Not Every Sea Has Pearls
O my heart, sit with someone who is enlightened with the matters of the heart.
Sit in the shade of a tree that is alive with the blossoms of spring.
Don't go around aimlessly in the market, like those who are lost.
If you are after sugar, go to the one who sells sugar.
If you don't possess a scale to weigh the merchandise, the shopkeeper will cheat you.
Someone will produce a fake piece and you will mistake it for gold.
You sit by the front of the house, waiting for one who goes inside and cleverly tell you to wait there.
Don't sit there waiting for him. This house has another door, and he is already gone.
Don't take your bowl and sit by every pot that's boiling with some brew.
Every pot is cooking something different. Know what's inside.
Not every cane contains sugar, not every down has an up.
Not every eye has vision, not every sea has pearls.
Cry out, O soulful nightingale,
For prayers said in the wilderness of suffering are answered.
Your enlightened hear is like a lamp; protect it under your robe.
Pass through these storms, for the winds are blowing hard.
When you pass through these storms, you will discover a spring of living waters.
You will find a companion who is enlightened.
When your heart becomes enlightened, you will be like a verdant tree,
whose branches continually bear fruits, and you reflect the light of the universe.
--Rumi, Translated by Jahan Tavangar.
Recited by Jahan Tavangar at One Book, One Philadelphia concluding event on March 17th, 2010 conducted by Free Library of Philadelphia.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Planning, Procrastination and Life Leeches
The last couple of weeks, there was heavy activity at my home. The day was coming close for the return of my sister-in-law to our hometown in India. I am not a big fan of airports which I disclosed with ample detail in my previous post here. International travel causes a lot of stress to me, with the shopping, packing, weighing bags with no end until the departure of the flight.
My sister-in-law began packing a month and half in advance. She would weigh the bags(which is not suitable for weighing bags) every weekend. However, there would be more shopping every weekend and more items added to the bags. So the contents in the bags would be rearranged and weighed again. I concluded that my sister-in-law is a kind of person who likes to get things done ahead of time and likes to be in control. The lesson I learnt through my international trips, is to postpone packing until the last couple days before the day of journey.
The day of the departure finally arrived. While we were driving to the airport I saw the bumper sticker on a car ahead of me saying 'I was gonna procrastinate today... but I'll wait till tomorrow'. I like bumper stickers messages like that; It was funny and messages like that bring a smile on your face unlike the serious and sensitive religous and political messages. I felt that my sister-in-law should take a cue from the message. But is there a broader lesson to be learnt for my sister-in-law and myself included who like to be in control of every aspects of our lives.
During the senior(final) year of my Bachelors, I was travelling in a train from Kolkata, what was then called Calcutta, to my hometown after a disappointing performance at a job interview. Train rides have left great impressions and memories on me. While I was watching through the cabin window, I saw rows of fields; sugarcane, corn, rice paddy immaculately swaying in the distance. As I watched the fields and electric ploes passby, I thought about my performance and blamed my poor lack of planning and procrastination. I pondered and repented the number of hours I wasted each day instead of practising or reading a book in preparation for the interview.
My friends tried to help me by saying that they didn't do any better either. They always denied doing well in an exam. Even good students deny they did well and that re-assurance was of little effect as I felt they were lying and I could care less if they did any worse than me. The competition was with other students from the entire country and not just a bunch of my classmates. I concluded that I should plan better if I was do good in future for my GRE, GATE and other upcoming competitive exams coming up later that year. A few months later, I got the job offer from my interview in Kolkata.
As I grew older, I did not grow any wiser. There are still ocassions where I blame myself like a guy on deathbed thinking about not having spent quality times with his family. I think most humans fall into that pschological guilt trap. And sometimes life chores can be burdensome, they can be simple but their multitude can be overwhelming. Also the randomness of life can throw something unexpected at you inspite of all the detailed planning.
We live in an age where 24 hours is not enough to do the things we need to do. Each one of us have things to do every day and every month of the year; rent, mortgages, utility bills, credit card statements, automobile maintenance, laundry, home and lawn maintenance, health, life and home insurance, immigration, investments, retirement planning, vacation planning; and responsibilities; kids, spouse, parents, sublings, relatives and friends.
The above items are just the personal tasks. The list expands when we add the tasks from that we have to do at work. In the current world where multi-tasking is not a 'good-to-have' trait but is required, one has to juggle between projects, meetings, scheduling, prioritizing various tasks, follow ups, documenting etc.
All these life leeches(tasks and chores) can leave a perpetual mental burden on us. This overwhelming list can cause us to procrastinate till the last day. Then there are modern inventions; the killers of limited productive time; Internet, TV, Sports, Cell Phones. There is no doubt that these all add value when used optimally and when consumed in moderation. These modern day distractions have caused much unwanted procrastination for many of us.
Over the last couple years of pondering, reading and watching, utilizing many or all of the aforementioned modern day inventions, I did come up with some ideas and tricks that I utilize to accomplish the various tasks. Some of these are not so modern and might need a pen and paper. Neither are these ideas in any form earth shattering(I am fully aware of the limitations of my brain) but they work for me. These ideas and tricks can be found in the concluding post to this article.
Note: The concluding post will be linked to this article later when it is published.
My sister-in-law began packing a month and half in advance. She would weigh the bags(which is not suitable for weighing bags) every weekend. However, there would be more shopping every weekend and more items added to the bags. So the contents in the bags would be rearranged and weighed again. I concluded that my sister-in-law is a kind of person who likes to get things done ahead of time and likes to be in control. The lesson I learnt through my international trips, is to postpone packing until the last couple days before the day of journey.
The day of the departure finally arrived. While we were driving to the airport I saw the bumper sticker on a car ahead of me saying 'I was gonna procrastinate today... but I'll wait till tomorrow'. I like bumper stickers messages like that; It was funny and messages like that bring a smile on your face unlike the serious and sensitive religous and political messages. I felt that my sister-in-law should take a cue from the message. But is there a broader lesson to be learnt for my sister-in-law and myself included who like to be in control of every aspects of our lives.
During the senior(final) year of my Bachelors, I was travelling in a train from Kolkata, what was then called Calcutta, to my hometown after a disappointing performance at a job interview. Train rides have left great impressions and memories on me. While I was watching through the cabin window, I saw rows of fields; sugarcane, corn, rice paddy immaculately swaying in the distance. As I watched the fields and electric ploes passby, I thought about my performance and blamed my poor lack of planning and procrastination. I pondered and repented the number of hours I wasted each day instead of practising or reading a book in preparation for the interview.
My friends tried to help me by saying that they didn't do any better either. They always denied doing well in an exam. Even good students deny they did well and that re-assurance was of little effect as I felt they were lying and I could care less if they did any worse than me. The competition was with other students from the entire country and not just a bunch of my classmates. I concluded that I should plan better if I was do good in future for my GRE, GATE and other upcoming competitive exams coming up later that year. A few months later, I got the job offer from my interview in Kolkata.
As I grew older, I did not grow any wiser. There are still ocassions where I blame myself like a guy on deathbed thinking about not having spent quality times with his family. I think most humans fall into that pschological guilt trap. And sometimes life chores can be burdensome, they can be simple but their multitude can be overwhelming. Also the randomness of life can throw something unexpected at you inspite of all the detailed planning.
We live in an age where 24 hours is not enough to do the things we need to do. Each one of us have things to do every day and every month of the year; rent, mortgages, utility bills, credit card statements, automobile maintenance, laundry, home and lawn maintenance, health, life and home insurance, immigration, investments, retirement planning, vacation planning; and responsibilities; kids, spouse, parents, sublings, relatives and friends.
The above items are just the personal tasks. The list expands when we add the tasks from that we have to do at work. In the current world where multi-tasking is not a 'good-to-have' trait but is required, one has to juggle between projects, meetings, scheduling, prioritizing various tasks, follow ups, documenting etc.
All these life leeches(tasks and chores) can leave a perpetual mental burden on us. This overwhelming list can cause us to procrastinate till the last day. Then there are modern inventions; the killers of limited productive time; Internet, TV, Sports, Cell Phones. There is no doubt that these all add value when used optimally and when consumed in moderation. These modern day distractions have caused much unwanted procrastination for many of us.
Over the last couple years of pondering, reading and watching, utilizing many or all of the aforementioned modern day inventions, I did come up with some ideas and tricks that I utilize to accomplish the various tasks. Some of these are not so modern and might need a pen and paper. Neither are these ideas in any form earth shattering(I am fully aware of the limitations of my brain) but they work for me. These ideas and tricks can be found in the concluding post to this article.
Note: The concluding post will be linked to this article later when it is published.
Labels:
Life Lessons,
Organizing,
Planning
Friday, March 12, 2010
Did the Bee beat the Beatle?
Recently NPR, the much revered Public Radio Station, ran an article titled Bee Vs. Car: Who Gets More Miles Per Gallon?. You can listen to it on the embedded mp3 link below.
The article states that the new VW prototype will be giving a mileage of 170 mpg. I was very much surprised and felt happy that someone out there is working on creating better cars with vastly improved mileage.
