Blog of Parag

Ashwini's new playset

Last few days, I have been busy building Ashwini's playset. It arrived in about 90-100 wooden pieces and other parts. There were hundreds of nuts, bolts, screws and other hardware. After about 8 hours of work it looks like this...

Here is a little movie (2MB), showing various stages during the construction.

Hope...

Saw this on a roadside sign yesterday:

Man's way leads to hopeless end
God's way leads to endless hope

Make your choice. But, think about it... what good is just hope if it doesn't realize into something real???

Quiz...

Can you tell a serial killer from a computer programmer? Take this quiz. I guessed only 5 out of 10 correctly.

malevole - Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer?

Stories at the barbershop...

Went to get a haircut yesterday. This old man hacks my hair as if he is a butcher, but, he tells interesting stories. This is what he entertained me with yesterday...

We were talking about kids (this is what I talk about everywhere I go these days). He is 73 years old. Has 5 kids and 13 gradkids. About 3-4 years ago, he found out that he had fathered another son 50 years ago. He met a woman that he used to date 50 years ago at a reunion and she told him about this secret. She was pregnant when they broke up but didn't tell him about it. She went ahead to deliver a son. Her parents adopted her son. The funniest part was that this son grew up with what he thought as his older sister. When he was 25 years old, he was told that his older sister was actually his mother.

Don't know if this is a true story or not, but was quite enetertaining the way he told it.

Work/Life balance

Over the last two days, I came across two items in the media that talked about work and life balance. Both are diagonally opposite views. Very interesting...

ONE:

TWO:

An op-ed in NYTimes by Matt Miller. Click on the link below if this one doesn't work.
My favorite quote:

Tell your boss you have to deal with a drinking problem and you'll be fine; say you want more time with your family and you're on the endangered species list.

Listen to My Wife

By MATT MILLER
Published: May 25, 2005

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world," wrote George Bernard Shaw. "The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Or maybe on the unreasonable woman. Take my wife.

Jody - and I mean this in a sweet and not a clinical way - has been in a state of perpetual schizophrenia since our daughter was born. She used to run a company, but she loves being a mom. So she's settled on a string of part-time roles that (in my view, at least) call on a fraction of the skills corporate America spent two decades helping her develop.

Maybe you know a woman (or a few million) like her. It's hardly news that the issue vexing talented people is the struggle to balance their professional lives with time for fulfilling lives outside of work. The shock is that after decades of wrestling with these tradeoffs, the obvious answer is the one everyone has been too skeptical or afraid to explore: changing the way top jobs are structured.

In a world where most people are struggling, the search for "balance" in high-powered jobs has to be counted a luxury. Still, there is something telling (if not downright dysfunctional) when a society's most talented people feel they have to sacrifice the meaningful relationships every human craves as the price of exercising their talent.

Nowhere is there a greater gulf between the frustration people feel over a dilemma central to their lives and their equally powerful sense that there's nothing to be done. As a result, talented people throw up their hands. Women are "opting out" after deciding that professional success isn't worth the price. Ambitious folks of both sexes "do what they have to," sure there is no other way. That's just life.

My unreasonable wife rejects this choice. If the most interesting and powerful jobs are too consuming, Jody says, then why don't we re-engineer these jobs - and the firms and the culture that sustain them - to make possible the blend of love and work that everyone knows is the true gauge of "success"? As scholars have asked, why should we be the only elites in human history that don't set things up to get what we want?

When your wife declaims like this daily for a decade, the effect can be surprising. For years I listened politely but inadequately, to judge from Jody's grumbling. Now, thanks to her persistence and my exhaustion, I've discovered I'm a feminist ("humanist," Jody corrects). They say spouses come to look like each other; maybe their convictions do, too. In any event, now that I've internalized this, I can help other men avoid my agonizing learning curve.

Here's the deal: this isn't a "women's" problem; it's a human problem. Yet for 30 years women have tried to crack this largely on their own, and one thing is clear: if the fight isn't joined by men (like me) who want a life, too, any solutions become "women's" solutions. A broader drive to redesign work will take a union-style consciousness that makes it safe for men who secretly want balance to say so.

