The Micro World of Carnivas

More about me here

[carnivas]

Here is how you manage traffic - Dynamic Medians! (aka, what do you think of in traffic jams)

People like Tim Ferriss have a NOC-NOC policy (No Crib, No Complaints - or some such thing) which works like this: They wear a band in one of their hands. Every time they complain or crib about something - without giving a solution to it, they will switch the band to the other hand. If they go 21 straight days without the band changing hands, it means they have succeeded. I may be getting the details wrong here but you get the point.

Well, I tried to to do it this morning with my wrist watch on my way to the office. I had to abandon that mid way: because within 30 minutes, the watch changed hands more than 100 times. I am exaggerating but again, you get the point.

I did try to find solutions to the problems before complaining but it usually involved some violence and bloodshed. So I had to put them aside. 

Now, let us get serious now. I mean, seriously. 

One of the things that bothered me repeatedly was the 'cutting’ that happens between lanes in places of bottlenecks at peak hours (in Bangalore - but I guess this can be extended to any city in India). 

Well, it is not feasible to build medians in all these places because they occupy space, making the already narrow roads narrower and they are really not needed in the non-peak hours (which, depending on which part of the city you visit could just be a few minutes in a year or so!).

So, what we need is “lanes that are restricted temporarily”. That is, lanes that are meant for merging traffic, lanes that are meant only for two-wheelers, auto-rickshaws and so on, but only for some time of the day. Not always.

(Source: This. K.R Puram auto-rickshaws laugh at this)

“Marking” lanes for slow moving traffic, merging traffic, buses, two-wheelers etc. and switching LEDs on and off, look good in theory (and apparently this is what people in countries with good infrastructure do). But that is not going to help in India. Yes, I know you are laughing already that the suggestion of an LED changing the behavior of people.

So, what do we do? 

That is where my idea comes in: 

Have medians that hide under the road and come up only at some hours of the day! 

These can be automatic based on sensors: When there is a lot of movement on the road, at the appropriate threshold, they come up. And when it goes below the threshold for a considerable period of time, they automatically go under the road to hide. 

If ‘automatic’ is not possible, they can be ‘switched on/off’ by the policemen, just like they do for the traffic signals. (Or hopefully not like traffic lights and do a better job with this).

Once such a thing is feasible, it can be used across many situations including places where flyovers are constructed, accident sites and so on. Such temporary needs would mean that the policeman just carries a long strip of median with him, all rolled up, which automatically pops-up once laid on the road.

If this sounds funny to you, note that some components/versions of this already exist. We just need to ‘localize’ them to “Indian conditions”, as they say.

Well, who knew that my daily commutes would spring the urban planner in me. Guess I am close to finding the purpose of my life, after all these years.

[carnivas]

Welcome Two Oh One Seven

Time for a super quick recap/review of sorts, given the year end/beginning season, which has been a not-so-regular feature here. More for my own read. But I suspect you may parts of it interesting too.

Few important projects:

Career Move: Changed Jobs to figure that S to B is actually 25 Kms

Painting & some interior changes at home: Surprisingly (& thankfully) took less time to decide on who will do, what color etc. instead of the usual analysis paralysis I get to

Trips: One to Andaman (through MakeMyTrip) and one to Valparai (self booked). Again, surprisingly did not sweat the small stuff in terms of planning etc. Still acted like a ‘tourist’ in the Talebian sense but better than before

Bike sale: Sold of my first (known) irrational purchase. I had decided to purchase it after the first look at the ad.

Lifehacks:

Low/minimal milk: Reduced milk intake to about 50 ml in a day (thanks in part to the super inefficient housekeeping staff at my office who take forever to fill milk into the coffee machine). So it has all been black coffee/tea etc. This has been a long pending trial I have been wanting to do, given my bowel troubles. It has been so far so good and I think this will be a change for life. By the way, this is not a ‘no dairy’ thing (as yet), which means, I still consume a bit of curd as well.

Daily Sins & No Screen Sundays: To avoid any FOMO related stress through the day, I have started a ‘daily sins’ habit. And thanks to something I heard in Econ Talk podcast, I also have started a 22-hour no-screen time in a week. And it has been a few weeks now of no failing.

MyFitnessPal & weight increase shenanigans: Whenever I meet friends/family after a few months, I am told that I have lost weight, even if I feel absolutely healthy and OK. Due to nocebo, I actually start feeling a bit unhealthy. Though the BMI stuff are right, I thought let me indeed try to increase my weight by a few Kgs (to the mid-to-late 60s). And started tracking stuff through MyFitnessPal (which funnily, straightaway assumes one uses the product for only weight loss! - this meant, every time it showed ‘red’, I was on the right track). After a month of religious tracking, I made note of the stuff that were causing issues in weight increase - like green tea, papaya and a few other things, which I consumed a lot. Now, I have sort of re-wired my brain to the extent that when I see papaya, it feels like some disgusting food. Of course, my family thinks I am faking this but no, really, I am not. Same with coffee with milk. :) [If you are curious to know if I increased any weight, nothing meaningfully as yet - it has only been 1 Kg as yet. I am giving it time till June of 17]

Less Water: Related to the above, I realized that I was drinking twice the water I should. On an average, I was consuming about 4 liters in a day. In the past month, I have reduced to almost half: 2 liters give or take a few hundred ml. No big (negative) impact in terms of my digestion & other stuff noticed as yet. Though, I should agree that I struggle sometimes when my body seems to be expecting lots of water to go in right after a meal. It is a matter of time before it gets used to, I guess. More on it, next year.

