Time is inversely proportional to money

After the 'Anna Hazare Incident', I started to dig into the details about the level of corruption in India. As we all know it has percolated till the rock bottom. But we never knew the details of it. How a honest man is automatically turned into a corrupt common man. Lets take the example of constructing a building.

There is a Constitution of India(CoI), containing more than 395 articles in 24 parts, 12 schedules and 110 amendments, that governs all the visible money and the Corrupt Constitution of India(CCoI), containing only articles named 420, that deals with all the latent money. Believe me there is a national standard involved in corruption. I don't know how it developed into a perfect system without a written copy.

Getting back to your problem. First you need a land. Land rates are usually high. But they are actually higher than that in paper. One of the main reason is that we need to pay a percentage as tax and an equal percentage to the concerned officer (kinda like tipping the waiter, governed by CCoI). By underestimating your land you can cheat the government and the officer in-charge. The CoI lets the concerned authority to keep any project file in pending for 30days without any reason. After 30 days if you still don't get your file processed then you can escalate the issue to his superior. And of-course the 30day rule applies to him too. This goes up to five levels and you cannot directly approach the fifth level. You gotta play the game level by level. By the way each level means more money. All these government servants do this to compensate all the "party fund" they donated the ministers to get this job. There has been some times when I wondered what kinda idiot would donate 20 lacs to get job paying 1.5lpa.

Lets just assume, you somehow managed to get the land. Then you file for the permission to construct the building. Where you should go through lot of troubles like measuring the width of the nearby road, height of the high tension wires that pass nearby etc. which of-course is the duty of another gov. servant who has never seen his office. After every clearance is obtained you submit a blue print of the building to construct, which needs 15 signatures which just means 15months. In any level they can find an error, like 2/3rd of 100 is 66.67 and you might have written 66.66, to be high priority and reject your file. That just means start from the scratch and add 15+all the levels of escalation months. You also pay Rs.50per sq.ft(CoI) as a security deposit to the board. You are supposed to get it back if you have built your building according to the approved plan. But who are we kidding. It is like asking a troop of monkeys to guard the bananas.

After construction you get clearance from the CMDA/any concerned board, that you have followed each of their regulations, which is needed to get water, electricity and all necessary supplies.
Now you have just moved to a new department, so a new drama start by a pilot episode.If you plan on filing a law suit on any of the officials, just remember that the judges are bought by the highest bidders with the lawyers as mediators and you are not willing to pay a penny. If you take this issue to a reporter, that just means he earned a vacation stay at Andaman & Nicobar Islands on the government funds.
The CCoI is a tough opponent and it will be a very difficult game unless you have the cheat code. And the cheat code is "MONEY".

                               1
Waiting time  α  ------------
                            Money

Zero money implies infinite waiting time.
More money implies less waiting time but never zero waiting time.

For those people who actually believe there is still one honest Indian left somewhere, I would like to point out that he is probably a saint who has no earthly possessions and answers to no earthly laws whatsoever. I write this article wishing nobody would publicize this and I wouldn't get into any trouble by it. 

One Fine Morning

It was 8 in the morning and I was still awake. So I was asked to go to the ration shop and update the book(An extra sheet for 2011). I thought no big deal. But when I reached there, I saw a big queue though the shop was not yet open. Around 50 souls standing and still there was pin drop silence. When I realized I am supposed to stand in this queue for another hour or so I died a little. There were few people with newspapers/business magazines and the rest with a cold stare. I joined the herd with a cold stare, for newspapers, according to me, were always a weapon to kill gross insects. I decided to make it interesting on my own. I imitated the standing postures of all the people in-front of me and the face expressions of all the people behind me.

As my fun time continued, half hour later I got a phone call. I didn't want to be the odd man out in the queue. I asked the lady next to me to save me a space and she smiled. I stepped aside and took the phone call. When I returned, she got all worked up and started speaking like an attorney in a very loud voice. Her points were

• I left the queue.
• To be fair I should join the queue at the last position again.
• Since I had already waited half hour she will let me join the queue beside her but never in-front of her.

