Introduction of the Brittos,
The Church leaders Introduced Me, Shanthi, and Solomon, but he probably he did not know my wife Shanthi's name, so he left her name out.

During the mass, Tatebayashi-san, read the second reading, astounding. I followed each and every word he was reading, so correctly (AFAIK). The initial pity that I felt was no where to be seen, the respect grew further and further ...

After the mass, he asked for my wife's name as it was not mentioned during our introduction. When she introduced herself as Shanthi. He repeated told me to take care of myself, Solomon and Shanthi. I was more impressed to see him remembering names correctly. Ah! I forgot, when Solomon was introduced, he immediately mentioned King Solomon. On hearing all this, my heart was filled with respect, but it suddenly sank, just unable to know, why god created him like this. Tears welled up (after a long time), but I just did not want to break down in front of him, so I put a brave face.

The following incident was forwarded to me in

Where is God's Perfection?

In Brooklyn, New York, Chush is a school that caters to learning disabled children. Some children remain in Chush for their entire school career, while others can be mainstreamed into conventional schools.

At a Chush fund-raising dinner, the father of a Chush child delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended.

After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he cried out, "Where is the perfection in my son Shaya? Everything God does is done with perfection. But my child cannot understand things as other children do. My child cannot remember facts and figures as other children do. Where is God's perfection?"

The audience was shocked by the question, pained by the father's anguish, stilled by the piercing query.

" I believe," the father answered, "that when God brings a child like this into the world, the perfection that he seeks is in the way people react to this child."

He then told the following story about his son Shaya:

One afternoon Shaya and his father walked past a park where some boys Shaya knew were playing baseball.

Shaya asked, "Do you think they will let me play?"

Shaya's father knew that his son was not at all athletic and that most boys would not want him on their team. But Shaya's father understood that if his son was chosen to play it would give him a comfortable sense of belonging.
Shaya's father approached one of the boys in the field and asked if Shaya could play. The boy looked around for guidance from his teammates. Getting none, he took matters into his own hands and said "We are losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him up to bat in the ninth inning."

Shaya's father was ecstatic as Shaya smiled broadly. Shaya was told to put on a glove and go out to play short center field.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shaya's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shaya's team scored again and now with two outs and the bases loaded with the potential winning run on base, Shaya was scheduled to be up. Would the team actually let Shaya bat at this juncture and give away their chance to win the game? Surpassingly, Shaya was given the bat.

Everyone knew that it was all but impossible because Shaya didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, let alone hit with it. However as Shaya stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shaya should at least be able to make contact.

The first pitch came in and Shaya swung clumsily and missed. One of Shaya's teammates came up to Shaya and together the held the bat and faced the pitcher waiting for the next pitch. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly toward Shaya. As the pitch came in, Shaya and his teammate swung at the bat and together they hit a slow ground ball to the pitcher.

The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could easily have thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shaya would have been out and that would have ended the game. Instead, the pitcher took the ball and threw it on a high arc to right field, far beyond reach of the first baseman.

Everyone started yelling,"Shaya, run to first. Run to first." Never in his life had Shaya run to first. He scampered down the baseline wide-eyed and startled. By the time he reached first base, the right fielder had the ball. He could have thrown the ball to the second baseman who would tag out Shaya, who was still running. But the right fielder understood what the pitcher's intentions were, so he threw the ball high and far over the third baseman's head. Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second." Shaya ran towards second base as the runners ahead of him deliriously circled the bases towards home. As Shaya reached second base, the opposing short stop ran to him, turned him in the direction of third base and shouted, "Run to third." As Shaya rounded third, the boys from both teams ran behind him screaming, "Shaya run home."

Shaya ran home, stepped on home plate and all 18 boys lifted him on their shoulders and made him the hero, as he had just hit a "grand slam" and won the game for his team.

"That day," said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, "those 18 boys reached their level of God's perfection."

I just wish ... to meet Tatebayashi-san again ...

A mouth to feed, or a couple of hands that can work ...

2009-02-02T18:39:00.002+09:00

For some times, some of us felt that the ever increasing Indian population is a cause of concern. I agree to an extent only, probably, the current Indian economic growth is attributed those huge number of young people.

In the same lines, I was thinking about the recent "right sizing discussions" going on in Indian IT companies. I was scratching my head on what can be done &%$#("? While I was reading through news articles ..., blogs ..., comments ..., and everything related to the topic on the internet, an idea popped up. If we start thinking postively that we have a couple of hands to work, rather than a mouth to feed idea, we may be able to weather this storm to some extent.

Now how does this apply to the current scenario.

Indian "IT services" companies have enough experience working on next generation technologies. We have mostly worked for the innovators, and little did we try to innovate something for ourselves. To give some more idea ...

The new age of computers is around the corners,
- RF ID technology is going to change the way we do shopping
- Interactive user interfaces will change the way we give commands to computers
- USB 3.0, is going to the change the way the computer CPU will look like
- Cloud computing is taking off, with google's online documents
- Power hungry worlds, wants to save every milli-watt they can
- Hybrid engines and technology changing the way automobiles operate
(this list is very big...)

Now, in all these, there may not be a major market immediately, but ...
Since we now have enough talented engineers to work, and more and more moving to free pool ...
* Can we start creating IP (Intellectual Properties) for future use, say USB3.0 IP?
* Is it possible that our engineers can innovate the next generation UI?
* Is it possible, that we create all software libraries for an 100% RFID based super market, from Hardware to DBMS?

In doing all the above things, we may not have earned a lot of money now, but, the IP are potential revenue spinners. The IP's may find use, when the market picks up.

Is it possible to show some market value for IP's?
Can we show them as our assets?
If the answer to the above questions are yes, then does it mean, we are saving money?
Is it a smart cost cutting?

One another method that WIPRO seems to be aggresively following is training all the free force.
I think, that is one another way of increasing the company's potential to take on the market when it picks up.

If only the management thinks that this may to be a smart way of thinking,
many talents will get a chance to innovate, for our own company.

Playing the inner game

2009-01-27T15:32:00.005+09:00

Last Sunday, I got thrashed by Shin, my tennis teacher for not following the basics. He told me that I am getting carried away with my own style of Tennis, which is far away from what is called basics. When playing I started thinking about what he said, and tried to follow all that he told, but things just got worse, to the point, that I was not able to return a forehand cross court, either in my style or the correct style. I was so much out of sorts that I requested him for a break, which he was glad to offer.

That made me think about, coaching, learning, and of all doing things correctly that you already know. For example, I know how to play a forehand cross court, I have done it a thousand times flawlessy (right from the first time). It is just that in the due course I settled to a style that suits me. In doing so, it seems that I am way off target. Missing the basics. And last Sunday, when it got pointed out, it was difficult to change my comfortable style I lost something. Later I understood it was the so called "Inner game". Last Sunday, during practise sessions, hopelessly, I failed again and again ...

Now talking about Inner game, recently I had been browsing a lot, especially about software development in the 60s, 70s, 80s, ... and while doing so I came across this wonderful video, a lecture by Alan Kay. It is a 90 minutes video on user interfaces, dynabook and a lot more ...

Now the part I wanted to talk about, is an excerpt from this video. When Alan Kay talks about the teaching methods, he points to Tim Galleway, who used to be a great coach, and has written this good book called, "The inner game of Tennis". The book was very interesting that I immediately order it from Amazon Japan.

