Search results! frustrating

Have you every been frustrated with the search results that you get using google or any other search engine? If my guess is right, it would have been more often than not. I should rather ask have you ever been satisfied with the search results? The answer would be a big NO in most cases. The answer is even more obvious if the content is India centric. More often than not, information is simply  not available in the public domain in the electronic form. I had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Vajpayee's speech writer once, and I described him my peeve that corporate communication is a much neglected and underestimated area in Indian context. He pleaded that that was not true. I still stick to my argument even though I was pleasantly surprised by the websites of Thermax and Triveni Engineering recently. Coming back to the search frustration, I wonder if it is because of the choice of words that I typed into the search window that gave me trash. I do not know of the search language syntax if there is any to search effectively. For instance I am not very much familiar with the use of a (+) (||) in searches. Maybe there is a lot to them than I know off. Maybe I am search illiterate.  But then, isn't it google's problem that a dumb person like me cannot use the tool for what I intend to do? It is for this reason I believe that google should not rest on its laurels. A better search engine and google could be history. But not that google isn't trying. Solution to a long long identified need appears to be taking shape. Today I happened to see a new menu bar to the left of my google screen which I found could prove to be useful for context specific search. It has been a long held dream to have something like this as a user option. At last google seems to be working on it. I have similar gripe about gmail. An example is sorting of folders for instance based on names, which I am so familiar doing. Hopefully they will add it one day....

Mind your language!

My language skills are a bit muddled up and although I am quite good at all the 3 languages i.e. Hindi, English and Marathi, I am most comfortable while speaking in Hindi, writing in English and thinking in Marathi. If you are wondering what thinking in Marathi means, it is similar to the funny grammatical construction  you  get when people think in Marathi, "Mazya bapacha kai jatai?" and translate it into English while speaking as "What goes of my father"...

Album art, Apollo 13, Lagaan and banking for the poor

Came across this audiovisual commentary about a chap called Storm Thorgerson who designed many of Pink Floyd's album covers. I have been trying to develop some understanding of art for some time now and need to dig much deeper to figure out what the covers really mean.

In connection with Apollo 13 completing its 40th Anniversary, I happened to see a video of Jim Lovell, the real Tom Hanks.  A couple of his quotes really stand out for me. They exhibit the spirit of  much of human society's evolution as I would like to put it.  It can become a nice opening line for a speech somewhere."I think one of the things that (Apollo 13) showed the people of the world was that even if there is a great catastrophe, good leadership and teamwork, initiative and perseverance - these things make for getting an almost certain catastrophe into a successful recovery,". Smell classic American Hollywood movie fare anyone?  One can argue.. but I will leave it there. Jim Lovell  was most certainly a brave man. He goes on to say, "Our philosophy was: had we not been successful, we would have continued to broadcast our indications of what went wrong, what's happening - either until the last battery had died or the last bit of oxygen was gone." It is such brave commitment to charge forward without the fear of consequence that most of the times leads to progress. And speaking of the scrapping of Nasa's current plan to return to the Moon, Lovell delivers another classic line :"Mankind is meant to explore. There is a certain group of us that live on the edge to do that sort of thing. And I think over the years regardless of budgets up or budgets down I think people will find a way of eventually going to Mars, not in my lifetime probably, but we will set foot on Mars one of these days." India's cryogenic engine technology failed in its first attempt to launch a communications satellite into orbit a few days ago. The team at ISRO can take heart from such powerful words of Jim Lowel and his Apollo 13 team. Hopefully, India will be able to launch its own cryogenic engine next year. It will be a worthy tribute to the people who spent 18 years of their lives for one dream!

One more interesting video that I saw yesterday was the performance of a Miami school based on the popular song "chale chalo" by A.R. Rehman from the movie Lagaan. I think music is one among certain things like sports that can transcend cultural boundaries. The video on Miami school's attempt at the orchestral composition is a great example of that.The other good thing about the song is that can act like a motivational or an inspirational song like the "eye of the tiger" with the only exception that while 'eye of the tiger' is more individualistic in nature while 'chale chalo' is more of a group motivational song. (Ironically, I know I am back to the tiger debate.. quite intuitive isn't it...tiger=individualistic). I liked the treatment to the song  sung in the orchestra performance because orchestral performances also happen to be of interest to me off late. I am not sure if each school in US has a choir  where school kids learn music and participate in an orchestra, but I sure am an advocate of such a thing in Indian schools if it can be done. The song "Chale chalo" also led me to the discovery of a fantastic film on the making of Lagaan. I have been impressed with Lagaan ever since I saw it for the first time, however my appreciation of Aamir, Ashutosh and the film has gone up tremendously after watching the making of Lagaan.

Finally, to conclude, here is something about another interesting little video that I saw on banking for the poor by Andrew Hinton of pilgrimfilms.com. It is an amazing video about how a South Indian bank manager called J S Parthiban has transformed the lives of many poor villagers in Tamil Nadu. It was heartwarming to see the compassion of Mr. Partiban and it reminded me instantly of the TED video I had seen about Aravind Eye Hospital sometime ago. A line from that video by Dr. G. Venkataswamy the founder of Aravind Eye hospital will remain etched in my memory.

"When you grow in spiritual consciousness, we identify with all that is in the world so there is no exploitation. It is ourselves we are helping. It is ourselves we are healing." -Dr.G.Venkataswamy

For me these are very powerful lines and they have a strange appeal which I can't explain. They appear so simple yet so deep in meaning that I can only hope to understand  it completely some day. J S Partiban's voice was as compassionate as that of Dr. Venkat's and I wish him well. Interestingly the video ended with a special thanks to many people including Sarosh J Ghandy. Mr Ghandy taught us Ethical leadership in XLRI and I am not surprised to see his name in the video. Mr Ghandy also happens to be one of the nicest people I have seen in my life.

collage of the year gone by in XL

While I was experimenting with picasa to get the photos of my "new look" uploaded, I had an idea... Why not try a collage of some of the different images taken during the past year @ XL.... Here is the outcome of my first try!

