A Visit to the Saratoga Battle Field

This post is long overdue, but better late than never. I and Philip visited the Saratoga Battle field shortly before I moved from New York to South Carolina a few months ago. Not unlike this post, the visit too was long overdue. Saratoga witnessed one of the decisive battles of the American Revolution. Here are a few snaps,

A Cannon atop Bemis Heights



Freeman's Farm


Charging downhill

After walking for a couple of hours ....


I now live in Greenville, South Carolina about 30 mins drive from the Cowpens Battle field. I plan to go there in summer.
Someone once asked me what the fun is in visiting a battle field. Let me answer it this way - It is not about fun, but rather about what that trip makes you do before you go there - like reading about the battle, its context, its aftermath and about letting the mind roam freely while one walks around the park which then travels back in time, tries to get a sense of how that gory day would have been and what could have happened had the result been opposite ..etc etc. It is also about the lung full of fresh air that you get to inhale in those wild empty plains. It certainly has something to do with my fascination for green, vast, open plains - the sight of which I believe has an emollient power.

Cisco Telepresence


Today, I had my first Telepresence meeting at work and it was an amazing experience. It is truly as shown in the picture above(courtesy Human Productivity Lab) where folks join from different parts of the globe, but all appear to be together in the same meeting room, sitting next to each other or right across the table. The attendees get to see and talk to each other in real time and high definition. Cisco has really hit the ball out of the park !

Hello World !! :-)

It has been a long time since I blogged. My son is now 4 months old and keeps us busy 24*7. Time flies when he is around. He has turned over and is now trying to crawl. He has become very curious about the world around him, turns his head towards light and sounds, coos, smiles and laughs. He also talks to us in an arcane language which only has sounds like "Aaa", "Eee", "Ooo", "Urr", "Aee" !! He can go on and on as long as we reciprocate. I have now started to get a hang of his language and we engage in conversations ;-). He demands attention and needs somebody to play with all the time and by evening when we are weary and drag ourselves home from office, we crave for some kind of energy booster to keep up with him.

Being a parent is an amazing experience ! And by the way...to all those "parents-in-the-making", I strongly suggest Dr. Harvey Karp's book "The Happiest Baby on the Block". He talks about the missing fourth trimester and also the 5 S's to calm babies. We have tried it and it really works !!

It is a boy !!
My son was born on 23rd June. We've named him Arjun.
I was away from work the whole of last week...so many things to catch up with and several documents to read. Shall post an update soon.

The Road Ahead..

More than 10 years ago I joined College of Engineering, Trivandrum with the simple dream of getting a decent job as soon as I graduated. At that point in time, becoming capable of fetching my family three square meals a day was more important than anything else. Engineering looked promising in terms of getting a job (a campus placement), and Electronics or Computer Science at CET was what most students (not all) with good entrance exam scores (ranks) opted, So did I. I hadn't heard of any student who had opted for Mechanical, Civil or Architecture inspite of getting a rank that would have qualified him/her for Electronics or Comp Sci (Ofcouse there are exceptions and I later came to know a few). I didn't have any worries about choosing a subject - all I wanted was a job at the end of four years to head off the financial disaster that stared my family in the face. That was more than a decade ago and since then life has come a long way. I am happy that I could achieve my dream inspite of running into a tempest following the 2001 economic recession and 9/11 fallout.

Presently, I am preparing for GMAT and dreaming of joining a Top Tier B-school. But unlike what I did 10 years back, I spend time thinking and discussing about what an MBA could help me achieve, where,what and how I should study, What my focii should be, What I should target to achieve in the next 10 years, What kind of companies I should aim to work for after my MBA, Where I should take my career..etc.

Today I had a very enlightning and fruitful discussion with Himanshu Joshi (First Year student at IIM-A ) who is currently in New York city for an intership with the famed BCG (The Boston Consulting Group). Thanks to my friend Saurabh Jindal, another first year IIM - A student, for the introduction. I wanted to know in detail about the life in a consulting company. I was curious about the kind of problems consultants work on, the variety of challenges they tackle, their growth, remuneration, career options and above all what they learn in B-Schools that opens the doors of great companies like BCG or McKinsey.

I have posted the salient points of our discussion here. Thank You Himanshu for your time and effort.

Way to go Shiyas

This post is to congratulate my old classmate Shiyas (College of Engineering Trivandrum, 2001 Batch) for making it to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). Shiyas has cleared the Civil Services Examination - 2007.

Shiyas,
Hats off to your dedication and hard work ! I wish you all the best. First it was the IES and now the IAS. You seem to have a special knack for clearing rigorous entrance examinations. :-)

Point of Rumination


This amazing series is by far better than any book I have ever read on Evolution. I haven't yet waded through all the facts and theories that are laid out in the course of this eight hour, four part series. But the first two parts that I have seen so far have given enough food for thought. The question, as my colleague Pablo Lopez points out is not "Whether you believe in Evolution", it is rather "Whether you really understand the Theory of Evolution".


Currently reading :
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.

Train of thoughts
I went to the Niskayuna Park for a jog today. It is amazing what a lung full of fresh air can do to one's spirits. It was mostly deserted except for an occassional biker or a skater. The park has a narrow bike trail which stretches for several miles and has the Mohawk river by its side. The chirping of birds and the rustle of leaves were pretty much the only sounds. There were birds of several plumage patterns and an occassional rabbit or a deer. I have always loved to let my mind wander and at times I stop the train of my thoughts and wonder how far I have strayed and attempt to retrace my thoughts. It is amazing how the web of thoughts work and is amusing to realise how interconnected the thoughts are and how one's mind can leap from one set of thoughts to another seemingly disparate set.