Now, talking briefly about this book, Tim differentiates any game that is played into two,
- The inner game (played in the player's mind) and
- The outer game (played by the player's body)
Interesting isn't it, he talks extensively about the inner game in his book. As far as the outer one, there are more books than the number of tennis balls ever made (that was just a joke). According to Tim, Inner game is played in the player's mind, that does not think, and when you start playing the game in your mind, you start winning. And when you start thinking (too much), you start loosing. Anyway, there are 2 videos that talk about this (they are embedded in this article at the end).

Now, talking about Inner game, and last week's session of Tennis, I thought I lost the inner game and starting thinking way too much, that it the end I just messed up "everything that I had been doing correctly". During my tennis sessions I have witnessed this many times, but mostly with others. When they were taught too much (or paid much attention), people just started playing badly. Is it because they are loosing the inner game. I think so.

The following videos is a proof to Tim's coaching success. I wish everyone I know enjoy it.

I also ordered a Japanese version of the book for Shin ;-). His birthday is on the 22nd of Feb, and I will gift to him on that day (though I am raring to give asap), and hope that he reads it through.

How to keep track of blogs ...

2009-01-26T17:13:00.003+09:00

After I started writing blogs, I always wanted to write about 2 topics,

1. How to write a blog
2. How to keep track of a blog

These 2 topics had been in my todo-list for a long time, and today I am going to write about a few tracking tools that will make your life easy when reading a blog, or for that matter, websites that gets updated regularly.

One such useful tool I can think of is google reader. Please see the following link

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2009/01/google-reader-for-beginners.html

Also take a look at the following videos,

Have fun tracking blogs ...

Somebody just read my blog ...

2009-01-23T17:15:00.003+09:00

Recently some of my friends, including Harsha, Nanda, and Jeff, told me they were reading (following) my blog. So I got curious and installed a hit counter yesterday. The fun started after installing it,

I set the hit counter's initial value to its default, so that would mean a fresh start. I could have given some (random) value like 200 or something, or could have even taken a wild guess at the initial hit count. But I just wanted to start fresh. And so I reset it to ZERO, the default value. After setting up the counter, I went to my webpage (immediately) and checked the count. It was showing '1' (obviously my visit). And then after about a couple of hours, I went and checked again, it was showing '2' (obviously my second visit), now I was worried. NO-BODY bothered to check my website in about 2 hours. I felt like a shopkeeper who kept his store open, and no customers visited it. Off course, the things inside are free, and all that the customer needs is time. And then I checked the website in disbelief again and again till the count reached 7. And everytime I check, the count increases by 1. And it was always ME.

So yesterday I left the counter at '7', and said to my myself that I will have to just try harder and harder, and success does not come overnight. So today, that is about 18 hours since I installed a counter, I checked my page again. And wow! to my surprise, someone had just opened it. The hit count was '9' ... It was a really nice feeling ;-)

I just wish I can write more quality blogs ;-) which will be useful to the humanity.

Great expectations ... American style

2009-01-20T22:23:00.004+09:00

Its a couple of days since I wrote my last blog. I was busy with work.

Today I want to write about the effect of expectations on human beings. I was seeing CNN, as it was flashing the preparation to the US President (elect) Barack Obama's swearing in ceremony, it was about 5 hours to the occasion, but there was a sports count down timer, and lots and lots of camera's from various angles, and of all lots of people with enthusiasm and expectation were waiting to hear the words that the president will speak. I asked myself this question, why would so many people flood to see an inaugural ceremony? Is it because the US citizens love their president, or is it patriotism, or Obama’s charm, or is it the hatred towards Bush. I guess it’s probably all of the above with a tilt towards the last couple.

Now, as the economy is tumbling like a catamaran on a windy sea, and with industry’s and people’s confidence in batters, everybody needs confidence. Confidence to search for a job, spend, invest, live, … , for everything. Like everybody my confidence too has been at a historic low.

(Insurance) Companies going bankrupt, high profile frauds, stock market at a historic low. At a glance, it seems that I am not affected at all. I have never invested in stocks. But it seems that there is a lot of indirect effect on us, like for example our pension funds, less interest on fixed deposits, more interest on housing loans, etc. I am not an economist, but all these have had a blow on people’s confidence.

And whenever we are troubled beyond what we can tolerate, we try to seek help from a powerful source (for example, god), now Obama is probably god (like) to many Americans, especially blacks. For some reason, they take pride in him.

Personally, I like his oratory. I wish him all the best.

Most of times, high expectations leads to problems, and I only wish that the new US president will prove to the whole world that, cowboys no more occupy the Whitehouse.

Air conditioner Kanji

2009-01-16T23:04:00.006+09:00

Today one of my Indian friends called me to setup their air conditioner in warm mode. I have seen many foreigners having problems setting up their air-conditioner, washing machine, microwave oven, etc. The funny part is, they end up never using some of its functionality. I would like to recall an incident that happened last year,

One of my friends who was living alone in a 1DK apartment invited me and one more colleague of mine for lunch. We went to his room and found that the room was too cold. He apologized to us and told us to bear with it. The reason was, he thought the air-conditioner in his room was malfunctioning. When I looked at the air-con remote I found that it was in cooler mode and changed it warm mode. To my friends surprise the air-con started working in warm mode. He told me, that he had lived in the same room for 2 years without using the air-conditioner in warm mode. I thought it was just because, he could not set it in warm mode.

So today I am writing this table for those people who want to set their air conditioners …

Kanji [漢字]	Japanese reading	Meaning
*Air conditioner*
イアコン	iakon	Air conditioner
運転	unten	ON
入	Iri	ON
停止	teishi	OFF
切	kiri	OFF
運転切替	unten-kirikae	Change operating mode
運転切換	unten-kirikae	Change operating mode
Operating modes
暖房	danbo	Warm (heater) mode
冷房	reibo	Cooler mode
除湿	joshitu	De-humidify
ドライ	dorai	De-humidify
送風	Sofu	(Fan) blower mode
風向	fuko	Direction of air flow
自動	jido	Automatic
風量	furyo	Fan speed
スイング	suingu	Swing
温度	ondo	Temperature
空気清浄	kukiseijo	Clean air in room
空清	kusei	Clean air in room
換気	kanki	Ventilation mode
気流	kiryu	Bring in external air

タイマー	taima	Timer
予約	yoyaku	Reserve
取り消し	torikeshi	Cancel
取消	torikeshi	Cancel

I will add the list for washing machine, microwave oven, ricecooker, in the order one by one …

Four seasons (shiki) and letter writing ...

2009-01-15T21:29:00.003+09:00

Today, I received a letter from Dell (in Japanese), it had "greeting words specific to the current winter season", more specifically to the month of January,

It seems that usually a (polite) letter in January starts something like, 「拝啓、極寒の候…」 which literally means, "Dear ones , in this extreme cold climate ..."

I happened to discuss this with my Japanese teacher, and found out the following ...

Shiki - Four seasons,
The Japanese have four distinct seasons, they call it shiki (四季), shi (四)- four, ki (季) - season. Japanese are proud of every season and celebrate them. Their food and dress changes for obvious reasons, but so does their mood. But today I had a feeling, that they are (mildly) proud of these seasons. They need to, because, if the global warming continues, then Japan will have to forego a few seasons (like it or not) ...

Now, I did some more research in the internet, and found the following words for each month ..