Sleep hacking techniques: Thanks to a book by Ariana Huffington (which I only heard about in a podcast, not really read), I did some experiments on this and figured that I need about 7.5 hours of good sleep in the night. If it has to be less, it better be 6 hours (and not 6.5 to 7) to not feel groggy. There seems to be a nice 90 minute rhythm going on. Also: Making your bed after getting up makes your day better. Well, only if you believe. HaHa.

Blog Posts & Articles

The ‘theme’ I (secretly!) had for 2016 was one of ‘Increase what you produce’ and ‘Reduce what you consume’. While consumption actually increased (thanks to podcasts, the reading part definitely decreased), production also seems to have increased. I did not really attempt a real comparison but I suspect I produced more blog posts this past year than any previous year.

The count stands at 36 Techy posts in Medium, 21 other posts in Medium, 10 tech posts in blogger, 8 Quora answers and 6 Tumblr posts (including this - though technically this will be posted only in the new year due to the no-screen rule). This includes as few ‘reply’ posts but those are really just a few. Did attempt a couple of podcasts as well on my own. And one where I was interviewed elsewhere.

Here are some that I am sort of satisfied producing.

Usability of Indian language apps

Diffusion, Disruption and Start up Strategy

Social norms in a Homosexual world

Consumer Behavior & Product Design

Slackification of WhatsApp & Facebook

Dubbed Tamil Ads

Books Read/Sampled

These are the books I completed 

Biography of Benjamin Franklin (Walter Issacson’s)

Mind & Vision (RS Agrawal of Agarwal Eye Hospitals fame)

How to Fail at almost everything but still win (Scott Adams)

Ego is the Enemy (Ryan Holiday)

Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind (Shunryu Suzuki)

Flow (Mihaly CannotSpellHisLastName)

High Output Management (Andy Groove)

Checklist Manifesto (Atul Gawande)

Thanks to the new behavior with the Kindle, I also ‘sampled’ a LOT of books (though one does not really need a Kindle device to do this).

When breath becomes air (Paul Kalanithi)

Tools of Titans (Tim Ferriss)

Bed of Procrustes (Taleb)

What I learned losing a million dollars

Can you solve my problems

Messy (Tim Harford)

The Success Code

MAGA Mindset

We learn nothing

Hard thing about hard things (Ben Horowitz)

Ghost of my father (Scott Berkun)

The third chimpanzee

Slipstream time hacking

Shoe Dog (Nike Founder)

Art of Product Management (Rich Mironov)

On death & dying

Consider the Lobster

Deep Work (Cal Newport)

Overcomplicated (Samuel)

Presuasion (Robert Cialdini)

Logically Fallacious

Stoicism today

Age of Em

Gujarat Files

Saving Capitalism from Capitalists

Trust me I am lying (Ryan Holiday)

Obstacle is the way (Ryan Holiday)

Quiet

Plato at the Googleplex

Seeing like a state

The Confidence Game (Maria Connikova)

Industries of the Future

Gut

Superforecasting

Sapiens (Yuval Harari)

Language Instinct

Learned Optimism

(Sorry am not giving the exact names & authors in all cases)

A few of these will of course move into ‘read fully’ list but only a few.

These are yet to be sampled

Psychology of man’s possible evolution

When coffee & Kale compete (book on Job to be Done)

Liminal Thinking

Miscellany

Got seriously into podcasting (consumption, that is) with the 150+ minutes commute every day, given my ear worm problem. Have been hearing podcasts from across the spectrum, product management, psychology, economics, history, personal development and the like! (most areas listed here). And yeah, got interviewed for a podcast as well.

Made the first purchase of an Apple product (iPhone - though not for me) and started using an Apple product for the first time (Mac - given at office)

Converted my 10 year old LCD TV into a ‘Smart TV’ with the purchase of a Chromecast. Delayed this purchase thinking I would buy the latest version but this review changed my mind and I settled for the older version

Took more control of finances, going through (& actually attempting several tools from freefincal, especially the ‘comprehensive’ one)

Took a dip in terms of (the minimal) exercise regime and got back to it, owing to a neck sprain that came due to the long commute

Paid for a Premium version of Evernote and for some reason, see more productive usage of it (though I have not really crossed the storage limits etc. of free plan). Though, secretly, I suspect this is also because of their Mac app, which seems much more usable than their Web or Windows versions (though I still cannot understand some unique Mac things!)

Started using Mindmaps effectively - MindMup is an excellent tool for this. I have mapped most aspects of life into it, using a master map of ‘state of oneself in 2016’

Happy New Year!

[carnivas]

UAN-PF conundrum

Just a couple of days after the current regime came to power, there was an SMS message to all PF account holders from none other than the Prime Minister himself that UANs will be allotted to every PF account holder and there would be no more issues with ‘transfers’ of PF.

