Yosemite Falls

 

The Forest in the Yosemite Valley

Pebble Beach, Oracle and Sundry Pictures

These are some sundry pictures from my collection.

Pebble Beach - some scenic spots

This one below has a faint hint of fog in the background. The fog was actually setting into this place just as we managed to get in. It was a beautiful sight to watch.

This is at the Pebble Beach - adjacent to the world famous Golf Course - one of the best on the PGA Tour.

This picture justifies why this is called the Pebble Beach!!!


The Palm Drive at Stanford University. It did look very very good. The day we drove into this university, there was a wedding at the cathedral and lots of people arriving for the wedding. There was a huge limo waiting for the newly wed couple - with attenders dressed in traditonal attire and with almost a royal presence. :)

A view of the Oracle Headquaters from the main road - Ralston Avenue.
To round this post off - I have one picture left from the Yosemite trip which I really liked. You can see that here below.

Yosemite - a video clip

This is a video clip of the Yosemite Valley!! I think we got it initially wrong by holding the camera in the wrong direction. But all the same, you can get a wonderful view of the place!!

This is nature at its serene best!!!

This is a small movie that captures the drive from our place of work to the hotel. A good drive - almost deserted - and a enjoyable one at that.

Happy viewing!

Yosemite - What a Trip!!

Our next trip was to Yosemite. We expected the place to be picturesque - but to tell you the truth, we really did not expect it to be this good. Some of the views were breathtaking and it looked as if we were right inside a calendar. Take a look at this picture towards the right. If you remove me from this picture, it will look straight out of a calendar. :)
Since this is summer, we hardly expected to see snow, but then the moment we entered this part of Yosemite, we saw the white snow capped mountains. To say that we were amazed is an understatement. The only expression that came out of us was a big - WOW! This is not the first time I am seeing snow - but the it was still a sight to behold. This place brought out a kind of weird streak in us. We took our cameras out and started clicking like two mad men. The photograph below is just another awesome view of this really, really, wonderful spot in this part of the world.
The unfortunate thing about a 3.2 MP digital camera is that it does not provide pictures with "depth". If you look at the picture here, it does not really make you feel that I am standing at a point which is a clear 5000 ft above sea level and I am actually overseeing a valley that is just huge. The experience of being there is just not captured. It is just a photograph that I can use to remind myself of this experience - an experience that will stay fresh for a lifetime. It was a bright and sunny day, in fact, a little on the warmer side at 82 F, and to see these snow capped mountains was indeed a great sight.
But our astonishing journey did not just stop at looking at these snow capped mountains. We even got to touch and feel the snow. I don't really understand how we really were able to see snow on the road side at 82 F!! Subodh and I did not waste one moment to stop the car, and rush into these woods and click some snaps with the icy cold snow in our hands. When we told people after we returned that we got to see snow, not many people believed us. I have these snaps here just to prove a point. :)
See the snap below to see me almost meditating at this scenic site. :)




This made Subodh give meditation a try and here is he seated like a Buddha!!! In fact, I am sure Buddha would have been happier to be at a place like this. Or probably it was like that in India too more than 2000 years before. :D


And the glacier peak however looked anything but a glacier. My knowledge in geography says that a glacier is actually a large mass of ice. And this rock is anything but ice! But then, maybe it would look like a glacier in winter.

Oh! That reminds me - it was lucky that we made it to this place in summer. Seems in winter the route to glacier peak stays closed.

We then proceeded to enter the Yosemite valley. The route to the valley was again awesome - to use the oft used and probably cliched American expression. But truly, this place made me grope for words. I felt handicapped, and bereft of a good vocabulary. My limitations stand exposed today while writing this travelogue.







I have seen these only on Discovery channel!! :D. That brings me to an interesting discussion that Subodha and I had. Are there not similar, if not more, beautiful places in India? There are, but unfortunately, we do not promote tourism the way the Americans do. So such places are not very easily accessible by road. The Western Ghats in Kerala, Karnataka and the Konkan region are probably the best places in the world. Wish we are able to go to such places as easily as we are able to in the United States.
The photograph on the right is the Yosemite Falls. I don't think I need to say anything about this absolutely fabulous view. And the photograph below probably even looks like a fake - like a postcard.

