A Rhapsodist's view..

Learnings from WCBU 2011 - 2

2011-09-08T13:29:00.003+05:30

Just a last couple of notes..

1) It was notable, the number of spouses and kids that had accompanied players to the championship. There were SO many young Ultimate couples (both people playing) who had come with toddlers to the tournament. Haven't seen this in any other sport before!

2) To give people an idea of what kind of players we need to create a competitive team.. ideally it should be a player with Bajji's stamina, Raj's speed and quick feet, AP's build, Boon's throws, Thunder's strength, Paddu's verticals, Abhi's heart, Mama's enthu & discipline and maybe my ability to learn quickly, and strategize (for lack of a better example). We'd need 15 players of this type :-). A whole generation of evolution required, I'd say. But, we've gotta start somewhere. Most of these things are learnable and evolvable over time.

3) Some of the top countries had dedicated coaches, and some teams even came with their own physio. Eg. Italy, France, GB, etc.

Learnings from WCBU 2011

2011-09-03T23:58:00.003+05:30

Thought I might as well put down some points that I observed, so that the next time we think of putting together an Indian squad, we take some of these things into account.

1) Squad Size: I think this is the biggest learning from the tournament. Most successful teams came with a squad size of about 17 or 18, for a 5 vs. 5 tournament. Team India went with 10! We got killed. I said this before, and I'll dwell on it again. Every point lasts typically 45-50 seconds. And so pretty much 5 people are sprinting hard in the field, while the other 5 are catching their breath, and getting a sip of water. This means (a) no side line support, which is a critical defensive weakness (b) you're going in every alternate point, whether it's Defense or Offense. I would size the Defense squad to be 10 people, and the Offence squad to be about 7 - 8 people.
The Canadian Women's team for example had 2 lineups within themselves, and they would alter the lineup at the end of everyday depending on what worked and what didn't.

2) Depth of squad: It doesn't make sense just having numbers, when you don't have the depth of skill sets & stamina in the squad. Which would mean that the top 5-6 players will end up going in every alternate point! From what I observed, no competitive team had players going in every 2nd point.. and no players played more than 2 points in a row. There were no clearly defined roles as handlers and cutters to be honest. 99% of the players did both

3) Defensive and Offensive plays: From what I observed from the US open team, they had 3 kinds of defensive plays only. They had codewords (I think blue and white) for a force backhand, force forehand for man-defense. Then they had a straight up aggressive mark defense, with cutters being marked under. And then they had a zone defense. They had practiced this well, and every player played their role.
On offense, everyone played ho-stack without exception. And I think the Indian team itself lacked knowledge on how to defend against this formation. We handle vert stacks much better. We need to practice this hard.

4) Squad age: I would say that the average age of the open division squad was about 25-26. The Indian team was probably a much higher average age squad. This becomes imporant, as along with that, comes increased agility and speed.

5) Sideline - The 6th man on defense: This was a clear difference between the top teams and the rest. The top teams communicated a lot more from the sidelines to the defenders in the field. Calling a no-break / no-inside / no-outside, strike, no up-line, etc. etc. really made a big difference to the game play.

6) Pulls - One thing I did notice was the blady backhand outside-in pulls that some of the top teams had. Very effective, and put a lot of pressure on the receiver right from the word go. Most of the lesser teams did not have this pull in their arsenal.

Can't think of anymore at this point. Will add more later if I remember anything!

Day 6: Final day - US win 5 out of the 6 categories!

2011-08-31T11:49:00.021+05:30

The friendly match against the Great Britain Grandmasters was probably one of the most fun games I ever played. Remember, that the Grandmasters category was 40+ age. They had even one lady (Diane, if I remember right) playing on their team. There was a John who looked like the oldest player on their side. Had played ultimate for about 37 years I think! That's frigging older than anyone on our team. John was telling me that he's planning on coming to India to take part in the Auroville Hat tourney in 2012!
We agreed to play for 5 points, and then mix-up. And guess what? They beat us 5-4! Hehe, we weren't playing too hard or anything, but still! After that, we mixed up and had a lot of fun. The spirit huddle was also a lot of fun.

After the game, we all headed to the Arena for the finals. And oh man, was it a treat for everyone. The Masters was a little one-sided. But the mixed was super close. Germany almost beat the US.. but in the last second, US pulled through for a victory. This was the one game, where I thought that the US team wasn't the tallest! :-). The Open finals between the US and Philippines was mind blowingly athletic. The video will be up on Vimeo I heard. Everyone should watch it. I thought that the Phillipinos stood a great chance to win, but they made a couple of mistakes, and that came back to bite them.

It was interesting to watch the audience (mostly players from all other teams) support the opposition that the US teams played.. No one really supported the US teams on any occasion, except the Americans themselves. Now, I really like America as a country, have had the chance to live some really awesome years there, and the US players are all those we idolize and learn from online and videos. And the US team definitely played with the BEST spirit from what I've seen. The US open team especially I thought was EXCEPTIONAL (and I will mention an incident towards the end of this post which will give an example of how highly spirited they played). But, still, there was something impersonal about them, that made everyone (and maybe even me) support the opposition. One of the American players even came and spoke to us about it that morning, and was feeling a little sad that no one supported them. It was hard for them to understand why, but I think I sort of get it.

I have limited international exposure (Manila, Singapore, Malaysia) before this tournament, and hence am completely new to the whole Europe, US ultimate scene. But it seemed to me like the US squad came into the tournament with 2 disadvantages. 1, they were the favourites to win in most categories, and hence the big bad guy. 2, in general, there's a perception (which I heard through jokes, imitations or comments around in tents and sidelines) that the US players are full of themselves. This may/may-not be true, but in general, that's a perception of Americans as a bunch from all the European teams from what I could see.

The US squad themselves didn't do much to help their image. For instance, they pretty much hung out by themselves from what I saw.. atleast the younger teams in the squad. I don't think I ever saw a single US player hang out with any of the other teams (post game, or at parties, or at dinner / lunch tables). Also, personally, I thought that the spirit give-aways that they had for other teams, could've been thought through with a little more sensitivity. They had USA Ultimate caps, US flags wristbands, and I think some US flag temporary tattoos. Now, in a world tournament, why would you expect other teams (which are being super charged emotionally on their nationality, patriotism and flag), to wear someone elses flag? Especially given the perception that the US is considered to be full of themselves anyway and you probably just lost to them in the game. To put it in perspective, I'm not sure a Sockeye player would find it very easy to accept Revolver fan merchandise (to wear) in a spirit huddle, especially after being beaten by them. Most probably not, especially when you're breathing fire and feeling super patriotic about your club. This is that equivalent. And, no, it's not the same as exchanging a jersey with the opponent. That's mutual to a large extent. Also, it was nothing for the other teams to connect with. For example, Italy's spirit gift was simple, a small packet of spagetti, a red pepper, a single garlic, a mini bottle of Olive Oil and a small printout of cooking instructions, for us to get an essence of Italy. We gave out Lungis, a garland and Mango candy to give an essence of our culture. Ireland had this big fun bag which had some random fun objects like an odd shaped bottle opener, etc. All objects, which created a small but important connect with the team. Yes, it takes a wee bit of time, and a wee bit of effort, but it could go a long way. Sure, most people know a lot about the US than most other countries, but then there are so many things that outsiders don't know, until you actually live in the country. For example, I would've spent some time picking up some very small, but American artifacts. For example, a mini dream catcher, or a cowboy boot / hat fridge magnet, a dried cedar cone, etc and explained its significance or nativity in the US. Everyone of us wants to connect with something about the other team/nationality, and understand where they come from. In fact, you don't even have to give gifts, to create a connect with other teams. You could just do a super fun spirit game, and still create a connect. How would there be support, if there is no connect? The default connect is to the under-dogs! Which in this case was any non-US team.

Coming back to one of the example incidences I was talking about, I think it was the game between US and Belgium? or was it US and Spain, I forget. US player Brett Matzuka got a superb layout D on the opposition player. This was somewhere near the sidelines. The opposition player called a foul on the D, calling a body bump before the catch which caused him to drop the catch. Matzuka was furious, and got up in indignation. I think he was about to yell and contest the foul call, when Tyler Kinley (I think) who was standing just outside the sidelines just said "Brett.. Maybe".. and then he repeated "maybe". Matzuka took back the contest call, and the catch was deemed complete. This was just one such incident, where I thought the US was an example of exemplary spirited play.

Anyways, after the finals was over, and the prize distribution ceremony was going on, I was standing on the far side of the arena, with Mama, Abhi and Navin, hearing all the anthems being played n stuff. And they were giving out the Gold, Silver and Bronze medals. And then they were announcing the Spirit Awards, and we heard Patrick, the BULA head, say "this year, the most spirited team is a team which is appearing for the first time in the International Arena.. and they have come a long way, and played their hearts out. The most spirited team award goes to team India!". We couldn't believe our ears. Then pandemonium. We got down from the bleachers, and raaaaan all the way to the front. We couldn't believe it. We were so thrilled. We knew that at the end of Day 1, we led on spirit points, but this, we didn't expect. We didn't get any medals, but we didn't care. We were just happy to be recognized, and to stand on the podium with all those amazingly experienced team, who played some of the most amazing Ultimate I've ever seen. Team India, I loved playing with you. Indian Ultimate, we have a LONG LONG way to go in terms of game evolution, before we can have a chance to stand on the podium as game winners. But till then, we should atleast play to the best spirit, play fair, and play our heart out, giving every point our best, at every tournament. That may not seem very easy to do, when you're going down 13-0 in games, but nothing that is worth it, is easy. So what if you're down? Still go play with a lot of heart, and it will show.

Post the ceremony, when all the excitement has died down, somewhere deep down inside I wonder if they gave us the award to encourage us ('cause we'd lost all our games). One grand masters player came to Navin and congratulated him and said that he's been playing Ultimate for 31 years, and has tried hard, but has never won the Spirit award in any tournament so far. That put some things in perspective. Maybe it is this, maybe it's that. Maybe it's a mixture of both. But, I'm happy nevertheless. Team India, we have atleast set a good bar for ourselves to perform to next tournament. Play to the best spirits!

One more post to come. Learnings from the tournaments, and what we can / need to do better!
Go India!

Day 5: Placement Bracket

2011-08-31T11:18:00.003+05:30

It so happened that we had to compete against Ireland again for the 16th and 17th position. And so we played them again. We were hoping it would be much more evenly matched, since Ireland would've played 2 matches for the day before we played them at 6pm (btw, sun sets here at 9pm at this time of the year). But Ireland beat us 10 - 6 (I think) in the end. They outclassed us definitely this time. All of us played well. Navin's layout lefthanded grab was the best play of the game I'd say. That was the last game for us this tournament. We finished bottom of the Open category at 17th place (I don't count Ukraine which was disqualified). But I don't think we had any regrets! We played our hearts out. We smiled our way through every game, spent a lot of time with a lot of experienced players, learnt a LOT, enjoyed the post game huddles in the sea waters (to beat the boiling sand), and partied hard. Though we were disappointed we didn't place higher, it was a strange feeling of exhilaration.

In the night we watched the women's finals at the Arena (which is about 2 km away from the place where all the usual matches took place) between US and Canada. It was a really really close match and went to Universe point. US had a very questionable foul call on a throwaway and the crowd boo'd the US player who called the foul. After a lot of discussion, the play was re-done, and US score to win the point. But, the crowd was completely for Canada. Unfortunately, that doesn't count.

Tomorrow, we play a friendly game against the Great Britain Grand Masters team.. Also looking forward to watching the Mixed Finals, Masters Finals and Open Finals at the Arena tomorrow! And tonight is pool party night! :-)

Day 4 WCBU 2011 - the last day of pool play

2011-08-26T05:04:00.001+05:30

Our first game against France was quite one sided. We lost 13 - 2. I played a few points (and not too well). They had some really fast youngsters and finished us off in quick.

The second game vs. Ireland was very very close. We lost 7 - 10 to Ireland. We were neck to neck all the way till the last 10 min of the game. Ireland was playing their first match of the day with a 13 member squad. They had plenty of fresh legs and that made the difference in the end. I'm willing to bet that if we had had a 13 member squad, we'd have beaten them. But anyway, reality was that we lost to them. I did play the matc ok I guess. 3 assists and 1 score, but was still feeling a little rusty. My body is literally creaking.

And oh, guess what! The Ukraine team gets kicked out of the league. Not sure of the exact reason. Some say that they played in very poor spirit, and some say they had a player who faked a name and participated with Ukraine, and at the same time participated in the Russian mixed team with his original name. Not sure why exactly. If it was the latter, then why didn't the Russia mixed team get kicked out as well?

Also, there was trade night today, where there's a trading floor / market, where people come and trade their jersey's and shorts for other interesting ones. I had ordered a couple of extra jersey's and shorts forthis exactly. I got some really cool trade-ins. I traded a spare blue team India jersey for a Ring Of Fire #13 jersey fro Brian Conklin of the US open team. That's the North Carolina's biggest Ultimate club name. Interestingly Brian and I use the same kersey number. He's doing his masters at NCSU! :-). And the jersey looks super cool too! And it's a 5 Ultimate branded t-shirt. The other white India jersey got traded for a Black German jersey which also looks uber cool! I also swapped a India #13 shorts from Zone with an Oxford shorts from 5 Ultimate (I didn't like my Zone shorts anyway). and have a promised 2 more pairs from Team Canada and Team Venezuela (which has a nice No Break written on the backside). Let's see if I manage to actually get one. Mama managed to get a cool trade of his CUF jersey with Chicken (Adam Simon)'s USA jersey. Chicken was looking for an Indian Jersey 'cos his girlfriend's half Indian and her dad would be thrilled to have an Indian Ultimate Jersey!

Tomorrow we have a cross pool game at 6pm in the evening, against winner of the Pool A last position game. We expect that it will be Portugal. Let's see.

Finally, I think I'm starting to understand what it's going to take to put together a decent team by the next World Cup in 4 years, and make sure that we perform decently! I'll write more abt this tomm. Now headed to sleep on the beach on a lounge chair! :-)

Day 3 WCBU 2011

2011-08-26T05:02:00.000+05:30

Hmm, what can I say about today. Just a not so good performance by us. We scored a couple of points against Italy, but the second game was a complete washout. Germany beat us 13 - 0. The most clinical defense I've seen so far. Talk about German efficiency eh? :-)
That brings us to two important games tomorrow France and Ireland. France has scored 40+ points over the tournament so far (compared to our 16). Ireland on the other hand has only 12 points scored so far. Let's see.

Last night's showcase game between Canada and the US masters team was well attended. They showed some amaazing athleticism, but US quite wasily vanquished Canada.

Today was a bad day for the US squad. US open team was beaten by Italy 12 - 10. US women's team was beaten on universe point by Great Britain. Brilliant match I thought. Got a chance to watch this from the sidelines. And the other brilliant match I got to watch waqs the US vs. Austria masters game. Austria actually beat the US on universe point. Amazing grit showed by the Austrians. And kudos to the sideline support from the rest of the Austrian squad. Was the best I've seen in any tournament.

