Cognitive Study

I love this field of study though I never got a chance to really study this. But one thing is sure, I would have never cribbed about my job. Check the following link for some good time pass.

http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/

People do all kind of psychological analysis and they create theories around it. And as they are supposedly "scientists", you have to believe them. And the best part is that they just take (i doubt if they really need to do it) some 10 people and ask them a set of questions after putting them in all kind of funny situations. I just can not digest the idea that those 10 people represent how all other people on this planet will behave in the same situation. It is better to have a meeting within the team of the scientists and make up the theory. I might offend some people but I got the same idea about a certain set of people who have the lucky job of market research. It can very well work on hunch.

Now, let us assume they really do those experiments. After all, they have to do something to be job satisfied. It is so much fun getting that empirical data and then fitting the theory into it. You can never get wrong as the results are there before you. It is something similar to the science of evolution. This reminds me of the days when I was doing my thesis back in college. I was so happy doing empirical study. You just throw in a lot of data and interpret it to create a theory. But as I was not convinced, I did not publish even though my guides were so excited about my findings.

[Disclaimer: This is the perception I get when I hear such things. I understand that there is a lot of hard work involved here. After all, I also worked hard for my master's thesis. :)]

Deja vu...

I am back in Korea for a month as Nagaraj goes for a vacation. I was not particularly looking forward to this trip as I had decided not to come back. But it started off reasonably well.

Flight...

The flight was as good as a Thai flight can get. With short stop overs in Bangkok and Taipei, I was not exactly expecting a comfortable trip. But for a change I slept well in the flight. Perhaps the lack of sleep previous night helped. The new Suvarnabhoomi airport at Bangkok was a surprise. It is huge (maybe an understatement). It took a lot of time to figure out the directions to get the directions for my onward gate. I had packed my camera in checkin baggage by mistake. But I liked the new look of the airport. I decided to walk to my departure gate and I guess this was the longest walk I had ever taken on an airport. And I was wishing I had more time to explore.

Landed...

It brought back the memories of the great time I spent here. And it felt like I am back to the winter of 2004-5 when I first came to Korea. It is a country where one feels at home as soon as one lands. And being familiar with the environment was an added advantage this time. It felt good with all the apprehensions gone. Work is going to be tough and I think I am ready for it now. It is all in the mind. And I am back to myself.

Cheers!!!

So long... Farewell...

Last weekend here... I can't help thinking about the past year and a half. It has been a roller coaster ride. Looking back, I see some of really great moments spent here and some of the lousiest ones. One side I see the great hikes, the drives, the food hunts, and the night outs, movies, wines, and bul-taak. And of course, I can not forget the late night fire-fighting days and those integration camps with loads of work and lot of fun. On the other side, there were some really lonely times with no idea on what to do. Feeling of missing out on some things back in India. But still, I guess I would call this a great experience and a wonderful time spent in Korea. Of course, everything comes at a price. And I do not believe in looking at the darker side. But now, it is time to move on. I have made a conscious decision to go back. To get myself back to where I belong and find my way back.

It is exicting to return to India after a long time. I am looking forward to the life I have missed in recent times. But I am just thinking about the life which I am going to miss once I return back. It is a very funny feeling. I hope I could capture this moment in my mind. But time will wash it away. And life goes on...

For now... So long, and thanks for everything... I am really happy to be going back... But I would always cherish the time I spent in Korea...

All the wrong things... Still it's within law...

Cricket is in news again for all the wrong reasons. First SA pulling out of tri-series and everyone blaming them. I guess this is a bit unfair to them. If we are used to bombs exploding nearby, that does not mean that one becomes insensitive to others' concerns. And weather made it worse to make sure that there is no play in Colombo.

And then came the master of all controversies. Pakistan forfeited the match (as the news say) or Hair did it again. There is no evidence that ball was tempered. I don't blame Pakistan for what they did and umpires did everything according to the law. But applying the law is all what umpires are supposed to do?

Whenever there is a talk to implement the use of more technology for making correct decisions, there is an argument about the authority of on-field umpires and the human factor going out of the game. But now, when umpires apply the law without really considering the situations, where is that argument? In the same context, I can never forget the incident where Sachin was ruled out by law in Kolkotta test. (video archived in "my video" link - favorites)

I remember so many incidents when law books are shown as excuse for some things which umpires do, but one should remember one thing. The authority can not be enforced, it has to be demanded by your actions. If umpires want to have an authority as the game requires, they need to be more respectful to the spirit of the game and not to the law.

Potter in news again

Is it J K Rowling's another publicity stunt?

Rowling, who kills two characters in the novel, told the New York audience that she was certainly not looking forward to their deaths.

The task was easier however, for she insists that she has already done her ‘grieving’.