The sad part is that NPR would not let the carmaker have their day of glory. I don't think NPR is anti-technology or anti-science. If anything, they are the opposite. One would wonder why they would run such an article under the science section. The only reason I can thing of, is that the creators of the segment thought it was funny. But sometimes, being funny can be out of character for somebody like NPR that’s known for its sincere, thought provoking, serious news content. Also at time the naive joke can do unintended harm to other worthy causes. I know VW has a long way before they can have a successful car on the road with 170mpg and this article will have little impact if the technology advance becomes a reality. Here is a CNET review from the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show. This car can be on the roads by 2013.
So, what is the beef that I have with this article? The article states that VW new car is promising 170 miles per gallon of car fuel gasoline. They think that a Bee beats this car hands down with its 4.7 million miles per gallon of bee fuel i.e., honey. They also had a bee expert supporting their claim who came up with the number for bee mileage - 4,704,280 mpg.
So I did a small math. A bee weighs 80-100 milligrams, lets take the upper end 100 milligrams. Also lets say it carried twice it's weight during the test which is being very liberal. A bee typically carries about 50% of its body weight in the form of pollen during its regular daily job. So a bee carries a weight of 300 milligrams and covers 4.7 million miles on a gallon of honey. With those numbers, the bees takes 1.41 miles to move a ton of weight. Let us compare this with the VW. A car weighs anywhere from 3 to 12 tons; 3 tons being the compact care and 12 tons being the heavy pick up truck. A compact car gives about 30 mpg. So a car not including the passenger, can move a ton of weight to about 90 miles. To me the math is very simple, 1.41 is far less than 90 and the car is the clear winner. There are other problems with this article as well. But I don’t want to list them all out and appear that I am anti-bee. On the contrary, I thank the bees for producing the sweet honey I use in my tea. For all the other views against the article, please view the comments in the NPR site at the end of the article.
What about the unintended harm that this article causes? Consider this; it took decades for the NHTSA fuel economy regulations to enforce fuel economy improvement of 5-10mpg by the carmakers. If a car maker tries and succeeds in making a car that improves the fuel economy from 20-30mpg to about 170-200 mpg, I would give them all kind of support. They are attempting to achieve something far beyond the minimum standards set by the government regulatory bodies. When fuel economy is improved by 8 times, it significantly reduces the current fuel consumption and thereby, provide the fruits of the current cheap fossil fuel we enjoy now to couple more generations. Any endeavor to extend the life of fossil fuel and the benefits we enjoy to future generations needs all the support.
We are in an age where every scienctific view is questioned. Consider this article by USA Today - Is the global warming movement cooling? The problem with the article is not the content but the title itself. Most people read just headlines. They conclude that global warming movement is cooling off and don’t trust any news in support of it adding to the feedback loop. Thanks much also to the conservative political and news media who have already discounted scientific evidence on global warming. They think that green house gas effect is a myth and they drill their way into having their way of life.
Articles like the bee humiliating a car can only cause more people lose interest in scientific and technological advancement. So this is my advice to NPR. Leave the thoughtless, provocative ridicule to someone else (the world has enough of those) and act your normal responsible way. Being serious can be nerdy, but the world needs the nerd to spread the scienfic word out. NPR please be that nerd. You are lot cooler that way.
The article states that the new VW prototype will be giving a mileage of 170 mpg. I was very much surprised and felt happy that someone out there is working on creating better cars with vastly improved mileage.
The sad part is that NPR would not let the carmaker have their day of glory. I don't think NPR is anti-technology or anti-science. If anything, they are the opposite. One would wonder why they would run such an article under the science section. The only reason I can thing of, is that the creators of the segment thought it was funny. But sometimes, being funny can be out of character for somebody like NPR that’s known for its sincere, thought provoking, serious news content. Also at time the naive joke can do unintended harm to other worthy causes. I know VW has a long way before they can have a successful car on the road with 170mpg and this article will have little impact if the technology advance becomes a reality. Here is a CNET review from the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show. This car can be on the roads by 2013.
So, what is the beef that I have with this article? The article states that VW new car is promising 170 miles per gallon of car fuel gasoline. They think that a Bee beats this car hands down with its 4.7 million miles per gallon of bee fuel i.e., honey. They also had a bee expert supporting their claim who came up with the number for bee mileage - 4,704,280 mpg.
So I did a small math. A bee weighs 80-100 milligrams, lets take the upper end 100 milligrams. Also lets say it carried twice it's weight during the test which is being very liberal. A bee typically carries about 50% of its body weight in the form of pollen during its regular daily job. So a bee carries a weight of 300 milligrams and covers 4.7 million miles on a gallon of honey. With those numbers, the bees takes 1.41 miles to move a ton of weight. Let us compare this with the VW. A car weighs anywhere from 3 to 12 tons; 3 tons being the compact care and 12 tons being the heavy pick up truck. A compact car gives about 30 mpg. So a car not including the passenger, can move a ton of weight to about 90 miles. To me the math is very simple, 1.41 is far less than 90 and the car is the clear winner. There are other problems with this article as well. But I don’t want to list them all out and appear that I am anti-bee. On the contrary, I thank the bees for producing the sweet honey I use in my tea. For all the other views against the article, please view the comments in the NPR site at the end of the article.
What about the unintended harm that this article causes? Consider this; it took decades for the NHTSA fuel economy regulations to enforce fuel economy improvement of 5-10mpg by the carmakers. If a car maker tries and succeeds in making a car that improves the fuel economy from 20-30mpg to about 170-200 mpg, I would give them all kind of support. They are attempting to achieve something far beyond the minimum standards set by the government regulatory bodies. When fuel economy is improved by 8 times, it significantly reduces the current fuel consumption and thereby, provide the fruits of the current cheap fossil fuel we enjoy now to couple more generations. Any endeavor to extend the life of fossil fuel and the benefits we enjoy to future generations needs all the support.
We are in an age where every scienctific view is questioned. Consider this article by USA Today - Is the global warming movement cooling? The problem with the article is not the content but the title itself. Most people read just headlines. They conclude that global warming movement is cooling off and don’t trust any news in support of it adding to the feedback loop. Thanks much also to the conservative political and news media who have already discounted scientific evidence on global warming. They think that green house gas effect is a myth and they drill their way into having their way of life.
Articles like the bee humiliating a car can only cause more people lose interest in scientific and technological advancement. So this is my advice to NPR. Leave the thoughtless, provocative ridicule to someone else (the world has enough of those) and act your normal responsible way. Being serious can be nerdy, but the world needs the nerd to spread the scienfic word out. NPR please be that nerd. You are lot cooler that way.
Labels:
Fuel Standards,
News,
NHTSA,
NPR
Monday, March 1, 2010
Mr.Toyoda goes to Washington
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is an american classic movie starring James Stewart. It is about a boy ranger who is appointed to the senate by his state's governor who wants a puppet in that post. James Stewart character named Jefferson Smith(cleverly deduced from Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith) goes to capitol hill and ends up fighting the evil political machinery of US Senate through filibuster process. A detailed review and story of the film can be found here. This fictional movie was released(in 1939) during the great depression era.
Cut to current great recession non-fictional age. Last week, the grandson of the founder and president of Toyota was invited to the hearing of the US senate committee. Here too is a guy not familiar with the DC and it's politics. He comes to DC unwillingly and is asked several uncomfortable questions. Though Mr.Akio Toyoda is no country bumkin, a guy from Japan is as comfortable in the Capitol Hill answering to the Senate committee as Jefferson Smith was answering about his alleged profiting from the land purchase he proposes in his bill. Mr. Toyoda was appointed as President of Toyota less than 9 months ago and is faced with the daunting challenge that his company has ever faced. The similaries are very few, but it made for a good beginning for my post and I could not resist invoking the famous movie.
But getting to the actual point. I loved Toyota for several years. Infact I own a 2007 Corolla and I absolutely love it. It is a great car. I loved the fact that, unlike the US big three car makers, Toyota put reliability, safety and fuel efficiency as the primary goals and it won significant consumer following over the years. Infact they became the number one car seller in 2009 pushing GM to #2. But just within a span of few months from October 2009 to January 2010, the reputation of Toyota went downhill. The stories of the recall have been in the news for some time now. I first heard and read about the recall of Toyota vehicles at my delear during one of my 15K routine maintainance of my Corolla.
If you look at the newspapers they are filled with several articles about Toyota and the mess they are in. Here below you can find some of them that I have read just in February.
Toyota’s Blind Spot dated February 5, 2010.
Twitter Toppled Toyota? dated Wednesday, February 17, 2010.
Toyota Official Says Recall May Not Fully Solve Safety Problem dated February 23, 2010.
Back to Basics for Toyota WSJ op-ed dated FEBRUARY 23, 2010.
Toyota chief blasted by lawmakers despite apology dated 02/24/2010.
Toyota loses rank to Honda
Analysis: Cultures Collide With Toyoda Testimony dated Wednesday, 24 Feb 2010.
'Toyota defense' might rescue jailed Minnesota man dated Thursday Feb 25, 2010.
