A dog is man's best friend

Having been confined to home over the last few weekends I decided to go for an evening stroll. A simple one hour stroll it was meant to be. As I was walking up the hill (of Mt Davis) I saw a section of the backup reservoir, it seemed to cut through the hill. Instead of walking along a winding road I decided to take the shortcut. A few complicated railings and dead-end staircases made me jump a few railings with an intention of getting back on the road (on the other side of the winding road). My ever-present sense of direction kept me going in the right direction. That is until I felt something wrong behind me.

I turned back to see two dogs running towards me at great speeds. I didn't know if they had been barking with all the noise from my iPhone plugged tightly onto my ear. I stood still indicating all was at peace. These dogs seemed trained only to recognise a white cloth, and as luck would have it, I had not carried my white handkerchief that I always carry as part of my clothing. With the dogs advancing a great pace with ferocious looks and less than 20 feet from me I took to a quick sprint.

Not wearing my running shoes was a costly mistake, so was jeans They chased me for about 200 metres until I found a railing jumped across stumbled and rolled over imagining the dogs upon me any second. Nothing happened. I turned and looked, there were two tame beasts on the other side of the railing (which wasn't more than 3 feet in height) looking at me with great amusement. I thanked myself for at least having worn jeans, it saved me considerable bruises.


Now totally having lost track of direction I was looking for my terra firma. I was getting dark and no shadows to determine which way to heed. Damn. I roughly charted my path from the reservoir and using my uncanny ability to tell directions, decided the way to go. A little later I could see my direction was right, only halfway across the hill. There was no turning back, the tame dogs would be waiting. I chose to climb the hill and get down the other side considering I'd already climbed considerably at the end of the hot pursuit.

I was in luck, my sense of direction was bang on spot and I got on to the road. From here everything was simple, neat clean roads to walk upon. No mountain trail, no more blisters in the soles and toes and no more sweat! I decided to make it to the Pok Fu Lam reservoir and let my sweaty t-shirt dry up by then. It did wonderfully and I even jogged a bit to tell myself that running was in my blood. I turned a far cry to a man known as Forrest Gump. I reached the reservoir quite easily, but before I could enter I heard a dog bark.

I turned to see a well fed ferocious looking dog advancing towards me. I stopped, but it still came. Until its master decided it was time to act and gave it a call. It stopped a little ahead of me, not taking its eyes off me. I took a step towards the reservoir and it took 3 steps towards me and its master called out again. He decided to take it back along with him. I turned around to see the reservoir again and noticed it was closed.

It wasn't the first time a dog has warned me about the path. Back when I was climbing Mui Wo to Disco Bay and went on a wrong turn a dog menacingly came towards me and wouldn't let me pass or even keep a single step in the wrong direction. It had retreated the moment I was on the right path (which, of course, I realised much later). I should commend the HK dog's sense of boundaries!


With not much luck at the reservoir I decided to take a slightly longer walk back home. All was well and I kept on the roads. After a while Forrest Gump called and I was running again with blisters and all. It must've been about half an hour of run before I realised I shouldn't be going much uphill, I live by the bay! In all that running I had missed a Y intersection and was to Pok Fu Lam. When I got to the end of the road I was on top of a different hill - I was not on Mt Davis that I thought I was on, I was on the adjoining Lung Fu Shan with a clear view of entire Mt Davis. My house was naturally on the completely hidden side of it. Meaning I had to get away from this hill and then go round the other hill to get home.

I knew the way and it seemed simple. Just as I was about to start I noticed a short steep winding path leading right below. It looked like such a godsend shortcut - I took it immediately. I walked, jogged, hopped and limped over the next hour and still didn't seem to be making great progress towards my house. All I knew was I was below the hill (after a quick roll when I couldn't control my pace running downward) very close to the sulphur channel, but no idea how much further to go. I went on a little longer and I saw a road leading to Sandy Bay. This is it I thought, Sandy Bay was just next to Kennedy town and I went down the road (the other road inclined up and I showed little inclination towards it).

The path to Sandy bay was steep and went down quickly by the water, only to realise I'd reached a dead-end - there was no connecting path to my house. With a lot of grudge against HK town planning I climbed up back to the path I knew would take me home. I was another hour before I reached home limping, still sweating profusely at 10 PM in the night.

It was nice to be back to life, as I know it (I meant the evening, not getting back home!). My first dog chase, a hot pursuit, but I still managed to outrun the dogs despite having gone out of shape. In my next 10K run, show the dogs the finish line, they remember boundaries well!

