Nehru Planetarium cordially invites you to a Special Astronomy Lecture by Professor Srinivas Kulkarni, McArthur Professor of Astronomy and Professor of Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. USA.The topic of the lecture is “Cosmic Explosions” The lecture will be held on Friday, 24 October 2008 at 5 p.m. at Nehru Centre’s Hall of culture, Worli, Mumbai 400018.
If you’re gonna be there, buzz me before hand so that we can meet outside.
There is an acute problem of autorickshaw shortage in the place where I stay. To try and understand why an autorickshaw does not ply to my colony, I did try talking to them but they have mostly been offensive or silence, about discussing the logic behind their plying. These are trade secrets, I guess.
Being a mode of public transport, they are expected to ply to any place that a passenger wants to go. This is not happening and the number of times this is not happening is increasing to alarming rates. As a result, although the place is swarming with autorickshaws, you have people standing on the edge of the road trying to hail one.
There were some media reports about how to send it to RTO and they will act on it, but I am darned if I can note the number of the autorickshaw in the middle of commotion of catching one. The worst affected are senior citizens and women with children, who are present in their swarming many in my colony.
There is no autorickshaw plying from my place to Chembur (W). This is because, as per their explanation, they can’t get back to Chembur (E) because of the high congestion on the bridge on the East bound traffic.
They aren’t even too rosy about plying to my area. The reason generally stated is that it is difficult to get a return fare.
I have been trying to rack my brain about how this problem could be solved and decided that more brains can work on this problem, more easily can they solve it.
One of the solutions is avoiding rickshaws altogether. Car pool, walk and cycle. But, that requires a community effort and kicking the rickshaw riding habit is pretty hard. In the meanwhile, I’m planning my walk to station. It’s good exercise and fun, if you have friends around you.
Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on October 4, 2008 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.
Want to celebrate world space week?
1. Learn about your country’s space agency.
2. Talk about it to as many people as possible.
3. Write, paint, click or record your experiences.
For example, if you’re from INDIA, go to Wikipedia or search on the web to learn more about India’s space agency – ISRO. Talk to people about the SITE experiment, Edusat or Chandrayaan. Celebrate space!
Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on October 1, 2008 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.
It’s been a long day. I was walking around in the market place when I saw the amazing innovation that this country could produce. Small motorized water boats that run around in a bowl of water, many pocketed transparent purses, innovative ways of arranging fruits and vegetables. And still, people believe that we are not progressing.
I talked to a Rajesh Dora who runs a school for blind children. He told me about how people come there, look at the boys and girls studying there with pity, talk to them about their suffering and they go away happy that they have done their part. I tell him that I can’t promise more than that, myself. For some reason he remains quiet. The Government supports the venture generously and he gets enough donations to run the school properly. I get his email address and offer him the link to my blog.
He makes a request asking if I could guide the kids around the space museum. I oblige. I spend about 3 hours there looking through the books that they used to feel and talking to them about what they want to be.
Blind children in Helix are supported by the Government since three hundred years. It’s one of the rear gifts of the Dora dynasty who had a vast wealth which they invested in social causes through a series of foundations and committees. Even our national space programme is funded partly by one such foundation.
The Foundation does great work to publish books on space science for students interested in becoming a part of the space organisation. There is even a plan that the Sohrab Foundation has proposed to send a blind man in a space mission. Last I knew they were talking about it with the Human Space Complex.
After this, I go into the outskirts of Sohrab on a municipal bus. They’re using a positioning system on board to trace their route and enabling passengers to recognise their stops. There is even a voice system on board to tell the stop in the local language and English.
After a twenty minute ride, I get to the Horsborg Centre for Development Studies. I am scheduled to meet young Anjali Dora. She’s Rajesh’s wife and is heading the centre here which also comes under the Dora Foundation. The books that I saw in Rajesh’s office are from here. The centre is unique in that it has undertaken the project of voicing over and making visuals of the several historic documents. I’m here to review how our long distance education module is working. We take a hot cup of coffee and some buiscuits in her office.
She’s the one who gave me the idea of this road trip. We met before through this blog and I offered her the chance of setting up a distance education institute on campus through the Centre I work in to enable her to transmit her videos to schools which require special courses without local expertise being available. She jumped at the idea and after our first meeting talked about a road trip she had taken along with Rajesh through all the Dora foundation centres. I’m not doing the same. Although, these two stops have been Dora Foundation centres.
I reviewed the progress of the module, sent emails back to office with several requests and got back on the road. As I upload this via satellite link, I’m travelling north to Louisville, my second stop.
(IMAGILOGUES – these are imaginary travelogues. People, places, mentioned are all imaginary. IF you happen to be from the same place or have the same name, let me assure that I didn’t mean to use it and that it was purely co-incidental.)
