In NOIDA

Post on Blog - the metablog

2006-08-07T02:08:00.000-07:00

I have recently read some fascinating articles on the activity/phenomenon called blogging from the new yorker. Here are the links - Rebecca Mead first wrote in the New Yorker in 2000, click here to read the article in full.

Given the fact that it was 6 years ago, the blurb on the article says "How to put your business, your boyfriend, and your life on-line." The story is about Meg, who setup Pyra that was bought by google and is today known as blogger. Her courtship with Jason Kottke features prominently in the article. Those were early days in blogging and in trying to grapple with the concept, the analogies, today, appear thin, e.g. - "Blogging is like having your own version of the Readers digest magazine".

Then in 2006 July issue, Nicholas Leman deals with blogs in the contemporary context- the blurb says "journalism without journalists". Click here to read the full article. There is a historical perspective (which is humbling) in relation to the pamphleteers and periodicals of the 17th century which later evolved/metamorphosed into the mainstream press as we know today, in Britain and America.

"Will blogging replace mainstream journalism" - that question is asked frequently, however me thinks it is a naive, if an earnest one. Typically technologies, tools, and concepts get co-opted as opposed to discarded. Be it the big debate (at least in engineering in the circles, in the 1930's) between riveting and welding. Everyone thought riveting as a technology was over when welding came along - however both have found different niches for use, or the debate on mainframe computers vs desktops, technologies have found their individual niches, usecases and markets.

Having said that, the nuances of the evolution of blogging may be more interesting than "closed" technologies like riveting or the mainframe computer. The sheer ubiquity, the sheer number of people involved makes watching the evolution of blogging a fascinating phenomenon. I hope it doesn't get copted by the mainstream media.
Dept: of cynical quotes on blogging - "everyone will be famous for 15 people".

No milk Please - awesome blog

2006-07-23T07:51:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are thinking about mortality, your bad-sad job, the declining years, the bombay blasts, the commute, the sense of loss, the price of tomatoes, whatever - I draw your attention to this this excellent post (his other posts are awesome as well). Click here - and chill.
The post definitely made me get up and hit the gym. Why shouldn't I show off my biceps - once I get some, that is.

I grow old, I grow old
Shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled

Blogging the Block

2006-07-18T00:10:00.000-07:00

So, - the ISP's have blocked all blogspot.com sites based off a government directive. For details go here and here
This is a classic pavlovian response to a situation - when we don't have a handle on causality and have no clue how to approach the situation.
In the meantime if you can read this - that means you are already using pkblogs.com or some such site.
Tchk, Tchk..

Six degrees of seperation and one toll bridge

2006-07-17T00:46:00.000-07:00

It is a small world - turns out that my post on the funny incident on the DND expressway caught the attention of a fellow blogger who in turn turned out to be the guy for whome I swiped the card. He left his comment on my blog and his profile is here
What can I say, such twists and turns are what keeps us in awe of life and the internet.

EBook Fair

2006-07-16T08:55:00.000-07:00

The world's largest ebook fair is on - click here to go to the fair. 330,ooo goodies. Yummy.
Lasts till Augest 4th. Click away and stream those yummy bytes across that fat broadband pipe.

Mumbai

2006-07-12T03:08:00.000-07:00

Firstly I hope that if you have friends or relatives in Bombay they are safe.
Secondly if you are looking for information or ways to help here are some internet resources - besides the news channels and print media.
indiauncut.blogspot.com has a comprehesive list of resources for information and ways to help. mumbaihelp.blogspot.com is a great one as well. Mumbai metblogs are buzzing as well - well, if you go to indiauncut you will get a fairly comprehensive list.

Update: Linking Mridula's post on the insenstive programming on the blasts.

Chinese, anyone

2006-06-21T05:26:00.000-07:00

I am compiling a list of Chinese restaurants in NOIDA with a blurb thrown in. Here's what I have so far - and yes, I don't like Bercos. Please feel free to add.

Bamboo shoots
Excellent food, a little more light might make the place cheerier, hmm.. is that a word - cheerier, yes it is - I like the sound of it.

Fortune Cookie
I have been there a couple of times but somehow don't recollect anything. Nada - I was not that drunk.

Oriental Octopus
Out of the way, parking trouble, particularly if you go for lunch with with the burgeoning HCL campuses all around. Food is good, but I'd pick Bamboo Shoots with better light anyday. Apparently the Oriental Octopus in Delhi is only for members. Is that so - I wonder why?