Nandi Hills (rated 3.5 out of 5 for difficulty)

Cycling to Nandi Hills


The map below tells it all. If you aren't satisfied, click the 'Details' button on the map for more vital statistics. However before you do that I should highlight some elements of the map. You see the red line in the map? That represents altitude. Reading it from left to right, we know there's a lot of climbing. If you're looking for fun, just read (and cycle) the other way round.

The route goes north from Malleshwaram (the usual starting point). This is very favourable as the wind is generally directed northward. So if you're returning from Nandi Hills, be prepared to face some headwinds. The road is mostly divided into 3 stretches:

1. A national highway for most of the part (and connecting the airport), so it is in impeccable condition. However the road has a good amount of high speed traffic. You'll just about take the right amount of space if you stick to the lane's shoulder lines. Intersections tend to be a little polluted, but nothing compared to the levels within the city.

2. A state highway deviating a little after Devanahalli. It has good clean roads with a few speed breakers as you cross railway lines or village crossings. No separate cycling lane, but no traffic either.

3. An uphill stretch from the base of the hill to the top. Just over 7.5 kms with good road all the way to the top. It'd be a good idea to stick to the left of the road as you'll find speeding motorists coming the opposite way. It'd also be a good idea not to carry bananas in your hand while you're riding unless you want to demonstrate acrobatics with a dozen monkeys on your cycle. This last stretch usually requires lower gears riding, but there are a few super fit people who do it on single gear. The view from the top is very nice, especially early in the morning. Once you've decided to return, it is a good point to check that your brakes are working fine.

The entire route is usually populated during the day and you can expect help in case of emergencies. It also means there's a good chance your bicycle may vanish if left unattended (by sheer forces of nature).

The route seems ideal if one were to think about a track for time trial events. If you push too much on the flat land, the uphill section might prove too hard to finish making it a well-balanced endurance ride.

Kon-Tiki

With Manu at Girish's wedding in Dec '09
I visited Oslo recently and the main attraction to me was the Kon-Tiki museum.I wanted to see for myself the raft that sailed over 4,000 miles across the Pacific ocean from Peru to Polynesia. I heard about Kon-Tiki for the first time from Manu who visited Bangalore about 6 months ago. I was telling him about the two major trips I wanted to embark, one being sailing to Lashadweep. He immediately took me to the magical story of Kon-Tiki.

Thor Heyerdahl, the originator of the idea was in the islands of Fatu Hiva where an old native of the island told him the story of their ancestors. The people of Fatu Hiva were ancestor worshipers whose stories went back to the old chief Tiki, who was considered the son of God. The old man described Tiki as having come from the direction of sun in a plain raft. Thor Heyerdahl musing over this story saw the link between South America and Polynesia. Until then he had been intrigued by the huge stone statues erected on these islands and the similarities in culture with ancient south americans. Upon his return, he searched for facts to strengthen his arguments and found that Kon-Tiki was another name for the Sun-King in ancient Peru.

The original raft at Oslo

The legends that have survived among the American Indians describe the sun-king and other white men were attacked by an Indian chief named Cari over the lake Titicaca (from across current day Bolivia) and massacred the white men. But Kon-Tiki and his closest associates escaped westward into the Pacific. I tried looking up for more references around this, but even the expert on pre-Columbian settlements, Adolph Bandelier, does not make a reference to the escape although he noted the attack of Cari upon the white tribes. Nevertheless Thor put forth his theory to be duly returned to him as a flight of fancy and everyone unanimously pointed that there existed no boats during those days to navigate such distances and a balsa raft, which was in use then, was water absorbent and had to be dried periodically before use and was hardly sea-worthy.

After visiting many professors and nearly going bankrupt in the meanwhile, Thor decides to prove his weakest link by a practical example. He decides to undertake an expedition himself on a balsa raft from Peru to Polynesia to show that the raft was sea-worthy. He gathered the details of the balsa raft used then and after carefully choosing wet balsa wood from the inner forests of Peru which was more water resistant than the dry balsa wood, the raft was built with a single sail as described the local tribes. The expedition consisted of six members including Thor.

A small cabin on the raft used for storage

There were also other criticisms to the theory. Some argued that even if a raft could manage the distance it'd leave everyone on board dead due to thirst since they could not survive on rain water alone for four months across the Pacific. This was overcome by carrying coconuts that didn't add to the weight as they could be tied o the raft and left afloat. They also carried sweet potatoes that could last the expedition easily and complement the sea food they'd hunt on the way.

