Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

I saw Rang De Basanti last evening and came away horrified. This is positively the most dangerous movie I’ve seen,^† because it is so wrong, and because it is so going to be a hit.

I’m saddened. Go see it yourself and tell me what you think.

† In recent times, at least.

Update: I may have overreacted.

Rang De Basanti: keeping the masses opiated.

For my first day at work, I hitched a ride with a colleague who lives half a kilometre from home. She has a car and a driver. We discussed my commuting with her daily. That day I got motion sickness and a queasiness that lasted most of the morning. Not sure what to make of it, I took the bike the next day, and there was no motion sickness. The day passed well. Did it have to do the nature of the vehicle? I confirmed it over the next week and a half:

Chauffeured car ⇒ Motion sickness.
Bike ⇒ Dirt on the face, but excellent mental faculties otherwise.

Why is a car problematic? Is it because given how uneven Bangalore’s roads are (when not potholed), a car’s breadth tends to magnify lateral unevenness and thereby toss passengers around, while bikes are affected only by potholes, which too are easily manoeuvred around? That seems plausible.

Anyway, that saw the end to my fanciful visions of being a high powered executive wielding a laptop in the back seat of a chauffeured car, firing off memos and crunching cash flow projections before even getting to work each morning. I’m going to ride a bike just like every other code coolie in this city.

Which is not very optimal. The ride from Bannerghatta Road to Rajajinagar is about 20km in each direction, taking the Outer Ring road to Mysore road, and then on up West of Chord road. That’s the route with the widest roads and the fewest traffic lights. The best time is 40 minutes. In rush hour, it’s up to 90 minutes. Losing between two and three hours a day to a stressing commute doesn’t seem like a great way to achieve a healthy work-life balance.

I like to believe that my day is comprised of three types of activities: production, consumption and administration. Production is making things. Getting things done. That which results in a sense of accomplishment. That which causes your boss to give you a pay hike. That amorphous factor labelled ‘Productivity.’

Consumption is learning. Fuel for growth. Consumption comes with a sweet sense of understanding, of enlightenment. Consumption is habit forming. It’s addictive. But consumption, though good, is rarely higher priority than production.

Administration is everything else. Brushing your teeth, sitting in traffic, paying utility bills. That stuff that bogs you down. That which you’ll never look back on and recall as a highlight of your life. Some administration is good for you (brushing teeth). The rest (paying bills, etc) is best outsourced to someone who sees it a productive act.

Which brings us back to traffic. My attempt at outsourcing the ride isn’t panning out, so I have to find other means to convert a period of administration (getting to work) into one of production or consumption. On a bike, I can’t make secondary use of my hands or eyes, but I can use my ears.

Sony’s very affordable MDR-EX51 in-ear headphones do a great job of cutting out noise from traffic. Together with an iPod’s worth of quality podcasts and audiobooks and off-peak travelling times, I barely feel the commute. Maybe I’ll invest in an Audible subscription.

Or maybe I’ll take sriniram’s suggestion to relocate. It’ll let me step up from consumption to production. He just moved and now walks across the road to work.

At the registrar’s office in Koramangala. This is where you go if you want to register a company, trust or other legal entity. The waiting area has only four seats. A notice on the wall asks that you contact the Lok Ayukta if anyone harasses you or causes “undue delay”. The number of 100 rupee notes floating around freely on a busy day is not funny.

This Listerene mouthwash ad in Bangkok is using Space Invaders imagery.

Also in Bangkok, in the underground Metro, a projector in the tunnel flashes advertising on the glass as you wait for your train. It doesn’t work well since glass is not a good projection medium. Must be an experimental setup.

A food court in Bangkok issues these cards to everyone as they come in. Present the card instead of cash when ordering from any counter(s), and pay all at once when leaving. The cards use RFID. What a sneaky idea! In exchange for minor convenience to customers, they get to track what food is popular and what combinations are ordered. If you pay with a card on exit, they even get to track your food habits.

This notice in Singapore’s trains is the most egalitarian I’ve seen yet. No reservation for women (India), no harping about how respectful we are for giving up the seat to the needy (Malaysia), just a simple request.

Apparently the name is pronounced “Chump”.

And now for something completely different: I have a job! A regular 9 to 5 affair, five days a week. Today is my first day and sriniram is my new boss. I will not be travelling all the time. I’ll spend my days in a cubicle, plodding away at a keyboard. Basically, I signed up for this:


Scott Adams is a genius. There is a third panel in the series that is, umm… well… disturbingly close to what happened the last time I was an employee anywhere, in 2000. It’s been years. I’m not sure how long I can take this, but figured it’s worth a try. :-)

“Oh! Wow! He’s that important?” Then I noticed the logo in the corner.

This is study material for the course I’m taking at CSCS. About three inches.

This fellow, too, has decided I’m his best friend this morning. It’s good to be in action again.

I went to Futura on KR Road, where they printed me an A3 sheet full of stickers. Eighteen copies. Anyone who wants one, ask me IRL. First come, first serve.

My laptop will be three years old two weeks hence. When it goes to its grave, I want it to go bearing signs of a full life. There is much acreage inchage left to be covered. The sloppy positioning is intentional, though I wish the Helvetica sticker were somewhat more artistically sloppy.

Because LiveJournal doesn’t allow fancy mouseovers and stuff, click for the picture’s home at Flickr where there be notes.

PS: No, I will not disgrace my desk with something as fuddly duddly 2.0-named as “MacBook Pro”. This isn’t even April 1. Apple should know better than to make such cruel jokes.

Being somewhat disturbed by the amount of time I spend daily catching up with my news feeds, I have unsubscribed from boingboing_net. It was my favourite tech culture blog, but it was also feed of the greatest volume.

Hopefully this means lesser time staring at a screen.

People get busier. Fields of interest widen, attentions lower. And then people whine the environment (in multiple senses of the term) isn’t as good as it used to be in the old days. Well designed environments ought to make for lesser stickiness from users, not more. The user’s visits are going to get briefer and briefer, but they’ll continue to expect a sense of completing the visit each time.

I want to print this strip and paste it to my laptop. Someone’s kindly provided a high-res scan. What sort of paper and glue should I use if it has to be durable? Will regular photocopy paper survive the stress of backpack life?

I went to the railway station yesterday. The tracks were full of shit, literally. It should be no surprise if Bangalore’s next epidemic comes tumbling out of a train.¹ Former Chief Minister S M Krishna professed his intention of making Bangalore like Singapore.² Perhaps he should have started with the railway station.

The more I see of the world, the lesser I regard political rhetoric and local pride.

1. The train in Malaysia also had hole-in-the-floor toilets, with one significant difference: a bottom cap that refused to flush at stations.
2. Why is it that governing decisions in Bangalore are always made by the head of the state, instead of the head of the city, the mayor? Do you even know who Bangalore’s mayor is?