Skywok
Excellent ambiance with a view of the NOIDA skyline (don't take a window seat at lunch unless you want to see all the thrash that we merrily throw - you are safer at night). A restaurant big on space, you can probably pack in 3 bamboo shoots here. Unfortunately that's that - food ain't great.

Just realized that this is so subjective, running people and places down - after all the so much of effort must have gone in and I am not a trained food critic anyways. Maybe they just had a bad day. This thought then meshes directly with the thought of the power of instant publication, of information, of technology and that takes me to Kevin Kelly's excellent blog (he of the wired magazine fame). Click here to wonder about the speed of information.
Food for thought.

No sweat, we are in NOIDA

2006-06-15T05:10:00.000-07:00

Before going any further please read this yahoo link.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060614/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_life_sweat

So Phoenix is the sweatiest city or the citiest sweaty (try saying it out loud) in the US. So where does that leave us noidans. They should have a world competition - I promise that we will finish very close to the top, if not amongst the top three. Heh.

What about computing the dustiest city, ot the citiest dusty - we noidans will do the world proud, I assure you we will be amongst the top three.

I particularly like the phrase in the yahoo link "Phoenix residents collectively produced enough sweat to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, said Jay Gooch, sweat expert at Old Spice, a Procter & Gamble Co. antiperspirant brand."

Please take Jay Gooch seriously, stop that sniggering - he is an expert, folks, an expert - on sweat. As a famous blogger is fond of saying, much fun comes.

Whats a noida blog anyways

2006-06-10T03:19:00.000-07:00

It struck me that I have been doing the usual rants in my last few posts. You see something, don't like it - blog it. You hear something, don't like it, blog it. Fanaa (panaa - the mango drink is better, I still say), Rahul Mahajan, media - I have ranted. Now I shall stop ranting - and focus on noida for a wee bit.
Did you know that in NOIDA, amongst other sundry offices - is host to the office of "Directorate of Lighthouses". I mean, really - in sector 23. It is a huge building, a few hundred meters from Adobe.
The nearest lighthouse from NOIDA would be a few aeons away. Why on earth do they have the lighthouse "directorate" out here - the nearest ocean is a gazillion miles away. Why? And I am not even getting into - what is the function of the aforementioned directorate of lighthouses.
I mean, they were a means of navigation once upon a time - are they still like, relevant?

What does Rahul Mahajan need

2006-06-09T06:12:00.000-07:00

Thande ka tadka - for doing coke. Actually coming to think of it, the media needs it more than Rahul - coke, I mean, to chill and do some news. I mean what, the guy was partying, ODed OK- I can understand the conspiracy theorists coming to life given the context. But what next - let the law take its course.
Although the law is an ass, but it should take its course. I am just wondering that had Mr X sloshed down, say, a couple of bottles of whiskey in Ahmedabad (so called dry state) and had to be rushed to the hospital would he have been arrested?
All right, you say heroin is not the same as whiskey. It is a dangerous drug, very evil. Maybe, I argue, but a lot of folks say the same thing about grass (marijuana) and I have read enough research (and a small country in europe legalized it sometime back) to rebut that.
Psheeww, I say, to all the cameras and the media for standing guard outside the hospital/ court shooting Rahul being carried on a cop's shoulders.
Shooo, I say, give me a coke please. On second thoughts pass me the toke.

What does Fanaa mean

2006-06-05T01:23:00.000-07:00

1. It means a turkey , as the review points out. Why do they make these movies, blind-girl-meets-bad but good terrorist-blind girl sees- the terrorist turns badder-turns remoreseful-and tyagi take him on-ex blind girl who can now see (no pun) now fanaas the remorseful terrorist.

Usage as a verb: I am so fanaased that I could kill that "placeholder for expletive".

2. It mean conning people to believe that Poland is Kashmir, yes parts of the film were shot in Poland.
Usage as a verb: It is appraisal time and the boss won't give you a raise, citing bad company performance, rising cost of gasoline, the decline of Mallika sherawat's assets, whatever - so you say, "dude, don't fanaas with me. I am a badass".

3. Tyagi is Tabu. Wow! - what a fanaas chick. Usage as an adjective.

4. Here's what fanaa really means - click here . It is the sufi term for extinction in love. What a beautiful word, what was Aditya chopra thinking - that getting two bullets in your back is fanaa. Sufis are far too subtle for that, he missed the nuances. What a waste of such a beautiful word.

