rudeness, culture and future

Read this beautifully written rudeness topic Vinod on rudeness. Rudeness, unethical, corrupt, impatient, unorganized, selfishness, miss-use, I am better/boss and like “good” qualities have become part of the local culture.

While in situations facing such scenarios, which mostly happens on the road on a daily basis, I feel that “God, give me the powers of superman/batman, I will correct the situation”.  But, “huhhh”, only I can leave breathe of helplessness.

Having seen western world, I feel that above mentioned qualities have reached an all-time high in this locality. This may be just my opinion and I could be wrong. I have seen mistakes/misunderstandings or rare unfortunate incidents due to some general policy taken for mass benefits, but never anything that happens on a daily basis in the developed world. The daily or near daily basis happenings in this locality bring down the quality of life. Suddenly thoughts that occur in my mind that why not China or Pakistan attack local, and local starts a fresh like Germany or Japan did few decades ago and this time with better culture (unlike what we have done post British). I would not say we have done badly in everything, but we could have done wonders. Better social system, medical system, better transport system, better city planning, etc. Coming back to fresh beginning, sometimes I think of 2012 dooms day or some alien invasion kind of things or something very random similar to those could be a trigger. Or even, Kalki bhagwaan appearing or natural resources dry up so much that human ecosystem gets revamped.  But what is the guaranty that system will start for a good next time. If that is the case, is there anything wrong in continuing what it is now. Triggers I mentioned may be ridiculous, but as part of some hope, can’t stop thinking about such.

I watch this Mahadev serial on life ok. When I see characters like Dhaksha, Tharakasura and even sometimes Indra’s selfishness, feel like things existed in the past and probably continue to exist. Unless there is an imaginary evil nature pumped into those characters.  Some 500 years down the line somebody should not rely on starwars or similar movies or books and conclude that we were really moving around the planets and at will. Or characters like Shrek, Golomb or talking animals existed. That is I don’t want to opine on existence or non-existence of evil nature in the past but can’t stop thoughts appearing into my mind, whenever I hit history or puranas.

Lets get back to present, people pressing lift doors close button (my past post) impatiently, road rage, corruption and live our part of life whatever we are good or bad at. Accept the reality!

New flyovers and underpasses

It is an interesting way the new underpasses or flyovers built on the outer ring road (especially from silk boar junction to KR puram bridge).

This is very bad design according to me (unless I come to know of any advantages which I can't see now). What is design? Well, the flyovers or under pass in each direction are built leaving middle space for some other road.

What this makes:
1. It leaves very small space for the service road. Mind it combined middle half road and the short service road would have made proper two-lane road (or at least wider). Now there would be four single lane service roads (two in the middle and two in the outer side.

2. The shorter service road also means, the footpath is either very small or does not exist at all.

3. The traffic on the main road, now will have exits on both the sides. This means there is a potential slow down. We made the road signal free but not a constant speed road. And also this gives chance for some unplanned people to make random lane switches.

4. By doing those underpasses/flyovers _OFF_ the main road direction, the aesthetic of the road itself is bad. It is not straight lane anymore!


Only advantage I can see, in future you want to create a center elevated road or metro track, it is useless way of real estate management.


I also felt that, some of the busy districts, the road space could have been better used. For example, creating concrete structure with all the roads and potential parking lots and of course shopping places for the middle/lower class (currently those are on the roads). Also having sheltered bus stops inside such concrete structure is an advantage.

multi use of extreme left lane in highways

Day before yesterday I read this story: meru cab mishap. There are many such incidences every now and then. Problems in such mishaps: Left most lane is used as:

1. high speed overtaking lane

People with recommended speed get irritated with slow moving right lane or people with higher speed than the recommended speed use the left most lane as over taking lane.

2. parking place

People just park their vehicle on their need basis. SOmetimes it is due to vehicle break as well. Most of the times these guys never put those red triangle with sufficient distance as warning. In the above article, it mentioned some warning, so it could be the case of 1 that is meru using left lane for speeding.

3. shortcut path

Yesterday I was trying to join a six lane (3+3 with divider) from 2 lane service road around 7PM. It was already dark and trying to see how is the left most lane (that is flow from back to which I am going to hit) that is my face is turned totally right and seeing the opportunity I made an entry into the left lane (in ramp up mode). Suddenly I was shocked to a see a back rickshaw with no light or with its usual low intensity head light. I had to make a stand still by giving way for it (to enter into the service lane). Probably he must have dropped somebody in the middle and decided to take this short cut (rather than going ahead and finding proper entry into service road). I have seen these things happening quite frequently. Sometimes pedestrials use left lane as walking path and it becomes very difficult to ramp up (to the traffic speed).


The above things are nothing new, but why can't we fix and be like those civilized countries. Attitude and discipline seems to be the manthra and not sure when we will get there!

centralized health care system

I have been thinking of several items but never found time to write down here. Today I make myself to put down and probably very soon on the items I thought about in the recent past.