The expedition was not without difficulty, they had to face the storms. However the boat took them with ease as the waves that splashed over the raft simply went down between the rafts. Towards the end of the expedition the coconuts sprouted lugging the raft down and depleting their water resource. However they'd also collected some rain water during the journey. Even after they sighted land after 93 days, the raft was just swept away from Tuamotu islands. After another four days they came close to Angatau island where the locals noticed them and tried paddling towards them and they were still swept away. Four more days later they hit  a coral reef at Raroria bringing the expedition to a close. The raft was then recovered and sent to Norway.

Epilogue: The expedition proved that it was possible to sail the Pacific in a raft and provided strong support to the links found on Polynesian islands and South American civilisations. The success of this expedition led Thor Heyerdahl to conduct a similar expedition from Africa to South America to prove that the similarities between the cultures of these two continents were no coincidence either. The papyrus boat Ra I could not complete the journey due to design flaws and a reconstructed boar Ra II made it from Morocco to Barbados. This expedition included members from round the world as a symbol of unity after the world war and was the first expedition to sail under the UN flag. During the sailing of Ra I, it was observed that the sea pollution greatly affected the boats with lumps of oil found stuck to the boats. This led to the awareness of sea pollution in the Atlantic and eventually led to the ban of emptying oil waste in the Atlantic.

A scale model of Tigris with a photo of the burning boat behind      

The other notable expedition include the Tigris, which was made of reed bundles and sailed the Indian Ocean with similar objective connecting the Egypt and Indus valley. However the expedition was terminated after sailing 6,800 kms with the crew unanimously deciding to burn the boat in the Red sea where they were surrounded by war on all sides. The expedition carried a message to the UN to stop delivery of weapons and preserve the cultures that has led to the current civilisation. However weapon delivery continues by sea even to the current day.

Fourier series

I learnt Fourier transforms (FT) indirectly. I could solve them, both the transforms and inverse transforms, but could never apply them. Until I understood them in a roundabout way.

In statistics, Moment Generating Function (MGF) is used to decompose the probability distribution to its moments. The resultant MGF when expanded into a series (a discrete approach) or split by various order derivatives (a continuous approach) results into the various moments. Thanks to this usage, when I was introduced to Laplace transforms in a separate mathematics course, I understood the transform not just as a mathematical tool but also its purpose in decomposing the moments.

FT was a step further away, it was a cryptic puzzle to start. By the name I understood that it decomposes something, but failed to see what. The lack of internet resources made it difficult. I rummaged the library on FT but failed to come up with anything meaningful as they all dealt with solving functions rather than explaining why it was used in the first place. It was a passing remark in a textbook that told me that it decomposes signals. The decomposition into sine and cosine waves became immediately apparent.

I still wonder why no textbook ever explain what a mathematical tool is, but just start presenting functions. There are few good teachers who help you understand the fundamentals but none seem to ever write a textbook.

I might have gotten through FT, but stochastic processes continue to haunt me, especially when they're so erroneously put to use. Like most in the field, I can solve stochastic differential equations, find resulting distributions using analytical or numerical approaches. I also have the ability to tell when the results are meaningless (a huge bonus in my field). But yet I'm not endowed with ability to build the fundamental processes (that result in meaningless outcomes :P). Wonder where I'll ever learn to build the fundamental processes in their true form. Is there a teacher somewhere?

How to create news?

Seemingly an easy question, you’d expect answers like “Do something novel”, “Find something interesting”. A mediocre reporter might say “Just pick an old tale and report all over”. Its not uncommon to find many ‘newspapers’ publishing opinions while you’d actually expect an unbiased representation of facts. However, it is increasingly common these days to find a news item that seems entirely made-up!!

Today’s Times of India reported that Kashmir terrorists were given a pay hike! The source of the article simply said Times News Network. This particular item was really well written quoting average salaries before the hike and the current pay to terrorists, their funding agency from Pakistan, and even the number of terrorists (of about 700) in this pay-roll! Neat piece of information, but how much of it is actually true?

If the story has been made-up, it makes an interesting read, and apart from that it kills any other newspaper that actually try to report facts that don’t catch the eye. Even worse it makes the reader feel that they don’t get pay hikes such as the 60% to 80% hike the terrorists got (I never got such hikes despite being in the financial sector during booming times). I think the average army man is likely to feel the worst hit when he reads that his opponents are being paid such hikes. The lack of similar reward would make him feel contemptuous against his own government.

The consequences seem even more appalling if the news were to be true. It means the Indian army and hence the government has full information of the terrorists and still does not act upon it (I don’t even know the salary hike in my own department!!). The news item also reports that the increase in hike is to increase the amount of violence which has recently fallen significantly. I can’t seem to think up any possible way in which this is likely to be a hard fact to be reported as news. Can a leading newspaper be allowed to publish such speculation?

