Some people should not be allowed to have kids. Or at least name them.
I am hiring engineers. Reaching out over WhatsApp with a "Hi <First Name>".
This candidate. Her name is Honey. Her actual first name, not her pet name, is Honey.
So I went "Hi Honey". And then I recoiled.
It's just wrong.
Imagine talking to her at work? "Honey can you get me some MAX232's from the IC drawer." Nope. Nope nope nope.
Who are these people naming their daughters Honey?
So yeah, I ended up actively discriminating against a candidate today, because using her first name made me feel creepy about myself.
The more I think about this, the worse it gets. Imagine there is a client in the office, and I am addressing this 21 year old woman as Honey, while I am 46. And this client has no context, no idea, what the woman's name is. They're just overhearing.
Do people not apply their brains at all when naming their children?
I am sending out postcards today, after many many years. If you want one with an exotic Indian philatelic stamp, message me your address right now. And promise me you will reply with a postcard.
OK maybe some of you will get a card not a postcard. I have little greeting cards from WWF and Sabda from 1992.
So, I made a thing earlier this year, and forgot to talk about it.
https://web.thinvent.in
It's a website I designed and coded from scratch using Python, Flask, Jinja, Bootstrap, etc. It exposes our internal ERP system and product database as a customer facing ecommerce site.
I've recently purchased some shirts, which later turned out to not have pockets. Benetton, and multiple small boutique brands in Goa, all are at fault.
While we were all busy trying to get pockets in women's garments, the industry snuck up and counter attacked by removing them from men's garments too. And don't even get me started about new trousers with stitched up pockets.
If this isn't the surest sign of lawlessness in this country, I don't know what is. I've been scammed.
Kavin made this video to "explain a hw question to my friend". I asked him for the code and he said "it's messy" because "it's his first time".
There's been an ongoing tussle between me and him. I want him to do more with his time than his usual engagements - studies, piano and crochet (and other crafts). I've been trying to get him to work on a software project or community service project that solves a real world problem.
He'd rather use his time to do unstructured stuff - to experiment and explore.
I guess he won the argument with this "boredom leads to creativity" video.
A local bar was so sure that its bartender was the strongest man around, that they offered a standing ₹10,000 bet.
The bartender would squeeze a lemon until all the juice ran into a glass, and hand the lemon to a patron. Anyone who could squeeze one more drop of juice out would win the money.
Many people had tried over time (weightlifters, pahalwans, etc.) but nobody could do it.
One day a woman came in and said "I'd like to try the bet."
After the laughter had died down, the bartender said okay, grabbed a lemon, and squeezed away.
Then he handed the wrinkled remains of the rind to the lady.
But the crowd's laughter turned to total silence as the woman clenched her fist around the lemon and six drops fell into the glass.
As the crowd cheered, the bartender paid the ₹10,000, and asked the lady, "Who are you? Are you a bodybuilder, a weightlifter, or what?"
Sharing another customer service woe, this time with HDFC Life. I purchased a life insurance policy. They emailed me a letter. The letter has a very old office address on it. Said letter also has a link to a portal where I could update the contact details. The portal displayed a different address - which I have never been associated with. It also displayed a different email address and phone number from that on the letter.
I wrote to them, asking where they were pulling this data from. They responded with a form that I must fill up in order to have the address updated. And of course I needed to attach proofs to substantiate this address.
Indignant, I wrote back, specifically asking _them_ to provide copies of documents basis which _they_ had established these two physical addresses as mine. I also asked them for a copy of the form filled by me when applying for the policy, and a copy of the address proof I had provided then.
No dice. They keep replying back asking _me_ to provide _them_ with a proof of my current address, while not even acknowledging my concerns - where are they getting these addresses from, and how many printed letters with my private financial information have they despatched so far to these random addresses.
What is happening in corporate India? Is everybody just constantly reading from a script with no application of the mind? Is there fear and terror in the customer service departments, such that no trace of human intellect must be betrayed and only the bidding of the higher echelons must be done, customer satisfaction be damned.
