I had various eminent people having tea with me. That's why perhaps, they called it High tea. I started this conversation, which goes like this:
"Have you been in this situtation:
'Son, just study for your class 10 exams, then you can enjoy and have fun in life'
After the tenth exams
'Son, just study and do your class 12 board exams well, get into IIT/NIT/some good engineering college and then life will become cool'
After you enter a nice university, the expectations just keep on rising:
'Son, just get good grades, since your CGPA is required for getting a good job. Good grades will get you any job you want.'
'Son, grades are not everything. You have to be overall smart. Prepare well for your interviews and once you get a good job, you can relax, earn loads of money and enjoy life'
Then comes the most frightening one:
'Son, prepare for MBA, nowadays B-schools are where you need to be.'
And then it doesn't stop
'Son, get married by this this age'
'Son, let me see the faces of my grand-kids' and you were left wondering if they were asking you to have a thousand kids.
'Son, become a CEO by 40'
'Son, do something something blah blah'
Sometimes, you feel cheated by this shifting of YOUR goals by others including teachers, parents, peers, friends."
After listening to this, Spencer Johnson screamed at me "Who moved my cheese?"
John Lennon couldn't hide his feelings and had to write a lyric for the situation which goes something like this, "Life is what happens to you, when you are busy making other plans."
And I said:
"We have been treated like donkeys. Imagine a donkey, having a guy (read society) sitting on his back holding a pair of carrots in front of the donkey's mouth using a rod. Now the donkey is motivated to move forward to get the carrot, but he doesn't realize that the carrots just keep on moving forward with him. The donkey, obviously is no physicist to deduce the fact that the carrot has zero relative velocity with respect to him. So he marches on. The man sitting on his back boos, makes funny sounds, motivates the donkey, sometimes kicks him, and the poor donkey keeps on moving without knowing where he is going or where he will end up."
Robert Frost, after being in a silent, thoughtful state all along, had the final say in this conversation:
"Miles to go before I(donkey) sleep."
Friday, September 18, 2009
Friday, September 04, 2009
My African trip (Part 2)
While we were on flight to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, the pilot made an announcement that Mount Kilimanjaro was visible on our left. Nishant came running to me, all excited asking me to take a look through the window. Seeing the commotion about the whole thing, I requested the person on the window seat to give up his seat for a few minutes while I took some pictures. Only the Kilimanjaro, with its snow laden peak, along with a nearby peak called Mt. Meru was clearly visible, rest everything was hidden beneath the clouds. Kilimanjaro is actually Africa's highest peak, standing at about 5892m above sea level. The Kilimanjaro has a funny bowl-shape, perhaps they are the bowls of the Gods, from which They spit fury at the earth, yes, the mountain is volcanic. I really wish I had taken the window seat, because I had to abandon my position soon. Nishant was luckier in this respect.
We were going to Dar Es Salaam to attend the OpenRosa conference, a conference for the members of OpenRosa consortium involved in the development of JavaRosa. JavaRosa is an open source solution that can be used for collection of data through mobile phones. The OpenRosa conference was to bring together the people involved in development of JavaRosa and the implementers who used this technology in the field of public health. So the conference was as much about Public Health as much as it was about JavaRosa.
A taxi was found waiting for us at the airport, as had already been communicated to us through email. Dar Es Salaam is a nice city with good infrastructure and good roads, almost comparable to our very own Bangalore or New Delhi. On the way, I saw 3-wheelers of many different colors - green, yellow, blue, red, all of them from Bajaj. In fact, a localite who was attending the conference, surprised me when he told me later on, what these 3-wheelers in Tanzania are called. Guess what, they are not called autos, auto-rickshaws or even 3-wheelers but they are called Bajaj. I didn't see too many 2-wheelers, they are not commonly used as in India, since they are considered a bit unsafe.
It took us an hour to wade through the crowded city, but when we reached our destination - the Kunduchi Beach Resort, all our tiredness evaporated. There was a beautiful fountain in front of the main entry to the resort. As I went inside the resort to the reception, I was fascinated by the architecture and the beautiful designs I could see there. It was a big resort, well-decorated and gave the impression of pure luxurious living. Ah, and I missed the most important thing, the resort was situated on the shores of the Indian ocean.
At the reception, Natalie gave us a warm welcome. She was the person responsible for the smooth running of things at the conference. She took care of our dinner, our rooms getting allotted, basically all logistics related to the conference.
We were shown our rooms. The rooms were big, air conditioned, came with a television that had few interesting channels to watch, but then who came here to watch TV. There were 2 beds to choose from, a nice jacuzzi to relax, a wonderful view of the Indian ocean and the beach. Calling the place luxurious would have been an under-statement!
After keeping our luggage in our rooms, we decided to go out, and meet other people attending the OpenRosa conference. We met Neal Lesh, a representative of a company called D-tree. He was the main organizer of the conference. In technical jargon, I would call him the Administrator of the whole conference.
We also met Heather, a lady from the US who was an implementer in the field of Public health. We met guys from University of Washington, who were working on different projects. One of them I met, told me that he went upto the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Then we moved to have dinner. We had lots of salads, veg-nonveg food available. I had Dal tadka (yes, you read it right) and chapati as dinner along with different salads and vegetables. After dinner, there was a nice dessert waiting for us to indulge ourselves.
During dinner, I happened to strike a conversation with a guy called Sam from Kenya. He told me that he used to spend an hour for development of open source tools related to medical records everyday, and was instrumental in introduction of open source technologies in the university he used to study in, as an alternative to Windows based proprietary systems. Impressive.
After dinner, I roamed around the resort, found a bar, a nice swimming pool and of course, the beach.
The next day, on 20th July 2009, the conference started. We had Neal, starting with the introductions. Then Kieran, a guy from a company called Cell-life gave a short presentation on why collection of data from mobile phones is needed and how can this technology lead to faster results. Then everybody was passed on the mike so that they could introduce themselves - with the condition that they additionally had to tell the audience why they loved their mobile phones. Most of the people came up with funny answers.
