WANDeRiNG MiND!

Just an addition to compliment my previous post. This is an article I happened to come across a while back.

Not withstanding India’s emergence as an IT superpower, a global study has ranked India 10th in Asia-Pacific and 46th worldwide in terms of IT industry competitiveness.

In the study commissioned by software industry association Business Software Alliance (BSA) and conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the US, Japan, South Korea and the UK ranked the highest among 64 countries in terms of IT industry competitiveness. The study evaluated countries on factors like supply of skills, a pro-innovation culture, world-class technology infrastructure, a robust legal infrastructure, government support and a competition-friendly business environment.

China was number 49 globally and 12th in Asia-Pacific. Japan, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan and Singapore were the top five countries in Asia-Pacific.

“India and China have been able to parlay unique factors, such as workforce size, low wages or language attributes, into strong IT sector performance, compensating for glaring weaknesses in the industry environment,” the study noted.

However, the two countries will have to innovate more in terms of products and services to remain competitive, as their cost advantage erodes over a period of time.

“Developing a stronger legal and R&D environment, complemented with appropriate support for the IT industry and a better IT infrastructure, will help make Indian firms more competitive in this sector in the years to come,” said BSA India Committee chairperson Sanjay Gupta.

The study said India and China will see greater competition from Russia, Brazil, Malaysia and Vietnam and even smaller markets like Estonia, Lithuania and Chile in future.

I believe that. India is just a “cheaper” location, and soon that will not hold true with the rising infrastructure costs and the salaries of employees. It’s been just going higher and higher, so steep and at a scary pace. It’s bound to come down. Like the dot com bubble that burst, this too will happen one day. And Indian companies will have to move over to cheaper locations to make money. If US companies could layoff employees in the thousands only to shift their work to India, what’s the guarantee that Indian companies wouldn’t resort to the same to shift to other cheaper locations?

Just a thought!

This is something I wanted to post in August 2006, when India celebrated the 59th year of Independence. I had typed the whole thing back then, but then totally lost track and missed posting it. Around that time I received a forwarded mail about “being proud to be an Indian”… The theme was certainly a good one, and in context, it listed out the many reasons why we should be proud, and that included some facts like :

Rajiv Gupta is the GM of Hewlett Packard
Vinod Dahm is the creator of Pentium chip
Sabeer Bhatia is the founder and creator of Hotmail
38% of doctors in USA are Indians.
12% scientists in USA are Indians.
36% of NASA scientists are Indians.
34% of Microsoft employees are Indians.
28% of IBM employees are Indians.
17% of INTEL scientists are Indians.
13% of XEROX employees are! Indians.
India never invaded any country in her last 1000 years of history.
India invented the Number system. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.
etc etc..

Am sure many of you would have already seen it many times. Anyways, I just had a few thoughts to share too, because on August 15th, 2006, when the nation was celebrating the Independence Day, NDTV decided to go around asking the “rulers” or our nation, our so called “leaders”, a few basic questions.

The questions were…
1. Who wrote out national song? (Vande mataram)
2. What colour is on top of our national flag? Saffron, white or green?
3. Where was the “wheel” in out flag taken from?
4. What’s the full name of out Bapu?

The shocking news is… NOT A SINGLE ONE COULD ANSWER ANY OF THE QUESTIONS!!!!!!
Some of the answers they got were…
“National song? Which national song?”
“So many people have written national songs…I don’t remember”
“It’s a general knowledge question. I don’t know it”
“Green is on top…on the Indian national flag”
“The ‘chakra’ was not taken from anybody”
“The ‘chakra’ was taken from the different states”
“Bapu? I just know him as Mahatma Gandhi”
“Whatever we call him, he is Mahatma”
And one guy didn’t even know who Bapu was!!!
Another lady leader had to say… “Am getting late for the Parliament. Don’t doubt me. I have read the whole Indian history. I’ll tell you the answers when am done with the Parliament”

Believe it or not… this is the “crème de la crème” of this country! Our country!!
Huh! What are we proud of here?????

