Rubberducking

How many times have you experienced this : you are splitting you  hair (assuming you you have enough ) over some problem for hours and not able to make any headway . Then you call  your friend 2 cubicles away and ask for help. You  start explaining the problem to the friend and just halfway through it when you say : "Oh! It seems I got it!". Did your friend help you? I do not mean to offend your carbon based human friend, but in this case , even a rubber-duck would be able to help you as well because it was YOU who found out the problem while explaining it to your friend. This phenomenon is called "rubber ducking". So it basically means that when stuck with some seemingly difficult problem, talk to a rubber-duck, a plastic duck or for that matter any other duck. Even your dog, cat, cow, fish, goat, crow, pigeon or maybe your best friend will do, it does not matter. Explain the problem in detail and you will be surprised how many times you get to the root of it.

While rubber-ducking, it's the talking that matters. Explaining your problem out loud is often enough to shake things loose in your brain, expose bad assumptions, and cause you to see things in a new way. Speaking out loud accesses those parts of your brain which are not accessible while just "thinking". The act of explaining something gives you a new perspective on the topic. This is the reason why teaching is considered the best way to learn, as it forces us to explain our understanding of the subject and lets us see the things from a multitude of our students' perspectives.

So teach what you learn, spread the knowledge and be sure that you will be the one who would benefit the most .And next time you are stuck with the misbehaving code or some other such silly problems of life, talk to the rubber duck, and if that sounds too embarrassing to do in your cubicle, then by all means call your friend and explain. And yes, do not forget to thank him to be your rubber-duck (or your rubber penguin :).

Tata's new $2500 people's car.. Nano

I read the NY Times article about the Tata nano car. It is a good read, however the part about Elephants is wrong. We hardly get to see any Elephants in India nowadays. All references to India contain either Elephant or snakes, however it is so sad that they are not easy to find nowadays :( . I would have preferred them to the malls that are opening up every other day here .

But its true that the road discipline is non-existent. I imagine that after the nano, the roads will be used only as car-park in Mumbai .. and there will be only pedestrians.. all walking on top of the nanos 'parked' on the roads .

The car is good but the roads here are really bad. People here do not participate much in adventure sports, I used to think that it is because of some other reasons, but now I understand that an average Indian gets enough dose of adventure in his daily commute to office. After that, he is mostly content with watching the Americans jumping off the mountains or planes in search of adventure on TV :) and wondering why would somebody want to do that after a day out in the traffic???

Still, people have to travel in very unsafe transport. Seeing a family of a man , woman and an infant and maybe another child , all riding a scooter in such traffic is nostalgic ( as I used to be in the role of that infant once ) as well as worrying . A small affordable car can be of great use. However it will be a disaster for Indian roads . The cities here can be hundreds of years old sometimes and were never designed for any kind of cars..

That's why I am looking for the next Tata innovation .. a people's airplane  . I know it seems so incredible, but a 1 lakh ( $ 2000 car at that time's exchange rate) seemed as incredible at the time when Ratan Tata expressed his dreams.

Back to India ... part II

First few days back in India. With memories of Japan tending to settle down and getting ready to go behind the layers of the latest of the monotony of life back home. I have to dust off and oil all the systems that make up my little solitary home at Mumbai.

The television offers a lot of nonsense : the intelligent people in media have long realized that nonsense is far more interesting than the reality.Movies are getting better, but I have no appetite to watch one in a theater. So I listen to some Dire Straits songs : frozen in time and as fresh as it was a few days back.My phone at home has died and mobile is lost. With everyone chatting away on a mobile in Mumbai, I find it a great luxury to talk to anyone anytime using that little brick called a mobile phone. Going back to mobile-less prehistoric age is not easy I guess.

After struggling with Japanese, its a great relief to find everyone talking in my language.. Hindi .. and officially in English. Its not a struggle anymore to communicate a word or two . The trouble is that I will have to (again) listen to people who communicate more than necessary. This is one thing I was spared of in Japan.

Back to India

The TV interview in Japan was telecasted as expected, and I got a footage of it recorded with the help of Lee - my Chinese friend in Japan. But inevitably, I am back to India, and am finding a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes with my blogs. Its time to reflect I guess.

Japan is a great country, with its people so disciplined and understated. 'Order' is the theme in that beautiful country. I land in Mumbai and the theme changes from 'order' to 'chaos' . But the chaos here is more familiar than the order in Japan. I wonder why do I like this chaos ? I hear a consistent chirpy voice of a newly married girl reading aloud all the boards in the airport to her mildly embarrassed but still doting husband- that is something I could find only here. Japanese women never talk like this , they are too silent and compliant. And i find American women too harsh on my ears. India is at the middle. As Budddha says, "Take the middle path", I guess its the middle path which makes India so unique. It falls right in the middle of wild west and mild east.

India has too many voices, too many peoples. Somebody grown up on India's diversified diet would find other places insipid. That's why you would find an Indian travelling to a foreign land almost always with a supply of a few days of Indian food.

There is simply too much to experience in India. "India is an assault on the senses" says a popular guide to India ."Sweet assault", I mutter as I load my baggage in a rag-tag taxi taking me back home.

My First TV Interview for Japan TV

"I have been here for a 13 years and nobody noticed, you are here for last 3 weeks and you are going to be on Japan's national TV already?? I can't believe it !" That was the reaction when I told my American client in Japan that I was interviewed while coming to work by NHK (Japan's public broadcaster). The life is obviously unfair.