正　月　新春の候／初春の候／迎春の候／謹賀新年／恭賀新年／明けましてお

めでとうございます／謹んで新年のお喜びを申し上げます

１　月　厳寒の候／中冬の候／大寒の候／極寒の候／寒さ厳しい折より／いよ

睦　月　いよ年も明けまして／霜柱をふんで／貴地もさぞかしお寒いことと存

じますが

２　月　晩冬の候／余寒の候／残冬の候／立春の候／残雪の候／余寒厳しき折

如　月　から／春寒の候／残寒なお厳しく／立春とは名ばかりで／梅のつぼみ

もまだ堅いようですが

３　月　早春の候／軽暖の候／仰海の候／浅春の候／ようやく春めいて／一雨

弥　生　ごとに少しづつ暖かく／桜のつぼみもふくらんできました／春の足音

も聞こえるような

４　月　陽春の候／春暖の候／春粧の候／温暖の候／仲春の候／春の装いも美

卯　月　しく／若草萌える好季節／桜花の節／春たけなわ／陽ざしもやわらか

い春日和／春風駘蕩として

５　月　新緑の候／若葉の候／晩春の候／初夏の候／向暑の候／惜春の候／新

皐　月　緑が目にしみる季節となりましたが／初鰹の季節／風薫る五月となり

ましたが／青葉若葉の季節

６　月　立夏の候／薄暑の候／梅雨の候／入梅の候／長雨の候／向暑の候／若

水無月　あゆ躍るところ／山々の緑も濃くなり／うっとうしい梅雨の季節とな

りましたが

７　月　盛夏の候／酷暑の候／炎暑の候／猛暑の候／三伏の候／梅雨明けの暑

文　月　さ／暑さ厳しき折／夏祭のにぎわいもうれしく／夜空の天の川が美し

く

８　月　残暑の候／暮夏の候／晩署の候／秋署厳しき候／残暑厳しき折から／

葉　月　秋立つとは声ばかりで／朝夕は幾分しのぎやすくなりましたが／暦の

うえでは秋ですが

９　月　新秋の候／初秋の候／新涼の候／秋冷の候／秋分の候／燈火親しむの

長　月　候／秋気ようやく深きを覚える候／二百十日も穏やかに過ぎ／一雨ご

とに秋らしくなり／虫の音も聞かれるこのごろ／秋色も次第に濃くな

って

１０月　秋晴の候／秋涼の候／中秋の候／凍秋の候／秋冷の候／行楽の秋／実

神無月　りの秋／秋たけなわ／天高く馬肥ゆる秋とか／すっかり日が短くなっ

て／夜気冷やかに／山の紅葉もあざやかに

１１月　晩秋の候／深冷の候／霜寒の候／暮秋の候／向寒の候／菊薫るころ／

霜　月　取り入れの秋／肌寒い日が続きますが／感傷の秋とも申します／紅葉

も色あせて／落ち葉が風に舞うころ／落葉たく煙に秋は深まり

１２月　初冬の候／寒冷の候／歳末寒冷の候／霜枯れの季節／寒気厳しき折か

師　走　ら／木枯らし吹きすさぶ季節／年末ご多忙の折／年の瀬もいよいよ押

しつまって／心せわしい年の暮れを迎え／師走の寒さはひとしおです

I will translate all these someday (when I am free ...)

Nikkor 50mm Vs 50mm ...

2009-01-14T21:22:00.003+09:00

Recently I am searching for a high speed lens for my Nikon D200 camera, and had looked at options like the Tamron 17-50 mm F2.8, Nikon 50mm F1.4, Sigma 30mm F1.4, etc. And recently when I visited Nikon's website, I found a new variant of Nikon 50 mm F1.4, which is costing atleast twice as much as its older counter part.

I will have to look into the details, .... As for now, I am zeroing in on the Tamron 17-50mm F2.8. Recently one of my friend wrote the following about the lens

"I have been using Tamron 17-50mm for almost two years now and it is one damn good general purpose lens other than my nikon 50mm f1.8.

As far as image quality goes, It is a fantastic lens... may be pretty close to Nikon 17-55 at one third of the price. You will not regret spending on this lens.

But, the built quality is not something to boost about, i do take extra care about my equipments - but two years of travel and use (not very extensive -no time for that!!) clearly shows up on the lens. There are no marks or dings on the body, but you can hear & feel the front element and lens barrels shaking. But, i guess we can ignore it for what it gives in terms of flexibility and the quality of images!! And it comes with 5 years warranty (in US), that i think a reasonable deal.

AF is bit slow if you compare to nikon AF-S lenses, but pretty acceptable since the zoom range is small."

You can see some of his wonderful photos in flickr and picasa.

Ofuro 「お風呂」, Hamam and bathing ...

2009-01-12T20:06:00.003+09:00

Yesterday (11th Jan, 2009) was Sunday, the mercury was hovering over the single digits. And by 6PM, when I usually start playing tennis, it was as low as 2゜C. Playing tennis after a month long vacation owing to year-end-year-start holidays, I was exhausted. My tennis teacher and friend, Shin, told me to "enter the ofuro". Literally, It means, "enter the bath tub" or "use a bath tub". After reaching home, I was disappointed only to find that the bathroom was used for drying clothes (thanks to the super cold weather outside). So, after dinner I went to sleep.

In the morning, with the body pain persisting, I remembered Shin's advice. I decided to "enter the ofuro", I have never tried it before. After getting up at 10:00 AM owing to a National holiday, I filled the ofuro (bath-tub), with water at 42゜C to chest level (when I was sitting in it), and then heated up the bathroom using the bathroom heater, and then entered the ofuro. I was sitting inside it for 25 minutes (5 minutes more than Shin had adviced), and felt it was very refreshing. Not only the body pain was gone, a relaxed feeling engulfed me. Thanks Shin.

After getting out of the Ofuro, I was not very happy to just waste so much (still hot) water. So, I decided to use it for taking a shower, and used a bath mug to pour it over me. I continued, continued, and continued ... but after a while I was tired (just taking the water using a mug and pouring it over me). I thought, on a normal day, I could have taken a fulfilling bath 3 -4 times using the same amount of water.

Having wasted such a lot of water, and the guilty feeling still remaining. I thought the water could have been re-used, either by someone or for something else. So I browsed the internet, And found out that normally the entire Japanese family (re-)uses the same water. I thought that was (very) good.

Indians normally take bath in the morning (from very olden days). So when I first learnt that the Japanese take bath after work in the night, I was a bit confused. Now after experiencing both the ofuro and shower, I think, shower is best suited for taking bath in the morning, because it is mostly for cleaning purpose. And an ofuro, is more for relaxing, and off course cleaning. So it is best suited before going to bed.

Now, when searching about bathing, I came across the word "Hamam". It caught my eye, because it is the name of a popular brand of soap in India. Actually the word could have had its roots in a turkish bathhouses. It was an interesting information for me and hence I just mentioned here.

Now, do you take a shower, or enter an ofuro? Which one do you think is better?

Macro droplets

2009-01-10T23:48:00.004+09:00

I love Macro photos, and last year, I bought the Nikon 105mm F2.8 VR, Micro lens. Whenever it rains I always try to shoot the hanging droplets. Today, early in the morning it seems that there was a slight drizzle, I happened to venture out and take some snaps. Here are they ...

