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𝗟𝗲𝘁'𝘀 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗣𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀

As many of you know, I was hospitalised for Covid, and spent about ten days in the ICU. If you listen to this video, but tune out whatever Manish is saying, you will hear in the background a cacophony of all kinds of medical devices beeping.

If you listen to these sounds for a long time, for instance, 240 contiguous hours interspersed by a few precious hours of sleep, you start finding melody and patterns. You start visualising the code that emits these infernal sounds. And, most importantly, as an engineer, you start imagining a utopia of open source hardware and software based medical monitoring devices with better UIs that let the nurses turn off these meltdown inducing sounds. Or better, the code is smarter and just doesn't emit noise when unnecessary.

A patient monitor is a device that costs about ₹40K/$500 in India. It continually monitors your SpO2, pulse rate, and some other vitals (they stick electric probes all over your torso). Every half hour or so, it inflates a blood pressure monitor permanently velcroed to your non catheterised arm. I was hooked to a monitor made by Philips. Every time my SpO2 fell below 90, it started beeping loudly. This typically happened every time I talked, ate, or took a piss (In an ICU you can only pee into a can while lying on your bed. Walking to the loo is heavily discouraged, and the first time you ignore the nurse, stand up, then swoon and fall back on the bed, you learn why. Peeing into a can as an adult was quite embarrassing and made my SpO2 and other vitals drop due to stress.)

Now, when my SpO2 went back above 90, the bloody thing didn't stop. It kept beeping. Loudly. Kept on beeping perpetually till someone was kind enough to come press its yellow button. Now, here's the crazy thing. I didn't have a call bell at my bed. (A lot of corona ICU wards were created in a hurry; maintenance is also an absolutely hassle.) So I had to shout out for the nurse. Which, guess what, would dip my SpO2. See how delicate a darling I am. So it was like crying wolf. You called the nurse or ward girl to turn off the beep. She came and saw a large red 88 and said the damn thing is just doing its job.

Anyway, they eventually understood what's going on, and also understood how annoying the sound was to me. I had to go back to the basics. My first resume, written in 2003, carried the tagline "I like to make technology user friendly". This wasn't user friendly. The beeps had all become comfort noise to them, they were tuned out, but it annoyed me at two levels - the noise annoyed me, and the realisation that some dolt of an engineer and product manager thought such persistent noises were a good idea in 2020, annoyed me even more. They appreciated all that and then tried to keep my bed quiet at all time. The other beds kept howling 🙄

Note also that manipulating these devices using the buttons and dials on them is hard. They are mounted high, higher than six feet, so they can be seen from a distance, over the head of anyone standing between them and the viewer. They are mounted behind the patient bed, so there's stuff like ventilators or bedside tables that need be moved out of the way to access them. And then the nurse needs to often clamber over something to get to the height of the buttons. Terrible, terrible design.

Perhaps India is behind the rest of the world. Perhaps the world has moved on to wrist mounted buzzers that alert nurses. But I have a reason to suspect they haven't. My hospital had very good quality ventilators. They had a fancy name, so they were likely European. They beeped continuously when working, and the nurses liked it this way, because they could tell the machine is working. So, in an ICU, each nurse was supposedly listening to the continuous beeps from three different ventilators, and telling it apart from the beeps of the nine other ventilators in the same room 🙄.

So basically, every contemporary medical device with a microprocessor in it beeps. It gives out comfort noise that keeps the nurses happy. The machines need to change. And hospital culture needs to adapt to the fact that we engineers can assure you that your machines are working, your patient is normal, and alert you when man or machine breaks, in better and more reliable ways than only sound.

I'm interested in building such devices, and the ecosystem - you need network based monitoring, reports, handheld devices that can manipulate the UI of a nearby monitor, wearable alerting devices, and perhaps even wearable wireless sensors for patients that can eliminate those cumbersome cables. Please leave a comment here if you'd like to get involved.

