India's stand on climate change

The two cornerstone's of India's policy on climate change are :

1. Historic responsibility of developed nations versus the developing nations

2. Equity on per capita carbon emissions.

The Copenhagen summit is going to start the process of unraveling the complex issues related to climate change responsibility and in my opinion is a start of something good and concrete.

While I agree with the historic responsibility angle I am not content with the per capita carbon equity stand as I dont think it is correct. It gives an unfair advantage to over populated nations like China and India. I think instead of a per capita approach, we need to have a land mass based approach which includes a component for green cover. There are a number of reasons why I think this is a better approach :

a. This approach penalizes countries who have allowed population to grow beyond control.

b. If a country manages its greens well, then there is more room to spend carbon

c. Land represents the quantum of natural resources available to the citizens of the country and gives a better picture of the capacity of the country to support the emissions.

While on the topic of emissions, I have for long felt the ineffective way airconditioning systems are implemented in residences. A/Cs are switched on mainly during the nights when there is absolutely no movement apart from the occasional turning and tossing! Then why the need to cool up the entire room ? Like our cars and airplanes, we need to have personal climate control at homes as well...

Pyromaniac at work!

Entries submitted for the db Logo competition...Few people know that I have an addiction to fire..!

Shocking movie timings

I am left speechless by the movie timings in Mumbai.

Its like Get up, expunge, brush teeth (or not) and go for movie. Have popped corn for breakfast!

A Bad Form Design

A simple form is one of the most powerful tools to reach out to a much larger audience than you had previously anticipated.

I learnt the value of simple form designs during my stint in Deutsche Bank, thanks to Rajiv. Now I am very critical of an interface design and cant help myself when I see such an error on a site as famous as Twitter.

On the login page of Twitter, the "Remember Me" checkbox is after the Login button. What possible advantage could Twitter get by placing it after the Login button ? I mean after you check the box, you would need to click on the login button right ? So you check the "Remember Me" button and then unnecessarily go back to the Login button and continue.

I think its not quite efficient as most of the users of Twitter would access it from personal devices and not through cafes and hence would almost always click on the "Remember Me" checkbox when they Lgin..

A driving experience in Mumbai

I am writing this letter in the hope that it will reach out to a large set of car owners in Mumbai and they will be able to benefit from my experience.
A couple of days back I was driving from home in the evening in my ALTO and was crossing Bandra on Linking road. Suddenly a person crossed the road and pointed hurriedly at my bonnet and mentioned the words sparks and "aag". I didnt pay much attention and thought that I had misheard the person. Then another person on my left came out and again pointed at my bonnet and mentioned that he could see severe sparking.
I panicked and ground the car to a halt (near the amarsons petrol pump). A third person came out of a parked car and said that he too could see the sparks. By this time I had switched the engine off and was pushing the car to the left hand side of the road. This person then asked me to open the bonnet and start the engine. I opened the bonnet and went to start the engine and to my horror I could actually see sparking near the battery of the car.
The person mentioned that he knew of a maruti service station near by which would be able to do the needful. Leaving the car with my colleague, I walked to the petrol pump but the service station was closed. There was a person however standing outside it and was carrying some sort of tools on him as well. He agreed to look at the car and help out. Upon inspection, he mentioned that the "alternator" was problematic and had to be serviced. He was not able to give a clear indication of the costs though.
For some reason I called up my mechanic at that point in time and he immediately warned me of this modus operandi of fooling people. What had actually happened that a team of three identify cars of old make and target them. Upon opening my bonnet, when I went to start the engine, one of the members loosened the battery wire which links to the "coil" because of which the sparking occurred.
The experience was quite traumatic and I was compelled to write this mail when some one again tried to pull the same gag on me at the Bandra-end of Bandra Worli Sea Link.

Effective way of improving productivity in India?

One of the biggest changes I have felt in my life since I moved from Kolkata to Mumbai was the concept of 8'o clock in the morning.

In Kolkata, 8'o clock means BRIGHT sun and daylight. In Mumbai 8'o clock is pleasant and chilly. While 7 pm in Kolkata almost means dead of the night, in Mumbai I am just about leaving office and there are still some hints of sunlight.

