Thai-Laos-Cambodia trip

All major decisions start with a random conversation. It was in one such conversation that Avinash suddenly popped on a question asking me if I am game for Angkor Wat. I was in a state of depression after going through my MBA application process and decided that I needed a break very badly. So I decided to grab the oppurtunity.

After hectic planning for about 2 months and the destination varying from Hampi., Petra , Jerusalem, Mandalay , Hanoi based on visa requirements we decided to go to Thailand , Laos and Cambodia. 

About a month before we started Naveen confirmed his availability for the trip. This made sure that the trip will never be short of fun. Despite all the plannings we were sure about only visiting the Kong Lor caves and Angkor Wat. we still were not sure about what we going to do in the middle. 

We started on the 15th of December from Chennai. We got a taste of how the trip was going to be. At the airport we were held up by the Thai immigration demanding that we show either $400 or 10,000 Bhat in hard cash for the visa. Avinas and I talked our way out while Naveen was held up. Naveen made it a point to mention that we 2 got through and got his visa. His idea was that either all 3 get kicked out or all 3 get in to Thailand :P.

We picked our luggage from the carousel only to discover that Avinash's backpack has been damaged. The solution given by the Air Asia back pack handler was inadequate we still took what replacement he gave and moved on. We caught a rickety train to the Hua Lampong ( i heard it as qua lampong the first time and Naveen never managed to get this right until the end of the trip) from the airport. After seeing that train i decided that Indian trains deserve a special reward for speed. The train took little over an hour to travel about 30 kms. Sometimes i felt the hosues were too close to the train tracks. 

On reaching Hua Lampongh a helpful Thai Railway employee helped us to book tickets to Nong Khai (route 69 train) We dumped our bags in the cloak room and decided to go to the Grand Palace , Wat Phoo and Wat Arun. With the help of the tourist information center we managed to get a bus (no 53) to the Grand Palace. At the Palace we discovered that we were not allowed to wear full length trousers to get in. Thankflly Avinash and I had our pants with us. We found a nice quite spot and changed. We had a very hot humid day. The guide at the palace (I think his name was Ken).

Bangkok made us feel that Chennai is like Kodaikanal. In a winter day it was horridly humid and hot. On our way back from the grand palace we boarded the bus no 53 which was going away from the Grand palace (much like how we would do in Chennai) All 3 of us were really tired and we slept off. After an hour or so we discovered that we were heading straight back to the Grand Palace. With just 2 hours left to board our train we found the right bus to tae us to the railway station ( all thanks to Avinash's insistence on using public transport through the trip) We reached the station with a lot of time left for a spartan dinner of donuts and cakes. 

Our expereince with the Bangkok suburban trains made us to expect the worst when it  comes to Thai trains but thankfully the train from Bangkok to Nong Khai was in fact very very good. We had a good night's sleep. The next morning i woke up Avinash and Naveen much before the train reached Nong Khai much to their irritation (a prelude to what I would be doing all through the trip ie. wake them up at unearthly hours) 

To our surprise the temperature at Nong Khai was around 7-10 degrees. None of us had any warm clothing with us. We had a uneventful immigration and visa stamping. We reached Vientiane from the border post and using the map which we took from the border post we managed to find our way to the hotel. (Hotel Sinnakhone) The hotel was really good and quite cheap too.

We spent the day on a loaned cycle roaming around Vientiane, a small , clean and beautiful city. We got up the next day to get our bus to Ban Nahin from where we intended to go to Kong Lor. We missed the direct bus to Nahin. The clerk at the bus station helped us by booking a bus on another route. She was kind enough to write in Loatian the route we need to take (so that we can show it to the locals and get their help).

The first bus took about 6 hours to travel a distance which cannot be more than 200 km. We missed the last bus from our transit point to Ban Nahin. We were stranded in the middle of nowhere (the place had 4 thatched houses and one guest on a highway) and it was quite dark. 