The above photo of a grass with some water droplets was snapped without a tripod.

This photo of the droplet has the camera reflection (it was shot by my friend Nanda)

From droplets

The above photo does not have any droplets, but I like the color combination, so I posted it ... enjoy !!!

Anto started dancing ...

2009-01-09T22:03:00.004+09:00

Solomon started watching the Kids program 2 months back, but still was not dancing at all. I was not very impressed, because he was just concentrating but not even shaking his hands. Today after a long time, I thought I would make a film of him concentrating on the kids program, but to my surprise he started dancing today ... so enjoy the videos.
PS: They were filmed using my shaky hands and thus it is shaky ... (accept my apologies)

First I tried to upload the HD video for 6 minutes in its actual size. The upload continued overnight and did not yet get over. So, I converted it into 320x240 size WMA file and uploaded it again ...

Now Part-II of dancing ... (enjoy this one too ...)

Selecting a Japanese book ...

2009-01-09T21:04:00.006+09:00

I have been studying Japanese for 2 years now, but, my spoken Japanese is still, not humble enough. Since I am planning to use it mostly for business conversation with customers, I wanted to polish it. With this idea I visited the Kinokuniya superstore, and somehow walked around to the Japanese section, and to my surprise there were hundreds of book on business Japanese, and I spent roughly 3 hours and could not arrive at a book that matches my level (because it is just above beginner's level) .. But after sometime I bought this book "Japanese power for living"　「生きる為の日本語力」 . I read a few pages on the way back.

The book is all about "Humble expressions in Japanese". Speaking of these humble expressions, there are two of them,
- Sonkeigo 「尊敬語」
- kenjouｇo　「謙譲語」
Sonkeigo is used to praise seniors (add extra ++)
Kenjogo is used to humble oneself (reduce your own level --)

It seems that many Japanese are starting to make mistakes here. It seems that they are starting to face the same problem as "Japanese learning foreigners", and the Japanese (elders) are trying hard to re-introduce it.

Let us take an example, If you want to inform someone over telephone to, "wait for a few minutes" The word few can be expressed as chotto→shosho→sukoshi→shibaraku (respect increases in the ascending order).

USB 3.0 highlight

2009-01-08T13:56:00.006+09:00

It all started in 1999, when I started working on the USB mass storage class drivers for Windows 98 SE, the next version of windows, "the Windows 2000" had inbuilt USB mass storage class support. I worked extensively on USB and Mass storage class, eventually I fell in love. And had been following the developments in USB world till USB2.0 was frozen. When USB2.0 was released and adopted, I thought it is the end of the world for 1394 (firewire) and any further USB developments. Because USB 2.0 was 40 times faster than USB 1.1. When the wireless USB came into picture, I did not care much, because I thought there really isn`t any market for it, just because bluetooth and WLAN is so well established. I recently came across USB3.0, Tektronix has already released analyzers for it.

The first thing that caught my attention was its speed, believe it or not, it is 5.0 Gbps (Giga Bits Per Second), same as a PCI Express 2.0 (which is an internal bus interconnect protocol). I have not seen any USB2.0 application that is using its full speed. There are some arguments that network over USB2.0 might use its 60 MBPS bandwidth. Practically, nobody would like to connect their Network protocol stack over USB protocol in normal conditions.

What will be the typical application. If this protocol succeeds, then, we can live away with all the PCI bus inside the PC, and all your extensions cards, and even your RAM can be well, connected over USB 3.0. The designers will have a challenging time designing for this highspeed signal.

Kudos USB3.0 but ...

Hey USB3.0 developers, "Why do we want to run, so very fast?"

Satyam's revelation

2009-01-07T20:29:00.007+09:00

Indians for a long time equated non-governmental organization to instability. Inline with this, the top graduates from Engineering schools would always strive for a government job. It was and is highly competitive, except for the salary part. It was really surprising for me to see people just wanting to get a government job, due to the paybacks they can receive. The best part for these so called "government employees" is that they good girls (thanks to the arranged marriage system in India). Girls parents think that government jobs are the safest, bla bla ...

The confidence in private companies, like TATA, Infosys, Reliance, grew recently. To the point that banks started giving loans easily to employees of these private companies. But now ... with companies just going down ... now what?

People's confidence on wallstreet took a series of blows, we only wish Madoff's problem is the last. Recently I watched a speech by Vinodh Khosla and he mentioned the worst is not yet over, he thinks the "credit card debt" will also strike. No matter what, I do not understand the intricacies of this problem, but only know that the effect is not trivial.

I wonder how come countries go bankrupt, take iceland for example. In Japan, they showed a graphical representation of the global financial crisis created by the US. My feeling (though might not be correct) is that, the US people had a ball of a time with others money. Now check the image below, you can clearly see that the American government gets back all the money they pay to us for our services. Now isn't this great ...

Now when the world was sensing something fishy in Satyam computer, its chairman, Ramalinga Raju revealed the financial irregularities. Many of my good friends work for that company, it was and is a great company. It was one of the first Indian IT companies to extensively explore the Japanese market and has a huge Japan operations. Now, I thought of asking myself this question.

"Why would such (not so bad people) a person like Ramalinga Raju, Madoff and all. inflate things?"

These people are highly educated, they probably can visualize the consequences. I cannot imagine that they did this fraud (irregularities as it is called) to benefit themselves. Is it the investors, who create this quarterly results pressure. I guess something is not correct with the way the investors confidence has an effect on the company's stock and eventually the company.

This seems to be a time of reconciliation where the foundation of many companies seems to be weak or in the worst case non-existent. The world is now shaken, and it is time for those fundamentally strong companies to withstand this shakeup.

I always like the following lines from , King Arthur's Farewell
"Future seems dark and dreary ..."
But then he adds a bit of optimism by saying
"More things are wrought by prayer than what this world thinks of ..."

In these days let us be optimistic.

New Year Resolutions

2009-01-06T22:00:00.006+09:00

Nearly a week after New Year, I have decided to do the following,

- Continue to write blogs (till I complete writing the book that I always wanted to write)
- Divide the blog into two
- A blog for personal posts
- Another one for technical posts
- Manage both on a regular basis (regular = daily)
Everyday I spend more than a couple of hours travelling to work,

I plan to use the travel hours effectively to write down my thoughts ...

Anto's cleaning ... Part II

2009-01-05T21:35:00.005+09:00

The earlier post on Anto cleaning our living with the tennis racket was funny ... I shot a couple of videos, but posted only one. Now I am posting the second one.

During these crisis times, people working in places like US and Japan are to gain a lot,
Due to the fact the JPY has risen like a bull against the INR. I think it is the same case with USD against INR.

(Image was flicked from Yahoo)

The graph shows the inverse, INR used be around 2.8 JPY, but now it is 1.9 JPY.
So the Rupee equivalent salary has risen by 32% (which is really huuuuuuge)

Anto's o-toshi-dama 「お年玉」...

2009-01-04T16:36:00.006+09:00

Otoshidama means, gifts given to kids on New year's day ...

On the 31st of Dec, 2008, Me, Shanthi, and Anto went to Kakogawa 「加古川」. Usually it's a 2 hour journey, which we covered in around 3 hours.