A Sight to Behold!

When we started out on this small trip to the Golden Gate Bridge, I thought heck, this is just another trip to this place. I have seen this bridge before and I did not think much about it. I thought maybe Subodh would love to see this place.
The moment we turned into the curve that led to the bridge, I could feel myself leave out a short "Gasp!" - what an awesome sight it was that unravelled right in front of our eyes. The bridge beckoned us in all its glory and splendour. 

The Livermore Temple

My weekly trip to a temple continues in the USA. I visit this temple every week. It is one of the better temples that I have seen in the US. Not to mention, that the drive to Livermore is awesome.
We also saw Peoplesoft, now Oracle, buildings on the way to this temple.

I will never get tired of this sight!

The beach has always had a calming effect on me - be it at the Marina in Chennai or at the Half Moon Bay in California. The Pacific ocean here was not as calm and quite as at the Monterey Bay but it was still not as rough as the Bay of Bengal.
The water was icy cold though - not that I fancy getting into the water anyway - and one cannot imagine getting the feet wet in the waves.
Can you believe me if I say that this was a foggy day during summer, and that there was a light drizzle and low visibility? And within 10 miles away from the beach, we had bright sunlight and no clouds, drizzle or fog. :) 

How did I manage this?

The Mystery Spot became even more mysterious when I managed to stand this way without losing my balance. In fact I did not feel that I was tilting forward. The strange force at this spot made me feel a little heavy headed too!!! 

At the Mysterious Spot :)

I was standing right outside the Mystery Spot. The place looks calm and has no signs of any mystery. Is the story of the Mystery Spot really true? 

The Monterey Bay

You can see the Pacific Ocean behind me. I could realize why they named it the Pacific - it was so calm and quite and the only noise that we could hear was that of people on this terrace. The town can be seen at a distance behind me and there were people having a good time boating as well. 

Gushing Waters!

No - I am not standing next to a water fall. This is just a periodic gushing of water that is used to simulate the splashing of water on rocks on a rocky seashore. The effect can be experienced only when seen from the inside. This photo was just to picture the water gushing!! :) 

Monterey!!

The town looks straight out of an old English movie. They have tried to retain the look which adds to the charm of this small but very busy town. 

Colorful Monterey

Monterey is a picturesque small town, almost a village. This picture was right next to the place where we parked our car. The tree next to me is just beautiful. Phew! 

A Humbling Experience

When I stood between these two trees, I realized how small I am when compared to the rest of the world. Here are two huge trees, on my sides, and the camera is able to cover just 10% of their height. You can imagine how the tall and wide they really were. This was an amazing sight to behold. 

Can I make this my home? :)

This looked awesome. The tree was hollow and even split at the bottom and yet stood quite tall. How did it manage to? I do not know the answer. But the space at the bottom of the tree made me feel that one small family of 2-3 people can easily make it their place of stay. :)
 

Bridge to Nowhere?

Is this the bridge to nowhere? Look at how thick the forest is behind Subodh.

 

Exploring the Redwood Forest

It was quite an experience, to explore the Redwood Forests reserve at the Big Basin. This was the place where we entered the forest. The beginning of an amazing 2-3 hours of walking around in the woods.

Driving in USA :)

I was back behind the wheels in the USA after almost 3.5 years and after an initial couple of days of apprehension, I was back at my very best on the roads. I have been driving so much on this trip that I believe I am making up for all those miles lost in the last 3.5 years.

Tour Dairy - 2

The last couple of days have been real fun. I ventured into the freeways with an enthusiasm that a child would display while entering a candy store. I decided to go to a place that I was familiar with - Fremont. My colleague and I got back from work to the hotel, had a quick wash and off we were on my Ford Taurus screaming past exits on the 101 South towards Dumbarton bridge. The evening traffic on this route was heavy but nothing compared to the 1999-2001 period when traffic moved bumper to bumper.

When I got on to 880 South, a wave of nostalgia swept me back in time as I saw the Thornton Avenue exit. I was on my turf now and I needed no maps to guide me. I drove straight to Coconut Hill on Cedar Blvd and we got some frozen Indian food and snacks. We then drove to the New Park mall and ambled around for sometime before we returned to the Coconut hill strip mall. We ate at Woodlands and the food was really good. oh! How I wish this hotel existed when I lived in Fremont. My wife and I could only go to Udupi if we wanted some authentic (well....more or less) South Indian food.