It was hailed as a great achievement by the core supporters - ‘See what can happen in just 2 days’ sort of comments were made. No thoughts of - It should have been in the works for a few months/years and this was only an announcement of the launch. Still, they would say ‘Give credit for pushing it finally out of the door’. 

Honestly, even I thought there was merit in that argument. May be it was pending some final approval/signature and it happened once the new Government took over. Taking credit for the project was too much but then, it was OK. Politics IS like that.

New employees in my erstwhile organization did get their PFs transferred super-fast, it was tied to their newly assigned UAN and (I thought) all was well.

But things seem to have gone downhill from there.

I moved jobs early this year and thought it was going to be super smooth with the PF process.

First Surprise - I heard from my employer that ‘UAN process’ is different and I would need to anyways apply for ‘PF Transfer’ from the UAN website. 

I did the process and it was indeed smooth. Emails were automatically sent to old/new employers. There was only one document I had to physically send to my new employer. It was no big deal and I did that. Old & new employers approved it online and the site said that the transfer was done.

Second Surprise - There was only one problem. While the transfer from old PF to new PF number had been done, the new PF number is not shown as part of my UAN. Only the old number is shown and the passbook says that they money has been transferred out.

So, I learnt that I now need to tell my employer to ‘link’ my new PF number to the UAN and only then would I be able to see both PFs. There is an option in the UAN site to list ‘Previous PF numbers’ but none to list ‘Newer PF numbers’. It has to be done only by the employer, it was told. Well & good.

Third Surprise - The employer also cannot do it because there are too many pending cases with the site. So, I have been given a ‘new UAN’ which I need to now activate with my new PF number.

This was the screenshot sent by my PF consultant:

I do not know if this is because of something my PF consultant failed to do or something else. It is fairly confusing.

Whatever be the case - WTH - UAN was supposed to be unique to a person. It is now unique to each PF number. [Update in Oct 2017: I changed jobs again - no I do not do it that often, just once - this time, thankfully the latest PF got merged to the second UAN of mine. But there is a new process for PF transfer. The PF consultant here says this is only another gimmick and I should submit the old style forms again - not even the one I followed with the employer just before]

Fourth Surprise - I went ahead to activate my new UAN but it said that my mobile number is already locked to another UAN. Of course Sir, but you are not letting me link to that!! 

Fifth Surprise - When I check back with the PF consultants of my company, they tell me to simply give another number and activate it. Which means, there is no security per se in it. Anyone who has my UAN can go and activate it and add their mobile number. And see my balances/ do whatever they want with it.

I did this with an alternate number of mine and it says I can download my passbook after 4 days. If I am indeed able to download it in 4 days, my theory above will be proven, anyone with my UAN could have gone and activated it with their mobile number. (If there is any change in this - I will update here. I still see a possibility of my employer being asked if that number is mine - which I have not given them yet) [Update: The UAN got activated & I could get my passbook without any check on the mobile number - so it IS a security hole]

Hope the new UAN shows my complete balance, from my old PF and the new PF accounts (it has PF from all 16 years of my work life!)

Now, I am sure there is a way out of this 2 UANs scenario. If I look at sites like Jago Investor, someone somewhere would have figured out what to do. (I hope so). 

It could even emerge as - I should have done something different/ my employer(s) should have done something different. But the source of all it is - the whole confusing site/process that is.

Back to where we started - SMS from the PM and the credit taken - Well, he obviously would not know these intricacies (and should not - there are bigger things for a PM to focus on) and would have just consented to the PR theatrics around the SMS. 

It is the people who implemented it (& have made a mess of it) that are to be blamed. This looks like our own ‘Healthcare.Gov’. 

But you know what worries me:

It could be these same people that may be implementing everything around ‘Demonetization’ related changes! 

Scary, no?

[Update in October 2017 - Sigh, Demonetization stuff and then GST as well we see.... the same story repeating]

[carnivas]

Are you proud of products ‘Made in India’?

Long long ago (circa 2004), when I used to frequent Yongsan Electronics Market, I have observed something interesting: There was a pecking order of the ‘Made in...’ tag. 

Though the product was branded (like a Canon Camera), the price charged and the bargaining allowed depended on where it was ‘Made’. 

With great pain (given the relationship), the shopkeepers would give ‘Made in Japan’ the highest respect. But next to it was ‘Made in Korea’ - They would want you to be convinced that ‘Made in Korea’ is way better than ‘Made in China’. You talk about a neighboring shop offering the same product for lesser price, they would balk at you - “But that is Made in China.. Go buy there if you want”. I do not know of other products (like cars where you would have European/American brands weighing in) but for Electronics, the order was Japan - Korea - China.

I remember paying about a few hundred thousand WONs more for my Canon S1IS because it was ‘Made in Japan’.

Well, the point of writing all those things above is because I saw something similar yesterday!

Image credit: Wikipedia.