The other match I got to see was the Ukraine vs. Austria. Very very poor in spirit I would say from the Ukrainian team. Three or four strip calls in the end-zone on universe point, which were clean Ds! Ukraine went on to win the game. I heard Ukraine has done this in other matches as well. Very poor show. What's the point of winning on poor sportsmanship.

Looking forward to tomorrow's games. I so badly want to play. Let's see!

Day 2 WCBU 2011 - From the sidelines

2011-08-23T23:27:00.001+05:30

We had the pleasure of playing Belgium and the US today, and though we lost both games (obviously! They were totally out of our league), we had a lot of fun. Belgium beat us 13 - 3 (or was it 13 - 4), and US beat us 13 -3. It was good fun having spirit circle huddles happening in the sea, 'cos it was too hot to stand on the sand. We gave Chicken the Tri-color garland and distributed the lungi and dried mango candy to them. They had some goodies for us to. They gave Amberish a USA ultimate hat for being their pick for the best player on our team. Amberish had a superb layout grab score from a throw off Chetan. It was a superb point, with Amberish laying out twice and Chetan once for catches all in the same point.
Against the Belgium team, Paul had a sweet inside out breakmark throw to Amberish for a score, and a Jaidip zipthrow to Abhi across the pitch for a score. Abhi also had a good huck to Chetan who had a super box-out scoring catch over a Belgian who was a good 6 inches taller than him!
Now headed for dinner, and then the floodlight showcase match between Canada and US open masters team, and then finally another party.
Legs feeling better today. Tomm we will be playing Germany and Italy, both again seeded in the top 8. I don't plan to test my playability tomorrow. Will save that for Thursday when we play France and Ireland. We heard that both those teams are more in our league, and will be fighting matches!

And oh, the Blockstack TV interview is now up on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSFK6MJizyE&feature=player_embedded

Day 1 WCBU 2011 - Games begin - disaster strikes

2011-08-23T23:02:00.001+05:30

Aaaaaargghhh! Strained my left hip flexor during the first game. The physio examined me after the first game and said that I need to completely rest it and not stretch or load it for a few days. Totally bummed out. After working on the ankle and shoulder for the last so many days and making sure they don't trouble me, something else pops. Indication of how critical overall fitness is, to such a strenuous game. Trying not to load my right ankle, I think I must've over loaded my left leg. I'm reduced to being a side-line captain/support, and team correspondence. Sigh. Annoying!

We lost both our games on day 1. First match against the Philippines (13-3), and the second game against Curier islands (13-5). Both games were no contest and hard on our players in the sapping heat, with very few subs. We could've done better in the 2nd game, where we had a few unnecessary turnovers near the end-zone. Maybe a 13-9 or so could've been managed in those games. The first game had Abhi scoring to Amberish twice (hammer and forehand), Jaidip to Ed. Second game Paul had a super huck to Abhi, Abhi had a sweet break mark forehand huck to Chetan, Girish had 2 scores and Chetan had one more.

We watched a few good games, but the best one we watched on day 1 was the Italy vs. Belgium open category game. We thought it would be a bo contest win for Italy, but wow..Belgium really stepped it up. Belgium led most of the way till it was tied at 11 - 11 and time ran out (games are 45 min or 13points whichever comes first). So a last point eas played with Belgium on offense. But Italy's defense put some amazing pressure on Belgium and caused a turnover..and went on to win the game. What a match it was. Nail biting finish. Some of the most amazing layout scores and bids were in this match. Incredible.

Tomorrow we face Belgium in the morning and the US in the evening. Also we're looking forward to the showcase match of the day tomorrow between the Canada and US in the open masters category. These are all the who's who of Sockeye, Jam, Furious, Sub Zero, etc.who have now moved into the Masters category (between ages 32 and 39)

Some observations from this tournament in general..
1) It's frigging hot, we had to all buy and wear sand socks to step onto the sand past 11am. It was like starting to play at 1pm on the Chennai beaches.
2) Every team we observed play, had 3 lines of players. Which meant that every player played only once in 3 points, and hence they were super fresh when they got back to the line. A little chat with the other teams revealed that that's how most competitive line-ups play. So that they can keep the same intensity up point after point. In comparison, team India had only a 10 man squad (now only 9), which meant that every person had typically a 50 second break before going out there and sprinting hard for another 50 seconds (average time for every point). Comparing this to a 200 meter dash which is typically completed in 30 seconds, that's a LOT of sprinting on the beach! And imagine doing this every alternate min for 40 min. Gave me a little insight into why my team seemed gassed out all the time.
3) The sand is so much softer and hence harder to run
4) All teams played a 3:2 or 2:3 ho-stack. No vert stack what so ever. Vert stack doesn't really work in a small 5 vs 5 field. As a team, we aren't as comfortable playing a ho-stack.
5) The level of the games here are definitely MUCH higher than the games I've watched in Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines. So its safe to say that US, Canada, Japan levels > Europe levels > Philippines, Singapore, Australia levels >>> Malaysia, India levels. Being the best in India means nothing yet.
6) On the better teams, there were no specific handlers or cutters. Everyone could do everything. This was the single biggest difference between the top teams and the rest. Everyone had the same level of stamina and speed otherwise!
7) We were by far the heaviest team in the open division and also the second shortest team I would say. Not that those are any indication of game levels, but this was just a general observation. The Philippinos were shorter but well built, but not an inch of fat from what I observed. All those are only "looking good" factors. Though, the fat content has some correlation to speed and stamina, I noticed some heavy built or big made people on other teams move super fast and not be out of breath. Only thing that matters is stamina and speed, and that's one of the areas the next Indian contingent will have to focus on. If it so happens that this 'causes a 6 pack, so be it.
8) Universally, everyone is surprised that India put up a team that plays proper ultimate, and are very supportive of it and welcome it. One of the captains said it beautifully when he said "I never thought I'd ever get to say this in my Ultimate carrier, but Well played India". Steve and Tom Styles from Blockstack TV (one of the primary ultimate frisbee networks in Europe) spoke to us and asked us about India Ultimate, and Beach Ultimate in India. Everyone is very excited that India is finally onboard the ultimate community!

On a comical note, Mama (in his new avataar of 7kgs less + starting to show a 6 pack) says that his P90 program is of no use anymore. He should plan Program Rebirth :-P.

Day 0 WCBU 2011 - Ge.tur sports village

2011-08-22T13:13:00.000+05:30

I am super excited to be here in the sports village. The atmosphere was super charged with all the teams arriving and checking in. The US contingent is the largest one at WCBU 2011. They have over a 100 athletes competing as 6 teams, one for each division (Open, Mixed, Womens, Open Masters, Mixed Masters, and Open Grand Masters). On the bus from the airport to the sports village, we spoke to Tony (US Open Masters team) who was the one who wrote the article about the Indian team on Skyd magazine last week. Jim Parinella (author of the famous Ultimate Frisbee book) was also on the same bus, but I didn't get to meet him. I hope to meet him in the next few days.
After we'd checked in..we had the grand parade of nations from the village to the Arena, where the showcase match was to take place. It felt AWESOME to wear the team India jersey and carry the Indian flag representing our country amongst 40 other nations.
The showcase match was between Italy Open (the hosts who are seeded 7) and the Philippines Open (seeded #2, current favorites to win). It was interesting to see a girl on the Philippines Open team line-up (though she didn't play any points this particular game). The match was explosive and just watching it in peak 3pm heat sapped us audience. The game ended in upset victory with Italy beating Philippines 12 - 9. This means team India will face the brunt of it, tomorrow morning when we play Philippines.
Oh btw, Team India is seeded #16 and in the same pool as the Philippines, Italy, Ireland, the US, etc. We're one of the 3 first-timer teams in the World Championships and the only new entrant in the Open Division itself. Only Portugal and Curier Island (a non-existent country on whose team random pick-up players not playing on any other national team, can take part) are seeded below us. Team India would be happy if we held seed at the end of the tournament! The level of Ultimate here is incredibly high (way higher than any Indian tournament I've seen)..and fairly so, because the sport is atleast a decade old in all the countries, whereas in India its only 3 or 4 years. We have a lot to learn from the other countries and I already have a few ideas to take back and experiment with in Chennai.
Day 1 games for us, Team Philippines at 11am and Curier Island at 4pm. First one will probably be very one sided. 2nd one..no idea what kind of players have picked-up with the Curier Island team! More tomorrow.

Note on the Indian Team
---------------------------------------
We had our first team get-together at dinner and introduced ourselves to each other. Apart from the 4 of us from Chennai, the others are all NRIs from Europe, or people of Indian origins living in India (Jaidip) and one foreigner in India (Paul). We could've not put in a true all-Indian team because most people cannot spend Rs. 1 lakh (minimum) on getting to such a tournament in a foreign location. Many players in India don't even own a passport! Yes, we have probably the oldest team in the open division, we probably have a lower skillset than most other teams, we have one of the smallest squad (only 10 players) amongst all teams, and yes, a few of our players are not in the best shape and are carrying minor injuries (I am still recovering from a rotor-cuff injury on my throwing shoulder, and a right ankle ligament tear from the last few months).
But nevertheless it is important we put together a team (some / any team) to get here once. We'd be setting a good precedent and an aspirational target for many many other younger players 4 years from now when the next World Championship Beach Ultimate will take place.

San Francisco - there's something about the city

2011-08-05T18:29:00.004+05:30

There's something about the city. There's something about driving into the city in the morning for work. The air is crisp. The breeze is nippy. There's an almost palpable excitement in the atmosphere. I love the first view of the city from 280 when I'm on my way to the Marina bay. My adrenalin pumps every morning without fail. Feels like progress. Feels like a million bucks.

I will miss the city, when our San Francisco office moves to Belmont completely in the next couple of months. The next work trip to the US will not be as exciting.

iPad 2 - Almost

2011-05-03T06:04:00.005+05:30

I had decided to buy a tablet this trip to the US, and hence made my way to the nearest Best Buy from office. Yes, after having been one of the earliest adoptors of netbooks 3.5 years ago, I was finally ready for a tablet. My market options were the IPad 2, PlayBook, Samsung Galaxy Tab 7, Acer Iconia and Moto Xoom.
Being a fan of open ecosystems, the IPad 2 was basically ruled out already when I walked into the store. I was really looking forward to getting a really good Android Honeycomb 10" tablet!

But guess what?
1. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7" - Ruled out!
Reason: 7" form factor wasn't too compelling. I like bigger screens and I have fat fingers. Also, the response was quite sluggish, it is a previous generation product, yada yada

2. Blackberry PlayBook - Tempting, but still not compelling enough!
Reason: UI was brilliant, superb use of the bezel as part of the touch experience. Multi-tasking was top-notch. Screen quality was top-notch. But then once again 7". Also too new in the market, and I wasn't sure about the apps support, and hadn't read any reviews on it.

3. Moto Xoom - Ruled out!
Reason: Heard some bad reviews on it. 10" was good, but finger prints showed very badly. Also, was heavy, and very thick. Seemed like a Gen 1 product for sure. Played some games on it. They were brilliant. Very high quality. Really liked it otherwise. But the whole interface was very cluttered and unintuitive. Was unlike any Google product I've seen before. Maybe the store had a really messed up version. Anyway, something about it put me off.

4. Acer Iconia - Quite good, but still not compelling enough
Reason: Screen was much better than the Xoom. Even had a USB port on it. But I still couldn't commit to buying one because after looking at the IPad 2, it seemed like a monster. Even thicker than the Xoom. Also unsure of the Acer brand after my last Acer netbook conked out in less than a year!

5. IPad 2 - The best of the lot! Almost bought it! Sanity prevailed in the end!
Reason: Definitely the best product in the market. Even tempted an anti-apple guy like me. The screen was crystal clear. Touch experience, much better than the others. And far thinner and lighter than any of the other options in the market! I was just about to pick it up and walk out of the store when I decided to go for a walk and come back. Finally sanity prevailed. No USB. No AVI support. Definitely deal breakers for me. My use case was for the Tablet to be a replacement for my laptop when I'm not on work. In that case, I'm not really "creating" anything, but would definitely like to
a) Download the photos from my DSLR when my CF card gets full.. Typically during vacations or Ultimate Frisbee tourneys
b) Plug in my external drive and play movies from it when on travel. Obviously I'm not going to store all my movies on the tablet.
c) AVI support? Xvid support? "oh.. you can convert the movie to mp4 through iTunes." said the Best Buy support guy.
NOT happening! It takes forever. Also a pain to keep converting whatever I need, when the most popular format is clearly AVI.

Mr. Jobs. You got me. Almost. But yeah, definitely kudos on the product. I wish you would reconsider your stupid stance on a closed ecosystem and NOT supporting any of the standards (Mass Storage Class, AVI, etc.)
Mr. Competitors. You guys really have some catching up to do.

So, the wait continues. I hear that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1" is even thinner and slicker than the iPad 2. That solves half my problems. Hope they support USB, and I'll buy it and retire my netbooks! I'm not going to buy an iPad 2 just for the sake of owning one. If Email is all I needed to check on that, I'd use my BB. Far better typing experience! :-P

Negotiations Lesson No. 1?

2011-02-19T15:27:00.002+05:30

I remember Prof. Dishan Kamdar repeating over and over again.

Get a BATNA / NBA.

(BATNA = Best Alternative To A Negotiated Alternative, NBA = Next Best Alternative).

I love corporate drama. Reading this WSJ article on the Microsoft - Nokia - Google mating dance, I was fascinated about how every lesson we were taught in our Negotiation Analysis course / workshop at ISB can be followed in this drama.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604576150502994792270.html

Awesome!

The sign of a true leader

2011-02-09T06:15:00.002+05:30

Earlier this week, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop wrote a memo to his entire organization. This memo has now come to be known as the "Burning Platform" memo (see transcribed below). This is probably the most straight forward a CEO can ever get. I can only imagine the turmoil that must've been going through the company ranks and all it's employees prior to this memo. I'm sure the employees were disillusioned about the leadership and why the "leaders" were not able to see ground reality. As a consumer, I've always wondered what the heck the Nokia guys were smoking up! Stale products. Totally unexciting. If I'd been an employee, I'm sure I'd have been wondering why I'm working on whatever I was working 'cause it's totally irrelevant to the market.

There are four parts to the situation Nokia is in (a) Recognizing the problem (b) Accepting it openly to send out strong signals that the problem is known (c) identifying corrective actions (d) executing on the corrective actions. Even if one of those steps is missed out, it's impossible for a leader to re-gain confidence of his workers, peers and investors. If one of those parts were missed out, it always leaves people wondering "What the heck are these guys are up to? They are clueless!"

Stephen Elop took a strong step in the right direction by his memo. He addressed (a) and (b). Let's see what happens at Mobile World Congress this week. He should talk about (c). Hopefully a partnership with Windows Phone 7?
Stephen Elop, we bow to you. It's the hardest thing for any leader to have said openly (and proactively), especially when there are thousands of employees depending on you. Once you have said what you said, it all seems so simple. But, the simplest things are often the hardest to say. Yours is a text-book move, for every aspiring leader to learn from.