Today talented people live in fear of sounding anything less than 24/7. Tell your boss you have to deal with a drinking problem and you'll be fine; say you want more time with your family and you're on the endangered species list. As a result, my wife says, we're being led by a class of people who made choices (because there was no alternative) that are alien to what most of us want.

Some call this "whining." Others like working 24/7. Still others assert that you can never change the nature of work near the top. But our corporate experience persuades us that change is inevitable. In a globalizing world, many senior jobs are already impossibly big. If they need to be restructured anyway (we're working on how), why not do so in ways that give folks the option to have a life? Skeptics should recall that everyone once "knew" that a weekend or a minimum wage would spell economic ruin, too.

The first step in any tough transformation is what A.A. famously teaches: admit that we're powerless and that our lives have become unmanageable. It's time workaholic males took up this cause, because top jobs will never change unless we do. Jody even has an incentive plan.

In Aristophanes' play "Lysistrata," the women withhold their charms until the men agree to stop making war. Jody thinks that's a promising model. Talk about unreasonable.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

I have been reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. This is Mark Haddon's first novel and it turned out to be an excellent one. It is a wonderful story written as a first-person account by an autistic young man, Christopher. I don't want to give away the story but, it reads like a blog. It has a lot of interesting facts, illustrations and puzzles. It is a fun read. Very different.

Winged Migration, II

Got my own copy of Winged Migration. Ashwini and I watched it for a few minutes (given her short 10-15 minute attention span) yesterday. She was totally fascinated by all the birds. There was a scene where a baby seagull takes a plunge from a high cliff and flies for the first time. She made me rewind that scene and watched it over and over.

Bride and Prejudice

* silly and stupid. was expecting better from Gurinder.

* aishwarya spoke in a weird accent that was very annoying.

* the songs were awful. just like the broadway musicals.

* story was trashy. couldn't imagine those parents that were almost hawking their daughters to any man they could find. they were acting more like pimps than parents.

Good soup

Roasted red pepper and tomato soup from Pacific Foods is most excellent. It is organic with all natural ingredients. So easy to make: pour, heat and eat. :) It is one of the best soups one can buy at a grocery store. I buy it at Whole Foods, but, it should be avaialble at other places too. Other soups from Pacific Foods are also good, but, 'roasted red pepper and tomato' is the best. I highly recommend it. I add a dash of crushed red pepper to give it a zing.

What? come again...

India announces Rs 650 mln aid for Palestinians

Such foolish waste of money...

Indian government should think about balancing the budget or maybe use this money to improve the electricity shortage situation, instead.

Evening gowns

Check out Sofia Hayat's clothes at the premier of 'The Interpreter'. She is supposedly a "bollywood star". Never heard of or seen her before.

Store wars

Check out the Grocery Store Wars | Join the Organic Rebellion

Thanks, Mahesh

Koran desecration hoopla

White House bashes Newsweek report on Koran - Yahoo! News

Wonder why all the photos accompanying this story are from a demonstration in Mumbai. I read that demonstrations in Pakistan and Afghanistan were much bigger and turned into riots and dead people. Is it because it was just easy to take those photos in Mumbai rather than Karachi or Kabul?

Before believing this report about desecration and making all this fuss, did anyone stop to think if it was possible to flush such a big fat book down the toilet?

Golf III

I continue to do worser and worserer every time I play. Last night, my score was 70. What is my excuse for this time??? Hmmmm.... I was playing against my boss's boss. So, there was a little added tension/nerves there.

35 and counting...

Completed 35 revolutions around the Sun, today. Thanks to the Earth and my parents for making this possible.

Thanks to many friends for their warm wishes on my birthday.

Winged Migration

Just finished watching "Winged Migration" on TV. It was just beautiful. Great cinematography. Very little commentary and very few images of human beings in the whole 90 minutes. The astonishingly captured images do all the talking. Highly recommended for people in any age group. I think Ashwini will love this. Am going to order the DVD right now.

Golf II

Played another round of golf on Wednesday. This time the score was 69. Worse than the first time, but, this part of the course is tougher. One par 5 hole just about killed me and my confidence. I was so shaken that I missed some easy shots on the next two holes. Hope to do better next time around.

Bowling for Democracy

This article appeared in NY Times, a couple of days ago. A historical perspective on cricket. Thanks, Mayuresh for the forward.