I was out to buy a Bathroom Water Heater (Geyser) to the local Electrical shops near my place (Amazon, Flipkart were more expensive, trust me!) and noticed two things:

1) In one shop, a customer asking for ‘Diwali serial lights’ and not happy with the ‘Made in China’ items that the shopkeeper showed (to be fair, they did not have any known brand - just a ‘China item’ as they are called). While the disdain for ‘China item’ was expected, I did not expect her to ask ‘Is there no Made in India item’ - which she did. May be she just did not expect any European/American/Japanese brands to made them. I wonder what she would have bought had the shopkeeper had an unbranded ‘Made in India’ item (instead of known brands like Bajaj, Havells etc.)

2) In another shop (where I ended up buying the water heater), the shopkeeper convincing me to buy Havells because it was ‘Made in India’ while others like Bajaj, Racold, AO Smith were ‘Made in China’. I asked him what makes it special - after all, it was a brand and they would take care of the quality. He got slightly offended and said that ‘Made in China’ are inferior in quality even if they are branded. (when the whole Korea story came to my mind)

I do not (obviously) believe in the whole thing about ‘Made in...’ affecting quality - for branded products. Heck, even Apple trusts their manufacturing and makes their “Phones that don’t catch fire” there. There is no reason to believe other brands would not provide quality standards to their manufacturers.

After all, every country goes through this ‘Oh that is of poor quality’ to ‘They make the best of...’ - See more thoughts from me on this here. So it is a matter of time before China sheds this low quality image.

However, what was heartening is to see the pride of ‘Made in India...’ similar to what I saw in Korea. Of course this is a sample size of 2 and it is very likely that I am getting carried away, given they occurred on the same day. Or may be, just may be, there is a slight pride that our people have started attaching to stuff like these. 

May be the Govt’s PR stuff on ‘Make in India’ might be working, though the logo was designed by a foreign firm ;-)

PS:: Given the shopkeeper’s sentiment rubbing on me, I ended up buying the ‘Made in India’ product and paid Rs. 1200 more!

(Image credit: YourStory / the foreign firm that designed it)

[carnivas]

WTF: Whatsapp in The Family

An anonymous reader of this blog sent me this note:

Many of the annoying WTF moments in life in recent times have been WTF (Whatsapp in The Family) moments, causing serious stress in life.  And casual discussions with friends reveal that I am not alone. 

In fact, I seem to be lucky to be part of only a few such WTF groups. There are people who have been added as part of groups that contain first cousins of maternal lineage, first cousins of paternal lineage, (OK till here), second cousins of maternal lineage, second cousins of paternal lineage and worse, groups for first/second cousins from grand-maternal/grand-paternal lineages and so on.

This, at a time the world is considering even husband and wife living in one house as ‘Joint Family’. We are talking about the descendants of the second cousins of the paternal great grand father to be ‘Family’. Sigh. At last count, I only know 4% of people in such groups well enough; 10% that I have met a few times and only 28% that I have ever met at all.

Recently, when a friend left his phone with me for a few minutes, I found a message from ‘Chakku Kollu Paatti Second Cousins Clan’ or some such thing (Kollu paatti = Great grand mother). I promptly shared some pro-Trump messages and also asking for suggestions on how India should teach a lesson to Pakistan, a la Israel. Replies started pouring. When my friend reached to it later, he would not even have realized that it was he who started it.

***

Mr. Koum, you may feel very proud about how you have made such great UX that it is very easy to be part of Whatsapp and how any one can add any one to a Group. Do you have any clue how difficult you have made life for several people? Side effects, Sir, Side effects. You should consider that too when you design something like this.

Oh well, you tell “Mute” the group you do not like. Well & Good. I did that. And even disabled notifications. That is, enabled “Do not show notifications”. To be fair, you do not show me notifications in the Notifications bar (btw, your Mac app does it even for muted groups!). But you still show a number (of unread messages) against such groups when I open Whatsapp for other messages. 

But, what if I have OCD and want to ‘clear’ the numbers wherever I see them?

You tell me that I should consult a psychiatrist and get myself cured? Oh well, I just did that & got over my FOMO on my Twitter / Facebook feeds and try to treat them as ‘laminar flows’. I do not really have a FOMO anything on WTF groups. But the number SHOULD be cleared. No? I should have not have this expectation too? Am I looking for too much legibility in life?

Oh yes, you now ask me to LEAVE such groups, don’t you? No Sir, no. That is not how it works. When you already are almost an outcast and are considered to be acting too pricey to not be attending all & sundry weddings in the family, this would become the final nail in the coffin. Your parents will be blamed for having brought you up in such a fashion that they would have to disown you. Who wants to be disowned by parents for this reason?