After the presentation, we had our coffee-breaks, which were at least 45 minutes long. The extra-long breaks were intended for people to socialize, build bonds, know more about what others were doing and thus serve as a platform for future collaborations. Definitely a wonderful idea.
We had a short training on Xforms after lunch, the technology which is to be used for collecting data in mobiles or even in PCs.
After the conference ended in the evening, myself, Nishant, and the people from Makerere - Laiton, Job and Steven went to the beach. Surprisingly we never got to know the Makerere team very well while we were in Uganda. This was because we never saw them apart from office hours. Now, we were living together in a beautiful place, so bond-building was happening.
After the beach stroll, we found people playing beach volleyball, so we joined in. Soon, we switched to football and had fun together.
The next day, 21st July, we had various presentations from the representatives of companies associated with open source and Javarosa. After lunch, the people were divided into 2 sections, one was the Coder's corner where all the geeks sat together and discussed what they liked best - code and the second one, the lesser mortals like us who took part in brainstorming sessions as an exercise to learn how to solve problems in the field of Public health where a technological solution could be adopted.
In the evening, we had a cocktail party. Various hard-drinks, soft-drinks and food were available. We tapped to the rhythm of music as we enjoyed ourselves together. We also went for a stroll on the beach after the party to take in the fresh air.
On the third day of the conference, we had our presentation as we were newly added to the OpenRosa consortium. We basically had to tell the people what we were doing. We continued the usual discussions and brainstorming sessions of yesterday and later gave our presentation. The presentation went fairly well, but I do regret the fact that since we were new to open-source, we didn't have much to show, we just talked about our plans. Fair enough.
With our presentation behind us, along with the Makerere team, we decided to go to the city of Dar Es Salaam, since we didn't had the taste of the city yet. We boarded a mini-bus to a place called Mwenge (pronounced Moin-ge) which was famous for its souvenir shops. At one shop, after lots of bargaining, I brought two African map wall hangings as souvenirs. I bought them at half the price the shopkeeper was asking for.
We came back to Kunduchi and had dinner - Laiton christened it 'the last supper'.
On the fourth and final day of the conference, we had feedbacks, suggestions and discussions about the conference. The proceedings ended at about 12 pm. Our flight was at 4:30 pm, so we had lunch, and bid farewell to all people and the friends we made at the conference.
Taxi was ready as usual on time. We reached the airport and boarded Emirates flight to Dubai and then to home sweet home - Bangalore, with a kilo of Swiss chocolates bought from the Dubai airport.
I learnt many things from this conference. The passion of people working in the area of public health made me feel good and motivated to work in this area. I learnt more about open-source and how people are trying to build their revenue model on Open source technologies, something which we are looking at, ourselves.
Thanks to Natalie, Neal and other people behind this conference, everything was so well organized that I marvel at the fact that there were no problems and issues, no last-minute goof-ups during the whole conference.
I had a wonderful time in Tanzania at the conference, though I missed going on an African safari, which would have set me back by about $500, a bit expensive. Maybe next time.
We were going to Dar Es Salaam to attend the OpenRosa conference, a conference for the members of OpenRosa consortium involved in the development of JavaRosa. JavaRosa is an open source solution that can be used for collection of data through mobile phones. The OpenRosa conference was to bring together the people involved in development of JavaRosa and the implementers who used this technology in the field of public health. So the conference was as much about Public Health as much as it was about JavaRosa.
A taxi was found waiting for us at the airport, as had already been communicated to us through email. Dar Es Salaam is a nice city with good infrastructure and good roads, almost comparable to our very own Bangalore or New Delhi. On the way, I saw 3-wheelers of many different colors - green, yellow, blue, red, all of them from Bajaj. In fact, a localite who was attending the conference, surprised me when he told me later on, what these 3-wheelers in Tanzania are called. Guess what, they are not called autos, auto-rickshaws or even 3-wheelers but they are called Bajaj. I didn't see too many 2-wheelers, they are not commonly used as in India, since they are considered a bit unsafe.
It took us an hour to wade through the crowded city, but when we reached our destination - the Kunduchi Beach Resort, all our tiredness evaporated. There was a beautiful fountain in front of the main entry to the resort. As I went inside the resort to the reception, I was fascinated by the architecture and the beautiful designs I could see there. It was a big resort, well-decorated and gave the impression of pure luxurious living. Ah, and I missed the most important thing, the resort was situated on the shores of the Indian ocean.
At the reception, Natalie gave us a warm welcome. She was the person responsible for the smooth running of things at the conference. She took care of our dinner, our rooms getting allotted, basically all logistics related to the conference.
We were shown our rooms. The rooms were big, air conditioned, came with a television that had few interesting channels to watch, but then who came here to watch TV. There were 2 beds to choose from, a nice jacuzzi to relax, a wonderful view of the Indian ocean and the beach. Calling the place luxurious would have been an under-statement!
After keeping our luggage in our rooms, we decided to go out, and meet other people attending the OpenRosa conference. We met Neal Lesh, a representative of a company called D-tree. He was the main organizer of the conference. In technical jargon, I would call him the Administrator of the whole conference.
We also met Heather, a lady from the US who was an implementer in the field of Public health. We met guys from University of Washington, who were working on different projects. One of them I met, told me that he went upto the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Then we moved to have dinner. We had lots of salads, veg-nonveg food available. I had Dal tadka (yes, you read it right) and chapati as dinner along with different salads and vegetables. After dinner, there was a nice dessert waiting for us to indulge ourselves.
During dinner, I happened to strike a conversation with a guy called Sam from Kenya. He told me that he used to spend an hour for development of open source tools related to medical records everyday, and was instrumental in introduction of open source technologies in the university he used to study in, as an alternative to Windows based proprietary systems. Impressive.
