"You look familiar, I think I have seen you in Cisco"

Me: "No, I do not work in Cisco. I work at Company 'ABC'."

Mr. India: "O sorry! By the way, I am Mr. India. Where are you from?"

Me: "Oh, I am from Jhumari Talaiyya!"

Mr. India: "Great, I have a friend from that place too. So what work do you do?"

Me: "I just lay eggs."

Mr. India: "Fantastic, lets meet up some time. May I have your number please?"

Me: "Uh, it is XXX-XXX-XXXX."

Mr. India, calls and checks, if I get the ring.

Mr. India: "Ok, see you later."

Exactly two days later.

Ring Ring.

Mr. India: "Hey hi, Mr. Jhumari Talaiyya, this is Mr. India here."

Me: Hi.

Mr. India: "How are you doing?"

Me: "I am fine, how about you."

Mr. India: "Great, Thanks for asking. Hey listen, I have an e-commerce business. It's a partnership based business. You look very enterprising and I think it would be a good utilization of your spare time."

Me: "Is it related to Quixtar, Amway?"

Mr. India: "Uh, why did you ask?"

Me: "Get the heck out of here. Do not call me again, and I am not interested."

This is a very familiar conversation, many Indians could relate to. Walmart, Malls, Target, Ross, anywhere you go, you get constantly cornered by fellow Indians trying to talk you into their "e-commerce" business. Bay area and Silicon Valley is very badly infected by these menace. It is scary to talk to any other Indian whom you do not know. Either they will be interested to sign you up to this business, or they will think that you are looking for to sign them up.

It has made difficult to make new Indian friends in the Bay area as you are always doubtful of other person's intention. I am sure, many of my friends have their share of horror stories with these people.

Although, I have not been very succesful to avoid all of these attacks, I can give you some tips to avoid them. Do not stray around an Indian couple who are formally dressed in a location, where other people are casually dressed. Be especially away from Indian couple who appear to do shopping at these places, but have empty shopping carts. If somebody wants to talk to you out of blue, just do not give your phone number. And if you do, save them as "Do not pick" in your phone book.

I hope keeping these tips in mind will save you some harrassment from the e-commerce business people.

~Raag

Our Cross-Country Drive

Finally, we left Blacksburg for good in February 2008, to go to Bay area, CA. We decided to drive our Toyota Camry all the way. It was 2700 miles drive and we were excited. We started our drive on a Sunday morning and planned to drive about 750 miles each day. Visually, the travel was as the following map.

View Larger Map

When we started in Blacksburg there was snow all around and wind chills. However, we were lucky to have sun that day. Beautiful, sunny Blacksburg reminded us of the wonderful years we spent here.

We entered into Tennessee in just few hours. The Tennessee welcome center was quite big and designed artistically. The landscape of Tennessee was not much different from Virginia, but it was definitely flatter. We drove about 490 miles in Tennessee.

We entered Arkansas in the night. I have been here few times but it was first time for Vinny. We booked a hotel on phone and then called Dr. Saraswat. Dr. Saraswat is my senior from my undergrad college. Well, it was a mistake to call them after booking the hotel and we realized that after we got some nice scolding, and a great welcome from Dr. Saraswat and his wife in Little Rock, Arkansas. They cooked a really nice dinner for us. Too bad, we forgot to click a picture at their house.

We started from a place called Conway in Arkansas, which is very near to Little Rock in the morning. The time zone change was showing its effect and we got up a little early. On the I-40 in Arkansas, we got a chance to catch a scenic view in our camera.

We did not have to travel much in Arkansas and we were in Oklahoma by early noon. They really had a nice welcome center. Oklahoma welcome center displayed some interesting examples of some skills of Indian's craftsmanship. I found an interesting quote in the Oklahoma Welcome center as well.

Oklahoma was mostly flat, and pretty much deserted on Interstate 40. We reached Tulsa, in the afternoon. We wanted to eat at a nice Indian restaurant, but we didn't know address of any restaurant. So we tried the GOOG 411 service for the first time. Those who do not know about it, it is a service to find out local businesses by dialing 1 800 GOOG 411. We ended up at an amazing restaurant Gopuram at Oklahoma City. We had a nice buffet.

We reached Texas around evening. The welcome center for Texas was just a welcome sign. They didn't have any rest rooms there. We saw quite a few windmills as soon as we reached Texas. The size of these windmills were really huge.

We reached Amarillo, Texas in the evening. Interstate 40 passed though the Amarillo, so we were able to see that city. We in fact did some shopping at Kohl's there. Having interstate in the city is positive as the people passing buy can actually see the city and may be visit it as well. Amarillo, however, like many other US cities is also made for cars, not people. You cannot walk between two showrooms if they are just 20-30 feet apart. That rant some other time though.

Around the time we were going to pass Texas, we saw a beef farm right beside the interstate which was more than a mile long. All the beef in the farm were waiting to get butchered. I hadn't seen animal agriculture at that scale before, it was overwhelming. At the end of Texas, severe wind was blowing which was shaking our car badly. We entered New Mexico after dark, and the time zone changed as well. We stayed in Tucumcari, New Mexico that night in a Super 8 Motel. Actually, that was first time I stayed at a Super 8, it was pretty good. Tucumcari looked like a small beautiful town. I could see Route 66 from my room in motel. Route 66 is considered were scenic.

