It happened to me..

Remember those classic Tinkle stories in the 'It happened to me' segment? In my childhood, I was always skeptic of these stories as they were either too simple to catch my attention or too fantastic for me to believe.

However, a few days ago something did happen to me and it is a little incredulous to believe, primarily because of the protagonist of this incident.

Please forgive my use of drama to enhance the suspense of an otherwise short story. Here's what happened:

A certain Mr.X and I were returning from the department and decided to savor the delights of mess food for lunch. X is a 9++ pointer from my department and apparently is a big fan of Rajnikant Movies, ISO 9001 and mess food.(Mess food can be super-awesome too, Mind It!)

So, as I descended from the comforts of a doubles ride to Himalaya, both of us had an argument as to which caterer to go to. X has been in a particular mess(SK) since childhood and he did not feel the desire to sample different mess food this day. Yours truly is in CR mess, which in addition to being on the ground floor, simply rocks. So, after much cajoling I convinced X to come with me to CR.

X was worried whether the people at CR will check his mess card and in order to avoid problems later he asked me for my room number. "259, Narmada" is how I distinctively remember myself answering. Nevertheless, to allay his fears, I decided to walk in first without showing my mess card to the mess-man after which, X followed suit with an air of false confidence.

No problems till now. We took our food. X is very fond of mess extras and went to collect some. However, it so happened that one of the mess-men found X's behavior to be queer and innocently asked him to show his mess card. It is at this point that X got psyched for the first time and blurted out something which vaguely sounded like "252, Narmada hostel".

X then came to me and told me to follow him through the narrow internal passage connecting the two big mess chambers into the next dining hall so that "By the time, the mess-man verifies that 252,Narmada is not in this mess, he won't be able to find us". "Fair enough", said I and followed X into the next dining hall.

The food at CR was good and X acknowledged this fact too. We ate without much incident.

When we were ready to leave the hall, a new mess-man stopped both of us. For some reason(again), he had found X's behavior queer and stopped him to ask him for his mess card.

It was the moment of truth. What was X supposed to do? Lie again or tell the truth. Guess what, X did neither! He chose the better option - to run away :) , leaving me stranded alone at the mercy of the mess-man. Here's a snippet of our resulting conversation :

Mess-man : Is your friend from this mess?
Me : Sir, he is not my friend. I don't know him.

Mess-man : Wtf! I saw you both eating and sitting together.
Me : (Oops), Sir, he is a junior from my hostel. I don't know him much. He wanted
some fundaes from me.

Mess-man : Don't lie.Show me your mess card.
< I show him my mess card and he gets more infuriated seeing the fact that I was actually in that mess >

Mess-man : I am noting down your room number. You have to get your friend's mess
card here tomorrow.
Me : Wtf! I said I don't know him. It is your headache to verify whether he is in
your mess or not.

Mess-man and I have this semi-heated argument for 5 odd minutes after which I relent and tell him that I will get X's mess card the next day. I gather my stuff and am about to leave when mess-man feels he hasn't had the last word yet:

Mess-man : Wait sir, I am going to complain to CCW about you. You come with me now.

It is my turn to get infuriated. This was getting too much. I mean, I had just acceded to the man's demands of getting X's mess card. I argued with him again for some 5 odd minutes. Clearly, being polite was not getting me anywhere. This is how the fight ended with the mess-man semi-apologizing to me later:

Me : Sir, I have been very polite till now. If you want, go and complain to CCW.
Nothing much will happen to me. But, tomorrow I will come back to the mess
with a dead cockroach, put it in my food and complain to the HAS, CCW and my
mother and you will be asked to pay a BIG BIG fine.

Moral of the story: Being polite sucks. Give people the kick in the ass that they deserve. Also, never go the wrong mess with X.

I hope it is pretty obvious who X is. Isn't it?

The state of Power Infrastructure

Following Uss's Example, I will also make it a point of chronicling the journals here. This is part of a course I am doing called Infrastructure Planning and Management and deals with the problems in Indian infrastructure:

Introduction:

The second week began with our presentation on the Power Sector in India. The readings illuminated me to the fact that rapid economic growth in India has increased the burden on India’s infrastructure. The sector, which has in fact been hit the hardest, is power.

I raised several questions to be discussed in class – the chief of them being India lagging behind the expected demand of around 300 GW by the year 2030 and the sustainability issues associated with India’s long term power policy(in particular India’s over-dependence on coal). Dr Ashwin justified the importance of the same by mentioning how the issue gave him ‘nightmares’. The discussion of the class was centered on how rather than focusing on improving generation; we should concentrate our attention on improving the existing infrastructure so as to reduce distribution losses.

Distribution Status:

A recent report I had read “Powering India – The Road to 2017” by Mckinsey India suggested the idea of privatizing distribution circles in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities as part of several other initiatives to reduce India’s AT&C losses to around 15%. This seems to be an interesting proposition for the Government as it will reduce the bureaucratic hassles due to different parties involved, as is the existing case. It reinforces the existing ideology that the private sector, by the nature of its operation will introduce effectiveness. There also exists the possibility of implementing various other distribution reforms, in particular, the introduction of feeders which allow the SEBs to distinguish between agricultural and non-agricultural supply.

Sustainability(Going the Shaastra way?)

I would like to focus a bit on the issue of sustainability which could not be discussed in class due to time constraints. India and China, which already account for around 45% of the world coal use, are expected to drive most of the increase in coal demand to the year 2030. There is a very interesting problem associated with coal usage for meeting India’s power requirements:

“The greater use of more efficient technology will cut the amount of coal needed to generate one kilowatt hour of electricity. However, at the same time it will boost the attraction of coal over other fuels , thereby leading to higher demand.”

