Another date with (d)anger

Barely a month since I jotted down my experimental techniques for anger management, fate presented me with another chance and a lot of time for practising those skills. 13 hours to be precise! That’s the amount of delay I had to endure in a simple 4-hour flight from Chennai to Singapore, via Colombo.

Since I didn’t have the necessary apparatus as described in the first post, to deal with the anger, I had to rediscover and reinvent a few. And 13 hours in 4 different airports is a lot of opportunity to resort to different techniques, especially designed to resist prolonged frustration attacks.

On a rare rainy day in Chennai, a heart filled with post-diwali joy, and suitcase filled with lovely sweets and savouries, I was all set for a journey of a few thousand kilometres across the Bay of Bengal.

Scenario 1: Dealing with delay on a hungry stomach
After a number of innovative security procedures, and delightful restrictions, I reached the waiting lounge to board the flight. I had a camera bag, and one carrying laptop, but the security guys didn’t like 2 bags, so I was forced to hurriedly buy one massive jute bag (koani pie) to put the stuff. Then I was gleefully allowed to pass thru, just to be told that the flight is delayed by 2 hours since the runway was flooded caused by a dead rodent clogging the storm-water drains.

Technique 1: Search for alternate entertainment/distraction
I was suffering from a temporary loss of interest in cricketing affairs, after yet another humiliating exit by the Indian cricket team from a prestigious tournament. But that wet night witnessed the display of some icy cool temperament of an English cricketer Kevin Pietersen, who steered his team right out of a hell-hole to the bosoms of sweet victory, all the while having the unfazed expression of an corpse who died while watching a repeat performance of a boring drama! By the time England hit the winning runs, I was so engrossed with the thrilling match, that the flight attendants had to wean me away from the idiot box, tempting me with a well prepared dinner onboard.

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The hour-long flight to Colombo was quite uneventful, and didn’t give a clue of what lay ahead of us. On landing at the Airport with a connecting flight in less than at hour at around midnight, I was ready to the slow-motion sprint act. We were then informed that that flight was cancelled due to flooding (again) and delayed by 7 hours till morning. Then multiple scenarios presented themselves one after another -

Scenario 2: Stuck inside a queue that is like a snakes' intestine (and the reptile is suffering from alimentary congestion! )
I found myself standing hopelessly in a queue, which was supposed to lead us to allocation of hotel accommodation, with nobody actually revealing the truth that the airport was cut-off from the rest of city due to flooding of the connecting roads. Watching people constantly complaining in muted tones, executives losing cool with the airport staff, and queue-breakers trying to advance in a line that’s never going to move!

Technique 2: Music from outside and within
Started to listen to music from my hard-disk player on a low battery, listening to slow melodies, instead of fast energetic numbers, which I tactically estimated, might consume more power. Despite my power saving efforts with advanced logic, the music lasted for 2 songs, and ended abruptly with the squeaking sound of a common lizard being accidentally stepped on under your bare feet.
It was time to put inside the hardware player and bring out the software based music player inside my brain - my inbuilt infinity mp3 player.. Like any lover of music, we possess memories of a huge list of favourite songs. With some training during sleep-less nights, I can now invoke any song from memory and play it in low-fi mode. A few minutes later, irritated bystanders were staring a foot-tapping, head-nodding, hip-shaking and whisper-singing moron enjoying himself in pure solitary and guilt-free pleasure, while they were fretting and fuming for no apparent reason.
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Scenario 3: No Acco, No bed, no silence, no darkness, no fellow-travellers, no sleep, no food, no nothing for 7 hours starting from midnight.

Technique 3: Victimise other victims by boring them with insipid conversation
Looked around for other suffering souls and found 2 poor guys - one from B'lore and the other from Hyd'bad. And we started our own deccan chronicles, talking about everything from politics to pot-holes, heated discussions about the security guy who disallowed me from shooting pictures of some colourful masks on display, but still managed to take this :)

Observing the sales girl who slept fitfully in a shop that sold costly cameras and lenses and open at 3am, about the duty-free shops which accepted any major currency, but returned change in 3 different currencies much to the delight of a coin collector, and a general discussion on the deep shit we were currently in and how we were sadly getting used to the stench.
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Scenario 4: Infinite delays :
till 6am, the information displays read 'departure at 0700hrs', at 7.15am it read 0800am, at 8am it 8.45a, and finally the flight took off at 9am ! (How could the flight take off any earlier, without the crew being able to reach the airport due to ..?? flooding again !! )

Technique 4: Anger -> Frustration -> Sarcasm -> Irony -> Humour -> Peace (-> Moksha)
With every other announcement of further delays, we were no longer losing our temper, but rather remembering the movie 'Terminal', playing games slow-coffee-drinking-race and, for a moment even considered responding to the 'job vacancy for electric trolley-driver’ ads!