Getting Personal: The new look

I have always valued personal space and I am uncomfortable with people getting too close to me unless I allow them to. I have always valued personal space immensely and I (believe ) have tired to respect others' personal space as well. People often misunderstand it as a certain "aloofness" or lack of empathy etc. But that is simply not the case in most cases. I have been an extremely independent person all my life and I believe in the human spirit of independence and self-reliance, something to do with having the world to oneself and weaving one's own life, painting one's own canvas. I think it draws its nutrition from the "id"  part of my human mind as described by Sigmund Freud, the wild side, the instinct, the gut-feel, the "hard wired" human nature. To that extent I can relate to the American way of life which values personal freedom , adventure and independence. My aloofness is borne out of this desire for valuing personal space. This particular point of view is not so well understood and respected in India and most parts of the world which are highly social in nature. I have been very unsocial if not anti-social throughout my adolescent years and early adulthood, so much so that I find it hard to be social in my prime adulthood now. Coming back to the point therefore, I very much get uncomfortable about people showing undue concern. As I have grown older and hopefully wiser, I see some merit, rather necessity in having a social life." Man is a social animal', I remember reading and hearing so many times. I do not know how much of it is really "hard-wired" and how much acquired. Innumerable hours in front of television watching national geographic channel and discovery has meant that I can't help but draw analogies that relate everything "human"  with everything "natural" or wild.  A tiger for instance is a lonely beast while a lion apparently a social feline. My implicit assumption is that wild-life is pure, it is natural and at some level below our social garb we are as wild and as natural as anyone else in the animal kingdom.  Therefore, I think I belong to the tiger-like species whereas the rest belong to the lion-like species. Both are equally good in their own right, both survive in the wild and both thrive in their own den. 

Well beyond the tiger-lion digression though is the original objective of writing this blog and that is the new look that I have had which has grabbed unwanted attention. Here is the sneak peek... 

Audio Spotlight : Listening is believing

A couple of years ago, on a 2000 mile long road-trip across 7 states in USA, I happened to visit the "American Country music Hall of fame" museum in Nashville, Tennessee. I am not a museum buff . So when someone suggested we visit the museum, I had my doubts. Besides, I had never listened to a lot of country music in my life and did not know any well known American country music star. After much thought, I said to myself , maybe its worth giving it a try, 'cause there wasn't much to do in Nashville that day anyway!

I am a very average guy when it comes to understanding and appreciating music and while I do enjoy music of all genres,languages and cultures, neither do I understand the subtle nuances in music nor do I spend much time in understanding it in such detail. When it comes to music I can only nod my head and tap my feet. So going to the museum was a strange experience for me. However there were two things that impressed me immensely about the museum. One was the lighting arrangement in the museum  and the other acoustics.  Different sections in the museum were carved intelligently and designed to help transition from one section to the next almost effortlessly. The lighting  arrangement in each of these sections was unique and helped develop the mood for the genre of music. I salute the curators of the museum who had put in great amount of effort and time to arrange the display in the museum.

It has been almost two and a half years since I paid a visit to the museum, and if you are wondering what on earth made me write this blog, it happens to be a case study that I came across as part of my course at XLRI. The case is about Audio spotlight, a technology that can create a musical spotlight: a small beam of sound that can be heard only by the person who is standing within the beam of  a sound-gun. Imagine standing up in the beam of light of a projector in a cinema theater. I recall the sheer amazement I and my friend Sudi had that day when we happened to listen to music from different country singers playing in the same section within a few feet of each other. We were not able to listen to the other song when we not below one of the speaker phones playing it. We were simply spellbound. Today, after two and a half years, the mystery has finally been solved! It was the genius of Dr. Joseph Pompei that led to this far reaching technology that enabled "American country hall of fame" museum to have so many different songs playing in a small area of a room without causing a cacophony and without disturbing others listening to another song in the same section. One could maintain the silence of a museum atmosphere and yet listen to the songs from different artists on display. Hats off! to Dr. Pompei for his marvelous innovation! Sometimes technology becomes invisible in our day to day lives.  Yet, along comes a day when a  certain technology makes you stand up and take notice. I haven't seen the movie "Avatar" but I am sure it had the same "wow" effect on the audience as the acoustic effect that  the "American country music hall of fame" had on me.

Another experience that will always stay in my mind is the record by  by Jimmie Rogers that I happened to listen to in one of the kiosks. Next to the record player was a bit of history about the song. It said "this is one of the earliest American country music songs to use 'Yodelling'". I keep wondering if the "yodeli yodeli yoho yedli yodli ho" of Kishore Kumar has something to do with the record that lay out there. Maybe he drew inspiration after listening to one such composition. Two years have gone by, but the acoustic experience in the hall of fame museum and the "Yodelling" melody remains as fresh as ever in my mind. The case on audio spotlight has revived some wonderful memories for me once again.

A year after visiting the Nashivlle Hall of Fame museum, I happened to visit another very well-known museum in Paris: "The Louvre".  I haven't seem many other museums but even after seeing the world famous "Mona Lisa" at Louvre, nothing comes close to the magic that "Country music hall of fame" was able to generate for me that day. What they have achieved to do in that limited space is nothing short of magic. It is one of the finest museums I have seen and I would recommend it to everyone, music lover or otherwise. I have never seen a better arrangement of lighting and acoustics in any one place ever. Listening is believing!