Tag: good time

On Schooling

Usually I’m quick to defend the school where I studied between 1986 and 1998. I made lots of good friends there and generally had a good time. Of late, however, in discussions on schooling, I find myself mention teachers from that school who I considered particularly horrible, mostly for their method of teaching.

Yesterday I was chatting with a classmate from this school who now works in the education sector, and she happened to mention that she considered her schooling to be mostly “a waste” and that she didn’t learn too much there. And I quickly concurred with her, saying all that I had learnt was at home, and school didn’t teach me much. So what explains my love for the school even though they might not have done a great teaching job?

From 1998 to 2000, I went to another school, where again they didn’t teach much, and instead assumed all of us went to JEE factories which would teach us anyway. What made things bad there, though, was that they didn’t treat us well. That school had a strict disciplinary code which was enforced more in letter than in spirit. Teachers there had a habit of loading us with homework, calling us for Saturday classes and having surprise tests. The problem with School 2 was that not only did they not teach well, but they also made life miserable in several other ways. The only redeeming factor for that school was the truckload of interesting people I got to meet during my two years there.

So what explains my love for School 1 despite the fact that they didn’t do a great job of teaching? The fact that they treated us well, and left us alone. The uniform wasn’t very strictly enforced, as long as you wore blue and grey. The school had an explicit “no homework” policy. Exams happened only according to schedule and there were few assignments. Even in class 10, we had three “periods” a week dedicated to “games” where we played volleyball or basketball rather than wasting our time in “PT”. Teachers were mostly very friendly and the atmosphere on the whole was collaborative and not so competitive.

My friend might think she “wasted” her 10 years in the school because she didn’t learn much there, but I argue that it was better than her going to another school where she wouldn’t be treated as well and where her life wouldn’t have been as peaceful.

Metro Notes

One of the advantages of being jobless is that though you’re poor in terms of money, you’re rich in time. So you have all the time you want to do things that give you random kicks, such as riding the new Bangalore metro on the second day of operation. The reason I chose to go today was that I had to anyway go to the MG Road area on some work, but also that the second day is a good time to see things early, while not getting caught in a mad rush.  My decision to go today was reinforced by a report in today’s paper that while there was much clamouring to get on to the first train yesterday, the second train was half-empty.

The supposedly showpiece MG Road station is not yet complete. You still can’t get to the station from the Plaza theater side, which is the “logical” side to get in if you’ve come to MG Road for shopping or generally hanging out, or even if your office is there. You need to cross over to the parade ground side at the Cauvery signal and then make your way through some narrow barricades before you get to the entrance. You get frisked at the entrance (this might end up being a bottleneck) after which you get to buy tickets. There was a queue of about 10 people when I got there.

There is still scope for the ticket staff to become more efficient, and for people to learn to carry exact change (especially given that you have tickets for Rs. 12, Rs. 14, etc). However, I would imagine that in the long term, most people would end up using a travel card, so the pressure on the counters may actually decrease. One disappointing thing was that they didn’t sell return tickets. I would have to stand in queue again at Indiranagar.

You have escalators only for going up, and you have to take the stairs when you exit the station. I don’t know if this is a method to cut costs or lead-time, but it would be a letdown if you had to take the stairs down each time, especially since the stairs were a major bottleneck in exiting the station when I disembarked from MG Road on the return journey. Another bottleneck while exiting at MG Road was the turnstiles. On your way in, the ticket booths are the bottlenecks so the turnstiles are free. Not so on the way out. However, I don’t see much scope for putting more turnstiles there so I don’t know how the metro will cope with increased demand.

The train is quite small (3 bogies long) but I’m told it’ll be increased to 6 soon. Maybe the train wasn’t as full as expected but I found the temperature in the train too cold on the way to Indiranagar (it was ok on the return journey when the train was full).  The indiranagar station was incredibly convenient and not crowded at all. Entry, exit, ticket purchase and turnstiles were all extremely smooth, and the view from the station platform is stunning, especially towards the ulsoor side. Speaking of views from trains, the metro has now given scope for a new set of hoardings for the city. These hoardings can be put up at the “metro level” along the metro line. I’d be surprised if no businessman were to take this opportunity.

The train itself doesn’t move too fast, especially since there are so many curves on the route. On the straight MG Road stretch, however, the train moves well at a faster rate. The announcements on the train still need some work. The grammar of the Kannada announcements is atrocious, and the funniest bit is when they try and explain “mind the gap” in Kannada and Hindi. The hindi announcements also carry a very strong Kannadiga accent.