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By the time the author of the post landed in Singapore after spending half a day researching anger management, he received a nomination for a Nobel Peace prize and conferred upon an honorary doctorate for saving humanity humbled by hellish horrors due to the hopeless habit of harbouring hatred.

Advanced techniques in Anger Management #1

Those who know me, will probably remember a meek, soft spoken, gentle natured guy who would even feel for stepping on grass, or eating meat for satisfying the palette ;-)
It had almost become become a habit for me not to express anger when it comes, but rather allow the storm to pass, and then think clearly and try to solve the problem. This helps greatly in maintaining important relationships, but sometimes made me feel like the closest human cousin of a spineless sea-cucumber !

Not anymore ! For the last few weeks, the force of anger repeatedly found weak points in the titanium crucible that contained it, and started to leak through the crevices and cracks. It would charge up slowly like a capacitor, and discharge as suddenly as a photographic flash- "tsinppp" . Within seconds the burst of light is gone, but the bad image rendered by the outburst was what is still visible to those on the receiving end -Definitely not the kind of image I would prefer others to have of me....

Last Sunday, I was caught up in a awfully messy situation, and was quickly spitting sparks of fury. Assertive words soon became aggressive action and that later manifested into uncontrollable Angry reactions. If only I had the defects of the cartoon character Hulk, I would have become greener that chlorophyll and given the Earth a Zidanish head-butt!

Fortunately the problem got solved on its own, and i was left with blood throbbing thru my temples, though fully knowing that the situation was under control.Being not used to getting so angry, even my voice crackled, vision blurred and i got even more angry with myself for what was happening to me!

It was about 5.30pm, when I walked out the bloody place and wanted to sit in some quiet seat and relax the nerves. Strangely, extreme anger is a bit like intense infatuation, and quickly to cause the blood sugar level to drop, and I felt ravenously hungry.

Entered the nearest restaurant, and acted cool, patient and talked very politely to the waiters. Browsed thru the menu card, my mind wasnt reading anything. Just went ahead , checked for availability and ordered my MOST favourite dish Panner Dosai, and special masala tea. Then the world turned upside down for the better, and the spirits rose higher, with every morsel of food that went down the oesophagus in peristaltic motion following simple rules of gravity.

I was starting to love it, and at the end of the first helping, I didnt think twice to order my other All-Time Favourite of thayir-Vadai for an extended evening snack session. By the time the yoghurt-soaked Indian salted donuts were safely nested within the mildly acidic linings of my stomach, I was back as the happiest and peace-loving soul that walked this planet. The world outside looked lovely and inviting and I was all set for a pleasant sunday evening....

So the next time, you intend to confess to me or do something silly that would surely attract rumbling thunderstorms in me, just make sure there is some form of eatery nearby. Even a fridge with ample stocks of cheese-cakes, indian sweets, tiramisu or icecream will be enough to formulate a adequate defense strategy !

The IC Designer's analogy of Child-Birth

Ever wondered how closely phases in the birth of a child follows a typical integrated chip development cycle so closely ? If you havent yet, then start now!

The relationship between designer(mom) and internal customer(dad) within the parent company is key to success of the project. Its starts with marketing presentations, feasibility studies, and project planning(courting,proposals,marriage). The designer and internal customer work closely to create the initial requirement spec(zygote).That happens only after severe brainstorming sessions to choose between millions of competing ideas, the most potent one is chosen for implementation(fertilisation process).

The quality of the final product primarily depends on the quality the initial spec (genes) and a typical SoE (System on Embryo) project duration is 38 weeks. Except in the case of identical twins or genetic clones, Intellectual Property rights are in place and there is no violation of copyrights(unique individual)

Once the top-level entity is declared and inputs outputs systems identified, the subsystems start to be declared(differentition) and individual workstations (stem cells)are assigned to start to work on development of systems like neural-network processor core(brain) , various functional macrocells(internal organ systems), analog sensors(eyes,nose,ear) and actuators(hand/legs).There is a constant need for power resources and information to fuel the growth(umblical cord thru placenta)

Project development is monitored by accrediting agencies - Doctors with ultra-sound. The system responds to external inputs like sound, light and many of its output vectors are registered by the designer. Well before the final delivery various simulations have been run (heart, organs start functioning) and actuators begin testing phase inside the womb itself(kicking and moving inside).