After dinner, I roamed around the resort, found a bar, a nice swimming pool and of course, the beach.
The next day, on 20th July 2009, the conference started. We had Neal, starting with the introductions. Then Kieran, a guy from a company called Cell-life gave a short presentation on why collection of data from mobile phones is needed and how can this technology lead to faster results. Then everybody was passed on the mike so that they could introduce themselves - with the condition that they additionally had to tell the audience why they loved their mobile phones. Most of the people came up with funny answers.
After the presentation, we had our coffee-breaks, which were at least 45 minutes long. The extra-long breaks were intended for people to socialize, build bonds, know more about what others were doing and thus serve as a platform for future collaborations. Definitely a wonderful idea.
We had a short training on Xforms after lunch, the technology which is to be used for collecting data in mobiles or even in PCs.
After the conference ended in the evening, myself, Nishant, and the people from Makerere - Laiton, Job and Steven went to the beach. Surprisingly we never got to know the Makerere team very well while we were in Uganda. This was because we never saw them apart from office hours. Now, we were living together in a beautiful place, so bond-building was happening.
After the beach stroll, we found people playing beach volleyball, so we joined in. Soon, we switched to football and had fun together.
The next day, 21st July, we had various presentations from the representatives of companies associated with open source and Javarosa. After lunch, the people were divided into 2 sections, one was the Coder's corner where all the geeks sat together and discussed what they liked best - code and the second one, the lesser mortals like us who took part in brainstorming sessions as an exercise to learn how to solve problems in the field of Public health where a technological solution could be adopted.
In the evening, we had a cocktail party. Various hard-drinks, soft-drinks and food were available. We tapped to the rhythm of music as we enjoyed ourselves together. We also went for a stroll on the beach after the party to take in the fresh air.
On the third day of the conference, we had our presentation as we were newly added to the OpenRosa consortium. We basically had to tell the people what we were doing. We continued the usual discussions and brainstorming sessions of yesterday and later gave our presentation. The presentation went fairly well, but I do regret the fact that since we were new to open-source, we didn't have much to show, we just talked about our plans. Fair enough.
With our presentation behind us, along with the Makerere team, we decided to go to the city of Dar Es Salaam, since we didn't had the taste of the city yet. We boarded a mini-bus to a place called Mwenge (pronounced Moin-ge) which was famous for its souvenir shops. At one shop, after lots of bargaining, I brought two African map wall hangings as souvenirs. I bought them at half the price the shopkeeper was asking for.
We came back to Kunduchi and had dinner - Laiton christened it 'the last supper'.
On the fourth and final day of the conference, we had feedbacks, suggestions and discussions about the conference. The proceedings ended at about 12 pm. Our flight was at 4:30 pm, so we had lunch, and bid farewell to all people and the friends we made at the conference.
Taxi was ready as usual on time. We reached the airport and boarded Emirates flight to Dubai and then to home sweet home - Bangalore, with a kilo of Swiss chocolates bought from the Dubai airport.
I learnt many things from this conference. The passion of people working in the area of public health made me feel good and motivated to work in this area. I learnt more about open-source and how people are trying to build their revenue model on Open source technologies, something which we are looking at, ourselves.
Thanks to Natalie, Neal and other people behind this conference, everything was so well organized that I marvel at the fact that there were no problems and issues, no last-minute goof-ups during the whole conference.
I had a wonderful time in Tanzania at the conference, though I missed going on an African safari, which would have set me back by about $500, a bit expensive. Maybe next time.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Statistical humor
Somebody once remarked, about the statistics class
If I had only one day to live, I would live it in my statistics class...
It would seem so much longer.
I am dealing with data analysis and statistics in my work-place, and after reading the first statement, you might have already judged how 'interesting' the field of statistics is. But I would defend myself saying that there is scope for humor even in this field. In this regard, I came across some wonderful humorous anecdotes in a book of Biostatistics. But before I get down to the joke itself, I need to bore you a little by explaining some statistical concepts.
You may be aware of the concept of correlation and regression. A particular coefficient called Coefficient of Correlation (r) is generally calculated to find out if two sets of data have a positive, negative or no correlation. A high value of r means high correlation.
While doing studies, many people have come across what are called spurious or nonsense correlations in which 2 sets of data seem to be highly correlated even though there is no link between them. In this respect, I came across 2 wonderful examples which were specially chosen to depict the humor that statistics can sometimes unexpectedly turn up.
The first wonderful example comes from a study done by a guy called Yule who observed a high correlation (r=0.951) between the proportion of marriages celebrated in Anglican churches (in England and Wales from 1866 to 1911) and the death rates in the same place. This had to happen, marriage had to be related to death, no? If John Lennon would have known this, he would have sung, "Mama, I don't wanna be a husband, I don't wanna die".
The second example goes even farther. LV Charlier found a correlation of 0.86 between the size of the stork population in Oslo over a period of about 40 years and the number of babies born there each year.
I can imagine a Harry Belafonte type of situation in hisclassic song Man Piaba, when a small boy will ask the dreaded question to his father, thus:
"Father, where did I come from?".
The father will reply, "Son! Scientifically speaking, its the birds and the bees. Statistically speaking, its the stork!"
If I had only one day to live, I would live it in my statistics class...
It would seem so much longer.
I am dealing with data analysis and statistics in my work-place, and after reading the first statement, you might have already judged how 'interesting' the field of statistics is. But I would defend myself saying that there is scope for humor even in this field. In this regard, I came across some wonderful humorous anecdotes in a book of Biostatistics. But before I get down to the joke itself, I need to bore you a little by explaining some statistical concepts.
You may be aware of the concept of correlation and regression. A particular coefficient called Coefficient of Correlation (r) is generally calculated to find out if two sets of data have a positive, negative or no correlation. A high value of r means high correlation.
While doing studies, many people have come across what are called spurious or nonsense correlations in which 2 sets of data seem to be highly correlated even though there is no link between them. In this respect, I came across 2 wonderful examples which were specially chosen to depict the humor that statistics can sometimes unexpectedly turn up.