Then came to our rescue the Songtheaw , the Laotian equivalent of Meen Body vandi which had provision to seat about 8 people. We haggled over the price and managed to convince him to take the 3 of us for a distance of 40 kms for 100,000 Kip (about $12.5) 

We reached Ban Nahin which was freezing cold. We located the Inthapanya guest house. We dumped our bags and went for dinner. We met a Malaysian Tamilian who was working as a site supervisor for a hydel power project near Ban Nahin. He helped to translate to the cook that we were vegetarian and helped us get food without meat. 

The next morning I woke early (as usual) and went for a walk in the freezing cold. I got panicked by the fact that there was no motorbike rental oulet in Ban Nahin. I thought that our plans to bike to Kong Lor was screwed. I went and transmitted my panic to Naveen. We both once again took a walk around to find a bike outlet!!!

We drove to Kong Lor , the caves was a truly amazing expereince. It was eerie and dark but the whole experience was absolutely fabulous. The light at the end of the cave was a sight to behold.

It was near the end of the cave that Avinash and I were so engrossed with taking pictures that we were unable to help the boatman and Naveen from controlling the boat (despite their cals for help :P ) in the process of trying to pull the boat Naveen cut his fingers and lost his foaters :D 

Our way back to ban Nahin was uneventful except for Avinash's puncture which scared us all. We reached Nahin and rushed to catch our bus for the onward journey. This was the part of the trip we had no plans for. We made a ad-hoc decision to go to Pakse. 

We once got down at the middle of nowhere T-junction from where we boarded the songtheaw to Nahin. We caught a bus to Nahin. We were asked to change to another bus somewhere in the middle of the trip. it was in this bus that Navin's love story started. he met Kathy ,a Laotian girl. This was just like in Anniyan except for that Naveen did everything that Vivek wanted Vikram to do in that movie. 4 hours of continous kadalai (not to mention the fact that even this Laotian girl found me to be scary, i guess all this happens in a rowdy's life) 

We got down at Pakse at around 2 in the morning. We roamed about in the street for a room. In the process we woke up a few hotel clerks. Finally we got a room at Hotel Pakse. One incident which is worth remembering is my "conversation" with the owner of Nazim's. Nazims is a Indian food chain in Laos. The owner happened to be a Tamil gentleman.My explanation to him on why we did not complete dinner that night vexed him and drove Navin and Avinash to splits. We spent time around Pakse and we decided to move to Siem Reap on the next day. 

Our bus started at 7 when we boarded the bus. We had a uneventful border crossing and finally we reached Siem Reap at 5 the next morning. Siem Reap was a nice place which was built for tourists. The Siem Reap hostel where we stayed was an amazing place which arranged tuks tuks and tours for us at reasonable prices. On the first day we hired bicycles to the War Museum. A place managed by mine victims. We talked to one person who was telling us about how Khmer Rogue killed his whole family. 

The sun set view on the plains of Angkor was a real dampener. It was a pretty ordinary site which most of us have seen everywhere. The enthusiasm shown by the other tourist (mostly a massive Chinese Contingent) confused us.

The next morning we woke up at 5 to catch the sun rise over Angkor Wat. Sadly it was a cloudy morning. We spent the whole day jumping between temples. It was truly a sight to behold, the scale of the temples and the intricacies of the scupltures made the trip worth while. After being overwhelmed by visiting temples for about 7 hours we decided to call it a day. 

The next day we spent the time at the floating village which was close to Siem Reap.   The evenings we spent around the night market of Siem Reap (avoiding people who were incessantly offering us "boom boom" messages). We were scheduled to leave Siem on Christmas day. The previous night being Christmas eve the whole town was on a party mode. Avinash and Naveen spent time hopping between bars (and running from matter girls and bombing photos and .............)