Controversy

2006-06-01T05:22:00.000-07:00

I am in possession of two pieces of excellent writing, from two friends arguing orthangonal views on reservation. I am debating whether I should post them on this blog - I don't want to be swamped with flames, it is a new fragile blog and it might burn.
On the other hand, me thinks that if we can't dust and air controversial topics - then what's the point of holding a stand and position and having a public space (blog).

Anyways, I have two get permission first from one of the authors. Do leave your comments.

On public demand

2006-06-01T00:04:00.000-07:00

I don't think this blog has a lot of readers but Alka asked me to link this - so I have duly linked.
Amrit has a post on this here
The summary is that 4 students won a NASA competition but they don't have money to get to the US of A. Sucks, doesn't it.

The invisible cloak in NOIDA

2006-05-29T05:19:00.000-07:00

This is in response to Amit Verma's query, click here to see the query.

Well, if I had an invisible cloak - and remember I have a goal to keep this blog topical to noida, I would:
1. Seriously, like totally, scare the living daylights out of those seth log who get their construction done, and then leave all the construction material to swirl as dust for the next century or so. I would hijack (scare them mostly) a few trucks and then ask them to dump all the construction material back into the home where it came from.
2. Seriously, like totally, I would scare the noida admin folks into seriously thinking about traffic patterns and how to fix some obvious bottlenecks. You never have a bus stop after a redlight, dudes, not unless there is a seperate meander for a bus lane. Where did you guys study traffic engineering?
3. Give some serious scares, I mean like totally serious scares to anyone who is a property dealer - or anyone who deals in property.
Ha, I already feel good - even without the cloak.

Of yahoo IM's, sex, married indian men and marriage

2006-05-25T03:22:00.000-07:00

This post is a response to a post by Sanjukta - click here to read the original post.
In case someone is wondering about the relevence of this post with my original intent of this blog (keeping it topical to noida) let me state that some of the folks who stay in noida are married. Let me also add that some folks who stay in noida have sex(just going by statistics here - I havenot peeped) and I guess all think about it, so there.

The question that is asked in the post is "Is it a social problem that this man is embarassed of his sexual fantasy and can't talk about it with his wife..???".
The flippant response would be that maybe (or most probably) his wife will have a sexual fantasy as well and if they could just communicate. A bottle of Rivera red might do the trick. At the most simplistic it is a communication issue, but then again all relationship issues can be distilled to commnication issues, well most of them.
The fact that it is a social problem is symptomatic in so many ways - more so in north India. There is repression for sexual expression (can't share fantasy with thy spouse who might have a big frigging whip if only he knew), there is repression of gender (female infanticide, how many single women can walk the streets of delhi without feeling vulnerable, how many single woman can go to a bar and get a drink without feeling vulnerable). Maybe the two are linked - maybe (and I am going on a limb here - someone put this theory out of its misery) the collective subconscious of the male psyche is so guilt ridden with the collective repression of the opposite gender that we (yeah I am a guy) just can't speak up about their healthy urges and desires "honey, can you crack that whip please, my harmones have just kicked in and I am not into gender repression".
And this creates a momentum of its own, the more we repress that desire, the more we get frustrated and the more repression, this builds a critical mass; newspaper headlines scream
"Delhi rape city", "Delhi - eve teasers capital".
That I think, IMHO, is that. Disturbing - but I think is true. Now having ridden on this theory so far that- sexual expression repression of self is linked to gender repression collectively and things progressively will get worse, the question to ask (in gladwellesque speak), what would be the tipping point when this starts to change?
I don't know - do have a few thoughts, but they are half baked - will post them later. Any one would like to comment?

There is also another aspect to the original, which I want to explore - marriage and its relevence, at least the victorian notion of a marriage. Save it for a later post.

A funny thing happened to me on the way to Delhi

2006-05-23T02:03:00.000-07:00

This was indeed funny. I was going to delhi via the DND expressway thingie and I stopped behind a car in the silver lane to pay toll. For those who don't know DND expressway the silver lane is the one where you flash a card to a transporder and voila the light turns green, the road block goes up and you hit the gas.
So this car was in front of me and the guy was swiping the magnetic card - nothing happened. He kept swiping - nothing kept happening. By now there were 4 more cars behind me and the guy in front of me requested that we all back our cars and move to the next lane - easier said than..
since the next lane was bumper-to-bumper as well.