"I didn't enjoy killing the character at the end of book six. But I had been planning that for years, so it wasn't quite as poignant as you'd imagine. I'd already done my grieving when I actually came to write it," she added.

The following piece is really funny.

Top authors plead for Potter’s life

Washington: While Harry Potter fans all around the world wait with bated breath to see what JK Rowling has in store for the boy wizard in the seventh and final book, authors such as John Irving and Stephen King have joined the bandwagon pleading the author not to kill the wizard.

The duo has now launched a campaign to prevent Rowling from killing Potter in the seventh book, and is confident that they can persuade the British author.

Speaking at a New York press conference, where the Rowling, Irving and King were staging a charity reading, Irving said that he was keeping his fingers crossed in the boy wizard’s favour.

Do you want to grow up?

There are times when one thinks about oneself and doesn't know what he is doing. Human beings work on instincts. Everyone sees the world in his own way. And more you start believing in yourself, the more vulnerable you become. The reason is simple. It is very easy to accept the decisions others make as you do not feel responsible for it. But when you start making decisions yourself, you are worried about the consequences. You are answerable to yourself if things do not turn out the way you want. As a kid, you are careless and so happy. You do not care for anything. You are living in a world free of doubts and uncertainities.

There is a time in life, when one "grows up". Well, perhaps I do not quiet understand it or I should say that I do not want to understand it as I never like the idea of growing up. But, I guess it has something to do with person becoming more confident about oneself and starting to believe in oneself so much that one thinks that (s)he can make best decisions. One starts doubting everyone else. This is alright till things are going well as it fits into the thought process. But, it makes one even more vulnerable to failure. It becomes more and more difficult to accept a failure as every success makes you think that you are on right track.

But life is not a bed of roses. One is bound to fall at times. From there on, it is a fight with oneself. It is very easy to give up but I guess nobody would like to do that. After all, you had got confident and believed in yourself and you can not let yourself down so easily. And as I can not relate to that at all, I would skip that. So, what does one do from there on.

Either one can carry on and justify oneself and keep on going with it or one can say to oneself that failures are part of life and they act as learning phases to make yourself even better. Both of these are not easy ways. One runs a risk of remorse in first one and the second way is so tough by definition. It is all about how you want to look at yourself at end of the day.

Let me come back to the point of growing up. If this is what growing up means, do I really want to grow up? I guess I do not have an answer yet. Ask any kid, don't they really want to make their own decisions. They are waiting to get old one day not knowing what is waiting for them. And to be frank, I don't think one should really regret. It is still exicting to design your life. One just needs a right frame of mind and the zeal for oneself.

Funny...

"I know it was wet on Saturday, but nobody expected so many ducks."

This was really funny. Can you imagine 12 batsmen getting out in succession without scoring?

Just check this out:
http://cricket.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1814612.cms

The comment from losing captain:
"When we were naught for four I jokingly said it would be strange if we were all out for ducks."

Reminds me of Kumble's 10 wicket feat. I was running high fever and was not able to sit in TV room in the hostel. So, came back to room and put on the radio. As the fourth wicket went down, a mad thought came to my mind that only Kumble can take wickets on such pitch. So, he might take 10 today. And he did it. Well, sometimes you can really see things coming. It happens to me for sure.

Hi tech security. Is it safe?

Watching sci-fi movies... First thing that comes to mind is biometric security systems. Retina scan, finger print based passwords, etc. Interesting thing is that this is not longer a fiction. You can see a lot of such systems in place already. These were meant to be safer than traditional password based systems.

But, I can't help thinking. Are they really safe? Or they are like keeping everything unprotected?

When I choose a password I keep it in my mind and no technology has been developed to read the mind or get the data out of human mind. But if I use my retina scan, anyone can scan that while I am walking on the road. I can not keep my eyes hidden. Anyone can replicate the key to my lock. When I use my finger prints, I leave the key in the restaurant where I go for food, it can be found on door handles, and I guess I leave the prints atleast at 1000 places in a single day. So, in effect, I have no way of keeping my key safe.

I would even go to the extent of comparing it with the old generation lock and key. I find even that safer as I can keep my key carefully so that I do not lose it. But all these biometric passwords are available for all to steal and make a copy. I really fail to understand how the technology creator think that all this is going to provide a secure world.

We sometimes expend a great deal of time, effort, and money to create a "high-tech" solution to a problem, but we get so immersed in technology that we forget very basic things in life.

I will close with the famous story (which I believe is a misquoted one, but message still holds):

During the space race back in the 1960's, NASA was faced with a major problem. The astronaut needed a pen that would write in the vacuum of space. NASA went to work. At a cost of $1.5 million they developed the "Astronaut Pen".

The Russians were faced with the same dilemma.
They used a pencil.

Culture... Am I missing something?

