Context Sensitivity

Before I get to 2010, let me quickly pen down, in chronological order, three of my very small stories from 2009 that taught me an interesting lesson. They show how important it is to watch what you speak and how heavily our language relies upon established context. Context Sensitivity is the reason we don't have too many computers that can talk back to us. If you, like me, have spent a year or more writing a compiler, you'd readily agree that human conversations are true evolutionary marvels! Of course, when we don't watch our mouths, even we, make mistakes....

************ Mangoes and Girls ************

Early 2009, I went in a inter-team outing to the mountain winery at Saratoga for wine tasting. It's amazing how perfectly acceptable it is, in modern professional culture, to drink (read binge) in front of your managers. I don't drink, so hopped in a conversation with a group of desi folks with a can of coke. The discussion went on for a while on Alphonso mangoes. How they are small, yet very tasty and how many people own their own orchards. I felt there was this one new guy who was getting distracted (read high). Now the group had many older folks who had children and the conversation drifted to teenage daughters and how hard it is to discipline young girls etc. Perhaps this guy just wanted to impress his managers or he was just plain drunk, but he had clearly lost context. At a pause he decided to break the silence... still with the context of Alphonso mangoes, he boldly went to give his take on teenage girls, "Ya... but I like to taste them when they are young and not very ripe"

************ Donuts ;) ************

Sometime mid 2009 was our product release date. Typically on such occasions the director of one of our teams, a fair healthy looking lady, would buy sweets and send out emails to invite people to her office (on the thirteenth floor). This release date however, it was a manager from a different team who decided to place donuts in her office (on a different floor) and send out the email. Now I am in a team which knows both managers. Soon after the email was sent, I was talking with the fair director lady (the one who did not know about the free donuts yet) in her office on the thirteenth floor. A happy guy walked into our conversation. The director lady paused and looked askance at him. In the most sweetest of voices and with utmost humility and gentleness, but to the wrong lady, he requested, "Ma'am, may I help myself to one of your donuts please?" !!

************ Mental Snowboarder ************

For Christmas 2009, I went with friends to the Kirkwood Ski resort at South Lake Tahoe. Having skied before I decided to learn snowboarding. People say skiing is easy to learn but hard to master and snowboarding is hard to learn but easy to master. They are right! What they might not tell you is that it is an impartial sport -- every part of your body hurts as you fall, roll over, crash, and it's not just your butt or knee, as you might imagine. For the first few hours, to me, the snowboard was like a magic carpet. Not having mastered turning yet, I would shout out verbal commands hoping it would make my "carpet" move in the right direction, "LEFT LEFT, ok RIGHT ok RIGHT". Fellow skiers and snowboarders would mostly just ignore me with nothing more than sympathetic glances at my deranged state.

But on one such run, one little expert-snowboarder kid kept staring down at me as I went on my mostly useless verbal command spree. I wished he would go away but he kept staring at me. I wanted to say "Shoo!" but before I could, he suddenly shouted, "You are coming loose". Thinking it was rather rude of him to make fun of my pitiable mental state, I found myself sarcastically snapping back, "YA, I KNOW, BIG THANKS!" It was only after my next fall, did I realize that the poor kid was merely pointing out that my back leg's snowboard strap had, indeed, come loose!

**********************
(Lesson to self - Be context sensitive or risk being insensitive)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Kids n Kalahari - A Wonderful Thanksgiving

This thanksgiving holidays, I flew to Chicago to meet nearly all my relatives residing in the US. Four families with seven kids in total were to spend thanksgiving at Kalahari water resort at Wisconsin Dells. It had been a while since I had been near both theme parks as well as little cute kids. So it was easy to predict correctly that it would be one of my best thanksgiving vacations till date.

****** Confusion at Kalahari ;-) ********

Kalahari is one of the world's largest indoor water parks and makes for an excellent family destination during winter. Complete with an indoor surfing setup, it has several awesome "rides" which are pretty much water slides that splash into a pool. The best of them was this one called the Tasmanian Twister... Meant for only "experienced swimmers", this fast water slide ends with a free fall into a 9-foot-deep pool out of which one has to swim out deftly before the next rider can enter the tunnel from top.

