RIP B.D. Manocha

My last living grandparent - my paternal grandfather - B.D. Manocha - pitaji - passed away on the 18'th of May, 2009. He was 95 years old.

This was coming - he had severe Alzheimers, had suffered a stroke that had paralyzed the left side of his body, was very frail and pretty much fully dependent on others. It is because of this that I feel this was a good thing. He had led a long and (for the most part) healthy life - lived long enough to see his great grand children (the oldest of which is now almost 19 years old), seen all his grand children (save me and my brother) get married and been there when his wife passed away. His passing away relieved both my uncles (his two oldest sons) from having to constantly worry about him (though, amazingly, I never heard them complain - infact they often fought over who would be the one taking care of him).

I debated over the content of this post - should this be a eulogy or a detailing of my trip to India to perform his final rights. I will give both a shot, starting with the former.

I didn't really know pitaji too well. From the time I remember things, I knew him as a deeply religious man - so much so that he almost completely ignored everything else - including his wife (for example, I don't remember a single time when both of them slept in the same room, not sure if he did it earlier in his life, but definitely not since I remember anything about our family) and his youngest grand children. The most vivid memories of him I have are the ones where he used to come to our part of the house for dinner or when he used to be the one chairing the prayers whenever a common one took place in the house. My older cousins tell me he was a strict taskmaster - he used to see if they finished their studies, were disciplined etc. Non compliance usually meant they would be hit with a cane. He didn't take non-compliance too well (this is all too evident in my father too) - as was witnessed by him scolding us or our mom when we used English instead of Hindi (he was a Gandhian). He was also obsessive-compulsive about his health (this may be why he lived to this age). He was never one to try to build a fun and playful relationship with us. I remember my younger self asking my mother how come pitaji didn't play with us like the grandfathers in the movies played with their grandkids. However, by the end of things, he had changed significantly - everytime I visited, he would enthusiastically hug me and ask me to sit by his side. I'm not sure if he knew who I was, but he liked people sitting with him, holding him or holding them in an embrace. He had also, as far as I could tell, given up on religion (this could by my bias) as well as on good health (part of this was 'cause he couldn't walk after his stroke, but he also started loving sweets - when he used to not eat much more than 3-4 spoon fulls of the stuff earlier). I guess, I had more fun being around him in his later years.

He passed away on Monday, 18'th May. My dad left for Delhi the same day. My mom followed the next day (Tuesday) and me the day after (Wednesday). He was cremated on Tuesday morning. We went to collect his ashes the morning after I arrived - almost all the males in the house. This was done with all pomp, ritual and ceremony - none of which I understood. We laid out different kids of food on all 4 corners of the rectangle as well as the 4 mid points of the sides of the rectangle. This was followed by some shlokas being read by the in-house pandit. We then did what's know as phool chun-na (pick the flowers). This involved saperating the bones from the rest of the ashes in the pit. We then headed home with the ashes as well as the bones. The afternoon saw a 3 hour rendition of the Bhagvat Gita followed by lunch. This was mostly attended by family members as well as mid to old aged housewives from the neighbourhood (given that it was a thursday afternoon, most of the men were apparently unavailable to attend). We then had an hour's respite and then headed to a temple where a more public ceremony was held - attendance was actually quiet good. The ceremony involved 45 minutes of funeralistic songs followed by a 20-25 minute eulogy delivered by the family priest. The ceremony ended by 6:30pm, after which we all returned home, where plans to go to Haridwar to put his bones in the Ganges were made. 11 of us in 3 cars were to go. We all left at different times the next morning, but ended up meeting just oustide of Haridwar. The drive there in my uncle's Wagon-R was actually pretty taxing - with the A/C not working fully well and the tempreatures soaring over 40C. Once we reached Haridwar, we checked into our hotel, rested for a few minutes and then headed down to the main river bank (called Har-ki-pauri) to put his ashes in the Ganges. Our priest met us at the banks - who then performed another 10-15 minute prayer. We then gave his ashes to the Ganges and then everybody but me, a cousin and his wife, followed it up with a dip in the river. We then headed back up to the hotel, took a shower and headed down to meet our Haridwar priest. This is the guy you go to to register a death or birth (though the latter rarely happens) in the family. He has records for the Manocha family going back 3-4 generations - apparently. This done, we went for a stroll in the local market. We rushed back to the main bank of the river by 7pm for the aarti held daily. The place was packed which meant people were rubbing up against everybody. Rather distressing but I survived what was a - fortunately - short prayer. A quick trip back to the hotel, we headed back out for dinner after freshening up. We had dinner at a Dhaba type place and then headed back to the hotel to call it a night. The next morning involved another dip in the river for most everybody and then checkout followed by our drive back home - which was plagued by the same ills that troubled us on our way in.

That was it for the performing last rites part of the trip. Many things about these 3 days pissed me off. Not least of them was the fact that after deciding to not go to India for this hoopla, I changed my mind after a call from my dad asking me to come. Now maybe I was being naive, but I thought he asked me to come 'cause he needed me there - somebody to talk to and stuff. It turns out I was window dressing - a body to show that the grandkids from our end of the family haven't all suddenly gone AWOL (since grandkids from the other two brothers were in attendance). But as I said, I was probably being naive to expect otherwise. Anyway, many of the rituals irked me too. The putting food on all corners of his pyre, the picking of his bones from the ashes, the floating of said bones into the Ganges (no wonder the water there was so nasty), the singing of the songs, the pseudo-eulogy delivered by the priest instead of his kids etc. I am sure if I had been there for the cremation, I'd have had problems with that whole process too. But I guess this is to be expected - I believe dying is the end of things - nothing lives on. You remember the person the best way you can without acting like you need to help him gain passage into heaven. Suffice it to say, I feel I would have been better off not going to India - just mourning his death from Kuala Lumpur, in a way that I feel acceptable, instead of going along with what others think I should do at such a time. Alas, that didn't happen.