There are some other measures that the metro corporation has taken in order to get people acquainted with the metro. There is usually an officer standing at the turnstiles who tells you how you should swipe (on entry) or deposit (on exit) your token. Then, there are security guards at the platform itself who make sure passengers are standing back when the trains arrive, and that they are not blocking the doors when it’s closing.

The journey from MG Road to Indiranagar was extremely quick and painless. I believe that the metro has already demonstrated its ability in making the city smaller, and I can now only hope that the full stretch of the metro (including the underground stretch at Majestic) gets completed fast. I can’t wait for the day when I take a short walk to the Jayanagar metro station and do two quick journeys to reach MG Road or Indirangar easily, safely and painlessly.

Opening up, yet again

I go through these introverted and extroverted phases. I started off as a loner, and then something happened during a class picnic to Coorg in 1997 that changed me, for what I thought was forever. I suddenly started opening up, made new friends, talked more to my existing friends, gave up all my inhibitions and basically had a good time. That phase continued maybe for a year and half, or maybe more, and then I shut down again. In IIT, I started oscillating wildly. At times I’d be aloof and keep to myself, at other times I’d walk across to the coffee shop in front of my hostel, buy myself a cup of cheap Nescafe and sit down, with random people, and talk and talk and talk.

Between five and two years back, I went through an “online extrovert” phase. I’d forever be online. When available, I’d have an average of four GTalk windows open, chatting with different people about random things. The first thing I’d do when I switched on my home computer would be to find people who were online and message them. It was a lot of fun, though the person who ended up being my wife found it weird that I spent most of my time online, chatting (it did help, though, that she would often be one of the people I was chatting with).

Certain “life changes” and redefinition of priorities and some unexplainable stuff meant that I shut down once again around two years back. Ironically this came only a couple of months after I thought I’d truly opened up and gotten rid of my inhibitions. I suddenly had less time to just “be online”. I’d hardly talk to people. GTalk being blocked in office meant that I disappeared off so many radars which were tuned in my direction. I had less time for “frivolous chatting” after work, and one by one I got “out of touch” with all those people I would chat with regularly. Things were quite good otherwise in life so I didn’t exactly bother, I must mention. Among the side effects of this, I think, was that my writing quality suffered. As did my network, of course.

To illustrate, I spent three weeks in New York City in January 2010. Then, I made every attempt to contact friends and acquaintances who lived in that area. And met them for lunches and dinners fairly regularly. I tried counting the number of people I met during that trip, but it was easy to lose count. I had a good time, I must say. In February 2011, I was in New York City yet again. This time, though, I didn’t make any effort to meet anyone, didn’t inform anyone I was in town. I had most of my dinners alone, in a list of restaurants I’d gathered from a few friends. I met one relative, and one friend (this was by chance), and that was it.

Over the last few days I’ve started making a conscious effort to open up again. Once again, whenever someone suggests we meet, I make it a point to go. I’m making an effort to not bail out of social engagements citing “NED”. I met a friend for tea on Friday, another for tea on Saturday, had a long phone chat with yet another on Friday night and met a whole bunch of people I don’t often meet for dinner on Saturday. And I had a lot of fun in all of them! I do hope I can continue with this streak for a while, and also need to figure out how to expand my network. Anyway, the more perceptive of you would have noticed by now that I’m blogging a lot more nowadays.

Rafa and the Ranatunga Principle

Today seems to be a massive theory session. In the morning, I introduced you to the Mata Amrita Index. Now, as I write this watching the third set of (ok it’s the third set now – when I’m starting to write. for all you know, by the time I finish this, the match might be over) the Australian Open, I think it is a good time for me to introduce to you the Ranatunga Principle of energy management.

The Ranatunga principle states that:

When you don’t need to run, walk.

Yes, it is that simple. And if played an instrumental part in Sri Lanka’s victory in the 1996 Cricket world cup. Arjuna Ranatunga, the captain, was a massive guy. Yet, he was an excellent finisher, converting the ones into twos, and the twos into threes, running them hard, making everyone wonder where he managed to get so much energy and stamina from. The key to his performance was what this terriffic energy management.

