India – Australia on an ugly spat. Time for media to cool down

 

After the recent burning of an Indian student in Australia (following 2 murders last week), India is really angry with Australia. To make matters worse, Victoria police has not progressed much in these three cases. They entirely deny racist motive. What irks India is that after 100+ attacks on Indian students, Australian authorities have still not tightened up the screws.

While we may find issue with efficiency of Australian police, it is outrageous to term them as racist. Even though the cartoonist of the Delhi paper – who drew Aussie cops as the racist Ku Klux Klan members – says the exaggeration is to provoke them into a positive action, such things can really be offensive in the West. It is like those ill fated Danish cartoons. You don’t want to provoke an entire society just for the action of a few individual criminals.

Hopefully, India-Australia relationships turn to normal soon. Let that not get derailed by a couple of criminals.

Cricket Dream teams

My favorite teams in Cricket. Methodology – for each position the best player in terms of runs & average, and overall team balance

All time ODI XI

 

Sachin Tendulkar

Desmond Haynes

Viv Richards

Brian Lara

Gilchrist (wk)

Michael Bevan

Imran Khan ©

Wasim Akram

Allan Donald

Joel Garner

Muralidharan

Shane Warne (12th man)

Jayasurya had to omitted as opener because Haynes & Sachin are better batsman than him, Ponting is not here as Richards & Lara are better middle order batsman, Beavan is the most consistent at 6, Imran & Wasim are the all rounders. On pacy tracks, Garner, Donald, Wasim and Imran can decimate any order. On spinning tracks Warne in place of Donald could be lethal supporting Murali. Batting extends till No. 8.

All time Test best XI

 

Gavaskar

Sehwag

Don Bradman ©

Sachin Tendulkar

Viv Richards

Richard Hadlee

Gilchrist (wk)

Dennis Lillee

Shane Warne

Malcolm Marshall

Muralidharan

Wasim Akram (12th man)

Since No.3 is where most of best players play - Ponting, Dravid, Sobers, Hammond had to be unfortunately excluded in favor of the Don. Sehwag’s inclusion here will be controversial, but he is the only opener in the history with two triple centuries and overall batted with much better average & strike rate than Hayden & other openers.

Sachin – the greatest (by impacting 4 decades)

Sachin had made a mark in 80s, by being one of the youngest cricketer and playing the Pakistan series with a lot of spirit & courage. He is unarguably the greatest batsman of 90s, and among the  top 3 in 2000s, and will probably be a great batsman in 10s & probably retire by 2013. How many sportsmen (cricketer or otherwise) can impact their sport for 4 decades? His records will be hard to beat for a long time to come (unless ridiculously made batting pitches become the norm).

Year of dreams

This year was not a dream year. But, it surely was a year of small dreams. Not coincidentally, I read "The Alchemist" atthe end of last year and probably that made a difference. I just pursued all the little dreams and happy that I did them. In no particular order:

1. I finised watching almost all movies listed in all of AFI's 100 year series (600 of them)

2. I biked the STP (200 mile Seattle to Portland on bicycle). It was a 3.5 year dream and afer two ligament surgeries, finally completed them this year.

3. I toured all the major national parks & monumnts in the US - Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Rockies, Yosemite, Arches, Wind Caves, Lassen, Mt. Rushmore, Death Valley... (20 of them)

4. I touched the Arcic ocean and drove the entire length of Alaska on a RV - for the first time

5. I rafted a frigid rapids near Glacier NP, slashedup the Class4 rapids at Yellowstone, enjoyed a day long raft in the warm Colordo and rated the Class 5 Husum waterfalls.

6. I flew in a small airplane landing on a Glacier near Mt. Mckinley and flew in a Helicopeter over Glacier NP - both firsts for me.

7. I drove 6000miles on a single trip alone for 2 weeks. I had half dozen other random drives

8. I moved back to India after 5.5 years.

9. I started my own company.

10. I learnt Scuba diving. Though I didnt get the certification, I had enough of experience une water.

11. Hiked Granite mountain and a dozen other peaks.

Now, time to achieve the bigger dreams and as we step into a new decade want to follow the path of the Alchemist and go where the heart takes me. A crucial decade in which I want to redefine my life.