I spoke to several friends and colleagues. Surprisingly the opinion was divided on the lines of immigration status. Immigrants had the opinion that Toyota is being penalized to make way for the American Big Three to regain share. US Citizens(born and naturalized alike) felt that this is just a beginnging of a lot more recalls, that Toyota is hiding facts and domestic companies should be preferred and incentivized over international firms. (A thing to note is that recent naturalized citizens tend to think like immigrants and citizens naturalized about a decade or long tend to think like citizens.) I dont agree with either of them. I think the above two opinions are prejudiced.
Audi, Ford and GM have had recalls that caused severa damage to the reputation and market share of the makers. Only GM seems to have managed to escape recall crisis with less damage. But what we have now are different times. Audi and Ford had lot of time to fix the faulty vehicles before the actual news of the recalls became widespread by the news dispensing mechanisms-newspapers, TV and Radio of that time. In the current times, news can spread repidly and instantly to almost every corner of the world with Internet and more so with the help of social networks. In the current social networking world, one doesn't have to depend on traditional media to get the news. For eg.:The earthquake in Chile was delivered to me not by the traditional media but through my family and friends way away in India. So politics had nothing to do with the bad publicity that Toyota is getting. It is just the instant news dissemination age that is compounding the trouble for Toyota. The politicians in DC are always late to react and react only to appease their constituencies, vote banks and special interests.
A recent news mentions the call from a southern republican senator who advised the senate hearing committee to tone down on the criticism and political rhetoric against Toyota. It is not surprising given the fact that Toyota has some maufacturing facitlities mostly in the southern states and that it employs about 36,000 people in the maufacturing facilities directly and employs about 166,000 people indirectly through dealerships and suppliers in the U.S. The myth of a naive foreign company in U.S. caught in the storm like a deer in a headlight can be dispensed of when you look at the list of Toyota’s powerful friends in Washington in the linked article dated Mon., Feb. 8, 2010.
Lets get to the other side of the criticism. The criticism that this is not an end of the recalls cannot be either supported or discarded as only time can tell. Leaving speculation to speculators, we can only deal with facts at hand. The slow response of Toyota in responding to the recall and publicly accepting, apologizing for the faults has given some fuel to the critics. But this delay could as well be attributable to a different managerial style-that of a Japanese rather than to Toyota trying to hide facts. It is definitely a failure of US PR wing of Toyota. Despite this debacle, Toyota is still in top three in the recent report card from the independent and widely popular Consumer Reports. In spite of the criticism and bailout from the government, Chrysler dropped to the bottom, and GM held on to it's bottom but one position. Only Ford improved one position better than last year and that position is very far from the top three. So the Big Three are still a far distance away in quality and reliability ratings of foreign makes.
So where did Toyota go wrong. Between the highly reliable period of the 90's and the deadly late 2000's, something went wrong. Before we look up the history, I want to express my own impression of Toyota of that period. My impression is purely based on watching their promotions on TV and talking to people. I felt that Toyota cars were highly reliable, cheap and very good with mileage; infact best in the market. They were the first to bring in Hybrid vehicles with Prius. But if you watched their promos on TV, none of these aspects were highlighted. Take a look at this Toyota Tundra commercial video. More of those can be found here, here and here. Infact Tundra dominated Toyota's commercials, emphasizing power over every other positive side of thier company. Commercials for their flagship Corolla and Camry were far and in between. In fact the cost of these two models fell by a few percetage points during this period. It is as if they were trying to move into a new direction.
I looked at the history of toyota to find who led toyota during the 2000's. The president of Toyota from 2005-June 2009 before Akio Toyoda was Katsuaki Watanabe. His Wikipedia entry will tell you that he was responsible for building a full-size pick-up truck manufacturing plant in San Antonio, Texas U.S.A. It utlimately resulted in a huge loss for Toyota. He also led a rigorous effort to cut cost at every possible oppurtunity, thereby sabotaging their quailty and the Toyota Way. He and his predecessor also rigorously led toyota into nascar. On hindsight the shift from traditional emphasis on quality to quantity and getting to No.1 in a rush is conspicous. But one does not have look at history to get to that conclusion. Mr. Akio Toyoda himself has mentioned that during several press conferences.
What can Mr.Toyoda do now. With toyota death count at 56, the time for action is now. They should be frank and find a fix for all the faulty vehicles and do them quick. It is easier said than done, but that is the only way to do. Redo their commercials on TV around the fixes and reliability and give up their power dream of Tundras. Emphasis on quality and fuel economy(with oil close to $2.75 and expected to rise) will surely bring back the customers. Until then they just to wait out the media damage and not do anything stupid.
I am sure Mr. Toyoda is doing what is best for him and the company of his forefathers including public apologizing and crying. But what can we as customers do about it. Keep a watch for Toyota recalls at autoblog's ultimate toyota recall guide and at Toyota's recall site. Contact your dealer if your vehicle is on the list and get it fixed. While driving on the road, if you see a Toyota approaching you, get out of it's way if you can. I am kidding but watch out if your own toyota has problems with acceleration and braking systems. In case you are stuck in a car with unintended acceleration, here is something you can do and hope for the best.
Cut to current great recession non-fictional age. Last week, the grandson of the founder and president of Toyota was invited to the hearing of the US senate committee. Here too is a guy not familiar with the DC and it's politics. He comes to DC unwillingly and is asked several uncomfortable questions. Though Mr.Akio Toyoda is no country bumkin, a guy from Japan is as comfortable in the Capitol Hill answering to the Senate committee as Jefferson Smith was answering about his alleged profiting from the land purchase he proposes in his bill. Mr. Toyoda was appointed as President of Toyota less than 9 months ago and is faced with the daunting challenge that his company has ever faced. The similaries are very few, but it made for a good beginning for my post and I could not resist invoking the famous movie.
But getting to the actual point. I loved Toyota for several years. Infact I own a 2007 Corolla and I absolutely love it. It is a great car. I loved the fact that, unlike the US big three car makers, Toyota put reliability, safety and fuel efficiency as the primary goals and it won significant consumer following over the years. Infact they became the number one car seller in 2009 pushing GM to #2. But just within a span of few months from October 2009 to January 2010, the reputation of Toyota went downhill. The stories of the recall have been in the news for some time now. I first heard and read about the recall of Toyota vehicles at my delear during one of my 15K routine maintainance of my Corolla.
If you look at the newspapers they are filled with several articles about Toyota and the mess they are in. Here below you can find some of them that I have read just in February.
Toyota’s Blind Spot dated February 5, 2010.
Twitter Toppled Toyota? dated Wednesday, February 17, 2010.
Toyota Official Says Recall May Not Fully Solve Safety Problem dated February 23, 2010.
Back to Basics for Toyota WSJ op-ed dated FEBRUARY 23, 2010.
Toyota chief blasted by lawmakers despite apology dated 02/24/2010.
Toyota loses rank to Honda
Analysis: Cultures Collide With Toyoda Testimony dated Wednesday, 24 Feb 2010.
'Toyota defense' might rescue jailed Minnesota man dated Thursday Feb 25, 2010.
I spoke to several friends and colleagues. Surprisingly the opinion was divided on the lines of immigration status. Immigrants had the opinion that Toyota is being penalized to make way for the American Big Three to regain share. US Citizens(born and naturalized alike) felt that this is just a beginnging of a lot more recalls, that Toyota is hiding facts and domestic companies should be preferred and incentivized over international firms. (A thing to note is that recent naturalized citizens tend to think like immigrants and citizens naturalized about a decade or long tend to think like citizens.) I dont agree with either of them. I think the above two opinions are prejudiced.
Audi, Ford and GM have had recalls that caused severa damage to the reputation and market share of the makers. Only GM seems to have managed to escape recall crisis with less damage. But what we have now are different times. Audi and Ford had lot of time to fix the faulty vehicles before the actual news of the recalls became widespread by the news dispensing mechanisms-newspapers, TV and Radio of that time. In the current times, news can spread repidly and instantly to almost every corner of the world with Internet and more so with the help of social networks. In the current social networking world, one doesn't have to depend on traditional media to get the news. For eg.:The earthquake in Chile was delivered to me not by the traditional media but through my family and friends way away in India. So politics had nothing to do with the bad publicity that Toyota is getting. It is just the instant news dissemination age that is compounding the trouble for Toyota. The politicians in DC are always late to react and react only to appease their constituencies, vote banks and special interests.
A recent news mentions the call from a southern republican senator who advised the senate hearing committee to tone down on the criticism and political rhetoric against Toyota. It is not surprising given the fact that Toyota has some maufacturing facitlities mostly in the southern states and that it employs about 36,000 people in the maufacturing facilities directly and employs about 166,000 people indirectly through dealerships and suppliers in the U.S. The myth of a naive foreign company in U.S. caught in the storm like a deer in a headlight can be dispensed of when you look at the list of Toyota’s powerful friends in Washington in the linked article dated Mon., Feb. 8, 2010.