At first, we boarded a "local train" train from Nishioji to Takatsuki, on alighting at the station we realized it was freezing cold, the strong breeze made things difficult. Shanthi wanted something hot for Anto. The next train was 9 minutes away, and so I went to find some vending machine, there was none in the Platform, so I went to the second floor where the ticketing gates and few shops were located. I went to the toilet for pissing and came back and bought a couple of Yuzu tea, and came back to the Platform to find that the train that I was about to board had already left ... sigh ...

Then we waited for the next train (14 minutes to be exact) and boarded the next train and got down at Shin-Osaka and boarded the "Special Rapid Service" bound for "Banshu Aboshi".

Otoshidama-I,

In the train an elderly man, might be in his late 60's sat besides me. As most of the Japanese he started praising Anto, and praised that Anto was cute. I was not surprised till he took out his wallet and gave Anto a JPY 1000 bill... I was SHOCKED, I thought it was not a nice guesture. And told that guy (in a rather rude voice) to take his money back, but he would not. He was probably drunk, or atleast I though so. He repeated the same phrase, "Everyone in the world are friends" 「世界の皆が友達ですね」. I liked the phrase, but did not like the 1000 Yen guesture ... He talked to me about India, his visit to Srilanka, his unmarried daughter who was crossing 30 already, his liking for Indian curry and spicy food, how longing for a long nose, etc.

Atlast he got down at Akashi, I was relieved, but some part of me wanted to talk to him more. Probably would have even liked to invite him home someday, but the 1000 Yen shock overtook all the gestures and I had to just wave him bye ...

Celebration in Kakogawa,

During golden week, A japanese friend of mine, took me to Arima onsen. I met Subahar and Deepika (an active Tamil couple), he lives in Kakokawa. He had invited us to celebrate New Year with all his co-working Indian friends. I was excited to meet people who are living here for long, especially I was curious to meet their kids.

So me and Shanthi embarked on a journey that will be our first stay in a guest's place Japan. Though it is very normal in India, travelling with Anto was was challenging ...

The Subahar's, were a real "Tamil family", and their good humour, and hospitality took our tiredness away. It was one of the most pleasent trip we had ever made.

I shot some snaps of "the New year function" which can be seen here ...

From NewYear

Otoshidama-II,

On the 1st of Jan, 2009, we came back to Nishoji (my present home town ;-)) at around 2 PM. Shin and Rieko were leaving for a tript to Vietnam and Cambodia on the 2nd. Earlier our plan was to meet them for Lunch on the 1st, but since the comfortable stay in Kakokawa only made sure we do not leave after eating those hot idlies with 3 type of chutnies and a lengthy chat.

Now I had to give them their New years gift and my wishes for the trip before they leave for Shin-san's parents home. So I rushed to meet them at the hanapot at around 4PM. I gave each one of them a shirt, and conveyed Shanthi and Anto's wishes too ...

At this, Shin and Rieko gave otoshidama-II for Anto ... 1000 Yen ++
I happily accepted the otoshidama cover, ... though I expected a bigger amount ... ;-)

Otoshidama-III,

At around 7 PM, we went to Hanapot for the formal New Year's dinner, during this time, Oto-san and Oka-san of Hanapot, gave Anto his 3rd and final Otoshidama for this Newyear.

He had 3ooo JPY in the form of Otoshidama's ...

Back in olden days, when I was a kid, we used to go to our relatives house and get some gift money, usually 5 INR (10 JPY). We used to feel very happy when someone gives 10 INR, and very sad when unexpectedy someone hands out 2 INR ...

But now, living far away from all those relatives, I neither have an oppurtunity to give, nor receive ... but am happy to write about this Otoshidama's ..

Anto's cleaning ...

2009-01-03T14:58:00.005+09:00

I wanted to write a lot of things over the New Year ... The procrastination inside me is taking over most of the times.

I have a vague feeling that Antony will become a nice Tennis player, just because I always wanted to be one. And I thought and wish that it is probably in his genes already ...

It was humorous, but it made me sad to see him using my Tennis racket for mopping the floor. I guess those Tennis genes are still dormant and somewhere inside him ;-)

Happy New Year ...

2008-12-30T13:21:00.005+09:00

This is the year of cow ... so ...

Shanthi's flower lessons ...

2008-12-30T12:13:00.009+09:00

Recently Shanthi has been attending "Dutch style" flower lessons, that are customized for Japan. It is taught by Rieko at the Hanapot. A fun filled lesson, I accompany Shanthi and Solomon to the lessons for 2 reasons,

Translate lesson which are in Japanese into English,
Most importantly to take care of Antony Solomon when the lessons are on.

I enjoy the lessons too, because
I can learn flower arrangement without actually having to pay for it and
I can learn new Japanese words (silly me ...)

After I started attending the lessons I learnt the mildness of color they use. Back home in India we believe stark contrasting colors are georgeous, but here they use simple colors and make things look milder and cool. For example the reeth uses mostly light colors, but it look good ...

Week before last, she made the wonderful christmas reeth. I enjoyed it's look very much. Except that I dropped it when I tried to hang it and it lost it's shape (a bit though) ...

And last week, she made yet another beautiful full green stuff, which is also cool and mild (some people would like to term it dull ... though). This week she made this veritically aligned New Year special stuff which was by far the best (according to me). It did cost special too. But in any case she is enjoying these lessons, and I will accompany till such time Solomon is old enough not to disturb her.

Birthday parties ...

2008-12-29T13:10:00.004+09:00

Nov 7th was Antony's birthday, 10 days later was Ravi's kid, Vishu's birthday and yesterday was Teja's birthday. So we were eating a lot of cakes recently, with Christmas falling on the 25th. As always I was the photographer yesterday too, and I snapped a lot of photos. Am attaching a couple of them.

Now, it is holiday season here in Japan, with temperature hovering around zero degrees, I have been happy to stay back inside home all times.

I plan to finish some of the training courses stipulated by the company before I start off my next assignment. Hope the procastinating days are gone ...

Lighting a candle ...

2008-12-27T11:23:00.005+09:00

Recently I was busy with Christmas and my office. My project got over yesterday and I was busy as I had to finish a few things.

As for Christmas, it was less than usual, I received 10 shirts as gift from my sister, Shanthi and Solomon received a couple of dress each and a sweater.

Anto's special pair of Puma shoes looked cute, I was surprised to see such good finishing in such a small scale. Anyway I thought it was worth the high price.

The other day, Solomon (Anto) imitated his mother's way of lighting candle. And we happened to film it, and thus this video. Enjoy !!!

Meltdown ...

2008-12-23T20:42:00.006+09:00

After I started working in 1999, this is going to be most challenging year owing to the economic meltdown. The news isn't good in Japan too, Toyoto corp. which symbolizes Japanese economic strength is going red in 71 years. Why should this happen, are these problems created by guys who play with stocks. Or those (stupid) banks in America which gave away all the money to home owners ... Like many including Paulson I don't know either ...

I dont know what to do, the JPY-INR exchange rate is floating like anything ... I dont know whether to send money to my country or not ...

Whenever I am confused I always wait and watch, and this time though it is frieghtening ... I decided to wait and watch ...

God bless !!!

Test cricket's more interesting than ever before ...

2008-12-22T10:13:00.003+09:00

Recently South Africa chased a mammoth 413 against the mighty Australians in their own backyard. While many are happy to discuss the reasons for this Australian defeat, I am happy to see that few teams have already started outplaying the Aussies, and this will make cricket more interesting than ever before.