The first wonderful example comes from a study done by a guy called Yule who observed a high correlation (r=0.951) between the proportion of marriages celebrated in Anglican churches (in England and Wales from 1866 to 1911) and the death rates in the same place. This had to happen, marriage had to be related to death, no? If John Lennon would have known this, he would have sung, "Mama, I don't wanna be a husband, I don't wanna die".
The second example goes even farther. LV Charlier found a correlation of 0.86 between the size of the stork population in Oslo over a period of about 40 years and the number of babies born there each year.
I can imagine a Harry Belafonte type of situation in his
"Father, where did I come from?".
The father will reply, "Son! Scientifically speaking, its the birds and the bees. Statistically speaking, its the stork!"
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
My African trip (Part 1)
When I came to know that I was supposed to visit Africa, I had mixed feelings. There was a sense of excitement for going to a new place, as well as the feeling of fear that I was going to an unexplored, under-developed and perhaps a little unsafe place in this world. People go to US, UK, France, Germany when they go abroad and here I was, heading to a completely different place. Thankfully, I had my colleague and friend Nishant along with me in this adventure. We never had a clue as to what we would see on our visit to Africa.
On July 16th 2009, we took flight from Bangalore to Dubai via Emirates airlines. We had a brief stop-over at Dubai for a few hours. The Dubai airport is huge, it feels like miles long from one end to the other. They have moving walkways for making it easy to walk from one point to another. We had our fun on these walkways, as we walked on them which made us appear to cruise at a fast speed relative to the still ground.
We boarded another Emirates flight to Entebbe, Uganda. The Airbus 330-200 we were in, was double the size than the planes that run in Indian domestic flights. Emirates air-hostesses were diverse in their origin - some blacks, whites, some colored as well and they wore a peculiar head covering, also portrayed commonly in Emirates ads. They spoke various languages, which made me feel that Emirates was a truly international airline. I enjoyed the service provided by Emirates and was almost sad when they said Thank you on my way-out.
We found the Entebbe airport just at the banks of Lake Victoria, the largest tropical lake in the world, giving a beautiful panoramic view of the landscape. After completing the formalities for Swine flu checkup and getting a visa on arrival, we came out and met Simon from University of Makerere. He had brought a taxi which took us to Kampala, the capital of Uganda, the place where the University of Makerere is located.
Kampala is about 38 km from Entebbe and it took us an hour to get to Makerere. We found the highway to be quite good, and in fact I was surprised to find only big cars and sedans plying on the roads. Hatchbacks were nil, and a very few motorbikes were to be seen. Was Kampala actually a city of rich people? It was a mystery to which I found out the answer, only a few days later.
Kampala basically consists of 7 hills located at an elevation of about 3900 ft. We were at one of the hills called Makerere hill where the University was located. The temperature here lies between 16-27 degrees throughout the year - heavenly.
We arrived at the Makerere University Guest House where we had our rooms waiting for us. The receptionist gave a warm welcome to us. The rooms were quite big, each with 3 beds and an attached toilet and bathroom. The guest house even had wireless internet facility. After putting our luggage inside our rooms, we went for a short meeting with the people at Faculty of Computing and Information Technology. They were the people we were supposed to work with.
When we went to the FCIT building, we realized that the office was 6 floors above and there was no lift. So much for the health conscious people at Makerere! I came to know that the building was new and the lifts maybe installed later on. I do hope it happens for the people working in those offices.
After the short meeting, we came out and bought a SIM card by a company called Zain. The SIM card was handed to us in exchange for 2000 Ugandan shillings (2000 Ugx = 1 USD). I remembered that when I had applied for a postpaid connection in Bangalore, many verifications, phone-calls, residence visits were done before my SIM card could finally work. I was glad to have a SIM card that simply worked out-of-the-box. Plus the Zain network worked in 18 African nations, including Tanzania where we were headed for next.
At the Guest house, I had a vegetable sandwich for dinner. I had been concerned regarding the food as I am a vegetarian, but it turned out that they had sufficient veg dishes, although 80%-90% dishes were non-veg/egg based. Drinking water is an issue in Kampala, which is surprising taking into account the fact that they are practically on the banks of the largest fresh water lake in the world. There were no water coolers that had drinking water freely available, so we had to buy 500 ml mineral water bottles for 500 Ugx (about Rs 13).
After dinner, I roamed around the campus at about 9 pm. Simon had warned us not to take a risk and go out of the campus after 9, lest we became sitting ducks for looters. It was quite dark, even inside the campus and I didn't go far.
The next day, Friday, was a working day where we had detailed discussions with the team at FCIT. I found many of them to be very bright and passionate about coding. Some of them were younger to us, fresh out of college working there.
When we came out of Makerere for buying some water and an electrical converter, I noticed the city had 2 brands of motor-bikes that were predominant. And they were the Indian brands - Bajaj (Boxer) and TVS (Max 100). These bikes are locally called Boda Boda, and people also use them as taxis. Africa seems to be a happy customer of Indian automobiles - good for Indian companies.
July 18th, Saturday was an off-day for us. Simon was again assigned to take us to the Kampala city for some sight-seeing. Simon even joked that we were his guests, so his colleagues had to take permission from him if they wanted to talk to us.
After lunch, we set out for Ggaba beach, which is situated on the banks of Lake Victoria. We took a shared taxi to get to the place. They don't have big buses, but vans ply as taxis at Kampala. And the taxis are not filled up as in India, where 6 people are made to sit in place for 4. That way, I had a comfortable ride and I found the public transport to be good. The Kampala city is not as crowded as a metro in India would be. But roaming inside the city, I saw unclean roads, reminding me of India again.