On my return trip, my colleague commented - "so are you getting used to the roads - I can see you are more confident now". That made my day.

Today we decided to go to Sunnyvale and had some decent food at Saravanabhavan. I probably overate and am struggling with my tummy even as I type this blog.

It has been a very busy day with tons and tons of work piling on my plate. I am filling in for two others who are going on vacation this month. On top of this was the announcement of yet another acquisition by Oracle. This was followed by some serious gossip on the acquisition with a sales person who had sold Oracle's product against the acquired product in the midst of fierce competition. The guy was wondering what he was going to tell his customers now. :)

Life at HQ is what you can call as "Boring" - with a big B. There is hardly any face to face interactions and the whole place is like a museum. Quite and dull. Each man/woman is unto himself/herself - people do not go together even for tea or coffee or lunch. If you are to go to lunch with someone, it has to be planned in advance. No dropping in at a cube and asking "Lunch?" ;) No group chai sessions or the animated discussions on Oracle v/s IT services companies or the debate on reservations. The place is vey quite and dreadfully desolate.

Given this scenario, I guess it makes real sense to outsource for the Americans. If interactions are by Instant messenger, phone or email even within the team here, then how does it make a difference if the person is sitting here at HQ or at far away IDC?

Met an old colleague of mine and went all nostalgic for close to half an hour. Will meet him again later during the weekend for a further dose of nostalgia. :-D

The next time someone at IDC crib about food at the cafeteria, I am going to ship him on the next flight to HQ and condemn him to lifelong sentence of food at the cafeteria here. :p

Ciao then. I am signing off for the day and will post later this weekend. We plan to go out someplace nice.

Tour Diary

I reached San Francisco this afternoon - at 11:50 AM Pacific Time.

It was a short trip - comparatively speaking. The trip via Singapore usually is long and arduous - with a long transit time at the gorgeous yet artificially boring Changi airport. However, my travel agent was kind towards me - she booked me on a flight to SFO with just a 2 and 1/2 hour lay off at Singapore - time just enough to to avoid atrophy of my limbs and freshen up.

I spent almost the entire trip either sleeping or watching Tamil movies. One of the advantages of traveling Singapore Airlines is you get to see Tamil movies and these are trimmed just enough to interest you - all movies on SQ are trimmed to 120 minutes. I saw two Vijay movies - Sivakasi on the Hyderabad-Singapore leg and Aathi on the Singapore-SFO leg. I also saw Rang De Basanti which I thought was a brilliant movie with a poor climax - almost an anti-climax if you were to mention that.

Landed at SFO and breezed through customs except for an interesting experience of filling up the custom declaration form for a US citizen. :) Yes - this man was from the villages of Bihar, cannot speak or write a word in English but flaunted a US passport and the immigration's officer requested me (I was next in line) to translate what the guy said and also fill his form. Interestingly this guy spoke in Hindi and I was struggling to follow him. The immigration officer asked me later why I found it difficult to understand that guy - I said we don't share the same native tongue and that was why. That was all the guy actually asked me. He gave me a straight 3 months I-94 without even wanting to know why I had landed in the USA.

Checked in at the Hotel and then had a quick lunch with some packed food items I had brought. Later I called up Hertz and rented a car and started driving around the place. I have not ventured into the freeways yet!

I am back in the bay area after almost 3 and 1/2 years - a lot of nostalgia and some deja vu moments too. The country seems to be almost exactly the way I left it way back in 2003 :) - something you would not notice in India - every trip to India would throw up something startling new. Maybe these are signs of a developed economy. Nothing interesting other than that so far other than getting locked out of my room. I did not take the room key card with me - took the front desk guy 10 seconds to issue me a duplicate. :)

I called up home to let them know I reached safe and sound. Will talk to them again tomorrow when I get to work. The office buildings - an awesome sight for a first timer here - are just a stone's throwaway from the suite where I am put up. The place is gorgeous - close to the lagoon and cars seem to zip by unmindful of the speed limits.