RIM.. I hope you're watching and learning? Your Blackberrys are going sour!

Hello there,

There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform's edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a "burning platform," and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times - his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a "burning platform" caused a radical change in his behaviour.

We too, are standing on a "burning platform," and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

Over the past few months, I've shared with you what I've heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I'm going to share what I've learned and what I have come to believe.

I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

And, we have more than one explosion - we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.

In 2008, Apple's market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.

And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry's innovation to its core.

Let's not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally - taking share from us in emerging markets.

While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.

At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, "the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation." They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.

And the truly perplexing aspect is that we're not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we're going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we've lost market share, we've lost mind share and we've lost time.

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody's took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.

Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It's also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.

How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?

This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven't been delivering innovation fast enough. We're not collaborating internally.

Nokia, our platform is burning.

We are working on a path forward -- a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.

Stephen.

Biases and us..

2011-01-26T14:30:00.007+05:30

American History X. One of the most powerful movies I have ever seen in my life. For those of you who've not seen it before, it's all about the Black - White conflict in many suburbs in Amaerica. I've seen it twice before, and I saw it again today on my San Fransisco - Hong Kong flight. I knew what was in the movie. I knew what it was all about. And still it had the same effect on me as the first time. Every time I see that movie, I am deeply moved. So many of us have pre-judices against certain kind of people, certain sects of people, certain religions, certain castes, etc. etc. Even though we don't really know anything about them.
It's all about simple people finally. They're defined only by their actions, and not by where they come from or which group of people we slot them into.

I am very lucky in many ways. It has almost been 4 years now since I moved back to Chennai. I get to meet someone new almost EVERY week. There is always someone new showing up to try out Ultimate, or someone wanting to learn Cuban Salsa or a new intern/full time at office. I get to meet all sorts of people: people from different backgrounds, different religions, different ethnicity, different countries, different states, different sexes, different sexual preferences, different colours; some very good looking, some not at all; some who can speak fluent English, some who can't put a single sentence together; some who talk a lot, some who just stand silent and stare in a very discomforting way; etc. etc. All walks of life.
And not only do I get to meet someone new, but I'm lucky enough to be in a situation where I get to know them over an extended period of time. Most people would probably meet 1 or 2 people in a year at the max.. who they get to know. I've had a chance to observe my own reactions to new people, and also the reactions of those around me to the same new people. Its interesting how almost 90% of the time people get it wrong.. they/we are incorrectly scared of/dismissive about certain kinds of people. Or incorrectly confident/trusting about certain kinds of people. Over the years, I am am learning to let go of the biases to a large extent. Its very hard, but it's possible to put aside the urge to slot someone into a category and the need to interact with someone only on the basis of where I slotted them.

American History X reminded me today of all those things. The movie just got done, and I leant back in my seat reflecting at nothing in particular. Somewhat happy that I've come a long way from 6-7 years ago, from being a very judgemental & reactive person. And then I realized that there is someone I know now.. one of my friends... someone much younger than me, who does an AMAZING job at this. Someone I met less than a year ago through Ultimate. I've played on the same team as him a couple of times, travelled with him, been a mentor/coach for a short while, and now a peer. But, at this point, I find myself marveling at his amazing ability to interact with anyone with zero bias.. (or at least thats what it looks like to me). I find myself being the student learning from him. It is this ability of his which reinforces into so much good that happens around him. I have watched people I have written off performing superbly just because they are playing on his team. He brings out the best in them. He gives them self-belief. He is genuinely interested in seeing them progress. Doesn't matter if it's the most unfit person, or the oldest person, or the youngest kid from the nearby slum that turns up to play. They all love him. They want to play for him, they all want to play with him. They all enjoy his company.
For those of you who play Ultimate and haven't figured out who this is yet.. I'm sure you will now. Just keep your eyes and ears open. You will observe what I see.

And sir, if you yourself are reading this note.. :-). Kudos. This is your strength. This defines a big part of what you are. Hopefully this part of you will change only for the better as you grow older. The last couple of months has been great learning for me. I still continue to learn, just by being around you. You inspire me to look at people as people, even more. To trust them. And just to try and bring out the best in them, and hence myself. Finally I think I'm the one who stands to gain.

p.s. On a totally different note.. anyone who thought Surya did a great job in Vaaranam Ayiram. You gotta check out Edward Norton in this. How he plays an action hero, 14 year old, 17 year old.. all very very convincingly!

Life is like a box of chocolates..

2011-01-19T16:15:00.004+05:30

Life is sure like a box of chocolates! Dayum! Godiva sure knows how to package its chocolates! :-). I may not have the time to go shopping. But the US rocks 'cause you can just find these in the convenience stores! Awesome!

p.s. For those of you who know me well. Yes, you guessed right. This box didn't last me 10 min :-(

Chennai Sangamam 2011 video

2011-01-19T08:43:00.002+05:30

Here is the video of the finale of the Vaanam Vasapadum musical drama showcasing all the dance, music, and martial art forms in Tamil Nadu. Turn up the volume so that you can hear the percussions. Awesome energy to hear that live!

Don't miss Ms. Sushma the singer dancing at time 3:35 and Smrithi the heroine at time 4:20.

Chennai Sangamam 2011 - Pleasant Surprise!

2011-01-14T09:15:00.004+05:30

Got a chance to watch one of the Chennai Sangamam programs last night at Island Grounds. I went there primarily 'cause a couple of people we know were performing in the musical dance drama called Vaanam Vasapadum.
I was quite apprehensive and was mentally prepared to get bored as I usually don't have much patience for this kind of stuff.
But I was pleasantly surprised. There were lots of folk artists and even Hot Shoe Company dancers. The lady director Prasanna had done a very good job of mixing folk stuff with city stuff that you and I connect with, and put up a very good show. The energy levels of the musical was AMAZING. It was very high, and gave me a super thrill. The sound of live drums, and all other traditional South Indian instruments accompanied by live singers and the play actors and dancers was enthralling. I'll try to put up a video clip which one of my friends shot. Many of our city dance schools and play groups can definitely pick up a few leaves out of this book.. on how to maintain a very high energy level and get the audience hooked on to the program!

I'm a little disappointed that I'll be missing the finale on Bessie Beach on 17th. Work travel gets in the way.

But I strongly recommend this for people who're looking to try out something different in Chennai. It's worth it.

The genius of Kamalhaasan

2011-01-04T15:56:00.003+05:30

I was blown away by the song Neela Vaanam from the movie Manmadhan Ambu when i saw it in the theater. Kamalhaasan is a genius without doubt. I can't believe that he managed to mouth the words to the song forwards for a song which was completely meant to be played backwards! He does it with such perfect sync.. it's amazing! Check it out for yourself! There are no graphics involved in morphing his lips alone!

Is this closure? The technology equivalent?

2010-12-22T11:35:00.011+05:30

I've been having this feeling for a while now. Maybe the last 4-5 months. But, this is going to be the first time I will admit it aloud.

Yahoogroups & Googlegroups are outdated. Blogs, websites are almost there too. Email is fast getting there!

People just don't check emails & groups as often any more!

What do they do instead? They check their SMS, Facebook messages, etc much more often than email! Hotmail and yahoo.. I can probably find 10 regular users (combined) on my mailing list. Gmail.. maybe a lot more.. but even then I'm willing to bet that the people below 20 who use it regularly are VERY few. 8-9 months ago, I was sort of taken aback to find out that a lot of teenagers / less than 21 year olds creating hotmail / yahoo ids. When I asked them why they aren't using Gmail, their response was.. "It doesn't matter which one.. I just need that to get to my Facebook. I hardly check it anyway! If people want something important, they just message me on FB chat, or SMS me if they can't find me online!"

I think it is the new reality. The future is about text messaging, instant messaging, Facebook messaging, and maybe facebook private messaging.

The best observations of the changing times I can probably give are all from my Ultimate Frisbee experience. The first few clubs in India (Chennai Ultimate, Bangalore Ultimate, etc.) use yahoo groups to communicate. The clubs that formed a little later use googlegroups. And the clubs that formed most recently (Pune Ultimate, etc.) use Facebook groups! Thats probably an accurate description of the changing trends & times. All this in a span of 4-5 years!

The older teams (Chakraa, LiveWires, L2F, etc.) use yahoogroups and email to communicate. The newer teams (Stall 7, FlyWild, etc) use purely Facebook groups, instant messages and SMS to communicate.

Chennai Ultimate Frisbee's communications are also moving slowly with the times. 3.5 years ago, we used to be completely Yahoo Groups based. But these days, we use both Yahoo Groups, and the Facebook fan page to communicate news / events. I suspect that even the regulars are increasingly getting their updates from Facebook rather than from our Yahoo Groups. You don't even have to guess about the rest of the people.

I'm waiting to test out the Facebook Messages email service that Facebook will be rolling out. If we find that's stable enough, and offers most of the features that we used to be able to do on yahoogroups and traditional email, Chennai Ultimate will take a bold step towards completely migrating to a Facebook based communication. I believe that going forward, this will help us reach out more effectively to new fans who're looking to be in touch with us, new talent who're looking to start playing, and also provide news about us more effectively to our existing fan base.

I guess in relationship terms.. we call this "closure". We stop hanging on to the past, and accept the inevitable. Now, I'm excited! :-). The future looks bright!

p.s. Don't get me wrong. Email will probably always exist. So will blogs and websites. And maybe even Yahoo Groups and Google Groups. But, I'm talking about the primary mode of communication. Make no mistake. It will be Facebook & SMS.

The Irish Debt Story

2010-12-08T12:13:00.003+05:30

This was circulated on the ISB Alumni list, and I thought it was a pretty cool way to explain the much talked about bailout packages!

“It is a slow day in a damp little Irish town. The rain is beating down and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit. “On this particular day a rich German tourist is driving through the town, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night. “The owner gives him some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer. “The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel. The guy at the Farmers' Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill at the pub. The publican slips the money along to the local prostitute drinking at the bar, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer him ‘services’ on credit. “The hooker then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note. The hotel proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich traveller will not suspect anything. “At that moment the traveller comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town. “No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now out of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism. “And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how the bailout package works."

Chennai Heat 2010

2010-09-29T15:43:00.010+05:30

Fabulous throws, Adrenalin pumping action, Heart stopping plays, and Loads of fun! Come watch it all in

CHENNAI HEAT 2010
INDIA's BIGGEST ULTIMATE FRISBEE CHAMPIONSHIP!!!

OCTOBER 8th, 9th and 10th at Elliot's Beach, Chennai
Free entry!

To know more about Chennai Ultimate Frisbee and Chennai Heat 2010 log on to www.chennaiheat.com

Media coverage on Chennai Heat 2010 kicks off

2010-09-28T21:53:00.003+05:30

September 28th, 2010 - Times of India, page 3

Naturally..

2010-09-03T08:08:00.004+05:30

A few months back, when we stepped out of office, there was this awesome insect, which I've never seen before in my life. This looked like a preying mantis, except it had the most AMAZING camouflage. Check out this video which I shot using my camera! Pretty amazing huh? Note the colour, shape and markings on its body. Its amazing. Looks exactly like a tree leaf!

The new beauty..

2010-08-29T16:31:00.005+05:30

My Adidias cleats lasted me almost 2.5 years. Only recently the sole has started coming apart, and the cleats are almost completely worn out. Those were the best cleats an Ultimate player could ever ask for. They were American football cutter cleats, and boy oh boy were they comfortable. My only other experience with cleats was almost 17 years ago.. when I was in 9th grade, and I remember them being very very uncomfortable and tight. And when I wanted to buy a pair 2.5 years ago, everyone said you'll have to get used to that uncomfortableness, and you have to pick one size less. But then this Adidas was like none before (or after). It had the comfort of sneakers, and the grip of cleats. They were a steal at $19 from Ross in Mountain View! I remember this Kodai Fly Baba tournament, some American from the sideline's remarking during the finals, that my cleats were the best model that have ever been created, and sadly, you can't find them around anymore.
About 8 months back I started hunting for my next pair. I was very disappointed that the model that I had was out of production, and I couldn't find similar shoes or 'upgrades'. I returned from the US empty handed. During my trip throughout Asia, I still kept hunting and still came up empty handed.
In India, I've been about thrice to every store in Chennai, and once in Delhi.
And finally.. I found one that I liked and were my size! Introducing my new cleats, the Nike CTR360. These are actually soccer cleats, and hence don't have the same amount of padding as the American Football cutter cleats. But nevertheless, these ones are the best-of-the-rest. Good comfort, good cleat heights (to last our hard grounds and not wear away in 2 months) and also decent looking. Hey, if you gotta do it, you gotta do it in style ;-). Watch-out Singapore Ultimate Open, the handsome pair is here. Lets see how long these last!

Interesting map of understanding Social Media

2010-08-16T16:04:00.001+05:30

http://www.rhinoseo.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/socialmedia-effect.png

Jeff Bezos speech at Princeton graduation ceremony

2010-07-22T16:08:00.003+05:30

Great people have a simple way of saying something important. Something valuable. Something everyone can learn from.

The speech that I've been most impressed by, is Warren Buffet's speech at the Univ. of Florida graduation. That's one speech I don't think I'll ever forget in my life.

I recently read a script of the speech that Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon) delivered at the Princeton graduation ceremony. A couple of lines just stood out stark in my face. They were almost on the same lines as what Warren Buffet said.

What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices. Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy -- they're given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you're not careful, and if you do, it'll probably be to the detriment of your choices.

I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices.

Brilliantly said. And he gives one of the most amazing examples that even a 5th grade student would understand!

You can find the full speech at the link below

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S27/52/51O99/index.xml

The geek in me - Part 2 :-P

2010-07-20T16:09:00.002+05:30

Someone recently suggested that I try a Google search on my own name. I never thought much about it, until I tried it this morning.
Lo and behold, I found that one of my research papers back from NC State days actually was presented and published at a conference. I was pleasantly surprised when one of the links took me to the page of my research guide Dr. Ram from NC State. This was 2 years of hard work as a Research Assistant during my Masters. It was during the dot com bust days, and I had to leave NC in a hurry when I found a job in Colorado. I got caught up with settling down there, and focusing on my new job, and completely lost track of all that I did at NC State. I actually dug up this paper from somewhere in my archives this morning and read it! :-). I don't know if they ever productized the Lignin sensor!

“Mechatronic Design and Control of a Waste Paper Sorting System for Efficient Recycling”, M. K. Ramasubramanian, Richard Venditti, Manukaran Karunakaran, Tappi Fall Technical Conference, Chicago, IL, Oct 27-29, 2003

http://legacy.mae.ncsu.edu/homepages/ram/pub/conference.html

Woot! Low Power Design picks up my article..

2010-06-18T06:54:00.003+05:30

The geek in me still lives! :-)

Woke up to some good news this morning. An article I wrote (on how to improve Tablet's (iPad clones) performance while downloading movies, songs, etc. onto it)has been published on Low Power Design electronics magazine. Front page! :-)

Anyone who went to Low Power Design magazine's page
http://www.low-powerdesign.com/index.html
would see my article on the first page! Damn kicked about it. Low Power Design magazine has a 45,000 people subscription to it's newsletter!

