The Baby Name

If I wasn't clear in the previous blog post then let me announce this once more, D-cat is pregnant. Revised estimates on target date of delivery is Sep-23. So these days apart from going through all the pregnancy related stuff, that a couple has to endure, we are also finalizing the baby name. And as we are going through all this, I have realised that deciding a name is a process. A lot of things have to be considered before one narrows down on the name that the little fellow will either endure or enjoy for the rest of his/her life.

One could name a child after a popular or significant historic figure. Someone that a parent or both the parents idolise. This is very significant, in a way you not only honour your hero but also give your child a sense of identity and a message that will remain with him/her for the rest of his/her life. Some magnificent examples that I came across - Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln, Jim Reeves, Richard Nixon, Subhash Chandra Bose, Lancelot, Jhansi Rani. But what if you have 2 role models or both the parents want their respective role models in the baby's name. A mix two names in one is absolutely okay. In fact this puts even more weight on the name and makes him sound significant eg. Napoleon Einstein (this guy is a cricketer). Imagine when Napoleon Einstein is playing in the line-up of the Indian cricket team, who will give a damn about Tendulkar. Please believe me when I say that these are names of not the historic figures but the names given by the inspired parents to their new born.

One can also name a child after a quality that one would like that child to possess. There are two ways of doing this one is by simply giving the child the same name as the quality. Some superb real life examples that I came across are Soulwinner, Deathcheater, Pathfinder (ok I made-up the last 2). But the other and more the creative way is to name a child after an event that personifies that quality. For example - if you want a child to possess qualities like "Achievement"& "Success" (and nothing emulates achievement & success than man landing on the moon) then a good name can be Apollo 11 (also a real name, except for the 11 part).

One can also chose names after a city or a place in which the child was born like Shimla, Hrishikesh, Paris, Holland (all real names, people).

Recent trends and my research on the web has shown me that these days parents chose abstract names with a deep hidden meaning behind it. Kind of like a Dan Brown type code that the child needs to solve during the course of his/her life. These names help the child fit in with the crowd and yet stay unique. It can also be a mix of two hip names as well, to sound even cooler example Dylan + Frodo = Dyldo. (also a real name)

Of course, there are some other names that can make a child popular. This of course is not initially intended by the parents examples - D.K. Bose, P.K. Muteja (real names).

We?? Still looking for that perfect name...

It's Raining Babies coming Sep-2011

Time for some updates. Little did we know that this day will come so soon. But anyway, it happened and now junior-G is on the way.

But also interesting to note is the forecast for the month of Sep this year. It will be a monsoon of babies.
Two of my close friend's wife's are also pregnant. So in summary (based on information available so far).

Vshall - 15-Sep
Rwind - 25-Sep
G-Man - 27-Sep

by God ki kasam this Sep is a busy month for DBF-G.

I am thinking that all of us guys can open a To-Be-Father's-in-Sep Club and we can meet up weekly at beer bars or strip clubs.. you know to drown our sorrows and pain. :) just kidding.

Internet Voting In India Using UID

Nandan Nilekani is working on a UID for every individual in India. I think it can be used for internet voting. At least in the cities where people have started using internet for paying bills, transferring funds, buying/selling stuff so why can't people vote as well. I think this might do wonders in increasing voter turnout in cities, specially in the younger, facebook addicted, generation. I hope the guys who are working on this have already figured out this potential use of the UID. But I wanted to put it out there via my blog, just in case. I am sure that if you've read so far and if you are a person who uses internet regularly for checking email, social networking, banking, paying bills, buying/selling etc. you would have already made a mental list of the advantages that internet voting will have, specially in the cities. Well here are a few anyway:

1. The voter turnout amoung the young generation might just reach as high as 99%.
2. People in hospitals can vote.
3. People who are not in the city/town at the time of voting can vote
4. NRI's can vote
5. No bullying/threats at poll booths
6. No booth capturing (of course places where booths are captured might not have high percentage of internet voting)
7. People don't have to miss work. They just need 10-15 mins off and can cast their vote.