Rhetorical rant: What is this manic obsession with data collection by companies? When the government does it, we well understand what their motives are. After all they've foisted the half baked CKYC system upon us. I have traced one of the bad addresses to that database, from where it is sending it to all other financial institutions. Of course I never provided that address, nor could I every have produced any "proof" for that address. How, then, did one of the financial institutions upload this junk address into the system? Why would HDFC override the address I explicitly gave with garbage from this system? And do citizens have any forum to knock to fix all this swapping of garbage?
100,000+ business users have been successfully migrated to desktop Linux by thinvent.in. Banks, railways, manufacturing, retail - there isn't an industry we haven't transformed.
Lose your Microsoft addiction and move to a secure and stable stack that respects the mission criticality of your business. Let's talk.
In recent years I have seen a distinct change in the attitude and tone of emails from sellers in China.
We regularly get spam from manufacturers in China, insisting they become our suppliers for finished computers. I am constrained to reply to the persistent ones, telling them that we are manufacturers ourselves and do not need their finished goods. At the maximum, we might source small components such as power switches or high speed cables.
Earlier, this would be met with praise or congratulations. Now, they are incredulous. "But you can't manufacture in India". "How do you make electronics in India?". "That is not possible. If you already have another good supplier in China and don't want to change, just say that".
This total domination of the market, this success, has gone to their heads. And equally responsible are those Indian brands who import fully finished goods from China and then falsely claim that they make in India, or are merely doing screwdriver assembly of SKD kits without any inputs into design or technology. They are enabling this belief among the Chinese that Indians are incompetent and lie about their achievements.
Anyway. I hope this is the beginning of the end. As someone with 20+ years of electronics manufacturing experience, I can confirm that making electronics is not rocket science. Which, by the way, is a science that we Indians excel in.
A couple of weeks ago, Nilay and Kavin were doing a survey in rural Tamil Nadu for Eureka Homes (AID India). They were making a map of the village and figuring out what families need support.
I tagged along on the first day. Beyond the edge of the village was... I don't know the right term... a shrine where the village guardian, some other Gods, and a sacred banyan tree were there. At the very edge was a temple still under construction. While standing beside it we were met by a man who lamented the bad state of the temple, and implored us to do something about it.
By the third day Nilay had had it. This story apparently repeated in many village they surveyed. "There are no hospitals, no clinics. The schools are tiny and absolutely run down. The panchayat building is in shambles. And all these people care about is temples. One village had more than five temples and no functioning school!"
I tried to explain to Nilay that TN is a progressive state. The HDI is one of the highest for a large state. Per capita GDP is also high, and rising fast. The state government is progressive and focuses on social equity. He was unimpressed.
When you speak to people in Goa, issues like the environment, cutting of trees, quality of roads and schools, civic sense related to throwing garbage or driving properly, water and electricity - this is what people talk about. They don't talk about churches or temples - that's not a social issue to discuss.
But I really wonder - if TN hasn't moved beyond temples as an "infrastructure" issue, where are rural Bengal and Bihar?
Traveling out of Goa, food is always a pain. Not just the quality, but the portion sizes in Goa are also quite good. And the pricing is reasonable, unless you visit tourist traps. I don't know in what world this qualifies as a sharing plate.
As long as I had nothing but my cot and my books, I was happy. Now I have nine chickens and a rooster, and my soul is troubled.
The property has made me cruel. Whenever I bought a chicken I tied it to a tree for two days, to impose my domicile on it, destroying in its fragile memory the love for her former residence. I mended the fence of my yard, in order to prevent the escape of my birds, and the invasion of four- and two-foot foxes. I isolated myself, fortified the border, drew a diabolical line between me and my neighbor. I divided humanity into two categories; I, owner of my chickens, and the others who could take them from me. I defined the crime. For me, the world is filled with suspected thieves, and for the first time I cast a hostile look on the other side of the fence.