True, there are Indian’s in many top and highly influential posts all around the world. We can be proud of them. The forwarded mail did have a few points worth thinking about.

India never invaded any country in her last 1000 years of history.
When that’s something we all can be proud of, the real question is, has that ensured the safety of the Indians??? We are always a target for our neighbours and the terrorists. Though war is NOT the answer, we certainly have to do more than just listen to “a condemn speech” by the great PM. So many of our soldiers are getting killed, so many civilians are massacred by those bullies. India should be doing more than simply sending the soldiers on training in out dated MiGs that crash before takeoff. This public display of erratic administration is indeed an invitation for the enemies. After losing so many innocent lives, the PM has just “harsh words”????? And for all you know, those are not even his own words, but the staff member who wrote it for him.

The world’s first University was established in Takshila in 700BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century BC was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.
Hmm… But how many Indians would actually pick an Indian University over an American or English one today? Would you? How many Americans or Europeans come to India to do their higher education? At least half the number that goes to them to study? I didn’t think so. O’course our IITs and IIMs have made it big in the world, but Universities? Nope. How will it be? I have heard of people “take up” their MBBS final exams in a local coffee shop. Yup, an “agent” arranges everything for a small “fee” of a few lakhs and you can write the exam wherever you feel like, referring whatever you want to and be a “world class” doctor who kills the patient by his bills. Recently CNN-IBN exposed a few doctors in the capital, working in reputed hospitals and medical institutes, who were fakes. They had a pending case against them for being a fake, but they still “treat” patients and draw huge salaries from the organizations!!

A great history, but an amazingly corrupt present.

Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to humans.
Yup, but more than us Indians, the foreigners have faith in it today. They spend so much on this, that for us Indians it’s now more of a business than a tradition.

Although western media portray modern images of India as poverty striken and underdeveloped through political corruption, India was once the richest empire on earth.
Well…either cling on to the glory of our past, and blame it all on the East India Company for having looted us and left us poor OR learn from countries like Japan who did everything to wake up from the grave and fight back to riches and fame. And HOW!!!

This is not something we have to be proud of, but something we Indians should be ashamed of. Something we all should be acting upon. So many Indians are in the top ring of the worlds largest corporates. But none of them ever started anything in India. None of them had the resources to build it in India. They had to go to other countries to do what they wanted to do and those countries have come out with many of the greatest inventions of our times. With the help of “imported Indian brains”.

Hotmail happened because Bhatia was in the USA. Sun Microsystems was started by a small team which included Vinod Khosla, but that happened because they were in Stanford University (SUN is Stanford University Network)… not in JNU or IGNOU. Vinod Dham did all his education in India but for his Masters degree he went to Cincinnati. And thus came the Pentium chips.

Most people think India has suddenly become the IT super power!! But the truth is, India has just become an OS super power. Well, that’s Out Sourcing super power. The best brains from the country have gone out and started companies which rule their segments in IT. But the brains still in India stick to the huge flow of works out sourced to us due to the lower labor cost here. Instead of that why don’t we concentrate on building a software giant like Microsoft or Adobe or Google or Yahoo? All those giants get a lot of works done from their developments centers in India too. They believe Indian’s are highly intelligent. And YES, we are. But why doesn’t any of the Indian companies use that intelligence to create an Indian giant that can rival these “world leaders”, instead of doing the work for the giants themselves? The head count in Infosys, Wipro, TCS etc. are so huge, most of the giants don’t have so many “brains” and a large part of our population is still not utilized. What they find intelligent is only the ones that were fortunate enough to have got the exposure. With such enormous resource in our own hands, how difficult would it be to come up with a “Windows” or a “Mac” or a “Photoshop” or a “Google” or “Yahoo” instead of being just services companies?