Got a call from my wife's cousin and then a cousin of my father. I plan to use Skype to talk to people.

Will be back tomorrow with more tour jottings.

Reservation - the issue rages on

I got the following article by email. I am not sure if this was indeed written by Prof. Balakrishnan. I am providing the article in-toto and leave the rest to the readers.

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Nearly six decades after independence, this country is planning to announce that majority of its population is backward and does not have equal opportunity to pursue education and employment. Along with this, it is going to open up a Pandora's Box by various caste groups to be classified as "backward". What an interesting way to begin the 21st century when finally India was beginning to emerge as a serious player in the new knowledge economy! The major carrot that is being doled out is the seats in the elite medical, engineering and management Institutes. What bothers me is no one is interested in even consulting the people who have built these Institutions and brought them to this stature. I have strong views on efficacy of reservations in general but here I would confine myself to the issues concerning IITs. At least here with my three decade long association, I can claim to know something. Many of these arguments may be applicable to the other elite Institutions in medical and management disciplines as well.

Today IITs are considered excellent educational institutions. There is a countrywide scramble to get into these with many students spending the best part of their teen years in preparing for its entrance examinations. This should not be confused with ranking of universities where just a couple of IITs make it in the top 500. These rankings deal primarily with the research output and not with the quality of undergraduate education. I can confidently say that any ranking of quality of undergraduate engineers produced would put IITs in the top 20 worldwide if not in the top 10. And it is this achievement that is going to be hard to maintain with the proposed reservations policy. Before we go any further, it would be best to examine how this excellence has been achieved.

The fundamental contribution that the Central Government has made to these institutions is in generous funding (by Indian, not global standards) combined with unmatched autonomy. The main point of engagement between the Government and these Institutions has been through the appointment of Directors. Except for a brief period during the last administration, the Governments had refrained from any major politicking in these appointments. They have by and large appointed the best available applicant Professor from the same or another IIT for the job. These venerable people had themselves a great pride in these Institutions and have ran the Institutes with the best of their abilities (maybe not always efficiently but always fairly) without major vested interest.

For someone outside IITs to understand the power of this position is not easy. The Director virtually appoints the complete senior administration including the deputy directors and deans, chairs all the faculty selections including that for the Professors, is the chairman of the senate and thus the academic head, is the financial head and also the administrative head. For most people living in the campus, which includes 90% of faculty and students, he is also the chairman of the local municipality (all major complaints on water, electricity, sewage etc. would reach him). This ensures that the buck almost always stops with him and thus decision making is unavoidable. This autonomy that has been the hallmark of these institutions is being eroded. There were attempts in the last Government (fortunately not vigorously pursued) to tell IITs what to teach. The present decision would strike at the fundamentals of IITs as the Government no longer feels whom to teach and how many to teach is best decided by these Institutions themselves. This in my opinion is the most dangerous fallout as it strikes at the very core of the success of these Institutions. Once the lines of control gets blurred, there would be no stopping, as today's political functioning is clearly not dictated by long term vision. Soon we could have reservations in faculty and create a caste based patronage system which has destroyed many of the once excellent state universities.

In IITs, the faculty selected and promoted solely based on merit has maintained a high standard of ethical behavior, have taken their teaching and research seriously, refrained from politicking themselves and supported the Institute in many ways to fulfill its commitments. Who are these faculty members? A large number are our own alumni (undergraduates as well as postgraduates), majority of them have studied or conducted research in the west and almost all of them have had opportunities of pursuing financially much more lucrative careers in India and abroad. Thus each faculty member is here by choice and he/she has exercised that choice with one major attraction - opportunity to teach, interact and work with extremely bright students perhaps unmatched anywhere. It is this attraction that is being tampered with. In a situation where all IITs are short of faculty and desperately trying to innovate to attract faculty under the constraints of the pay commission dictated salaries (while competing with Sensex based salaries), this is not a pleasant development.