Of-course, it will disappear in a week or two from the front page. The permanent link for the article is on
http://www.low-powerdesign.com/article_karan_061710.html

China Trip and a few firsts

2010-05-23T12:11:00.000+05:30

The last 1 week I was travelling in China on work. It was the usual trip, but this time with a few firsts.
I had to travel to Zhuhai from Shenzhen on work. This is a 3 hour drive by land one way.

However, the alternative was to travel by sea, on a Ferry. My sales guy asked me if I was cool with travel by sea, and I thought how hard could it be. The closest I'd come to a ferry ride was during our college trip to Goa, and that wasn't even in the sea! It would be a good experience I thought. So, we took the ferry across the bay. It was a 1 hour journey each way.

The ferry itself was very cool. Pretty high-tech high-speed boats. They were quite bit too! I took a few pictures with my phone. Not bad for a 7k Samsung Corby phone camera (I'd forgotten to carry my DSLR to China this time.

The interiors were very comfortable. It felt like sitting inside a plane with BIG windows in the beginning.

The water-hostess (Did I just coin a new term analogous to the term air-hostess?) came around handing out puke bags to everyone 'just in case'! It did make me a bit nervous. I'd heard about sea-sickness and also seen it on movies!

The ride started off pretty smooth, but as we gained more speed, the "turbulence" started. I have to admit that the ride is NOT for the faint-hearted (or should I say faint-stomached?). The turbulence is much more than in an airplane, and is more constantly present almost through the entire length of travel. I think I didn't throw up only because of my 4 years of bus-journey to SVCE during college days which had trained me for this kind of travel. But I did feel queasy at some points though. A good experience never-the-less.
I was a little surprised that they didn't check my passport or visa on arriving back at Shenzhen. It's almost like I could take a ferry from Hong Kong to Shenzhen and walk into mainland China without a Visa?

The other first for me this trip was being upgraded to Business Class on my Hong kong - Chennai segment on the way back. Pleasant surprise indeed! The flight was overbooked and so I got upgraded luckily. This was the first time I traveled Business Class in my 10 years of flying! And I have to say I really liked the experience. Much more leg room for me for sure. And ofcourse, can't complain about the welcome drinks one gets even before the flight takes off. It was interesting to note that the chief air-hostess remembered every one of the business class passengers' last names and addressed us using them. Of course, poor oriental lady was struggling to my extra-long Indian last name! But I appreciate the effort! :-)

Ponniyin Selvan - The First Floods

2010-04-20T21:11:00.002+05:30

I have heard so much about the story Ponniyin Selvan from my parents, uncles, aunts and older cousins from as long as I can remember. My folks used to tell me about how they used to wait eagerly, for the weekly Kalki edition just so that they could get to the next part of the story! It was such a rage in the 1950s! Just like maybe LOST or Heroes is now in our generation. For many years, I've been curious and wanted to read it. Unfortunately, the story was written in Tamil. My Tamil reading really sucks, and hence I had given up on that idea long ago.

It was about a month ago that one of my colleagues at work mentioned that he was reading the English translation of Ponniyin Selvan. I immediately asked him for the first part. He handed it over to me a while ago. I had no clue what the story was when I started reading it. The first 10 pages were very slow, and I'd almost gave up on the story thinking its one of those rambling old epics. But, in the next 10 pages, the story picked up a feverish pace. Boy am I a sucker for grand kingdoms, empires, conspiracies, and battles. This story seemed to have it all. I think this is the book that has excited me the most after the Mahabaratha.

I woke up every morning and read the book for the last 2.5 weeks. But I've spent 3 hours for the last 3 days reading it in a feverish pace. I just could not stand the suspense and I just got done with it. Brilliant! The story is paused midway through though! I need the 2nd part of the book "The Cyclone" already! I'm having withdrawal effects!

Even if no one is watching!

2010-03-07T11:07:00.000+05:30

Even if no one is watching!

Why do I like Ultimate so much? Have you ever wondered why there is an air of dignity around any Ultimate player even off the field? The simple answer is "The Spirit of the Game" that governs the sport. It teaches me/us conflict resolution in tough circumstances.. without having to involve a 3rd party like a referee. I can trust my opponents to play fair more often than in any other sport. "If you knew you would not get caught, or not be penalized, would you still steal?". Lindsay Hack explains it very well in the article below.

http://www.the-huddle.org/issues/24/even-if-no-one-is-watching/

Tournament mode

2010-02-20T10:02:00.004+05:30

I'm only about 12-13 tournaments old in Ultimate and every single one of them has been a learning experience. I'm no expert, but over time I see certain points surfacing as common

a) Peaking at the right time - Everyone has cycles in their form. There are ups and downs all the time. It's important to hit the tournament in the best of form. But, here's the cool part. Over time, I've realized that you can control when you peak in form, and time it to coincide with a tournament. Not just yours, but your teams too!
It's important to understand your body, your capabilities and your thinking and experiment with them to figure out how to time it perfectly.

b) Spectacular plays during tournaments - We always see these spectacular moves: amazing throws & hucks, mind-blowing diving catches, layout defensive plays during tournaments. Everyone is in awe of these things and think that its a spark of brilliance or natural talent or that the player tried something new and pulled it off. That's a myth. There is no such thing as "I tried something new and clicked". In my mind, there is no experimenting during the tournaments. Everyone wants to win, and by that, making less risky plays. No one would "experiment" in a tournament unless that's the sole purpose of their tournament. Behind every spectacular play, is a LOT of experimentation and hard focussed effort in getting the basic mechanics of the play right. For example, if you see a nice smooth Inside Out backhand huck breaking down all the defenses, you can be pretty sure that the thrower spent a lot of time visualizing how to throw that, how the disc would fly, when to throw it. He/She has spent a lot of time picturizing the scene in the mind! An equal amount of time was probably spent trying to throw it!

c) Adrenalin levels: Channelizing your adrenalin is key to tournament performance. I don't know the scientific explanation behind adrenalin. But from what I understand, it's that rush of blood that hits you in a big-stage scenario like a tournament. Adrenalin has both positive and negative effects. On the positive side, adrenalin can give you that extra 1 inch on your vertical jump required to make that tough catch. Adrenalin can pump you to perform in spite of your injuries! Adrenalin can bring about an energy level in your team like never seen before.
The negative side of rushing adrenalin is that you tire out. When the adrenalin rush drains out (typically at the end of your first game).. you're going to be SO drained out, you'll wonder why you're so tired after a 1 hour tournament game, when on regular practice days you are capable of playing 2 hours continuously without a break! Adrenalin rush also makes you make impulsive / hasty decisions. It increases the risk taking capability in you. You start making risky throws and hence cause more turn-overs giving away the game on a platter to your opponents. Adrenalin rushes also don't help you think straight. You'll be "caught-up in the moment" many a times without you realizing it. I also find myself more snappy & short tempered when my adrenalin is pumping. This is detrimental to my team performance. It never helps any of my team members if I'm screaming at them during a game!
I get my best performance when I keep my adrenalin levels in control on offence.. and let it run high on defense. When on offense, I calm myself down, take deep breaths. I try to make sure my mind is focussing on the point, and not getting carried away with the thoughts of spectacular plays. When on defense, I pump myself up.. saying that I can defend any one no matter how fast he is. I pump myself saying I'm smarter, faster, more agile and more experienced. I pump myself by visualizing spectacular plays and then my body automatically follows when the situation presents itself.
This is also one of the reasons why I avoid picking up the disc after I have just performed a good D. I'm high on adrenalin and if I pick up the disc, I tend to throw it away back to the opponents. I'd rather "go-through" and rush into the end-zone after performing a good defensive block than pick up the disc.

d) Hydration, sugar/salt replenishment and lactic acid buildup: I have had a few tournaments where I have cramped out in crucial moments! I had let my team down when they needed me the most. I learnt the hard way that I need to consciously stay hydrated. I start having more water than I usually do, one day before the tournament. I also avoid alcohol during tournament days 'cause I end up dehydrating myself even with the little social drinking I do. My body reacts that way I guess. But prevention of cramps is more than just having water. It's more about replenishing the body sugars and salts that get used while creating the energy required for your muscles to operate during the game. I also consciously make sure during the game, I force myself to drink lots of electral / Gatorade / 100 plus. It's amazing how these health drinks have really helped me to keep my body salts and sugar levels up. I have definitely noticed a difference between games where I don't have my body salts and sugars replenished.. and the ones where I do.
Drinking a lot of water also helps me wash down the lactic acid which builds up during the games. This lactic acid is formed as a result of breakdown of sugars in the body (basic chemistry). The lactic acid also absorbs nerve impulses sent by the brain to the body parts (once again basic chemistry of acid absorbing electrons in the nerve electric impulses). This makes the body parts respond sluggishly to the brain's commands and hence it makes you feel like your body is tired and not responding as well as it did during the first game.

e) Massages: I've become a big fan of massages after tournament games. This helps get rid of some of the lactic acid buildup by pushing it back into the liver where it is reused again to create energy by some mechanism that I don't understand. (The same effect is achieved by wearing compression shorts / compression shirts / skinz or any other tight performance wear. They prevent the lactic acid buildup by keeping the body parts compressed and hence pumping the lactic acid back into the liver).
These days I try to get a back release between tournament games just before I re-enter the field.

f) Stretching: This is the most fundamental, mandatory task in tournament mode (or even otherwise). When you haven't stretched, your muscles are shortened and stiff. So any vigourous movement which needs the full stretch capability of the muscle is performed, the muscle tears near the joints. So, definitely you don't want to injure yourself. Also, when you're warmed up & stretch enough, you use only half the effort to perform a particular task than what you would have if you hadn't warmed up. So, a fully stretched body uses almost half the power less than one that is not. So, this is a great way to conserve energy during tournaments.

Ofcourse, all the above is moot if your game itself is flawed

Indian Ultimate on The Huddle

2010-02-10T16:25:00.003+05:30

Abhinav recently sent me this link from The Huddle, the premiere Ultimate Frisbee magazine which has the most readership world-wide. It's more than a year and a half old.. and we didn't even know about its existence. Thanks Preetham for letting the world know about Indian Ultimate.

http://www.the-huddle.org/features/international-ultimate/indian-ultimate/

We should probably write an update to that one. Things have changed so much since in the Indian Ultimate scene since then.

p.s. Credit goes to Mama, Shankar, Abhi, AJ, Mondams, Lekha, Janani, Stall 7 junta and all the rest who have toiled hard to keep the Chennai Ultimate club growing.

Ah'bad Ultimate Open 2009

2010-01-25T20:09:00.001+05:30

The tourney (Dec 26th, 27th)was awesome. Grass was good. I played for Stall 7 and had fun. The other team from Chennai was just pickup.. and they called themselves "Too Fat Too Furious" and they won! They beat us Stall 7 in the finals, and I really enjoyed the game even though we lost. I thought it was very fast paced, athletic and explosive. It gave some of the new Ah'bad players a feel for a good high level game. Personally, I went into the tournament wanting to do a couple of layouts just to get back into old cutter mode of thinking. It did happen. I had a layout score and a layout defensive bid. However on the defensive bid, Bajji too laid out and caught the disc just a cm in front of my hand. I'll not forget this catch! :-P. Next time I will be more aggressive! Being a handler for the last 3-4 years has taken away my mentality to take a couple of risky diving attempts at the disc.

More on the tournament in the following short article by Rahul

http://blog.indicorps.org/news/ahmedabad-ultimate-hosts-national-frisbee-tournament/

The article however does incorrectly state that I was the captain of Too Fat Too Furious! Poor Abhinav.. once again gets upstaged incorrectly. He was the captain that led the winning team. That doesn't bother me as much as the fact that I got classified in the Too Fat team! :-P.

Looking forward to Kodai FlyBaba 2010 in March! This time, many more layout attempts coming up! I'm visualizing it already! :-)

Auto(matic) pickup?

2010-01-21T00:50:00.004+05:30

This has to be the most hilarious things ever sold on Craigslist! Someone is selling an auto-rickshaw in the Bay Area SFO Craigslist!
I love the way he negates the part where it's not Legal to drive it in the US.. but is great for picking up chicks!
You've gotta take a look at it yourself before the link disappears!
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/cto/1554986242.html

TMI TMI TMI

2010-01-12T13:38:00.006+05:30

Yes.. this is a post addressed to my dear women friends. There is something called TMI and the latest viral campaign of "Breast Cancer awareness by announcing bra colours on FB Status message" DEFINITELY falls in the TMI category! (TMI = Too much information!). Post a fact about breast cancer.. not your bra colour! :-P

To those of you who're going to say "It's a fun way to promote awareness. I don't think it's offensive.", get this right. I'm all for freedom of speech and creativity and all that.. but it was just plain gross to watch my Facebook Friends News feed filling up with all possible colours from people I know.

I was complaining about this campaign to one of my women friends and all she had to say was "Oh grow up! Don't blame us if your imagination is hyper active"

One of the messages from someone on facebook read
My mom's facebook status is: Hot pink and leopard skin.
I'm officially scarred for life!

er....!!! Maybe that will give you an idea of what are the possible messages we could be seeing?

Another friend goes.. "Oh.. you guys are just too insecure and jealous that we girls are having fun".

Maybe we guys should start a campaign to promote awareness on prostrate cancer prevalent in men.
And the more controversial, the better.. right? The more awareness it will create.. right?
Hmm.. maybe all the guys should start posting their.. hmm.. sizes, as their status message as part of this campaign to promote awareness on Prostrate cancer?

What? Let me guess! you're going to say "but we only posted our colours, not sizes". Well, we do get your attention by mentioning sizes didn't we? I'm sure you won't bother as much if we put up colours like the girls' campaign!
Awareness quotient achieved with sizes?
End result achieved?

And if you tell me that it won't trigger any imagination in you, and you're not affected by it.. think again! I'm SURE your life will never be the same again after a colleague posts a 2" on his status message or your kid cousin brother posts a 11" on his :-P. Every time you walk by that colleague at office I'm sure your imagination will scar you with that thought! No matter how hard you try not to!

I'm willing to bet that 90% of the women who "participated" in the campaign didn't spend a minute reading up about breast cancer!
Ladies.. Get a life. Donate something towards Breast Cancer if you want to. But please spare your platonic friends, family and co-workers!

TMI TMI TMI

PS: I'm always a big fan of the fairer sex :-). But, there is still a line somewhere out there..

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

2009-12-17T20:15:00.000+05:30

Snooper Dawg sent me the link to this awesome rendition of the famous them of The Good The Bad The Ugly.

Loved it!

TEDx Chennai

2009-11-30T07:54:00.004+05:30

I'm glad that Abhinav pushed me into attending TED. Initially, I had no inclination to attend it because I just couldn't stand the idea of sitting and listening to people talk from morning 8.00am to evening 6.00pm! I just don't have that kind of patience, nor did I think that my body would allow me to do so. After all, I'm the guy who dozed off during a 1:1 with my research professor! (and oh believe me, that's not the only time I've fallen asleep while spending 1:1 time with someone else). But, finally, I did sign up for it. Got my passes.