Ggaba beach is on the banks of the Lake Victoria, which practically looks like the sea, minus the big waves and the tides. Boating facility was available and we talked to a guy called Frank. He quoted a price of 10000 Ugx, we found it to be too high for us. So he immediately went down to 5000 Ugx. The deal was done. He said that he would take us on his motor boat for 10 minutes, but he gave us 20 min of wonderful riding, probably seeing our enthusiasm.
While on our way back, Simon cleared the 'big cars in Kampala' mystery for me. It seems that people here generally buy used cars from Japan, mostly Toyotas at about 2k-8k USD while a brand new one costs 15k which is quite expensive for anyone. No wonder I could see many old models of Toyota which are no longer manufactured. A brand new Boda boda will cost about 1000 USD, around the same as it will cost in India.
We reached back Makerere by evening and went for a walk in the campus. I could see that University was big in size. I heard that about 40k students study here. The campus was quite green, and we even witnessed a christian wedding at a residence hall. Majority of the people in Uganda are Christians. We also stumbled upon a church behind the main administrative building at Makerere where we saw a students choir practicing for Sunday church music. We sat inside the church and listened to the gospel music that they were playing together. It was quite peaceful there.
On Sunday, it was time to say goodbye as we boarded a taxi and reached Entebbe airport. Overall, the Uganda trip was an enlightening experience. I found many similarities between India and Uganda. Uganda has lots of different tribes who speak different languages, so they are linguistically diverse, just like India. Luganda is their main language, apart from English which is also the official language, so a large number of Ugandans know and converse in English. Seeing the city, the warmth of the people, I felt at home. They even drove the same bikes. :)
Seeing our Uganda trip to be successful, with lots of enthusiasm and expectations, we boarded a Air Uganda flight, and flew towards Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.
(contd in My African trip Part 2)
On July 16th 2009, we took flight from Bangalore to Dubai via Emirates airlines. We had a brief stop-over at Dubai for a few hours. The Dubai airport is huge, it feels like miles long from one end to the other. They have moving walkways for making it easy to walk from one point to another. We had our fun on these walkways, as we walked on them which made us appear to cruise at a fast speed relative to the still ground.
We boarded another Emirates flight to Entebbe, Uganda. The Airbus 330-200 we were in, was double the size than the planes that run in Indian domestic flights. Emirates air-hostesses were diverse in their origin - some blacks, whites, some colored as well and they wore a peculiar head covering, also portrayed commonly in Emirates ads. They spoke various languages, which made me feel that Emirates was a truly international airline. I enjoyed the service provided by Emirates and was almost sad when they said Thank you on my way-out.
We found the Entebbe airport just at the banks of Lake Victoria, the largest tropical lake in the world, giving a beautiful panoramic view of the landscape. After completing the formalities for Swine flu checkup and getting a visa on arrival, we came out and met Simon from University of Makerere. He had brought a taxi which took us to Kampala, the capital of Uganda, the place where the University of Makerere is located.
Kampala is about 38 km from Entebbe and it took us an hour to get to Makerere. We found the highway to be quite good, and in fact I was surprised to find only big cars and sedans plying on the roads. Hatchbacks were nil, and a very few motorbikes were to be seen. Was Kampala actually a city of rich people? It was a mystery to which I found out the answer, only a few days later.
Kampala basically consists of 7 hills located at an elevation of about 3900 ft. We were at one of the hills called Makerere hill where the University was located. The temperature here lies between 16-27 degrees throughout the year - heavenly.
We arrived at the Makerere University Guest House where we had our rooms waiting for us. The receptionist gave a warm welcome to us. The rooms were quite big, each with 3 beds and an attached toilet and bathroom. The guest house even had wireless internet facility. After putting our luggage inside our rooms, we went for a short meeting with the people at Faculty of Computing and Information Technology. They were the people we were supposed to work with.
When we went to the FCIT building, we realized that the office was 6 floors above and there was no lift. So much for the health conscious people at Makerere! I came to know that the building was new and the lifts maybe installed later on. I do hope it happens for the people working in those offices.
After the short meeting, we came out and bought a SIM card by a company called Zain. The SIM card was handed to us in exchange for 2000 Ugandan shillings (2000 Ugx = 1 USD). I remembered that when I had applied for a postpaid connection in Bangalore, many verifications, phone-calls, residence visits were done before my SIM card could finally work. I was glad to have a SIM card that simply worked out-of-the-box. Plus the Zain network worked in 18 African nations, including Tanzania where we were headed for next.
At the Guest house, I had a vegetable sandwich for dinner. I had been concerned regarding the food as I am a vegetarian, but it turned out that they had sufficient veg dishes, although 80%-90% dishes were non-veg/egg based. Drinking water is an issue in Kampala, which is surprising taking into account the fact that they are practically on the banks of the largest fresh water lake in the world. There were no water coolers that had drinking water freely available, so we had to buy 500 ml mineral water bottles for 500 Ugx (about Rs 13).
After dinner, I roamed around the campus at about 9 pm. Simon had warned us not to take a risk and go out of the campus after 9, lest we became sitting ducks for looters. It was quite dark, even inside the campus and I didn't go far.
The next day, Friday, was a working day where we had detailed discussions with the team at FCIT. I found many of them to be very bright and passionate about coding. Some of them were younger to us, fresh out of college working there.
When we came out of Makerere for buying some water and an electrical converter, I noticed the city had 2 brands of motor-bikes that were predominant. And they were the Indian brands - Bajaj (Boxer) and TVS (Max 100). These bikes are locally called Boda Boda, and people also use them as taxis. Africa seems to be a happy customer of Indian automobiles - good for Indian companies.
July 18th, Saturday was an off-day for us. Simon was again assigned to take us to the Kampala city for some sight-seeing. Simon even joked that we were his guests, so his colleagues had to take permission from him if they wanted to talk to us.