Project delivery is a difficult time for the designers getting very little rest/sleep during the phase. Every team concerned with the project is really tensed and praying for a good delivery on time for fully functional first silicon with minimal bugs. Tape-out occurs after all verification has been done (head-out in the case of a baby!)

Basic Operating Systems (new-born's instincts) are put in place in the ROM memory and remaining memory will be field programmable for customisation by external customers(parents,school,society). This is one of the finest examples of hardware/software codesign, and the complexity of the software increases with the maturity of the product. After the first silicon is up and running, there is huge support phase (15-20years) needed from the designers to make sure all the bugs are cleared up and the product reaches maturity(puberty) and ready for volume production(career).

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Reference:
http://www.spuc.org.uk/ethics/abortion/human-development

Happiest day in my life...! -- May 30, 2005

No ! I wasnt about what happened today, but rather how today happened.

I simply woke up laughing in my bed, triggered by some really funny event in a dream that I dont remember now. And I just checked the time in my phone and it was 7.29 sharp, and an instant later the alarm started to ring out one of my favourite songs (the alarm tone was a Mp3 file in this case).

Compare this to the average day, where I always switch off the alarm, sleep for 30 mins more, and wake up hurriedly and groan " Oh! S*** ! " , and let out a few more curses before getting out of bed.. SOMETHING was seriously right today..!

Just continued smiling and giggling my way to office, and attended some training. And like every other classroom , my circadian cycle turned upside down and started feeling sleepy. Thats when I unleash my best anti-dote to slumbering during a lecture or a meeting..And thats Not a cup of coffee..!

I just watch someone else dozing off, and struggling to stay awake. This is bound to make you laugh, sending in those crucial pints of blood to the brain, and you are back again. Today it was my friend, who slept exactly the way , the guy advertising for some Airline company does- well stretched out and completly relaxed posture in the chair.

The day ended with a showtime premiering the old comedy movie- Taxi (original french version). And here I am , armed with a smile to goto sleep, instead of a sleeping pill.

Now tell me how many people get to smile from the moment they wake up, till the instant the fall asleep ??

Bowling & Bowling..

Just mused about Bowling, after participating in a tournament on May 07..

To all those who know the game of cricket, and those who would like to know...

A bowler has to bowl a hard ball, with a core of cork wound with string and covered by leather, weighing between 156 and 163 grams(slightly larger but a lot heavier than a tennis ball). The ball is directed towards 3 stumps (cylindrical wooden post, 25 mm in diameter and 813 mm high) arranged in a row perpendicular to the bowling direction with a maximum separation of 228 mm apart from the edges ...I omit the detail about 2 little bails, sitting on the gap between 3 stumps.

The aim is to unsettle this combination(wicket) by directly bowling at it from a distance of 22 yards. To top it all, you could bowl inswingers,outswingers,yorkers,bouncers,fast,medium pace,gentle medium pace, leg spin,leg break, off spin ,chinaman,leg-cutters and other species of balls.

(note if you are feeling dizzy about the statistics given above, you are not fit to listen to a standard cricket commentary..You need to work on your appetite for numbers before you read on. start befriending the 'deep blue'..)

Thats not all..To prevent the bowler from achieving this aim of hitting the stumps, stands the guardian of the wicket..A Wicked Batsman with a dangerous weapon simply called a bat, whose dimensions are well specified, but not the maximum weight. This guy's job is to despatch the ball you just bowled, to the farthest corners of the playing field, and send your teammates on a leather hunt..

I barely had a happy moment in my bowling career, and mostly left the field demoralised and dis-oriented. Now you can understand why a failed bowler like me, would readily love the friendly conditions of an Bowling alley

----------------One fat heavy ball, 10 fat little stumps, tame rolling the ball on the lane will do, and most importantly no batsman to prevent it from reaching there. Though you could never flatten all the 3 stumps in cricket, you could strike down all the 10 pins in Bowling.

Getting a strike, could be quite gratifying for normal cricketers, and absolute bliss for sloppy bowlers(in cricket) like me. When I still see other novices bowl and miss all the pins, I cannot imagine how they would fare if they were playing cricket. Now dont ask me how I fared in that tournament..All I can say is I scored centuries in almost all the games I played..(well, that last sentence is intended to wow a cricket batsman, who has never been Bowling !!)

Last heard that our team could been selected for the finals..A big thanks to my 3 teammates, for triple-handedly taking me along to the finals on June 04..

Just Another Movie ?