At the end of the day, I was glad I attended it. I didn't sleep for 1 second. I didn't even feel drowsy. I did feel bored during a couple of people's talks, but that was about it. You can find the list of speakers here. If I were to order the speakers/performers according to my favourites, the list would look like the following
1) N. Vittal
2) R. Madhavan
3) Romulus Whitaker
4) Anil Srinivasan & Sikkil Gurucharan
5) Dr. Santhosh Babu
6) Satyabrata Dam
7) Sharada Ramanathan
8) Kavita Baliga (amazing Opera piece demonstration by her.. but the talk wasn't as good)
9) Khurshet Batliwala (only 'cause I've already attended the Art of Living course and so there wasn't much value add for me)
10) Jeeva Raghunathan
11) Krupalatha Martin Doss
12) GRK Reddy

My biggest problem with the bottom few speakers was that they did not understand the concept of TED. TED is a forum where some inspirational people who have achieved something, come and mention a few things about what they've done, and more importantly share how others can achieve what seems to be impossible. There have to be tangible take-aways from every take away. It is NOT a forum for advertising their companies or their achievements... but rather a place to highlight / show other people how to achieve them. If a talk made me think about somethings I haven't already, then it
Ever since I got back from the talk, there have been flashes in my head.. certain lines that some of the speakers said. That should tell you how good an event was. Some of the lines which made me think are listed below. I don't remember the exact lines, but these are my take-aways..

1) N. Vittal - It's always a challenge for an IAS officer because he is given the authority to change things without having any idea of what he's dealing with. So, what Vittal did was send out questionaires to every member of the organization asking a few particulars about the individuals, their function, and the challenges they faced, and what could be done to make their jobs easier. Vittal's take was that you can't always be the one coming up with all the ideas. If you're a good leader, you can enable others' ideas to come forward and blossom and importantly, you will credit them for it!

2) N. Vittal - How do we use the Judo technique (make the opponent's strength useless by your offense) to disrupt the money power of politicans in an election. This incredible money power and spends during elections is the start of the vicious cycle of corruption in India. Eg. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose tried to take the British on their own strength.. but was vanquished. Gandhiji used other methods like Ahimsa, Non-cooperation, etc to really get the Britishers out of India.. no amount of army power, money power, or authority that the British had could do anything against it

3) N. Vittal - Great leaders find a way to simplify complex problems into a simple concept/solution, exaggerate it effectively to make the masses understand / embrace the solution, and mobilize the masses to the cause! Perfect example was the Salt Sathyagraha. The complex problem of the Indian's suffering under the British, the British Oppressive rule, and the great loss of India's heritage was all summarized as: a common man cannot even have a pinch of salt without paying taxes. He made the Dandhi march to exaggerate the concept and make a point. And sure enough, the masses all around India rallied behind him. Non-cooperation!

4) Khurshed Batliwala - Problem with organizations and NGOs that address Alcoholics, drug addicts, etc.. is that you don't address the root cause. Not many people in the world know how to handle the ups and downs of life. They are mentally / physically weak and hence adopt other means to cope-up.. "It's almost like I have to either become an alcoholic / drug-addict before I can get some help and attention!". The Art of Living is one of the many ways that teaches the common man how to strengthen himself/herself through breathing techniques and other concepts.
I thought he nailed the problem statement atleast..

5) R. Madhavan - India is an 80% agricultural country, and if we have to import staple food.. its a shame. The problem is not the capability, but the yield. India probably has the worst yields per acre farmed. It's however easy to fix it. It's harder to go from 90% efficiency to 95%. However, in our case, it's so much easier to go up from 20% yield. Any educated changes we make, dramatically increases our yield!

6) R. Madhavan - Young entrepreneurs should look at agriculture (through engineering) as an opportunity. There's a lot of money to be made in this space!

7) R. Madhavan - A human being's brain capability is severely stunted if there is malnourishment in the first 3 years of his life in this world.

8) Satyabrata Dam - Whenever your life seems to complicated, head to the mountains.. They will give you clarity.
I tend to agree with this one. I've felt the same! Boy do I miss Boulder / Colorado!

9) Romulus Whitaker - I can't get over the name Madras. Why did they have to go change it to Chennai? What does Chennai mean?? Red-dog?? :-P

10) N. Vittal - Diabetes and corruption are similar in a large sense. Both can be controlled but not eliminated.. (thanks Janani for reminding me about this gem)

That's all I remember now. Will add more later as I remember..

You should be able to watch the videos which will be made free in 2 weeks on TED website (www.ted.com)

#TEDxChennai

Ultimate for Olympics! Please vote!

2009-10-09T12:31:00.000+05:30

Some more media coverage on CH'09

2009-10-07T07:49:00.014+05:30

http://nazaronline.net/sports/2009/10/ultimate-fun/

Chakraa - this year's National Beach Ultimate Champions

2009-10-06T12:07:00.009+05:30

Finally, we played to our potential! Finally, we played like champions. Chakraa totally dominated the Chennai Heat 2009 tournament. Lots of people said that it was boring to watch a Chakraa game this tournament because we didn't make many mistakes, and hence there was little scope for close matches. The scores 9-5, 9-4, 9-4, 9-3, 9-2 and 9-0 say it all. I take that as a compliment as a player, and as a not-so-good comment as a tournament director who wants the audience to feel the thrill of good, well fought Ultimate games. I will write a following post about my learning on the "Spirit of the game" from this tournament. I feel proud to say that this tournament, I did not make any bad/dubious calls throughout. This makes my victory even more sweet on a personal front. There was one bad call made against me on one of my defensive blocks, which I let go with a minor contest. It wasn't much of a conflict since my team was up any way, and I was supremely confident of us winning even if the play was redone. But, maybe I should get the video and point out the bad call so that the same situation need not be dealt with again in the future. More on SOTG soon.

Chennai Heat 2009 Flyer

2009-09-24T23:32:00.001+05:30

Designer: Shrayas Rajagopal

Being honest when no one's looking

2009-09-24T15:20:00.002+05:30

I read this article written by a friend's dad.
Really liked it

Being honest when no one's looking

In times of conflict or dilemma, it is personal integrity that tells us what to do.

Ultimate featured on TOI

2009-09-22T17:53:00.006+05:30

TOI - Chennai Edition, 19th Sept, 2009

Times of India carried this article on Ultimate going semi-professional on the last Saturday edition.

Chennai Heat 2009

2009-09-17T14:13:00.003+05:30

Finally the website is up!

check out

http://www.chennaiheat.com

Yes.. it's a very simple website. Yes.. it could've been done better. Yes.. it could've used frames.
But, this was what was possible at this point of time from my limited knowledge of HTML. It's a modified version of a freely available template Call of Duty 2. We were looking for functional.. and not elaborate / designer. Maybe next year, it will look cooler!
Thanks to Abhi for helping me out with the content, Movin Stilz for helping me out with the top banner, Sandhya Rao from Sure Designs for the Logo.

It's already been talked about on the BULA blog. Check it out here.

The Mysore Tourney Aug 15th-16th, 2009

2009-08-27T10:50:00.002+05:30

http://chennaiultimatefrisbee.com/?p=74

Kaushal who recently moved back to Chennai from Seattle talks about the two big differences he notices in Indian Ultimate in comparison to Ultimate in the US.

Mondams gives a good account of the tournament from the Chakraa teams perspective.

Storm 2 - Piezo touch screen

2009-08-24T10:46:00.002+05:30

Combining mechanical feeling with the flexibility of touch screens. RIM is now the innovator with the new feel touch screen for the Storm 2. Ha! Take that Apple!

Say no to shackle-ware!

Value of money

2009-08-14T17:15:00.003+05:30

Recently one of the Ultimate players posted the following video on FB.

Pretty interesting video. And, it brought back memories of an old post I'd read on an Alumni's blog. It took me a while to find the link again (I'd forgotten the Alumni's name and the blog name). I read it again. Same emotions as when I'd read it for the first time 3 years ago when I'd just moved back to India.

http://gyaan.blogspot.com/2004/11/150-rupees-year.html

Now, I don't know if the boy in the blog-post was faking or was really genuine. But, the reason I put it up here is to show that the you-tube video wasn't really just some Ad gimmick.

Once again, I'm reminded of my social responsibilities.

He-Man on YouTube!

2009-07-27T10:18:00.001+05:30

One of my all-time-favourite cartoons is now on YouTube.

I love the way every episode finishes with a moral!

http://www.youtube.com/user/HeMan

Lavatory Love Story

2009-07-22T11:26:00.002+05:30

One of my friends forwarded me this video. Her comments were.. "Since you write so much about Loos across the world, thought maybe you would appreciate it!". :-P

I think this is an Oscar nominated short movie..

2009 Himalayan Odyssey

2009-07-07T13:35:00.002+05:30

One of my friends forwarded me the following videos of the 2009 Himalayan Odyssey! Looks interesting! Maybe I'll do it one day?

Pudiyador

2009-06-21T19:17:00.008+05:30

One of our expat Ultimate Frisbee players, Manickam (mostly known as Manix), and his dad run an NGO in Chennai called Pudiyador.

This evening I had a chance to go and visit their Besant Nagar center to see what they do. The intent is amazing.

Pudiyador adopts a community at each of its 3 centers and works with kids and uninitiated adults to enhance learning for the kids. The slum around this Besant Nagar center has people who are primarily dhobis, construction workers, street hawkers, and similar low skilled workers. The low skill jobs necesitate that most folks (both parents) work for long hours. Hence, there isn't much time for their kids typically. The good thing about this slum is that most of the kids here go to school which is typically till about 4.00pm. But, between 4.00pm and 9.00pm till their parents come back, these kids basically just loiter around. They don't do homework, or work on improving skills. It's not a question of incapability, but more a question of motivation and exposure. The school system encourages mugging / rote learning, which isn't the most motivating factor to study. Besides, the quality of teaching is quite poor, and hence these kids don't understand even what they're taught. Their homes are typically a single room with a TV.. (thanks to our Tamil Nadu Government and the free colour TV scheme), and hence offers a lot of distraction.

These kids when passing out of school find it very hard to survive in the real world... where they have to compete against kids who have had exposure to a lot more things. Eg. Art, craft, sports, etc. Hence, they come out with an inferiority complex in some cases, or lack of confidence, or lack of leadership qualities, etc. This is where Pudiyador fits in.

Pudiyador steps in between 5.00 and 8.30 in the evening and facilitates enhanced learning opportunities to the kids of the slum.

You can read more about it in the link below

http://www.pudiyador.org/pudiyador/mission.shtml

If any of you want to volunteer to teach a bunch of underprivilidged kids once a week for an hour, please let me know. I can put you in touch with the right person. It can be anything from art to dance to theater to craft, etc. Deepam has already stepped in and is helping these kids learn and use computers. They could definitely use a lot more help. Just 1 hour of your time in a week?

Chennai Ultimate will be hoping to step in soon to teach the kids some Ultimate Frisbee. This will be a program that we will run just like we do at Olcott Memorial School. Teach the kids to play Ultimate and more importantly, the Spirit of The Game (SOTG). This helps in their hand eye coordination, as well as makes them better human beings. The background from which these kids come from.. they are used to breaking / bending rules to get ahead of the next guy. We will hope to teach them to respect fellow human beings, and respect the rules, and get rid of the "Win at all costs" attitude that pervades all around us.

Indian Ultimate League

2009-06-21T15:24:00.004+05:30

Proudly like to say that the Indian Ultimate League was born (officially) last week. At this point, we have

1) Stray Dogs in Sweaters (Delhi)

2) Pune (yet to be named )

3) Storm Chasers (Mumbai)

4) Learning To Fly (Bangalore)

5) Disc-o-Deewane (Bangalore)

6) Chakraa (Chennai)

7) Stall 7 (Chennai)

8) Blitzkreig (Chennai)

9) Livewires (Chennai)

10) Mozarella (Kodai)

11) Indicorps (Ahmedabad)

12) Auroville Ultimate (Pondichery)

13) The Flying Dutchmen (IIM-Ahmedabad)

Last week, someone from Pune contacted our Ultimate playing friends in Bangalore. They had a group of 20-25 people who played Ultimate Frisbee. They were interested in joining the rest of the teams in tournaments if we were organizing any.

The Mysore tournament planning is also underway by the DoD and L2F teams in Bangalore. They've been sending out communications as well regarding this. Few captains / coordinators were missed out from the communications. Not on purpose, but because there were just too many people to be added to the To list.

It was at this time that I thought we needed an e-mail list for only the captains / coordinators of the various teams around India. Thus was born the Indian Ultimate League. Baby steps..

Entrepreneur vs. VCs

2009-06-20T09:49:00.001+05:30

Nice article

http://www.readwriteweb.com/readwritestart/2009/06/how-not-to-get-screwed-by-vcs.php

Was it worth it?

2009-06-18T21:44:00.007+05:30

A short fuse.. is what I was built with. God created me that way.

I've blown up a few times.. badly. Said things in anger, that I regretted later. Done things in anger that people have seen only happen in movies.

One evening, back in October 2001, I decided to change that. It was on that day that I regretted something I said much more than any other times before. From that point of time, I wanted to be someone different. I wanted to be someone with a lot of patience.. someone who wasn't reactive... someone who wasn't blowing up at the slightest of provocation.. someone who didn't lose words easily.

It was a lot of hard work from that day. Every day, every minute, every second I had to work on it. Very consciously. Very deliberately.

I learnt to slow down my speech. I learnt to take a few seconds to think about what I wanted to say. I forced myself to look at things from the other person's point of view. I taught myself to think about how the other person would feel if I said something. I put rules in my head about what I would allow myself to say, and more importantly what I would never say in any situation. If it ever got to the point where I was going to blow up, I told myself I would walk away from the scene. I played past experiences over and over again in my mind. Ones where I blew up, and things went down hill. I visualized myself walking away from such a situation were it to happen again... when my blood is boiling, and when my head is feeling like it is going to explode if I don't say something, or if I don't act.

Many times since that evening, I've been angered. I've felt like I was going to explode if I didn't act. That part, I couldn't stop. Even if I worked on it a million more years, I don't think I can ever stop feeling those emotions. But what I managed to do, was watch the way I acted on those emotions. I have raised my voice in anger, but managed not to spill unnecessary words. I managed to never say anything more than what was needed to convey the emotion.

It is like this.. there is this person I want to be.. and then there is me.. and everyday is a constant struggle to get to this person I want to be. A struggle that I have waged with reasonable success for the last 7 and a half years.

And then 4 days ago.. after years of taking baby steps in the right direction, I let myself down. Someone managed to break me. Someone who I considered a very close friend hurt me so much, that my resolve broke down. It was the same feeling of my blood boiling.. the same feeling of my head blowing. My head pounding on me to react and retaliate.. my senses telling me to not take it standing silent.. my feelings telling me to be a man and have some balls to give it right back.. How could someone be SO inconsiderate and selfish? How could someone so lack any sort of respect for me or my feelings?

In the heat of the moment, I cursed that person. I regretted it an instant later. Yes, sure, it felt good for a few seconds. It felt like I was giving it back. It felt like I finally did what that person deserved.