He knew that the effort involved in each run wasn’t the same. There were a few that were “obvious singles” or “obvious twos” and he correctly realized that there was no point in running them faster than was necessary. And he simply walked them, saving up his precious energy and stamina for the runs that required more energy. In fact, if you recollect, the defining picture of Ranatunga in the 1996 world cup was his nudging a ball to third man and lazily walking a single.

Similarly, in tennis, due to the unique game-set-match scoring system, not all points are of the same value. Some points are more equal than others. For example, it doesnt’ matter if you lose a game at love, or if you lose it after making 30. However, certain points (break points, especially) can make a tremendous difference to the game, and it is important that you win those.

Tennis, especially of the non-grass court variety, is a highly energy-consuming game. We saw on Friday the Nadal-Verdasco game being played for almost five hours. The final also promises to go on for a similar length of time. Even on grass, as we saw in the last Wimbledon, tennis can become an endurance game. To remind you, Rafa Nadal beat Roger Federer in the final back then, taking the fifth set 9-7 (Wimbledon has no tie-breakers in the last set). It was his superior energy-management and stamina-management that saw him through that day.

It had been a long time since I had seen Rafa play, and looking at him play today, it is clear that he has understood the Ranatunga principle well. In fact, he seems to be an excellent exponent of the same. A while back, Federer was leading 40-0, and Rafa just gave up and allowed Federer to take the game, choosing to preserve his energies for more important point. I’m not saying that Rafa has been completely giving up. What I’m saying is that he seems to be doing some kind of a “value analysis” for each point, and then deciding how much energy he is willing to spend on it.

I don’t know if he is a math stud, but you don’t need to be one in order to do simple Ranatunga analysis. You can get a computer to work out the relative values of points for you depending upon the match score, and broadly remember that when you are playing. And once you have done that a few times, you will automatically be able to figure out how much effort to put into each point (remember that you don’t need to know complicated projectile physics in order to catch a ball).

A lot of managers, especially fighters, don’t like the Ranatunga principle. Their management philosophy is that you always need to be f resh, and be prepared, and if you don’t dive on a regular basis, you won’t be able to dive when you actually need to. However, the Ranatunga reply to this is that as long as you know how to dive, and have general practice in diving, you will instinctively dive when you need to, and you should make sure that you have enough energy to dive.

Extending the analogy to work, there are some managers who like to push their subordinates to meet deadlines even when it isn’t important in the larger scheme of things. Their argument here is that their subordinates should have enough experience in diving so that they can use it when they need it. The Ranatunga response to that is for the subordinate to be smart, and to see the larger picture, and to call the manager’s bluff about the criticality of the project whenever it turns out to be not critical.

Ok, so Rafa has won the third set and leads the match 2 sets to 1. If this ends up being a pure endurance 5-setter, I would put my money on Rafa. He seems to be showing superior implementation of the Ranatunga principle.

Lazy Post – Search Phrases Leading To This Blog

this is yet another “lazy post”. One for which I don’t really need to do too much work. Harithekid recently brought out a list of search terms that have resulted in people hitting his blog. Looking through my google analytics statistics, I find quite a few funny/unusual phrases that have led to people reaching my blog, so I thought I should share it with you.

I don’t want to make this list too long, since some good stuff might get lost in that case. So if you think you reached my blog by searching for a phrase that you thought was interesting and you don’t find that in this list, my apologies. Maybe next time I’ll include the phrase that you searched for in order to land up here.

The top spot of course goes for “pertinent observations”. This is closely followed by people searching for “noenthuda”. Maybe because I’ve never put my real name anywhere on this site, there aren’t many searches for “karthik” either as a word or in combination with other words that lead up to here.

Ok so getting to the gems:

  1. “iit madras” + blog + girls
  2. bitchy logos
  3. broken engagement second thoughts
  4. gay in iimb
  5. how to avoid absent mind with south indian food
  6. how to make my husband stop consuming alcohol
  7. positive black relationships
  8. top reasons marriage engagements break in pakistan
  9. why don’t northies learn a new language
  10. does mckinsey employee non iits
  11. hypothesis for muslims are not terrorist
  12. bleeding hearts by nassim taleb reviews

So I think this is a good time to ask you how you stumbled across my blog. Did you reach here by way of searching for something unusual? Or did you find link to blog on someone else’s blog? Or is it through twitter? Or facebook? Or through a friend’s google reader shared items? Do leave a comment and let me know.