***

Now, as a good product manager trying to understand his users, you ask WHY I want to leave such loving groups and what sort of messages appear here. Right? Yes, here is a sample:

Photos of irrelevant stuff/people - like ‘xyz getting ready to school’ - no xyz is not going to school for the first time. It is just that her mother found it cute that day (and it happens every day)

Forwards of Messages from you - Yes Mr. Koum - You, on sharing some message to others so that you do not start charging $10 from me from next year

Good Morning / Good Night messages from people who I have known to be grumpy always. Where did this polite behavior come from? (Oh wait, you may start thinking this is a benefit)

Need for blood / Someone missing. And there are indeed heart warming stories of how they actually help. (Wait, am I listing benefits here? Time to change tack, seriously)

Birthday wishes. See, you allow some 256 people in the group and they are usually full, at least 200+ people are there. There are only 365 days in a year. So odds are that there are at least 5 days in the week when someone has his/her birthday. Lo & behold, someone would immediately change the Group name, Group icon and so on (where do they get time for this, seriously? this job is not done by the old people in the group, mind you!) right in the morning that you do not know what struck you. A barrage of messages from everyone in the group wishing that person a great year ahead. Your carefully built habit to ignore unread messages of certain groups (using visual cues of group icon & name) goes bust and you got to learn again till the next person’s birthday happens (usually the next day!). More than anything, you will dread your birthday - not (only) because all & sundry would wish you - but because the worst photograph of yours will be picked to be the Group icon for the day!

Stupid jokes of all kinds, the sexist ones forming the majority. You have no clue how many people who I had a bit of respect for (yes, I do respect some people.. well I try to, really..) have lost that status because of some stupid Whatsapp forward they did.

Puzzles which only ‘Genius’es can answer.

How to get rid of mosquitoes without a repellant

Various health tips right from itching in hair to postures at desk to what not

Some phone numbers of Railways, Police, Army etc. to be auto-saved in my phone book for which I should thank the Railways Minister / Prime Minister for the ‘Technology’ behind it. Really.

Comparisons on Mahabharata and today’s political class (praising the current Prime Minister of course)

Nostradamus predictions - this has been following me right from the days of Email Forwards to SMS to now Whatsapp!

And the mundane smileys and replies of people to such messages - the goal being, the smiley should be as irrelevant to the already irrelevant message. Goes meta, I tell you.

Speaking of smileys, the world may be confused if it is a prayer or a high five. We have concluded it is the Namaskarams/Vanakkams.

This is just a sample, Mr. Koum. And this is only for today morning! I have received a total of 324 messages in just the first 5 hours of the day. And the retired uncles of the Group are not yet in full form. They would come to that in the afternoon and I believe this would cross 1000 when end of the day is reached.

You may gloat about the billions of messages you send more than the telecom operators. But sometimes, think of us, the users too! There was no Family SMS Groups, you know?

Now those were a taste of the messages for you. There are other sundry issues around some uncles not feeling respected enough, people feeling bad about not being admin and what not. Let us not even get there!

***

When you do your next product features brainstorming, seriously consider doing something about WTF groups. You seem to have a Slack envy with @Replies within groups. What next, Channels? No, we need none of those. Whatever you give, we will find a way to annoy people with that.

Just consider these: Allow me to be part of a group but still get no notifications whatsoever, not even that number of unread messages. Instead of @ to specifically call out people, allow me to specifically @ people whose messages I want to read. And ways to easily search it. It would help me to quickly reach to the message the next time when my parents ask me if I saw a particular health tip they had posted. (Yes, they call it ‘posting’ - not sending/sharing etc. Damn those writers who spend hours together to write original articles with 1000+ words - thinking it is humor - and ‘post’).  

I hear rumors that the primary persona for Google Allo is the WTF Group orphan like me. And Google Assistant is being trained to be smart enough to be able to read & reply to all messages there. First productive use of all those machine learning AI stuff I say. Wait, is Allo anyway not likely to be a ghost town, like Wave, Buzz and Plus before it?

***

Like any low-maintenance employee at an office, I try to provide solutions. Not just show up with problems. So, as a low maintenance blogger, dear Mr. Koum, if you ever get caught in a WTF group , here is the trick to leave: 

Keep changing your phone number a couple of times every few days. Slowly, extend the gap between leaving & joining back. After several days, leave the group to not join back at all. People would be confused if you are there or not. Actually it does not matter to them. 

If it really matters and they call you back so lovingly, then…. don’t be a d**k. No no, I am going to say that you be part of it. You are really part of some psychopathic group so better get some plastic surgery done, change your gender, get a new identity and start living in another planet. 

Talk to Mr. Musk - When a proper study of his unstated needs is done, I suspect his motive to colonize Mars is because of some WTF group.

***

PS:: To all my family members that are reading this, hehe, you know... this is all a joke... you know...! Did you read the disclaimer in the first line of this post?

[carnivas]

Flipkart, NPS & me!

Bought an iPhone for a family member last week. As usual, looked at Flipkart and Amazon. Flipkart had ‘exchange offer’ while Amazon did not. And the exchange value was very tempting.

Further, it had one more thing: 10% Cashback when paid from Citibank cards. Super.

See:

To check if T&C has some hidden thing I should know of, I clicked to read it.

And there was a pleasant surprise. It had one more offer: Exchange value will be topped up by another Rs. 2000 for iPhones. Checked in mobile and in desktop site - both said it. 

See:

And this:

“This is bounty” I thought, and immediately ordered. 

The extra Rs. 2000 was not applied - May be it is part of the cash back, I thought and went ahead.

After ordering, I call up the customer care to find out - The call centre person is unaware of any such extra 2K and tells me to email screenshots. Which I do.