Lets get to the other side of the criticism. The criticism that this is not an end of the recalls cannot be either supported or discarded as only time can tell. Leaving speculation to speculators, we can only deal with facts at hand. The slow response of Toyota in responding to the recall and publicly accepting, apologizing for the faults has given some fuel to the critics. But this delay could as well be attributable to a different managerial style-that of a Japanese rather than to Toyota trying to hide facts. It is definitely a failure of US PR wing of Toyota. Despite this debacle, Toyota is still in top three in the recent report card from the independent and widely popular Consumer Reports. In spite of the criticism and bailout from the government, Chrysler dropped to the bottom, and GM held on to it's bottom but one position. Only Ford improved one position better than last year and that position is very far from the top three. So the Big Three are still a far distance away in quality and reliability ratings of foreign makes.
So where did Toyota go wrong. Between the highly reliable period of the 90's and the deadly late 2000's, something went wrong. Before we look up the history, I want to express my own impression of Toyota of that period. My impression is purely based on watching their promotions on TV and talking to people. I felt that Toyota cars were highly reliable, cheap and very good with mileage; infact best in the market. They were the first to bring in Hybrid vehicles with Prius. But if you watched their promos on TV, none of these aspects were highlighted. Take a look at this Toyota Tundra commercial video. More of those can be found here, here and here. Infact Tundra dominated Toyota's commercials, emphasizing power over every other positive side of thier company. Commercials for their flagship Corolla and Camry were far and in between. In fact the cost of these two models fell by a few percetage points during this period. It is as if they were trying to move into a new direction.
I looked at the history of toyota to find who led toyota during the 2000's. The president of Toyota from 2005-June 2009 before Akio Toyoda was Katsuaki Watanabe. His Wikipedia entry will tell you that he was responsible for building a full-size pick-up truck manufacturing plant in San Antonio, Texas U.S.A. It utlimately resulted in a huge loss for Toyota. He also led a rigorous effort to cut cost at every possible oppurtunity, thereby sabotaging their quailty and the Toyota Way. He and his predecessor also rigorously led toyota into nascar. On hindsight the shift from traditional emphasis on quality to quantity and getting to No.1 in a rush is conspicous. But one does not have look at history to get to that conclusion. Mr. Akio Toyoda himself has mentioned that during several press conferences.
What can Mr.Toyoda do now. With toyota death count at 56, the time for action is now. They should be frank and find a fix for all the faulty vehicles and do them quick. It is easier said than done, but that is the only way to do. Redo their commercials on TV around the fixes and reliability and give up their power dream of Tundras. Emphasis on quality and fuel economy(with oil close to $2.75 and expected to rise) will surely bring back the customers. Until then they just to wait out the media damage and not do anything stupid.
I am sure Mr. Toyoda is doing what is best for him and the company of his forefathers including public apologizing and crying. But what can we as customers do about it. Keep a watch for Toyota recalls at autoblog's ultimate toyota recall guide and at Toyota's recall site. Contact your dealer if your vehicle is on the list and get it fixed. While driving on the road, if you see a Toyota approaching you, get out of it's way if you can. I am kidding but watch out if your own toyota has problems with acceleration and braking systems. In case you are stuck in a car with unintended acceleration, here is something you can do and hope for the best.
Labels:
Current Issues,
Toyota,
Washington DC
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Stereotyping Current Telugu Movies
I used to watch a lot of movies during my days in graduate school. I still do but a lot less than I used to. But I do keep in touch with the current movies and their trends. Recently I was driving and listening to NPR where the host and guest were discussing a hypothetical thought-if aliens would somehow get to see today's movies, TV drama or any literature, what kind of opinion would they form of us. They would think there was a lot of drama with violence and people hardly worked as most of our current literature rarely touches on the day to day aspects of our lives. This post is my crude attempt at extending this idea to Telugu Movies alone.
Imagine in few decades or centuries, humans do not exist and aliens landed in the part of India where people speak Telugu. In such a time suppose that aliens reach there and find videos of our current successful Telugu movies. If they were preserved without a blemish and these movies are their only means of knowing our world. What sort of opinion would they form? Here are my ten thoughts on what they could potentially theorize.
1. Men are from Orphanville: Most of the males of our times are orphans. They are either bastards whose mother dies giving birth to him or lose his parents when the guy was a kid in some violent or tragic accident.
2. Women are from Desperateville :The female protagonist is always trying desperately and unsuccessfully to make our male lead fall in love with her. Add to this drama, there is always competition - another lady tramp who is falling for the love of her life. She eventually succeeds.
3. Macho Men: Our male lead is macho in every aspect; no matter his upbringing and family history. He can make men and vehicles fly by touch of his fist. He is like a bee that will sting when disturbed and can make people(mostly men in white lungis) fly at regular intervals. Some guys machismo can make trains move.
4. Teleportation: The male and female lead can transport themselves to a distant colorful land(either a snow clad hilly mountains or just a small room with colorful sets) where they jump, dance and sing their guts out. The amazing thing is that there is big group of other people sharing the joy of our leads and dancing to the tunes that are well synchronized. They would be surprised as to why these guys are joining in on the fun; they have no relevance to our leads and disappear as quickly as they come.
5. Dreadful Dads of Beautiful Daughters: The father of the female lead is evil and very unpleasing to the eye. You wonder how he could have had such a beautiful daughter. If he is not a mafia don, he is factionist leader, or just plain evil dude who dotes on his daughter but doesn't like the guy his daughter is dating.
6. Bad Governance: The politicians, police and law are all evil and work hand in hand in creating trouble to our leads.
7. Dog like Friends: The male lead and female lead hang out with a bunch of loyal chums who are willing to follow and do anything for them. The male lead often abuses these chums but they still follow him with no animosity.
8. Sibling Situation: The male leads' sibling often end up in a tragic death. The female leads sibling often elope which makes parents become more protective of her. Tragedy of such measure is followed by locking her in a huge palace or bunch of goons escorting her where ever she goes.
9. Parallelism - humor and tragedy happen in life: Our society believes in parallelism. While there is tragedy and drama going in the main story, there can be humour either interwoven with the main leads or sometimes disconnected with them.
10. Disrespectful, Alcoholic and Violent Youth: Young people of the society were prone to drinking alcohol, disrespectful of elders without repentance and prone to violence.
Imagine in few decades or centuries, humans do not exist and aliens landed in the part of India where people speak Telugu. In such a time suppose that aliens reach there and find videos of our current successful Telugu movies. If they were preserved without a blemish and these movies are their only means of knowing our world. What sort of opinion would they form? Here are my ten thoughts on what they could potentially theorize.
1. Men are from Orphanville: Most of the males of our times are orphans. They are either bastards whose mother dies giving birth to him or lose his parents when the guy was a kid in some violent or tragic accident.
2. Women are from Desperateville :The female protagonist is always trying desperately and unsuccessfully to make our male lead fall in love with her. Add to this drama, there is always competition - another lady tramp who is falling for the love of her life. She eventually succeeds.
3. Macho Men: Our male lead is macho in every aspect; no matter his upbringing and family history. He can make men and vehicles fly by touch of his fist. He is like a bee that will sting when disturbed and can make people(mostly men in white lungis) fly at regular intervals. Some guys machismo can make trains move.
4. Teleportation: The male and female lead can transport themselves to a distant colorful land(either a snow clad hilly mountains or just a small room with colorful sets) where they jump, dance and sing their guts out. The amazing thing is that there is big group of other people sharing the joy of our leads and dancing to the tunes that are well synchronized. They would be surprised as to why these guys are joining in on the fun; they have no relevance to our leads and disappear as quickly as they come.
5. Dreadful Dads of Beautiful Daughters: The father of the female lead is evil and very unpleasing to the eye. You wonder how he could have had such a beautiful daughter. If he is not a mafia don, he is factionist leader, or just plain evil dude who dotes on his daughter but doesn't like the guy his daughter is dating.
6. Bad Governance: The politicians, police and law are all evil and work hand in hand in creating trouble to our leads.
7. Dog like Friends: The male lead and female lead hang out with a bunch of loyal chums who are willing to follow and do anything for them. The male lead often abuses these chums but they still follow him with no animosity.
8. Sibling Situation: The male leads' sibling often end up in a tragic death. The female leads sibling often elope which makes parents become more protective of her. Tragedy of such measure is followed by locking her in a huge palace or bunch of goons escorting her where ever she goes.
9. Parallelism - humor and tragedy happen in life: Our society believes in parallelism. While there is tragedy and drama going in the main story, there can be humour either interwoven with the main leads or sometimes disconnected with them.
10. Disrespectful, Alcoholic and Violent Youth: Young people of the society were prone to drinking alcohol, disrespectful of elders without repentance and prone to violence.
Labels:
Telugu Movies
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Songs that stick
I have this habit of listening to a song over and over again until it bores me out. There are times when some songs just linger on in the inner corridors of my brain. They make me sing voluntarily, involuntarily and repetitively to the point of embarrassment. There are several songs that got stuck in my head some that I passed the fever to someone else to my own detriment.
It was probably 1996 and I was in my second year of my bachelors degree. I managed to gain access to a computer lab as part of the research project I enrolled under a professor. As I started spending more time at the lab, I got friendly with the lab maintenance guy who would lend me his collection of music CDs. The CDs were ofcourse donated by the users of the lab. The lab manager was one smart guy. He would let the new users listen to the cds that he had collected over time. After a few months he would induce the users, who are old now, to buy new CDs and donate to the lab for common use. Nothing wrong with that, but he was dealing with a new beast here. So I would borrow the CDs from him and play the music in the computer I was using. I liked the music of Kishore Kumar and one song stuck on me. The song was 'Oh Mere Dil ke Chain'(can't translate to english without making it look funny, so I will refrain) from the movie Mere Jeevan Saathi.