PS: I'm not interested in building a ventilator. That thing howls like wild the moment the person it is serving skips a breath, hiccups, does anything with their breathing. For good reason. A single missed breath is an indication of distress. Within seconds, you might lose the patient. The devices are adaptive, and they listen to every breath you take and tweak themselves. Even a basic BiPAP is adaptive. A misconfigured ventilator gives you lung fibrosis for life - imagine what a malfunctioning one can do (umm, inflate your lungs till you explode). Anyone who claims they can design a reliable electro-mechanical device with multiple feedback loops and continuous life-critical fraction-of-a-second monitoring in the middle of a pandemic, is lying. If the world didn't invest in ventilators before the pandemic, too bad. The tried and tested ventilator manufacturers, who perfected their product over decades, will extract their pound of flesh, and there is no way around that now.

Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said the Opposition will boycott the proceedings of the House till the Government accepts their three demands. “Government to bring another bill under which no private player can purchase below MSP, MSP to be fixed under formula recommended by Swaminathan Commission, and Government agencies like FCI shouldn’t buy crops below MSP,” Azad said.

This is pretty much what Sainath also demanded in the interview with Faye last evening. He said he is drafting a bill. Looks like the opposition either listened to him, or to farmers, or applied common sense, and arrived at the same conclusion.

https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEIv0K0LaBiGG-yoHhB2Q9MAqGAgEKg8IACoHCAow3rvTBDD89X4w8ZXmBQ?hl=en-IN&gl=IN&ceid=IN%3Aen

𝗕𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘀𝗺𝗮 𝗥𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗱 from a B+ Covid recovered donor for

Patient: Shivanika Singh
Age: 38
Hospital: LNJP, Delhi Gate

Please contact Mr Jainender immediately on 9811509045

[Donor should have recovered from Covid (tested negative) at least 15 days ago]

This should be good. Informative, with facts, anecdotes and stories from the ground.

Edit: This was very informative. Sainath placed so many facts and real life stories before the audience. Hopefully Faye will put up a recording soon.

मेरी यह विनती है कि इस बेरोज़गारी के दौर में अगर किसी को काम मिलना चाहिए, तो वो सबसे पहले कंगना है। अब इसका वेलापन बर्दाश्त नहीं होता।

It is my humble request that in this era of global unemployment, if anyone deserves to be given work first, it is Kangana. This country cannot tolerate her joblessness any more.

I always find this amusing. The newspaper headlines and editorials are busy prostrating in front of Modi. Meanwhile, every cartoonist in the same papers is criticising and lampooning him.

That is the difference between an artist and a journalist, I suppose. The pen might succumb to the realities of रोज़ी-रोटी, but the brush does not.

Wear a mask
Wash your hands
Maintain distance
Avoid all unnecessary human interaction

Or... face the rather frightening consequences of contracting Covid-19

(Don't keep "handling" your mask. If you touch it, the purpose is defeated. Make sure it covers your nose and mouth. Make sure others you meet are also wearing a mask that covers their nose and mouth.)

I have barely heard of Ginsburg before today, so I won't put up a pretend obituary. I'm just concerned that the US is now going to descend into further turmoil. I've already written earlier - I find this system of judges being political appointees, and being obviously biased towards liberalism or conservatism, rather scary.

Not like we Indians have a better system. But thankfully our judges retire...

Nilay: Fresh coconut water.

Me: Fresh?

Nilay: Yes. I killed the coconut, took out the water, just now.

Me: Okay 🙄

Nilay: Drilled a hole in the skull, took out the water.

Me: Thanks. I'll drink that now.

R.I.P. Akshay. Though we never met, the kids and I had the honour of going through some of your achievements in the dining hall of the Bull's Retreat last year. And the boys spent some time with your lovely daughter, who has clearly had a very well rounded upbringing thanks to her adventure and outdoor loving parents.

This country needs more people like you. Who love the outdoors, walk the talk, and instill the love of nature in future generations.

The Dilliwallah wrote in this morning's Hindustan Times about my struggle with Covid-19. Do read the article if you subscribe to the paper, or click here https://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi-news/covid-19-and-the-icu-experience/story-fimU6LzSpVqJaBrmCfUiTI.html

I wasn't planning on publicly talking about my sickness. But now that @[100002153045695:2048:Mayank Austen Soofi] has written so poignantly about it, all I want to add is, please do not underestimate this disease. If you are not careful, it will find you, infect you, and then put you through the worst torture of your life.

