Swiss expedition

Long time no blog ....

Well, I am in Switzerland now. Locarno to be more specific. Here on a business trip for a week.

A trip that started of well in Bangalore with Air France upgrading me to premium economy. Basically means more leg room, slept very well in the flight after a long long time. Why the airlines can't provide a tad more room in economy class, I don't know. If you are any taller than 5'10'' you would know what I am talking about.

For a change my flight landed 45 mins ahead of time. Unfortunately it meant a 5.5 hour wait in Charles De Gaulle airport. Terminal G is the designated terminal for connection flights to Zurich. Not very big, but still enough room to ensure that people can remain comfortably seated. Something for Frankfurt airport to see and learn.

Swiss railway network is a work of art. Typical itinerary leaves you around 3-7 minutes to catch a connection train. And usually all of them run on time. On this particular occasion, I missed my first connection, caught my second connection , but that got delayed, which caused me to miss my third connection again. But trains run at frequent intervals, so if you miss one, usually you can catch another one in 30 mines or so.

Reached my hotel late evening on Sunday night, only to find that the elevator had broken down. Had to lug my suitcase up 4 level of stairs :-(( Shoulder and Back ache after that. Swiss hotel rooms are .... well, they are economical in terms of size. The door to my room opens in and it just about clears the foot of the bed. Had to struggle to pull my suitcase in through the narrow gap. The feeling of claustrophobia gets amplified in the shower stall. My hands are constantly banging the sides as I am trying to take a shower :(

Had a stroll outside to grab some dinner. Locarno is a tourist destination, so I am faced with this sight of couples everywhere. No one is eating alone, every restaurant is filled with families or couples. Looks very odd if I go in and sit at a table alone. So I hit the McDonald's nearby. Consistent taste around the world - consistently bad, that is. I have no idea why people find this to be tasty food !!

The sights that I saw on the train from Zurich to Locarno were good. Nice mountains, steep valleys, big lakes, mountains again, valleys, lakes, mountains, valleys, lakes …… That is all this whole country has !! But very impressive all the same ...

More on this to follow

The number one

After the farcical F1 race last weekend at Hockenheimring and a brutal press conference later ( see especially the section saying Questions from floor in this link), Felipe Massa has now come out and said he is not the number two driver in Ferrari.

Barring Massa, I am not sure how many other people in the world would share that belief. But I agree completely with the temperamental Brazilian. Sure he is not number two, Fernando Alonso is number 1 and 2 in Ferrari !!

Hope someone gives poor old Felipe a hard slap so that he wakes from his state of denial :-(

Tour de France

What better to fill the void left behind by the World cup football, Paul the Octopus , Jabulani et.al than Tour de France ??

Surely one of the purest forms of human suffering that you can witness in sports. 3 weeks of sprints, crashes, lung bursting mountain stages and exhilarating descents. I have been a follower ever since I read Lance Armstrong’s books.

Armstrong, sadly had a disastrous tour this year. But the battle between Andy Shleck and Alberto Contador has been enthralling  so far. I just witnessed a brutal attack by Shleck up the Col du Troumalet that tore up every other cyclist except Contador. After nearly 3 weeks just 8 seconds seperate them. The time trial on Saturday will be interesting. Contador is the favorite on the time trial, but this has been a tour full of surprises.

One of the things that I find very different about cycling is this concept of fairness. If the leader of a race crashes, the rest of the pack would wait for him to catch up. The concept being that Le Tour should be won by the strongest rider, not the luckiest.

The other is the total commitment of the team towards their leader. I saw Shleck’s team mates sacrificing themselves one after the other to set up a brutal pace to propel their man to the front

Both these are quite unlike any other sport that I have known.

Makes for fascinating viewing all the same ….

Life is like that

Flashback to some Friday around 6 months back. I am tossing an turning in my bed, it is 11.30 in the night. Sleep is distant. I feel restless and tense. I try to read but I cannot focus. What is happening , I wonder ?

Now back to the present. Friday evening around 9.30 pm. I am settling down in by bed. My daughter is snuggling close to me, her head on my shoulder, arm clasped across me. I look down at her and see two expectant eyes staring back at me.

“Story”, she demands.

I start off with some impromptu story, my daughter keeps giggling. I keep asking her questions during the story and she keeps responding. Suddenly there is no response to a question, I look down and see that she has fallen asleep.