Mere Jeevan Saathi (1972) - O Mere Dil Ke Chain by Kishore Kumar.
I didn't know much Hindi then, nor do I do now but I think I am better. I still get mixed with the gender of objects. I think it was the easy lyrics and repetitive nature of the title verse that made it sticky. I would repeat the song over and over again. It appears that song went viral and everyone who was coming to the lab was either playing the song on CD or were humming it when coming to and going out of the lab. Virus effects the person most likely to be exposed. In the case of the 'Dil Ke Chain' virus our poor lab manager was most exposed to it. He got bit by the Dil Ke Chain bug and he would listen to the song on his way home until one day disaster struck. He met with an accident while going home from work. Apparently he was trying to repeat the song on his CD player and got distracted fell off his bike. He broke his arm and had it in a sling. After a week of absence he returned to the lab taking rides from my fellow students as he was unable to ride his two wheeler scooter anymore. He forbade me from playing songs in the lab from that time onwards.
Having been forbidden from playing songs at school, I tuned myself to listening music at home. There used to be a small music store(more of a shack) at the end of the street. They would record songs of your choice onto to 60mins tape cassette. I made myself a list of 12 songs onto an old cassette we had at home. Of all the 12 songs the most I played was this song 'Chappa Chappa' (no idea what that means) from the movie Maachis by Gulzar.
Maachis (1996) - Chappa Chappa, Sung by Hariharan and Suresh Wadkar, Composed by Vishal Bharadwaj, Lyrics by Gulzar
Again I hardly understood half of the lyrics(I dont even now) as most of the verses are in language I don't understand. I don't know if it is Punjabi or Kashmiri, because I know that only few lines of the song are in Hindi. But the catchy Chappa Chappa caught with me and I repeated that song for a long time. It was only time before I irritated someone and it was my Mom this time. One day she took the cassette out and said 'Chappa Chappa ani enni sarlu ra Chetta pata' or something like that. From there it was a slippery slope for my chappa song and it slipped out of my brain.
During the third year of my engineering, I went to Bangalore with a bunch of my friends for an exam. One of my classmates was into English movies a lot. It was the time when Pierce Brosnon was being introduced as the new James Bond and the movie was Golden Eye. On the day after the exam, I borrowed the cassette from my friend and was listening to the soundtrack from Golden Eye. I was most impressed with the title track.
James Bond - Goldeneye Opening Theme
I couldn't get the lyrics of most English songs those days. But this song was different. I could get the verses very well and repeated that song to death. Imagine me singing 'See the reflections in the water' doing the husky female voice over. Apparently I had hummed the song aloud and awoke my classmate who was also sharing the room then. He lamented to me as to why I would sing the same song and not change it. I did not get the golden eye but my classmate did get a red eye. He slept all along the return journey in the train.
Fast forward couple more years to the year 1999. It was the first semester of my graduate studies at WVU. Internet was growing fast and all sorts of services were being provided for free but the search engines were pathetic. Anyone remember askjeeves.com or altavista.com? Google did not make it big yet. So finding stuff on the internet was not as easy as it is today. During those days, I don't know why but I could not recollect a song from the movie Antham(translation - the end). I had asked that to a friend who was also a new graduate student at WVU and was my neighbor then. He could not recollect the song immediately. Few weeks later my friend came to me and told me that he had been looking for that song for several weeks on the internet and that he had found a site where I could listen to the song. That site is Raaga and I visit the site whenever I look for Indian music. The song is titled 'Nee navvu cheppindi naku'(translation - Your smile told) - a slow romantic melody.
Antham(1990) - Nee Navvu Cheppindi Naatho by S.P.Balasubramayam, Lyrics: Siri Vennela Sitarama Sastry and Composed by R.D.Burman
I thanked my friend and that song stuck on me for a long time that semester. My friend though switched to LSU a semester later. I didn't expect the distraction that I passed on to him would have such impact on my friend. Well it might not have been the reason, but it makes for a good story and I am sticking to it. At least he went to a better football team.
After many such haunting songs and a decade later we reach to the end of 2009 where I am stuck with my current sticky song. It is an old song from the movie Tezaab in which Madhuri Dixit rose to stardom with the song Ek Do Teen. The song I got stuck with is a different one. It is a slow crooner by Nitin Mukesh titled 'So gaya yeh jahan'(Transaltion - the world is asleep).
Tezaab(1988) - So gaya yeh jahan by Nitin Mukesh and Lyrics by Javed Akhtar
I dont know how and why I looked up this song but I had listened to it for a day or so. I managed to pass it on to my wife. It has been about a month since I played the song online and it still hasn't left my home. I am thinking, yes the world is asleep and so should this song, but it hasn't yet.
While Nitin Mukesh soul is doing rounds in my home, I decided to look up on what makes these songs stick. Almost everyone goes through this song stickiness. It is as if some songs get stuck in the haunted chambers of our brains. Not surprisingly research has been done on such songs. They call such song an earworm - a very creepy name. They say that some songs on repeatedly listening to them creates, what these researchers call, a 'cognitive itch'. It is like a regular itch and one way to sooth yourself is to 'scratch the itch' by listening again to the song or humming it. This creates a feedback loop - repetition creates the itch, scratching by humming or listening the song soothes the itch and on and one again. Here are some links for more information on it.
Why do songs get stuck in my head?
Songs That Cause The Brain To 'Itch': UC Professor Investigating Why Certain Tunes Get Stuck In Our Heads
Songs Stick in Everyone's Head
Researcher confirms existence of 'earworms' / 98% of people have had songs stuck in their head
The more simple the song and easy to repeat the more is the likelyhood of the song being stuck. So even mediocre songs can get stuck like Billy Ray Cryus' only known hit Achy Breaky Heart. He is now known as a father of a famous teenage star Miley Cyrus than for his musical career.
Billie ray cyrus & miley cyrus - achy breaky heart , get ready , get set , Don't go
But so much for the research, nobody knows how to get rid of them. But luckily it is not a serious affliction. Most of us get out of them one way or the other. So I end this post with a tribute to all such songs and to their makers - 'Can't get you out of my head' by Kylie Minogue.
Kylie Minogue - Can't Get You Out Of My Head
It was probably 1996 and I was in my second year of my bachelors degree. I managed to gain access to a computer lab as part of the research project I enrolled under a professor. As I started spending more time at the lab, I got friendly with the lab maintenance guy who would lend me his collection of music CDs. The CDs were ofcourse donated by the users of the lab. The lab manager was one smart guy. He would let the new users listen to the cds that he had collected over time. After a few months he would induce the users, who are old now, to buy new CDs and donate to the lab for common use. Nothing wrong with that, but he was dealing with a new beast here. So I would borrow the CDs from him and play the music in the computer I was using. I liked the music of Kishore Kumar and one song stuck on me. The song was 'Oh Mere Dil ke Chain'(can't translate to english without making it look funny, so I will refrain) from the movie Mere Jeevan Saathi.
Mere Jeevan Saathi (1972) - O Mere Dil Ke Chain by Kishore Kumar.
I didn't know much Hindi then, nor do I do now but I think I am better. I still get mixed with the gender of objects. I think it was the easy lyrics and repetitive nature of the title verse that made it sticky. I would repeat the song over and over again. It appears that song went viral and everyone who was coming to the lab was either playing the song on CD or were humming it when coming to and going out of the lab. Virus effects the person most likely to be exposed. In the case of the 'Dil Ke Chain' virus our poor lab manager was most exposed to it. He got bit by the Dil Ke Chain bug and he would listen to the song on his way home until one day disaster struck. He met with an accident while going home from work. Apparently he was trying to repeat the song on his CD player and got distracted fell off his bike. He broke his arm and had it in a sling. After a week of absence he returned to the lab taking rides from my fellow students as he was unable to ride his two wheeler scooter anymore. He forbade me from playing songs in the lab from that time onwards.
Having been forbidden from playing songs at school, I tuned myself to listening music at home. There used to be a small music store(more of a shack) at the end of the street. They would record songs of your choice onto to 60mins tape cassette. I made myself a list of 12 songs onto an old cassette we had at home. Of all the 12 songs the most I played was this song 'Chappa Chappa' (no idea what that means) from the movie Maachis by Gulzar.
Maachis (1996) - Chappa Chappa, Sung by Hariharan and Suresh Wadkar, Composed by Vishal Bharadwaj, Lyrics by Gulzar
Again I hardly understood half of the lyrics(I dont even now) as most of the verses are in language I don't understand. I don't know if it is Punjabi or Kashmiri, because I know that only few lines of the song are in Hindi. But the catchy Chappa Chappa caught with me and I repeated that song for a long time. It was only time before I irritated someone and it was my Mom this time. One day she took the cassette out and said 'Chappa Chappa ani enni sarlu ra Chetta pata' or something like that. From there it was a slippery slope for my chappa song and it slipped out of my brain.