Wear a mask
Wash your hands
Maintain physical distance
And be a little bit afraid

A little bit of fear is not a bad thing. Covid put a relatively healthy 40 year old like me with no co-morbidities, no history of lung disease or smoking, into an ICU, hooked to a BiPAP machine that forced air into my lungs 24x7. Fear that fate, please, if fear helps you make sensible decisions.

I have survived only because of the love, attention and care of my family, friends and the medical team. Folks worked round the clock to make sure I was getting the right treatment and nutrition, that I was motivated and positive, that I wasn't worried about my children. A stranger donated blood plasma 🙏🏽, receiving which was likely the turning point of my healing journey. Please do not put your loved ones through this much anxiety and trauma. Always wear a mask and avoid any human interaction you can.

9/11.
Never Forget.

Allowing the Tibetan refugees to peacefully protest when Xi visits 👎🏽

Using the Tibetan refugees to beat the shit out of the PLA 👍🏽

We Indians are always just using everybody...

tangled web

What the hell is wrong with American Police. Will they shoot anyone who is black and walks? And when the person doesn't walk and submits, they choke him to death.

So if you're black and cops show up, you are basically dead.

In this episode, am I the only one concerned that there is profit to be made in pirating NCERT books.

As in, why is NCERT selling books to students at so much more than the material cost, that someone could literally make crores of rupees in reprinting them.

Isn't the public funding the NCERT to make these books? Then why recover operational or content creation costs from students?

As someone who can always be found working in pyjamas and an old T shirt, I find this meme deeply offensive. Suits do not define success. You can sit in a corner of your house in your night clothes and still be running things (into the ground).

And you thought pre wedding shoots are cringey.

What a shocking shame.

Judiciary में अभी जान बाक़ी है ❤️

Hindi language chauvinism in full display. Perhaps an unfortunate choice of guest by NDTV - the lady felt Hindi was disrespected when others started speaking in their own mother tongues.

I cannot overstate the importance of this activity.

The Eighth schedule of the Indian Constitution is powerful. It is important. (See below why)

Coorgi, Pahadi, Chattisgarhi, Bhojpuri, all of these are living languages. Each has more speakers than Sanskrit. By an order of magnitude. Are they taught in schools, even state board schools? No. That changes once they make it to the Eighth Schedule.

Do not confused languages with scripts. A language without a script is NOT a dialect. Marathi, Hindi, Sanskrit and Nepali all share the Devanagari script. Yet they feature independently in the Eighth. A shared script, vocabulary or grammar does not make your language any less than another.

A scheduled language has state protection. The Sahitya Kala Academy awards literature in that language. CDAC and NIC work on adding glyphs of that language into Unicode. AIR records media in that language for posterity.

(A decade ago, the railway board invited me to present a proposal on printing Indian languages on railways tickets. The impetus was the noise that our Tamil friends are always making about Hindi being on tickets but Tamil missing. But the board couldn't just implement Tamil. If they went beyond English and Hindi, they'd have to include everything in the eighth. Meiti has recently had its script added to Unicode, so we would have to support that too. Cool, isn't it? Get your language in the Eighth.)

(Unicode code pages are a shared global public copyright-free resource. Once the glyphs of your script are in Unicode, eventually they end up in all major operating systems. Applications like Facebook automatically support current and future Unicode codepages. I've been typing Indic scripts on computers since 1991 - trust me there is tremendous value in having your language/script digitised.)

As I was saying, IR has decided to cut its losses on this useless passenger traffic business, and focus on freight. I cannot fault their decision. The government simply hasn't been giving them the subsidy they need to bear the operational losses of passenger traffic.

Increased freight traffic on IR will be a win for the environment, highway safety and traffic congestion.

Reduced passenger traffic is also a win for the environment. Use Zoom to meet people. Stop hopping around.