It became a rather unsatisfying week to the not-so-much movie maniac in me..three of the latest Tamil movies Chandramukhi,Mumbai express,Sachien seen within a week, and here I am yelling at myself.."Why dont I just learn to, see only the movies that i really want to ??".. And thats what i did..

I have heard from my old Rwandan friends, back in college days about the civil war in their country in 1994. When they told me about a million lives lost during that war, I might have said "Oh ! my god ! thats terrible", and probably continued eating my dinner after a 30 second pause.

And there was a scene in the movie Hotel Rwanda, where the lead actor Don Cheadle exactly predicted the way most people in other parts of the world would react, when they come to know about such a massacre.

I realised that a million lives is about 5 times or so the number of lives lost in the tsunami(Dec 26,2004). No natural phenomenon, or force of nature can take away as many lives as the weapons of hatred or men at war can snatch. So tell me who is our greatest enemy ?

This inspiring movie is about Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager from Kigali, Rwanda who saves more than a 1000 people from certain death, at the hands of the opposing militiamen. Watching the movie , made me feel a lot more connected with the brutality and pain endured by the survivors, and also a few good lessons about resoursefulness and hope.

Having watched Schindler's List last week for the first time, and this one now, you can guess the state of mind now..

If you are of the kind who looks for much more than just entertainment in a movie, watch this one.

And for Nshakabatenda Ramadhani , Nzamutuma Ismael, and Nyandwi Alphonse who narrated the happenings of the war to me... I now understand..!

Digital Frustration !

There are a million reasons why one should compose a blog, or write a poem, or scribble something in a diary, or just scream aloud. But nothing can come out as suddenly or as passionately as the expression of pure and unparalleled anger & frustration.(did you think i was abt to say something abt love ?)

I have been lazy, hesitating, unimaginative or just plain disinterested to write my first blog ever. But the day has come... for a spontaneous outburst of annoyance ..

Electronics is my study and profession. But today I would like to deep fry the brains of the people who invented transistors, batteries, integrated circuits, CDs, DVD players, and even cables. and pulverize the lousy fellow who imagined great wonders could made out of silicon instead of leaving the mud(silica) alone... How can so many things fail at the same time ?? How far should I go to listen to just listen to one nice song ?? How could one of my favourite CDs gets stuck in a brand new branded DVD player ?

It only proves my theory about the existence of a Goddess of Circuits- Electronica , who simply decides for or against any user on a given day. Most users of electronic equipments,circuit debuggers would readily agree that certain inexplicable events/ failures would have left them puzzled on one day, and the very next day, they start up the system and lo! it works as if it always had. At such a moment look above , and you would find Her smiling to glory.

Having typed all this, my anger seems to have been dissipated. But thinking again, I might have made Electronica throughly unhappy...I hope I can save this blog, post this entry..and the PC does not hang up before that or a disruptive power glitch ruins this already wonderful evening....or a ....."Pllunkkkk"....................................

Yesteryear's Musicplayers

Yesterday, I have just gone through one full circle in the possession of music players . A strange feeling of 'retro' started to sink in.

The first year in my college life, I didnt have any device to listen to music. Then my first ever music player was organic.. it was a hostel mate who resided in the adjacent room, and sang all his favourite songs in his inimitable genre. This unfortunately caused the old hostel walls to quiver as if hit by mild tremors. This also made 11 other souls who could hear his voices , to respond with their own style of 'returning the music'- using the same language like angry young rappers always do..!

Then came along my most loved and inorganic Aiwa cassette playing walkman, whose spools had to rotate on battery power almost every night of 3 long years. In the final year however we inherited an amplifier and a large speaker which resembled a small fridge, designed to bring the roof down. This strange combo was still used to render all of ARR's and HarrisJ's latest hits and endured endless hours of playing 'Vaseegara'. But there was one fatal problem of the 50Hz power supply noise which got added to the music, so a listener would get the impression of riding a diesel-powered motorbike and listening to the music at the same time !

The days of the Compact Disc had become a reality in India, by the time I left for Singapore a CD player was among first in my list after getting my first stipend. My friend Ravi and I actually bought an unknown brand Compro for $99, within just a few weeks of university life - the reason being the walkman could play it could ACD,VCD and Mp3 for just 100 dollars! But we realised only later that we got much more for the money than what we desired. The MP3 decoder inside had a soul of its own, and would improvise any song rendered as a Solo by adding some ghost voices and making it sound like a chorus instead !