Possible problems:

1. Hacking
2. Overload
3. System Crash or bugs
4. Somebody may steal your UID and password and cast your vote

But I think these issues can be addressed and should not be a detterent to this idea. Of course if you are worried that someone might steal your UID and password then I think this is a matter of personal responsibility and not a drawback of this system.

The Noosphere

Some half cooked ideas and some thoughts for the reader's  pleasure and my records. Why for my records? Because if anything that I write below happens, I will have to opportunity to say - "I told you so."

Last evening when I was relaxing in onsen in my gym, it struck me, it was not just like the moment of Eureka, it was the moment of Eureka. A little bit of background first, the Little Green men in Toy Story series and Buzz Lightyear movie, live in a planet where they have developed a machine that keeps that connected all the time (in every sense imaginable). If someone discovers something, everybody knows. If someone is lost, everybody knows the location of the lost. This system has helped them develop a very strong community and which in turn has helped them fight against the invading aliens.

After a little bit of googling, yahooing, binging and yodeling (ok! I just googled)..I found out that these green men live in a planet called Noosphere.

Now the interesting part, "the Eureka moment", I realized that this is actually happening. We are e-mailing, blogging, facebooking, twittering, buzzing, orkuting, likedin-ing. All this is now available in our mobile devices. All this is networking, what about knowledge, news, data? Well do I really need to answer that?

Some companies and governments are working on a chip that can be implanted into our bodies (albeit its criticism) and so on. In short, we are now in some ways actually working toward the future as seen in the world of the little green men.

Somethings still need to be developed though and may perhaps be our biggest challenge before the noosphere can completely see the sunlight.

a. Democracy/Governance : The question or the challenge is - Can we really achieve facebook democracy? Something like the person with most no. of "Likes" is the president of the world. Sounds laughable, right?. And decisions are made instantly by real time consensus.

>> I am too excited about this aspect of noosphere (specially in the context of Indian politics) and so I want to discuss this in a separate post. Actually I am simultaneously drafting a sperate post for this.

b. Monetary system: We have internet banking but what about network banking? Honestly I don't know what "Network Banking" means. I just made it up. :)

c. Currency - Now this may sound crazy but why do we have exclusive currencies in all the countries. Since money is already dealt as a commodity in the trade markets then why not allow the common man to take advantage of all the currencies of the world like say soaps. Example, In a situation like this RBI and US Federal bank not banks but competing companies and their respective product being Rupee and Dollar.

d. Markets

e. Medical & Emergency situations - Since everybody in the noosphere know about everybody else, we can actually save more lives.

f. Disaster & Relief - Nobody can control natual disaster (right now) and even if in future we remain powerless against nature, we  will still have enough information to conduct swift and effective relief work.

g. Crime Control - Crime control in noosphere reminds me of Tom Cruise movie Minority Report but of course without the precogs.

Probably Facebook isn’t such a bad thing to happen to the world after all. It is a step toward the noosphere. Looking forward for the noosphere, developers are you listening.

In Loving Memory of Sanky

16-Aug-1989 to 21-Jan-2011

Hakone Trip

The last day of the year was spent sight seeing in Hakone. Debbie got to see Mt. Fuji for the first time. Although I have seen Mt. Fuji a million times already and have also gone hiking all the way to the top. And this trip was not just about watching Mt. Fuji from some other mountain. The trip had other attractions as well - a ride on a toy train, a cable car, a rope way and ship cruise. Watching volcanic activity in a mountain and watching the beautiful terrain from the cable car and toy train. But believe me when I say that all the other activities are like side-kicks of a movie in front of Fuji. The presence of this dormat volcano is felt at every point. Although the snow covered Fuji is just standing there all by itself at a distance afar but it draws your attention like a magnet draws paperclips. Everything is dwarfed by its mere presence. And as I said earlier even though I have seen Mt. Fuji a million time already but I was still in awe by it. How great is thou art.

This is 100

It started in June 2007 and 3 years and 6 months later on the December of 2010 it is 100 posts old. Well let's see what happened in this period.