Since sometimes inexperienced swimmers end up trying this ride and nearly drowning, there was a lifeguard stationed at the free fall deep pool. Now I am relatively good at swimming underwater and had tried this ride twice. So for kicks, the third time, I thought I'd free fall head-first and upside down instead of leg-first and upright into the pool at the end. Unfortunately, as I dived below head first into 8 feet deep water, the lifeguard stationed on top thought that I was one of those inexperienced swimmers and jumped in to rescue me! He flung his lifeguard rescue pad which hit me hard on the head. Not knowing what was going on, I assumed that the next rider had entered the tunnel too soon! So while I was trying to swim deeper and away from this guy, I did not understand why he was trying hard to catch me!! A nice game of hide and seek went on underwater for some time before the exhausted lifeguard finally caught and pulled a confused/angry me out of the water :-)

******* Learning with Kids *******

I totally love kids. Surrounded by not one or two but nearly seven really cute adorable children, I could not have asked for more. At the waterpark, I would happily volunteer to watch over the kids while their parents would go for rides. Of course they would cast their suspicious eye on me first wondering if I was some kind of a nut case. Kids say the darnest things. My 2 year old cute cousin went to sleep in the van on our way back and woke up in the van after nightfall. She looked up at the night sky and informed her mom, "Amma! Look someone turned on the Moon!"

Of course I learned a few lessons after being with them for five days...

Lesson 5: Don't try to play proper piano in front of 2 year olds, they will often jump in and add their own sound track.

Lesson 4: If you want to role play star wars light saber with 4 and 7 year olds, it's a good idea to be one of the good characters. Playing Darth Vader simply means they are all going to gang up and hit you.

Lesson 3: If a one year old lady likes to grab your nose, picking it up and trying to teach it other parts of the face might just be futile. She is going to keep pinching your nose no matter which part of the face you mention.

Lesson 2: "TIME-OUT" is a disciplinary mechanism for kids 7 year old and lower only. If you are over 20, you do not have to sit on the floor with them and count till 30.

Lesson 1: If a little one says either "Poo Poo" or "Pee Pee" don't bother trying to clarify which. Better to just take it there asap. Otherwise chances are the kid would have already completed the job in-place.

Of Gujjus, Dandia and Sanedo

I, like many many Mumbai brought-ups, have known gujjus for as long as I can remember. A lot of important people in my life have been or are gujjus - my project partners from my undergraduate era, my cool dude roomies from cmu days and some of my best friends here in the bay area. Now, although I am very familiar with several Gujarati traditions, customs and can even understand parts of their tongue, back in India, I had never really been able to pass off as one of them. I can recollect how some new folks I would meet during my college days would automatically shift to speaking Hindi or English, from Gujarati, when they would talk to me in the group. Something about my tam-bram-ness I guess was involuntarily forthcoming. I thought this could never change... until I went to attend bay area's biggest dandia event - SEF Dandia 2009 at the Santa Clara Convention center.... Well, almost!

Dressed in a red kurta-pyjama and armed with two bamboo sticks, I stepped, prepared, into the super huge Convention center hall. Throbbing and pulsating with live music, there was an ocean of multi-colored Ghaghra Cholees, kurtas, salwars and sherwanis. Following a durga puja, was a series of garba and dandia numbers. Garba being the harder of the two, joining a garba dancing group takes a little getting used to. It is a rhythmic sequence of steps and rapid turns that I had taken some time to get familiar with last year. So this year was much simpler. I was in-sync with doing garba with a bunch of true blood gujjus. Here's the fun part ... whether it was my ability to move with them easily, or perhaps because I appeared prepared with dandia sticks, I could not tell, but the gujju dude next to me assumed that I spoke Gujarati and started giving me instructions in Gujarati. I followed what I could understand, and by his response I think I might have guessed the meanings right! Finally, after long years, I felt happy -- I had managed to pass off as a gujju!! :-P The feeling was exhilarating!