During the third year of my engineering, I went to Bangalore with a bunch of my friends for an exam. One of my classmates was into English movies a lot. It was the time when Pierce Brosnon was being introduced as the new James Bond and the movie was Golden Eye. On the day after the exam, I borrowed the cassette from my friend and was listening to the soundtrack from Golden Eye. I was most impressed with the title track.
James Bond - Goldeneye Opening Theme
I couldn't get the lyrics of most English songs those days. But this song was different. I could get the verses very well and repeated that song to death. Imagine me singing 'See the reflections in the water' doing the husky female voice over. Apparently I had hummed the song aloud and awoke my classmate who was also sharing the room then. He lamented to me as to why I would sing the same song and not change it. I did not get the golden eye but my classmate did get a red eye. He slept all along the return journey in the train.
Fast forward couple more years to the year 1999. It was the first semester of my graduate studies at WVU. Internet was growing fast and all sorts of services were being provided for free but the search engines were pathetic. Anyone remember askjeeves.com or altavista.com? Google did not make it big yet. So finding stuff on the internet was not as easy as it is today. During those days, I don't know why but I could not recollect a song from the movie Antham(translation - the end). I had asked that to a friend who was also a new graduate student at WVU and was my neighbor then. He could not recollect the song immediately. Few weeks later my friend came to me and told me that he had been looking for that song for several weeks on the internet and that he had found a site where I could listen to the song. That site is Raaga and I visit the site whenever I look for Indian music. The song is titled 'Nee navvu cheppindi naku'(translation - Your smile told) - a slow romantic melody.
Antham(1990) - Nee Navvu Cheppindi Naatho by S.P.Balasubramayam, Lyrics: Siri Vennela Sitarama Sastry and Composed by R.D.Burman
I thanked my friend and that song stuck on me for a long time that semester. My friend though switched to LSU a semester later. I didn't expect the distraction that I passed on to him would have such impact on my friend. Well it might not have been the reason, but it makes for a good story and I am sticking to it. At least he went to a better football team.
After many such haunting songs and a decade later we reach to the end of 2009 where I am stuck with my current sticky song. It is an old song from the movie Tezaab in which Madhuri Dixit rose to stardom with the song Ek Do Teen. The song I got stuck with is a different one. It is a slow crooner by Nitin Mukesh titled 'So gaya yeh jahan'(Transaltion - the world is asleep).
Tezaab(1988) - So gaya yeh jahan by Nitin Mukesh and Lyrics by Javed Akhtar
I dont know how and why I looked up this song but I had listened to it for a day or so. I managed to pass it on to my wife. It has been about a month since I played the song online and it still hasn't left my home. I am thinking, yes the world is asleep and so should this song, but it hasn't yet.
While Nitin Mukesh soul is doing rounds in my home, I decided to look up on what makes these songs stick. Almost everyone goes through this song stickiness. It is as if some songs get stuck in the haunted chambers of our brains. Not surprisingly research has been done on such songs. They call such song an earworm - a very creepy name. They say that some songs on repeatedly listening to them creates, what these researchers call, a 'cognitive itch'. It is like a regular itch and one way to sooth yourself is to 'scratch the itch' by listening again to the song or humming it. This creates a feedback loop - repetition creates the itch, scratching by humming or listening the song soothes the itch and on and one again. Here are some links for more information on it.
Why do songs get stuck in my head?
Songs That Cause The Brain To 'Itch': UC Professor Investigating Why Certain Tunes Get Stuck In Our Heads
Songs Stick in Everyone's Head
Researcher confirms existence of 'earworms' / 98% of people have had songs stuck in their head
The more simple the song and easy to repeat the more is the likelyhood of the song being stuck. So even mediocre songs can get stuck like Billy Ray Cryus' only known hit Achy Breaky Heart. He is now known as a father of a famous teenage star Miley Cyrus than for his musical career.
Billie ray cyrus & miley cyrus - achy breaky heart , get ready , get set , Don't go
But so much for the research, nobody knows how to get rid of them. But luckily it is not a serious affliction. Most of us get out of them one way or the other. So I end this post with a tribute to all such songs and to their makers - 'Can't get you out of my head' by Kylie Minogue.
Kylie Minogue - Can't Get You Out Of My Head
Labels:
Hindi Movie Songs,
Leisure
Monday, January 4, 2010
My Recession Signal
Way back in April of 2009 I posted a piece about the economic conditions at that time and how I came up with my own signal. I wanted to revisit that signal and see if it is giving any indications of the current time. Here below you can see the same image I took at that time.
April 2009
As we can see, the cold container was packed with all sorts of items. I revisited our signal in September 2009. You can see that from the image below.
September 2009
As you can see things appeared to have improved but not by much. So I decided that it was too preposterous to call an end of recession at that time.So three-four months later I took the picture again. Here is the image of the same refrigerator.
January 2010
Voila!! Santa Claus must have rained in a lot of gifts during 2009 holiday season time. Looks like people are spending more outside on food. So here it is, our recession indicator is showing that the Recession is over.
But as anyone can tell, this is not an exact science. It only indicates the situation at my work place, because the uncertainty that we(my colleagues and myself at work) went through in mid 2009(there were some layoffs and re-org) is over and people at my work place are more comfortable. We are seeing more relaxed spending habits when it comes to eating lunch. There is no way I can say the same situation exists across the city, leave alone across the country. Also I did not record the time when I took the pictures. It is important because, the image can tell a different story based on when it was taken, like post-lunch and pre-lunch. Pre-lunch can tell we are in recession and post-lunch can tell we are out of recession and all this signal switch in just one day and few hours.
So far I have based my views on visual observations. For an index to have any meaningful value, these observations have to be quantified. Quantification of this signal to make up an index opens a slew of problems. Like what and how do you quantify? Do you take the number of items? This has many problems like one day the items can mostly be beverages and the number of items will be lot more than a day when lunch bags are more. Should we consider the volume occupied? It poses a very huge problem of measuring the volume of items occupied. The best measure is to find how many people are bringing their lunch to work from home. But this involves conducting a survey of the people working. On and on we can go with the shortcomings!
If the above mentioned trivial shortcomings of making the index a scientific quantifiable value are cleared, this signal does have some wings. Just like Case-Shiller Home Price Index became popular during the recent/current recession, similarly my own index based on my recessional signal will become popular. I will get to be on TV and write books about it. hmmm....
April 2009
As we can see, the cold container was packed with all sorts of items. I revisited our signal in September 2009. You can see that from the image below.
September 2009
As you can see things appeared to have improved but not by much. So I decided that it was too preposterous to call an end of recession at that time.So three-four months later I took the picture again. Here is the image of the same refrigerator.
January 2010
Voila!! Santa Claus must have rained in a lot of gifts during 2009 holiday season time. Looks like people are spending more outside on food. So here it is, our recession indicator is showing that the Recession is over.
But as anyone can tell, this is not an exact science. It only indicates the situation at my work place, because the uncertainty that we(my colleagues and myself at work) went through in mid 2009(there were some layoffs and re-org) is over and people at my work place are more comfortable. We are seeing more relaxed spending habits when it comes to eating lunch. There is no way I can say the same situation exists across the city, leave alone across the country. Also I did not record the time when I took the pictures. It is important because, the image can tell a different story based on when it was taken, like post-lunch and pre-lunch. Pre-lunch can tell we are in recession and post-lunch can tell we are out of recession and all this signal switch in just one day and few hours.
So far I have based my views on visual observations. For an index to have any meaningful value, these observations have to be quantified. Quantification of this signal to make up an index opens a slew of problems. Like what and how do you quantify? Do you take the number of items? This has many problems like one day the items can mostly be beverages and the number of items will be lot more than a day when lunch bags are more. Should we consider the volume occupied? It poses a very huge problem of measuring the volume of items occupied. The best measure is to find how many people are bringing their lunch to work from home. But this involves conducting a survey of the people working. On and on we can go with the shortcomings!
If the above mentioned trivial shortcomings of making the index a scientific quantifiable value are cleared, this signal does have some wings. Just like Case-Shiller Home Price Index became popular during the recent/current recession, similarly my own index based on my recessional signal will become popular. I will get to be on TV and write books about it. hmmm....
Labels:
Economic Indicators,
Economy,
Recession
Sunday, January 3, 2010
My holiday season resolution - so easy a cave man can do it.
Holiday season is the worst time of the year for me. No, I am not a cynic, scrooge like person who hates holidays and the merriment that goes around in the society. But it is that part of year where I indulge myself in freeloading myself with junk. The fact that these junkies are right there in front of you and that they are free only makes it that much easier. If they are not in the work kitchen, they appear in the form of the multiple holiday lunch/dinner invitations you get to attend as part of work and social invitations. I don't mind an occasional indulgence, but these multiple indulgence opportunities are packed so close to one another within a short period of time of about six to seven weeks, that I end up causing increased burden on my scale. This burden on my scale causes guilt that takes the next six, seven months or even longer life style changes to lose those pounds off. I managed to lose those pounds off so far but they have long term repercussions, like increase in cholesterol etc and slowing metabolism with age only increases the difficulty of losing them.
