Education education everywhere, not a learning to drink

Blog VIII of Thirty Days – Thirty Blogs series

I am amazed again and again by how much education goes into the making of many of us and yet how little a percentage of those learnings do we retain when time comes to exercise them. It seems as if in this information explosion, the sane voices end up being suppressed by the babble of warmongers and irrationality.

The trigger for this blog is the recent controversy over construction of a mosque near Ground Zero. While it is understandable that common public get emotional about these issues, what is truly appalling however is when their supposedly enlightened leaders go ahead and make comments along similar lines.

Fact #1: Events of 9/11 were conducted by terrorists.
Fact #2: Incidentally these terrorists were Muslim.

Fact #3: USA has chosen to be a country of religious freedom.
Fact #4: Islam is one of the many religions that have a right to that.

There is NO reason why Muslims should not be able to open a mosque near Ground Zero. Any comments trying to justify the opposite are a veiled attack on the religious freedom and democracy. Any national leader making such comments should be seriously reprimanded by pushing him/her out of mainstream.

And for those who understand only in analogies, Hitler was a devout Christian who went on to perform ethnic cleansing during Holocaust. Should “faithful German people refudiate (read as repudiate)” construction of any church in the vicinity of Berlin and Holocaust camps because it is an “unnecessary provocation” to Jews ?

PS: Another disturbing trend is when the media is more concerned about the grammatical correctness of their leader’s statement than its politically correctness.

three things about USA

Blog VII of Thirty Days – Thirty Blogs series

Today, I would like to talk about what I feel are three good and three bad things about life in USA. These are based on two years of my experience in USA measured in comparison to two decades of prior experience in India. Since I have spent most of my time in USA in academic life, there might exist a skew (although the points presented are generic in nature) in addition to my own socio-cultural offset. I am keeping the good points for last (following US style).

three bad things about living in USA

• health system: many may deny that this problem exists at all (reminds me of a designer saying “it is not a bug, but a feature”) but American health system is in a mess, period. For a developed superpower like USA, it is unthinkable that managing health expenses is a scary nightmare for many of its citizens. It defies common sense to give away health system into the hands of private players who are more concerned about meeting their margins than taking care of people’s health. All non-emergency cases need to wait for an appointment which means that if have an acute pain in your stomach, you simply cannot rush to the doctor. What’s more, Americans have come to accept it as part of the system when in reality it is a flaw.
• individualistic society: this is perhaps where my opinion gets skewed by my upbringing. We Asians are brought up in relation-oriented societies where an individual’s worth is also measured in his/her relations within the society. In USA, such a society exists only in professional circles where networks are important. Outside it, in personal lives Americans are more like pigeons who fly out of their nests as soon as they can. Mind you, Americans are not in any way less caring about their family, it is just that their culture is such that senior people are often left to fend for themselves. The health system problem means that many of these seniors are found dispensing grocery bags in stores like Wal-Mart and HEB to meet their rising medical costs. Another aspect of such a society is visible in the scarcity of inter-city public transport systems.
• democracy: no I am not a communist, the problem with US democracy is that there is too much of it. It is visible when issues that are either trivial or should have been quickly dealt with are deliberated over for months or years. Health discussions, financial recovery, construction of a mosque are items figuring in this list. To be fair to USA, this is not a problem per se of this country but rather of mature democratic systems in general; that they are susceptible to excessive fragmentation of opinions. Freedom of speech is an inalienable right but when fools start speaking and get to share limelight, then it is an abuse of this right.

three good things about living in USA

• infrastructure: This is perhaps the most visible and most stark difference that many of us must have felt in US and also might have been a main reason for us coming here. Things happen in US much faster and opportunities are plenty. People can easily go about following their dreams than ‘what sells’.
• sense of freedom: being an individualistic society has its benefits too. People have a complete sense of freedom and can do anything without the need for justifying it to anybody. This imparts an independent streak to their personality. This also means that people can wear, speak, listen what they want to, without the shackles of stereotypes coming into play.
• standard of living: ask any Asian why they want to get settled in US and this should summarise their response in majority of the cases. Indeed the living standard that many of us enjoy here (assuming I should ignore my living standard as a student) is far better than what they could expect back in home. Although it is unfair but if I were to indulge myself in some foreign exchange wizardry then my first part time stipend at TAMU was MORE than my my first full time salary at ST. You pay taxes at home but do not see any change, here you pay a heftier tax but you can see where it goes.

These were my points, I would be glad to know what people think about them or if they would like to add any new points..your comments – to take a cue from Americans - “would be highly appreciated”.

DISCLAIMER: Please note that this article is a personal opinion and individual experiences may vary.

Losing my Virgin-ity

Blog V of Thirty Days – Thirty Blogs series

No this is not about  my non-existent escapades. Sorry to have disappointed you. For the 2% of folks who are still interested, please read on.

Friends and relations are central in my life and a mobile phone comes handy in making a call to that ‘long lost’ friend. Of course, you can also let Facebook manage your re-connection frequency but I prefer to add that personal touch. Imagine my joy therefore to have got my first mobile phone back in 2005. No more excuses of not being at home, I could simply turn off my phone !

Being the BIG cheapskate that I am, my handset models have been very frugal till now, often at the receiving end of jokes of how a thief would return me a better phone while trying to steal my phone. My response till few months back was that I did not need a better phone. That viewpoint however got changed as I increasingly felt the need for staying connected to Internet during my extended travel periods for map, email and other info. The photographer in me would also scream now & then for a mobile camera. The music freak in me had enough of me listening to ringtones (I still do that though) and FM to satisfy my musical appetite to-go.