IITs have had reservations for SC/STs for decades. Why would this be different? Aren't these students likely to be better prepared than the students admitted under the existing reserved category? Here I would like to share some of the facts with the readers. IITs have been admitting SC/ST students for years under two modes. From the general category, a significantly lower JEE cutoff is decided and reserved category students scoring above this cutoff are admitted directly to the UG programmes. Another still lower cutoff is decided and reserved category students from this set are admitted to a one year preparatory course conducted by IITs themselves. After passing this course, they can join the programmes without having to appear in JEE again. Even this exercise collectively yields less than 15% in IIT Delhi though the quota amounts to nearly 22.5%. Half of the reserved category students manage to clear courses comfortably while the other half struggle on the margins. What would be called a good performance (cumulative grade point average or CGPA of 8 and above) and is achieved by nearly forty percent of general category students, is rare and occurs once in many years among the reserved category students. It is not that all general category students do well. There is nearly a 5% "dropout" rate even among them which is a cause of concern but mainly attributed to the burnout due to JEE preparation phase. The "dropout" students have no effect on teaching as they neither are regular nor make their presence felt in classes. The remaining part of weak students is too small and at present hardly any instructor would pitch his / her course at that level. On the other hand, the present policy may introduce a large band of weak students which no instructor can ignore. This would definitely result in drop in the quality of education. It is the hypocrisy of the highest order that on one hand the reservation for SC/STs is considered a success and quoted for extension to OBCs, and on the other hand, no hard data on the performance of these students is available in the public domain. Some administrators I talked to consider this data as sensitive! Analysis of where the reserved category students go after graduation would be enlightening. I do not have the sensitive data but my experience shows that most of them either go to services like IAS/IES or to the public sector companies. Normally this choice of careers by IIT graduates should be a matter of satisfaction except that both these entries are again using the reservation quota. Is it empowerment or crutches for life?

In this whole episode, the most stunning news for me was when the Hon'ble minister announced increase in intake to compensate for the reservations. This would amount to nearly 56% overall increase in undergraduate intake in the IITs. This showed complete ignorance of what makes IIT undergraduate education tick. There are few
Institutions in the world where undergraduate students get to interact one to one and so freely with such high-caliber faculty. Students are advised on courses in small groups, interact over hostel dinners, go on industrial trips and finally carry out a well supervised project. Every undergraduate student does an intensive "novel" project either individually or in groups of two and he/she is effectively supervised" by a faculty member. Many of them result in publications. This system evolved when the student-faculty ratio was 6:1 and is getting strained at the seams when it has reached 12:1. In some disciplines like Computer Sciences and Electrical Engineering where market competition is heavy, it has already gone to 20:1 and above. Though currently producing excellent results, it is a highly non-scalable mechanism. Intake increase on this scale, when effectively faculty strengths in key areas are decreasing could sound a death-knell to one of our few international brand names.

I have a poser for Prof. Jayati Ghosh, my well renowned colleague from JNU and a member of the knowledge commission. She has justified reservations in IITs based on the poor ranking of IITs internationally. Her argument is anyway these Institutions are not great, why they should crib about the quality of intake. She nowhere states that any of the 400+ odd Institutions worldwide which are ranked above IITs have achieved their status through reservations. In that case all Tamil Nadu Engineering Colleges with 69% reservation for decades (openly defying the Supreme Court suggested norm of 50%) now should be at the top.

Postscript: Finally, I would like to seek opinion on the composition of our next Olympics team. We have admittedly done much poorer in sports than education. Should our next Olympics team be chosen on caste basis or perhaps with adequate representation to athletes aged 40+ who are at present completely unrepresented? After all we do not have much to lose as we only win one bronze medal in alternate Olympics. I would no longer be surprised if some future Sports Minister considers caste based quotas for our national cricket team. After all that would be worth a few votes and the nation would have been well prepared by then to cheer only for its own caste brethren!

The author is a Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at IIT Delhi. He has been with IIT Delhi since 1977 except for a three year stint outside India. Currently he is on Sabbatical and working with a startup. The views represented here are completely his own.

M. Balakrishnan (mbala@cse.iitd.ac.in)
5, Taxila Apartments
IIT Delhi Campus,
New Delhi - 110016

My first post

This is my baby step into the world of blogging.

I have also started a blog at http://www.jambav.com/jambav/blogs/ - this is related to parenting and I would like to restrict my posts to just that.

Here I hope to get more time to post things I would like to write on whenever I find time.