My grandfather passing away is a bittersweet moment - it's sad but probably for the best. I can't say I'll miss him, but I will say may he Rest in Peace.

Using Twitter and Google Search API's using jQuery

Google and Twitter (API docs) both have API's available for web developers to create mashups using data from them. As a way to give users a broader view of what is happening around the constituency, state, party or representative they are viewing, GovCheck shows 4 searches on each of these pages - News, Web and Video search from Google and real time search from Twitter. These searches are all performed using the jQuery JavaScript framework. This has two advantages - the searches don't hold up page loading (as they happen asynchnously - AJAX :)) and they happen on the client side which means fewer resources (and hence load) used on the server side. So how exactly is this done?
The technology making this possible (besides the languages and TCP etc.) is JSONP. What this does is allow us to send AJAX requests to remote sites (due to security issues, browser do not allow cross domain AJAX requests. JSONP is a protocol that allows us to do so - although it has it's own issues too). Both Google as well as Twitter search support JSONP, as does jQuery - which makes querying those services from the client side very easy. Here's how to go about it.

function getGoogleContent(elem, searchtype, query) {
   $.getJSON('http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/' + searchtype + '?v=1.0&q=' + query + '&callback=?',
       function(data) {
           if(data.responseData.results.length == 0)
               elem.html($('
').html('No results').attr('style','text-align: center; font-weight: bold; font-size: 1.2em;'));
           else {
               elemliststr = elem.attr('id') + '-list';
               elem.html($('
').attr('id',elemliststr).attr('style','list-style-type: disc; padding-left: 30px;'));
               elemlistobj = $('#' + elemliststr);
               $.each(data.responseData.results, function(i, item) {
                   elemlistobj.append($('

').html($('').html(item.title).attr('href', (searchtype == 'video') ? item.url : item.unescapedUrl).attr('target','_blank')).append((item.publisher) ? ' (' + item.publisher + ')' : ' '));
               });
               elem.append($('
').html($('').html('More Results').attr('href', data.responseData.cursor.moreResultsUrl).attr('target', '_blank')).attr('style', 'padding-top: 10px; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;'));
           }
       }
   );
}

function getTwitterContent(query) {
   elem = $('#twitter-tab');
   $.getJSON('http://search.twitter.com/search.json?q=' + query + '&rpp=4&callback=?',
       function(data) {
           if(data.results.length == 0)
               elem.html($('
').html('No results').attr('style','text-align: center; font-weight: bold; font-size: 1.2em;'));
           else {
               elemliststr = elem.attr('id') + '-list';
               elem.html($('
').attr('id',elemliststr).attr('style','list-style-type: disc; padding-left: 30px;'));
               elemlistobj = $('#' + elemliststr);
               $.each(data.results, function(i, item) {
                   elemlistobj.append($('

').html($('').html(item.from_user).attr('href', 'http://twitter.com/' + item.from_user).attr('target', '_blank')).append(': ' + item.text));
               });
               elem.append($('
').html($('').html('More Results').attr('href', 'http://search.twitter.com/search?q=' + query).attr('target', '_blank')).attr('style', 'padding-top: 10px; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;'));
           }
       }
   );
}

We use jQuery's getJSON call to get the JSON results from these services. The "&callback=?" at the end of both the JSON queries tells getJSON that these are JSONP requests - jQuery automagically substitutes the name of the function the results of the query should be fed to.
The "elem" and "searchtype" arguments being sent to the "getGoogleContent" function allow me to call the same function for all News, Web and Video searches like so:

    getGoogleContent($('#news-tab'), 'news', query);
    getGoogleContent($('#youtube-tab'), 'video', query);
    getGoogleContent($('#web-tab'), 'web', query);

Another thing to note here is the usefulness of FireBug. When I was starting out making these queries, I relied on console.log to see the returned object structure (since neither Google nor Twitter specify it) which then allowed me to make the right calls for the relevant data.

So there you go - a quick, easy and scalable way of using Google and Twitter's API's to bring in information into your website.

Store pickled data in a database using SQLAlchemy

I've been using SQLAlchemy (and Elixir) to write the data collection code for GovCheck. My first choice would have been to use Django's ORM itself, but that proved harder and more time consuming that I thought worth it.

One of the problems that I've had to solve is how to store lots of static data in a SQL database without adding more than 100 columns into a DB table. A good solution to this problem is to store this data with a pickled dictionary. The problem with that is the in-built PickleType defined by SQLAlchemy does not also base64 encode the result of the pickle operation on the dictionary (I wanted to do this because the custom field type I'd defined within the Django app was something similar to this, which assumes base64 encoded data coming in). However, fortunately, it's rather easy to create custom Type's for SQLAlchemy and use them in your models. Here is the custom type I created to store the data.

import base64
try:
  import cPickle as pickle
except:
  import pickle

class EncodedPickleType(types.TypeDecorator):
  """
      This class should be used whenever pickled data needs to be stored
      (instead of using the in-built PickleType). The reason for this is
      that the in-built type does not encode the pickled string using
      base64, which is what the Django field type expects.
  """
  impl = types.Text

  def process_bind_param(self, value, dialect):
      dumps = pickle.dumps
      if value is None:
          return None
      return base64.b64encode(dumps(value))

  def process_result_value(self, value, dialect):
      loads = pickle.loads
      if value is None:
          return None
      if not isinstance(value, basestring):
          return value
      return loads(base64.b64decode(value))

You can then use this within your model definitions and feed it a dictionary. The field will take care of pickling and encoding it as well as decoding and unpickling the data when accessing the data.