My rooster was too young. The neighbor's rooster jumped over the fence and began to court my hens and make my rooster's existence miserable. I stoned the intruder away, but they jumped over the fence and looted at the neighbor's house. I claimed the eggs and my neighbor hated me. Since then I saw his face on the fence, his inquisitive and hostile gaze, identical to mine. His chickens passed the fence, and devoured the wet corn that I dedicated to mine. Other people's chickens seemed like criminals to me. I chased them, and blinded by rage I killed one. The neighbor attributed great importance to the attack. He did not want to accept financial compensation. He gravely removed the corpse of his chicken, and instead of eating it, he showed it to his friends, with which the legend of my imperialist brutality began to circulate in the town. I had to reinforce the siege, increase surveillance, increase, in a word, my war budget. The neighbor has a dog determined to do anything; I am thinking of purchasing a revolver.
Where is my old peace of mind? I am poisoned by distrust and hatred. The evil spirit has taken over me. Before he was a man. I am now an owner...
I've been reading some ill-informed, stupid "forwards" by people claiming that solar energy is bad for the environment. I am in the mood for a rant today, so here goes:
1. "Solar panels consume more energy than they make". Before 1990, some solar panels consumed more energy to be manufactured than they produced in their "useful life". This energy consumed, included the energy required to mine and refine the materials such as polysilicon and silver that go into solar panel production. A lot of these panels were specialised panels such as those that go on to space stations.
Today most solar panels break even in one to four years! And their useful life is 20 to 25 years. Within the first year of operation, a solar panel would have generated more electricity that was consumed to create it. If you think your solar panel will take 20 years to pay back its carbon footprint, you are living in the 80s.
2. "Solar panels lead to toxic waste". OK, lots of points here. a) solar panels are way way less toxic than regular electronics - even headphones and remote controls that people so frequently throw away (source: I manufacture electronics for a living). b) the government of India, like most governments in the world, mandates that manufactures compulsorily recycle all e-waste they product. It is up to the consumer to return their used electronics to the producer. The producer is also required to collect and recycle a certain amount of electronics every year through their own initiatives. It isn't perfect, but the system actually works well. (source: I own a company that is required to recycle e-waste and we do it all the time).
So if your solar panel is ending up in the landfill with the trace amounts of heavy metals it might have in it, that is entirely on you. Recycle it responsibly - you already paid for the recycling when you bought it.
3. "Solar panels have a limited life". There is no end of life of solar panels. They just become "weak"; they don't die. When you replace your solar panels after 20-25 years of use, it is because you want more powerful solar panels on your roof. But that panel still works, and most likely in a country like India, it will end up on the rooftop of a poor family in a village somewhere, where it will keep making small amounts of electricity for many more decades.
"Operating" a panel costs effort - mostly to keep the panel clean. Most middle class Indian households depend on external labour to upkeep their panels. That is why at some point we would replace our old panels with new shiny ones. But a poor family can maintain its panels on its own, and can therefore eek electricity out of "weak" panels for a long time using the free labour of its family members.
4. "The right answer is to consume less". I am someone who can quote E. F. Schumacher from memory, yet I disagree. Less is not always the right answer. We should be consuming more and more energy for purposes like healthcare and education. Even reducing unnecessary toil in the household using machines is a good thing to do. Let us stop romanticising domestic labour and chores - only those who are willingly blind to the caste, class and gender imbalance baked into domestic work would do that. Even climate control using electricity is a good thing. Blindly saying ACs are bad doesn't help. Indian summers are hot and keeping indoors cool helps improve productivity and health. Indian winters are bloody cold in a lot of places and electricity is a great alternative to fireplaces.
Next rant will be about how EVs are bad for the environment. Some people are shills for the oil industry and don't even realise it.