आगे ही आगे बढ़ाएँगे कदम

Ha hah. My kids are used to my work desk, which never has less than four displays.

Kavin: You know how pain is just a warning that there is an injury. There should be a mode or setting that turns off pain. I would rather have a short life where my hand got chopped off and I didn't even notice and then died of bleeding, than live a long life where my chopped off hand kept hurting all the while I'm in surgery and healing.

Me: You've... really thought this through in graphic detail. If all pain were turned off, do you think I'd do anything to fix my chronic back pain?

Kavin: Yeah, that would lead to about 1% of the jobs being lost. But those doctors and therapists could find other work.

Me: No no. I mean, the back pain is there because of a back problem. If I don't address the problem, because it doesn't hurt, eventually my back will just collapse. No?

Kavin: Still... (basically doesn't care about my comments, is totally sold on his own idea.)

Me: How about a dial 🎚️, so you could dial down the pain instead of turning it off completely.

Kavin: ⏻

Nevertheless, I shall continue to feel guilty about food that our household throws out, simply because we didn't like the taste, or worse, didn't feel like eating that particular food item before it went bad.

Teacher: Students, study about Colombia

Kavin: Dad, let me tell you about Pablo Escobar.

Me: ओ तुझे और कुछ नहीं मिला 🇨🇴 में स्टडी के लायक?

Kavin: What could be more interesting? Did you know, he is one of the richest people in the world.

I was in a bit of a pickle earlier today. Not sure if I did the right thing, so looking for advice.

Nilay was a little upset about his studies. I called him over (I was in bed) and he literally just started bawling tears. Long story short, turns out there are two teachers who are going very fast, and nobody understands anything in class.

He goes to the kind of school where this isn't a problem. Tomorrow we will write to the teachers and, mostly, things will just improve.

But then I asked him, why he was so upset. If the teacher is going too fast and no one understands anything, that is the teacher's problem, not his.

He said that all his classmates are able to understand later on and finish their homework; only he was struggling with his assignments. I said they might be making a note of the topics covered in class, and then doing self study. I offered to help him understand the concepts.

He says that if the other kids do well and he doesn't, his grades get spoilt. (Now we were on very familiar territory. Shout out to anybody else who has suffered IIT Madras and is reading this - RG.)

So why are his eighth grade grades important to him? Grades determine college, he says.

And why is college important?

I was asking for an incredulous look, and I got it. See, I've taken the kids to my college, and a few other colleges of repute. They look forward to attending a good college, and doing big things after. They understand college is important for success.

So now I started rattling off the names of all the people he knows, who didn't go to college but are successful. Or who went to college and studied one thing, but are now doing very well in another field. Or who did a lot of college and are now not working, or not successful.

So my question to you is - is this kind of mixed messaging confusing to a child. In the usual course I tell my children that education is important, classes can't be missed, homework needs to get done on time, and college is important. But when they struggle, I tell them that their happiness is paramount, grades aren't critical, college is dispensable, and learning is about understanding and not marks/grades. Is this mixed messaging going to set them up for failure?

(I also gave him personal examples. I came second in all of Delhi in maths competitions in grades 5 and 7. I came third in all of MP in the INMO in grade 11. Yet my CBSE grade 12 maths marks were some 48 or 52%. Even so, I cracked MPPET and made it to NIT Bhopal the same year, and cracked JEE the next year. So grades, especially school/board grades, can be tricky. A more relevant example was from IIT days. I flunked a few courses - all courses where the professor did a terrible job of teaching. A tenured prof used to teach us EMEC - they were teaching motor winding to 5 year program communication system students, because they just didn't have enough professors available to teach. There was nobody to complain to, and the bad profs would never be in their rooms after hours to explain concepts. So, not doing well in a subject is often a two way street.)

This is amazing news. Railways stations and bus stands in India have become hangout spaces. Entire families come to see off one person. Airports charge a pretty penny for the privilege of entering the building to receive a passenger. And entering the building with a departing passenger is simply not allowed.

Hope those who enter a station without a valid ticket are penalised heavily.