But, was it worth it? Was it worth 7 and a half years of progress that I made? Was I proud of the fact that I did something I've never done before? Was this person even worth my anger? Was this person even worth giving up on my principles?

No!

All I had to do, was get up, and leave. Walk away from that situation. Not spend an instant more on worthless things. What goes around, comes around. I don' t have to be the one doling it out! If someone stooped to low levels, did I have to go down to that level too?

I shall not forget the 15th of June. A lesson learnt for life! ....hopefully....

My journey starts again. Journey to do what it takes to be that person I want to be.

CUF is a 2 year old baby now!

2009-06-17T19:33:00.014+05:30

We successfully completed 2 years on 9th June! All of us forgot! :-).

My first reaction: Not bad! We survived so far!

Some trivia & Timelines
(picked up from memory and yahoogroups old messages)

June 9th 2007 - CUF founding date: Mama's initiative completely. I'd given up on the thought of playing ultimate 'cause of the lack of grass grounds. Mama put enough enthusiasm and convinced us that we can play on the beach!
First Day Members: Shankar, Mama, Vivek Manjeri, Karthik Vijayapalan, Sundar Ramachandran, Sid Govindarajan, Manu
We all ate at Murugan Idli after the game. A tradition that continued for the next 1 year or so!
4 of us playing with the club still?

June 14th, 2007 - KK Starts the "I'm in" business (so yeah.. if any of you are irritated by the number of "I'm in" emails.. you know who to beat up).
June 16th, 2007 - Next group of people join in for a game : KK, Anba, Vatsan, Guna -> Only KK still plays

June 21st, 2007 - Abhinav joins the groups.. and says "I'm in!".. and continues to say that for the next 1.5 month.. but no signs of him on the field! Starting troubles of waking up early morning for the next 1.5 months!
AJ turns up on the field same day. First woman member Lekha also turns up. Drags Varun in from next week!

July 8th, 2007 - First press coverage: Initiated by Kiruba on Press trust of India (PTI). Sudden spate of members wanting to join the yahoogroups.
July 9th, 2007 - The first (and hopefully the only) time we had to temporarily shut down membership for the club. We had 1 red ultra-star, and that was it. We couldn't scale up as fast as we were getting people..

July 28th, 2007 - Our first visiting expat player Chakrax joins us for a game. He works for Cisco in SJC. Also the same day Sukrit Sarkar makes first appearance on the field. He teaches CUF to "NO BACKHAND!" later rechristened as "Force forehand" :-P. Can't believe we didn't know what a force meant till that point! Sukrit also educates us on how to look for Ultra Star discs and not buy any Whammo's!

Aug 15th, 2007 - First Frisbee camp! Independence Day Boot camp. Chennai Runners group takes a crash course on Ultimate. We pick up some more members! This is also the first mid-week game played.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/manukaran/sets/72157601565136023/

Sep 9th, 2007 - First Sunday game. Demanded by Vatsan, AJ and a few others. They wanted to increase the number of game days to twice a week!

Sep 15th, 2007 - Subbu, Muthu join

Sep 27th, 2007 - CUF tournament proposed so that Mama, Sukrit, Shankar and me (only people who have played before) could split the members into 4 smaller group so that we can concentrate on growing skills of the players. KK, Abhi, AJ and Vatsan (later replaced by Subbu. Vatsan had to travel) respective vice captains. Friday games start at this point! We've reached 3 day games a week!

Oct 1st, 2007 - http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/astute87/TheUltimateSport#
Also Viswesh, Ranjani's first day

Oct 9th, 2007 - Ahmedabad Ultimate Discovered (http://ultimate.indicorps.org/) and contacted. Just saying "hey, we exist.. hopefully one day we'll find a way to play a match against you guys".

Oct 11th, 2007 - First time we deploy end zone cones! (Yes, till this point, we only had lines on the sand drawn with our foot)! Subbu & Mahen's suggestions.. .

Nov 2nd, 2007 - Logos for CUF designed by many people..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14900510@N03/1551875389/sizes/l/in/photostream/
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/astute87/TheUltimateSport#5124439586659408098
http://bitterscotch.wordpress.com/2007/10/07/ultimate-frisbee-chennai-logo/
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/astute87/TheUltimateSport#5119276357364783314
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/astute87/TheUltimateSport#5119276353069816002
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_mFnBJSPGbrM/Rxk5nCbZvUI/AAAAAAAAAA0/8DocoVUnHOA/s1600-h/logo+copy.jpg <- AJ"s logo only logo to show co-ed sport http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_A2AiRZCsQ-c/R51ojjdNtmI/AAAAAAAAA1M/XAwJDwUpRq0/s1600-h/4309.jpg

A poll was taken and last logo won!

Nov 6th, 2007 - World's coolest poem in Senthamizh (pure Tamil) composed.. when a big cyclone affected our play!

Chennaila Cyclone!
chennai le cyclone vandha kaathu
school/college gate-ellam saathu

chumma light mazhai le nananja no baathu
only veetukku vandhu dress maathu!

heavy rain-na road le man-holes paathu
swimming therinja nee swim like vaathu
therilena takkunu shout "aandava kaapaathu"!

- Babynav, Rhapsoder (aka. Abhinav, Manu)

Nov 17th-18th, 24th-25th, 2007 - First CUF Tournament is held. Blue team wins.
Winning pic:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30648061@N03/2870013184/sizes/o/in/pool-893963@N20/

Group pic:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30648061@N03/2870016152/sizes/o/in/pool-893963@N20/

MVP: Abhinav
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30648061@N03/2870013512/sizes/o/in/pool-893963@N20/

Tourney Cartoon - Coutesy GAPP
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2253/2057710678_70f36174f3_o.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2387/2070049967_6e9913b238_o.jpg

Press Coverage
http://rhapsoder.blogspot.com/2007/12/chennai-ultimate-frisbee-tournament.html
http://rhapsoder.blogspot.com/2007/12/and-two-more.html

Dec 2008 - 2nd expat player (Jairam) visits us from Stanford

Feb 12th, 2008 - Preparation for Ahmedabad Tourney starts. First hard ground game ever!

Feb 15th, 2008 - www.chennaiultimatefrisbee.com launched - courtesy GAPP

Feb 23rd-24th, 2008 - First Ultimate Frisbee tournament in India. Organized by Ah'bad Ultimate. Participants: Delhi Stray Dogs in Sweaters, Chennai & Ah'bad. Winner Stray Dogs in Sweaters
http://rhapsoder.blogspot.com/2008/02/first-ultimate-frisbee-nationals.html

March 2008 - Vivek, Bharani join CUF. Bharani learns to throw his forehand just as awesomely as he does today AT the Kodai tourney :-P

April 2008 - Mondams (aka. Bulu Thunder) joins CUF, full Cheetah tail and all!

April 25th-26th, 2008 - Kodai Fly-Baba tourney. Participants Kodai, Learning to Fly (Bangalore), Disc-o-Deewane (Bangalore), Stray Dogs in Sweaters (Delhi), Chennai. Joint Winners Kodai & Learning to Fly

June 2008 - More expat players Manix and Govind Manian

July 4th-5th, 2008 - Chennai tours Bangalore! Camp Shrishti tournament. Bangalore combined beats Chennai in a nailbiter 16-14 in a gruelling 1.5 hour game! Manix played on Chennai team

Aug 15th, 2008 - 2nd Independence Day Boot Camp. CUF appears first time on TV.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV4XhIm8q1w

October 2008 - Blitz team starts playing under the leadership of Janani

Nov 18th, 2008 - CUF is featured for the first time on radio Chennai Live 104.8fm in the Chennai Connect show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmoGCUnaiYc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_7BeKdiiwQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCWGvEt55XQ

Nov 27th-28th, 2008 - Chennai International Beach Ultimate Tournament. Participants: Serendiscity (Sri Lanka), Stray Dogs in Sweaters (Delhi), Learning to Fly (Bangalore), Disc-o-Deewane (Bangalore), Storm Chasers (Mumbai), LiveWires (Chennai), Cultimate (Chennai). Winners: Learning to Fly

Dec 20, 2008 - Asia notices Indian Ultimate Frisbee scene. Asian Ultimate TV features Chennai Ultimate Frisbee and rest of action in India

http://blip.tv/file/1597421

Jan 2009 - Siva turns up to try out Ultimate. Brings Vishnu, Vijay and Pramod. Thus starts Stall 7 team

Feb 2009 - Raj shows up first time to play for LiveWires against Blitz in a trial game in prep for Kodai FlyBaba 2008

March 28th-29th 2009 - Kodai FlyBaba 2008 tournament. Participants: Kodai Cheddarcheese, Kodai Mozzarella, Learning to Fly, Disc-o-Deewane, Storm Chasers, LiveWires, Chakraa. Winners: Learning to Fly

May 2nd-3rd 2009 - Chennai Stall 7 and Chakraa tour Pondicherry. Beach games at Auroville. Winner Chakraa

June 27th-28th, 2009 - Agni Nakshatra newbie tournament

July 4th-5th, 2009 - Agni Nakshatra hat tournament

Okay.. got impatient towards the end. But I had fun remembering the past! :-)

Baby steps for now! We have about 200 people in Chennai who have tried out Ultimate. 50 people who probably play actively. A little slow, but definitely growing.

Giant leaps coming up in the future!

Redbus - Raising the bar on user-friendly websites?

2009-06-15T06:37:00.000+05:30

My colleague was trying to book tickets on Redbus, when he pointed out this really funny link on the Redbus.in website! Boy did me, him and my boss have a big laugh about this!

The following page showed up when we clicked on the "Boss is watching? Look busy." link!! HAHAHAHAHA!

Ripped out heart? It's still alive!

2009-06-04T12:02:00.002+05:30

My alma mater North Carolina State University has done some amazing work. The Mechanical Department (yes.. the same place I used to be a research assistant) has recreated a tiny bit of God's magic, by keeping a heart beating outside the body! Pretty awesome stuff. Take a look at the video below..

More info at
http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/03/nc-state-gurus-keep-hearts-beating-outside-of-the-body/

Love this Parle ad!

2009-06-03T17:43:00.000+05:30

I believe in..

2009-05-25T21:47:00.000+05:30

The most important thing you have is your word and your reputation. Once lost, they are never regained. - Stephen Ross

2009 China Trip - Part 1

2009-05-22T22:08:00.011+05:30

Recently I was in China for a week on a business trip. Every trip to China is like a shot of glucose into my veins. There is so much energy and entrepreneurship in China! The pace of innovation, the pace of replication.. is just amazing.
Those who compare India and China in the same breath are nothing but fools. China is waaaaay ahead of India in terms of infrastructure and industry development.

This is not the first time I was traveling to China, but I noticed more things about China in this trip than any other trip.
While traveling around in Shenzhen I noticed these gigantic numbers on top of big sky scrapers.

These were numbers to call if you wanted to rent/buy office/residential space! Pretty interesting way to advertise. Compared this to the usual clutter of boards they'd have at our construction sites in India! Or probably a small board at the entrance to the site!
I also learnt another interesting aspect to these numbers. Chinese consider 8 and 6 as very lucky numbers, and 4 as an unlucky number! (And hence the no. of 8s or 6s in those phone numbers you see in the pictures).
Si - is 4 and the same word is used for death (different tone)

Ba - is 8 and is the luckiest number in China (Olympics were held on 8/8/08).. ba also means rich (diff tone) and Baba means father :)

Liu - is 6.. supposed to mean 'will go smooth'

This is also one of the reasons why there are no 4th floors in most buildings in China!

One of the other nice things that I noticed was that unlike the US, people even in the swankiest apartments, used the clothes line to dry their clothes! Go Green!

Bad thing about a lot of the big Chinese cities is that they're bloody polluted! Check out the smog on the streets! The sun is always shining a dull grey through the smog! Not much fun when you don't see the blue skies! Notice the next picture you can't see the hills at the background.

Continuing to learn something new

2009-05-20T00:22:00.008+05:30

My multi-month exile from physical activity has brought out this desire in me to learn something new! Action photography has long been on the list of my things to get good at. In the process, I have come to learn that action photography is not only about capturing dramatic moments.. but it is also about processing the picture well enough to ensure that the drama in the moment is evident to the viewer!
Some of the things I've come to learn in the process is
a) Always shoot with very small Depth Of Focus (DOF). This blurs away most of the distracting elements in the foreground and background. Gives you a decent picture to start working with for post-processing. I shoot in the Aperture priority mode these days with the lowest F stop supported by my lens.
b) Shoot in mult-shot / burst mode so that at least one of the frames will actually capture the dramatic moment. You don't have to be worried about timing your clicking finger with the perfect moment. However, having said this, I'd say that even timing the multi-shot mode is an art.. and I'm still trying to get it right!
c) Crop the picture mercilessly! Anything that is not the main subject can be taken away, unless it adds to the story. Don't worry about maintaining aspect ratios on your cropping! Just go chop-chop-chop!
d) Increasing contrast/saturation can add to some of the dramatic visual effect
e) Equalizing can have some interesting effects
f) off-late I'm learning to use layers to edit. Here are some interesting effects from my learnings.
My favourite is picture no. 1. (No.3 is the original). What's yours?

Thanks to Miao for helping me get started on Layers..

Boulder ranks once again as top city for quality of life in the US!

2009-05-09T21:00:00.002+05:30

I miss Boulder! :-(

http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/107039/Top-American-Towns-to-Live-Well;_ylt=AiVU4Q4grQ8korVteXowdn9O7sMF

CSK-ku periya whistle podunga!

2009-05-06T13:43:00.002+05:30

Summa thatti eduthutanga!

A different side of Ultimate

2009-05-05T16:11:00.002+05:30

Something I didn't know even though I started playing Ultimate in the US. Maybe it exists at higher competitive levels. I played at newbie levels.

http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/zagoria/catchandrelease/

Basics of giving someone a nickname!

2009-03-22T17:36:00.003+05:30

I'm writing after a long hiatus from blogging! I've written 3 posts in 4 months, and I'm hoping to be more regular from now.

After all the whirlwind wedding trips to Anaimalai, Hyderabad and Delhi for my uncle's 60th, Mama's and V-R's wedding, and after my Taiwan business trip, I'm glad to be spending a few weekends at home.

Today, I was chatting with SC and listening to her oil-field jargon when I came up with the PERFECT nickname for her!

OILY!

She protested of course, and then I had to explain to her the rules of nick-naming someone..

Basics of giving someone a nickname (Made up by me :-P)
a) Pick a name that's not common
b) Pick a name that embarasses the person a lot
c) Pick a name that people will want to know the meaning for
d) Keep calling them that till it sticks

Her first reaction was "NO WAY! Oily will stick!!"
Oh yeah.. sure.. oil is sticky!
Of course, then she said that she liked it and hence this doesn't qualify as a good nickname. So, I'm forced to add an addition to the basics list.

e) The person will try and claim that she/he likes the name just so that above requirements are not met

:-P. Mama, I dare you to call her that at home from now on!