Scraping PDF's in Python

So, in the course of grabbing some additional data sources for GovCheck, I needed to scrape a few pdf's and insert the information into my database. After looking high and low, I found an acceptable solution to do this using Python - pdfminer. It's not perfect, but it's much better than the rest of the pdf to html/txt converter tools - at-least as far as scraping goes. So I figured I'd note here how I wrote my scraping code. As a reference point, I was parsing election data for the past election using this pdf file.
You start off with running the code through pdfminer and getting the resulting HTML back.

import os
from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup
for page in range(9, 552):
    soup = BeautifulSoup(os.popen('python ~/dev/pdfminer-dist-20090330/pdflib/pdf2txt.py -w -p %d Vol_II_LS_2004.pdf' % page).read())

Once you have said soup object, the next steps are pretty much the same as scraping any HTML page you would grab from some page on the web, except since the HTML generated by pdfminer user absolute positioning, you need to take care of those offsets. A couple ways I found to take those into account are listed below:

1. You can analyse a few pages of the generated html from the pdf, find the various offsets that are displayed and use them like so:



    for left_margin in (267,271,275):
        try:
            electors_total = map(int, map(strip, soup.find('span', style = 'position:absolute; writing-mode:lr-tb; left:%dpx; top:352px; font-size:8px;' % left_margin).string.split(' ')))
            break
        except AttributeError, e:
            pass



2. The previous method mentioned is actually a pretty bad way of doing things, not to say unreliable 'cause your code can break whenever an offset you did not know off is found. A better way to do things is to find a nearby constant text message (such as "MARGIN ") and then backtrack from there to find your relevant tag. This allows you to completely avoid hard coding offsets - unfortunately it's not usable in all the cases. Here's an example of how you can use this method:



self._data['Margin']['Number'], self._data['Margin']['Percentage'] = map(strip, soup.find(text = 'MARGIN ').parent.previousSibling.previousSibling.string.split(' '))

So there you go, a quick example of how to scrape a pdf using Python. It's not perfect but it works for me, for now.

A few things I've learnt from living with my parents...again

As stated earlier, I've been living with my parents for the last 3 months. A lot has transpired between us during that time - lot's of fights and make ups, bruised egos, defiance etc. Suffice it to say that it's not been easy - if I had to advise somebody if it'd be ok for them to go back to live with their folks after 6 years of not living with them, my answer will be a resounding NO!! Now to be fair, I'm not blaming them for this, it's a classic "it takes two to tango" situation. But all that's not the point of this post.

The subject of this post is what have I realized about myself living with my parents - more precisely, what kind of man I want to be and what kind of women I want to be with. I'll grant that basing these two personality traits solely on observing your parents might not be the best way to go about it, but they certainly do influence you - as they have me.

So, as I've been noticing the interactions between my mom and dad, one particular theme has become very clear - how submissive she is and how authoritative he is. She will bring him a glass of water/milk/coke (but never liquor for some odd reason) when he asks her to, she will arrange the kitchen (which in all honesty, should be her domain) as he likes her to, deal with the help as he wants her to, work or not work as he wants her to, cook as he wants her to - to the chagrin of everyone else, etc. etc. Reverse all that and you'll get a picture of what my dad's like. Even the most mundane stuff, like leaving an empty glass of beer on the side table next to the couch is for some reason unacceptable - as is eating in front of the tv or parking the car facing in instead of facing out or cooking the food a bit spicy or grabbing pickles with your meal - and yes, the list goes on. Now, I am almost certainly painting an exaggerated picture - it's not possible for me with my limited writing skills to paint the perfect picture - but this is the general trend.

Watching all this has made me realize things, if not influence me too. I've never been (at-least I'd like to think so) the kind of guy who likes to tell people how to do things or be told how to do things. It makes me uncomfortable when people ask me if they should do this thing or the other, and outright annoys me when they think they know what I should do. I can't stand people who think they know what's right for me, or ask me 10 times "why" I've done or decided to do something (a disease that plagues both my parents unfortunately). This line of thought, inherently leads me to like decisive people. And that's what I've realized - my ideal woman would be confident, decisive and unwavering. She won't feel the need to ask me what to or not to do. She'll also, hopefully, be the kind of person who would ask me to shut up and get back in my place if I try to interfere. Of-course, this does not mean I don't want her to ask me for suggestions - but that's exactly what I want them to be in her mind - suggestions. Conversely, I want to be the kind of man who will be trusting enough to not have to worry about the decisions my woman is making. Again, this is not to say that I don't want to be involved - I just don't want to be the guy "telling" her what to do. I would hate to become into an incarnation of my dad - thinking I know enough about everything to know what's right for someone else - screw how they feel about it.

Finally, let me say that I do not think their union doesn't work - it works for them. Maybe what I'm looking for is an aberration - it might be why I've been single for most of my life. That said, I'm not ready to settle, not just yet - I still have hope :).

So what happens after they win an election??

I'm not even going to bother with apologies - I'm a lazy retard and that's just the way it is. So anyways, I was watching Yuva again tonight, and it got me thinking - what happens after these so called educated do-gooders win an election?? Does that automatically mean things work out from there on out?

I mean, looking at the stats, one would see that we already do have a whole bunch of educationally well qualified individuals in the Lok Sabha (while GovCheck does not show educational data - yet - it will, soon) so there ain't a deficit of degrees in the Lower House (far as I've seen, a lot of them seem to have law degrees). This fact leads me to think that an education is not the panacea here. 

It's often said that the problem with India's laggard growth is not it's politicians but it's bureaucracy. If we take that statement at face value (which I do, to a large extent) then the problem is not having uneducated or criminal lawmakers (though that definitely does not help, in-fact it probably does hurt - just not as much as people might say) but having a bureaucratic process that is so void of accountability that even if we do get politicians who want to do something, there isn't much they can.

This is what disturbs me - it's not easy to get rid of this apathy people seem to have towards their government. Laws can only go so far - this needs a change of mind-set. And that is where I feel politicians and social workers can help - start asking the people to hold their government accountable. It'll be a slow process, but I definitely feel that is what's needed to fix the quagmire we're in as a nation.