यह फूल मिला मुझे, पणजी में, मंडोवी के किनारे। तमाम मुश्किलों के बावजूद इसने जिंदा रहने की ज़िद की। जो मंहुसियत कभी अहमदाबाद में फैलाई गई थी, नदी के किनारे को concrete में ढलने की, वो अब गोवा में भी फैल रही है।
I've often said that #travel doesn't have to be expensive. In Dandeli we stayed at a campsite called BeOnTheTrail that charged us ₹1000 per night for pitching three tents. This included the use of all facilities on their campsite including a bathroom with geyser, and a campfire each night. Boating was ₹100 per head, kayaking was perhaps ₹300. In Gokarna we are paying ₹500 for pitching a tent at a campsite by the beach. Food at both places was about ₹2000 per day for six people. Petrol has been expensive, costing us more per day than stay and food, but we could have used public buses instead of a car.
That said, I recognise that travel is a privilege. Not everyone has a job that they can work on remotely, or can get leaves from. Not everyone has a car to just up and go. We've paid dearly for the space to store all of our camping gear. I have Sharada to take care of my plants when I'm gone. The list goes on. Just because I'm not spending much on this trip doesn't mean that I don't have other hidden means that enable this trip.
So, umm, if my travel pics encourage you to take short breaks more often, that's very nice. If they make you feel that you don't have the means to enjoy life as much as others, then I'm truly sorry I've made you feel this way. I wish I could tag Instagram pics in a way that you could filter out the travel pics.
I went camping with some friends three years ago, to Kasauli. They reached out to say that that trip would always be a core memory for their kids. And that my kids would have so many more such memories. Which is very generous of them, but it is also true. If you do have the means, and you have kids, yet you just sit on your butt all weekend, or all you do is luxury travel that doesn't let your kids connect with nature and with rural India, then really, get off your butt and go somewhere.
Can somebody with knowledge of how airline ticketing works, guide me about this?
Direct flights from Delhi to Goa on Thursday 28 Sep are for ~₹10,000. With a stopover, its ~₹9,000.
On the same day, flights from Delhi to Bangalore via Goa are for ₹5,130.
This isn't just a MakeMyTrip thing. Google Flights shows the same pricing.
Indigo will not fly your ass direct to Goa for anything less than 10K. But if you're going to Bangalore, it'll fly you via Goa for half that price. How does this pricing make sense, from an operations research perspective?
Can a passenger book the DEL-BLR flight and just walk out at GOI?
Kavin just woke up in the middle of the night, so I asked him
Are you okay? Yeah. Are you Donatello? What? No. What about Michelangelo (Grunts. Rolls over and goes back to sleep.)
No don't judge me. This is important to me. If my kid is secretly a teenage mutant ninja turtle, or worse, a reincarnated Renaissance artist, then I need to know. And when you ask them past midnight they can't lie.
It's 2023 and my kids have discovered ring back tones. Please call them and tell them it's too 90s to have an RBT. Coz I can't be exposed to their terrible choice in "music" every time I call them.
I hugged a man from Chennai, and he smelt of a Madras morning. Kollam, Suprabhatam, sambar, and women oiling their hair on the pyol.
(Describe the smell? I'm not a perfumer, but I'd say it was the smell of coconut oil that had been reapplied repeatedly, without ever being washed off completely. And a hint of sandalwood.)
These peanuts or potatoes, whatever you wanna call them. Sticking out of the ground, a hybrid between a geodesic dome and a hangar. A structural engineer's dream come true.
This man's great grandfather was born in Pakistan. So was mine. He makes kahwa; I make computers. But judging from our bellies, we are both equally prosperous.
If I and the kids were to vacation from the 2nd to the 7th of August, where could we go that isn't flooded or falling over? Kashmir? Ladakh? Nagaland? Someplace offbeat you've been to perhaps, and is good during the monsoons.
Madrasi makkal! How is the sea there? Tranquil or choppy? Not agni nakshatram levels of heat no? Can we make a surfing trip to Mahabs?