Li's Gaussian copula function - the recipe for disaster

2009-02-26T14:00:00.003+05:30

I read this amazing article on Wired. A must read for anyone who wants to understand the financial crisis the whole world is entrenched in today.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?currentPage=1

In financial markets, everybody doing the same thing is the classic recipe for a bubble and inevitable bust

In the world of finance, too many quants see only the numbers before them and forget about the concrete reality the figures are supposed to represent. They think they can model just a few years' worth of data and come up with probabilities for things that may happen only once every 10,000 years. Then people invest on the basis of those probabilities, without stopping to wonder whether the numbers make any sense at all.

I totally agree with the last part. If you cannot understand the concrete real world impact of some financial instrument.. it's not worth the risk of investing in it!

Hahaha! Join the club!

2009-01-08T14:20:00.001+05:30

This has to be the funniest thing I've read in a long time!

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/01/07/porn-industry-seeks-federal-bailout/#more-34724

Asia takes notice of the Indian Ultimate Frisbee scene!

2008-12-31T10:47:00.004+05:30

I got an email from Shane Charnas from Asia Ultimate TV in Taiwan recently. He runs a show for Ultimate Frisbee and wanted to talk about Ultimate in India. We had a chat over Skype and he put the talk on this month's episode of Asia Ultimate TV. He talked about how there is lot of Ultimate happening in Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan and China and mentioned that India should start getting integrated into the Asian Ultimate scene too!
It was at this moment that I realized how far we've come from.. the whole of India.. and Ultimate in India... from a year ago, when there was nothing, to today, when we have so much happening! Every single player has contributed to all of this.. and I'm proud to be part of this big movement!

Goooooo Ultimate!

Click below to hear the interview
http://asiaultimatetv.blip.tv/#1605771

Sport, equality, et al

2008-12-12T12:02:00.003+05:30

I love this picture for one thing it signifies. It doesn't matter who you are.. what size you are.. or where you come from. Ultimate is a game for all.

Nothing bonds like sport!

OMG! The new Lexus...

2008-11-24T10:44:00.001+05:30

Check out the video below!! Mind blowing technology! Watch the car parallel park by itself!

My job

2008-11-18T12:41:00.003+05:30

For the technology lovers who read my blog.. here's an article on the product which I do marketing for in my company. This device is a sort of USB accelerator which allows you to download music into your phones much faster.

Today, if you take 1 song from your PC and put it on your phone through a USB cable, it probably takes you 2-3 minutes. This time is MUCH longer if you do it on BlueTooth or over the network when you download from your Telecom Operator like Vodaphone or Airtel.

Now imagine you downloading 2 or 3 albums full. You're pretty much waiting for 40-50 minutes for this to finish. So, it almost makes you think what the heck mobile phone makers are doing by putting in huge amounts of storage on the phone. It's not like they've given you any practical way to fill it up.

This article talks about that exactly and how the Cypress West Bridge solution is the answer to this problem. :-)
This article features a comparison of the iPhone, LG Dare, Samsung Instinct, HTC G1, and Blackberry Bold

http://eetimes.com/news/design/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212002500&pgno=1

Golden rules for that important decision..

2008-11-13T21:59:00.004+05:30

For a change, I think I'm going to be posting on a topic that's a little serious.. and more my age :-).

Someone forwarded me this small piece.. and I have to say I knew a lot of these things even before reading this piece. but wish that it had been more intuitive to me, rather than learning the hard way..
I don't know/don't care about the source of this article, nor do I care if it sounds cliche, but it does have some value. I wouldn't call these rules either, but more like things to watch out for!

Golden rules for finding your life partner by Dov Heller, M.A.

When it comes to making the decision about choosing a life partner, no one wants to make a mistake. Yet, with a divorce rate of close to 50%, it appears that many are making serious mistakes in their approach to finding Mr./Miss. Right! If you ask most couples who are engaged why they're getting married, they'll say: "We're in love"; I believe this is the ..1 mistake people make when they date. Choosing a life partner should never be based on love. Though this may sound "not politically correct", there's a profound truth here.

Love is not the basis for getting married. Rather, love is the result of a good marriage. When the other ingredients are right, then the love will come. Let me say it again: "You can't build a lifetime relationship on love alone"; You need a lot more!!!

Here are five questions you must ask yourself if you're serious about finding and keeping a life partner.

QUESTION ..1: Do we share a common life purpose?

Why is this so important? Let me put it this way: If you're married for 20 or 30 years, that's a long time to live with someone. What do you plan to do with each other all that time? Travel, eat and jog together? You need to share something deeper and more meaningful. You need a common life purpose.

Two things can happen in a marriage: (1) You can grow together, or (2)you can grow apart. 50% of the people out there are growing apart. To make a marriage work, you need to know what you want out of life!

Bottom line; marry someone who wants the same thing.

QUESTION ..2: Do I feel safe expressing my feelings and thoughts with this person?

This question goes to the core of the quality of your relationship. Feeling safe means you can communicate openly with this person. The basis of having good communication is trust - i.e. trust that I won't get "punished"; or hurt for expressing my honest thoughts and feelings. A colleague of mine defines an abusive person as someone with whom you feel afraid to express your thoughts and feelings. Be honest with yourself on this one. Make sure you feel emotionally safe with the person you plan to marry.

QUESTION ..3: Is he/she a mensch?

A mensch is someone who is a refined and sensitive person. How can you test? Here are some suggestions. Do they work on personal growth on a regular basis? Are they serious about improving themselves? A teacher of mine defines a good person as "someone who is always striving to be good and do the right ";. So ask about your significant other: What do they do with their time? Is this person materialistic? Usually a materialistic person is not someone whose top priority is character refinement.

There are essentially two types of people in the world: (1) People who are dedicated to personal growth and (2) people who are dedicated to seeking comfort. Someone whose goal in life is to be comfortable will put personal comfort ahead of doing the right thing. You need to know that before walking down the aisle.

QUESTION ..4: How does he/she treat other people?

The one most important thing that makes any relationship work is the ability to give. By giving, we mean the ability to give another person pleasure. Ask: Is this someone who enjoys giving pleasure to others or are they wrapped up in themselves and self- absorbed? To measure this, think about the following: How do they treat people whom they do not have to be nice to, such as waiters, bus boys, taxi drivers, etc.. How do they treat their parents and siblings? Do they have gratitude and appreciation? If they don't have gratitude for the people who have given them everything; can you do nearly as much for them? You can be sure that someone, who treats others poorly, will eventually treat you poorly as well.

QUESTION ..5: Is there anything I'm hoping to change about this person after we're married?

Too many people make the mistake of marrying someone with the intention of trying to "improve"; them after they're married. As a colleague of mine puts it: "You can probably expect someone to change after marriage for the worse" If you cannot fully accept this person the way they are now, then you are not ready to marry them. In conclusion, dating doesn't have to be difficult and treacherous.The key is to try leading a little more with your head and less with your heart. It pays to be as objective as possible when you are dating; to be sure to ask questions that will help you get to the key issues. Falling in love is a great feeling, but when you wake up with a ring on your finger, you don't want to find yourself trouble because you didn't do your homework.

Another perspective...

There are some people in your life that need to be loved from a distance.. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you let go of or at least minimize your time with draining, negative, incompatible, not-going anywhere relationships. Observe the relationships around you. Pay attention...Which ones lift and which ones lean? Which ones encourage and which ones discourage? Which ones are on a path of growth uphill and which ones are going downhill? When you leave certain people do you feel better or feel worse? Which ones always have drama or don't really understand, know, or appreciate you? The more you seek quality, respect, growth, peace of mind, love and truth around you...the easier it will become for you to decide who gets to sit in the front row and who should be moved to the balcony of your life.

An African proverb states, "Before you get married, keep both eyes open, and after you marry, close one eye"; Before you get involved and make a commitment to someone, don't let lust, desperation, immaturity, ignorance, pressure from others or a low self-esteem make you blind to warning signs. Keep your eyes open, and don't fool yourself that you can change someone or that what you see as faults aren't really that important.

Do you bring out the best in each other? Do you compliment and compromise with each other, or do you compete, compare and control?What do you bring to the relationship? Do you bring past relationships, past hurt, past mistrust, past pain? You can't take someone to the altar to alter them. You can't make someone love you or make someone stay. If you develop self-esteem, spiritual discernment, and "a life"; you won't find yourself making someone else responsible for your happiness or responsible for your pain. Seeking status, sex, and security are the wrong reasons to be in a relationship.
What keeps a relationship strong is:

1. TRUST

2. COMMUNICATION

3. INTIMACY

4. A SENSE OF HUMOR

5. SHARING TASKS

6. SOME GETAWAY TIME WITHOUT BUSINESS OR CHILDREN

7. DAILY EXCHANGES (meal, shared activity, hug, call, touch, notes, etc.)

8. SHARING COMMON GOALS AND INTERESTS

9. GIVING EACH OTHER SPACE TO GROW WITHOUT FEELING INSECURE

10. GIVING EACH OTHER A SENSE OF BELONGING AND ASSURANCES OF COMMITMENT

If these qualities are missing, the relationship will erode as resentment withdrawal, abuse, neglect, and dishonesty; and pain will replace.

ISB Aerial View

2008-11-11T19:39:00.002+05:30

Someone in the current batch (Class of '09) took these pictures. He apparently was in the army for many years, and has a flying license.. decided to took one out for a spin and shot these pictures!

Tribute to Kunnakkudi Vaidyanathan

2008-11-09T18:53:00.003+05:30

One of my cousins who's a regular writer for www.dhool.com wrote a tribute to Kunnakkudi Vaidyanathan recently.

Loved it.

A must read at

http://www.dhool.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7679

While I'm on this topic, I should also mention a couple of facts about my cousin Saravanan.

He's an acknowledged dictionary of Tamil movie music. He's the guy who has photographic memory, and knows more about Tamil music than even most music directors.

If you're a fan of Tamil music especially in the 1970s to 2000, you should read all of his articles. His articles have cult following.. so much so.. that Dhool.com features "Saravanan's picks" as one of the primary pages on their website. Check it out yourself from the link below!

www.dhool.com

ISBian Vivek Pahwa is Asia's Best Young Entrepreneur!

2008-11-02T07:58:00.004+05:30

I had written about Vivek being in the list of nominees for Business Week's Asia's Best Young Entrepreneur title. He's the founder of secondshaadi.com, desimartini.com and gaadi.com.

And he's the chosen one! He beat the other 25 Asian Tigers to the title! Read about it at the link below.

Asia's Best Young Entrepreneur: And the Winner Is...

Thugs for hire or tyre fixers?

2008-11-01T12:46:00.003+05:30

This one is too funny!

How many punches do you want? :-P.
But, you've got to admire the creativity of the puncture shop guy! He just hangs up these notices on trees in and around the R.A. Puram area!

This one was spotted near the Nokia show-room on TTK road.

Some great speeches / talks

2008-10-24T16:07:00.002+05:30

In the last couple of days, I've come across 2 really good articles/videos by imminent personalities Narayana Murthy and Warren Buffett.

I think there's a lot of really good learning that one can take away from both these people.. read/listen to the following if you have some time. Really good stuff..

Narayana Murthy's address to the graduating class of 2007, Stern Business school (NYU)

Warren Buffett's address to the graduating class of 2006, Graduate Business School (UFL)

Cause and Effect - & Women

2008-10-17T20:26:00.014+05:30

Warning: A rant is about to follow. Do not read if you're looking for some entertainment. This is going to bore you to death.

Cause and effect. Why is that some women can NEVER differentiate between the two, when it comes to personal relationships. I write this post out of frustration 'cause now I have experienced this multiple times in the last year. I'm hoping some learned person will educate me on this.

Consider this event.. where a friend (girl in all the cases so far) does / says something that causes some damage to my relationship with them and causes me some grief/anxiety. Now, I try not to react to that event, and let it go. But the same keeps happening over and over again, and I get creamed every time this event happens. First time, I probably will having a talk with the person on how this affects me.. and ask her to not do it. But when this keeps happening over and over again, I'm forced to react.
Now, there are only a few things I can do in this situation
a) Whine, kick, and make a big deal out of it / start advising the person on the "right" way to handle the situation with me :- I personally try my best not to do this. I'm nobody to tell another adult how to behave. And the "right" way is all subjective. What may seem right to me, may not to another person. So, I guess this option is ruled out. Plus, this option would make me feel like a tenth grader! :-P
b) React to the grief/anxiety inflicted on me, and go on offensive mode.. and start giving it back to that person.. 'causing as much grief / anxiety to the person who's doing that to me... just so that they realize the pain they're causing me.
Now this seems like a very childish thing to do. But, sometimes its a very human thing to do.. and I try my best NOT to do this too. Sometimes, in spite of all my efforts, I end up doing this.. which I don't think should ever be justified.
c) Take it as it is (accept it)..
d) Put some distance between me and the situation/person. In hope that the distance is enough to stop causing this pain.. hence solving the problem.

Now, I straight away rule out option (a) and (b) 'cause they're very silly immature options. The only two real options are (c) and (d).
Now, if could do (c).. trust me, I would. But the pain/grief/anxiety is for real.
So, I"m forced to do (d) after clearly explaining the reason for me stepping away.

Now comes the part which I'm eternally STRUGGLING to understand. Now when I step away.. then for some reason.. they get really worked up.. they take it as a sign of me suddenly acting pricy or distant or haughty or whatever.. (when all I'm trying to do, is to save myself of some pain).

The situation goes into a downward spiral from this point. They start behaving irrationally after this point. They make some extreme decisions which totally kill whatever can be salvaged of the situation in the long run.. citing my reactions as the cause for the demise of the relationship.
Now, if they really wanted to fix the situation, all the would have had to do, was to fix the cause of the problem.. which is them.. in the first place.. and everything else will fix itself. Once the cause has occurred (giving me pain), then I have no real choice.. but to step away (which is the effect). If the cause was killed.. then there won't be any need for me to step away.

Stating very clearly..
cause = them causing me grief
effect = me stepping away

I cannot be the cause in such a situation. And I don't see why this is so hard to understand/fathom. It's almost like they don't want anything to do with me.. and then do something to cause me to react.. and then finally blame it all on me.
:-s. Looks like most women (and hopefully not all), will always remain an unreasonable enigma to me.

So, my guy friends.. have you faced such situations before (or am i some sort of freak of nature)?
my lady friends.. please attempt to make me understand this.

If this is a common happening, then it seems like a rather unfair fight that no guy can hope to survive.

[Edit] After a few people asked me, I'm forced to put up this extra note.. this is NOT the girlfriend/boyfriend type of fight. I'd like to put up this notice loud and clear at this point.. that I'm single and available :-P. Dang.. looks like any personal note on men/women has the dangerous potential of taking you out of the singles market when you're actually still single!

Inspiring view at the Shanghai airport

2008-10-16T16:38:00.002+05:30

I was sitting and playing on my Nintendo DS very intently at the Shanghai airport. It was sunset.. kind of annoying as the sun was glaring right at my face..
At the end of one game of Yugioh, I suddenly became aware that there was no sun on my face any longer. Looked to the side, and saw this awesome scene. I was seated in the tree's shadow. Breathtaking.