We started from Tucumcari in the morning and reached Albequrque, NM during lunch time. My cell phone was having problems, so I had to go to a verizon wireless showroom in NM. Albequrque, NM is situated in a valley with mountains surrounding it. Its a beautiful place. I talked to four people in NM, two verizon wireless representatives, one hotel receptionist, and one native Indian at the roadside. They were not only very nice, they had a very special warmth as well. May be that's a characteristic of NM people? There was a village situated right beside Interstate on a dormant volcano. I think I forgot its name, but some Indians were on the road and one of them told me about it. The nearby areas had black earth due to that volcano which erupted few hundred years back. New Mexico had some snow by that time, and the surrounding areas were looking very beautiful. Enjoy some other pictures from new Mexico as well.

Arizona had a nice welcome center. It was based on the theme of an Indian village.

The interstate in Arizona had some big statues of dinosaurs which appeared to be running towards the interstate.

Arizona was looking really beautiful and we entered California by night in the pacific time zone. California didn't have any welcome centers, although California welcomed us by checking our cars. I think they do not allow import of agriculture products and live animals. We stayed in Needles, CA that night.

We still had to travel about 550 miles in California and reach our apartment in Fremont before 5 to get the keys. Thankfully, time zone change helped us wake up by 5 and leave Needles by 6. This was our fourth day of driving, but we were as excited as we were on day one. We were less than half a tank of gas when we left Needles and were planning to get it filled before moving forward, but we forgot and realized when we were in the desert of Mojave national park. That area was dry and deserted as in the pictures below and you could easily see small wild animals (fox, rabbit, deer etc.) running around .

We tried to call 411 (couldn't call 1800GOOG411 as my phone was discharged and another phone was out of minutes), but that was not of much help, as we didn't know the name of city or county where we were. We had no other option than to drive as far as we could. We finally found a place called Ludlow, out in the desert, which had only two gas stations in total and nothing else as far as one could see (one could see for miles actually there). We could have been in serious trouble if that place was couple of miles away. Once we got the gas, we started again. California had the most varying landscape, changing from desert, to snow covered mountains to huge agricultural farms to concentrated cities. You can see the varying landscape of CA in pictures below. We found amazingly big wind mill farms near Mojave as well.

We had lunch in Bakersville, CA. We were able to reach Fremont, CA before 5, and we got the keys. In few minutes, we left for Ikea to buy the bed. We took the picture below couple of days later to show how dirty our car was after so much driving.

I always wanted to do a cross country travel like this, and I am glad I did it with my better half. It was an amazing experience. The visual panorama we experienced for four days will always be in our minds and heart like a treasure. All of that cannot be illustrated in the pictures or in my shoddy writing, but hopefully you liked them.

Raag

Diwali 2007 at Virginia Tech

See this video for what Indian Students Association has to offer this year at Diwali celebration!

Raag

Global Warming: An issue or just politics?

Background: Virginia Tech has come up with a campaign where each Virginia Tech member, faculty, staff and alumni will promise 10 hours of community service as a tribute to the victims of April 16, 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech.  Different people have promised community work in several organizations in and around Blacksburg and elsewhere.  I also promised 10 hours of community work. To utilize these 10 hours, I wanted to set up a stall in a grocery shop talking to people about buying reusable grocery bags and stop using petroleum based plastic grocery bags. I also wanted to use that occasion to talk to people one to one about several environmental issues as well.

Now what happened: I chose Kroger grocery store for this place as they have started selling reusable bags recently and it generally has crowds of lots of young students.  I went to talk to the Kroger Manager today and he outrightly rejected the proposal. He did not like the fact that I was being supported by Sierra Club. He said the organization was too political.  He added on to that I will be talking about environmental issue specifically "Global Warming" which is a political issue.  He said this might (or definitely will) annoy some of their customers and he didn't want his customers to complain.

"Global warming, a political issue?"  I was really surprised to hear that.  I have always considered that to be an environmental issue.  As per as normal IQ goes global warming is a phenomena by which the greenhouses gases absorb heat which makes this planet inhabitable.  The balance of greenhouses is delicately maintained by several natural processes.  However, several human activities increase these greenhouses gases in atmosphere and are causing the increase in global temperature.  There are several serious repercussions of this increase in temperature and I have discussed some of them in my previous posts related to environment.

I have followed several discussions and read several articles but I am not convinced that global warming is a political issue and it should not be taken that way. It's an issue of screwing up the mother nature which inhabits us.

On a positive note, a grocery store at Blacksburg agreed to my proposal instantly.  They will get reusable grocery bags so that I will use this occasion and convince people to use them. The grocery bags will be sold at cost price as well. The store manager also gave me several ideas to organize that stall.  At the end of the day I was able to convince one store of my idea.  I will let you know how that goes.