New year resolution: Blog reguarly in Agni and EconJournal. :-)

SPS Rathore: Molestation, abuse of power, abetting suicide - but no justice done

A 14 year old budding Tennis player was molested by the chief of a Tennis association. Then he started harassing the family when they filed a complaint, leading to 11 fabricated cases against her brother and other cases against the family. Finally the harassed girl committed suicide. In a civilized society this guy should have been sent to the gallows or electric chair. But, not in India. This monster with his political connections became the chief of police and had more ammunition to harass the innocent.

19 years later court finally ruled on the case. The punishment: 6 month imprisonment. You must be kidding, Mr. Justice.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/Om-Prakash-Chautala-shielded-Rathore-Ruchikas-father/articleshow/5376426.cms

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/19-years-later-ruchika-girhotras-tennis-partner-returns-for-judgment-day/556732/3

A day in Indian life

On most days these days, I visit the neighborhood temple in the morning, clad in tradional Indian wear. On one of my recent visits to the temple, an elderly gentlemen accosted me:

Stranger: What is you name?
Me: Balaji Viswanathan(huh, who is this guy?)
S: What is your father doing?
Me: Viswanathan.... (What does he want?)
S: Are you married?
Me: No, not yet (!$!$!$ Indians are famous for blunt questions)
S: What is your age?
Me: 26
S: Where do you work?
Me: I worked for Microsoft, and now building my startup (at this point, I wanted to really cut the conversation and continue with my business)
S: I worked as a senior manager @ Air India. I have a 24 year old daughter. She works as a senior software engineer in XXXX company. I'm looking for a well-educated son-in-law.
Me: ? (Well educated? You have come to the wrong place, buddy)... I'm not thinking about marriage now. I need to get my company stabilized before taking additional commitments.
S: That's ok. I have enough wealth. It's ok for you do your business.
Me: ?(If you have enough money be my VC and not my father-in-law :))
S: She is quite a beautiful girl and smart girl, but I have to ask her before finalizing this agreement.
Me: (Wait a minute.. who agreed to what here?) Sir, I said I'm not interested in marriage at present...
S: It's ok. I will talk to your father and convince him. You don't worry.
Me: ($#!$%#)
S: What's ur zodiac sign?
(Indians are pretty strong believers in astrology)
Me: Taurus (will you really allow me to get away)
S: (After making a minute of mind calculation) Oh, I'm sorry. This alliance will nt work, as her zodiac sign will not match with urs.
Me: (With a heavy sigh of relief) That's not a problem. I really need to get going. Nice meeting you.

Started a new blog for my startup

Just trying to chronicle my startup progress:
http://balaji-startupdiary.blogspot.com

Flunked my Scuba certification

I practiced for weeks underwater, but when it is time for certification everything seemed to go wrong. It was a nice day with sun coming out, but I got late getting to the site and got too much tension on the way. We started in our wetsuits and got down into the alki beach overlooking the ships entering the Seattle harbor.

I had a wet suit with tight hood and gloves to tackle the cold waters (10 C), masks with snorkel, weights to help me sink easily, BCD (a suit that is connected to air suply) to help me move up and down in the water, boots, fins to swim easily, cylinder with 2 regulators to breathe, gauges to monitor depth, direction, air pressure etc... Scuba is a sport with too many gears all strapped into your body :(.

The first few minutes seemed to go ok and I swam underwater about 100 some feet, when the dirty waters of Alki seemed spooked me. The salt water was bitter, visibility was not good with all those silt and I got extreme claustrophobic. The extra weights (I strapped some 40 pounds into various parts of my body to help me sink well) were awkward and it was tipping me onto one side all the time. I don't know what got into me, but the panic I felt was sudden. And I broke the cardinal rule of scuba diving - never panic. In that panic I lost all the rationility.