Kavin (in a whiny tone): पापा! यह क्या होता है? Just because we are learning how to take notes, they are making us write the same notes in five different formats.

Me: एक तो they are teaching you how to take notes. Nobody taught me how to take notes. I had to figure it out on my own. कितना struggle किया मैंने। Ungrateful. Useless.

Kavin: You're useless. I can't even complain to you.

Me: ये कहाँ की दोस्ती है कि बने हैं दोस्त नासेह
कोई चारासाज़ होता कोई ग़म-गुसार होता

At this rate, what if their school also teaches them to cook, clean and manage their emotions. Then they'll grow into self sufficient adults.

Oh wait...

Me, every time someone asks me to do something stupid/risky.

Birds don't nest in a day. That rich brat hadn't used this vehicle for days, that's how the bird nested there. Cordoning off a vehicle that you anyway don't use much, because you have ten times the number of vehicles than family members, is useless drama that we don't need.

Here are some questions to ask of these filthy rich sheikhs:

Why do the royal families have exclusive rights over oil and gas found under their country's land? Why don't all citizens get an equal share of national wealth?

It's 2020. When is your nation getting democracy? Who needs princes anyways?

Your wealth is made by pumping out oil and gas from the earth, which your consumers quickly convert into carbon dioxide and other toxic gases. Air pollution is an externality that you don't pay for. But the world and it's children do. You care about this bird and it's kids. What don't you care about the millions of kids exposed to vehicular emissions? Or those millions exposed to floods, droughts or rising sea levels due to climate change.

Your wealth stinks. You stink, for not having worked for a single day in your life. Stop living off your inheritance and do some actual work, you scum. When it's 8:30am and you need to get to work at 9 in the only car you own, we'll see how much you care about bird's nests, you shawarma eating dramebaaz.

The important thing is that I still fit in these pants after 12 years. And Nilay doesn't fit in his pair even though they were way oversize for him.

(This is a 12 year old pic)

5 down. 3 to go.

Bangalore to Ooty in my almost 20 year old tin can Omni. For folks surprised that I drove to Spiti by myself - Ooty was my first hill drive ever, and its ranked treacherous.

Me: So what do you wanna do?

Kavin: I want to open a restaurant.

Nilay: You can't even cook!

Me: 🤷🏽‍♂️

Kavin: Wait, what do I wanna do long term, or today?

If you don't begin your Sunday early, it just refuses to take off 🙄

Us, riding in the car.

Me: There's a bug in the car.

Kavin: Ya Nilay! Stop being a bug.

Me: 🙄 really, Kavin?

Kavin: There's a fly! There's a fly!

Me: Exactly.

Kavin starts swinging an empty coke bottle wildly.

Me: Capture the fly in the bottle.

Nilay: That's the kind of expectations our school has from us all the time.

Me: You go to a good school, ok. Stop whining.

Me: But that was really witty 😂

PS: First soda drink we had in months. Looks like you don't need soft drinks if you don't step out.

Now that my kids understand the insect food chain, they're happy cohabiting with spiders and geckos. Been a while since we used mosquito repellants or nets, even though we have so many indoor plants.

Of course, the absence of flies and mosquitoes could also be a function of the amount of fumigation in my neighbourhood.

We are far from a perfect nation, and we have a lot of change to make. But in gaining our independence, at least we got rid of these scum.

Heard this song after 27 years and it still gave me goosebumps. I'm used to hearing this as a marching song, sending energy down our veins.

What a beautiful rendition, @[534141870:2048:Abhinav Chandola]. Thank you 🤗

Public university > private college

Private school > government school

This is what a mixed economy has given us. The rich build, own and operate what they can (schools), and make the government build what is too expensive to build and run well on private money (universities).

Newton lived for 84 years but is reputed to have died a virgin.

They never tell you that, when they tell you to choose science or engineering as your profession.

This.

Outrage in the name of God. Yes.

Outrage when God's earth is destroyed and children forced to breathe toxic air. No.