Let me know what do you think,

Raag

When technology pulls us backward

Couple of years back wireless Internet became ubiquitous and it became available on airports, hotels, restaurants, cafes everywhere. With the widespread availability of Internet, businesses took it as opportunity and started to sell the usage of Internet at these public places.

Now, to get access to wireless Internet at most of these public places, you need to sign up for some monthly service or pay exorbitant amount of money through credit card. So, you have to pay upwards of $7 if you want to check your mail real quick on an airport or even Starbucks. In the hotels also, the Internet is getting extremely costly. We went to a conference in Minneapolis, MN in summers and the rate of Internet was as high as $15.00 per day. Although we are in highly advanced world most of the people were not using Internet until they really really had to. On a sidenote, however, there are still couple of places with free Internet without any registration and sanity. One of them is Denny's restaurants. You can find them on almost all the highways in US.

At Virginia Tech, we can buy licenses for many software to work. I wanted to buy the server edition of MATLAB but its annual license expires in couple of months. So whether I buy the software in Jan or Dec, I pay the same amount and need to renew it in January. How is that for technology? Now many a software are server edition, that means they will work only if I have Internet. So, if I get stuck in an airport or I am staying in a hotel with costly Internet and I want to work on my laptop, I have to pay for that costly internet just for my software to work.

To me technology means efficiency. If something is not efficient, its not advanced, whether its a car or a computer system. We have recently experienced many popular software like MS Windows, ESRI (ArcGIS), are getting bloated and inefficient.

Anyway, I went to a Starbucks few days back. Besides the fact that they did not have Internet at all, that place was supercold. I asked if they could do anything about it, they told me that the temperature was controlled by a central unit and they cannot do anything about it. Besides the fact that temperature outside was in upwards of 80, workers in that place were wearing warmer clothes, and I was not able to sit there for long because of that cold temperature. This technology of air conditioning is supposed to make us feel comfortable, or uncomfortable and blatantly waste huge amounts of energy. I have felt this central AC crap many a times before as well. I know in some offices people keep heaters to counter the cold AC. The most stupid way to waste energy.

In Virginia Tech library last week, the temperature inside was too high in the evening as it became a little colder outside. And since it was controlled automatically, people had no option than to feel hot. In my department there is a classroom with special air conditioning unit. And the AC switches on as soon as somebody enters in it. It also makes it colder than that starbucks. The whole time in that class you wait for it to get over, get out and feel better. How is that for technology?

Raag

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Al Gore and IPCC won the Nobel prize for peace, for their efforts in raising awareness about Global Warming. I take this space to congratulate IPCC and Al Gore both and I hope it will raise some more awareness.

Story of Bhasmasur

In Hindu scriptures, there is a story of a person who became demon named Bhasmasur.That person did a lot of praying to “Lord Shiva” (a Hindu God) for long time.Lord Shiva became happy and asked him what he wished for. The person requested for a power to destroy (Bhasma) anybody he wished for, just like we want to have more and more arms and weapons. Lord Shiva fulfilled his wish and said he can destroy anybody by putting his hand over their head, and that person’s name became “Bhasmasur” (Bhasma = Destroy, Asur = Demon). Just like we can aim and shoot anybody whom we like using guns, airplanes, may be satellites.

Since Bhasmasur had power to destroy anybody he grew stronger and stronger and in the lust for more power he planned to destroy Lord Shiva himself to become more powerful. Just like when we arm another country or group who comes back to us after some years. Anyways, Lord Shiva got scared and ran to another God “Lord Vishnu” and requested his help. Lord Vishnu said Bhasmasur has become very strong and now he can be killed with his own power only. So Lord Vishnu made a plan and disguised himself as a beautiful seducing woman and went to Bhasmasur.

As soon as Bhasmasur saw this woman he proposed her. The woman (Lord Vishnu) said that for her to accept his invitation, he will have to dance with her. Bhasmasur accepted and started dancing with the woman. While dancing, the woman kept her hand over head, Bhasmasur - lost in the intoxication of extreme power and lust, in an attempt to copy her, kept his hand over his own head and destroys himself.

I have heard this story from my parents a few times since childhood, and it’s interesting to see so many of its live practical examples everywhere. We can relate it to the amount of weapons on Earth which can destroy all life on earth multiple times, we can relate it to arming the groups or countries who come back to us, we can relate it to a concept of arming each and every person with a handgun, or rifle as a measure to protect human life (we forget that the soldiers in Iraq are far more equipped, still close to 4000 of them have died and many after Iraq lost the war), we can relate it to the amount of pollution human being has created to destroy Earth’s natural processes (and not accept it) and so forth.

The story has been repeated since human civilization for ages and being repeated again. One of the latest example is the "mistaken" flight of nuclear bomb all over the US in B52 bomber. Although, the science and knowledge has improved a lot since human being appeared on this earth - our dressing style has changed, we use internet, we fly airplanes, but have we become really civilized since then? I wrote an article in Collegiate Times long back and said that may be it’s a right time to watch an old movie called “Gandhi,”I think it will always be right to time watch it once more.

Raag