So now I think, is it important that the concept of 8'o clock be uniform across the country? Would introducing two time zones in the country aid it in any way ? I think it would lead to better work co-ordination and help tremendously in an increasing global economy. Agree it would lead to massive confusion in the beginning but people would learn to adapt. It might just spur a mini economy of its own with people coming out with new products to help others adapt to the time zone. Imagine, going from Mumbai to Kolkata, we would adjust our watches!

Think of the situation today. If some one from the North East wants to schedule a meeting then he would probably be most productive at 8'o clock and want to keep the meeting at that time with his western India counterpart. On the other hand in Western India, 8'o clock would be when people would start to get out of their homes. (This I am assuming that people will adjust to the solar clock and instead of having a 9to5 office timing will have something like a 7 to 3 office)

If my assumption is "incorrect" then we are already in a big bowl of pea soup. People would start their offices at 9 but by the time it would be 5, the skies would be pitch dark as the sun would have set by then(in context of Eastern India). Which means, that they would need to make special arrangements to travel in the dark. It means more electricity consumption for lighting up street lamps, car headlamps etc.

The SUN drives everything. Humans tend to carry out maximum activities in daylight and in its absence we wait for the next day to begin (ya, i know not much nightlife for me!). Isnt this why Benjamin Franklin introduced Daylight "Saving" Time (come on, I know you saw National Treasure, even though you hate the guts of the producer) so that the extra long hour of the day could be used productively?

Anyways, as per MapsOfIndia, India's longitudinal expanse is from 68degrees 7 and 97degrees25 east. Theoretically, with a change in 15 degrees, half an hour should be added / subtracted from GMT.

Now, the part which baffles me - When we look at US, there are 4 time zones and when you look at China they dont have a time zone as of now. (they used to have 5 time zones half a century ago)

This is one point I am not able to understand as China is doing fantastic in terms of productivity and all the global economy stuff without having multiple time zones?

What do you people think ?

Storing renewable energy

I have often pondered about the problem on storing excess renewable energy so that it can be used later on. However i never could come to a logical conclusion..

Storing energy in batteries is really not the rite away. Batteries themselves take a certain amount of carbon for manufacturing and they are not really reliable on a long term basis. Again some time back there was this idea that cars would be hooked on to the grid which would allow excess energy generated at night to be pumped into the cars and then retrieved back during the day when the other guys need it...But it does not still make sense..the idea is workable but not elegant...

This other day, I came across a documentary on the news where some island nation had put in plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2012....They had wind farms, obviously...but what i really liked was the way they stored excess energy..they would pump up water to a high reservoir which would then be allowed to flow down and generate hydal energy...Pretty simple huh...

use the extra energy for creating potential energy...amazing...

The best travel site so far - expedia.com

Before going on a trip, I do extensive research to try and figure out the best deal on the net. We are planning a trip to Hongkong - a 4 night / 5 day kind of deal, where one night is spent in Macau. 

The Indian setups like makemytrip.com, cleartrip.com and ezeego1.com are useless when I want to do a flight + hotel booking. They offer them separately, whereby I loose the advantage of bulk booking..Obviously,  there is the option of taking the holiday package where I travel coach class, have buffet breakfast, lunch on coach basis, something else on twin sharing basis and some other thing on sharing basis. I feel put off, when I read such stuff...Useless..In any case the I think the Indian sites have a long way to go before they can develop the market for non packaged holidaying.

Looking at International sites, I admit I went to two sites only - travelocity and expedia.

The reason why I have not clubbed traveloctity with Indian sites is because it is primarily an International player which has made a presence in India as well.( For me, making a presence means that I get to pay in INR and the site probably has payment options via local banks. )

Going by travelocity's lineage, the site offers a good combination for flight + hotel booking. However the service is very basic and there is no intelligence applied to the idea. 

Going to expedia.com was a true delight. I can

a. Book a multi destination trip - really cool

b. Book a trip in which I want to book a hotel for only a part of my stay - Now this is the option which has really made me smile. As I mentioned before, I wanted a one night macau and 3 day hong kong stay. All other sites offerred me a 4 night hk stay or nothing else. This site atleast gave me the option to choose 3 nights in hk and book return flight tickets with them and yes it works out cheaper if I take this combo when compared to booking the itineary item by item. 

Agree, this still does not allow me to choose the Macau in the same one payment deal, but I think that would be the next step in travel planning. 

The only other time when I have been more exhilirated about booking trips online was when I booked my first online ticket with Air Deccan. If any body wants to build a good travel site, expedia.com is the site to emulate!