Alas, everything was good, until Sanedo started! It's an interesting "game", where the song is divided into 4 poetic lines, now for the first three, following gujju instructions from the singers, the whole ocean of dancers all across the floor sit down low on the floor and beat their sticks to the ground making one hell of a racket. Then on the last instruction, they jump high up into the air throwing their arms about, yelling, "SANEDO SANEDO" and dancing furiously, until the singer instructs everyone to sit down again!! We could barely understand what the singers were saying, so just followed the crowd and jumped up after they jumped up. This repeated a number of times.

Still pretending to be a gujju, I asked the dude next to me if he understood the commands, in the best Gujarati I knew. He responded saying its too noisy to hear. But there was too much excitement in my head created by my feigned gujjuness. For some who-knows-what reason, I ended up thinking that I could decipher the singer's instructions on my own in the next round of jumping and dancing. I wanted to be the leader and not a follower! Alas, I so wish I were lucky. Instead of jumping at the 4th instruction, I started off at the third! While the whole hall of dancers were low on the floor, only I was high up in the air, yelling "SANEDO SANEDO" like a crazy maniac. Time slowed down as I felt a thousand eyes turn toward me, several with sympathetic glances, others with sinister HA-HA smiles. All cover was blown. A cocktail of embarrassing emotional currents coursed through my spine. I held time with frozen breath until the singer's last instruction brought up everyone else into the air with the same din I had started off with earlier. Phew!

The cool thing about dandia is mistakes are easily forgotten and forgiven. Back to being myself, I was glad, my fellow dancers feigned, if not truly felt, short term memory loss and continued to dance with me! Sanedo after-all means sneh or love.

Happy Navarathri

Labor Day Weekend at Catalina Islands

What started out as a pointless hey-what-are-you-doing-for-long-weekend type phone call on the Friday night, became a let's-leave-right-away plan in less than an hour. Shoving down chapatis, dosas, we hurriedly packed and left house Friday night itself to the car rentals at San Jose airport. Our insta-mix plan was to spend 2 days and a night at the beautiful Catalina Islands!

Pulikachal (Tamarind rice) in a convertible at LA

Fortune favors the brave. Four mavericks reached the car rentals at 2.30am Friday night only to discover that Hertz had run out of regular economy cars to rent and ended up giving us a free upgrade - a Ford Mustang Convertible! YEAH!

We drove to LA all through the night, taking turns. By morning, it was show off time -- with the top down and AR Rahman tamil songs in full volume, we scoured the streets of Beverly hills, as if we were kewl dudes who have been doing this since ages. Perhaps the only contrast came when it was breakfast time. My friend's wife who was with us, had made delicious pulikachal rice or spicy tamarind sauce rice. Now the very scene of us, four desis, eating pulikachal in paper plates from a ford mustang convertible, with its top down in downtown LA, amidst curious onlookers, is something I am not going to forget very easily.

The Enchanting Catalina

It is truly a pity of the human condition that although we have two eyes, we can only see one "item" at a time. At Catalina, this condition sorely gets exacerbated. Even a simple walk to our cottage became a problem of economic choice. Let's put it this way - when looking at a scene with a rose, the moon and some pigeons, the wise thing to do is to look first at the pigeons, since they might fly away, then at the moon, since clouds could block it and later at the rose, since it probably isn't going anywhere. If one looks the beautiful rose first, one could miss out on the pigeons!

However, our hearts went out to all those poor island inhabitants -- while we all had good clothes to wear, several members were dressed in nothing more than the very bare essentials. If Kofi Annan had walked there, I suspect, he might have had UN air-drop clothing relief packets to these poor island dwellers.

Snorkelling and Scuba diving

Snorkeling is probably one of the most fun things to do on the island. The water was just warm enough and the fish, colourful and plenty. Many thanks to our hotel manager who gave us this idea of carrying bread with us. One handful of bread crumbs into the water and the whole marine ecosystem came alive in an eye-candy feeding frenzy!
It takes a little getting used to breathing through the mouth via a pipe, but once comfortable it is just pure fun!