How is a "rabbit" related to "Sanskrit" ? Staring down at a little brown rabbit that ran across my path, I started to wonder how fast thay move and how long they live. I wondered what they eat and how they survive the six to seven months of sub zero temperatures. I wondered how the fish in the nearby Mohawk survive the winter when the whole river freezes, it then reminded me that my classmate (Mandarin class) Patrick was going fishing for four days next week. I recollected the stories he told me about how he and a couple of other guys caught and cooked an alligator down in Mississippi or somewhere. I, then started to think of the other stories he told me about how as a kid, he lost his little library to fire. Pat had been to India for four months where his daughter learned to speak hindi. I thought about the different places foreigners visit in India and remembered seeing a book at the Schenectady Public library on Kumbhamela. That reminded me that another classmate of mine - Tashin who is from Tibet, spent a few years of his life as a monk in Varanasi. He runs a Tibetan Gift shop in Albany these days after renouncing his monastic ways. Then I thought to myself that I had met a lot of people in my life who have had interesting stories to tell - Stories from their lives which they may or may not have time to share with others, then I wondered how much or how little I knew about my friends and family ! I questioned myself as to how many stories I knew from my father's life, my mother's, my sister's, my brother's, my wife's lives, from the lives of my dearest friends. I decided that I would share a lot of my stories with my kid (if you don't know already, I am going to be a dad this july :-) )....and then I remembered some of the stories my mother had cooked up to make me study Sanskrit when I was six or seven years old - Stories that really made me study the language for three years (Grades one to three)- Stories of how Gods in heaven spoke only in Sanskrit and how I could talk to them if I remained a good boy :-)). May be, I'll pass these along to my kid and I am sure he/she would grow up some day and laugh at these stories and may want to pass it to the next generation. I hope they add a few twists of their own to make it more interesting and relevant...and who knows, the story might grow in length, might change forms, might look totally different from the original. I may not be around to hear how the story would appear a hundred years from now..but let the stories pass on, as they have always. Along with the story would pass a piece of my thoughts and my mind. Isn't that the way Kunta Kinte's story passed through several generations and finally reached Alex Hailey ? And that finally brought me to one of the greatest stories ever told. I watched this documentary just yesterday on YouTube. Obviously, it was the controversy surrounding it that made me curious.

Toddling...

I have been a student of the"Chinese for Adults" course at the Albany Chinese School for the last five months. Here is my contribution to what was collected for the School Magazine from our class ;-)
It simply says,

My name is Sarath.
I am from India.
I would like to learn chinese.
I can speak, read and write in three other languages including English, Hindi and my mother tongue Malayalam.

Here is a picture of our class,


The classes are held every sunday from 1 PM to 3PM and the current semester ends on May 11th. The next semester classes begin in September. If you are in the capital region and are looking forward to learning Mandarin, there is no better choice. The instructor Xuewen Wang (aka Sherry Wang) is a gifted teacher with endless patience. Although I am still light years away from being fluent in Mandarin, I think this course has helped me reach a stage from where I can start learning the language on my own. Let me know if anyone has tried "Rosetta Stone" ..I have so far received one positive first hand review from one of my classmates.

Now coming back to the obvious question of why I chose Chinese. Well, there are several reasons,
1. I have always wanted to learn a foreign language.
2. I can still learn one of the European languages after I return to India (hopefully in a few years, unless I fall victim to the N+1 syndrome).Unlike Mandarin, it is not very difficult to locate French or German instructors in India.
3. With my dreams of relocating to the Eastern Hemisphere after graduating from B-School, I am sure a little Mandarin would come in handy.
4. I want to truly understand this phenomenon called "China" - this great trasformation that we have witnessed and are witnessing.
5. Visit Tibet someday (certainly not this year :-)) )
6. Learning (if voluntary) is a healthy break from the drudgeries of the "Land of Cubicles".
7. Resist Cerebral Atrophy :-).

Well, this is a long haul and I certainly have no illusions of it being a smooth ride.I hope that in the next few years I reach a stage where I can read chinese websites and news papers.

I watched Ron Maxwell's movie "Gettysburg", which depicts in good detail the first and second days of the battle of Gettysburg. The defence of "Little Round Top" and Jeff Daniel's portrayal of Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain were impressive. I liked the movie pretty much although I haven't seen many American Civil War movies to compare this with. Suggestions welcome.. :-)


If all goes well, I plan to visit Saratoga and Gettysburg this Summer.

Would you believe that a seeemingly endless list of names of strangers could tell a poignant tale ?
This long list is a snapshot of "Booming" India's Agrarian crisis. What it doesn't talk about is the plight of the families of these deceased men. Each person on this list may have had at least 3 or 4 lives dependent on him - lives that may have withered off by now !


Sainath's book titled "Everybody loves a good drought", is a collection of stories from India's poorest and unheard-of districts.I read it about a year ago. It paints the true picture of my land - The land of contradictions, The land of abundance and paucity !!

More here.

Currently


Reading..





Watching..

Books for January

In the Market: The Illustrated History of the Financial Markets




The Rational Unified Process Made Easy: A Practitioner's Guide to the RUP (The Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series)

WELCOME 2008