On a philosophical note ...
Recently, I was watching the movie Matrix, in which Neo defeats "Agents (Smith)" when he starts "believing in himself". In this note, it's just that more team think that they can chase huge totals instead of playing for a mostly sure "defensive defeat" ...

On the other hand, Australia will be alright once they start believing that "they are invincibles, no more"...

Anto in his dhothi ...

2008-12-20T17:20:00.003+09:00

Recently Anto has been sporting this green Dhothi (Indian style wear), like everyone I like it too. Shanthi had made numerous videos of it, at-last I got a chance to upload it.

Computer scientist's holy grail?

2008-12-19T13:30:00.004+09:00

For a long time we know that Resistor, Capacitor and Inductor form the basic elements. We also know to use a combination of these elements to create complex circuits.

Now make it four, add the newly created, but the 30 year old, "memristor"

Discovered as early as in the 70's, but got into the limelight after scientists from HP really made one. It is taking us to the nano age, really. It seems that the potential applications include "brain emulation".

Read more about it at spectrum and also wikipedia

Now, if you do not have time to read through the entire article, I want to quote the following paragraph from spectrum,

"... However, even a mouse brain simulation in real time involves solving an astronomical number of coupled partial differential equations. A digital computer capable of coping with this staggering workload would need to be the size of a small city, and powering it would require several dedicated nuclear power plants."

Tamron Vs Nikon (Expensive 1 to 5)

2008-12-16T21:58:00.004+09:00

One of my class mates (Dennis) from Engineering college days is getting married. Thinking of taking some snaps for the wedding, I thought of buying a lens with a large aperture for portraits. For a long time I had been eyeing the Nikon 15-55 F2.8, but it's highly expensive (JPY 150K) that I was postponing the purchase. Especially with JPY clocking its peak.

But then recently when I was checking the Tamron's website, I came across the Tamron 15-50 F2.8 AF. Man, it costs around JPY 33K. Which is roughly 4 times cheaper or a 5th of the price of its Nikonese counterpart. I can't believe my eyes. Now its time to start reading the reviews ...

What's in store ...

2008-12-16T17:32:00.003+09:00

Once upon a time, reading "IEEE spectrum" was enjoyable for me. It was an eye opener into many things that I did not know of. Those days I understood the future technologies and thought that it will definitely help improve human race.

These days, I am slightly disturbed with the following technologies

- Artificial Intelligence, After some years, all you will do is teach a computer and make it work for you. Or buy an already intelligent off-the-shelf computer and ... then "What will you do?"

- Neural or Brain mapping, Computers can read your brain, remove or add information. Like the one shown in the film Matrix. I do not know the technical term though. Direct Brain Access (DBA) or something ... It will be good, if this is used in a good way. But hmm.... kowai

Imagine a situation,
We have developed a machine that can add or remove contents to or from human brain. And there is a simple machine mal-function or worst, this is in the hands of some "really bad guy". I do not want to think more ... on this. It is really really scary.

- Gesture identification
A good technology, machine's will be able to understand our gestures. And if those machines are intelligent and in some way do not like our actions, then ... ;-)

- Nano technologies etc etc ...
Super computer microprocessors the size of ball pen tips, electronics printed on clothes, invisible or transparent electronics. They have 100's of good applications and 1000's of not so good ones...

Now, I may be sounding a bit negative. That is exactly how I feel about these future technologies. May be I should stop reading "IEEE Spectrum" ... ;-) or what?

387 scored in the fourth innings ....

2008-12-15T19:47:00.004+09:00

This is great news for the "shell shocked Indians", especially after the Bombay carnage.

Tendulkar (is from Bombay) and he once again did it for India. From now his critics will have to find a new reason. What an Innings from our "little master"?

I attribute this test to the entire Indian team.

Abbeee abbeee ... (probably it means gran-ma gran-ma)

2008-12-14T12:02:00.001+09:00

Mom, this is for you.

Anto (that is how every one in my family calls Solomon) recently started talking using some language which is foreign to perhaps everybody.

We made a video of that, and I am attaching that for my mom ... enjoy !!!

忘年会ーBou-nen-kai [Forget year party]

2008-12-14T11:47:00.001+09:00

Yesterday I along with Shanthi (my wife) and Solomon (our kid) attended the year's first bou-nen-kai 「忘年会」. This is a party to forget any (every) bad thing(s) that happened during the year. Yesterday's party was for the tennis circle called "the november" that I am part.

For Shanthi and Solomon, this is their first time attending a bounenkai. They had a good time enjoying all the food that was served. Solomon was in his good spirits and he did not cry. He was wearing a sherwani. I had a chance to discuss with my mate Mr. Masa. I have never seen someone who can talk more about cars that this man. He can exactly tell each and every Japanese car's dimension.

After discussing with him I decided 2 things.
1. Buy a toyota car (possibly harrier)
2. Apply for my driving license ;-)

BTW, Toyota will stop making Harrier from next year.

Photo courtesy, Jeffrey (my friend who writes this amazing blog)

Definition of a dream

2008-12-12T17:05:00.001+09:00

Yesterday late in the night I was watching a program called "人体～セックスと人体機能～" in the discovery channel. The english reading is "Human body ~ Sex and human body function ~". I happened to see yesterday's part from the series. Yesterday's was all about brain's functionality. In that program they defined the meaning of "dream".

It was mentioned
"Dream is nothing but, uncontrolled thinking", and they added great scientists always dreamt solutions to their problems, and this was possible only due to "uncontrolled thinking". It was a very interesting definition, because from time to time, I have dreamt about solution to some complex algorithm related questions that I have come across ...

Can we term a scientist "a day dreamer", why not?

How little we know about the world.
We start at the atomic level, and stop at the milky way galaxy.

We need better microscopes and telescopes eh ...

“Implicit, mild and honest” – Personified

2008-09-24T22:51:00.001+09:00

My first impression about Japan was during my high school days, it started when I read a prose titled “Selected snobberies” by “Aldous Huxley” in which the author writes that the “Japanese style of snobbery” is to add honorific prefix to all nouns in a sentence, according to Huxley the Japanese would say “Keep the honorable umbrella in the honorable umbrella stand”. I read the above passage to the whole class, and as expected, all students laughed. My impression during those days was that the land of “Sony and bullet trains” is perhaps weird. Much later I would have confronted Huxley if only he was alive.

Selecting a topic for describing my views on the Japanese culture seemed difficult. I have a feeling that I had found some unique things in Japan that many foreigners living in Japan might overlook. The topic search can be difficult if you have no ideas, and also if you have many ideas. I was suffering from the “many ideas” syndrome.

The “words” we choose to express our thoughts might reflect our culture. So the first title that flashed my mind was “The Japanese language”. I think students of the Japanese language may pickup some aspects of the culture. Once puzzled during my high school days I was impressed with the idea of “honorific salutations” [丁寧語] after seeing its practical usage, partly because my mother tongue too is heavily influenced by honorific expressions for the elderly. I started jotting down a few points about the Japanese language, after jotting down all I can think of, I realized that my knowledge of Japanese language is limited to express my complete feeling about the Japanese culture. So I started thinking about some other topic …

Seasons in Japan! It was Jan, 2005 I had just landed in the Kansai airport wearing a T-shirt. The first impression was that Japan was very cold. In my home town I had witnessed only three seasons, “the hot, hotter and the hottest”. For a moment I started enjoying the cold weather, but I had to scamper for my sweater after sometime. On my first day I was in Kyoto, it was covered with snow; like a kid I played with the snow for sometime, much to the amazement of some passersby. On that day I would experience yet another season. Much colder than the coldest hill station I had ever been to. I have observed that food, clothes, color, moods, activities, vary based on season. But then seasons are universal, so I started looking for something that is unique to Japan.