Now what do I mean when I say "hold them accountable"? Well, for starters, make more positions in the government electable - posts such as mayor, district attorney etc. Also, allow people working for the government to be fired. As I understand it - presently it's so hard to fire people off the government payroll that they can pretty much go about doing anything with fearing the consequences. Finally, we need to have more investigative journalists (and not the kind of idiots who setup "sting operations") - not only at the national level - but at the local level too. The kind who will sift through city records, looking for dirt on that city council member, or the state representative. But none of these changes will happen unless the people actually ask for them (save maybe the last one) - which is why I say we need a change in the mind-set of people.

Indulge me now, if you will - this is the main reason why I started GovCheck. It's not something that was put up because there was an impending election in India. In-fact this is one of the things that piss me off about people - the ones pretentious enough to think they know why I started the website - because there's an election coming up. I couldn't care less about the elections - especially in a place like India - it's just a time for people to go around making promises and in some cases, pointing to the disgraces, they passed as law, as proof that they're better for the people. I don't care what they say during an election - a good lawmaker is one who's active off the campaign trail - and that's what I'm trying to bring to light with GovCheck.

So there we go - that is my answer to India's problems - not only better elected representatives, but a better and more aware electorate. That is the panacea for most of the diseases that plague our land - and I hope I can play a small part in curing it.

So...Obama won and became the 44'th President of The United States

Just in case you've been living under a rock for the past couple of months, Obama won the race for the presidency (against McCain) and became the 44'th President of The United States. It is hard to describe my elation for this outcome, but let me try. People have already said enough about what this means for the country, it's people and the rest of the world, so I won't repeat all that. I will just talk about my feelings.

I went over to my cousin's place on the night of the 4'th (the results didn't start coming in until 5am on the 5'th our time) 'cause I don't have a TV. I was planning on staying up all night watching CNN but ended up sleeping for 4 hours until 4am in the morning. That is when I started following the news, and as CNN started projecting states for Obama, my heart started jumping beats. I don't remember the correct sequence of events, but as soon as Pennsylvania was called for Obama followed (or proceeded) by Iowa and Ohio, everybody knew that was it. But I still didn't celebrate, lest I jinx it. It was only after California and Oregon were called for Obama (at about 8am my time) did I finally shake the hands of and hug my cousin and sister-in-law. It was momentous, it was exhilerating, it was unique and yes, it was emotional.

The first 3 make sense, but let me explain the last adjective I used above. When I say emotional, I meant I wanted to cry. Tears did well up, but I pushed them back - I didn't want to look like a pussy in front of the audience (my cousin and my sis-in-law :)). There were plenty of reasons for this - first black man to be president, first truly liberal guy to get there, finally a democrat back in that seat, the knowledge that Palin would not come within 100 ft. of the oval office etc. etc. But the main reason for my response was something else - I wanted to cry 'cause this was the first time I picked a winner. All the other times, my choices for President lost. This time, he won. And it's no small thing - I was supporting Obama from the start - from the day he stood up outside the state house in Illinois to announce his candidacy (and actually from before that). It was this feeling of pride, this feeling of accomplishment, this fulfillment of a dream that got to me. There was an amazing soliloquy delievered by Ray Romano in the show Everybody Loves Raymond, and while I don't remember the exact words, it's crux was that when one of your dreams, a dream that you thought was so distant to border on the unreal, comes true, you start taking your other dreams more seriously. That's what happened for me. When it all started, I was pretty sure I was supporting a loser - after all he was Black, with relatively less experience, a well educated and articulate man, etc. All ingredients for a great President, but all qualities that would work against him. Him winning meant nothing is too hard to achieve, too distant a dream when you go after it with a plan and a focuses approach, and work really hard to achieve the goal you set out for. 

What remains to be seen now is what he makes of it. He needs to do good, else his whole aura that he can actually change things, and bring about a better future will fade. He has a nice team to help him, and that added to the fact that he himself is a pretty smart guy leads me to be optimistic about his chances. Let's hope I'm right here too.

My last day at Agilent (and my comeback to blogging).

So it's been a while. Lot's has happened since the last time I posted an entry here. Most importantly, Obama won the race for the presidency of the US and became the 44'th and the first black president of the United States. In this time, I also visited Goa (twice), saw a close friend get married (a bit scary - we're all coming of age), saw the US go into recession, lost my partner (who shall remain anonymous, on his request) to the economy (or something else - I don't want to think too much about it), gave the GMAT - twice 'cause the first time around I got only 640 (second time around, I got 700), and celebrated my 24'th birthday (in-fact on the same day as my second GMAT exam). But, I also resigned my job at Agilent (one I've had for the past 15 months). My last day was today. I'm excited, not scared, optimistic, not pessimistic and interested in looking forward to what happens in the next few months.

Resigning from my job was long in the making. I had thought of it way back in august/september while discussing with R about our plans for out startup. It took me almost 6 months between first thinking about it and finally leaving my job. I guess there was some apprehension with the economy the way it was and all that. I also postponed my plans more than once 'cause of R and now even though he's no longer taking the plunge with me, I still feel this was the right choice for me. The fact is, I was no longer enjoying the work I was doing at Agilent - it was mundane, repetitive and sparse. Sure, there were moments of excitement and exhileration, but they were few and far between for me to justify staying on.

What was (and still is) surprising to me was how my folks supported me in this decision. I was not expecting it, so it came as a very pleasant surprise. As I have mentioned earlier, they have not always been the most supportive of my aspirations or decisions (and this is not me bitching, this is me appreciating them for showing me a different path, giving me choices I had not thought of) so them supporting me fully meant a lot to me.