After spending the morning snorkeling, we headed out to the main highlight of the visit - SCUBA DIVING! Two divers are accompanied by a scuba diving instructor. We being four in number, made perfect pairs for the dives. My instructor Frank, was a very experienced professional. He helped us with our air tanks, the breathing regulator, the wet suits etc. He also gave us instructions on equalizing pressure in our ears as we descend and the most important under water hand signals.

"I am OK, why do you ask?"

The signal shown to the left means "I am OK" and Frank told us to show this when everything was good and we could descend further. Now, since we were first timers, Frank started out by holding each of our hands and guiding us lower and lower. Me and my roomie started out ok, but soon my roomie started experiencing some discomfort in his ears and decided to go back up before coming back down. I, on the other hand, had already reached down. Frank was with me for some time, but suddenly shot back up, asking me to wait. So I spent my time trying to touch some beautiful bright orange fish. After a while, I saw the familiar green oxygen tank and so quickly swam up and grasped his hand. To my surprise, he turned and made a hand motion as if to ask "What". Wondering what Frank meant, I responded with a "I am OK" signal... A few confused moments passed between us. It was only after I saw his underwater video camera did I realize that this guy wasn't Frank!! The poor cameraman's look was as puzzled a look as a scuba diver can possibly make :-)

After nearly an hour of under water fun, it was time to head back. A beautiful 1 hour boat cruise brought us back to the mainlands. What started out as an unplanned outing, became one of my most memorable trips till date!

Modak Conquest - A humble tribute

As a Mumbaikar for most part of my life, I have seen several pompous celebrations of Ganesh Chaturthi. Many people choose to keep idols in their homes/colonies and drown them later in the sea, some travel far to visit temples without footwear and a few others break coconuts loudly near other people's feet :-) As a silicon valley engineer far from home, I thought that any tribute to the elephant god, should be both refined as well as humble ...

In Hindu mythology, lord Ganesha is called by several names. Two such names are Modakapriya (lover of sweet rice dumplings) and Sarvasiddhanta (Bestower of Skills). Putting these two together, I felt I had found the best way to offer my tribute - to hopefully learn the coveted skill of preparing kozhakattais or modaks and feed my roomies, after presenting one before the god's idol of course (the former are generally hungry and hunger knows no taste, the latter is known for tolerant silence). But, this is not an easy matter for a guy at all! The art and skill of preparing these rice dumplings is known to reside only deep within the bastions of the culinary secrets of select Indian women. Few men are even known to dare attempt this undertaking, let alone achieve success at them.

My first attempt lasted about an hour and a half (inclusive of cleaning vessels and preparations). The results lay here in pictorial form...

I will spare the gory details of the effort but jot down a few quick random lessons to self...

Lesson 1 - Do not be ashamed to ask: Sometimes this first step that seems so easy might be really hard. As long as you have your reasons, there ought to be nothing to be ashamed of in asking women for help. Many many thanks to my ever helpful Maharashtrian friend at Rayleigh for giving me guidance and sound advice regarding this matter.

Lesson 2 - Even old dogs can learn new tricks: The human brain is known to be an adaptive organ. It may have its imperfections that may seem to manifest more stubbornly with age, but with sustained interest, it can be taught just about anything. No worries if the few modaks don't come out well, chances are the next one will look better than the current unrecognizable blob.

Lesson 3 - Watch out for surface ruptures: Modaks contain a sweet stuffing in the core, which may boil in the cooker. If the covering isn't prepared adequately, the latent steam may choose to find the weakest point in the surface and tear apart the covering. The resultant mass may still possess taste, but may make the hands oily before touching the camera ;-)

Lesson 4 - Take pictures even at intermediate stages: This allows for shameless boasting even if the end product were to be a disaster.

Results...
My first attempt had 8 modaks (since 8 bits make up a byte)
1 resides before god as I type this... 7 have been consumed with content smiles!