A few weeks later a beautiful slim blue-eyed model became our roommate disguised as a 2.1 multimedia speaker with a cute looking bass speaker. She was sooo photogenic that I even practised my modelling photography on her ! And she could really SING , and I truly understood that music with no bass was like a night sky with just stars but no moon..! With her, I enjoyed 2 more years of moon-lit skies and soothing music.

Photographers and Audiophiles have one thing in common - they cannot stop yearning for better quality features and higher performance devices to enrich their passion for photography or music, and can fall into the trap of burning their own purse in pursuit bigger , better gadgets. And imagine the plight of someone, who is both ! Eventually the blue fairy was getting older, and needed replacement.

This time it was Toshiba DVD player which seems to play everything including photos CDs. And another audiophile friend who overgrew his system of Rotel amplifiers and PSB speakers, sold it to me. Just how nice it was to shut off all the windows, put all the noise-generating flatmates to sleep, switch off the ceiling fan, and even breathe slowly-- just to listen to the music without distractions.

All was well, but something was missing! There was too many songs in many different genres, too much technology involved, too many CDS and Mp3 compilations ....but all seemed too familiar and offered no element of surprise, reminded nothing close to the heart.

I remembered how my tamil teacher in high school Mr.Baskaradoss once told us, how every kid in his native village were new fans of the 'radio box' but had a fear hidden deep within their hearts. All of them apparently thought that it was a little 'bhootham'(ghost in tamil) which resided and sang all the melodies from inside the box, whenever invoked.

I too longed to be mesmerised by the bhootham and bought a little AM/FM tuner, put it unobstrusively by my bedside, turned on the late-night old melodies programme on 'Oli 96.8', enjoyed the songs that mydad would have enjoyed as a kid and ....... slept !

Balance of Terror

I am extra lucky to have this mean machine at my home- which makes me feel happy or sad, depending on what I want..! Before you let your imagination run wild, let me tell you that its a simple weighing scale gone wrong.

When stood upon, the scales point to some number - when body weight is shifted slightly more to the left leg, the weight decreases- And when I shift the balance to the right it increases exponentially. With such amazing linearity, it is one instrument you just dont want to believe. But on the positive side, on days when I want to feel supremely positive, I stand entirely on my left leg..! (Scale reading = (My weight) - 8 kilos, and lets not fix a value to the variable My weight)

The point is not about some malfunctioning springs. Its just that this is the only balance I have control over, and know how to get pleasing results. The other balances..?

We keep listening to this 'One should learn to strike a balance between bla-bla-blah'-- Think about it ; Is that insightful or useful or atleast interesting to hear? Without any proper definition for what exactly is the balance, most people are still left groping in the dark, figuring out the perpetually oscillating value shown in the scales of balance. Lemme describe 2 big ones -

Professional/Leisure activity : Among many things that young adults writing their resume or attracting their partners, like to portray themselves as, ia a well rounded personality. The ability to juggle a profession (to earn for the rice), and leisure activities (flavor the rice with sambar,rasam) is something everybody recommends. But as the author found out, it aint that easy.

It starts with 5 weekdays-2 sleepdays- 5 WD-2 SD.. kinda routine - leading to the jolting realisation that 28.5714% of ones life is being cruelly wasted. Then follows a scheme of enrolling into various sports, classes and other voluntary activities over a period of time designed to enrich life. The weekends get packed slowly, and the important yet insane things-to-do spills over into weekday evenings and nights(like this blog). Today I just realised I am more relaxed during regular work hours that outside or weekends..! Gotta work to achieve a balance in this.

Food and Diets : "Eat in moderation" claims every health bulletin. Good idea , but whats moderate ? I absolutely hate it when they gives figures in calories, which is quite immeasurable when I think of the variety of stuff we eat throughout the day.

Follow the food pyramid says the wise one. But wise ones havent seen through the different food pyramids thats available - for meat eaters, for lean meat eaters, for vegetarians, for vegans, for non-dairy diets, low cholestrol diet, low saturated fat diet, low carb diet, e-diets , and then ofcourse the McSpicy Double meal. All this for somebody for forgets what he is talking about, when interrupted by the very thought of lunch !
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By now you must be wondering where or when is this guy going to end this winding passage on the incompetance of regular humans to know what to do, and how much. You might even debate if you should spend time reading blogs in future, of people who do not want to think aloud but just type it down and forget all about it.

My last word here, would be to learn to strike a balance on the amount of time you spend online and the time rather spent on other equally worthless activities!

Opening in the clouds..

Atlast..the first post..
a very cautious and unambitious first step towards the massively proliferating blogworld.