The regulator went out of my mouth and water salt started rushing into my mouth. I could not find the BCD regulator that will help me go from the bottom of the sea. Salt water filled my masks and I could harldly see a thing. In that panic, I took the emergency exit and zoomed thorough the top of the water and started gasping. And since I had all those extra weights to help me sink, I could not stay on top of the water and kept sinking repeatedly. The coast was just 100 feet away but water seemed to take away all my courage. Finally the scuba instructor pulled me out of the water.

Relaxing for a few minutes out of water, I wanted to go again., But, the one time panic was still acting on my brain and I could not act rationally underwater. The salt water was still producing all those nasty reactions in my mouth, but this time I calmly swam out of the water.

That confirmed my flunking the underwater diver certification. Maybe scuba is not for me. I donno. I still have this fear of open waters - having seen the brutal powers of water. Having once struck under a whitewaterstream and suffocating in a powerful rapid before entering a waterfall, maybe contributing to that effect.

I was so disappointed with myself and as usual I took up the 2 activities I enjoy. I went to the bookstore and spent some time reading and buying books, and then drove randomly. I went for 5 hours to go to beaches in Oregon, when the tiredness of the day started getting on me. I pulled up in a rest area and started sleeping in my car - usual stuff in my roadtrips. After 2 hours woke up, drove back, returned gear. I'm not ready to give up Scuba yet. But, I will hopefully get over claustrophobic...

Moving to India - part 5

Life is full of tradeoffs.

Top 10 things I will miss in India.
1. Driving my Mustang - it was my most prized possession and I thoroughly enjoyed driving. I could drive 1000 miles in a day in mountains and not feel tired. In India, I will have to use powerless car in hapless roads with nary a road discipline :(.
2. Splendid Seattle - I-90 is the road to the heavens and 101 is the boardwalk of utopia. I drove these roads dozens of times for 100s of miles with no end in purpose. Sometimes I ended all the way in Montana while planning for a 20 min drive. There is going be nothing like I-90.
3. Hiking - I throughly enjoyed the hikes of Mt. Baker - Snoqualmie forest. The peacefullness of Granite Mountain, crowds of Mt. Si, pleasantness of Rattlesnake mountain, beauty of Oyester dome and dozes of other places. In India I need to travel to the Himalayas (1500 miles away from my place) which I could drive in 20 mins from my place in Seattle.
4. My current home - It is a rental, but I got the home I wanted. Watching the sun rising over the entire breadth of Sammamish Lake, without even getting up from bed is something I will sorely miss. There won't be a lake like Sammamish.
5. Brilliant national parks - swimming in Olympic's crescent lake, biking the Tetons, hiking the Denali, driving through Arctic national refuce, sneaking for wildlife in Yellowstone, flying in Glacier park, riding a mule into the Grand Canyon, gawking at the Arches, rafting the colorado, trekking the Rocky Mountains, crawling into wind caves, camping in the red woods, walking the Yosemite - there is no place like America with accessible natural beauty.
6. Dollar - oh yeah dollar smells sweet even after its fall. One dollar is still worth 45 Indian rupees.
7. Efficient government services.
8. Civic facilities - clean water, cleaned up streets, no stray dogs etc.
9. Pretty energetic work environment
10. Most importantly the friends I made here.

