Forever young...

Back to Kindergarten days...using color pencils... :-)

Technology in Cricket? Where is it?

Cricket is such a wonderful game. Most of the Americans feel it vapid and such a drag. I don't entirely blame them because most of the American sport like football and basket ball are time based and much more fast paced. But we, from the Sub-continent in particular and the British occupied colonies in general are fond of cricket. Fond might be an understatement. At least in India the passion towards the game easily reaches maniacal proportions. Sometimes, the aftermath is startling and even horrendous. Anyways, the point being, cricket is a religion for most of us.

Cricket is a game of "glorious uncertainties" they say. But when the uncertainty is because of poor umpiring decisions it is hard to accept it. There's nothing we can do except moan at the umpire's blunder. The player cannot even do that lest he get fined for a level 1 breach of conduct: "Showing dissent at an umpire's decision by word or action." It is not the umpire that we can or should blame for he too is human.

There is so much technology involved in the game today. The advent of the third umpire has helped address the issues of run-outs and stumpings but what irks me is the abstinence from the ICC to use the existing technology for LBW's and caught behinds. The purists say that to keep the tradition of the game the technology should be minimal. But I'd say to maintain the sanity of the game, to keep it on an even keel, to keep it as a true battle between the two teams we need to use the technology. We don't want the umpire to be the monkey holding the scale. I'm not amongst those who say that it has to be all electronic gadgets which replace the umpire (Whom will the players appeal to if that's the case :-)?). No, I'm not saying that. But when you see videos like this you feel so aghast.

The 'Hawk-Eye' and the 'Snicko' are consistently used by the commentators on television to prove or disprove the umpires. But what good is it other than having an inutile debate over lunch. The Hawk-eye, which is mostly used for LBW decisions, I'm not an ardent fan of. Only because it works on predictability. Something which is yet to happen, kind of acausal. It analyzes the trajectory of the ball and predicts whether the ball would have hit the stumps. I'm not against it per se, because most of the times it is correct but just to appease the purists I'd say let the umpires stand by their judgment. But the 'Snick-O'. Such a handy technology which can be put to pragmatic use. Simple. Use it for caught behinds. When in doubt use the Snicko.

For caught-behind's the ball passes the bat at around 70-100 mph and before u know the ball is past the bat. Now if it were just the players ad no spectators the umpire could trust his sense of hearing along with sight but that's t not the case. The noise from the crowd reaches clamorous proportions. The umpire ends up trusting only his eyes and that is when disaster strikes. Yama cracking his whip :-) . What if that fatal decision stood between the World Cup or a rare win as seen in Australia.

Anyways, I think I've put my point across the table. All I can do is hope that the ICC implement a few rules and with hold the respect of the game. They should at the least implement a few of these in 20-20 games and then take it from there. There has to be some beacon of light pointing in the right direction. We'll enjoy the usual debates over lunch till that day...till that day...

Cross-roads in Life...16 to 26...

I don't know what prompted me to choose this topic. Could be the relatively easy schedule at work or perhaps realizing how important a good school is and how much difference it makes (this comes from watching a few live class room sessions at U Cal @ Berkeley). When I had begun this weird flow chart, to be honest, I wanted to show what I had missed and maybe why I missed. A list of excuses and explanations to no one in particular but to myself. But as I came closer to the present, as I went down in the flow cart, I realized that things weren't too bad. They weren't as dis-arrayed as I had thought they were. I mean, things might have been a little more easier and maybe a little more oriented. But 'might' and 'maybe' are the key words. You never know what life has in store for you. I mean, anything could have happened. We cannot discuss hypothetical situations with regards to life. We cannot gauge the present depending on what didn't happen or what should have happened in the past. It simply doesn't work that way. Makes more sense in looking at the future. Bygones are bygones, what will be is in our hands and that should be the focus. Be aggressive. Be purposeful. Be prepared. I've got colleagues from more reputed schools who have more knowledge in the field because of the curriculum, because of the projects and because of the professors. I'm not saying that they aren't smart or anything like that because after all, they got into those schools and they are where they are because of what they did. But my point is that I'm not too far behind maybe just an year or so. So as I finished my flow chart I was actually feeling content, confident and a feeling that nothing is lost. There will be a whole bunch of new cross-roads ahead and maybe this time, I'll anticipate and be prepared to at least a few of the cross-roads that I come across.

Just Do It!

Just wanted to try inserting JPEGS into a blog. With our silicon due next week it's been predictably busy the past two weeks. Last Sunday was perfect to catch up on my aesthetic talents :) (and you can decide on any other adjectives if otherwise). Two weeks of continuous LabView code, roomies on a road trip, crayons which I bought ages ago and never had a chance to use...summed up to the picture above. Actually felt good that I drew something after such a long time. Never had a chance since I came to the US and I think I have only me to blame.
Anyways, no point in crying over spilled milk. So decided to spend time more often for stuff other than work and studying.

Challenge

Unless a man undertakes more than he possibly can do, he will never do all that he can.

- Henry Drummond

My trip to India and back to the Mundane Bliss

Here I am, sitting @ my desk and pondering about doing something “useful” just like I have been doing for sometime now. Come to think of it life has been pretty quotidian since the first year in the US. You so get used to the routine life that you feel out of the “zone” once you are in a different place. And I sure didn’t realize this till I was in India this year.

India...hmm…it sure was a blithe, interesting, enlightening and hectic (yeah...yeah...the oxymoronic ‘hectic vacation’) trip. Was I happy to go to India?? Oh yeah!! Was I happy to come back? The answer might hurl me into a pseudo-American clique but I wasn’t exactly morbid to come back.