Why doesn’t that happen? Is it because of all the hurdles they have to cross with the Indian administration?

I guess the same would answer many other questions, like why with a population of 1 billion plus we still don’t have a world football team. Or why we still have to rejoice over winning the single bronze medal in the Olympics.

Seriously. What are we proud of?????

I wanted to conclude my trilogy before posting anything else, but unfortunately time and everything around is too discouraging to even attempt it. Everyone and everything around me seems to be targeting me for their torture games. Thus my mind is all screwed up, and pretty bad too. Every day is a nightmare for me now, and so is every night. No sleep, no smile, no peace of mind. The sunlight shines through the clouds for a minute and then it’s gloomy again. Talking nonsense here too, I think. Large part of all that’s happening is o’course due to my own insanity. Anyways, today I thought I’ll just put all the irritations in my mind, right here. So here it is. Am just venting. So don’t mind. No offense whatsoever.

Am sure many would have come across a mail, with the content given below, several times..

Oprah’s interview and Tommy Hilfiger Good for Oprah!!!!
I’m sure many of you watched the recent taping of The Oprah Winfrey show where her guest was Tommy Hilfiger. On the show, she asked him if the statements about race he was accused of saying were true.

Statements like”… if I’d known African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews and Asians would buy my clothes, I would not have made them so nice. I wish these people would NOT buy my clothes, as they are made for upper class white people.”

His answer to Oprah was a simple, “YES”. Where after she immediately asked him to leave her show.

My suggestion? Don’t buy your next shirt or Perfume from Tommy Hilfiger. Let’s give him what he asked for. Let’s not buy his clothes.

Let’s put him in a financial state where he himself will not be able to afford the ridiculous prices he puts on his clothes.

BOYCOTT PLEASE, & SEND THIS MESSAGE TO ANYONE YOU KNOW !!!!!

I got if first some 4 years ago.. and before that I heard about it from somebody else too.. and I believed it. But as it turns out, it’s always been just a hoax.

Many of us just read these mails and believe it and just blindly forward it. Well, most of them don’t harm anybody, but some could harm somebody pretty bad too.. I believe it’s unfair on our part to be a part of such “chain mailers”.. I think we all should take a minute “googling” the genuineness of such mails before we forward to the entire addressbook.

My request: please, please, PLEASE… avoid forwarding those horribly stupid and dumb mails which claim to earn you “millions from Microsoft and AOL” and the likes, by just forwarding them. Even the ones that show heart melting images of little girls, claiming that the girl has some terrible virus that’s killing her and needs treatment badly and for the fund, Yahoo or whoever has agreed to pay for each mail forwarded etc etc… I mean, how can we be so ignorant of the truth that no company is stupid enough to pay thousands and millions, to the millions who believe it and forward the mails????? I mean, hello! these companies are into making softwares. Not printing dollars.

The worst of them all is the ones that carry “God’s messages”! Man, I hate that so much. People actually believe that the message originated from some famous temple and unless they forward it to 10 others, they will have ill-luck. Since when did “God” start spamming???? What kind of a loser actually started that sick mail?

When I put this for discussion in a group from which I received the mail last, someone told me that the same girl, the one who was to receive the cash generated by the rest of the world forwarding the mail, is still fighting against bone cancer. She’s been sick from from 2003 and now she is 6 years old He also said when received the mail a month ago, the words were same as of the first one he had received.

Which girl? And why? Because nobody forwarded the mail? Because Yahoo or Microsoft or whoever agreed to pay, didn’t pay? Well, maybe they should have gone for an easier and better option… like just forwarding the Microsoft and AOL mail which claimed to have “turned thousands of people into millionaires just overnight” (as per the mail), instead of just waiting. How long was that mail to be in circulation before the company pays up anyway?