The postman dropped in my passport today. The timing is perfect, though I’d have preferred it a lot earlier.
well, better late than never.
Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on September 22, 2008 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.
As per the plan, I have reached Horsborg. This was where in the 23rd century BC, William of Horsborg had the dream of a united Helix.
I downloaded several historical references and have the benefit of opposing in views and theories of Horsborg. It is only while going to Horsborg and I am going this prejudiced for a town.
I gave a talk on various special kinds of propulsion engines at the local engineering college today. They also have seem to have inaugurated the Rocketry Club today. It’s lovely to see the enthusiasm for rocketry and space sciences in the country today. After advancing them on some points of law, I went to the Helix Archives. Helix Archives is really the home in which William’s grandfather lived. They moved out of this house in the year of William’s rise to Presidency.
William was an intelligent man. I loved some of the ideas that he tried to implement in his twenty three year old rule stint as President. He conquered nearly 106 kingdoms – showed each of these Kings that in unity there was strength and reinforced this belief with his rule. Helix functioned as an alliance more than as a republic.
My motel is an old fort that was converted in 1643 to a hotel to hold meetings etc. Technically, it was on the southern border of the Kingdom of Horsborg. Till 1640, it was used by military captains to practice their campaigns and train new troops. From 1704, it has been housing several statesman, scientists, engineers etc. To walk through the same corridor has been a cool experience.
Before drafting this post I just read that Helix has just launched Horsborg-7. All the best to Dr. Kumar and his team. This was also done in collaboration with Sohrab’s School of Engineering at which I and Dr. Kumar were classmates. Great going! This is the second education and space industry collaboration in the country. I hope to see more.
(imagiLOGUES are a bunch of imaginary travelogues that I am writing while traveling across my imaginary nation of Helix.)
Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on September 17, 2008 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.
Global meltdown, job cuts and dipping of interest in jobs seems to be the flavour of the season. Accordingly, I’m bunking college today due to sickness.
September 15 was engineer’s day. It is celebrated to mark the birthday of the great Statesman-Engineer from India, Sir M. Visvesvarayya among whose many achievements was the first hydroelectric project in Asia at Jog Falls.
On the occasion, we reactivated the Mechanical Engineering Students Association (MESA) in our college. As the first speaker, we got Dr. Parameshwaran (an erstwhile dean, Faculty of Technology, MU). He’s a great, old school speaker to have who gave his speech without many of the modern aids (no ppts, no computers or even paper in hand) that a speaker normally uses.
He talked to us about caring for our work – “Even if you are a sweeper at a railway level crossing, work so that your railway crossing is the cleanest in the world.” Visvesvarayya said that and he quoted it during his talk.
With so much stress paid on effectiveness and efficiency in jobs today, I think that we miss this subtle force – caring. I think, once a person cares about his work, effectiveness and efficiency usually follow.
Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on September 17, 2008 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.
A pass time that I cultivated long ago in the hope of expressing my skills in geography, civics and science is called imagiNATION. That’s short for imaginary nation. It also expresses that the nation is part of that person’s imagination. Two of my cousins and my brother also have their imagiNATIONs.
My brother took the name Elvenia because his birthday falls on the 11th of December and also because he’s fascinated by elves.
I stand by a name that came to me on a geometry box that my father brought for me. My imagiNATION is called Helix.
Helix (There was a MS Paint generated map here that is forever lost?)
These nations actually refine themselves as one matures. You can keep on adding new innovations there and use it as a playground for testing something that needs to be done in the real world.I also plan to write an imaginary travelogue. Has anyone tried one?
Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on September 17, 2008 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.
In India our exposure to technology in getting things done has been limited to Windows and the Office suite. Few students in the mechanical engineering department use computers for their work unless it is forced on us by the syllabus. We still prefer the green graphs and writing on paper.
For my final year project at Air India, I’m trying to convince my group mates to work in the Google Docs environment to hack together our final year project. The ease of sharing and collaboration that I experienced in Docs through my work with SEDS is essentially my source of inspiration for this. For us, who missed out on most of the computer bandwagon, I think it would be necessary to work in the Internet environment.
Recently, I saw my brother read about being responsible netizens in his English text books. Although, most of Indian education has remained in the analog state, it might soon be time to switch over to computers or even mobile devices for education.
Besides the final year project, I’m also planning to work on a smaller scale presentation for a subject, Manufacturing Production and Control (MPC) along with a friend.
As I’ve already said (and is Microsoft or Google listening?) we’ve gone on a Windows system for campus, but not many people know about it and people are still largely on Yahoo and Google systems online. There have also been a few installs of Chrome and Firefox on the traditionally IE 6 platforms.
I will use this to share more of my online experiences here.
Parallel Spirals 