Today I read an article in Bangalore Mirror, on "I so want to go back" and the things mentioned are so true! I feel those every day of my stay after the return. Some things like cycling (balance part) and swimming which can't re-learn in your life. Staying abroad brings a kind of awareness that it is very difficult to through away and get used to "home conditions" :-(

My six year daughter got sick a week ago and the symptoms started when I was about to start on a business trip. I thought she would be okay and my wife would be able to manage. Of course it did not happen that way and daughter got hospitalized and things became worse and cut short my trip and returned home. Daughter had certain problem and it had happened before a year ago. Due to several reasons we visited different hospitals. What happened was it is most of the time we have to tell doctor what had happened and what was diagnosed then. There is no centralized system which keeps such information. The way the hospitals and individual consultants organized, I don't see some kind of organized setup coming up in anytime future. Other possibility I can think of is user maintaining soft copy with some kind smart card (with built in memory). This also needs an interface where hospitals can enter data into it and hence not possible in near future. This smart card brings to another topic what is happening to this nation identity card, what it can be used, what can be stored, how credible it is, etc. Only time will tell. And will we ever hit social security?

Another thing is incentives model. I am somehow afraid of visiting dentist. I have some fear they always propose some treatment which brings them some revenue. And again no centralized data, and sometimes the xrays and such would be kept by the hospitals to keep stickiness to their operation, sometimes to make sure that records are kept safely, sometimes ignorance. But we usually loose the information we change the doctor, which otherwise could have been very useful.

Probably I have skewed the information to more negative way, but I feel there is a scope for improvement in the over all system! Of course meeting privacy rules is other topic for such a centralized system.

hobby DIY, enhance car subwoofer

I was looking for a decent sized subwoofer for our car, and requirement was it should perform well with reference to bass but size should be optimum. In the car accessories shop could not find a best match. Sony and JVC had some quality bazooka's, but size wise almost consumed whole of our car boot space. SO I decide to get one the optimum box (locally made) from the car accessory shop and enhance it.

And here is the hobby project in video:




There are several websites explain subwoofer DIY. An example: http://diyaudiocorner.tripod.com/faq.htm

Some points:
1. Air vent
As all subwoofers have air vents, I decided to have one and I got one optimum sized in SP road Bangalore. Wanted it bit longer (but same diameter), but had to settle to what I got.

2. Damping
Mostly one does not need damping material for vented enclosure (makes sense for sealed enclosure). But this box was very small compared to the speaker (13 inch) configuration, decided to go for it. Thought might help in increasing the virtual volume ans well phase cancellation. Difficult to find acoustic insulation material (for such a small quantity) and decided to use Yoga mat for this.

3. Protection and floor firing
And as you see the speaker diaphragm was directly exposed and in the boot space the speaker could be easily damaged during shopping material inflow or out flow. So decided to go for a protection and noticed that it could also act as kind of floor fired effect. http://www99.epinions.com/content_2374082692

Some of the above points might add or do bad acoustic wise, but I am happy with what I did!

careless, unprofessional

For long time I have not written here, today after I saw the horrifying pictures of people jumping out of the carlton tower and hitting ground leading to their death, I thought I put down something. trapped-in-carlton-towers The cause of this is speculated as electric short circuit. And also some were mentioning of people at the ground were asking people struck in the last floor to jump to the plastic they were holding. During course of our house built and in office when we moved to new building we have come across some lapses, faults. Plenty of time I thought of mentioning them here, but never found time, here is one such thing...

This is one year old story, when installation of our home UPS happened. The installation guy came, though installation was included in the price, we had to make few phone calls to get him. I did not know if a local electrician could install, later I realized that I could have installed and infact made some changes by myself. He came and asked for the electrician who did the wiring of the house and started arguing with him on some points (he continued throughout installation, I will not cover those and few other mistakes). Finally made this kind of wire and completed installation.



The above looks quite fine. Can anybody notice what is the problem. Ok, below is the complete connection. He also told that in case of any problem with UPS remove A2 from UPS and connect to the B3, that is, bypass UPS and direct connection (as it was).



The problem with this setup is A2 was not female! So the mains current was directly exposed. 2-3 weeks after installation, the UPS fuse was blown and hence we did not have the power. I went to check and decided to bypass UPS (As instructed) and called the UPS guy to get the fuse (it was internal fuse not the external replacable one). While making direct, I felt something strange and luckily did not touch the A2 exposed contacts (Male)! I was mentally shocked and not physically. Luckily it was me. If anybody else it would have been disaster. Later on I fixed them properly.

Cutinphobia

There are two types of cutinphobias: Positive cutinphobia and negative cutinphobia.

Positive cutinphobia: While driving a 4-wheeler, unfortunately if you are on a wrong lane, if you have to change the lane to take turn then you find it difficult as there are no gaps maintained between vehicles (not side by side but back to front). Indicator does not yield people giving way. They usually think that you want change lane because you want to move ahead. The fear to cutin in this scenario is positive cutinphobea. Being in wrong line happens usually because of bumper to bumper traffic never get chance to get into the correct lane. Some times, unaware of which turn to take a left/right turn in advance also a possibility that you are on a wrong lane.

Negative cutinphobia: While driving 4-wheeler, according to safety rules you need to keep a safe distance from front vehicle. But you can't do that as people just make cutin and get in between. Usually, riksha, bikes are potential cutinners, many a times yellow number plated white indica or tata sumos also do the cutin tasks. To avoid that happening every now and then you try to keep the distance between the fron vehicle and yours as few inches as possible and keep looking around if somebody is cutting in. The fear that somebody might cutin in such scenarios is negative cutinphobia.

No medical/sceintific terms meant above!