Ganpathi Bappa Morya

The Swapped Towel

Few days back, at the gym in my work-place,
I went to take a shower after a workout phase
I had hung my towel outside, on a hook,
but later when I came out to look,
I realized a guy from the next shower room,
had gone with my towel leaving his to loom!!

Only two grim choices I could see on inspection -
Either drape his towel around my mid-section,
risking the possibility of some weird infection
Or nude-walk to the towel rack, risking detection!

I made up my mind and chose the latter,
but this was hardly an easy matter,
as the towel rack was nearly a hundred feet away!
So like a secret spy on a trail of a prey,
I tip-toed to the nearest corner after much delay,
waited to ensure the coast was clear my way,
took a deep breath hoping my fears would allay,
And made a Big Bold Dash with Everything on display!

Time seemed to slow down and the towel rack afar
my birthday dress was dripping wet, it was bizarre!

But finally after what seemed like eternity,
I had made it, no sneak peaks to the fraternity
The soft towel covered critical real estate
phew, I was relieved ... never felt so great!

But just as I thought none had seen me zoom,
a gentle voice went, "It's ok man, you're in the Men's room"
!

Lessons from Surfing

Everybody has a at least a little craving for "new experiences". I am not really an always-hungry-for-adrenaline type at all, but when my cool ex-roomie asked me if I'd like to join him surfing today, I just couldn't say no. After my first nearly three hours in a wetsuit with the surfboard and waves, I suspected I have reflected enough upon life itself that I'd be writing this blog. My top 10 lessons in decreasing order of relevance are...

Lesson #10: To begin surfing (in bay area at least), you need both a wet suit as well as a surfboard else the water may be too cold. In life too, if the surfboard is like food, clothing and shelter(basics for survival), the wet-suit may be like a stable job and decent income - without which life may be too harsh for fun. Family and close friends are like that rope from the surf board that is tied to your right leg (reason may get clearer later).

Lesson #9: Surfing isn't just about riding the wave, although that is the part people see and notice easily. There is lot more to it... for starters you need to paddle against the current and waves for at least sometime to be able to catch a good wave to ride on. If riding the wave is like success in life, the paddling against the current and smaller waves would be like the effort needed to get to it. The paddling or the overcoming of smaller waves, are harder to notice but extremely important and often the reason for the result.

Lesson #8: Identifying and catching a good wave is an important part.. It need not be the perfect wave, for there may be no such thing, but a good wave that you can at ride on till you get as close to the shore as possible. In life, this is like waiting for a partner or a business opportunity or a good time to do something big. There may never be a perfect choice, just good and bad ones. It does not matter if you have picked the perfect one, it's just nice if you can pick a good one.

Lesson #7: Bigger waves start deeper. To get to them you need to paddle harder against smaller waves. Sometimes while doing this, you might fall off your surfboard. That's ok. Just need to get back on it when the big wave seems to be coming. In life, it's ok if you have setbacks while in your efforts, what matters is you still catch a wave.

Lesson #6: Once you have caught a wave, the job isn't done, it actually gets interesting. Surfing the wave without toppling over is just as important. You need to balance! Some manage to stand up straight and do noticeable things, others just manage to get half up without falling. In life this is like marriage or commitment to a post or business. In your pursuit to do stunts make sure you are still on the surfboard. If you don't balance well, you might fall badly. That's probably why your leg should be tethered to the surfboard just in case (decipher yourself).

[Ok were those too deep? Better not attach double meaning to these notes to self..]

Lesson #5: Don't surf on an empty stomach.

Lesson #4: While carrying the surfboard to the water, either look at the ground for sharp stones or wear surfing footwear. Better to not get distracted at this stage.

Lesson #3: After battling the waves, if you are terribly exhausted, please look before falling like a dead log on wet sand... you could be squishing a dead jellyfish or yucky sea weed!

Lesson #2: If you are not wearing spectacles do not try to squint at not-too-far-away but possibly good-to-view beach members, no matter how interesting their er... "attire" might be.

Lesson #1: While lying on the sand out of of exhaustion, do not talk to who you think is listening, esp if you eyes are closed. Dogs do not respond well to foreign languages.