This holiday season I decided to stay away from junk food. But junk food is a very generic term. I have become a fan of checklists recently. The checklist bug bit me via Atul Gawande's article in New Yorker titled well - The Checklist. So I made a checklist of items to make my resolution concrete and this list is as follows.
1. Cookies
2. Brownies
3. Fudges
4. Donuts
5. Muffins
6. Chocolates
7. Cakes
8. Candies
9. Dressings on Salads
10.Pop Corn
For a sweet toothed weak willed human like me, the list appeared like I was David going against Goliath. Having made up my mind I carried the list safely in my pocket where ever I went lest I forget what was on the list that I was to not eat. Mind you that this list was only meant for work and social gatherings, and not for food at home though I gave strict instructions to my wife to not bake any cakes or pies during this period. While I had defined the list so clearly, the other parameter that needed definition was the duration itself. The period was to start from 11/23/2009 to 1/10/2010. The begin date is a Monday on the week of the Thanksgiving holiday and the end date is my own arbitrary date as when the holidays goodies will stop showing up at work by the fairy from the sugar land. That's a total of 49 days and I was confident I could hold my resolve.
I prepared myself for the battle that was to come with Goliath(s).
Week One: Goliath did not show up. I win this round.
Week Two: Looks like Goliath is hiding. He is coming anytime soon. May be next week. Two down and Five to go.
Week Three: Time of reckoning. The event was a department lunch. There were many of the items on the list that I made up earlier, but in far fewer forms compared to last year. I stayed away from all the distractions that appeared on the lunch table. A colleague of mine came over to talk to me and said that she made the lemon seven-up cake that I liked. During a previous team lunch, I had really liked the cake. If I like something I go overboard with the compliments. So she said she thought about making some cookies, but remembered how much I and others had liked the Lemon Seven-Up cake and decided to bake the cake instead. Now I could say no. I took a piece of the delicious cake, partly due to my weakness for this cake and partly due to my desire to be nice.
Week Four: After my broken resolve during Week Four, I decided to change the rules a little bit. I took the baseball analogy 'Three strikes and you are out' - I allowed myself three infringements during this period. I had already committed an infringement during Week four and I have two more left. But surprisingly nothing else showed up during this week. There were no more lunch events at work and no goodies from vendors either. Last year I had about four lunch invitations that I attended by the end of the holiday season. This year so far just one.
Week Five: Nothing this week. Just two more to go now.
Week Six: After five weeks long unnecessary wait, there appeared in the kitchen a tiny green tin box with even tinier butter cookies. Since I had given myself three infringements and knowing by now that there are only two weeks to go, I treated myself to two cookies. I later found out that those were home made cookies by another colleague of mine. They were tasty and were loaded with butter. This led to a bet during a conversation with another colleague who was also trying to stay from junk to lose weight. I said that two of them together will not be more than 80 calories, and my colleague argued that they were would be about 180 calories as they were butter cookies. We went scientific over it. We found that the paper plate weighed 0.15 ounce and the plate with 4 cookies weighed 1.14 oz, so the net weight of cookies came to around 0.96 oz. My Fitness Pal tells me that 1 oz of butter cookies is 132 calories. So that's 132 calories for 4 cookies and simple math tells that's 66 calories for 2 cookies. Now I am clearly delusional over holiday season sugar deprivation.
Week Seven: Week seven has just begun and I am sure it will be another downer with no fight in sight. With one more infringement allowed, I am quite confident that I can sail through this week with having to use my third life line.
It is clear that the economy has a direct relation on reduced holiday spending by companies and individuals. Though the stock market has been showing signs of improvement for some time, companies more so than individuals are holding on their purse strings tight. It is about time I revisit my recession indicator. Hopefully 2010 will be better off and will give me a better fight that 2009. So far my scale has not moved far to the right and I am happy about it. If things go well, I might carry this resolution into the next holiday season.
Happy New Year to you all.
This holiday season I decided to stay away from junk food. But junk food is a very generic term. I have become a fan of checklists recently. The checklist bug bit me via Atul Gawande's article in New Yorker titled well - The Checklist. So I made a checklist of items to make my resolution concrete and this list is as follows.
1. Cookies
2. Brownies
3. Fudges
4. Donuts
5. Muffins
6. Chocolates
7. Cakes
8. Candies
9. Dressings on Salads
10.Pop Corn
For a sweet toothed weak willed human like me, the list appeared like I was David going against Goliath. Having made up my mind I carried the list safely in my pocket where ever I went lest I forget what was on the list that I was to not eat. Mind you that this list was only meant for work and social gatherings, and not for food at home though I gave strict instructions to my wife to not bake any cakes or pies during this period. While I had defined the list so clearly, the other parameter that needed definition was the duration itself. The period was to start from 11/23/2009 to 1/10/2010. The begin date is a Monday on the week of the Thanksgiving holiday and the end date is my own arbitrary date as when the holidays goodies will stop showing up at work by the fairy from the sugar land. That's a total of 49 days and I was confident I could hold my resolve.
I prepared myself for the battle that was to come with Goliath(s).
Week One: Goliath did not show up. I win this round.
Week Two: Looks like Goliath is hiding. He is coming anytime soon. May be next week. Two down and Five to go.
Week Three: Time of reckoning. The event was a department lunch. There were many of the items on the list that I made up earlier, but in far fewer forms compared to last year. I stayed away from all the distractions that appeared on the lunch table. A colleague of mine came over to talk to me and said that she made the lemon seven-up cake that I liked. During a previous team lunch, I had really liked the cake. If I like something I go overboard with the compliments. So she said she thought about making some cookies, but remembered how much I and others had liked the Lemon Seven-Up cake and decided to bake the cake instead. Now I could say no. I took a piece of the delicious cake, partly due to my weakness for this cake and partly due to my desire to be nice.
Week Four: After my broken resolve during Week Four, I decided to change the rules a little bit. I took the baseball analogy 'Three strikes and you are out' - I allowed myself three infringements during this period. I had already committed an infringement during Week four and I have two more left. But surprisingly nothing else showed up during this week. There were no more lunch events at work and no goodies from vendors either. Last year I had about four lunch invitations that I attended by the end of the holiday season. This year so far just one.
Week Five: Nothing this week. Just two more to go now.
Week Six: After five weeks long unnecessary wait, there appeared in the kitchen a tiny green tin box with even tinier butter cookies. Since I had given myself three infringements and knowing by now that there are only two weeks to go, I treated myself to two cookies. I later found out that those were home made cookies by another colleague of mine. They were tasty and were loaded with butter. This led to a bet during a conversation with another colleague who was also trying to stay from junk to lose weight. I said that two of them together will not be more than 80 calories, and my colleague argued that they were would be about 180 calories as they were butter cookies. We went scientific over it. We found that the paper plate weighed 0.15 ounce and the plate with 4 cookies weighed 1.14 oz, so the net weight of cookies came to around 0.96 oz. My Fitness Pal tells me that 1 oz of butter cookies is 132 calories. So that's 132 calories for 4 cookies and simple math tells that's 66 calories for 2 cookies. Now I am clearly delusional over holiday season sugar deprivation.
Week Seven: Week seven has just begun and I am sure it will be another downer with no fight in sight. With one more infringement allowed, I am quite confident that I can sail through this week with having to use my third life line.
It is clear that the economy has a direct relation on reduced holiday spending by companies and individuals. Though the stock market has been showing signs of improvement for some time, companies more so than individuals are holding on their purse strings tight. It is about time I revisit my recession indicator. Hopefully 2010 will be better off and will give me a better fight that 2009. So far my scale has not moved far to the right and I am happy about it. If things go well, I might carry this resolution into the next holiday season.
Happy New Year to you all.
Labels:
Economy,
Holiday Season,
Resolutions
Monday, December 28, 2009
Identity and gender issues in today's world at work
James Chartrand is what one can say a successful author in a very competitive field of freelance writing. He is a regular contributor at copyblogger and his own blog Men with Pens is listed in the top 10 blogs for writers. But the success did not come easy for him. Not too long ago he was struggling to make the ends meet. He just came out of a bad relationship and has two daughters to care for as a single parent. He was earning just $8/week writing articles on the net. But he persisted and was doing better consistently. Despite his best efforts, he had hit a plateau in terms of earning. Then he decided to do something drastic. He made a conscious decision to switch his identity - he became a male. Yes, James is female and became James(it's her pseudonym) when (s)he decided to change her online identity. Not unexpectedly enough, James saw an increased respect and billing for her work. James would sometimes submit two resumes with both identities and invariably her male identity would get more interview calls, had more success getting the assignments and better rates. The story of James Chartrand in her own words can be found here.
Few years ago I was working in Dallas. My roommate was also my classmate while I was at WVU. One day he had a question - 'What is a good Indian name for a woman?'. I did not get the point of that question. So I asked him why he wanted a female name. He said that there was a woman at his work who was a consultant and her current work is about to come to an end. She seems to have trouble getting calls for prospective work. She felt that her identity as an African American was the cause. I sympathized with her as I have seen immigrants both male and female changing their identities especially names to more European/anglicized ones. But this was the first and only instance I have seen a US citizen resorting to a tactic of reverse identity change for reasons which are highly stereotypical. So she took an Indian identity following the stereotypical association of Indians being good with computers. I believe the reason for immigrants taking up anglicized names are similar - avoid being screened off of potential jobs, wanting to blend in and other reasons.