Today, I want to go back home. I had got over the excitement of seeing the outer world long ago. Now, I am even tired of just thinking about career and compromising my life for it. Perhaps I have stayed away for too long. I feel like a foreigner all over again even though I am so comfortable here. There is not even a single thing which makes me uncomfortable about Korea. But it is not my home. I do not want to think about what to eat everyday. I do not want to worry about not able to understand if some notice comes to my apartment. And most importantly I want to see people around me with whom I can associate. I want to have Dosa's, chats, and pakodas. I want to see hindi movies in theatre.

And when I am thinking of going back, I am realizing what living away does to you. This feeling started when I first went back to India after staying here in Korea. I got to see things from a different perspective. I started noticing things which I would never have, staying in India always. I am not talking about the usual things people talk about like dust, crowds, disorder, nagging policemen, people not being polite to each other, etc. But seeing different cultures, I started thinking about the cliched praises about "indian culture". People do love to talk about it a lot as soon as you tell stories from outer world. There is never an argument as nobody wants to argue. It has to be accepted that we are great. If you do not agree, people will isolate you. They will think that you do not want to come back to India and got too fascinated by life abroad.

When it comes to culture, I keep wondering what is it we are talking about. Here are a few things which I noticed:

1. If I am driving a car, the people on the road have no right to walk peacefully. I will honk at anyone who comes in my way and tries to reduce my speed.
2. A policeman can harass a guy and girl in a public place just sitting and chatting.
3. A boy dropping a girl back home can not come till her house as neighbors will talk about it.

Let me not talk about impolite behavior or lawlessness. But sometimes, when you describe Indian culture to foreigners, couple of restrictions that surprise them are:

1. Boys and girls being friends and going out together is an issue.
2. Drinking in social gatherings like college parties, official parties.

The above two things are really difficult to explain to anyone else in the world and are often talked about in a multinational gathering. And I personally see the first thing spoiling the mindset of the youth in so called great culture of ours. I don't know about girls. But if it is just guys, they can not have fun without talking dirty about girls and sex. Bring in one girl in the group, and things are so different and "cultured" (oops this is my definition of culture, so don't get confused). At various times, I have thought that it is not a good set of people I have seen perhaps. But, with my limited sample set, I would like to illustrate my point.

Let me go back to my school days. Class 8. I joined a new school in Sonepat, SDM School. It was one of the best school in Haryana in terms of infrastructure with hostels, a temple and a huge stadium. I was very excited about it. But I soon realized that I did not know the culture of "good" schools. I did not know how to talk dirty. I did not know any of the popular porn books. I did not understand the language they were talking in. Slowly I got acclimatized to the new environment but I could never pick up the language. I made fewer friends as I was never fluent enough. As I started topping the class, I saw the friend circle growing but I could always feel that they do not see me as one of them.

Now, let me jump to my college days. I cleared JEE, got good rank and joined IIT Bombay. Again, I was very excited being part of premier institute of India. I was amongst the cream of the nation. First time I realized that being a topper in your class or city or district is no distinguishing factor as everyone has got a better story to tell. With all the excitement, I also learnt that things are no different from what I saw in schools. The IITB culture includes weekend TV shows with primary attraction being the X-rated movies with no limit on number of "X" unless people start puking and cleanliness becomes an issue. Everyone still talks about same things and even more openly now as this was a set of confident people who can speak out their mind without any doubt. Unfortunately the competition is so tough that all these people did not spend much time other than concentrating on studies and had very little time to "interact" with girls, so they were even more frustrated than average youth of the nation. And on top of that you have got 25 girls in a batch of 450 with only two of them passing the standard of successful person's girlfriend. I do not see any fault in all of them considering themselves successful. And trust me, that was reducing the standards too low after being declared the cream of nation. With all due respect to fairer sex, I am talking about the majority opinion of guys in my batch. I guess one needs to take this comment sportingly. :)

Now, let us come back to the point. The above two examples are not exceptions. I have studied in 9 different schools, went to NTSC training program for the state (top 60 people from the state), went to the most cosmopolitan IIT (again majority opinion), have been part of a group of top stock traders in India,...
Do I need to add more? This is the ground reality and I believe very few people will disagree.

When did I see a healthy environment in a group of guys? In a co-ed school and even better when there was no sitting restriction for boys and girls. After school, when either the guys had girlfriends or there were girls in the group. But this doesn't happen often for most of the people in India. If you have been in these groups, consider yourself very lucky.

Today's generation does not agree to these thoughts and it is changing. But as this is not accepted in the system, the things are coming out in wrong way. I guess, this opens up a whole new chain of thoughts in my mind and I can not give out real examples in this direction. So, I would end this here. But I am still searching for the answer on what exactly is the culture which we are so proud about. With so many people in India staying away from home for studies and then for making their career, I think it is not a small set of people I am talking about. And myself being away from home for 9 years, I can only relate to this facet of indian culture.