After lunch, we set out for Ggaba beach, which is situated on the banks of Lake Victoria. We took a shared taxi to get to the place. They don't have big buses, but vans ply as taxis at Kampala. And the taxis are not filled up as in India, where 6 people are made to sit in place for 4. That way, I had a comfortable ride and I found the public transport to be good. The Kampala city is not as crowded as a metro in India would be. But roaming inside the city, I saw unclean roads, reminding me of India again.
Ggaba beach is on the banks of the Lake Victoria, which practically looks like the sea, minus the big waves and the tides. Boating facility was available and we talked to a guy called Frank. He quoted a price of 10000 Ugx, we found it to be too high for us. So he immediately went down to 5000 Ugx. The deal was done. He said that he would take us on his motor boat for 10 minutes, but he gave us 20 min of wonderful riding, probably seeing our enthusiasm.
While on our way back, Simon cleared the 'big cars in Kampala' mystery for me. It seems that people here generally buy used cars from Japan, mostly Toyotas at about 2k-8k USD while a brand new one costs 15k which is quite expensive for anyone. No wonder I could see many old models of Toyota which are no longer manufactured. A brand new Boda boda will cost about 1000 USD, around the same as it will cost in India.
We reached back Makerere by evening and went for a walk in the campus. I could see that University was big in size. I heard that about 40k students study here. The campus was quite green, and we even witnessed a christian wedding at a residence hall. Majority of the people in Uganda are Christians. We also stumbled upon a church behind the main administrative building at Makerere where we saw a students choir practicing for Sunday church music. We sat inside the church and listened to the gospel music that they were playing together. It was quite peaceful there.
On Sunday, it was time to say goodbye as we boarded a taxi and reached Entebbe airport. Overall, the Uganda trip was an enlightening experience. I found many similarities between India and Uganda. Uganda has lots of different tribes who speak different languages, so they are linguistically diverse, just like India. Luganda is their main language, apart from English which is also the official language, so a large number of Ugandans know and converse in English. Seeing the city, the warmth of the people, I felt at home. They even drove the same bikes. :)
Seeing our Uganda trip to be successful, with lots of enthusiasm and expectations, we boarded a Air Uganda flight, and flew towards Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.
(contd in My African trip Part 2)
Monday, May 07, 2007
Run for your life (A real story, happened on May 19, 2006)
I had completed three years of engineering at IIT Delhi. The summer vacations were going on, and we were supposed to be doing our internships. Many of my friends were doing their internships outside Delhi and were not here. I was doing my internship nearby, so I was staying at my hostel itself.
Recently the issue of reservations had become a hot topic. The Indian government had come out with a new policy, under which people falling under the category of 'Other Backward Classes' or the OBCs were to be given 27% reservation in government aided institutions, thus increasing the reservation of seats from an existing 22.5% to 49.5%. That is, half of the students getting into any government institute would get entry based on their caste, and not their merit. Obviously, this infuriated the middle class sections and many people thought that this was a very negative step taken by the government that could seriously affect the quality of the students going into prestigious universities of India. Thus India was divided into two factions, one supporting the cause and one against the cause.
It was the fifth day of my work. I was required to complete fifty days of work to register a successful internship. It was a Friday and I was looking forward to a two day rest period. I had just come back from the office, when I saw a notice on the notice board regarding a meeting being called for discussion on how to protest against the policy of reservation. After having my dinner, I went to the meeting. The people there were discussing strategies and were dividing responsibilities amongst the students. As I was a bit late to the meeting, I couldn’t get any responsibility even though I was looking forward to getting one. Thus the people who had not got any responsibilities were asked to go to Jawahar Lal Nehru University, for holding a peaceful demonstration against reservation.
We were about twenty in number and reached the JNU gate through auto rickshaws. We realised that the pro-reservation group of students were already holding fort inside the university. Still we were given a green signal saying that it was safe for us to go inside. We were given candles in our hands; we lighted them and went in shouting slogans of 'Reservation No Solution', 'Say No to Reservation' etc. As we entered the gates and went in a few hundred meters, we saw that there were at least a hundred pro-reservation protesters. We were outnumbered by five to one. Yes, the demonstration was supposed to be a peaceful one, but seeing their number advantage they started attacking us. We immediately started for the campus gate in order to escape the madding crowd. We were literally running when we reached the campus gates and I was one of the last ones to reach the place. The gates were closed after we had come out, but some of the pro-reservation guys managed to get out as well.
They caught hold of a poor guy and kicked him badly, making him fall. I was only a few feet away, and I was going to help him on his feet when I myself was attacked by a mad person. Yes, I will always remember him, that expression he had. His anger clearly showed a lot of frustration, as if I was going to put an end to reservation and this would have led to his son's/daughter's career getting ruined. Apart from some fear I felt, I thought the situation was really funny. I couldn't comprehend why he was so frustrated or why he was induced to hurt me when I had not done any harm to him. I guess those people were not only backward on paper, but backward in their thoughts as well as in their behavior. He punched me on the back, I jogged away from him to save myself, also seeing that the person who had fallen had managed to find his feet and was coming along with me. And then I was hit by a huge stone on the lower part of my back. This was enough to give me a warning, and I ran as fast as I could, still holding the unburnt candle in my hand and reaching at least a safe distance of about 200 meters from our rendezvous point.
This was the first time I had run so fast in order to save my life. This event has been seared into my memory. I came back to my hostel room, thankfully, not seriously hurt. I only had a slight pain in my back, where I had been hit by the stone. More than the pain, I had a feeling of humiliation on being forced to run like this. I called up my father to tell him all that had happened. He was obviously worried and asked me if I was okay. Subsequently, he had advice to offer me. He said, "Son, you are still too young to know where to go, how to react in tough situations. So if the situation demands it, you should run for your life. Bravery is not about getting hurt. Bravery is about using common sense in tough situations. After all, you shouldn't kill yourself for the mistakes done by some petty politicians. You have your future to look after."
That day I realised how precious life was.