I have probably mentioned this before, but the feeling of having a little one snuggle up and go to sleep in your arms is the most relaxing feeling ever !!

My bed-time story time is over, the story of my life continues. Only things seems suddenly so different from 6 months back. I cannot find a single word to describe the difference. It’s as if everything that I wished for came true … Complete, maybe that is the word, I feel complete again.

World Cup

World cup football and my daughter – 2 strong reasons that have kept me off the blogosphere.

World cup has been a pleasant surprise, I was not too sad to see Brazil and Argentina go early. I don’t like their attitude, always whining to the referee, overacting when fouled, they act more like a bunch of kindergarten students than professional football players.

So finally it is Oranje vs La Furia Roja. My prediction is for Netherlands to nick it. I like watching Spain play, but they are one dimensional. They could be choked by the Netherlands midfield. van Bommel and de Jong have been the best defensive midfielders on display this world cup.

Just a couple more hours and we will know the winner !!

Also busy with my little one. I am in charge of sending her off to school and receiving her once she comes back. A few minutes with her is the best stress reliever  ever !!

Wonderful Wuhan

June 22nd, 2010 : Wuhan, China
If Beijing revived my deeply hidden fear of skyscrapers, Wuhan bumped it up a couple of notches. The city looked every bit as big as Beijing, with insanely tall skyscrapers everywhere.

Courtesy of the late flight from Beijing, we reached there pretty late. Checked into Ramada , they upgraded me to a suite room. Very luxurious. But alas, they had to do this when my time spent in the  hotel was going to < 10 hours :-((

In the morning we ran into couple of Delhi-ites in the hotel lobby. They were from an Indian firm supplying plastic fuel tanks to variety of car manufacturers. They do manufacturing in China. Indian company, manufacturing in China, supplying parts to German and US companies. World is so small …….

The place was called optics valley, I am told that there are like zillions for optics and laser manufacturers in that area.  The “optics valley” comes from Wuhan National Lab for optoelectronics, one of the five national laboratories in China. The Laboratory is managed by Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), which has about 50,000 students !! A more comprehensive look at this impressive university is found on the following Wikipedia article. Among others, it also house the National Center for High Magnetic fields, another impressive feat of planning and Engineering. When fully commissioned, it can do pulsed fields of up to 80 Tesla, possibly the largest capability in the world

This is another thing that I notice about China, there is no chest thumping or boasting. People are quietly building up world class research, science and engineering facilities. Very focused vision, with loads of government support. There are surely lessons to be learnt from them.

To crisply summarize Wuhan – World class !!

The only downside being the Smog that hangs over the city at all times. You get an acidic sort of smell in your nose all the time too :( Massive urbanization does have its de-merits in terms of air quality.

Left in the evening from Wuhan to Nanjing, my mental image of China as a low cost manufacturing hub has rapidly altered in the past couple of days.

Let us see what Nanjing has in store

Beijng Bites

20th June
12 pm Hong Kong time: I am sitting in the massive Hong Kong airport. The approach for landing offered the most breathtaking view I have see so far from air. The Hong Kong high rise and Harbor are lovely to watch from air.

1 pm : My flight to Beijing is in couple of hours. The airport is definitely a bit warm, I am beginning to sweat slightly. 

6.30 pm : Landed in Beijing, yet another huge airport. I have been forewarned by my colleagues to ask for a hotel pickup. The cab drivers do not understand English well.

7.30 pm : I am finally out of the airport. Beijing is pretty warm. I see a lady holding up a printout with my name. I follow her to the parking lot, which is underground. Surely she won’t be able to drive a car in those heels  ???!!!  Sure enough there is a car waiting for me with a Chauffer. An Audi !! I can play football in the rear seat.

7.40 pm : We are on our way out. Already impressed by the roads. Airport is in the middle of nowhere, I can’t see anything on either side of road. No sign of the infamous Beijing smog as of yet. I am settling a bit apprehensively into my seat, I know that Beijing has lots of skyscrapers. I am mildly scared of them :-( Never been all that comfortable around skyscrapers, I don’t know why

7.55 pm : First wave of skyscrapers hit us, this is not too bad, I can hold on.

8.05 pm : We pass the Bird’s nest stadium in Beijing. Beijing looks massive and with a traffic to match its big city status. Roads look better than in the US. And the driving style worse than in India

9.00 pm : Checked into the hotel, headed out for dinner with a colleague. We go to one of these traditional Chinese places. Menu includes Chicken, beef, pork, fish, soup, noodles and rice. I decline the pork, I sample everything else. The food is very hot, I like it !!