On Christmas day we boarded the flight from Sieam Reap to Bangkok and from Bangkok to Chennai (only entertainment being a couple of pretty Ukrainian girls )

On the whole it was an amazing trip. Avinash's ability to not wake up int he mornings , Naveen's (and sometime Avinash's and my) snoring , Naveen's paranoia to visit rest rooms when ever he sees one and my epic and near incessant blabbering added to the comic elements of the trip apart from the wonderful people we met (the Laotian guy whom we met on the Songtheaw to Ban nahin who had an insanely good ability to learn english, an Australaian who spent 3 years roaming around India, a Dutch gentleman who working illegally in Malaysia and a Frenchman who kept bumping on us where ever we went were some of the interesting ppl we met) , the amazing places we saw andthe crazy adventures made the trip a truly once in a lifetime event.

Some good in screwed up times.

We live in depressing times. How many of you felt that India was the worst country to live in the past 6 months??How many of you felt that the government in India is the most useless and government servants the worst that one could imagine?  I am here to make you feel better for being Indian and change your perspective on how the government servants work. To help me do that Iam going to cite the event of Kumbh Mela. I want to give a disclaimer, I am not here to campaign for Congress or the Samajwadi party.

The Kumbh Mela is the Hindu event to commomerate the alignment of Jupiter aligning of Jupiter and the Sun. It is believed that dipping in the Ganga will relieve of all ur mortal sins. The Mahakumbh mela is held once in 144 years. This year the MahaKumbh was held in Allahabad. 80 Million people participated in it. I read an article which was ranking the gatherings in the world according to the number of people attending it. The MahaKumbh came first with 80 million people. The next biggest event was attended by 16 million people in Iraq. Interestingly the 3^rd biggest event happened to be the funeral of Anna attended by 15 million people.

To put things into perspective Germany has a population of 81 milloion people, France has 65 million people and UK has 63 million people. In short the Govt of UP and India has together handled a crowd larger than the whole population of some of the developed countries.

How does the government handle all this crowd? They have built a mega city of of 7 lakh tents with 31 police station and over 40 police check posts, 36 fire stations and a mega super speciality hospital. This is a city which is bigger than London, Paris and New York put together. This is a proper city with sanitation facitilies , full electricity (yes people they have power there), divided into avenues and well designed pathways. 

Iam not telling this to you to extol on the achievements of the UPA or the UP govt. I feel sad when educated people like you and me sit in the cafeteria and pronounce judgements that Indian government is worthless and India itself has no future. What was achieved in Allahabad in Jan 2013 is nothing short of a miracle. Harvard University is sending a team to study this "phenomenon". On the other hand the whole media is obssessed with the most depressing news, as they say no news like bad news.

Another statistic which I would like to cite is India has an average of 1628 govt servants per 1 million people. While US has over 7200 govt servants per million people,In all developed countries it is around 6000 to 8000 govt servants per million people. In comparison the US govt does not handle the world's densest railway network, one of the most functional universal public distribution system and many other services which are provided by the Indian govt. Still they have 4.5 times more public servants than India.

Contrary to popular belief the Indian bureaucracy is not a  bloated elephant, no my friends it’s a mouse, and it is doing its best to move mountains. 

Driving in India

There are miles to go before I sleep and there are miles to go before I sleep, these are one of the most memorable lines of Robert Frost. As with anything with modern art there are so many interpretations to everything (even the creator of the art becomes startled at times) there are many interpretations to Frost's memorable lines as well. Well if Robert Frost had been in India ,Chennai or Tnagar I can give it to you in writing that he wrote those words in sheer dread of having to travel miles in the treacherous roads. I have no doubts there.

So what / who makes our roads so treacherous? Well I have madea  small list of the demons who haunt my driving experience

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First and foremost happens to be the pedestrian.The average Indian pedestrian happens to be like the King of the Jungle. He is above all rules. He does not have to wait for a signal to cross the road, he does not have to use the pedestrian cross over bridges, he does not know the foot path. Btw the zebra crossing is not something in the zoo. The thing which makes our pedestrians above the law is the fact that if a police sargaent catches a pedestrian jumping asignal he cant exactly grab his license or RC book. This lack of vulnerability makes our common man an invincible super man whose only fear in life happens to be the Metro water lorry.