This blog account was actually opened much much before I wrote my 1st blog post. Sarah Salins opened an account in Dec-2005 and edged me to open one too. Sarah has been married for over two year now and her blog is dead.


Dec-2007, First visit to Japan
Feb-2008, Barny got married.
Apr-2008, Permanently shifted to Japan
Aug-2009, Arvind got married.
Nov-2009, Buvana got married.

The Shoppers Stop
Well I guess Debbie and I can differ about the moment, or the day, when our relationship actually started but since Debbie doesn't write this blog, you get to hear only my side of the story. So we met in the church youth meeting at Salom Hills School in Gurgaon. In fact I and Barny use to pickup people who didn't have the means to come to the meeting. So we were suppose to pickup Bhanu, and Barbarra and her room-mate aka my wife. I said "Hi" to Debbie. Debbie will say that I didn't but I'm sure I did. That was our "first ever" meeting. This was sometime in the summer of 2007. Things moved on we met occasionally in the church, in youth meetings but the next singnificant meeting took place in Dec that year. At this time I was shopping for my trip to Japan. I had asked Bhanu to accompany me while I shop but at this point I don't exactly remember how Debbie ended up showing up that day. May be I only had invited her. I hope she doesn't kill me after reading this, but honey I as I said, I don't remember. Anyway, I bought loads of stuff... oops... I shouldn't say "bought" at this point, I picked up loads of stuff and arrived at the checkout counter and voila my credit card was not working and I had no cash in hand. Oh poor me!! dude in distress.. enter Debbie to the rescue she paid my bill and saved me from the humiliation. She saved the day. Later, I dropped her home that night and promised that I will return back her money the very next day.

No I didn't run away with her money, in fact I met her the very next day with the sole intention of giving back her cash. As it turned out, I had buy a suit as well so I asked her to accompany me to the mall. I was expecting the suit shopping to be over in 30 minutes and then adios... ta-ta..good bye.. but the suit that I bought needed to be altered and the shopkeeper promised that his tailor wouldn't take more that 10 minutes but he took more that 2 hours or so. So what was supposed to be a "Hi... thank you .. here's your money.. bye..see you around.." meeting turned out to be "lets have coffee..." I mean it became a date. And that's the beginning of our relationship.

No I'm not implying that that was the day I decided to marry her or I knew that she was the one or anything lovey-dovey like that.. but that was the "kick-off" of ,God only knew at that time, of a life long relationship.

Rest of the story... well may be later.

It was Christmas in Tokyo this year

This was our 1st ever Christmas together. The day started with the morning worship service at Tokyo Union Church in Ometosando and the rest of the day was spent just roaming around together.
 The Church is located in one of the most prime spots in Tokyo. On its left is the show room of Louis Vuitton and on the right Armani. The street itself has the showrooms of probably all the designer labels I have ever heard of…

Ometosando dori is famous of its autumn trees although we couldn’t take pictures of the autumn trees but the street right now is illuminated by hundreds of lights in the night which too was a sight to see.

 


Window shopping at the designer street was a delight. Probably someday we will have enough money to buy stuff from these stores. Anyway, moving forward… apart from the glitter on the street and the beautifully decorated shops the Christmas trees caught our attention.

We too decorated our own Christmas tree and when I say we, I mean Debbie. She did all the hard work while I happily slept in the night.

We are looking forward for the New year now…
Personally speaking it was the best Christmas ever.

Honeymoon at Phi-Phi Island

Have not been able to find time to update the blog recently... for obvious reasons.

I could not execute any of screw-ups that I had planned and shared in the previous post. I guess life doesn't even allow us to plan our failures. But I am sure if any one of those ideas had been executed I would have been in my divorce deposition. :)
 

Here are a few pictures from our honeymoon. Will be uploading the wedding album soon.

The Perfect Wedding Adventure

Debbie and I are getting married and the wedding preparations are on full swing. By the way there is something about the wedding that makes women cranky (for lack of a better word). So just like everyone else wannabe Mrs. Maurya is has also been infected by the wedding prep. virus.And she is working hard for the elusive "Perfect" wedding.