I figured one person is not going to change anything. Plus she accepted to help me(or at-least I thought so). But then the guy in-front of me(I don't know what he thought) offered a position in-front of him. Before I could turn down his kind offer, she started yelling at him and he started yelling at her and a group of people joined in each persons defense and a whole debate went on. Nobody knew who threw the first stone. Finally I somehow stopped the quarrel and stood after her. But two guys pulled me to the front saying "நீங்க வாங்க தம்பி. நம்ப பாத்துக்கலாம்", and forced me to stand there. Effectively I created one extra enemy on earth.

Nallathu & Kettathu

This is a long over due post. A while ago, I went on a trip to all the famous Navagraha temples. Although I was not interested in the trip at all and also I was tricked into the trip, I kinda enjoyed the trip. For some unknown reason I was giving a lot of importance to things which generally I wouldn't even care. For example

A lot of interesting things written on the back of the vehicles(நல்லவங்களே இல்லையா!)	The Transport Company that openly accepts rash driving with spelling mistakes
The Blocked pedestrian way	Biggest Lock
The Untidy Pond with funny sign	Warning sign that everybody will neglect

The Quiet Temple
For most of this tour I was bitching non-stop. Finally we arrived at a place where I had to shut up or I will draw the attention of the rest of the temple. Yeah the rule in that temple was to keep quiet when we come around the God. So there I saw the line after which I had to put an end to all my stupid comments.
The Shut Up line
	In this temple I found a puppy that somehow managed to climb the stairs and reach the end of the floor. Now it was about to jump but afraid to. So it started to bark(a cry for help). It took around two and a half minutes for me to reach there and help the puppy. By this time around a hundred to a hundred and fifty people passed by. Given that the temple was a quiet place every one heard (only) it. If all these people were more interested in a pure divine heart and doing "good" deeds, Why not help the puppy. I wish I had a picture of the puppy. But I had a lot of cold stares from my fellow passengers for this little detour from my bakthi rounds.
The Interesting Beggars
This only made me angrier. So I protested to go into the next temple. At the entrance, while I had a lot of free time to kill, I happened to meet the interesting set of beggars. There were six of them and they had a common vault. They made interesting deal with the people there. People coming of the temple need not look for change to give money to each of them. If they give 10 bucks, these interesting people will return four back. I was standing next to them and watching all this. There arrived a pissed off fat lady. She got down from an auto and had a huge fight over the tariff. Some how they settled over Rs.55. Neither her nor the driver had five bucks. While this was going on, our friends ran out of change and asked me if I had any. I happened to have around 25 bucks in

change. I got back 20 and asked them to keep the rest. She looked at this and was confused what was going on here. She walked up to them and handed out 10 bucks and asked for the change in a very rude tone, thinking they ware just giving off change. Then flew a lot of uncensored words. She got scared and embarrassed and ran into the temple and the auto driver chased here inside and I don't know what happened next.

K Man

Of all the cities I visited I remember nothing but Kumbakonam. This was a place where every street has a temple. Surprisingly every one of them were famous. All the people I saw there were all clean, blindly believing in God, etc etc. In short a nice group of idiotic people who spent too much time and money in temple. Then I remembered one of our friends is from Kumbakonam. Mr.K aka Srinivasan K. Considering the place where he came from Mr.K is either சேற்றில் முளைத்த செந்தாமரை or செந்தாமரை குளத்தில் தெறித்த சேறு. I don't know which one is the perfect metaphor but he is definitely the odd man out in the whole city.

Bell the CAT

From a few question papers of model CAT i found out that those questions that involve multiple answers, for ex: if line A and D are correct. The option reads

1)c-d
2)a-b
3)a-d
4)b-d

So if you find one of the lines is correct(say A) and the unable to find the other, you still wont be able to find the correct answer(confusing between b,d).