The next suspect happens to be the two wheeler drivers. I love Mani Rathnam movies, but you know he has created a nuisance with his opening sequence of his film Alaipayuthey. People think its cool to drive with music blaring from head phones. They are oblivious to the honking , shouting and cursing of their fellow pedestrians and are among the biggest headaches to the normal commuters. The other league of folks would be the ones who drive vehicles which have a displacement more than 150CC. these people think they are the direct cousins of Valentino Rossi and zip across the traffic giving many an innocent  driver a heart attack in the process.

The Comercial vehicle drivers which include call taxi wallahs , share autos and Tata ace wallahs. These men have the uncanny ability to make you feel claustrophobic, even if you are not travelling in their vehicle. See they try to squeeze through such ridiculously small spaces that people around get suffocated and give them the path to overtake.  The other really really irritating and BP raising habit of these men is their tendency to honk incessantly even when they know that there is not an inch of space to move forward.

The last but the least of the villains happen to be the Lorry drivers and bus drivers.First and foremost these people don’t have brakes. Trust me. And they never take their foot of the accelerator pedals. They are like the mad elephants. Their right of way is guaranteed. On top of it 90 pc of lorries and buses would  never passed a proper fitness inspection.

You might wonder if there is anything in the road which does not haunt me. There are 2 tyes of people who dont scare me at all. First being the folks who are new to driving (yours faithfully being one among them) . The moral degeneracy of the system is yet to catch with these people. Hence they are the absolutely law abiding citizens of the road. The other bunch of people who dont scare me happens to be the people with the ridiculously expensive limousines (Jaguars, Rolls & Bentley league).These people are mostly scared to death that someone will put a scratch on their cars. hence they are double extra careful when they drive. 

So these my friends are the villains which haunt my driving. I read a very interesting article last week in the Hindu which said that driving in india is not a test of ones driving skills, it’s a test of one’s foresight, intuition, astrology and fate. I dont think anyone can sum up driving in India in a better manner.

Rajat Gupta

I dint come across Rajat Gupta until the first time I was researching on Indian School of Business. I thought he was just another Indian born CEO of an American company, I understood his true greatness only after I joined an MNC and started to realize how difficult it will be for a minority to go to the top.

    Rajat Gupta's story is like  a script to a Tamil cinema. Poor hero who is orphaned , works hard and manages to come on top of it and wins against all odds. In the current era of the Pandits and Nooyis and half a dozen other indians heading global MNCs its very difficult to assess the true difficulty in , what i beleive to be rajat Gupta's near herculean feat. It is just like in a family , its always the first child who makes all the mistakes and his/her siblings learn from those mistakes and manage to do better. In that sense I think Rajat Gupta is like the elder brother of all those NRIs who made it big.

      For someone who was orphaned at 16 , managed to crack JEE (i guess there were no Kotas and Rammiahs back then to spoil his chances) and with absolutely no money to have got into Harvard itself is a reflection of his brilliance and grit. Then to have managed to have got into Mckinsey with zilch work experience is indeed super human. he went to become the CEO of Mckinsey , the first non US born person to have occupied that position. To get a true idea of his achievement just imagine how you will feel if a hardcore Indian company like Ashok Leyland or Reliance has a non Indian as a CEO. Frankly i will feel vexed. Its pretty much how most patriotic Americans would have felt back then when Rajat Gupta achieved that position.

     What I admire the most in him is his total insulation of his goals from what other people think. If he had thought about the people around him he would have been bogged down by fear of racial prejudice and he would have never aspired to reach the top post. In my position when I think where I will be 10 years down the line in my company I cant think beyond a particular level as I am being bogged down by realistic considerations of how much a Indian can progress in an International company.

   I think we Indians have to thank Rajat Gupta, who laid the path for us dream ambitiously and to ruthlessly work towards that dream. He also made us believe that the "glass ceiling" of our careers is in our mind and we need to break just that. What ever might be his current short comings or wrong decision calls off late he has taught us all to dream and work.