So (as the alcoholics call it) I had a moment of clarity, I got out of the car, walked over to the transponder and waving the guy's protests aside, swiped my card - voila!, the light turned green, the roadblock went up and he hit the gas muttering thanks.
With a slight swagger, I walked back to my car, started the car, moved to the transponder, swiped my car and was about to hit the gas when I realized nothing happened. Swipe again - nothing again, and again and again.
It was then that I realized that there were some people (including the guard in the next lane) who were laughing ear to ear. Earlier I'd thought that they were admiring me for my prompt action.
I talked to the guard and it turned out that you can't swipe the card twice in a row without having a 15 minute interval in the same lane.
Well, you know the rest - I kept hearing the guffaws for the next 15 minutes.

Noida bloggers meet

2006-05-22T05:45:00.000-07:00

Are there any noida bloggers out there who meet - I am getting hooked with this medium having recovered my lost blog. In fact if work didn't come in the way..

It's summer so it must be road rage

2006-05-22T01:16:00.000-07:00

The bad news is that Natasha Mitchell, reporting for ABC news has reported that India has only 3500 psychiatrists;
that is something like one psychiatrist to every three million of us Indians. In comparison
the US has something like one psychiatrist to a few thousand.

The good news is that the burgeoning middle class now owns 80
million motorized vehicles and at the last count almost all of them
had a functional horn. Our friend Natasha need not be alarmed at
the lack of mental health alternatives in the country, we have 80
million horns and pounding all of those should lead to a copious catharsis
and consequently well rounded individuals.

The average commuter on a day honks 20 times; From the crickety
tweet of the Bajaj scooter to the brain curdling staccato of the pressure
horn on your friendly neighborhood blue line. So that would
amount to 1.6 billion honks a day or about 500 billion honks a
year. Now that is quite something.

Honks is one thing, but road rage that seems to transform bovine
looking middle aged gentlemen into Gabbar Singh on steroids is
quite another. The honks and the road rage define the problem as
one of competence, essentially saying that people don't know how
to drive and are basically stupid and need to be told as much and as loud
as possible. Now this may be true in parts, given the way driving tests are
conducted and the licenses procured but there is also another element.
There seems to be a basic design/requirements flaw in the way we model/design and implement transportation systems.

Back in the early 90's we were doing a course on transportation planning
in IIT Delhi. Now in one of the labs we were supposed to compute the volume
of traffic at the Hauz Khas crossing near IIT gate.
The volume of traffic would have been an input to modeling a transportation system or its components (say
a round about or a merge lane). The way to compute the volume of
traffic is rather simplistic, at least for that lab students man different
corners of an intersection and then simply count the number of
vehicles over a period of time and come up with the volume defined
in vehicles/hour. You could do it at different times to factor in rush
hours and lean periods but essentially at the end of the day someone
would need to stand and count the number of vehicles.

Now the problem as I see it today is that we counted only the cars,
that's correct only the cars. If you take a cross section of traffic on
any road, there are at least a dozen types of vehicles and we are
not even talking about the extremes of vehicle types that can be
found while crossing Bhangel in NOIDA. There is the scooter, the bus, the
truck, the auto, the cycle, the curiously titled private carrier which
actually is the lifeline for small merchants, it is easy to see a tractor, some indigenously crafted vehicles that is called rather appropriately "jugad" in western U.P. and of course the pedestrians.
There will be the RTV the rural transport vehicle and a whole bunch of others. In short the requirements analysis of the
phase missed out on all except a few use-cases and we know what
that means, chaos during implementing the project and customers
screaming after the implementations. Now you know why we honk
it is the primordial scream of a dissatisfied customer. Ideally it
should be directed towards the folks who failed to read the usecases.

Dr Geetam Tiwari is a professor at IIT Delhi for the center of transport
studies. She has been publishing a number of research papers
and has been on the media NDTV did a short story on her that
deals with this issue. Essentially, she says that our transport systems
are unsustainable the most important elements of traffic are pedestrians,
the cycle and the non motorized rickshaws and our models
of transport systems are rather blindly copied from developed
nations who have a much more uniform traffic pattern and do not
factor-in all the other use-cases.

Obviously the solution to this problem is a well near impossible one.
one cannot just do away with all the roads and then build again,
you'd need some political will apart from technological challenges
to fit all these disparate vehicles (motorized and non-motorized)
into a serene smooth traffic flow.

But that is another story- what we could do when that hand moves towards the horn or you get the itch to mouth some of the choicest remember the guy you are screaming at was probably not at the requirement analysis committee when they were designing this road.