As for my plans from here on out, I'm going to finish off my grad school applications before next weekend, which is when I fly out to Malaysia. Once there, I plan on working full time on making GovCheck a reality. The Indian General Elections are coming around so this should be a good time to launch a site like this. Additionally, it will be a good test for the idea - if it can't gain traction during an election cycle, then probably this idea isn't something that can be turned into a profitable business. I'll see how things go in the few months after the site's launch. If I feel it is succesfull (and I don't have a clear definition of what does succesfull mean), I will punt on grad school and continue working on it. If not, I'll go to grad school. And if I don't get into any of the schools I apply to, I will then start looking for jobs again, though I'm really really really hoping it doesn't come to that.

So that is an update for the day. I hope to take up blogging regularly again, but let's see if I can stick to that. All I can say is, right now, I'm excited for my future. I hope my efforts bear some fruit.

A very reassuring image

Found this image via FriendFeed today, and I've got to say, it's very reassuring (and yes, I know it's not an official Obama poster - yet it has that satisfying tone to it). Enjoy it and Believe!!

Blah...

I'm bored, don't have much to do, and can't think of an interesting topic to write about. So here's a brain dump.

I've been sick for the past week - a cold I caught last friday when the power went out at 1 in the morning, leading me in some hot & humid weather, to go take a shower at 2am, followed by me strolling on my balcony for an hour afterwards. The next morning, I woke up to a running nose, blocked sinus' and a sore throat. It got incrementally worse from there on out. I finally recovered enough this thursday to go back to work, only to find that my head hurt in the A/C there. My mother too, fell sick this week. She had to undergo a surgery for an "obstructing hernia". She's better now, but let's just say she gave us a scare for a little bit there. Fortunately, my dad was around and was able to handle things (he was supposed to go to Beijing the night my mom was diagnosed with the problem). There is now some discussion around me and Ayush going to KL when dad has to go to NYC (4'th - 14'th Oct). That might end up happening, in which case I'll have to take even more days off from work.

I've been reading a lot about Sarah Palin and the resurgent McCain campaign. I am a bit scared about how big of a bounce they've got from her selection. Churchill once said that the best argument against democracy was a 5 minute conversation with the average voter. He sure sounds right seeing the kind of reaction Palin is getting. As Matt Damon put it (quiet well, in my opinion) - it all seems like a bad Disney movie - where the hockey/soccer mom suddenly becomes the president. I truly am scared of seeing another Republican administration in power - I honestly do believe that it would be a very bad thing for the US and the entire world.

Back to personal issues, I've been fighting myself, trying to figure out exactly what I should be doing with my time, and life. I'm constantly conflicted about studying for the GRE, paying more attention to work, or working even harder on my project. I want to just go all out on the last of those, but for a myriad of reasons, am unable to yet. The major one, I think is 'cause I'm not getting the backing I feel I need to be able to do so. Support from my parents is luke warm, at best - and realistically, I don't expect more from them. But then there's R (he doesn't want his name out in the open) who has these bursts where all he'll discuss is how we grow this idea, and then completely stop talking about it for long periods of time (like we haven't spoken about any of this for the past 2 weeks). I'm trying to figure out if I think I can do this alone - but so far, I don't think I can. It's not that I need someone to help me write the code - that I'm confident I can do. It's that, I need someone who can prop me up - who has more confidence than I do in me (and in themselve). I also want to work with smart people, and I have always counted R as one of them - somebody smarter than me, whom I can learn a lot from. I guess, all I can do is hope things work out, but keep a back-up plan in case they don't. I honestly think I've come too far to give up now - I see this as my way out of the mundane life that is working for a company. I want to do my own thing - create something new - innovate - help people in their regular lives, and along the way, get some fulfillment.

Why I use vim!!

It's been a while - life and other things have kept me busy. Anyways, what better way to return than to write about something I have not talked much about in the past - technology.

So, coding is my profession - I enjoy coding - nay - love it (given the right circumstances). And one of the biggest weapons in a coder's arsenal is his/her IDE. Well, mine is vim (vi improved). I have been using vim on and off for a few years now - but mainly as a text editor. I had never considered using it as my main development tool until recently (2-3 months back). Boy was I missing out. I've been using it to write everything from Python to HTML/Javascript now and been loving every bit of it.

The main (and rather obvious) reason is it's amazing ability to make text editing fast. Visual mode is the best invention mankind has made since the wheel. It allows me to remove and add text about as fast (maybe even faster) as I can think of doing it. Want a word gone - done. Want a line gone - done. Want to replace a line - line gone, cursor at beginning of line - done. I can keep going on. Gone are the days when you have to use your mouse to select a word, or a whole line. w,b,j,k,h,l allow me to move around in lesser time than it would take me to move my hand off the keyboard, onto the mouse, find the pointer, bring it down to the text I need gone, select the whole thing and hit delete. In-fact, now when I edit text in a browser (like this blogger textbox for example), I find it tedious to delete things, or add things.

But more than that, it's ability to double up as a IDE is what has me truly amazed. The amazing set of plugins around it (for example snippetsEmu) make it a breeze for me to write my code and get the right text in the right place ASAP. Other things like omnicompletion, code highlighting, line numbering, syntax checkers, class definitions etc. are icing on the cake. And the biggest win - it works on all 3 of my development platforms (Win, Max and Linux - yes I work on all 3). Setting it up on my windows machine took some doing (had to compile vim from source) but once it was done, everything worked exactly how it worked on my other machines. No more switching between IDE's and no more learning new commands (thanks, but no thanks, TextMate).

I do have a couple of gripes though - I would like to see some straighforward way to refactor my code and I would like to see integration with my vcs (git). I have tried out a plugin for the latter, but couldn't get it working within the 10 minutes I gave it a shot for.

In anycase, vim is an amazing text editor/IDE and anybody using anything else (with the exception of Eclipse for Java) should consider switching. I haven't tried Emacs, but after learning vim, I don't see any value in it - I've got all I need (and more).

Why NYC is my favorite city on this planet

I have often said, and been rebuked for saying, that the Big Apple is my favorite city on this planet. People often ask me why that is so, and I'm never able to give a wholly convincing argument - so here is an attempt in that direction.