So, I was wondering about the ways in which I can goof up the wedding. So me an my co-conspirator Vishal were scheming all day today and we've come up with some ideas that can make this day go crazy.

1. Dropping a banana peel in front of Debbie when she is walking down the aisle.
2. Make a small ditch somewhere on the aisle fill it with water and put the carpet on it.
3. In wedding vows, instead of saying "I take you as my lawfully wedded wife".... say "I take you as my Awfully wedded wife"
4. When its time to exchange rings, I bring out a thick, large, silver ring with a skull, snake, swords, blood dripping from its mouth... like pirates wear.
5. I put plaster on all my fingers and ask her to put the ring on my toes.
6. I put paint or mud in Bride's flower bouquet (the one Debbie will toss in the end ).
7. When the paster recites the final banns I'd say i object...
8. During the wedding ceremony, when the pastor comes to the part about, "If anyone has any reason why these two people should not marry, speak up now or forever hold your peace..." a couple of kids running up the aisle yelling, "Papa, papa."
9. I make loud stinky farts on the stage.
10. As we both walk from the stage after the ceremony, a funeral music plays. (This one is a bit classy, I don't think many people will notice).
11. Make faces when photographs are taken. 
12. During the wedding ceremony, when the pastor comes to the part about, "If anyone has any reason why these two people should not marry, speak up now or forever hold your peace..." a muscular, well dressed man runs up the aisle yelling, "Darling please dont leave me".....  but he runs up to me and start kissing me, begging me not to leave him.
13. I say someone else's name during vows preferably old married woman like Mrs. Chib.
14. Select a guy as maid of honor and a girl as best man.


I hope my girl will appreciate it and I hope that our wedding is a fun filled event with errors and goof-up, some deliberate and some unintended and we'll fondly remember and recall them for the rest of our lives.

The Ponzi Scheme

I read this in "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Nicolas Taleb and it appealed to my darker side. (Please note I have 2 sides one is dark and the other one is darker). So, imagine one fine day I decide to become a share market pandit and start predicting the future of the market on a monthly basis.My objective is to fool some people by making him believe that I do possess some genuine know how about the market and thus can actually forecast the future of the market. (But actually I don't know a thing about the market).Can I do that?

Ok, so I start with selecting 10000 random people and send them an emails. To 5000 people I send an email stating that the market will go up and to the remaining 5000 that the market will go down. Ok now let me do this systematically...


Jan: Prediction Group A (5000 people) - Market will go up , Group B (5000 people) - Market will go down
Actual outcome - Market goes down.

Feb : I dump contact Group A but from Group B, I send another email
Group C : 2500 people - market will go up; Group D: Market will go down
Actual outcome : market goes up

Mar: I dump group D, and send another email
Group E (1250 people) - market will go up, Group F: Market will go down..

and so on...

In April I will have 625, in May 312, in Jun 156, in July I would've accurately predicting the fate of the share market to 78 lucky people seven times in a row...

Now, imagine that you are one of these lucky people who has received this email 7 times in a row and before you receive the 8th one, the I send another email asking you to invest in a share or mutual fund... would you invest?

A Developed Nation

Japan rapidly grew from a catastrophic nuclear disaster to an economic super power. I've met people that were Young boys and girls when US dropped 2 Atomic bombs on Japan during the second world war. Remembering those days, these people tell me when their father's use to go out in the morning they didn't know whether or not they will be able to bring food for the family that day.

But they were determined people. Their farmers toiled hard in the fields, their workers worked hard in the factories and their leaders had vision. The vision of not just building a developed country but building a culture. They wanted to make their world the perfect world and as a result in less than a half a century, Japan was one of the most powerful economy in the world. Not just that, they were able to cultivate an environment where the people were humble, respected one another. Their streets are safe, clean and their country looked beautiful.

A job well done, I'd say. Now what to do...

As humans, we do things. We've climbed the top of the highest peak of the world, we've learned how to fly, we've walked on the moon. We communicate with each other at the speed of light. We have sent objects out of the solar system. And everyday we are breaking the boundaries of thought. I guess the reason we do these things is not just because we can, but to make this world a better place.