Top 10 things I will gain in India.
1. Staying with my parents and family - there is nothing as sweet as a family.
2. Temples - I might be a rational, objective man. That doesn't preclude the fact that I'm a spiritual person.
3. Festivals - Oh yeah.
4. Food - I might like Thai and chains like Denny's and Subway, but there is no match for Indian food. And then Sugarcane in Jan, Mangoes and Jack fruit in summer and lychee's in winter.
5. Lower cost of living - Dollar buys more there. Even after the scorching inflation, India works to be a lot cheaper than living in the US. Particularly in the startup phase, I need to have as long a runway as possible.
6. No long winters. While winter is great if you are skier, but I stopped skiing after 2 seasons when I tore my ligaments. That means 6 months of year goes short of activities - in dark, damp, cooler Seattle winter. (But to compensate for no winter, Chennai gives you plenty of brutal summer).
7. No more restriction on activities. If you are a visa holder in any country (particularly in US), what you can or cannot do with your career is dictated by your visa. Now, I will be a free man.
8. I reactivate my old networks. For obvious reasons my network is a lot extensive in India and a lot of people in business that I know of.
9. Ability to access large, untapped markets. Indian businesses are sometimes run in stone age principles and there is a lot of room for improvement if I utilize my experience in US to make even smallest of changes.
10. Most importantly, I will be in India. My own little country. It can be poor, shabby, corrupt and diseased. But, it is a part of me and it is my dream to build the country I want, instead of just moving to some country that has already been built.

Moving to India - part 4

Now that it is clear (to me atleast) why I'm moving to business and why I'm moving to India, next comes what I'm going to do now. I have a few ideas, but I'm going to start from democratizing economics and finance. This crisis was a painful reminder of how little objective information is out there and getting used by common people. News sources offer pretty biased, subjective opinions on the eocnomy and financials, while common people need more of objective facts. The facts (in the form of government statistics and company earnings releases) are all public, but there are very little tools at the reach of common man to make sense out of them.

I'm really passionate about data and the tools to visualize the data. My goal is to have a central place where an objective (wo)man can access any major economic/financial data at the click of a mouse,visualize the major patterns that are occuring, and then make decision on investing, retirment planning and career moves based on it. This should act as a bulwark against the imbecile showmen and clowns in the media, who pretend to delieve advice on finance and investing.

Over the course of my work at Microsoft, I have made a lot of interesting friends and some of them will be a part in build this idea. My little venture is to start by the end of this year in Chennai, India and I will be joined by my partner and other people in the team early next year. It is too early to discuss the business plan and the product design in public, but this blog will publish it first when it is ready to go public.

Moving to India - part 3

Now that it has been decided that I am moving to business, the obvious question is where. I toyed around with building a business in US, Canada and Singapore, but finally settled for India. While India has always been a part of my dreams, there were two recent catalysts that helped me make the final decision that it is going to be India where I'm going to start my business from.

First is the movie Swades that still keeps troubling me after I first saw it 4 years ago. The Hindi movie is about an Indian-born NASA engineer who visits India to bring back his childhood nanny to US, whom he considers as his only relative. But in the process of convincing her to move from her native village, he undergoes transformation in his perspectives and finally quits being a rocket scientist to move to India.

My classmates and I used to argue whether the movie is practical, but that got me to thinking why it should not be practical. I thought one could be a rational engineer and a capitalist and make use of the wide market of rural India. As an Ayn Randist, I believed that building capitalistic temples - corporations, can do more to world's development than all the charities put together.

Second is when I visited India early this year, I saw this transformation in my village. (See post here) The village that could easily compete with the worst of subsaharan Africa in yesteryears, is not undergoing real transformation with capitalism and technology. The village school didn't have a building 5 years ago - but now classrooms have PCs and DVD players. The teachers talk about world issues, and villagers own pricey motorcycles, mobile phones and TVs (5 years ago there was not even a telephone connection to this place). But, while they had hardware, skilled labor was in short and the school had all their PCs shutoff since they didnt know how to operate it.

I think this is a beautiful platform from which India could be rebuilt. I'm not a social activist or some kind of social worker with elevated thoughts, but an ordinary engineer who thinks there is a symbiotic potential - I can develop India while at the same time developing myself. I know its human development index and economic indicators are among the poorest in the world - but the entrepreneur in me sees the opportunity rather than problems. I came to this position (however meek it might be) crossing through rural India, and it is time I made did something for it. I enjoyed studying America's history and now believe that the conditions in the late 19th century US that brought Ford, Rockefeller, Edison, JP Morgan and my other heroes, are pretty similiar to what India is having now. I dreamt of US for 2 decades, but I'm an Indian and it is time to apply what I have learnt to India.