Let me preface the rest of this post by saying that while I have lived in NYC for upto 3 weeks at a go, most of my visits have involved me living there for not longer than 2-3 days - always as a tourist. Mileage may vary for the people who have actually lived in the city.

To understand my undying love for NYC, we must go all the way back to the summer of '95. This was the first time I had left India - and guess which city I went to first?? I had been warned by my dad before arriving there that the place was just as dirty as Delhi and that I might indeed be disappointed once I got there. But, I wasn't. I remember falling in love with it during our drive back from JFK. I remember peeping out the window of our cab, admiring the huge glass buildings, the no. of cars on the roads, the long bridge with two levels (I think) that we were driving on. Imagine me as Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone 2 - when he first arrives in the city riding in on a cab. I was him - and I was loving every moment of it. The 3 weeks we spent there were just as much fun too. I don't remember spending much time with my dad (he was constantly at work), but my mother, brother and me had one of the best vacations I remember. We must have walked more miles in those 3 weeks than we did our entire lives before then. We covered everything from Central Park to the Wall Street to liberty island. We had coke in cans, and nice nike shoes, and a new remote controlled car. We had the nice weather (coming from Delhi in the summer - you can imagine), the friendly people (I remember dropping my coke in a McD's and the manager giving me a new one - on the house), the diversity of faces, the subways, the buses, the yellow cabs, the ferries to Liberty and Ellis island, the Empire State Building, the New York Style pizza etc. etc.

That trip was where it all started, but by no means is it the only source of love for that city. My next visit to the city came once I had moved to the states for college. Me and a few friends went on a crazy road trip our first spring break at UT. We lived in the city for 3 days and then went up to Boston. But those 3 days were amazing too - we walked up to Central Park and down to the Wall Street. We saw the Empire state building and the City Hall. We walked through the village and China Town. We saw our first apple store across from the NYU. I experienced our first police stop in the city. I saw my first snow fall in the US there.

I went there a couple more times too - when my folks had come to my brothers college for all of us to meet up, or me and my friends going there for new year's '07 (that was one crazy night). And then finally, before I left the US to come back to India, in Oct '07. NYC was my last stop - my final encore - the last city I was in, in the country I had called home for the past 5 years. That trip was memorable too (for many good and some not-so-good reasons). But what I remember most, was my drive to the airport from my cousins dorm room. There was nobody riding with me - and I wouldn't have had it any other way. I was taking in the city, the country, the people - one last time - not knowing when I would be back. And I remembered then, my first time driving into the city - only this time the buildings were getting smaller, not bigger.

However I might describe my feelings for NYC, most people won't understand it - and I don't expect them to. It is my favorite city in the world for personal reasons - they all have theirs. All I want to say is this - go visit NYC, live there for a bit, walk it's streets, talk to the people there, eat the pizza there, ride on the subway there. Then maybe you might fall in love with the city, just as I have.

Thoughts: The parent-child relationship

I've often found myself wondering (after talks with my folks/friends/co-workers, or after watching a movie/tv-show) about the kind of relationship a parent and child should share. Here are some thoughts.

Above all, I see this relationship as one of the few, one-way relationships a person has in his/her life - the road going from the parents and to the kids. Let me explain.

I think when a couple decides to have a child, they consciously make the decision that they are going to bring someone into this world, take care of it, groom it, have good times with it, enjoy it's company et al. Now, having made that decision, they also need to realize that it'll be their job to keep a watchful eye on them, keep 'em out of trouble, help them when they do get into trouble and generally give them everything they need and (hopefully) most of what they want. This is because you are their parents, their creators (humor me) if you will.

It is also a parent's responsibility to not burden a child with his/her expectations. You didn't create an object that you can return or discard if it didn't do what you thought it was supposed to do - NO! You had a child - another human being - who needs to make his/her own decision about their life - about how they want to live it. The child can have expectations of his/her parents (see last paragraph) but it should never go the other way round. And I'm not talking about the small stuff here - I speak of the whoppers - religious expectations, career expectations, marriage expectations, grandkid expectations and so on. Parents should never impose these on their kids - and the reason for this is quiet straightforward to my eye - it will stop your child from becoming who he can, but more importatnly, who he wants to be. And nothing, in my opinion, is a greater crime than stopping somebody from leading their life their way (there are certain exceptions).

I have often seen parents demand high ranks in school/college, a good job - an expectation to stick to the basics. They will try to impose their experiences onto you - not realising that there is at-least a generations difference between them and you - that their experiences, while useful, will not necessarily be the same as yours, and that you have the option (and might I say obligation) to experience them for yourself.

Now, I can't say children are completely absolved of any responsibilities towards their parents, but the flow is so one-sided (or at-least should be) that it's hard to see the other end of it.

So, to surmise, parents need to back off with their demands of their children - while they might have his/her best in their mind, they need to realize that they are not perfect at guessing what is good or bad for someone - that decision, in almost all cases, should be left to the person being talked about, to decide for them self.

My movie going experiences in Bangalore...

In my last post, I'd said that there will be more about watching movies in India - well here it is.