IT reflects badly on us.

2012 could not have had a worse start for Tamil Nadu. Mired by controversy, the common man is made to believe that 2012 is indeed apocalyptic. We are in the middle of a power crisis that is becoming close to an existential threat and there seems to be no credible policy decisions to improve the situation and the common man has accepted the situation with the same equanimity that he accepts everything that has to do with the government (only that we have a lot of jobs and even the reputation of the state at stake). So what has led us to this dire straits?

To start with we have policy makers who believe that an investment once made in technology is like building the Brihadeshwara temple, it can sustain itself for a 1000 years (what they forgot is that the temple was very richly endowed for its upkeep) We had very little effort , in terms of money and human effort, to modernize the electrical apparatus of the state. We have a whooping 20 % transmission loss (I read somewhere that it was 30 , im giving a very conservative estimate) . As of 2011 we have an installed power capacity of 16000MW. Which means we loose 3200 MW even before the power reaches the end consumer. So why do we have such a ridiculous transmission loss? I have not made a detailed study on this issue, but I can bet my life on the fact that we stilll use antiquated technology or equipment. The lack of investment has not only bogged down our transmission lines but also our power plants. We are way behind in terms of power generation technology. The power sector until recently has been under the complete control of the public sector. There was very little R&D in this area (for that matter any area at all, in our case the build or buy equation always seems to favor the buy option, anyways we have well wishers like IMF and World bank to fund our buys) Bottom line we follow the policy of build and forget (like the fire and forget) This has landed in this spot of bother.

Next in our root causes would be inability of our engineers to come up with out of the box solutions. The state is so accustomed to solving its electricity woes by simply buying electricity from the central grid that they cannot think of anything from that. The second tool in their kitty would be to unleash the terror of load shedding indiscriminately without any major second thoughts. I guess thats the only thing that comes to their mind when they think of Demand side management ( please read http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/tamil-nadu/article2961150.ece to get an idea of some good demand side management ideas) I had studied bit of energy conservation and management in my UG. I was told by my prof (who happens to be a part time energy consultant) that US had around 2000 (not sure of the number) demand side energy managers, in India there were hardly a handful. We often blame the lack of investment on new power plants as the reason for our problems, but the actual issue would be the lack of initiative and creative thinking on the part of our electricity engineers and managers.

The last but not the least point is we as a public dont realize that there aint no such thing as free lunch. We have been corrupted by our political system. We just want power at low cost. We dont really bother about the quality of our power. We dnt mind the voltage fluctuations which has daunted us for years. Had we protested for those fluctuations probably the system would not have suffered as much. But we only want free power, not quality power. No wonder we have landed ourselves in such a quandary.

On the whole the entire trouble badly reflects not just on the simple issue of strategic policy failure but on our mind set. We dont want to face problems until they threaten to wipe us out, we dont want to think of new solutions , we believe that good time lasts forever and last but not the least we HATE technology.

Sea side suicide

Finally managed to accomplish yet another of my suicidal (ok thats exaggerated) to-do activity, to dive into the Bay of Bengal (with a life jacket). Some genius in CTC had this amazing idea to organise mid sea dives in the Kovalam beach. My colleague Murali and I jumped on to the e-mail and enlisted for this rock crazy expedition. After an uneventful ride from my home till CEG , from where Murali hitched me a ride till Thiruvanmiyur in his dynamically unbalanced Pulsar ( Bajaj engineers need to do something about the vibration I cans still feel the tremor, pity Murali for driving it to work daily) There we met up with the other CTC folks who had enlisted for the dive. There Prabhakar offered us a lift til Kovalam . we dumped Murali's bike at the Thiruvanmiyur MRTS vehicle park and went on in Prabhakar's car.