Reverse tracking this you can guess the answer by finding the most repeating options, in this case A and D. I tried this on around 30 similar questions. Without reading the question i just guessed the answer from the options and I got 22 correct. Given a penalty of 25% for every wrong answer, i still get 67%.
This works good on match the following type of questions too. A new trick on the verbal ability.
Hey Kitty kitty kitty. Here I come !!!

Fluid Motion

I was too bored and I started to wonder about the properties/behavior of fluids. air in particular. I was in the back seat of the bus on the drivers side or the silencer side. Government automobiles are the worst form of pollution. I was thinking where does all this smoke go when the bus travels at a faster rate. I mean at slower speeds we can see the smoke but at higher speed ??? As soon as i got access to the internet I started digging for details. There are very few articles explaining displacement properties of air. But the behavior of water has been explained very clearly. I took the same concept and applied it to air. Considering air is lighter and less cohesive than water, it is easier to move and so displaces a lot. Turns out a greater part of the smoke is redirected to my face(The passenger on the back seat). Also if it is after a rain the air is dust free and humid(still lighter- lower part of the atmosphere has O2 (Atomic weight-32) replaced by H2O (Atomic weight-18)) means the smoke is on your face even at lower speed.

Following this I started to wonder about the train and the occasional water droplets on our face (foot board passengers) even after the rain stops. Roughly calculating I got the result that those water drops can be the stagnant water on the roof or the flush of a toilet. Also I was assuming the old fashioned trains where there was gap between the compartments.

But remember that I am basing this on the behavior of homogeneous fluids and our test cases are all heterogeneous fluids. Which means this whole thing I am saying MAY BE wrong.
Also remember the words of bajji vaayan MAY BE also means MAY NOT BE.

20 Kilometers

 
Thursday September 9th 2010, Chennai, Annanagar West to Perungudi.

The interesting journey started @2100 hours. I thought it is already late and the roads will be free and I will reach my destination in another 40 minutes. I was so confident that I asked my sister to call me after 40 minutes. My sister did call after 40 mins and I covered only 1.5km. Yup! I forgot that it was a weekend and the Friday was also a government holiday. Anyway I covered around 5km and some car driver and an auto driver scratched each other. That took another 20 mins out.

Somehow I managed to reach Thiruvanmiyur Signal in OMR(17km). It was over 10p.m and the signals were turned off. As usual vehicles from all the sides blocked the junction. Nobody were interested/were able to give way. After 5mins wait I couldn't wait any longer. Finally I took the job of a traffic constable. I locked my bike in the center of the road. After 20mins of waving and shouting, the traffic was almost regulated. I ran to start my bike and the bus driver behind gave me a token of appreciation "சாவு கெறாகி! Bike நிறுத்த வேற எடம் கெடைக்கல". I didn't have much energy left in me to thank him. I just waved him a sorry and rushed to Perungudi(@2235 hrs) only to find that our 'Bledy Thala' was not home yet.

 

Graduation Day Speech

I have always wondered how much ever inspirational it is, why we never hear a word of the speaker on our graduation/orientation/commencement day but listen intently to someone else's video taped speech. Anyway this one is good and if you have time to spare watch it.

The Fringe benefits of Failure

With Subtitles :P

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

For further speech follow the link

Thoughts are powerful

August 19th, around 5:30PM I could hear my stomach grunt. I didn't have my lunch and I was hungry. After a prolonged staring at the phone and lot of absolutely useless lazy thoughts about whether to pick up the phone or not, I got off the sofa to grab the phone that was about 4 feet away.
I tried to call the Dominos and order a pizza. But turns out there are too many people who love the pizza and so the line was engaged all the time. Before I could think of another place to order food, some strange thoughts went through my mind.

"What if I turned vegetarian?"
"What if I stopped lying?"
"What if I were never lazy?"