So I started for office early morning as usual from my Nishi-Kasai apartment . I dropped some garbage in 3 different trash cans as the Japanese do and pressed the iPod's 'play'. A few steps later I found a girl, a cameraman and a sound assistant with a microphone almost lurking behind some invisible hideout, crouching for a prey . They were silently waiting for something or somebody. I looked on curiously and then turned and started waiting for walk sign to cross the road. "Hello" I heard from behind, and found that the crouching tigers have found the hidden dragon, i.e. me!.

The girl started "We are making a program on the Indian proficiency in Mathematics... can we ask some questions?" . "So I am being interviewed", I thought, I felt exited with the prospect and at the same wondered what they would ask . I tried to summon all my forgotten Maths knowledge thinking that I might finally spoil India's name today . Will they ask me about the differential calculus or some Fourier transform ?? I wondered.

My thought train was halted by a microphone which was thrust towards me and a cameraman who seemed be already in the process of filming the events. But the girl reporter was the most merciful who showed me a cardboard with a problem and said "I will show you some problems, could you please answer them?", I was relieved when I looked at the cardboard, it was something like 4 *6.I answered it . Then another card with a similar easy problem, I answered it correctly too. Then she showed me 25 *25, it took no time to answer that it is 625 ( square of 25). Two more such questions were answered with increasing difficulty. I received each further question with some trepidation which I had almost forgotten since the school days. Then she showed me her most difficult question : 19*23. A few seconds later I could reply that it was 437. She seemed satisfied and then asked me to show how I arrived at the answer so quickly. The cameraman focused once on me and then on the card where I started revealing the secret of how I arrived at the answer. The calculation is : 23*19= (23*20)-23 = 437.

Then she asked me to hold the cardboard and look at the camera for 5 seconds, I stood with a smiling face . I was thinking all the things that could have gone wrong but didn't. I was smiling because I had just finished my life's first interview in Japan. The myth of Indian mathematical proficiency was alive for another day, and it was done by just showing that I could do some primary school multiplication.. very generous of the reporter.

This interview is hopefully going to be broadcasted tomorrow in one of the two channels of Japan's national TV. I am already a micro-nano celebrity :) .. in Japan.

Perils of little knowledge

More about little knowledge. I am learning a lot about the perils of using little knowledge and the little risks it comes with .Whenever I read a few new Japanese words , I feel like trying it out in the open. Till now , I have inflicted my Japanese on a taxi driver, a shopkeeper and some other less fortunate individuals here in Japan.

The results have been less than spectacular. The taxi driver looked like he pitied my lack of intelligence , the shopkeeper replied about the price by talking in Japanese numbers and after looking at the blank expression, used his calculator to actually show the price in digital form . The other less fortunate individuals had similar reactions . To understand their situation, the 'Lord of the Rings' movie dialogues are instructive:

Pained with his situation, Frodo says to Gandalf ,

"I wish the ring had never come to me...I wish none of this had happened."

on this, Gandalf says :
"So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

So these individuals tried their best to deal with the situation given to them. In other words, they had to use all their resourcefulness to answer my questions.

Firstly and naturally, they would speak in fluent Japanese because I asked the question in Japanese. Then, when they find out that that I had already used all the Japanese I knew, they try to use some very broken English . After this point some gave up with the cross sign using their fingers , meaning they are at their wits end , and left. Some others used sign language to make me understand their point .

I have very few days left here , nevertheless, I intend to keep up the good show.

Japanese and Bihari

Little knowledge is dangerous and the little knowledge I am gaining of Japanese might be no exception to this. I am trying to learn Japanese a little. I read a Japanese learning book everyday though I might never be able to use Japanese much. Its a disappointing thought but I am trying to keep the (non) usefulness of learning away from the joy of learning it.

So, armed with my little knowledge of Japanese,I have been drawing premature parallels with other languages I know : namely Hindi and English. The Japanese learning book I have is in English and I do my thinking in Hindi. So its two levels of translations I have to do to understand something. But then after a day or two I discovered that Japanese is more like Hindi than English:grammar wise. The subject, object and the verbs are arranged in Japanese and Hindi in the same way. But even more interesting is some literal parallels with Bihari, (a Hindi dialect) Example:

Bihari's often add 'wa' after a noun . e.g. if you want to say "That building is here "


Woh building-wa idhar hai.
( Woh= that , idhar=here , hai = is )

Incidentally, Japanese do the same :

Ano Biru -wa sono des.

( Ano = that ,biru= building, sono= here , des= is )

So,in this case, a straight,simple literal translation from Bihari will give you a correct Japanese translation :)

Another example, Bihari's add a 'ka' at the end of a sentence to make a question from a sentence. Example, if you want to say, " Is that building here?"


Woh building-wa yahan hai ka?
(woh= that, yahan = here ,hai= is )


A Japanese would say :

Ano biru-wa doko des ka ?
( Ano= that, biru=building, doko= here, des= is)

With such miniature discovery and enlightenment, I was already feeling like a Japanese expert. But before long, my pride took a beating. The reason is that today I said "Ohayo gozaimus" ( good morning) to a girl in the bank instead of "Arigato gozaimus"( thank you). Thankfully the she understood what I wanted to say because I have learned to bow at every excuse, or the lack of it ( I am a natural at it). She said something in Japanese with an expression which gave away friendly understanding and enjoyment of my situation and also some appreciation of the large effort I was putting on my brain to find the right words on the spur of the moment.