Ill never forget the drive to Kovalam for 2 reasons. First is 2 rock crazy girls , who were a part of CTC, were riding in their Activa to Kovalam. I guess they should be thankful to have reached Kovalam in one piece. They should have collided with our car at least twice (I dunno how many such near misses they had on their way). The other was a couple of drunken dudes stopping by to make money when the group Had gathered for a head count near Kovalam. Those two fellows were talking in some highly accented english and behaved like a bunch of thugs. We folks had such a laugh after they left. Poor chaps had made fools of themselves.

We finally reached Kovalam and after parking our cars in a graveyard the group ventured towards the sea. We were provided life jackets and we boarded the fishing dinghies and made towards the sea. We expected the fishermen to take us at least a km into the sea and were quite disappointed when he stopped about 500 m from the shore. Nevertheless it dint dampen our spirits. We dived into the sea.

The time in the sea made the effort truly worth it. I felt like being in an abyss of water. The water was just throwing us around and people were drifting apart. It was initially very scary. Once i realised that the fishermen were around having an eye about for us it put all my doubts and fears to rest. I simply lay around the water enjoying the view of the horizon and the sky. It was an amazing experience. With people cracking random jokes and pulling everyone's legs (literally) it was on the whole fun.

After about 45 min the water got really bouncy. The fishermen told us that the tide was on the rise and that we must get out. We all boarded (with a good amount of difficulty) and the fishermen allowed us to jump back into the water about a few metres of the shore. We all drifted happily to the beach.

I saw a really funny thing here. I drifted to the beach and removed the life jacket. I was just watching the sea when a lady came drifting to the beach. She was unable to get up and she just kept going back and forth with the waves. It was a bit humorous for me to watch , i guess the lady would have been petrified. I pulled her out of the water the next time she drifted towards the shore. Only to be asked if I was a northie (my tamil core writhed with a sense of righteous self indignation :P ) and the next question was if I was a tambrahm (as if it was written on my face!!) Had my Don Quixote moment :P

After a nice little photo session we were on our way back home. On the way back when Prabhakar was feeling a bit sleepy it was suggested that he should smoke. Then a question raised as to who else smokes and even before I could make my reply the rest of the group declared "nee lam dhum adika maata un munjileye ezhidiruku" with such a startling unity!! man I need to go for a plastic surgery to make it less obvious to people.

On the whole an awesome trip with loads of fun.

Retrospection and Introspection

Looking back at 2011 its a classical year of mixed feelings.2011 was (cannot use a past tense yet but still) a wonderful year without any doubt. The best part of the year being spending almost 3 full weeks with my sister (something which I had longed for 8 never ending years) athimber and little manas. I would love to remember 2011 for the amazing treks. 4 wonderful treks with really awesome people. Most times we did not reach the end point. The treks made me realize the importance of the enjoying the journey rather than the end point. The next best part of 2011 would be my year in the factory. For long I had imagined myself to be the exact same as the character Anbarasu portrayed by Madhavan in Anbe Sivam. I overcame my taboos and learnt to look at people beyond their fake accents and smart dressing. This one year I spent with the welders of Caterpillar India's fabrication line. I made a bunch of amazing friends among them, though Im not sure if I will be ale to stay in touch with those folks.

While talking about the best parts of 2011 I cannot afford to miss the Summer of 2011 (had I had some talent I should have written a song) . Left to fend for myself this summer, I had a whale of a time with Charu, Anand, Mukund and Srikant aka Thenavan. Those crazy eat outs, night outs, beach outings and alll sorts of crazy fun made the summer among the most memorable and crazy ones till date.

As previously stated 2011 was not without its share of woes. The biggest being the fact that Adith, Anand and Charu left for US, within a months span of each other. A fellowship which lasted close to 20 years was broken. First time ever I actually felt sick about being in Chennai.

Apart from this random vexatious incidents like seeing extremely undeserving people taking very responsible positions at work and having to suffer the agony of travelling a 100 kms everyday defined the low points of 2011.

On the whole 2011 was an amazing year where i made and lost friends.

looking forward to a more crazy and fulled 2012.