Then someone calls me later in the day and says - The original exchange value was Rs. 800 and the Rs. 2800 I saw was including the extra 2000. I promptly check a non-iPhone device and indeed it shows Rs. 800 there. Ah!

I should not have been greedy to expect Rs. 2800 for a 3.5 year old Galaxy Ace phone. But with eCommerce discounts, you never know how much you could get, right?

Fair enough. 

BUT....

Dear Flipkart, have you actually not squandered an opportunity to delight me? It turned out to me far worse, with me being slightly unhappy - Rational brain may say this is fair but I did feel like a fool and deep inside, there was/is some dissonance.

If only the first screen had actually shown Rs. 800 as exchange value and then shown another Rs. 2000 because I had an iPhone, I would have been elated. Expectation would have been for Rs. 800 and seeing Rs. 2800 would have made me jump with joy. Instead, expectation was set at Rs. 4800 and then reduced to Rs. 2800.

Sigh.

Postscript:

Even after all these, the customer service rep who called me to say Rs. 2000 is included, could have tried to soothe my feelings. Not that he was rude but he clearly wanted the conversation to end ASAP. Though I expressed my displeasure and said that they should have split the 2800 into 800+2000, he simply thanked me for the feedback and ended the call.

He could have said ‘Sorry’ (which works wonders, at least with me) and added a freebie, even something simple, like a Rs. 100 voucher or a ‘Free delivery’ for a week/month. Things like that. But none were offered.

I read in today’s Mint that the NPS score is getting better for Flipkart so this could be a one off instance.

Post PostScript:

I did end up giving a ‘Very Likely’ in their post delivery feedback. Rational part of brain took over.

And when I had to buy a ‘case’ for the iPhone, I promptly ordered it from Amazon (cheaper, free delivery etc.). Guess what I would have done had I had one of those offers (Rs. 100 voucher / Free delivery) from Flipkart?

[carnivas]

Flow through traffic follows Gentrification

Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war, again. Guess who’s winning?

Haha, I thought only Somasandrapalya was a victim of this! Glad to see even cities in the US going through this issue.

At Somasandrapalya, HSR Layout, there was a planned road that connects 27th Main (a wide road) to Haralur Road (a wide enough road). But a big builder built the play area of their apartment in that path. As it usually happens, it is now getting difficult to get them remove those structures. That connecting road never got built. 

However, the need for the connecting road has grown multi fold - So many vehicles including big buses of VIBGYOR school go through narrow lanes of Somasandrapalya and they get thoroughly choked in the morning & evening hours. Thanks to the constant digging of roads by various agencies (recently notorious for multiple digging is GAIL), the narrow lanes only got narrower. And then the rains.

It is just a case of a road not being built and other roads being used, right? How is this related to Waze et al and the story linked above? Read on.

(Image Courtesy: One India)

During a recent protest in Hosur Road by garment workers, these roads suddenly got choked even in the afternoon, even worse than mornings & afternoons - And the culprit was Google maps. As Murphy would have it, it was a day when I had taken off in the afternoon and was coming back from office.

Even as I was stuck there that afternoon (5 mins away from my home but could not leave the car & walk), I noticed a few people in other cars, who all were glued to their Maps app! Google Maps has smartly diverted all incoming traffic from Koramangala side into HSR so that they can avoid the garment factories and directly reach Kudlu, which is further down the road. Sigh! By the time Google Maps would have started showing DARK RED for this route too, enough damage had been done.

I was astounded to see a Tamil Nadu State Bus going to Salem in that road. The driver is either Google Maps savvy or he had a bad advisor in a passenger.

And just as the article says, quite some people ‘learnt’ these internal routes that day and have started using it regularly. Even after Hosur Road became normal, traffic in these roads continue to be more than usual. 

Sigh.

On a larger note, I pity the plight of the ‘original inhabitants’ of such places (that is, people who have lived more than 10 years back) when they were just villages. First comes gentrification.. And then the flow through traffic too!!

[carnivas]

Evolution of clerical work in India

You may see some parallels in this article (though you do not have to read that to continue here)

We Indians (at least the ones in the middle class) have been good clerks throughout our (recent) history. Well, at least from the times of our great grand fathers (when British rule became direct). May be even before that but I really have not done any research. This could as well have some caste related aspects here - about some castes (say Brahmin) being more suited to this than others. But let us not go there and simply generalize this as the middle class. And becoming this clerk was an aspiration to people below the middle class.

For the purposes of this discussion, we can consider a clerical position as something where the job description involves executing a codified set of tasks. It could be less in some cases and more in others. And in some instances you could add value by enhancing the codification. However, you do not face a challenge every moment on what is to be done next. It has been codified by your employer.

The ‘Top Professions’ talked about in the post linked above is essentially a clerical position, not necessarily a ‘Profession’ where you get entrepreneurial and run your own stuff. Entrepreneurial stuff was for other classes - the ones above the middle classes did out of their own volition while the ones below out of compulsion since they could not get into any clerical work. Again, there could be caste connotations but we are not going to get in there. Remember, this is for entertainment and is not backed by serious research of any kind.