But what do you do when you've already made your place the better place? Japan (and may be some other European countries) is the example of the end result of the development. There is no inflation, indicating that the economy has grown to its peak and can't grow any further. The government can't put money in infrastructure projects to boost the economy because everything they needed to build has been build. The country is growing old, people are not interested in having kids because Nintendos and X-box's are more fun and easy to handle. They've got night clubs and bars where men pay women to just sit with them and hold hands. They care about their environment alright so they import all their timber from other countries. 

Some perfect world huh!

Tele-translator

Here's an interesting business idea. Let's see if someone can pick it up and make some money out of it. I'll lay down the idea in a systematic form.

Let's give our company a name say Tele-translator.

Service it will provide - Language Translation on phone

Need for this kind of service - Let's talk about people like me who have to meet with people that don't speak the same language. Now, it may be easy to find a translator but it's not cheap to have him when you are travelling abroad.

How it will work - This service will be on phone. Say you are an Indian and have a meeting with a Japanese guy, in Japan, but you don't know the language and you didn't hire a translator. You reach the meeting spot and as the meeting starts you realize that there is no way you can have a productive meeting because of the language barrier. You dial tele-translator, put your phone on speaker mode and have the meeting.

How to pay - I could think of two options:

1. You can become a member and dial a toll free no. or
2. A non-member can dial a hotline no. where he or she can be charged on per minute basis.

Any takers?

Black Clouds

Ever wondered why some clouds are dark and some are white? Well I did not, but I always assumed that dark clouds bring rain and white ones just float. Anyway, today I saw an interesting thing about this on the return flight to Tokyo. As we were flying I saw a thick cloud sheet below me and patches of clouds above. The areas where clouds above were casting shadows on the clouds below were darker than the surrounding clouds. I think a darker cloud would mean that there are more layers of clouds on top of the lowest layer of cloud.

India walon main aa raha hoon.. :)

By the way just realized that I'm planning to visit India, probably this week itself so may be I'll post the remaining part next month.

Screw the post.. I'm going home :)

Simply Complicated

Recollecting a conversation that I had with Arvind a couple of years back about an incident that happened during my school days. You see,in school I was with a bunch of extremely talented and brilliant people that used to challenge each other in problems in mathematics.On one such day we were trying to solve a trigonometry problem and during the process I tried to solve the problem by using theorems after theorems in order to arrive at the solution but I only ended up making the problem more complicated. On the other hand a friend of mine, who apparently is a genious, was able to solve the same problem in just 3 or 4 steps. The lesson learnt was that best solutions to complicated problems are always simple and are beautiful. And a real genious can solve a problem in the most simplest way.

Later in life I came to know that the revelation above that I had was somewhat in line with Occams Razor which says, all things being equal the simplest solution is the best. Added to the fact that for quite some time now the smartest minds of our species too are trying to find out the common pattern in all that there is or should I say the single theory of everything. It makes sense, right? There can be nothing simpler than being able to explain all that there is by a unified theory.

Now the obvious question that comes into my mind is that if a possibility exists that there is a unifying theory that explains everything in the physical aspect of our life then what about the spiritual aspect of our life? Is it possible that here too only one possibilty exists and if that is true than who is this God and what is the means to know him. Well this post is not entirely about the God conundrum, it's about simplicity, so I'll move on but I will discuss this one more time in this post because it's important.

I held my views about simplicity for a long time and I was pretty convinced about it too. Untill recently I read a few things that made me question my original set of beliefs. And I realised that those beliefs were based on a certain set of assumptions that now stand on shaky ground in the light of some new discoveries.

~I always like to keep my blog posts small and also my mind is over crowded with ideas and is running in many directions so I'll take a small break and get back on this in a day or two.~

Random Thought

A few days back one of my friends shared a video on facebook. Have a look at it :



This is a time lapse video of the Perseids meteor shower that was visible in Tokyo around the same time last month. Also before I dwell in the philosopy check out this video as well.



These are just a few examples of the both discovered and undiscovered wonders of the universe that can be seen from our planet. Over the last century our technology has enabled us to witness and understand much more. And as our equipment improves - which it has and will- we will, no doubt, be even more astonished by what we get to see and understand.

