Tuesday, January 11, 2005

In Germany

Saturday morning I landed in Germany and by 10am local time I was at the hotel.
The weather is not so cold. This is unusal at this time of the year.
Am In office from yesterday. Schedule is very very hectic. Hope that things like the weather will improve.

Friday, January 07, 2005

Human emotions

Scenario 1
A colleague of mine wanted to take the team laptop home for a day and prepare some documents. He had collected it from relevant department. The laptop was placed on his desk and he had gone to have some tea. A sudden work came up for me. I had to leave office but work from home. So I took the laptop and sent him a mail saying that I have the laptop. I left the place.
The guy comes, doesn't check the mail, thinks that the laptop is stolen and he is scared that it is lost. Starts enquiring the cost of the laptop etc. Basically he PANICS. Then he opens the mail and gets to know that the lap-top is safe. He is relieved. He is happy, calls me up and says THANKS (actually for stealing the laptop).

Scenario 2
I get a sudden work. He is in his seat. I go to him and ask for the laptop. He says that he cannot give it. I have not booked it...blah blah. Finally after lot of arguments he agrees to give. But he is UPSET.

What is the result in both the scenarios? I got the laptop. But see how the emotions of the guy were.
Isn’t it difficult to understand humans?!!

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Only Meetings

Today is a day of meetings.
I have my calender filled with appointments.
2 meetings over, 2 more crucial ones coming now. Interesting!

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Why outer space and not inner land?

Countries are investing billions of dollars and rupees into space research. There are really large institutes and organizations backed by the government of respective nations doing study on outer space. Some of the research has helped us form the "Global village". Satellites beam pictures of remote places and have contributed in shrinking the world. We now know where exactly is a mineral found and where to explore for oil. But there are some useless stuff also (Today it seems useless to me...may be tomorrow it may be different). A specialized robot is made to land on Mars. This project took I don’t know how many billions. Whatz the point?

We have not invested enough to know what is happening below us. There are no specialized rich organizations to do this. This is costing us not only billions of rupees in aid but lakhs of people also. Though there are claims that tsunami and earthquake prediction is possible, there is only one instance so far where the prediction has worked correctly (this was in 1970 in China, if I remember correctly). There have been many hoax predictions. The problem is that we have not invested time and money to study our mother earth. So technology to predict these is not available. Whenever a disaster of the magnitude of Tsunami - 2004, there is lot of media coverage on such technology. But then when the dust settles down, the talks and the money for the technology goes into the coffin.

I feel people on earth are more important than the life on Mars or aliens elsewhere. Its time to think and start. We need to strike a balance between the two.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Worship place dressing

Jamshedpur girls can’t wear Jeans to Gurdwara. This rule has been enforced by the Central Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee. Interesting!

I knew a colleague who had once told me that she wears only salwar kameez or sari to temples. In fact she had an argument with one of her friends, because that friend wore jeans to Tirupati temple. She would be happy to see this news.

There are temples where males have to go topless. This is very strict in Kerala. In Kerala (atleast in Trivandrum’s famous temple) even a boy of age 4yrs cannot wear shorts inside the temple. My sister’s son experienced this. There are vendors outside who give small towels to wrap around. Men with trousers are a big NO. When having food in many temples men have to be topless (particularly if you are a Brahmin). I don’t know the logic of these, but we just follow it.
There is a “Dattathreya” temple near my house, where ladies have to sport bangles unless they are widows. This is the only restriction I have heard of among ladies.

Monday, January 03, 2005

People reject aid

This was news I read in a kannada daily today. It was confirmed by one of my neighbors.
There is an association near my house. My neighbor is a member of this association. Ladies and a few guys got together and booked a choultry for a couple of days. They pooled and collected money and started preparing chapattis. One full day they prepared almost 1 truck load of chapattis. This was taken to Nagapatinam on Friday. To their surprise, the affected people there just weren’t ready to accept chapattis. They demanded rice and water. Some of them abused these relief workers for bringing chapattis and not bringing rice. Some old clothes collected were lying all along the roads it seems. They need new clothes, new vessels and rice.
I was in Tamil nadu for 4 yrs, and I know that chapatti is not consumed there. But this rejection is a big surprise for me. When they don’t have anything to eat, they could have had chapatti. It’s not poison after all.
The truck had to come back with the chapattis. It was distributed in the slums of Bangalore. Also there was another truckload to be sent on Sunday. This was also diverted to some slums of Bangalore.