So, if we briefly look at what have been the greatest clerical work that we have done, these come to mind.

Translators, Notekeepers, Accountants, Teachers and the like in British rule

Teachers, Compounders, Notekeepers in early independent India both in Government & Private companies (though the ones with Government job were superior)

Bankers & Chartered Accountants in the 70s and 80s

Sales people in Pharma, FMCG companies fit in somewhere here.

For a long time, Lawyers & Doctors were fairly out of this but still had a Government connection. However, with corporate-ization of everything in India post 1990s, these people too have become nothing more than clerks

Barring a handful (typically civil & mechanical), engineers have always been clerks more or less throughout the history but it has severely accelerated after the globalization regime (on another serious note, read the difference between Science and Engineering)

From the late 90s, clerk-ization of engineers has been more or less complete with the arrival of software ‘profession’. You really do not have to even study engineering concepts to be a software clerk, just application of computers (MCAs) was more than sufficient. Unfortunately, even non-info-tech engineers got sucked into this, since this was the ‘Top Profession’ of the decade. [Side Note - I used to be extremely scared when I was told that Engineering was ‘Professional’ education - Oh man, should I look to do something useful on my own! And once I understood it better, it was all clear - Everything has been codified and I need to do just the same my forefathers have done, just obey your bosses and follow the rules!. Ha Ha]

One may argue that the software guys in ‘Services’ space alone are clerk and not the ones in ‘Product’ space. But sorry, it is only a subtle distinction and the level of clerk-ness that varies. End of the day, it has all been codified for you.

Niche areas like Product Management, User Experience Design are also not spared - It is all only Glorified Clerks.

In this same period 1995-05, add ITES, BPO people to the mix.

Then comes the ‘Chartered Accountants’ - Their glory days of being professionals was broken in the 90s but what happened to software between 95-05 got done to them in 05-15. Droves and droves of people who have done CAs are recruited by Goldman Sachs, PwC etc. to do what - Clerical work. (read definition above if you have forgotten or are getting offended).

Now you may wonder that this is a new India with a great entrepreneurial set of young people doing great start-ups all over the place. Oh well, but what if I say these are also clerks who are executing ideas codified by people in the Silicon Valley and that their employers are the Angels & VCs? You really think a lot of the founders have full control over what they do?

Remember, any job that is considered the ‘Top Profession’ of its day had a certain amount of prestige. Don’t you have an uncle who was a proud bank manager in the 80s and a cousin who was a proud employee of IBM in the 90s? Start up founders of the time 2015-2025 may just be the same. That is all I am saying.

[carnivas]

Death, Taxes & Password Change

They say that there are 2 things that are inevitable - Death & Taxes. I would like to add one more to it - Password Change.

Given the amount of digital services you use, Password Change is going to happen for one service or another that you use, pretty soon & often. Even if you have a fairly complex password and do not want to change it often, in some cases, you will be forced to change it by whoever runs the service - it could be banks & financial institutions or even your office IT security people. 

On the last part, it used to be that I would be forced to change my Windows Domain password every 45 days or so. Now, they have started forcing me to change my mobile’s lock screen password as well, once in those many days, thanks to Airwatch app, that I need to be able to access emails.

And I am one of those people who cannot stand notifications and change the password the first time the notice appears - It starts appearing 10 days before it expires. Therefore, the life of each password is 35 days for me, instead of 45 days for people who can put up with notifications.

After changing my Windows (after 35 days) & Lockscreen (after 6 months since this is a new policy now) passwords in quick succession, there are several things that I have noted:

It just took 2 days for me to stop typing the old password (”muscle memory”) in case of Windows. But even after 5 days, I have been typing the old password in the phone lockscreen still. Wonder how long it would take to completely change.

We should also note that there are 2 things involved here - The number of days the password has remained and the number of times it has been used. While I may type the password some 20 times in a day in case of a PC, it is more like 100 times in a phone. That makes it 35*10 = 350 times in the PC, versus 180 * 100 = 18000 in a phone. 

These typically are the steps involved in the process:

Inevitable has happened - Password has been changed

For the first few times, you will type the old password, hit Enter and realize only after the error screen pops up. Even within that, the first few times will be one of thinking you made a typo and then the next few times, you would realize you typed the old password

Next few times, you will type the old password and realize just as you hit Enter but damage has been done

Next few times, you will type the old password and realize even as you are typing that you are typing it wrong. Then the dilemma is - are you going to type it fully, press Enter and wait for the error message. Or are you going to press backspace multiple times to type the new one? Which is going to take more time or less time? By the time this thought occurs, your muscle has typed the old one already and won ( (I am somewhere here in my mobile)

Next few times, you get conscious before typing it and directly enter the new one. (I am somewhere here in my PC)

Next few times, you start typing the new one directly without much effort but then feel happy that you did it

Next few times, it does not matter, you do not even remember that you did something spectacular here by directly typing new password

Next few times, your new password becomes part of your muscle memory

And then, you get a pop-up that you need to change your password.

Based on these thoughts, I have framed this law, which shall be called ‘Carnivas Law of Password Change’ henceforth

Sooner you change your password, sooner your fingers forget them. 