I hope we realize sooner than later that we need to stop singing praises of our culture without understading the real meaning of it and to start taking some positives from the world in addition to what we are already best at, that is, learning all bad habits.

Expressions... They do make a difference...

Yahoo, MSN, Google... there is an endless list of IM services. They are very useful for software engineers like us who spend best part of our days in front of this "smart" terminal. But sometimes it makes you wonder whether one can really communicate through it. Here is one such funny incident which happened today.

Today I got a mesg from one of my friends. She informed me (with I donno what expression): "U know what... Salman got jailed". I didn't know how to respond and foolishly I said what first came to my mind: "Good". Now, all you intelligent people must have figured out what a mistake I made. I don't presonally dislike Salman but if he has been jailed for something he has really done, I can't feel sorry for him. But it seems the "poor guy" did not do such a crime to deserve such "cruelity" on the part of our law system. Well, I did another mistake of pointing out that he is not exactly a poor guy and he owns best of the cars available in India and killed some really poor guys with that. Now the second part was my mistake and not the mode of communication. But I guess I made my point, so lets move on.

Well, obviously I am not worried about Salman Khan here. But coming back to the thing which i find more concerned about is the expressionlessness of this thing called IM. I guess most of you guys must have used it (while at work or home) to stay in touch with family and friends. Things are not always funny. It is not only Salman you talk about.

All the people who agree can put comments here. All those don't agree, send me an IM. ;)

Love of technology transforming Korea

Korea's love for technology is something which you can not miss. It is sometimes impressive and sometimes stupid. But this is what interests everyone.

Interesting article in NY Times: Robots in every house

(Reminds of Will Smith's iRobot)



South Korea, the world's most wired country, is rushing to turn what sounds like science fiction into everyday life. The government, which succeeded in getting broadband Internet into 72 percent of all households in the last half decade, has marshaled an army of scientists and business leaders to make robots full members of society.

......

South Koreans use futuristic technologies that are years away in the United States; companies like Microsoft and Motorola test products here before introducing them in the United States.

Since January, Koreans have been able to watch television broadcasts on cellphones, free, thanks to government-subsidized technology. In April, South Korea will introduce the first nationwide superfast wireless Internet service, called WiBro, eventually making it possible for Koreans to remain online on the go — at 10 megabits per second, faster than most conventional broadband connections.

South Korea, perhaps more than any other country, is transforming itself through technology. About 17 million of the 48 million South Koreans belong to Cyworld, a Web-based service that is a sort of parallel universe where everyone is interconnected through home pages. The interconnectivity has changed the way and speed with which opinions are formed, about everything from fashion to politics, technology and social science experts said.

Cricket...

I am writing about cricket after a long time. India-Pakistan series should be right time to start talking about it. :)

This weekend there was nothing much to do other than cricket which is as dull as it can get. Pakistan has rolled out the flattest pitches available in the country. Are they afraid of losing to India? After a good show against England, they would be happy to get a drawn series against India. Nobody is talking about that. Because there are more interesting things to talk about. For example, is Ganguly's career over? Should Dravid open the batting?

Ganguly was drafted into first test squad perhaps because of pressure from cricket board. It is obvious because there was no reason to drop him against SL and there was no reason to change the squad for 2nd test against Pakistan. And here comes dravid as an opener. Is 5 bowler strategy just an excuse to drop Ganguly. Perhaps he will not feature in the next match also to make way for a regular opener unless India sticks to 5 bowler strategy. It is debatable whether he deserves a place in the side or not but why does it look so dubious as if there are hidden motives to not give him a chance to make a come back. One thing is for sure that he has no friends right now.

What about the match? I guess it will be another draw unless India proves their lack of application in batting just like every other time when they play a batsman short. Afridi is becoming another Jayasuriya for India. Our bowling attack lacks bowlers who can be dangerous without being dependent on helping pitches. Pathan is not consistent at all and all the talks of comparing him with greats should wait. Harbhajan looks ordinary every alternate match. It is going to be interesting to see how Tendulkar does here. He has not played much cricket off late and playing against Pakistan will tell us whether he is at his best or not. But I guess, he should be used as a bowler more often.

The series? It is going to be interesting match at Karachi if this one also ends in a draw. Let us hope now that it is not another flat pitch and there is some real cricket over there.

It's my life...

You have been given an opportunity to live your life. Nobody else can get this opportunity. Do not worry about what you did not do or what you could not do. Take it today as the way it is. And live it the way you want it.


More on this later... I need to catch up on some sleep desperately... :)


January 21

Could not get time to complete that thought which was actually provoked by Priyanka (don't kill me for this). Now, I have lost it. :)