Recently the issue of reservations had become a hot topic. The Indian government had come out with a new policy, under which people falling under the category of 'Other Backward Classes' or the OBCs were to be given 27% reservation in government aided institutions, thus increasing the reservation of seats from an existing 22.5% to 49.5%. That is, half of the students getting into any government institute would get entry based on their caste, and not their merit. Obviously, this infuriated the middle class sections and many people thought that this was a very negative step taken by the government that could seriously affect the quality of the students going into prestigious universities of India. Thus India was divided into two factions, one supporting the cause and one against the cause.
It was the fifth day of my work. I was required to complete fifty days of work to register a successful internship. It was a Friday and I was looking forward to a two day rest period. I had just come back from the office, when I saw a notice on the notice board regarding a meeting being called for discussion on how to protest against the policy of reservation. After having my dinner, I went to the meeting. The people there were discussing strategies and were dividing responsibilities amongst the students. As I was a bit late to the meeting, I couldn’t get any responsibility even though I was looking forward to getting one. Thus the people who had not got any responsibilities were asked to go to Jawahar Lal Nehru University, for holding a peaceful demonstration against reservation.
We were about twenty in number and reached the JNU gate through auto rickshaws. We realised that the pro-reservation group of students were already holding fort inside the university. Still we were given a green signal saying that it was safe for us to go inside. We were given candles in our hands; we lighted them and went in shouting slogans of 'Reservation No Solution', 'Say No to Reservation' etc. As we entered the gates and went in a few hundred meters, we saw that there were at least a hundred pro-reservation protesters. We were outnumbered by five to one. Yes, the demonstration was supposed to be a peaceful one, but seeing their number advantage they started attacking us. We immediately started for the campus gate in order to escape the madding crowd. We were literally running when we reached the campus gates and I was one of the last ones to reach the place. The gates were closed after we had come out, but some of the pro-reservation guys managed to get out as well.
They caught hold of a poor guy and kicked him badly, making him fall. I was only a few feet away, and I was going to help him on his feet when I myself was attacked by a mad person. Yes, I will always remember him, that expression he had. His anger clearly showed a lot of frustration, as if I was going to put an end to reservation and this would have led to his son's/daughter's career getting ruined. Apart from some fear I felt, I thought the situation was really funny. I couldn't comprehend why he was so frustrated or why he was induced to hurt me when I had not done any harm to him. I guess those people were not only backward on paper, but backward in their thoughts as well as in their behavior. He punched me on the back, I jogged away from him to save myself, also seeing that the person who had fallen had managed to find his feet and was coming along with me. And then I was hit by a huge stone on the lower part of my back. This was enough to give me a warning, and I ran as fast as I could, still holding the unburnt candle in my hand and reaching at least a safe distance of about 200 meters from our rendezvous point.
This was the first time I had run so fast in order to save my life. This event has been seared into my memory. I came back to my hostel room, thankfully, not seriously hurt. I only had a slight pain in my back, where I had been hit by the stone. More than the pain, I had a feeling of humiliation on being forced to run like this. I called up my father to tell him all that had happened. He was obviously worried and asked me if I was okay. Subsequently, he had advice to offer me. He said, "Son, you are still too young to know where to go, how to react in tough situations. So if the situation demands it, you should run for your life. Bravery is not about getting hurt. Bravery is about using common sense in tough situations. After all, you shouldn't kill yourself for the mistakes done by some petty politicians. You have your future to look after."
That day I realised how precious life was.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Quake ]I[ania
When I wake up from my bed I hear
Of machine guns and bombs exploding near
No, I am not talking about the war front
But my neighbour's computer, my dear
Welcome to Quake 3 arena
Where killing is the name of the game
Don't be afraid, its only virtual
After playing, nothing shall remain the same
The arenas are made ready
To host deathmatches and bloody slaughter
Only one will win the tournament
And others won't matter
SARGE has lost his cigar
ORBB is looking through its big eye
XAERO is carrying a weapon of mass destruction
And HUNTER is sporting a new hairstyle
Well, John Carmack and his team
Has done what the Beatles did during the sixties
That was why I gave the name above
As people are playing the game a lot and with ease
But here, I have to warn you
Because in the newspapers, i recently read
That a person who played continuously for fifty hours
Got a fatal heart attack and was found dead
I can't stop you from playing
But I advise you to slow down
There are better ways of killing time
Without any anger without a frown
I can only sing for my friends and my neighbours
"Quit playing games with my heart"
My heart, oh my heart
Of machine guns and bombs exploding near
No, I am not talking about the war front
But my neighbour's computer, my dear
Welcome to Quake 3 arena
Where killing is the name of the game
Don't be afraid, its only virtual
After playing, nothing shall remain the same
The arenas are made ready
To host deathmatches and bloody slaughter
Only one will win the tournament
And others won't matter
SARGE has lost his cigar
ORBB is looking through its big eye
XAERO is carrying a weapon of mass destruction
And HUNTER is sporting a new hairstyle
Well, John Carmack and his team
Has done what the Beatles did during the sixties
That was why I gave the name above
As people are playing the game a lot and with ease
But here, I have to warn you
Because in the newspapers, i recently read
That a person who played continuously for fifty hours
Got a fatal heart attack and was found dead
I can't stop you from playing
But I advise you to slow down
There are better ways of killing time
Without any anger without a frown
I can only sing for my friends and my neighbours
"Quit playing games with my heart"
My heart, oh my heart
Monday, October 24, 2005
My Rendezvous with the Indian Bureaucracy
My first day at IIT Delhi, was not the day of the counseling but the day when I came here to submit my IIT JEE application form at the JEE office. And the person at the counter who was accepting forms screamed at me, just because I hadn't taken out the form from its brown envelope. What was the reason he got so angry with me for practically no reason at all?