Click on the following link to read it...

Bowling for democracy
The New York Times

TUESDAY, MAY 3, 2005
Cricket, the quintessential English game, is nonetheless one of the most international of sports. It is a dominant game in more countries than any other sport except soccer, in lands as varied as Australia, India, Pakistan, South Africa and the Commonwealth Caribbean. But a glance at the global map of cricket poses a remarkable cultural puzzle.

Why, on the one hand, does the game flourish in lands like Pakistan and India, where a hard-fought series can transfix two nations and even lead to improved diplomatic relations? And why, on the other hand, is cricket not much played in other former British colonies like Canada - or, for that matter, in the United States, with its heritage and "special relationship" with Britain?

The puzzle only deepens when one considers that cricket was once popular in both Canada and the United States. It rivaled baseball for most of the 19th century, with as many stories in the sports pages of The New York Times until 1880. Indeed, the world's first international test match was played between Canada and the United States in 1844. So the puzzle is not so much why it was never adopted in North America, but why in the early 20th century it was subsequently rejected.

Many popular explanations are flawed. Climate has nothing to do with it; cricket emerged as a summer game, and is easily played in North America during mild weather. North American multiculturalism is hardly a factor, given the game's popularity in the multicultural societies of the Caribbean and South Africa. Ethnicity cannot be the answer: There was a far greater proportion of English in North America than in India or the Caribbean. Why is it, then, that hockey and baseball eventually trumped cricket in Canada and the United States?


Cricket lost ground in North America because of the egalitarian ethos of its societies. Rich Americans and Canadians had constant anxiety about their elite status, which prompted them to seek ways to differentiate themselves from the masses. One of those ways was cricket, which was cordoned off as an elites-only pastime, a sport only for those wealthy enough to belong to expensive cricket clubs committed to Victorian ideals of sportsmanship. In late 19th-century Canada, according to one historian, "the game became associated more and more with an older and more old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon elite."

This elite appropriation played into the hands of baseball entrepreneurs who actively worked to diminish cricket's popularity. A.G. Spalding, described in the Baseball Hall of Fame as the "organizational genius of baseball's pioneer days," was typical. "I have declared cricket is a genteel game," he mocked in "America's National Game," his 1911 best seller. "It is. Our British cricketer, having finished his day's labor at noon, may don his negligee shirt, his white trousers, his gorgeous hosiery and his canvas shoes, and sally forth to the field of sport, with his sweetheart on one arm and his cricket bat under the other, knowing that he may engage in his national pastime without soiling his linen or neglecting his lady."

Baseball, in contrast, was sold as a rugged, fast-paced, masculine game, befitting a rugged, fast-paced economic power. Americans of all classes swallowed the chauvinistic line. It was also great business for Spalding. By inventing elaborate baseball gear, he created a market for his new sporting-goods company.

In the remaining British colonies, however, the opposite happened. In these rigidly unequal societies the colonial elites and their native allies never had any anxieties about their status, and the British actively promoted the game - first to native elites, then to the masses.

In India, the wealthy Parsis first took up the game in emulation of their British masters. Soon, royalty throughout the subcontinent adopted it. English-style grammar schools were an important source of exposure to upwardly mobile native men. In the Caribbean, grammar schools made the imperial game a core feature of their education and made competition possible between different classes and ethnic groups without disrupting the social fabric.


The game itself partly facilitated this process. Cricket requires no contact between players, and its strict and complex rules, dress code and officiating largely eliminate any risk of embarrassment in play with those of different ranks or castes. So did the careful allocation of positions; less glamorous roles like bowling and fielding were assigned to social inferiors while those of specialist batsmen and team captain were reserved for elites.

What broader lessons might the history of cricket have for the globalization of Western cultural practices? It shows that such practices can be promoted or discouraged from the top down; it is not necessarily a bottom-up process, as is commonly believed. Nor does such downward dissemination require the point of a gun. The passion for cricket in places like Pakistan and India also shows that a complex Western cultural practice can be adopted in its entirety by very different cultures, even when highly identified with its country of origin.

Might the same be true of other Western cultural practices, like democracy?

(Orlando Patterson is a professor of sociology and Jason Kaufman is an associate professor of sociology at Harvard.)