But I've realised that man can't really understand the universe, we only observe and make notes of patterns. I mean we only understand the patterns. Even the greatest mind of our civilization Einstein was looking for a common pattern in everything. But we all know that he failed to figure out that pattern. May be towards the end he realized that a thing so vast and so complex cannot be weaved into a single theory. It's like an ant trying to understand the purpose of an aircraft.

Some of us on the other hand think that everything is for us. Even-though we don't even know what that "everything" comprises of, again it's like an ant thinking that the aircraft was made for it.

The ant can never comprehend the aircraft nor the aircraft was made for it.

I guess may be sometimes we should take a step behind, relax an enjoy this amazing ride.

My Life's Score Card

Truthfulness - F
Honesty - F
Humbleness - F
Love - F
Discipleship - F
Principles - F
Kindness - F
Content - F
Faith - A
Grace - A

RESULT - SAVED

Adventure in Summer Vacations - Sea Paradise

I did perhaps the most darest acts I have ever done - A non-stop free-fall ride from 108mts. And considering the fact that the world's tallest free-fall ride is 120mts, it was a personal landmark for me. And I think, Arvind would know what I'm talking about. But what Arvind doesn't know is the feeling that creeps in when you are at 108mts high and ready to be dropped at any moment. What's more terrifying is the fact that they've made the seats in such a way that you don't see anything other than the sky above and the sea below. Yes, you can't even see the ground and your feet are just hanging in the air. No footrest at all. Further, to add to the terror, the music in the background is nothing but pure horror. It's the sound of a rapidly pounding heart... dhak dhak.. dhak dhak.. the tempo of the heartbeat keeps on increasing till you reache the top. Then there is a moment of silence, and that sinking feeling of the inevitable creeps in. But you don't fall for another moment or so instead they linger you on for that little bit longer. Long enough to confuse your nerves - whether to be calm or not. And just when you think you have an opportunity to scream and bail out there is a sound of a scream and the free-fall. You can check out the free-fall ride video (not taken by me).



There's another adventure here. The roller coaster at hakkeijima sea-paradise. I must reveal a little secret, I wasn't really scared when I boarded the roller coaster, I mean not as scared as I stepped on to the free-fall (At free-fall I was about to piss in my pants type scared) but at the coaster I was a bit more relaxed and confident. But the moment it started dropping and turning, I screamed... I screamed out my lungs on the roller coaster. On the other hand at free-fall, I was pretty OK after the bloody thing was on it's way down. I mean, right at the moment of fall I was scared as hell but during the ride I was OK. Although I did feel a little buzz in my head after the free-fall was over.

Here's another video of the roller-coaster.



I guess the next obvious adventures in my to-do list are
a. Bungee-jumping and
b. Skydiving

woohoo.. I can already feel the adrenaline rush...

Here are some pictures from Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea paradise.

O yes! I forgot to tell you that the main attractions of Sea Paradise are not the rides but an amazing aquarium and a wonderful dolphin show.

Adventure in Summer Vacations - Disney

So last week was summer vacation in Japan. Yes, we get summer vacations here!! and winter vacations and spring vacations too... mwaha ha ha haa....

Anyway, I had a pretty good time and got to do things and visit places that I always wanted to. One of the main items in my to-do list, for a long time, was to visit Disney Land in Tokyo. Well actually, visiting Disney Land was my childhood dream. So I now strike-off visit to Disney Land from my Bucket-List. And for people like me who love a good bargain I got to see Disney Sea as well. You see unlike other cities, Tokyo has an equally awesome Disney Sea amusement park as well.

Here are a few moments captured on camera.

The rides were fun but I think they have been made keeping the kids in mind. The roller coasters & the free falls were not really as scary as the ones in sea paradise (look out for other blog post on sea paradise) but then Disney is not about scaring the people. It is about fun and wonder. Every ride, every coaster and free fall had an amazing story and an amazing set to back-up the story. Designed to perfection taking care of every minute details. Just spectacular.