It will not be a joke to say that “some Japanese men spend more time commuting in trains than they spend with their wives”. I thought of writing about Japanese trains and the Japanese society. Sometimes the symbol of Japan is the bullet train “Shinkansen”. I have seen super stores dedicating a section for selling toy train. Looking at the prices I was not astonished to learn that it was mostly used by adults. The trains had been in Japan for over a hundred years. Though it is unique to Japan and tempting and interesting to write an essay about trains, it may not reflect my feeling on the culture. My mind was looking for something more solid.

I am lucky in that my work has taken me places in Japan, one such place was Matsumoto. I was single and had enough time (and money) to check out some of the exotic Japanese foods. What started as an adventure since I was bored; will soon engulf me into the world of sushi, sashimi, udon, soba … the list will be endless if I start with basashi, fugu, hirezake, yamadanishiki. Yes, I love Japanese rice wine, nihonshu. Though the country is small, it still has many pockets famous for specific items, for example Akashi-yaki, Sanuki udon, Nagano Soba, Shizuoka eel (unagi), etc. But then I thought it might be “mean” to write about food when I am supposed to write about culture.

The list continued, so I wrote down all topics that came to my mind. After jotting them all, I though three English words can define the Japanese culture, they words are “implicit, mild and honest”. The meanings of these words are as deep as the Japanese culture.

In a Japanese sentence the subject is implicit. Initially I was confused, because Japanese language had pronouns too. But then after living in Japan for a longer time and learning more Japanese, I learnt this grammatical construct expresses an aspect of the Japanese culture. In many places there are un-said or un-written rules. After coming to Japan, the first time I went to a bus-stop everybody was standing in a queue though it was not explicitly written and people thought standing in a queue to board a bus was implied. I also learnt that many Japanese business contracts have no major written clauses, but are bound by implied commitments.

I had worked as a “haken employee” in Japanese companies. I never had a formal briefing on office timings, lunch hours or waste disposal. But still I have managed to do all those tasks perfectly. Their culture is to mingle in a group and this works perfectly when executing large projects. I started pondering over it. Back in India, we use to get a big manual and often undergo week long trainings on policy and procedures, but still I felt the Japanese system is more effective.

Some of the things that can be interesting to foreigners are, People waiting in signals even during midnight, litter free pavements, train coming on time, railway station staff sincerely apologizing for a minute train delay.

Whenever I asked my Japanese friends to translate some Japanese phrase, more often the answer was either, “it’s difficult to translate into English” or “it’s Japanese specific”. These answers from them made me curious and thus I started learning Japanese. Soon I was using phrases like “osaki-ni-shitsurei-shimasu”, “otsukaresama desu” without knowing the meaning. In the due course I “realized” the meaning. And now when I teach Japanese to my wife, I always tell her that meaning needs to be realized “kanjiru”. Culture often reflects the nature of a race as a whole. The meaning of the salutations like “Ojama shimashu”, “Shitsurei shimashita”, “Yoroshiku onegaishimasu”, needs to be felt based on situations.

Recently I can read kanji characters and suddenly I felt like being blessed with a new eye. The first realization came when I read the Japanese translation of an English novel “The Alchemist”. The Japanese translation I thought was far better than the original version. The translation was［アルケミスト- 夢を旅した少年］. The phrase that caught my attention and one that I quickly memorized was 「何かを強く望めば宇宙の全てが協力して実現するように助けてくれる」. I got a chance to read both the English and Japanese version, and I felt that probably the Japanese version made me visualize more. I realized visualizing「想像」is an excellent means of understanding, and the Japanese often explain things pictorially. Is it because of the pictorial kanji? Anyway, the liking for cartoons and anime is a proof.

After pondering over the implicit things that I observed in Japan, I started wondering, after all, what is the meaning of the word “culture”, is it just the sum of all implicit things attributed to a particular race.

When learning the Japanese language, many times my teacher mentions that certain words are used to make the sentence mild [軽くする為の表現]. In learning this aspect I saw another realm that might be specific to Japan. In the Japanese language the expression are so mild that it may lack assertiveness. Does that mean the Japanese lack assertiveness? That is another question. But this mild way of expressing things works well in the Japanese society. They words like “may be”, “I think …” can be seen as prefix to sentences often. After living here for sometime I learnt that many times, when the Japanese say “may be”, it means they are mostly sure.

Japanese are good at finding out mild differences. I read that some Japanese people can find out even small difference in the thickness of paper just by feeling it. Unbelievable was my first impression, but later experiences made me believe this..

Once I started wondering why someone would eat raw fish, and raw meat. Japan was the only foreign country I have ever lived, so I could only compare this culture with mine. Back in India, we deep fry fish, soaked in a variety of spices or eat it as part of a fish curry. Both “fish fry” and “fish curry” is a delicacy in south India. I thought probably since Japan does not have spices, they consume it as sashimi or sushi. I asked a friend, “why do the Japanese eat raw fish”. His answer was “we eat it raw to feel the taste of the fish”. This answer made me thinking; actually Indians taste more spice than the fish in itself. Some more thinking into it, probably we amplify the taste of the fish with spices. The lesson learnt here was important that the “Japanese can enjoy and distinguish even mild taste differences”, and like things mild.

Praising the Japanese all times, I have concerns too. For example, about the way the Japanese copy western life style ending up being obese. The hamburger outlets seem to be popular among the youth. Obesity is compounding to the increasing NEET issue. I think the younger generation is able to afford many luxuries just because their forefathers did all the hard work to grow the economy in a resource starved country.

I was traveling from Tokyo to Shiojiri in the JR Azusa super fast express. I missed the single small bag that I was carrying which had all my valuables like passport, all my traveler’s cheques inside the train. After alighting I was totally frustrated once I learnt that I lost the passport and all my money. With much difficulty as I did not know a single word in Japanese I somehow explained to the station in-charge. I was more worried because the station in-charge was cool. For a moment I thought he did not understand. He called up the Matsumoto station (which is Azusa’s final stop) and traced my bag. Once I got the bag I was surprised that nothing in that bag was touched. It was my first experience of Japanese honesty.

I used to stay in a small village called Hirooka near Matsumoto and commute to my office by train. The JR Hirooka station was manned by a station master only from 8AM to 5 PM, and it did not have an automatic ticketing gate too. Sometimes late in the night I see some coins and tickets lying in front of the closed ticketing counter, much later I found out that it was the honest way of fare adjustment. Amazing, was also the fact that even the punks who roamed around the railway station in the night did not touch those coins.

I think the discipline in Japanese life style is because they are honest to themselves. The meticulous garbage separation even when no-body force you do not.

I had always thought that this country suits me. I wish I will sometimes dare to say that “this is my home away from my home”

Eating out ... after a long time

2008-06-22T22:54:00.002+09:00

Today my colleague Terai's family visited us for dinner. Mine and my friend's (Nanda) family made a five course meal, and topped it with Indian mangoes. It was fun all day as Terai-san's son Ryose was an active guy, much like Terai himself. I made most of the cooking and cleaning, as my wife was busy with Solomon.