Efficient use of fossil fuels

Last Thursday, I turned on the TV to watch CSI but was disppointed that Survivor was being shown as its timeslot was taken by President Bush talking to the Nation. The damned thing messed up my Thursday night TV watching schedule. Here is the transcript of President Bush's Press Conference. Don't want to say anything about the changes he proposed for Social Security. He spent first couple of minutes talking about oil and gas prices.

Fourth, we must help growing energy consumers overseas, like China and India, apply new technologies to use energy more efficiently and reduce global demand of fossil fuels.

Interesting, eh?!

Saturn from Cassini

One of the prettiest photos of Saturn. Didn't know that the rings were so thin. The moons in the plane of the ring... it is quite cool.

The Fountainhead III

Finished listening to 'The Fountainhead' this morning. I am glad I chose to listen rather than read. I would never have finished a paper copy. I know that many people worship Ayn Rand, her books and her philosophy. If you are one of them, you won't like my take on it and so, stop reading here.

There are some nice thoughts and concepts in the book, but a lot of Rand philosophy is just bullshit. I agree that nothing gets done in committees, boards and meetings, but, that doesn't mean that collaboration and co-operation has no place in any original work. Try telling that to Watson or Crick or numerous contributors to the field of Quantum Mechanics, which would not be where it is if it was developed by just one egotist. Maybe, the individuality concept makes sense for art or architecture (which is an art, too), but can't be generally applied to everything. The way this notion of individuality is extrapolated to every walk of life in the novel, is nonsense. The egotists in the novel are almost like a cult. There are only 5 people in the world who know what is right and evryone else is a horse's arse. Howard Roark's attitude about his work is just like Geroge W Bush's "You are either with us or against us". Being good at what you do doesnot give you the right be an arrogant jerk. Anyway, this 'every man is an island' kind of philosophy is good to read and get influenced by as a teenager, but, in real life it doesn't work.

The proponents of individualism in the novel, Roark and Wynand (spellings may be wrong as I didn't read the book), were conveniently without any tangle of relationships. Their parents were killed off at an early age or didn't contribute to their upbringing. It is also nice for Roark to start off a romantic relationship with a rape and not spend any energy on developing a relationship. When you can save yourself from all the relationship tangles, and not feel indebted to your family or society, then you can be an individual without much concern for the people around you.

I have always believed that I am set for failure in life because my mother loved me, my father wasn't an abusive drunk and they provided me with a safe and happy home while I was growing up. Only if I didn't have this relationship tangle with my daughter, wife, parents, other relatives and friends, I could be so successful in life.... just kidding ;)

I would like to see how Roark deals with a two year old's tantrums or change a diaper with his high and mighty principles and rules.

The third proponent of individualism in the novel, Dominique Francon, had no purpose to her life, other than being a masochistic lover of Roark. One can easily do it if they have a wealthy daddy to take care of them or a string of wealthy husbands to keep them home comfortably.

I do understand that this novel was written during the second world was and there was the big threat of fascism and communism taking over the free world. That is the real villain that the egotists are fighting in this novel.

Overall, I wasn't too impressed with the book eventhough it is well written. I couldn't swallow the whole philosophy bit. I'll wait some time before attempting to read another Rand book.

WHOA!!!

Consider yourself warned, before you click on the following links. These are not for the faint of hearts. They are horrible even by my standards.

A perfect car for you, if you have problems with your neighbour's cat.

This guy needs to see a doctor.

via _flyonthewall_

Yahoo!mail

Just noticed that my Yahoo!mail storage has gone up tp 1GB, now.

March of Dimes: Walk America

The walk was on Sunday. It was a beautiful day to be outside. A little chilly but comfortable for walking 2.5 miles briskly. It was a successful event. Judging from the number of cars in the parking lot, there were more than a couple of thousand people at the walk.

My sincere thanks to all friends and family who contributed. I collected $185 from them and after my matching and other employer matchings, the grand total came out to $690. I hope to count on you guys again next year.

Here are some photos...

It was a beautiful day...





Ashwini was happy to be outside after being cooped up in the house for a couple of days because of a fever. For a change, I caught Ashwini's real smile and not the fake photo smile that she flashes to the camera these days.