10.30 pm : Back in my room, make a couple of calls home. Internet is not free, scandalous !! Hotel is very nice and comfortable though

21st June

7.30 am : Breakfast is not free either !! Tremendous selection for breakfast. I eat heartily.

8.30 am: We are checked out and ready for our university visit. Our colleague is held up in traffic. He stays only 5 kms away, but has taken him more than 30 mins to reach us.

9.15 am: We reach the university and start our meeting. We are served tea, black, with leaves floating at the bottom of the cup. No milk, no sugar. First sample tastes awful, manage to take in a few mouthfuls. The cup gets refilled at alarmingly regular intervals, Chinese seem to be very caring hosts !!

12.30 pm: We are off for lunch with the faculty. Lunches, I am told, are grand occasions in China. I can see why. Lots of food, wine and talking. Talking is all in Chinese, so I focus on sampling small morsels of everything. Tastes pretty decent, just looks and smells very different from what I am used to seeing everyday. The fish looks as if it has just been dunked in hot water once, almost looks alive :-(( But surprisingly taste is good.

3.00 pm : On our way to Airport, Wuhan is the next destination. Flight is delayed by almost 2 hours. I am deeply engrossed in a book that I picked up at Bangalore airport. Open : An autobiography by Andre Agassi.

Sports ?? and Indians ?? No way !!

Honduras, with a population of 8 million can qualify for world cup, not us.  We have 1000 million people in India, imagine that. 1000 million !! We can’t even get past the first round of qualifiers.

Did I hear a voice of objection ? Did someone shout, “But hey, we have Vishy Anand, who is the Chess world champion yet again”, “What about Abhinav Bhindra, gold medalist in Shooting?”, “Haven’t you heard of Geeth Sethi and Pankaj Advani, ace billiards champions ? “.

My point is all these sports are so called “stationary” sports. Any sport that requires us to get off our backsides and move around, we pretty much SUCK royally.

And please don’t mention Cricket to me. It is a more or less a stationary sport. And about 9 countries around the world play it seriously.

In the meanwhile, Switzerland, with a population of 7.8 million has defeated Spain. Slovenia has 2 million people, New Zealand has 4 million, Slovakia has 5 million.

And Mumbai alone has 13 million people.

Where are those 11 folks who can kick a @#$%^& ball ????

On Education

This is courtesy of another blog that I read often , two wonderful videos on education

Week of redemption

“All my memories from those days come gather round me
What I`d give if they could take me back in time
It almost seems like yesterday
Where do the good times go?” – Twenty years ago by Kenny Rogers

Good times are here again !! After 4 years of waiting, finally my family is coming back to be with me. June 9th is the day when I shall emerge from the ashes like a Phoenix and fly again.

Fly higher and higher, no limits now. I am floating in that unbelievable lightness that comes from a truly contented mind.

Finally my demons are vanishing and I am at peace.

May peace be with you too, wherever you are.

And may peace be with all the boy soldiers ( former and current) like Ishmael Beah, author of the gut wrenching book A long way gone : Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. One of the most shattering books I have read, I could not  sleep for a day after I read this.

Books like these can often give you a much needed perspective on what true hardship in life is.

Brownie time ..

Tea cake, Chocolate cake, Raisin cake, Nuts and raisins cake, Cashew nut cake, Pineapple cake, Chocolate chip muffins and cookies, Black forest cake, Rum and Raisin cake … Hmmm, just about enough items in my arsenal to open a bakery !! Maybe one of these days I should do so .

I had been contemplating baking a brownie for some time. I have not eaten a brownie, or if I have, I have forgotten what it tastes like. I like undertaking these kind of experiments, because one can be very liberal in the interpretation of success :-).

I required a square cake tin for the same ( don’t ask me why, almost everyone says brownie should be made in one ), a brief trip to MK retail fixed that part.

When wifey was over here couple of weeks back, she was complaining about the lack of general purpose vessels in our kitchen. However I can proudly say that there is no way she could raise the same complaint about baking vessels. Muffin trays, muffin cups, rectangular baking trays, bread box, circular baking tray, hexagonal tray, I have them all !! I have no idea why, maybe I have a bit of blind-spot when it comes to baking ….