And that’s when I broke my smart phone virginity by ordering LG Rumor Touch. The blog title is a double play on the fact that I have Virgin Mobile as my carrier in USA. Initially I was thinking of iPhone and Droid but then the cheapskate in me kicked up and found a phone that could offer comparable services at dirt cheap prices. The extent of my naiveté in dealing with smart phones was visible when I was trying to locate the method to decrease the phone ringer volume in my system menu…only to realise that there were two volume control buttons right on the side of phone.

Another beautiful life

Blog IV of Thirty Days – Thirty Blogs series

Thread A: Remember the time travel enigma, what happens if one day you see a person who claims to be you from future. How would you know for sure ? I am sure you would ask for some personal detail of yours that nobody else would know of. What if you were asked to identify a person who lives life in a way identical or similar to yours ?

Thread B: Human gazing being an active interest of mine (when you are an introvert, this thing comes in handy), sometimes I would spend time in a public place watching people go about their daily lives. Grim faces break into most lovely smiles on meeting their friends and people who seem gay (in literal sense) would conduct gloomy conversations indicating some underlying serious nature. Quite often I come across people whom I call “another beautiful life”. I generally identify them as people who do not seem to have any air around them (not speaking literally), seem content and at peace with life (not talking of facial expressions here) and would appeal to you for no apparent reason.

Wrap-up: Previously I deliberated over what good character could mean. Not far away from that is the definition of a beautiful life, a person of good character going about the daily routine of life, at peace with the surroundings and inner self. There are so many beautiful lives that one comes across, it is almost a pity that one cannot be friends with all of them.

Inspiration: is due to all those beautiful lives who have come across my life, some of them I am lucky enough to have as my friends, others have been subjects of my observation.

Disclaimer: Lest you should think so, this blog is not induced by my situation in previous blog, I had this thing in my mind for quite a while now.

Will you be my friend ?

Blog III of Thirty Days – Thirty Blogs series

This is the thought that has been bubbling in my mind for some time now. Having recently shifted my base with no close friends around, for past few weeks, I have been busy trying to find new friends. The fact that I am an introvert, shy and look like a very-serious guy is not helping me at all in my efforts.

This is not the first time though that I am going through such a phase. In the past also, when I newly joined NSIT, STM or TAMU I had to go through similar phases. I have come to look forward to them because after every phase come some new friends. The beauty of this life (and I would talk about this in next blog) is that you keep meeting some very interesting people and forge relations with them that hopefully shall last for your complete life. Every time when one thinks that perhaps his/her friends list is full, one comes across another gem of a person. Right now, it is my time to be patient and look out for friends.

My list of attempts for finding friends include forcing myself to not eat in my cubicle, go out and socialise, giving smiling faces to passersby (probability increasing exponentially with decreasing distance from home/office) and using some existing friends. Trying to balance existing distance relations and forging new ones is never an easy job. Hope I succeed in it again !

PS: If you live in surrounding areas and are looking for a nerdy friend to help you fix your PC and network problems (cannot think of any other VP for myself), please contact me.

You know you are back in India when..

Blog II of Thirty Days – Thirty Blogs series

Here is a list of real-life situations you would find yourself in only in India. You know you are back in India when..

• ..stewardesses welcome you with a big grin and a Namaste.
• ..you simply cannot make out which lane of the road are you in.
• ..you hear your name being pronounced correctly.
• ..on hitting the road, the first thing you realise is the persistent honking.
• ..on asking for drinking water, a security guard gives you his own bottle.
• ..on asking for a public urinal, a transport official directs you to a staff-only restroom.
• ..a custom officer lets you breach the security cordon for a bribe.
• ..your friends and relatives enthusiastically take you to the ‘newest’ mall for window-shopping.
• ..you have to fight your way in & out of public transport.
• ..you hear a blaring sound on public system announce “Kripya yatri gan dhyan dein..”.
• ..you find spices and oil in your dish like water in a fish.
• ..you realise that people in the same bus stop are speaking in at least five different languages.
• ..you can spot street side sellers standing 3 feet into the road.
• ..your well-wishers hug you as if you were/would be gone for years.

DISCLAIMER: This blog article neither opinionates nor attempts to interpret above situations. It is subject to reader’s own opinion as to what might have been the underlying reasons.

Thirty Blogs in Thirty Days

Since my last blog entry, a big change has happened in my life. If my life was a car, then this would have been equivalent to a gear shift. And as I make this shift from academic life into professional life again, time is ripe to bring in many other changes in my life.

One of those changes would be amount of time that I devote to my leisure and non-technical activities. Academic life especially at postgraduate level is tough on your schedule. It is equivalent to working 10-12 hours daily in a regular job with no leaves to take and no weekends to spare. And to make matters worse, academic work does not proceed at the rate of your regular job. You can encounter wrong turns, dead ends and what not.

One of the things that I have been wanting to do more often is blogging. Unlike what the gap to my previous entry (4 months) might suggest, I have not been running short of things to blog about. In fact I have been maintaining a list of topics in my to do list. And to kick-start my re-blogging I thought why not take a cue from Morgan Spurlock and start a Thirty Days series of my own. So for the next thirty days, I would attempt to write a blog every day till the next thirty days. If things get tough on weekdays I would hopefully cover it on weekends.

$P