मैं सोच रहा हूँ

What if the Railways has realised that the passenger business is too much bother. It anyway loses money on it. And it creates a lot of hassles also. Who wants to deal with individual customers anyways?

This theory would make sense if the Railways is doubling down on freight traffic. The tracks are empty; no need to prioritise those express trains. Lakhs of employees who usually deal with passengers, such as booking clerks and TTs, are available for other work.

Is there a renewed focus on parcel and freight? Have the revenues gone up? I suppose it is hard to track an increase in market segment share when the entire economy is in slide.

"उस की याद आई है साँसो ज़रा आहिस्ता चलो
धड़कनों से भी इबादत में ख़लल पड़ता है"

अब क्या पता कि राहत इंदौरी साहब ने ऊपर वाले को कुछ ज़्यादा ही याद कर लिया। या ऊपर वाले को मुशायरे कि महफिल सजाने की बेसब्री थी।

ख़ैर। अपने जाने में भी वो लाखों भक्तों को कुछ पल की खुशियाँ बाँट गए। कहाँ मिलते हैं ऐसे लोग?

Is there any situation where tipping is a good thing?

In the US tipping is used to pay nearly zero wage to waiters. Tips are a factor of your attractiveness and chattiness, not how well you served a guest.

In India it reminds me bakshish. There is a huge class factor associated with it. Does anyone even tip from the goodness of their heart in this country? It always seems to be "ले, रख ले"

And now all these delivery apps want you tipping riders. First, you make people work for you full time, but treat them as contractors. Pay them per delivery or per mile instead of by the hour. No benefits, no job security. Then, you want customers to "support" the rider, while your own valuations go through the roof and dozens of your execs make over a crore an year. What rot?

Tell me what you do.

Then tell me what you'd rather do.

(do, for a living)

Kavin and I did the math. There was a ¾ᵗʰ chance Nas would hit the raw egg on his head.

Nilay can't believe we brought maths into the video. But hey, they're engineers who meet at an engineering college. So, maths!

That's it. मुझे इमरती खानी है। अभी की अभी। Screw Corona, I'm going to a हलवाई।

Just received this over WhatsApp, along with an audio recording. Modi is literally being used as an idiot filter here, "If you trust Modi, then surely you're dumb enough to trust us scamsters".

कुछ इश्क़ किया कुछ काम किया
~फ़ैज़ अहमद फ़ैज़

कुछ इश्क़ किया कुछ काम किया
वो लोग बहुत ख़ुश-क़िस्मत थे
जो इश्क़ को काम समझते थे
या काम से आशिक़ी करते थे
हम जीते-जी मसरूफ़ रहे
कुछ इश्क़ किया कुछ काम किया
काम इश्क़ के आड़े आता रहा
और इश्क़ से काम उलझता रहा
फिर आख़िर तंग आ कर हम ने
दोनों को अधूरा छोड़ दिया

Saurabh: I need your breadboard.

Me: Don't have one.

S: You do. Check your drawers.

Me: My drawers?

Mandela ♥

Yea! This will effectively kill all cheques. What joy!

https://www.livemint.com/money/personal-finance/new-clearing-process-for-high-value-cheques-soon-how-it-works-11596698349784.html

आज कई नक़ाब उतरेंगे। बहुतों की तथाकथित निरपेक्षता पर से पर्दा उठेगा।

इस देश के हम्माम में, कुछ तो बेबाकी से खाकी चड्डी पहने हुए हैं। और बाकी जितने हैं, वो लगभग सारे के सारे नंगे हैं।

इन 'मुँह में राम बगल छुरी' रखने वाले नंगों से तो, खाकी चड्डी वाले ही बेहतर।

@[588885640:2048:Vishnu Karthik] goals!

I'd literally give an arm to put our current gutless leaders through similar grilling.

Trump may be lying. He may be stupid. What he isn't, is a coward. He can take a grilling and not lose temper.

You don't know how good you have it compared to us Indians, you ungrateful Americans.

And just look at the attitude of this reporter. Forget Modi, did any reporter ever speak to MMS this way? Subservience is programmed into our press.