For the recipe, my US consultant stepped up to the plate yet again with this recipe on Hershey’s site. Only alteration was to use half cup cocoa instead of one-third mentioned. I did not bother with the frosting, in the past I have failed pretty spectacularly whenever I have attempted it.

All in all the brownie came out looking decent. Maybe more of a blackie than a brownie. It crumbled somewhat towards the center and it was not very easy to extract it out of my cake tin.

Nothing extra-ordinary about the taste, I don’t think it will be one of my favorite cakes. May be the walnuts spoiled the taste some what for me, I should have used cashews instead :(

Rain, Power and me

Not only is it raining here, but it is windy like crazy. And the strange part is the rain and wind exist only for a one hour stretch in the evening. After that it is perfectly calm and bone dry. But boy, the one hour more than makes up for the remaining 23 hours of calm. It has been total mayhem for past 2 days. Trees falling, windows getting shattered, roads getting flooded and what not

Plus the small issue of lack of power of course. The merest sight of a breeze and power goes off. I am supposedly a fully qualified electrical engineer and I can offer no explanation on why this maybe the case.
Is the power switched off to prevent trees from falling and shorting the wires ? Maybe , but underground cable is not exactly rocket science technology to implement, is it ?

More sadly the lack of power brings back two painful problems
1. Since the ceiling fan does not turn, mosquitoes have a field day in attacking me. Hence I cannot sleep very well
2. I light up a mosquito coil to shoo them away, but the smoke invariably triggers an asthma attack. Which in turn again means that I cannot sleep

Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

Among these raging insomniacal days, I have somehow finished Coming back to me by Marcus Trescothick. In one word- brilliant. 

Truly eye opening account on how devastating depression can be, and also on how under-diagnosed the condition is. It is very rare for a professional sportsman (who is still an active cricketer in the county circuit) to be so open about his problems. The story of his cricket life is very well written with a touch of humor present all the time. The book won William hill sports book of the year award in 2008 and I am not surprised at all.

Muffins and me

It is high time I launch my own bakery.

I was wandering in Forum Value mall the other day when I felt like eating a muffin( or a cup cake) . Strode into Cookie Man and ordered one, only to realize on piece is  Rs.60.  Imagine that !!! And it was not all that great either,pieces of it were under-cooked.

Later on I was in Hyper City when again I saw a pack of chocolate chip muffins, 2 of them being sold for Rs.50.

And to think I am giving away mine for free to the ungrateful lot in office !! Next time I am charging heavily for my creations …..

Learn from nature

A recent visit to the Mysore Zoo triggered some thoughts in my mind. There are indeed a lot of things that we can learn from animals.

For example take the Lion. The male lion does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. All it does is sleep the whole day, the female does all the hard work. The male is not even a wage earning member of the family for God’s sake !! Yet, you could say he enjoys his life. No responsibilities, 24x 7 x 365 food and comfort guaranteed.

Male Lion’s life is not too bad eh ? yeah , yeah, i know they look royal and all that stuff. I could grow a mane too, you know :-)

Or the Hornbill, which is the state bird of Kerala. Legend says that it drinks its water directly from the rain drops. Now why do we spend so much time washing our cars ? Leave them out of the covered garages whenever it rains, let nature do the washing for you !!

Extending the same concept to human beings can result in rather objectionable odors, especially if you are in a place like Bangalore where it rarely rains. So let us leave that one alone please …

I am convinced that this is a “natural” path to follow :)

Jnanappana

No, that was not some jumble that my daughter typed, it is the name of a famous poetry book in Malayalam. More specifically, the obtuse sounding reference to this old book is in the context of the following two verses

Randu nalu dinam kodangoruthane thandilethi nadathunnathum bhavan
Malika mugalileriya mannante tholil marappu kethunnathum bhavan

The translation, again obtained from the above link, reads :

In a matter of day or two You are He, who makes them ride on the royal chair.
On the shoulder of the king who climbs to the top of palace. You are He, who places the tattered heap.

How else can I describe my state ? Till yesterday I was a king. My house was filled with laughter, people, food , action and conversation. Today there is nothing, my family has gone back after their brief vacation

On the positive side, we spent probably the happiest week ever together !!

I will get back to my reading mode again. Among other books, I have the latest collection of short stories from Archer in queue : And Thereby Hangs a Tale.