If that “girl having cancer” is really a true story, then I really admire the will power and strength she and her relatives have shown, which kept her alive for so long. But I also feel disgusted by the person who used her terrible condition as a “tool” to start a chain mail which was meant to just fool the people and NEVER to help the victim. Am NOT saying there is no girl like that. What am saying is, there is no “offer” from any corporates like the one that’s told in these mails. It’s just some sick mind’s cruel joke. Just another chain mail.

But what exactly is the “intention” of the chain mails? The person sends a mail, and he/she gets it back after many years. Is that the only “high” the creator of the mails get? I really can’t see anything else. And like that same person in the group pointed out, nobody ever came with a mail after receiving the “charity fund”! Considering the “forward and help me save my daughter” mail is true, don’t you think it’s selfish on the part of the “charity fund receivers” to not send a “thank you all for saving my daughter’s life” mail at least, to all those people who forwarded their previous mail and helped them get the “charity fund”? Have u ever seen a mail like that? There have been countless mails asking for the fund, and not a single one succeeded?? What are the odds?????

There have been chain mails of different types. The “easy money maker” mails were an instant hit, thanks to the human nature. They even tried “Nokia is giving away free mobiles to make their brand popular” stuff, when mobiles were catching up in the market. Then they tried with “virus alerts” when a few deadly ones were actually making the news and people were scared of getting their computers infected. The “save my daughter” kind of mails started playing with the human emotions. And then “Gods” started traveling the web just like they used to travel in a postman’s bag, before the Internet happened. Remember those days when people used to get postcards with some “mantra” or spell written on it and asking the receiver to write 15 copies of it, write not photocopy, and send it to different people within the next 10 days? I had received one too, and for all I cared, that could have been a marketing gimmick of out postal department But hey, at least the postcard made many people write the “mantra” some 15 times. They wouldn’t have forgotten it after that, right? But how is hitting the forward button going to help at all?????? And why do people actually believe that just forwarding a mail can bring them luck? In my opinion health and wealth never comes to people who just sit back and HIT “Forward” in their mailbox. It goes to people who actually get up from their couch and take themselves forward.

The only outcome of these stupid chain mails will be that some day, when someone actually wants to pass on a genuine issue, like maybe the “missing child” mail or the “AB -ve blood for a patient in Appolo Hospital” one that’s been going around of late, the public will just ignore it thinking it’s another of the time wasters.

Remember the old story of the boy who screamed “Tiger, tiger”???????
Who’s to be blamed?

PS: I know people may have different opinions… This is just mine.

Been a long time. 2 months and 3 days to be more precise. And I’ve been too busy and then too bugged and soon too frustrated to be in mood to jot anything. I still am a li’l aloof and so have no idea what to write about. But then I thought I’ll just do the ramblings and mumblings on a text file rather than in my mind, so that I have something to post at least. Well, here I go. Get bugged. Feel frustrated. Kill yourself. I don’t care. And thanx in advance for not blaming me for it

I posted last on my birthday. So lemme start with that. My birthday.

It wasn’t something great, but it was a nice one. All my friends and cousins and uncles and aunts wished me, by phone or by sms. Oh, don’t be of the impression that I have loads of them though. Just a few good friends and relatives. In fact, more of my girlfriend’s friends wished me than my own old friends. Funny, eh? But that’s how it’s been always. My friends never remember my birthday. Even in school, I used to wish all my friends for their birthdays and send them cards etc. And they used to be like.. “Wow! You remembered!” That was good enough to make me happy. I never cared if they did the same to me. I was more excited when I used to get cards from unexpected sources. Like the one I got from Parry’s, the toffee company who had conducted some game once and I had participated. They sent me a sweet li’l card on my following birthday, which totally made my day!

Well, that was a long time ago when Internet and websites were a distant dream. Today, to be frank I get most of the birthday wishes from the umpteen websites I have registered with. They don’t make me feel special ‘coz I know, unlike the one somebody at Parry’s sent me, it’s an auto-generated e-card and lacks any human emotional value.