Much has been said and written about Indian Bureaucracy. The way they act as deterrent to Indians who want to invest here, the way they take bribes for doing their jobs, the way they show disrespect to their fellow Indians and act as if they are doing a favor to them while in actuality, they are doing their duty for which they are being paid by the Government. I would like to specially mention two incidents in this regard which have been mentioned by Arun Shourie, the former Disinvestment and Communication Minister, in his book 'Governance and The sclerosis that has set in'. Even though they are bizarre, they are very much true. And they are - once the Indian Government officials were faced with the simple question whether to use red or green ink on files. But this was enough to set off meetings, letters, and references to other ministries that stretch over a year. A tree falls on the house of the Indian High Commissioner; for nine years Government deliberates and weighs pros and cons, but is unable to decide who is to repair the house, and how. Meanwhile, lakhs of rupees are wasted in paying accommodation for a rented house for the Commissioner.
I would particularly like to talk about the misbehavior of the bureaucrats towards their fellow Indians. I ask you, why shouldn't Indians go abroad and cause brain drain when they don't get an atom of respect here for what they have achieved? Here, they have to face these ridiculing bureaucrats who cause all problems in the world if their palms are not adequately greased. Showing of such disrespect, whether anyone accepts it or not, is very much real and present even inside the elite campus of IIT Delhi. I would like to take my own example in this respect when I recently went to the UG section to talk to the Deputy Registrar. The way he treated me, you would have thought a master was scolding an errant servant. I shall always remember how that man insulted me. I shall always remember how he fractured my self respect. And I shall particularly remember the way he asked me to "get out" of his office, not once but twice. All this happened despite the fact that I was very polite to him and never answered back. On the other hand a few months back, I happened to go to the Foreigner's division at the Ministry of Home Affairs. To my great surprise and delight, I was treated well and my application processed very fast, even though it had a flaw and the officials could have easily delayed my requests if they had wanted to. Why were there such vast differences between treatment to the same person in two different scenarios? This only goes on to prove that Indian bureaucrats and in general Indians have greater respect for foreigners and lesser or no respect for their fellow Indians. What is the reason for such behavior? Do they think their fellow Indians are not worth giving respect to? Or are Indians still slaves to the white skin? This is a question I would like to ask you all.
x----x
I wrote this article for the IIT Campus magazine, but I had to change a few sentences in the above article as it was seen as 'a direct personal attack against an influential IIT bureaucrat'.
Precisely I had to change the following
'I would like to take my own example.... that I was very polite to him and never answered back.' to
'I would like to take my own example in this respect when I recently went to the UG section for some clarifications. I was shocked by the treatment I got. I was screamed at, even though I had been very polite. That event has left me disillusioned about the way some bureaucrats think they can get away with anything. My self respect was severely dented on that day.'
I submitted this article to the chief editor during August 2005, but it hasn't found a place in the magazine till yet, though I have been promised that the edited version will be printed in the next issue.
Later, I came to know that the article was dumped by them, they had gone back on their promise. The chief editor of the magazine remarked to me, in a very casual manner, that - "Your article will never be printed in the magazine!"
Much has been said and written about Indian Bureaucracy. The way they act as deterrent to Indians who want to invest here, the way they take bribes for doing their jobs, the way they show disrespect to their fellow Indians and act as if they are doing a favor to them while in actuality, they are doing their duty for which they are being paid by the Government. I would like to specially mention two incidents in this regard which have been mentioned by Arun Shourie, the former Disinvestment and Communication Minister, in his book 'Governance and The sclerosis that has set in'. Even though they are bizarre, they are very much true. And they are - once the Indian Government officials were faced with the simple question whether to use red or green ink on files. But this was enough to set off meetings, letters, and references to other ministries that stretch over a year. A tree falls on the house of the Indian High Commissioner; for nine years Government deliberates and weighs pros and cons, but is unable to decide who is to repair the house, and how. Meanwhile, lakhs of rupees are wasted in paying accommodation for a rented house for the Commissioner.
I would particularly like to talk about the misbehavior of the bureaucrats towards their fellow Indians. I ask you, why shouldn't Indians go abroad and cause brain drain when they don't get an atom of respect here for what they have achieved? Here, they have to face these ridiculing bureaucrats who cause all problems in the world if their palms are not adequately greased. Showing of such disrespect, whether anyone accepts it or not, is very much real and present even inside the elite campus of IIT Delhi. I would like to take my own example in this respect when I recently went to the UG section to talk to the Deputy Registrar. The way he treated me, you would have thought a master was scolding an errant servant. I shall always remember how that man insulted me. I shall always remember how he fractured my self respect. And I shall particularly remember the way he asked me to "get out" of his office, not once but twice. All this happened despite the fact that I was very polite to him and never answered back. On the other hand a few months back, I happened to go to the Foreigner's division at the Ministry of Home Affairs. To my great surprise and delight, I was treated well and my application processed very fast, even though it had a flaw and the officials could have easily delayed my requests if they had wanted to. Why were there such vast differences between treatment to the same person in two different scenarios? This only goes on to prove that Indian bureaucrats and in general Indians have greater respect for foreigners and lesser or no respect for their fellow Indians. What is the reason for such behavior? Do they think their fellow Indians are not worth giving respect to? Or are Indians still slaves to the white skin? This is a question I would like to ask you all.
x----x
I wrote this article for the IIT Campus magazine, but I had to change a few sentences in the above article as it was seen as 'a direct personal attack against an influential IIT bureaucrat'.
Precisely I had to change the following
'I would like to take my own example.... that I was very polite to him and never answered back.' to
'I would like to take my own example in this respect when I recently went to the UG section for some clarifications. I was shocked by the treatment I got. I was screamed at, even though I had been very polite. That event has left me disillusioned about the way some bureaucrats think they can get away with anything. My self respect was severely dented on that day.'
I submitted this article to the chief editor during August 2005, but it hasn't found a place in the magazine till yet, though I have been promised that the edited version will be printed in the next issue.
Later, I came to know that the article was dumped by them, they had gone back on their promise. The chief editor of the magazine remarked to me, in a very casual manner, that - "Your article will never be printed in the magazine!"
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