Managed to get a picture of it!

Makes me wonder if good pics are shot by luck, or by skill?

ISBian amongst Asia's Top Entrepreneurs

2008-10-14T14:25:00.003+05:30

Vivek Pahwa from the ISB class of 2006 has been selected as one of Asia's Top 20 Entrepreneurs for 2008!

In the past 2 years, Vivek has successfully started multiple ventures, starting from DesiMartini.com (which eventually was sold off to Hindustan Times) followed by SecondShaadi.com (India's largest matrimonial for re-marriages) and recently Gaadi.com (India's No 2 Car portal)

Wooot! Way to go Vivek! First among the ISBians. Many more to come!

The nominations are available in the following link
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/10/1008_asia_young_entrepreneurs/22.htm

ET Madras Plus Second Article on Chennai Ultimate Frisbee

2008-10-04T11:21:00.005+05:30

Yaaaaay! 4 photographs that I shot made it to the front page of the ET Madras Plus supplement! I'm kicked! This was a breath taking half a page article (followed by a contd on page 2). This scanned version does not do justice to the effect it has on the newsprint actually.

Nevertheless.. I'm kicked! This is the second time ET Madras Plus is covering CUF. Thank you Madras Plus!

THE NEW BEE IN TOWN!

This bee is buzzing. And has people leaping into the air with excitement. Ultimate Frisbee is here!

Deepti Sivakumar

Come sunrise; the Elliot's beach springs to life with people. There are the aspiring cricketers, the joggers, yoga practitioners, laughter club members, the bluegreen health concoction vendors… Amidst these groups, there is one more. One that has people cheering excitedly. Ultimate Frisbee. As even a quick internet search will tell you, the sport is mostly called Ultimate since frisbee is a trademark brand name for the discs.

Chennai Ultimate Frisbee (CUF) is a group of individuals who are passionate and committed to the cause of turning unsuspecting beachgoers into Ultimate addicts. For the uninitiated, it is a lot like playing rugby or American football as far as the game-objective is concerned. Teams have to score points by passing the disc between its members in the opposing end zone. But unlike rugby or football, Ultimate is a nocontact team sport, which means if you have a broken nose, you can have no grudges.

Though Ultimate's origins can be traced all the way to North America, the sport is gaining popularity in many parts of India too, courtesy the people who fly to the US for education, and expatriates. Ultimate is only about four-years-old in India, but the national teams are already gearing up for one of its biggest tournaments. On November 29 and 30, Chennai will play host to around eleven teams; ten from across India and one from Sri Lanka. "There have been national tournaments before, but participation from ten national teams makes this Ultimate Frisbee's biggest so far," says Narayan Krishnan, one of the founders of CUF.

What's interesting about this game is that even at the international competitions, there are no referees; the game is self-refereed.

Ultimate is a sport that believes in fostering the player's sportsmanship over everything else. That explains the total absence of sledging or heckling on the Ultimate grounds. "We will win because we are better than the other team in skill, speed and stamina; and not because we can cheat, bully, sledge, trip or push them around," explains one of the Ultimate pamphlets. "Sometimes people get too caught up in the competition and they forget the spirit of the game. We're just a bunch of people who have got together for the love of the sport," trails off Manu Karan, CUF's pillar of support.

The CUF members meet four times a week to practise their dives, catches and throws. But besides that, they also teach Ultimate to children from the underprivileged sections of the society. In fact, in cities like Ahmedabad, Ultimate is being adopted by NGOs as a method to inculcate confidence, teamwork and leadership qualities among different communities. As a sport, Ultimate is associated more with the sheer joy of playing more than the "win at all costs" spirit, and the focus is more on team work and camaraderie between the players.

The fitness angle cannot be ignored too. Ultimate goes a long way in giving the players something to look forward to, at the end of the day. "Most of us have full-time jobs; some of us are techies, some business analysts. But the work-home-work rut is a little difficult to break away from, once you get sucked in. Ultimate is my breakaway from the rut, even if it means waking up earlier on the weekends," says Manu. For some, the game is that last push one needs to make or break a habit. Muthuraman, an Ultimate lover, can't wait for the tournament to begin. "Ultimate helps me take my health seriously," he says.

Currently, CUF has around 35 members. "Newbies come over weekends to watch us play and some of them become regulars," says Manu, but he does add that the awareness levels are still low. For a game completely devoid of on-field cursing, Ultimate is surprisingly competitive, and even after the game is over, you can always catch the players practising their catches and throws. What's also unique about Ultimate is that it's unisex. Regardless of your age, sex, height and weight, you can play. Go on, be a part of the frisbee experience!

Action Photography Time!

2008-10-02T23:05:00.002+05:30

Due to my hamstring injury, I'm forced to sit out for the next 4 weeks. No Ultimate till then. So, I've decided to work on my action photography skills. Here are a few decent pics I've got in the last couple of attempts..

Sakkarakatti - review

2008-09-27T08:18:00.003+05:30

Worst movie I've ever seen in my life!

Sakkarakatti - kazhutha vetti!

If Ananda Vikatan were to rate this, they'd probably give it a -10 out of 100

p.s. This review does not require any more of my time or your time wasted!

Cuban Salsa - Rueda de Casino

2008-09-20T09:23:00.003+05:30

Cuban is my favourite style of Salsa, and the Rueda de Casino gets even more interesting because its dancing Cuban Salsa style in a circle with a group. If any of you have seen the movie Dance with Me, there is this particular scene where Chayanne and Vanessa Williams go to a Salsa Club. The dance they do there.. that's Cuban! :-)

Lots of people wonder what the difference between Cuban and LA style of Salsa. LA Style is all about the couple, and its about style, and how agile and fleet footed you are.

Cuban style is more community oriented. In Cuba, the dance evolved as a community outing. People go to dance with their friends and family, and hence it's more street style. It's more fun. It's more homely. It's about dancing with everyone in the community. And.. it's much easier to learn than the LA Style

Typically there is a King or the leader who calls out the moves in the Rueda, and everyone dances to the calls. Looks damn cool when people keep changing partners. Age/Sex/size.. none of it matters. The beauty of it all lies in the group..

Addicted 2 Dance (A2D) in Chennai teaches authentic Cuban Style. Infact, it's probably the only dance school in India which teaches authentic Cuban Rueda. I've been going there for the last few weeks and it has been great fun. I can't wait for the day when we take over Havana's dance floor on a Wed night and dance a Rueda!

The Hindu carried the article below on Cuban Salsa today in the MetroPlus Weekend session. Click here to check out the online article.

(yeah, I am in the picture)

The following is a video of how the Rueda looks like. It's a bunch of beginners of different ages performing together! Superb to watch!

And oh, here's the video from the movie Dance with me..

Newbies guide to today's financial crisis

2008-09-18T09:00:00.000+05:30

Found this interesting newbie's guide to the financial crisis. For those who're struggling to understand why the "world" is falling apart, use the link below

Why Lehman and Merrill fell

The Flying Cow

2008-09-07T23:08:00.003+05:30

Shot this picture last morning at the 3 hour session of Ultimate. Superb weather. It felt like we were playing in an air-conditioned room! Shot at the Marina Beach.

p.s. Before you start imaging things.. NO! I'm not a sports photographer to be able to shoot that during a game.. I play when a game is on. This pic was shot in a photo-shooting session where Cow was making a couple of dives during half-time to give me a chance to get an action pic. I was on my fours on the sand to shoot this picture!

Subramaniapuram

2008-09-01T10:32:00.004+05:30

The super hit song Kangal Irandal has been running through my head for the last month or so! My friends are sick of me playing the same song over and over in my car. A great listen to even those who don't understand Tamil.. this music has no barriers. Universally appreciated. I'm yet to meet someone who has heard this song and not liked it!

Saw the movie about 1.5 months back. Excellent movie. A little too violent for my taste though, which is what would stop me from seeing this movie again. But, amazing performances by the actors. The actor Jay playing the character of Azhagar does an amazing job. I love the way he has a special smile reserved for the heroine Thulasi (actress Swathy) as seen in the video. Jay's debut was in Chennai 600028 as the guy who moves from Royapuram to the RA Puram Rockers team. The heroine has also emoted her character beautifully. Apparently the director/producer Sasikumar (who also plays the 2nd lead character Paraman) gave Swathy minimal dialogues 'cause she's a Telugu heroine and could not speak Tamil. He has shaped the character beautifully so that Swathy can give maximum performance just with her acting. Nice support character selection too!

The music director James Vasanthan deserves a special mention. Name sounds familiar? Yes, it's the same guy who used to host the Top 10 movies which runs on Sun TV on Sunday mornings. Didn't know he could direct music.. but he's done an amazing job at it. There's an article on him on today's Metro plus.

A must watch movie.

Men and women in humor

2008-09-01T10:09:00.008+05:30

One of those forwards that everyone receives.. but I like the creativity shown in these images below, in expressing the same facts :-).

Okay, before people start accusing me of being chauvinistic, I'd like to make the disclaimer that I'm not one. On the contrary I am a big fan of the fairer sex.

Having said that, these are undeniable facts.. There's no right or wrong about the way men and women are.. they're just.. different. So, lets just look at it in good humor and appreciate how men and women are built so differently.
The first one, I never believed was tru, but now that a lot of my friends are engaged/married, and I've had a chance to observe these transitions rather closely :-). Whoever made this must've been totally experienced.

The second one, at least the men's route.. that's surely me!

And finally, the last one.. no explanations required. I wish though that I could flip the picture order.. and put the men's controls below the women's. Just to tell the women that men aren't really that complicated, and so don't have to be worried about so much!

p.s. In my opinion, none of these are true for the whole of mankind or womankind. But in general, for a majority of the people in either sex (meaning more than 50%), these observations hold good :-).

Mahabarata - Facebook

2008-08-27T16:31:00.002+05:30

Creative stuff.. how the Mahabarata would be if written by FaceBook instead of Vyasa..

http://krishashok.wordpress.com/2007/11/29/facebook-mahabharatha/

Quite hilarious!

CUF on CNBC

2008-08-25T10:54:00.002+05:30

Chennai Ultimate Frisbee's Independence Day Boot Camp got covered on CNBC live!
We've been covered a number of times by print media.. but this is a first for CUF. Coverage on TV!

Baby steps!

Some Delhi Ultimate Pics

2008-08-19T14:35:00.002+05:30

Some pics from our friends in Delhi.

This team is called "Stray Dogs in Sweaters" (named after how mysteriously all Delhi stray dogs start wearing sweaters in winter time!)..

If you're in Delhi any time and are interested in playing Ultimate Frisbee, you can do so at Nehru Park on weekends!

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/nickeubank/UltimateInNehruPark

The one that got away!

2008-08-17T16:37:00.002+05:30

I keep thinking!!

Hmmm...

http://crschz.i.ph/blogs/crschz/2007/03/27/the-one-that-got-away/

CUF Exhibition Game and Madras Week

2008-08-15T16:06:00.000+05:30

Chennai Ultimate Frisbee will be hosting an Exhibition Game on Sunday (17th August) at 6.30 am on the Besant Nagar Beach. We hold this game to show that we're honoured to be a part of this city, and how it has helped our club grow!

For more events on Madras Week, check out the link below

http://www.kutcheribuzz.com/themadrasday/eventscalendar.htm

CUF bootcamp Aug 15th - 17th

2008-08-13T16:01:00.000+05:30

Be there!

Frisbee Facts - 1

2008-08-13T11:25:00.001+05:30

Did you know?

In the U.S, Frisbees outsell footballs, baseballs and basketballs combined.

A walk in the clouds!

2008-08-01T13:59:00.001+05:30

Aviation industry has advanced so much!! Especially this Lufthansa airplane that I took from Chennai to Frankfurt during my last Europe Trip! Take a look at the following pictures (click on them to see the text better).

So yeah.. if you ever decide to go for a walk on the Airplane wings just to stretch your tired limbs.. please make sure you don't go beyond the marked areas! Could be hazardous :-P.

(Location: Somewhere over the Arabian Sea on my flight to Frankfurt)

Gapminder!

2008-07-30T20:19:00.003+05:30

Babynav sent me this link. It's an old video. One of my profs showed me this during a class at ISB. Very interesting!

The Japanese Pot Saga

2008-06-04T08:26:00.006+05:30

Japan is a treat for gizmo freaks. They have everything automated.. right from payments for tickets for the subway, all the way to food dispensers. But, one unique gizmo which I haven't seen anywhere else in the world.. is in the Japanese rest rooms! They have automated ass-cleaners! Of course, this doesn't put everyone in their comfort zone. As one of my colleagues remarked.. "Japan has everything.. automated dispensers.. high-tech toilets.. but no god-damn toilet-paper!"

Why don't we have such innovative products in India? :-P. At least in the star hotels! I'm sure no one will complain.

The pleasure of a high-tech pot, I tell you.. is very addicting! Especially true if you're a "lazy bum" like I am (pun intended)! I was reminded of my parents picking on me for trying to get work done without moving my ass :-P. For once, I can say that this did happen! (Okay.. I'll stop grossing my readers out at this point).

Voila.. for your viewing pleasure.. one such high-tech toilet!

Check it out! Heated seat rings for added comfort! Definitely useful during the cold Japanese winters!
[Edit] Forgot to mention the "Deodorizer" button! :-)

Spray control! Water temperature control!

And finally the incredible ass cleaner!

Oh btw.. the last picture wasn't as easy to shoot as one would imagine. The damn sprayer wouldn't come out till someone sat on the toilet seat. There was some sort of weight sensing mechanism on the toilet seat ring. Talk about hi-tech :-P.
I tried summoning the sprayer after placing my soap box on the toilet seat ring.. no luck. Replaced the soap box with my entire toilet kit. Still didn't work! Then, I finally ran out of options.. and decided to stand on the tub which was to the right of the pot.. put one foot on the toilet seat ring, add pressure by putting my weight on it.. lean over.. press the button to summon the sprayer (which btw.. retreats into the frame until required.. so as not obstruct other important stuff..), quickly stand up again, and shoot a picture of it. Unfortunately for me, the summon button was way over to the other side.. across the pot.. It was quite a task to whip out my camera quick enough to shoot this picture.

Finally, after 45 min of struggling to take this picture (and after getting sprayed on my face some 3-4 times.. DAMN that thing has a powerful spray! Went almost 4-5 feet high!), I emerged victorious from the rest room! Smiling.. drenched all over.. but camera unharmed/untouched (it's an expensive Nikon D70). I had this picture that I shall keep for posterity! I only managed to get the sprayer on its way back in.. but that's good enough. Couldn't dodge the damn spray.. AND whip out the camera and shoot a clear picture fast enough!

p.s. What? :-P. Stop over-reacting. The water from the spray was clean water. So, no big deal getting sprayed on the face :-P

iPhone, Pearl2, Diamond and Dare

2008-06-03T11:23:00.001+05:30

Saw this video on youtube comparing some of the newest touch phones. Great that they paid some attention to some of the features that most people neglect to look at, but will come back to pain you when you're actually using the phone!

p.s. The Pearl 2 has the USB accelerator that I market! Check out the transfer speeds! :-)