After the dinner we set out for shopping and bought few household things and one the way back we decided to eat the much hyped Marukame [丸亀] udon. Everybody liked it. I like udon very much and this particular shop is my favourite. I wish I can visit Sanuki some day to eat my favourite udon...

Obsessed with our gray matter

2008-06-20T23:26:00.001+09:00

Recently I have been reading a lot of IEEE spectrum. Another article on mapping human consciousness and selectively adding or removing it. The future seems to be thrilling, but I feel something slippery about the path taken by humans.

If we reverse engineer the brain and create a machine with the functionality of the brain, we might needs to create a way to stop it from going against us.

At this I remember King Arthur's farewell,
"The future seems dark and dreary" ...

20 years from now, you call 911 .... and the answer is something like "Sir, this is your Robo-Cop speaking ... How can I help you" ... And you say, sigh !!! "I just want to talk someone human ..."

Star thrower - an impressive story

2008-06-20T09:07:00.001+09:00

There's a story I would like to share with you. It was inspired by the writing of Loren Eiseley. Loren was a very special person because he combined the best of two cultures. He was a scientist and a poet. From those two perspectives, he wrote insightfully and beautifully about the world and our role in it.

Once upon a time, there was a wise man, much like Eiseley himself, who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had the habit of walking along the beach before he began his work. One day he was walking along the shore; as he looked down the beach, he saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself to think of someone who would dance to the day, so he began to walk faster to catch up. As he got closer, he saw that it was a young man and the young man wasn't dancing, but instead, he was reaching down to the shore, picking up something and very gently throwing it into the ocean.

As he got closer he called out, "Good morning! What are you doing?" The young man paused, looked up and replied, "Throwing Starfish into the ocean."

"I guess I should have asked; why are you throwing Starfish into the ocean?"

"The sun is up and the tide is going out and if I don't throw them in they'll die."

"But young man, don't you realize that there are miles and miles of beach and Starfish all along it, you can't possibly make a difference!"

The young man listened politely, then bent down, picked up another Starfish and threw it into the sea, past the breaking waves. "It made a difference for that one."

His response surprised the man, he was upset, he didn't know how to reply, so instead he turned away and walked back to the cottage to begin his writings.

All day long as he wrote, the image of that young man haunted him; he tried to ignore it, but the vision persisted. Finally, late in the afternoon, he realized that he the scientist, he the poet, had missed the essential nature of the young man's actions. Because he realized that what the young man was doing was choosing not to be an observer in the universe and watch it pass by, but was choosing to be an actor in the universe and make a difference. He was embarrassed.

That night he went to bed, troubled. When morning came, he awoke knowing that he had to do something; so he got up, put on his clothes, went to the beach and found the young man; and with him spent the rest of the morning throwing Starfish into the ocean.

You see, what the young man's actions represent is something that is special in each and every one of us. We have all been gifted with the ability to make a difference. And if we can, like the young man, become aware of that gift, we gain through the strength of our vision the power to shape the future.

And that is your challenge, and that is my challenge. We must find our Starfish, and if we throw our stars wisely and well, I have no question that the 21st century is going to be a wonderful place.

Vision without action is merely a dream
Action without vision just passes time
Vision with action can change the world

Matrix and total recall ... Now it may be reality

2008-06-19T20:40:00.001+09:00

Today I was reading an article in the IEEE Spectrum , this article is titled "Reverse engineering the brain". Guess what they are trying to do, YES! they are trying to map a human brain. I use to work for a semiconductor company after graduating and heard from my manager that Taiwanese are good at reverse engineering ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuits). I thought it was just gimmick, or those people who can reverse engineer are way too good.

After reading the above article, it was interesting how close we are towards resolving many human issues like "mental depression", "loneliness", "stress", etc. using brain mapping. The future looks interesting. I will be more than happy if someone can transfer all the "Japanese Kanjis" into my brain. But, that said, I guess it might have a darker side to it too ...

Is scientific fiction yet another reality of the future. Are those fiction writers oracles. Recently I read a novel named "Alchemist" 「アルケミスト」(in Japanese) by Paulo coelho. It talks about omen 「前兆」, and how they become reality. Now I am left wondering, may be ... those fiction writer are in a way ... oracles.

All directions ...

2008-03-24T21:19:00.001+09:00

It has been a while since I wrote my last blog. Recently there is a feeling, life is taking me in all possible directions. So I set out to find if this is just a feeling or otherwise.

One thing is for sure, my career is at cross-roads. I now know exactly how Robert Frost would have felt, when he wrote "The road not taken" ... It is scary. Yes recently I am into a ASIC design project, and it is a night mare.

Photography is taking me to new places, recently to the backyard in our appartments. I was able to snap some photos, which others thought were nice, but I feel there is scope for a lot of improvement.

Sports, Tennis has been in my mind for a looong time. Recently, I started playing tennis. Yes, after the teacher taught me, the first serve I served was in, with force. Everybody thinks that either, "I am lieing that I have never played tennis" or "I am a natural tennis player" ...

Recently I started trying sake (Japanese rice wine) again, and I am drinking a lot of them ... I am finding ways to stop it ..

The guy is Shin-chan (my tennis teacher ..) and his wife Rieko-san.

In anticipation ...

2008-03-17T22:19:00.001+09:00

Yen is soaring high in the air, I don't know if dollar is falling. Taking advantage of this, I was hoping to send most of my bank balance to my Indian account. We get a special discount with SBI (State Bank of India) Osaka branch, if we send more than JPY 1 Million. I was expecting some money from the insurance company, which never got credited into my account. I drew flak, plan dropped ... atleast for today.

Then again, I was hoping to get some money from my company over some re-imbursements related to my house deposit. Flak again ... it is 1 month now, and I have no answers ...

But, the Macro lens that my friend Jeff ordered last week for me, was delivered today. I am looking forward to lay my hands at them tomorrow. Hopefully I don't draw flak again ...

Natural tennis player

2008-03-16T22:16:00.001+09:00

In my high school days, I used to watch a lot of tennis. I first thought Borris becker was great. I used to imagine Becker & Graf were siblings, I also made my mother believe this. Those days I used to think that, "I will be a *great* tennis player someday". And it seems now, that "someday" can be in my next birth.

Anyway, today I was requested by my friend Shin-san to join him for a session of Tennis. I accepted it, though I was not feeling well. And I had no expectation apart from picking up a few Japanese words from Shin et al.

To my surprise when I was there with them. According to Shin and others, it seems that I played "really well" for a beginner. Shin told me that my back-hand strokes, and approach was good.

I remembered, once I told Yuki-san, that "I am a natural tennis player", and I was not sure if she believed it. But today I myself could not believe I am one.

After a long time

2008-03-16T22:10:00.001+09:00

Its long since I composed a blog, I was in a different world altogether. The following are some of the things that has happened in this period.
- Changed job twice (SCM->TATA Elxsi->WIPRO Japan)
- Moved to Japan, and presently living in Kyoto
- Got married to Shanthi and we were blessed with a kid on the 11th of Nov2007

After coming to Japan, every single experience I have had was so wonderful, that I always wanted to write them down as a record for myself. The starting trouble which tormented me for a long time is now gone. "the cast is broken ..."

2004-07-28T23:11:00.001+09:00

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