I could equally speculate that TOI has terrorist links and publishes such items to demoralize the Indian troops and they’re abusing their freedom of press to systematically change the public opinion making them immune against action to any news!! Wonder who’ll publish my speculation as news?

A Potter Wasp

A Potter Wasp
Originally uploaded by © Poras Chaudhary

https://sites.google.com/site/ssathyan/insects/potter_wasp
Its a mad world! Several years ago I had this opportunity to watch a potter wasp build its nest right from the first mound of clay. My room was on the second floor and right beside my bed was a window overlooking a large jack fruit tree. Wasps flying about the house is a very common occurence, but to see one hovering 2-3 feet from my face wasn't. It chose the bottom corner of the window for its nest having decided that I don't display any predatorial instincts.

The brown-yellow wasp brought in small mounds of clay from the soil right beneath the window and started building its nest. But it wasn't until it dropped one mound by mistake that I paid greater attention. As it brought the clay in, the mound slipped and dropped barely touching the side of one of the window bars. The mud stuck right there with its tiniest surface touching the bar on the side and nothing beneath. Intrigued by this super glue I watched the wasp for the next half hour.

The wasp had a simple routine - suck the fluid of the jack fruit tree leaf's midrib, then go down to collect the mud and back to its nest site to place them and shape if necessary. It just looked like adding bricks to a wall. I also noticed that the wasp did not go the same leaf more than twice! Despite the super glue it created the mound was quite soft for it to shape the pot.

When the pot was almost complete there came the supplies - a couple of spiders and one other 'bug'. They all seemed dead (though reading about them later told me that these could just have been paralysed) and they all went into the wasp's magical cauldron. Once this was done, the neck of the nest was built. It brought 3 mounds of clay, placed it on the opening and then bent its abdomen over the opening going round and round over it to create the neck of the pot.

It seemed rather odd to me then that it did not lay the eggs first before creating a neck for the neck was too small for the wasp to enter. It did seem like the wasp just dropped the egg into the pot (I thought the shell of the egg must be really strong with super glue!). But it didn't make sense for I've seen potted nests with the neck on the side. However, the wasp laid its eggs the same evening (seemingly dropped into the pot) and then covered the entrance. I read about it much later that the wasp suspends the eggs from the entrance so that it hovers just above the food so that the larvae falls right on the food when they hatch.

Asylum

"Why did you to come back?" was my manager's simple question. It took me over three seconds before I answered "Well, it was for personal reasons" laying emphasis on each word. Simple questions deserve no more than simple answers. But behind that answer were thoughts that spanned four years and I knew there was no way I could provide a complete answer.
  No time to delve into long histories, the immediate need was to decide what work I'd be doing in the foreseeable  future. The department was divided into three teams. It was not difficult to notice that I didn't fit in any of the teams. I never have. The general inclination was to associate me in a team that was more imbalanced than the rest. Quite justifiable, no one would want to tip something off balance especially when its going well. Then I got the word for this situation - Asylum. Just as in a mental asylum where 'mad' people are kept to avoid interference with a like-thinking balanced society or a political asylum to which individuals were condemned if they were seen as a threat to the ruling political power. In this corporate asylum I was required to provide least friction to the outside functions, which were in a state of equilibrium.
  The team I was associated with was an asylum for misfits, everyone with diverse ideas and varied quests. My work had no association to this team, but then neither did it have an association to any other team. Did that warrant creating a separate asylum for me? I'm sure each misfit in the team would've wanted one for themselves. I decided I'll use Nash equilibrium to decide on the most socially acceptable option. The world requires you to be more social than do something logical.
  I work in a very technical function that requires a very good understanding of the entire functioning of the business and industry and not just a particular aspect. But in the course of time the objectives of many people changed. They wanted a more socially acceptable job of a people manager saving themselves the bother of these mere technicalities. I belonged to the old school of thought that required people to be technically sound and managing people and their expectations were secondary to the work itself. After all, if everyone worked on similar ideas there is little difference in people's expectations and can be handled by anyone with a little personal maturity. Naturally for the current day I was wrong. Or rather, obsolete. It was a Keynesian world, people worked only for personal gains, on projects with a short and limited goals and at many times in stark contradiction to the larger scheme of things.
  When I stood at the crossroads a long time ago but couldn't decide on either. I took the forests. Now I stand at crossroads again. Will I take the thicker jungle?