Anyway, this year the company where I work also celebrated my birthday, making me cut a yummy cake and smearing my face with some and giving me a small gift etc. Then when I went home, my sweetheart gave me a tiny party too… with just the 2 of us. It was a really sweet one and is something I always look forward to Then I went to my aunt’s place and they made me cut yet another cake and had dinner there and hogged on a lot of ice cream for dessert too.

Well, that was my birthday. A simple and nice day.

At work however, things have been a mixture of feelings. I have been going through a lot of pressure and some fun and quite a lot of irritations and frustrations. Am into designs and stuff, and so my job is a lot more pleasant than the coding and programming team here. Well, for me at least, it is. I enjoy the work when deadlines are set. Keeps me engaged the whole time, with no time for worries. That’s the only way I can keep my mind from wandering into the unwanted territories. So I enjoyed those days at work. But once I finished those works, a lot of stuff came up which were highly irritating. And something the company was to do for us in February, is still pending. So I have been pushed into the frustration zone and there I still linger. Not a pretty sight, I tell you.

Ok, forget that. Now what else happened in the 2 months and 3 days? Ummm… well, after a long wait, I got a new phone. A Sony Ericsson K750i. Quite a gadget. A cool 2MP camera with loads of options, just like a regular digicam, a cool mp3 player that comes with my favorite MegaBass option from Sony (it’s become a replacement for my Creative Nomad MuVo, which by itself is a cool gismo), a good FM tuner and a great, superfast processor which renders 3D games damn nice. Wanted a Nokia as am too used to them, but then nothing was available that could beat the K750i for its image and sound quality. And then I held it in hand and was head-over-heels in love! Oh yeah, am a gadget freak and am pretty happy with the one I got

I watched a few movies too which I really enjoyed. Will write about them in the next post. And you can read it if you haven’t killed yourself by the end of this. Ha! Ha!! (snort! snort!)

In the last 10 days, my parents were with me and it was their 30th wedding anniversary on the 4th of April. So, as a celebration, we planned a short trip with a few friends and relatives to Coorg, a district at the Karnataka-Kerala border. It’s known for its incomparable scenic beauty, lush green valleys, coffee plantations, teak wood forests & majestic mountain ranges. It was a nice trip, in a group of 9. The climate there has however changed a lot now which I presume is inevitable considering the global warming. And the roads of course were horrible too and that left everybody too tired for much walks and treks. The trip could have been better, but still it was a good one and is one I made after a real long time. A much needed break from this city pollution and traffic.

Talking of this city, those who have known Bangalore a few years earlier, would be crying inside now to see its plight. This place has changed so much. I remember how pleasant the days used to be here back in 1999. Throughout the day, throughout the year, we used to wear a jacket and go out. I still have many jackets I bought back then, now rendered useless. The place has become so horribly hot and polluted that during weekends we prefer to stay at home rather than get burnt alive outside. The temperatures that used to vary from 14C to 27C now swing between 19C and 37C. The sales of air conditioners, coolers, fans and refrigerators were never this huge here. People are switching to whites, lights and cottons from the ever-fashionable denims and corporate dressings. The daily travel to work and back is like a test of patience and self-control. While reaching the office on time is the greatest achievement of the day, finding a parking space for the vehicle on a weekend is that of the whole week. The once green garden city is now the city of a lot lesser trees; and never-ending traffic jams, flyover constructions, potholes and road repairs and corrupted politicians, government employees and cops. And even with all these bottlenecks, the cost of living here is soaring sky-high. Shopping malls just pop up like mushrooms.

I once had a dream of settling down in Bangalore, but now, am not so sure. Don’t blame me for that. Am allergic to heat…and dust…and pollution…and crowded places …and…irritating people…

Oh, shuddup!

I hate myself
…for what I am.
…for being the way I am.
…for not being able to change myself.
…for hurting so many of you.
…for hurting YOU.

I hate myself… for being me!