Therefore, the only real way to solve the climate problem is to gradually phase out coal and not try to make the generation more efficient! This is quite paradoxical and should create nightmares for policy makers. Thankfully the government is not completely silent, with the introduction of the National Action Plan which aims, among other things, to increase the solar power investments to 20GW by 2020.

Conclusion

The discussion on the power sector can never end. I will simply conclude with the hope that the Government takes steps to improve the efficiency of the entire power infrastructure through effective policies and practices and to move towards sustainability. Maybe Copenhagen will have an answer.

The one on the Exchange Program

The following is meant to be published in the institute magazine : The Fourth Estate. I have to thank these boys for helping me rediscover my love for writing. It is a little long for a blog post, but then I am writing after a long time, so I am allowed to rant :


They say IIT is the land of infinite opportunities, whether they cater to your technical, cultural or even in some cases political interests. There was once a time when IIT was considered the necessary evil between JEE and GRE – a ticket to a land of greater opportunities; a one-way journey of exploring life beyond the motherland. The only drawback one can think of is the nature of a grad-student’s life(Ph.D comics is the inspiration) : All work and no play . Then, as time progressed, came along the concept of summer internships which can be loosely described as some work and some play .It was thus, only a matter of time before the arrival of no work and all play – perhaps the best summary possible of life as an exchange student.


I think it was November last year when I was informed of my selection into a unique program, very seductively titled “Leadership Enrichment and Regional Networking” (LEaRN)– an opportunity to spend one academic semester at Nanyang Technological University(NTU), Singapore or the National University of Singapore(NUS). Participants were chosen from various south-east Asian nations including Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Korea(South of course), China, Thailand, Brunei and Incredible Ind-yeah, some of whom have now become good friends.
It is very difficult to give an account of everything we did over the past few months but here’s my attempt:

Chapter 1 – Arrival

I arrived at Singapore, as part of a group of Indian students from IIT Madras. The initial few days were spent in extending niceties to our hosts(NTU), our sponsors(the Temasek Foundation of Singapore) and with our co-LEaRNers. It took us decent time to familiarize ourselves with Singaporean customs and the infamous Singlish( For the beginner ,‘can’ is the loose equivalent of ‘da’ – a word used in every sentence). For an Indian, Singaporean efficiency and discipline can be both surprising as well as irritating at times. I hereby present two case studies:

Numero Uno- The transport buses in Singapore actually stop at every zebra crossing for the pedestrians to cross. I doubt whether a Singaporean would last two seconds on Indian roads.

Numero Duex- I had a small problem regarding some of my courses initially. So, I did what every sane IITian would do – I went to the academic block. Yet, even though the manager’s vettiness was blatantly obvious, I was refused an appointment to meet her. “Please send email”. Standard protocol - Something which should have been over in 5 minutes took 2 days!

However, these are just two rotten apples in a bunch of good ones. It is thanks to this devotion to discipline that Singapore is one of the strongest financial centers in the world- Size does not matter!

The NTU campus itself is quite beautiful with lots of greenery , concrete and mini-skirts and is a good rival for insti. The one thing which might sway the vote in NTU’s favor is the McDonalds inside campus.

Chapter 2 – Wanderlust

Singapore is a backpacker’s worst nightmare. There is nothing there except buildings – damn beautiful ones but you tend to get bored of them pretty soon. It is an ideal place for a one week vacation, but not a day more. Among the sights to catch at Singapore is the world famous Night Safari – a nocturnal romp through wild animals in their artificially created natural habitats, Sentosa – an island based theme resort and any other place where you can get drink and company.

Singapore provides the ideal platform to visit neighboring South-East Asian countries. Flights are reasonably cheap and so are the living expenses. Our scholarship was sufficient to cover Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia.

We started off with a two day stay at Kuala Lumpur. It’s a nice city, similar to Singapore in a few aspects, yet totally different. The Petronas twin towers provided us with numerous opportunities to test our mettle in digital photography and obtain good display pictures for our Facebook/Orkut profile.

Thailand was a different experience all together and no amount of words can do justice to the time we had and the experiences we enjoyed. Thailand was a first for us in a lot of new things like para-sailing, snorkeling and even street dances!. The beautiful islands of Koh phi phi(watch the movie The Beach) provided the much needed relief from a daily routine. Phuket was the perfect holiday destination in the sense that on one hand it provided us with numerous scenic beaches and on the other hand, it was the best place to party!

Chapter 3 – Acads and other stuff

“Life in Singapore is peace”- official Indian sound bite in the LEaRN scrapbook. The good thing about the acads there is the wide variety of courses on offer. Personally, it was a very enriching experience as I got an opportunity to try out a lot of courses which would have been impossible to pursue at IIT- both core and non-core.

Technology is optimally used to serve the students needs with video lectures, course documents, tutorials, etc uploaded at the beginning of the semester itself. This is where I feel the system fails sometimes. By providing all the references at the very beginning, the system is snatching away the incentive for the student to attend regular lectures. This was true for most of my courses, where I found that the number of students writing the final exams was significantly higher than those who attended classes (not that I attended many thanks to zero attendance rules).

The concept of blackboard teaching is hardly in use here and is something which should be strictly reinforced by the administration. No amount of video lectures or power point presentations is substitute for “black-board teaching” .This enhances the teacher-student interaction as the student feels that the professor is actually teaching ex-tempore and not just merely reading from the slides.

I think I have covered enough. I will conclude with a brief FAQ:

1) How do I apply for this wonderful life experience?
Smail followed by numerous trips to department and acad block.

2) Is the scholarship sufficient?
More than sufficient. I know of some people who actually saved money.

3) What about my grades in Singapore?
All the credits will be transferred. As far as CGPA goes, it’s zero-credits.

4) Will it look good on my resume/ Will it help in job prospects?
Don’t know, don’t care.