In another two minutes I figured who am I kidding and decided to eat in the first restaurant I see. So I took my bike and was lucky enough to see KFC first. I ordered the "Hari's special" and came back home, tunred on the 40" Megan Fox, and played Die Hard Part One. Then I started swimming into the juicy chicken bucket.
Just after I finished three pieces I felt I was full. I couldn't eat anymore. I am not sure if it is because of my thoughts of quiting it. But lets just eliminate the known chance/option. So guys I request you not to think of anything evil in your life ever again.

Inception

Assuming 'if your body is not under the effect of gravity then your dreamworld has no gravity' to be true. If your dreamworld has no gravity then somebody dreaming in your dreamworld should also not have gravity. Meaning the dreamworld of the dreamer in the dream is also all out of gravity. You can extend this to any level.

When you throw a stone up in the air it travels against gravity. The acceleration due to gravity keeps reducing the acceleration on the stone, until at one point the two forces cancel each other. Then the gravity dominates and brings the stone back to ground. So, for small duration where the stone reverses its direction there is no gravity acting on it. On the other hand, for a freely falling body it is under the gravitational pull all the time. You will be falling but still under the effect of gravity.

Helmets

Now I have no job. Physically less work. But your mind doesn't rest. Wanders! Thinks a lot! Analyzes a lot! Suddenly I remembered the accident that I met with in the recent past. I was wondering if I had traveled at a higher speed as I used to, what would have happened? One thing let to another and finally I ended up with a doubt.

"Is my helmet bullet proof?"

It is really bad when people with good amount of knowledge end up having silly doubts. Now I started gathering data and calculating impact on the helmet by different events.
1) When I bang the helmet to the ground(Got a little crazy and practically tested)
2) When I meet with an accident @70kmph(Speed when I met with accident)
3) When I meet with an accident @105kmph(Regular speed)
4) When a bullet hits it(0.22 bullet)

Surprisingly I found that pressure applied on the helmet by a bullet is much less than when I meet with an accident at triple digit speed. The accident didn't scare me but my calculations do. From the day I did this calculation I never crossed 70kmph.

The Umbrella

I'm waiting in the TCS reception. Finally I decided to quit. I came here for final settlement. I was asked to wait for 5 minutes. A lady walked in shouting something, showing herself as a busy lady. By later events I learned she is the head of the HR department in that office. Receptionist shows her an umbrella, says it s from lost and found. This lady asks for a scale and measures the umbrella(am not sure why she did that). Another lady walks in and our head says bout the lost and found umbrella.
10 minutes later another lady walks in and our head says 'this umbrella is TCS property, do u want to use it?'
10 minutes later another lady walks in and inquires bout the umbrella and our head says 'its mine'. Puts it in her purse and walks out.

I am still enjoying my 5 minutes IST wait, watching all this.

Night Shift

I don't know if I am loving the night shifts or really hating my job to the core.
In the night shifts I'll be all alone and really bored. Also I don't find a single good reason for why I should be doing this job. But I understood one thing for sure. Given the time people will do anything foolish enough like this.

Now I start to feel amazed by how every system works in my office. First the lighting system. These work more like focus lights. As you walk the aisle gets lit up and as you pass by the lights stay turned on for around ten seconds and turns off automatically. For somebody with a serious job, he will never give a shit about this. But hey! it's me. I took it to the next level and started testing how big the object should be for the sensors to detect. I used the chairs whit wheels, a key board and a whole bunch of crushed papers as test cases. The system failed with the papers. Or should I say it was not intelligent enough to find a difference between a human and a chair.

Second is the flush in the restrooms. They sense how long a person stays in front of the urinals to figure out if he is just crossing or peeing. Also it tests if he pees or not. I guess there are no cameras in here. As usual I stated testing the system for how long a person should stay. Oops! I made a big blunder. In this case I should pee every time. Again I figured the system was not intelligent enough to distinguish between water and pee.

All this time I forgot about job. Did I really find my interest/passion? I don't know. But I know the devil inside me started working. Now a new question raise in my mind. Should I quit this job? Need Help!