Due to reasons palpable only to me I couldn't go to India for the last 3 years. Finally last year I took the bold step of, "thinking of", going to India. Told Mom and Dad that I might be coming in Nov/Dec and they were elated (an understatement, to say the least) to hear that. I wanted to go for my friend, Arthi's, marriage but things got so hectic at work that it was almost Christmas when I could take a breather and look at the calendar. And finally come Jan I had to reserve my ticket (my Dad constantly asking me for my itinerary definitely accelerated the process). Only after reserving the ticket and actually seeing the money deduct from my credit card did it actually dawn upon me that I was in fact goin' home.Yippee!!!! Couldn't do a thing in the final week before leaving. The last day I was so beaming with joy that I had earned the wrath of half the colleagues. Anyways...up, up and away....Boston->London->Dubai->Hyd.

The flight to Hyd was uneventful, which is a good thing I guess. Even after reaching Hyderabad I was lucky enough to be one of the first guys to actually come out escaping the greedy tentacles of the customs. And boy oh boy. Did Hyd change!! And what a change it was. The traffic was now at least 10 times what it was before. The roads changed drastically. A little in the quality and a lot more than little in the topography. There were so many buildings now!! Most of the previous landmarks I had known were non-existent. They were replaced by multi-storied malls or restaurants. The city's radius in general must have expanded by at least 15 km (I'm sure this is a perfectly reasonable number and no exaggeration).

I started driving around from the first day. Fortuitous for me there was an auto rickshaw strike and the roads were relatively less crowded. the general notion I got by looking at the number of cars was that most of the average “middle class” crowd are more affluent than before, albeit the poverty level increasing exponentially. Talk about extremes!! Thanks to all the MNC's and the young working crowd the prices have soared sky high and this is more than obvious at the restaurants and the movies. I was particularly aghast when I went to watch a movie at PVR Cinemas in the Hyderabad Central, the supposedly Indian answer to the malls in the US. The ticket was a 100 bucks, an amount I was kind of ready to hear so that wasn't a shocker as were the snacks upstairs. Any beverage you bought was 25 bucks and I had to wait in a snake-like line to get a water bottle. Four of us, a couple of coffees, a tea and water bottle...another 100 bucks...poof just like that. The prices at the Subways and the KFC's were a direct conversion of the prices in the US. I went around treating my belly :) and my wallet :( in different places most of them were new ones, ones which I haven't gone before and I cannot make a comparison of any sort but chutney's is one restaurant I had been to the last time I was there, there 3 yrs ago, an eon of time in terms of price and crowd rise. It was pricey then too and a little crowded (a wait time of 15 mins any time of the day) but it was considered to be a "high class" restaurant for South Indian tiffins and dishes and it was said that you would meet a couple of movie stars if you were there on weekends for breakfast. The idea is not to demean anyone or to suggest that others are not privileged enough to have a decent meal there but the crowd this time, Oh my God!!..It was like a tiffin center next to a busy railway station. 30-45 mins wait time for lunch, majority of the customers were from the MNC's in the neighborhood there for their lunch. Most of them ordering the 'thaali" which was a 125 buck rip off but supposedly "reasonable". I could have spent almost a week with that money when I was doin' my undergrad. Again, the idea is just to project how much the average expenditure per person has changed over the years.

The Pub culture has changed a lot too. There was minimal pub culture earlier but now the city was filled with pubs and most of them damn expensive. I was at a place called Bottles N Chimneys, BNC for the hip crowd, which was in fact pretty hip. The ambience was great I should say. Nice lighting or rather the lack of it, DJ rocking the floor with Hindi remix music, fancy bartender juggling the bottles, hookah pipes and lots of liquor. Everythign comes with a price and price over here was very high. But again, the crowd. Let me put it this way. In a couple of hours you had to mark a square foot as your territory. Your place damn it. You paid a 1000 bucks to get in there and you could kill anyone who dared step into your square :) . I just wanted to mention the emergence of hookah clubs. Supposedly a profitable bussiness today. I just went to a coffee shop, at least that's what I thought it was, with a friend of mine. Walked in, the place was crowded with teens with coffee and hookahs!!! Right there at noon. I mean... I didn't think I would see an adolescent crowd smokin' a hookah with coffee at lunch. The guy comes us and asks if we want a smoking or a non-smoking room. Non-smoking I say and we were the only two people over there for a good hour before a couple of girls showed up and I'm positive it was because the smoking room was full. Just wanted to emphasize how the idea of "hangin out" has changed. Yes sirrrrr...neither a simple coffee shop nor an expensive barrista will do. We need hookah at lunch time to be hip :) .

Another most obvious change as I mentioned earlier was the traffic, the cars. You could find almost all the cars that you see on I-95. The Toyota, Honda, Lexus, Merc and the Czech Skoda (not in the US yet) were all over the place. Invariably 3 out of the 10 cars I saw was a new one (made very obvious with the yellow license plate or the "just out of the showroom" ribbon around the car). The concern about getting a dent was accepted by most of the owners. How the insurance works, is something I am yet to cognize. What else changed?? Hmm...Oh yeah, the real estate. To say that the real estate business is at an all time high would be an understatement. The numbers you hear about the land value are mind-boggling. There's a lot more to write about the real estate boom and I’ll try to fill it in my next blog. The huge campuses of Microsoft, Infosys, Wipro etc are worth mentioning. I didn't have the privilege to visit these campuses but the mammoth portions from outside were enough to catch you in awe.

I could go on and on mentioning the beautiful Charminar, the crafty Shilparamam, the techy Hitech City, the "slightly smelly" Hussain Sagar with its Buddha statue and so on but I think I shall leave this blog to mention the metamorphosis of Hyd and will save the scenic and monumental beauty for an other blog. For now I shall leave you with an abstract yet honest memoir of my trip.