One of those "Did you know" questions

Did you know all watches made in the world, which carry roman numerals, have the number "4" represented as "iiii" and not the conventional "iv".

Talk about information hiding in plain sight. Every one must have come across a watch with roman numerals, but how many of you guys knew about this ?

The little somethings which cheer you up

U2 gave a free gig in London at the BBC tower. Thank you Bono! Not everything is driven by capitalistic needs..Well almost..I would not exactly say this was an entirely charitable event as they were promoting their new album but what the heck...Seeing U2 perform live and that too for free...

Now this is something which can happen to you only if you stay in a major metropolitan city...:-)

In some way, I can relate to myself staying in Mumbai. Nice feeling to have on a Saturday afternoon....

Another thing happened while I was flipping channels. I stopped for a few moments on BBC. They were talking about interesting sites....villageofjoy.com - this has to be the mother page for all forwards ! I liked it..spent a nice hour browsing..

Disappointing show at Oscars 2009

Slumdog won 8 Oscars..Wow...ya..but I am not really bothered....A.R. Rahman winning two oscars ya well, that was something.

But am I really interested in who wins and who has to be content with a nomination?..No..I am in it for the show...And as the master of ceremonies Hugh, did not stand up to my expectations.

To me, OSCAR nite is a time when humour flows like champagne. Oscar 2009 was as dry as and devoid of wit as a boring compliance training.....It somehow had a look and feel of Bollywoodaward award nite with performances..Though to be honest, some of the bollywood award nites have had more humour. Remember Shahrukh and Saif doing their bits ?

Anyways, apart from the low key Hugh Jackman (who by the way was not there most of the time during the later half of the show),  I really liked what Will Smith packed in for those few brief minutes. I enjoyed that. Sean Penn's speech was also refreshing...

May be I am growing up and have started noticing things from a finer angle because I thought I noticed quite a few faults in execution at the Oscars

1. The first time they displayed a video on the screen, some moron actually drew the curtains so the picture was displayed behind the blue curtain and you heard some one call "open it s..."

I was immediately reminded of the Cricket world cup inauguration in the eden gardens at Calcutta. The laser show was fiasco as the curtains were not tied down.

2. The 5 piece screen was a nice implementation. It breaks and moves around. very Nice piece of creativity. However the problem really comes when you have to present one giant screen...There were so many times when you could see cracks visible...The seam was showing..

3. The camera work for the TV audiences was so frustrating..... During the memorial song performed by Queen Latifah, the camera angles kept hovering around the various screens and only "sometimes" focussed properly so that the TV audience could actually have a glimpse of the artists which are no longer there with us..Thankfully, they had some sense and did not focus on queen latifah even once....the swerving of the camera angles really made me swear..

4. Talking about the memorial, I was heartbroken to not see Heath Ledger being included in the service. Is it because he had won the Oscar for the best supporting actor. That is not possible because there are only two people in the world who know the names of the academy winners before they are announced. The two guys from PWC..that is supposed to be it. I feel Heath has been wronged by the academy by not including a small background of his short life's work. 

I really have no comments on the concept deployed at this year's award nite. However the closed theatre group kind of atmosphere meant unnecessary TV presence of some stars over and over again. As I said I have no comments on this aspect as the attempt at an original design was made. Something a little different in thinking is always appreciated. The end result however was nothing to write home about. 

To think of it, OSCARS have been really hyped up...However I dont value the bollywood version of it as much...Seeing the Osacrs live to me is like fulfilling a year's work in those three and a half hours. I am disappointed, but there is only hope that next year I will feel more cheerful about the show..

Acknowledge the Pioneer.

The new Nokia 5800 is coming..SMS Touch to 55555 to prebook..Sure..looks great, slick advertising....Hey wait, there is this Sony Ericsson's Xperia or something...Then there is the ridiculous sound LG 10000...As if the name was making up for something. 

One thing is for sure that the market for iPhones has suddenly turned very competitive..But did you notice the one thing that these phones have in common..They are all iPhones wannabes. Sure some of them are much improved over the iPhone's offering. But the concept of touch..Nokia seems to advertise like it invented it..Lg is promoting it through a butterfly followed by a really cheesy couple who seem to revolve around the phone. 

Samsung and Sony Ericsson are doing something a little original..

What I expect is really a little gratitude to Apple from these companies for heralding in the future.