I've been out a few times now - to watch movies in Bangalore. They have all been Hindi movies (partially 'cause the people I go with don't enjoy watching English movies, and partially 'cause I'm making up for all those years I didn't go to the movies and watch a Bollywood flick) and inevitably, they have always been bad experiences. Let me start with a list of all the things that happen when you go to see a movie here:

• You will have a hard time getting tickets to a new movie (owing to the very few "multiplexes" in the city).
• You will have a hard time finding parking
• You will pay an obscene amount of money for the services being provided (and I'm not talking about the bad movie here)
• You will be given, what can best be described as black water with sugar, instead of Coke for Rs. 30.
• You will be ushered into the hall by a guy standing at the entrance checking your tickets (this is a bittersweet thing - figure it out)
• You will find your seat, and then notice the amount of dust on it.
• You will soon realize how little leg space there is
• At this point, you will start noticing the absolutely abhorrent state the hall has been kept in - the dust covered curtains, the speakers that look like they were bought in the 19'th century and never touched since and the dirty white screen in front of you
• After noticing all the dirt around you, your attention will move to the really small screen in front of you - and you'll start thinking that the wall of your house is probably bigger than this bitch in front of you
• Finally when the movie starts, your fears of the screen being small will be validated - with you squinting to see everything.
• You will also soon realize that there is some asshole around you who can't keep his/her mouth shut. They will gasp, laugh or scream loudly at the respective scenes, and when they're not doing that, they will keep saying this like "Duh", "I knew that", "He's going to die now" etc. etc.
• The flow of the movie will then be interrupted with an interval (a good or bad thing depending on your perspective - I hate it)
• You will go out to a throng of people in front of the single confectionery stand handing out a glass of "coke" or a box of pop-corns one at a time. God save you if you go to the restroom.
• You somehow get back to your seat with a coke and a box of pop-corns and now that really annoying bitch has added another piece of ammo to his/her arsenal - eating loudly.
• Then there will be some other asshole who will get a call in the middle of the movie and will take it - while still seated in his/her seat and will talk for like 2 minutes before shutting up.

I'm sure there are other items that can be added to this list - but by far, these are the ones that really piss me off. Even if I can deal with the parking, and the dirty toilets and the more than dirty surroundings, the fact that some asshole is sitting around talking throughout the film - as if giving us a running commentary just gets on my nerves. And while most of the issues I have listed to not manifest in the better theaters like PVR, this talking syndrome still rears it's ugly head in.

So...what prompted this post - well, I'd gone to see Thoda Pyar thoda magic on Saturday night, and witnessed all this - and it bugged the hell out of me. It would be some solace if the movie was good - but that would be asking too much off of a mainstream Bollywood movie - none are good - for some odd reason, they all think patronizing their audience is a succesfull business decision. I fucking hate it.

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I miss...

I miss...

• Having a decent internet connection
• Driving on roads that didn't have potholes every 2 feet
• Going on long, soothing, scenic drives in the middle of the night
• Driving a car that made me feel like it was fun to drive one (and I mean the automatic/manual thing)
• Having a nice place all of my own
• Watching HBO shows well past midnight - ON TV!!
• Shooting the breeze with co-workers
• Sitting in a bar, smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer, watching the NBA playoffs
  
• The Beer:
• Gusiness from a TAP...aah
• Blackjack
• Heineken
• Red Stripe
• Carlsberg
• fuck it - Shiner too
  
• Going out to eat to various joints serving up different cuisines
• The Food:
• Masaman Curry at Madam Mam's
• Anything from Hoa Hoa
• Stir Fry from Fire Wok
• Burrito's from Chipotle
• various shit from Taco Bell
• Sandwiches from Jimmy Johns (oh my god!!!)
• Portabello Mushroom sandwhich from NXNW
• Pizza from Dominos (believe it)
• The middle eastern food
• The occasional Sushi/Steak
• The grocery stores which had everything I needed under one roof
• The people who were always helpful
• Customer service which actually served the customer
• Company Websites that were taken seriously
• Public servants who actually did their jobs
• Cheap(er) gas
• An amazing movie going experience (despite the movie):
• The Air conditioned halls
• People who'd have enough courtesy to stop talking once the trailers started rolling, and definitely stop by the time the movie started
• People who had the courtesy to not take phone calls while still in the Hall
• Few movies that actually left you fulfilled coming out the hall
• (to be continued...)
  
• Electronics stores which stocked more than just household appliances
• Not having to pay 1/3'rd of my pay on rent

Feeling down...

Been feeling down all day. Not sure why. I had a nice weekend, didn't have all that bad a work-day, and yet I can't help but feel sad and depressed.

During this past weekend, a thought passed my mind. I need to start preparing for my GRE, and I need to invest more time/energy in the side project I'm doing. I can't possibly do both of these at the same time - both of them will take up a huge amount of time. So, I thought, why not quit my job and pursue these two?? But no matter what I do, I can't find the balls I need to actually take that leap of faith. I 'm unable to think out of the box here, and hence am coming up with all kinds of rationalizations - like if I continue to work on my side project, and it's succesfull, my college applications will look a whole lot better, that I don't really need to go to a master's school, everything I need to learn, I can learn on my own etc. etc. Some of these do make sense to me too, but I would still like to prove to myself that I have the faith, the ambition, the resolve and the balls to take that step - quit my job with nothing to fall back on, but I can't.

Other things have been bothering me too - lack of good/close friends, difficulty of dealing with everyday life in India, my aspirations to travel and all that. I don't know what's eating me today, but what I do know is, I need it to go away soon. I can't have this shit hanging over my head.

Doing some of the things I enjoy doing

Today, after a long while, I did one of the things I used to (and apparently still do) enjoy doing - watching back-to-back episodes of TV shows. The day started off with a complete download of Season 3 of Weeds followed up by Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Now, I used to do something similar during my unemployment days immediately following graduation, and while those days (or should I say nights) were much more fulfilling (what with all the catching up that needed to be done with regards to The Sopranos and The West Wing), I had a bunch of fun today too. It's just one of those stupid, useless, waste-of-time things everyone likes to do - I just maybe push it to the extreme :). I remember that during those aforementioned days, I used to be nocturnal - stay up all night, go to bed at about 10am, get up around 6pm. Those two months were some of the most fun of my life.