Dude, I lost my blog

2006-05-21T22:43:00.000-07:00

OK - a funny thing happened to me in cyberspace. I lost by blog. My earlier blog was noidauncut.blogspot.com (the suffix(uncut), a shameless rip off from Amit Verma's excellent indiauncut.blogspot.com).
Yes, I forgot my password and then forgot the email address to which Blogger might send a password. I tried everything and anything - but to no avail. So I set up another one, noidaunplugged.blogspot.com. So now you have a blog (noidauncut) that will just stay on in cyberspace much like the satellite that keeps circling in a fixed geostationary orbit ad infitum.
Somehow I find that comforting - but on the other hand if I can get in touch with the admin, I would like them to delete the blog.

The haves, have nots and the haven't hads

2006-05-21T02:36:00.000-07:00

We moved to NOIDA after 4 years last year and ofsourse my mind started doing a comparison with the baseline (4 years old), and like so many people went - look at all the new apartment complexes and the malls. Boy, have things changed.
At first glance, yes - things have changed. I don't need to go to PVR Saket to catch a movie, we have spice PVR, the multiplex, next door. We have italian marble. No kidding, I still don't know if they grow marble in italy like rice in India - or is it the scotch thing. More scotch gets consumed in Delhi than is produced in Scotland, more marble gets .. you get the logic. I have to admit that it does look cool. The swimming pool in the complex has a distinct cloudy green tinge to it - that's the noida water effect, if you drink it long enough the doctor will not be able to distinguish you intestine from the scaly plumbing in your building. There is security, power backups - in fact once you are inside the gates, it almost gets claustrophobic, till you realize that the hordes outside can't enter your sanctum because there is a gun wielding guard at the gates. It is a gated community - which is reassuring in a certain way, till you see the contrast.

Outside the gate there will be the invariable JJ (jhuggi jhopri) replete with construction workers, who built the place - and are onto a new project, or into begging or whatever construction workers do after they complete a project. The contradiction is striking - makes me feel a little guilty (not much I assure you) with the italian marble. And just to get even more defensive - I am only renting, I don't own the place.

It does make me wonder, why don't we see poor people in the mall - are they shooed out by the security staff. I am sure they want to go in and ogle at the eye candy.
Doesn't it put that much stress on the social fabric - what happens when two opposite set of forces pull something apart, and if both the forces grow as a function of time. I am worried for my italian marble, my snotnose colored swimming pool, for my security, for my unlimited power backups. It surely can't last

BTW: Here's an interesting article on the psychology of malls, there is a parallel to casinos.

http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_03_15_a_malls.html

BTW: I am a newbie blogger, is it like a cool thing to link stuff like I have done above in cyberspace or will they throw me in the gallows - and I know gallows don't have italian marble, unless, I guess, you are in Italy

NOIDA - authority or a city

2006-05-21T02:35:00.000-07:00

NOIDA - authority or a city
Well, for starters NOIDA is a confused city. I mean, if a city has a name that goes "New Okhla Industrial develoment authority", it is highly unlikely that the subconsiousness of the city will not spwan nightmares.They( the authority, who else) did change the name to GautamBuddha Nagar but the collective damage to the pcyhe of its denizens is too great for the new name to register a blip on their consiousness. Everyone, but everyone still uses noida.Then the other question - NOIDA is a part of NCR (National Capital region), an abstract construct conjured up by the, yes, an authority to placate folks who might think that they are living in U.P. But the U.P government underscroes the fact that NOIDA is very much a part of uttar pradesh by making sure that it doesn't discriminate between NOIDA, and say Hardoi.Both get the same hours of powercuts, no water and no public transport.And just so that the metaphor doesn't die a natural death, the authorities have a new toy - greater NOIDA. No they don't call it GNOIDA, or great(er) gautam Buddha Nagar - it is greater NOIDA. The hustlers on the dadri buses have yet to start the cackle of "greater neoda, greater neoda 5 rupay", but I trust they will get there.Some stats:Poulation - about 7 lacs (0.7 million)Area - As per the masterplan about 3000 hectares, but I suspect is much much more.Height above Sea level - 200 metersDistance from the nearest Sea - Too many miles to contemplate.Distance from the nearest desert - 0 miles.I realized this last week, on a scorching March day while driving in the afternoon on the expressway towards the Amity crossing.The place is a desert.I have been looking around for a decent NOIDA portal, haven't found any. If anyone has a link, please do post. Mucho thanks.