Women have taken up the identify of men in the distant and near past for reasons well known. The most popular is the Joan of Arc. Another lady Dorothy Lawrence was an English reporter who dressed up as a man to participate in the World War I. There are examples in folklore as well where women who have taken up identify as men. The story made famous by the Disney movie of the same name is that of Mulan based on a Chinese Ballad. It is interesting to note that all the above instances are of women dressing up as men to fight in wars. War catches attention like nothing else.
I am sure there were many other instances where women had taken up an identity as men in the ages where women rights were not honored and were legally not considered as equals to men. But after so much advancement and after successful women's rights movement, one would think that those stories are of the past and women do not have to resort to those sorts of measures. It is failure of our society to provide equal opportunities to women as those provided to men.
Is is a well known fact that gender wage gap exists. It appears to be a saving grace when you consider the fact that women fare better than men during recessions. More men tend to get laid off during recessions. But if you take a deeper look, it is only because more women work in recession proof jobs like those in education and health care whereas men are more employed in industries like manufacturing, banking and construction which get impacted by a recession more severely. So the 'faring better' fact can only be attrributable to the industries than the fact that society somehow sees women to be better working than men. Also the fact that women only earn about 80 cents to every dollar a man makes tends to sheild them from getting laid off. Moreover, women are less likely to negotiate than men, while women who do negotiate are seen in a negative light and tend to be penalized subtlely. It appears discrimination does exist and it will take some time before we call it quits on Equal Pay Day.
In the words of James Chartrand 'if just a name and perception of gender creates such different levels of respect and income for a person, it says a lot more about the world' we live in.
Few years ago I was working in Dallas. My roommate was also my classmate while I was at WVU. One day he had a question - 'What is a good Indian name for a woman?'. I did not get the point of that question. So I asked him why he wanted a female name. He said that there was a woman at his work who was a consultant and her current work is about to come to an end. She seems to have trouble getting calls for prospective work. She felt that her identity as an African American was the cause. I sympathized with her as I have seen immigrants both male and female changing their identities especially names to more European/anglicized ones. But this was the first and only instance I have seen a US citizen resorting to a tactic of reverse identity change for reasons which are highly stereotypical. So she took an Indian identity following the stereotypical association of Indians being good with computers. I believe the reason for immigrants taking up anglicized names are similar - avoid being screened off of potential jobs, wanting to blend in and other reasons.
Women have taken up the identify of men in the distant and near past for reasons well known. The most popular is the Joan of Arc. Another lady Dorothy Lawrence was an English reporter who dressed up as a man to participate in the World War I. There are examples in folklore as well where women who have taken up identify as men. The story made famous by the Disney movie of the same name is that of Mulan based on a Chinese Ballad. It is interesting to note that all the above instances are of women dressing up as men to fight in wars. War catches attention like nothing else.
I am sure there were many other instances where women had taken up an identity as men in the ages where women rights were not honored and were legally not considered as equals to men. But after so much advancement and after successful women's rights movement, one would think that those stories are of the past and women do not have to resort to those sorts of measures. It is failure of our society to provide equal opportunities to women as those provided to men.
Is is a well known fact that gender wage gap exists. It appears to be a saving grace when you consider the fact that women fare better than men during recessions. More men tend to get laid off during recessions. But if you take a deeper look, it is only because more women work in recession proof jobs like those in education and health care whereas men are more employed in industries like manufacturing, banking and construction which get impacted by a recession more severely. So the 'faring better' fact can only be attrributable to the industries than the fact that society somehow sees women to be better working than men. Also the fact that women only earn about 80 cents to every dollar a man makes tends to sheild them from getting laid off. Moreover, women are less likely to negotiate than men, while women who do negotiate are seen in a negative light and tend to be penalized subtlely. It appears discrimination does exist and it will take some time before we call it quits on Equal Pay Day.
In the words of James Chartrand 'if just a name and perception of gender creates such different levels of respect and income for a person, it says a lot more about the world' we live in.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
The gift that was not to be.
This Thursday when I reached work, on my port replicator was a small package. I was pleasantly surprised and quickly opened the lid on the cylinder box. I was about to open the contents in the see through polythene bag inside the box when my manager came to my desk. He talked about some project I was working one. Without thinking much, I had assumed it was a gift from him for the holidays.
I opened the contents in the plastic package and I found that it was decal. It was like an epiphany - the decal had the saying 'Family - is one that believes in one another'. My kid and the family are in India and I felt like this was a divine message for me. Epiphany or not, I decided to thank my mystery gift giver. I checked with my first suspect on my next meeting with him. My manager said that he did not and asked me to tell him if I find who it was as he found it amusing. I went around the work, preposterously thanking people only to be more desirous to solve the mystery when they said it was not them who was the generous gift giver.
As Murphy's laws states, you will find the thing you are looking for in the last place you look. So as one last attempt, I called my colleague who had already gone for the day. He said that it was he who placed the decal on my desk. The mystery had finally been resolved. I felt like Sherlock. But as it happens with me always, the story has a twist in the climax.
He mentioned that it was the item that I had ordered from him as part of his girl's Girl Scout donation drive at work. Well my euphoria was gone. It is not a gift as I had thought. But then again the story would be simple if it ends there. The item I had on my desk was not the one that I wanted. I had ordered a photo frame.
We have been in a photo and photo frame buying spree in the last few months. We have been decking the walls in our homes with the pictures of our baby. First it was the small frame for holding the regular 4X6 photo when the kid was 3 months. By the fifth month, the frames graduated to the 8X10 size. Recently, on the heels of my kid's sixth month, we have been to the picture people and were amazed by the quality of the pictures they take. We wanted to buy every picture they were showing us. They took about 16 good photos for 2 costumes. I am glad we did not take more costumes. Cooler senses prevailed after finding the price of each portrait-$18 per portrait picture. We still managed to end up buying 5 of them and the frame size graduated to the mighty 10X13. At this rate, we need to move to a new home like a mansion or something with really huge walls for the picture frames and their ever increasing sizes at the alarming rate of 35 sq. in./month((13*10-6*4) sq. in./(3 months)).
Since we were in this photo frame buying spree, I had ordered a picture frame from my colleague when he came for his daughter's girl scout donation drive. I wanted to kill two birds at the same time; bought the frames though they were expensive so I can feel good about contributing to charity. Santa must have said from the north pole -'Bad, Bad boy. No gift for you this year as you have been naughty'. Thus, the curtain had finally dropped on this drama in my life with me receiving an item I did not want in the guise of a deceiving epiphanous gift.
I opened the contents in the plastic package and I found that it was decal. It was like an epiphany - the decal had the saying 'Family - is one that believes in one another'. My kid and the family are in India and I felt like this was a divine message for me. Epiphany or not, I decided to thank my mystery gift giver. I checked with my first suspect on my next meeting with him. My manager said that he did not and asked me to tell him if I find who it was as he found it amusing. I went around the work, preposterously thanking people only to be more desirous to solve the mystery when they said it was not them who was the generous gift giver.
As Murphy's laws states, you will find the thing you are looking for in the last place you look. So as one last attempt, I called my colleague who had already gone for the day. He said that it was he who placed the decal on my desk. The mystery had finally been resolved. I felt like Sherlock. But as it happens with me always, the story has a twist in the climax.
He mentioned that it was the item that I had ordered from him as part of his girl's Girl Scout donation drive at work. Well my euphoria was gone. It is not a gift as I had thought. But then again the story would be simple if it ends there. The item I had on my desk was not the one that I wanted. I had ordered a photo frame.
We have been in a photo and photo frame buying spree in the last few months. We have been decking the walls in our homes with the pictures of our baby. First it was the small frame for holding the regular 4X6 photo when the kid was 3 months. By the fifth month, the frames graduated to the 8X10 size. Recently, on the heels of my kid's sixth month, we have been to the picture people and were amazed by the quality of the pictures they take. We wanted to buy every picture they were showing us. They took about 16 good photos for 2 costumes. I am glad we did not take more costumes. Cooler senses prevailed after finding the price of each portrait-$18 per portrait picture. We still managed to end up buying 5 of them and the frame size graduated to the mighty 10X13. At this rate, we need to move to a new home like a mansion or something with really huge walls for the picture frames and their ever increasing sizes at the alarming rate of 35 sq. in./month((13*10-6*4) sq. in./(3 months)).
Since we were in this photo frame buying spree, I had ordered a picture frame from my colleague when he came for his daughter's girl scout donation drive. I wanted to kill two birds at the same time; bought the frames though they were expensive so I can feel good about contributing to charity. Santa must have said from the north pole -'Bad, Bad boy. No gift for you this year as you have been naughty'. Thus, the curtain had finally dropped on this drama in my life with me receiving an item I did not want in the guise of a deceiving epiphanous gift.
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