Anyways, so watching the Secret Diary of a Call Girl made me realize something - perhaps some of the rigidness in Indian Society is a backdraft from the English Society. I mean I would have never guessed somebody could be so uptight about having sex with a hooker in today's day and age. I mean sure, a man needs to be taken care of and all that, but to ensure that your hair is done just right, paint yourself with enough make-up to make the lady in the Statue of Liberty look not-ugly, do the bed sheets just right, carry 10 condoms with you everywhere you go (ok, this I can reconcile with) etc. etc. seems like something only the English can do. But that's not all. Watching the show (and I have to admit, this is one of the first British TV shows I have watched), I did get a sense of express superiority by the leading protagonist - she kept mentioning the fact that she was educated, she was "high class", expensive, had done her A-levels in this and that et al. Just made me feel that some of the pride Indian folks feel to in such superficial arenas comes from the fact that our rulers had a similar bend of mind. No wonder we are still stuck with so many of the UK's mistakes - when we can't even fix this one.

I realize that I'm not make a whole lot of sense - it's 3am here so excuse me for that - but I just thought I'd note these thoughts down.

Of scary incidents and the ensuing revelations

So, my cousin met with an accident last weekend. He had got out his car and was crossing the street when a biker hit him and then dragged him along the road for a bit. He suffered a broken collar bone, had to get 10 stitches on his head and can't eat solid food (due to some torn muscles in his mouth/jaw) for a couple of weeks. Fortunately, his wife and parents-in-law were with him during this incident and were able to rush him to a nearby hospital. I got the call a couple hours after the incident and had a pretty terrified drive up to the place. Meeting with my sister-in-law, whose clothes were drenched in blood, was a pretty scary moment - I was praying at that point that nothing too bad had happened. Fortunately, my fears were alleviated as I entered his room - he seemed to be ok (besides the arm in a sling and a bandage going across his head) and continues to improve.

This was, however, a scary revelation for me. I guess I've always been scared about having an accident in India - emergency health care isn't all that good here. But this incident sort of brought those fears to the fore. I realised that if I ever have an accident like this, in most probabilities, I won't have anyone with me to look after me, especially in the moments immediately following the event. There will of-course be on-lookers and good samaritans, but it's still scary to me that I will have to rely on them in such circumstances.

I had similar thoughts in the U.S., but I used to feel some amount of comfort knowing there were friends around to help out - Dada and Deebu were around. And if not them, then co-workers. I, for some odd reason, do not feel as comfortable in Bangalore - I have friends here, fuck, I have family here, and yet I'm anxious about ever being in a similar situation.

I guess all I can do is be vigilant, and hope there's someone around in my need of hour.

About that trip to Malaysia

So, I got back last Sunday from a week's trip to Malaysia. It was an interesting trip - started with a thunder, ended with a whimper.

We reached on Saturday, and left for a beach resort in the South China Sea on Sunday (early Sunday morning). The beach and it's surroundings were everything I had imagined - clear blue water, amazing coral reefs, relaxing atmosphere, not too crowded and good food. A new thing I learned/did while there was snorkeling - took me a few tries to get the hang of it, but once I did, it was one of the most fun, exciting and interesting things I have ever done. Seeing those beautiful corals, and swimming among the fish like you were one of them was truly amazing.

A side effect of the water, or fish, or corals or the sun (take your pick) was that I had a pretty bad allergic reaction/sun-burn on my last day there. I had weird looking boils all over my face and down my back - which made me look like the second coming of Frankenstein. I visited the doctor on our arrival back to KL who gave me a couple of pills and some gel to apply to the affected spots. They cleared up in a couple days, but for that time, I had locked myself in the house - too conscious to go out - even to the local grocery store.

So anyways, the trip, up until Tuesday evening was god fun. Then came family - first my mother's sister, and then my cousin sister (with 2/3 of her kids in tow). Their arrival played a bit of party pooper. I guess meeting them after all this time was fun too - but I think I would have enjoyed it more had we been alone - just for four of us. We didn't do much after Tuesday - some shopping, some sightseeing, some talking and then some more shopping. Anyways, it was a pretty long trip (I was there for a total of 9 days) so I guess I couldn't have expected all those days to be as rosy as the first few.

One of the things that I was looking forward to the most was seeing my brother after a while. I had this notion (perhaps misguided) that we'd be the same as we were back in Austin - when he was living w/ me for a couple of months. That didn't end up happening. We were squabbling often, didn't talk all that much, I was regularly pissed at him and in general was not enjoying this time together as much as I did our time in Austin. Perhaps that notion that our relationship had changed was wrong - or maybe I was just looking at it through rose tinted glasses - either way, I was hoping for a ecstatic reunion, but it ended up being less than that.

Well, in anycase, the trip was an overall success - it was nice having all 4 of us together, after quiet a long time - and given the prospect that it'll probably be just as long before we are together again, I guess it was one to cherish.

So...things have been happening

Well, not really. Things have been pretty much the same since my last post - work, home, sleep and work again. Not to say I'm a workaholic - it's just that I don't have much else to do. Well, that's not exactly true either, but I'm being a bit lazy about working on something I thought up during my trip to Ooty.

Another thing in the motions is Ayush and mines' trip to KL. It's our mother's 50'th birthday on the coming Sunday, so we both reach there on Saturday morning (there were no convenient flights reaching KL on Sunday morning). Sshhh about that though - it's supposed to be a surprise. So, anyways, we reach there on Saturday and will hopefully go out somewhere (papa's supposed to be planning something). Then family (my sister with 2 of her 3 kinds, and my aunt) arrive, rather un-fortuitously on Wednesday. That's a whole other story that I'd rather not get into.

So, this whole trip thing has got me excited (what's new right??). But what's odd is that the source (well on an existential level anyways) of this happiness is different than usual. Usually, I'm just happy about getting away from wherever I am. Getting a break from the status quo - the daily routine. But this time around, I'm actually happy about being and meeting with my folks and my brother. That to me is very abnormal - these things have never really excited me, made me look forward to the events with great anticipation, as I am doing now. I guess my co-worker Ravi put it best - we realise that we derive pleasure from sources we didn't know existed, as we grow older.

Anyways, that's for this post - not much to talk about - but there you have it.