This is truer for passwords used more often.

So if you wish to be a human and want your brain to be used often (instead of the muscle taking care of all you need), do change your passwords often. And yeah, there are productivity benefits too by avoiding the wrong password entries all the time.

[carnivas]

How long before ABCDEF becomes QWERTY

As my daughter starts to learn typing stuff in my laptop (& struggling to find out where which key was), I was wondering why are we even teaching alphabets to children in the usual order of A...Z. Why not Q...M?

First I thought this would be a funny post to put in Facebook / Tumblr. After all, there should be some serious reason why ABC is in that order, right? Just for keyboard reasons, we cannot be changing all that. So it indeed is silly.

After all, the Indian consonants (Tamil / Hindi) of Ka, Cha, Ta, Tha, Pa actually produce sounds from the throat to the lip in an order. Like that there should be something about ABC as well.

Turns out, there is nothing like that. Or nothing that we know of. 

See this Mental Floss post:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/29011/why-are-letters-abc-order 

So if there is no reason why it is in that order, is it not high time we change the way we teach? We can as well change all the ABC, Phonics songs to suit QWE.

Sing with me - QWERTYU... IOPASDFGH... JKL... ZXC... VB... N & M... Now I know my QWE... Next time won’t you sing with me!

If we do not, I am telling you, we are going to look silly in front of our future generations!

You have been warned.

[carnivas]

Fonts & Wants

About a decade back, ‘Garamond Regular 12 Size’ used to be my font of choice. So much so that my friends / colleagues from that period identify me with that and think I would still be using it. This was when the default font of apps like MS Office used to be Times New Roman (Or was it Arial).

But Garamond has gone out of favour in my head for a while now. So much so that I cannot even think of using it now - it looks ugly.

Then it was Tahoma/Verdana for a while and then with Windows 7 / Office 2010 combo, I settled for Calibri. Even though Calibri is the default and used by everyone, I was OK with it.

While I still do not think it is ugly or something, I have been experimenting with other fonts. The other day, a colleague sent a mail in Times New Roman (14 size) and it suddenly looked beautiful. TNR with 12 size still looks ugly though.

I wonder what is it that causes this preference and change of preference in me - Does not look like fad / fashion / bandwagon effect. There is something more at work here. When I get to do some serious research on that, will do a post on it on Medium.

[carnivas]

Imployee

They say an intrepreneur is like an entrepreneur but works within a company. What is the equivalent of employee then? Is that imployee? Are employees those people who work (even) outside the office and imployees are people who work (only) inside? Or do we call imp-ishpeople that slack at work (like Wally of Dilbert strip) as "IMP"-loyees?

[carnivas]

Two Friends. Two conversations. Two observations. And a connection.

Last week, in separate conversations with two friends, I learnt these from their observations:

First friend/conversation/observation: This man travels a lot. Which means he uses public toilets a lot. His observation: Even the smelliest loo (where you really feel like puking the moment you enter) starts to get bearable once your own excreta flows into it.

Second friend/conversation/observation: This man has been part of a volatile product development team with a lot of team changes in the past year. His observation: Even the worst critic of a product / project / process starts to accept that it is not all that bad once he becomes a part of the project & has been part of a few decisions.

See the connection?

PS:: Though two consecutive posts are of similar nature, there is no real attempt in making this a toilet humour related blog. Trust me.

[carnivas]

Mind blowing Self-Help technique that will clean your thoughts... and more!

Whenever we wish to replace one habit with another, we are unnecessarily bogged down by the pressure of - 

oh will I be able to handle life without the old habit, 

oh will I face any physical/metal pain because of the new habit or because the old habit is not being done any more, 

oh will the new habit consume a lot more of my resources - time, energy as well as money, ... you get the point!

Over years, I have learnt that the best way to handle this is to mentally acknowledge all the problems, take a deep abdominal breadth and keep your inner child at peace. Then take up one concern after another and address.

Oh will I be able to handle life without the old habit - Whoever asked you to completely leave the old habit away? Even as you develop the new habit, let your inner child know that the old habit is still acceptable. You may think that you will keep going back to the old habit because of this. Not really - Once that option is available, you have won over your inner child who is now ready to accept the new habit. And over time, start liking the new habit without slipping back to the old. All that is needed is the reassurance that the fall back to old habit is available.

Oh will I have any physical/mental pain because of the new habit - Here is where you need to learn a thing or two from Stoics like Seneca and 'pre-meditation of evils’. Consider what is the worst that could happen? That thought alone will make your inner child chuckle and understand that the world is not really going to end by switching to the new habit. This, coupled with the reassurance from the previous paragraph, you would have won the confidence of the inner child

Oh will the new habit consume more resources - Again some Stoic thinking would help. Or you could consider the age old wisdom of 'This too shall pass'. Remember that using more resources in the short term is necessary to get rid of the old habit. And once the new habit is in place, its resource utilization keeps going lower and lower, more to the point of being lower than the old habit. That would have been the reason you would have switched to the new habit anyways, ain't it?

Hope this experience was helpful to you.

Wait, why this self-help BS here? Fits neither the blog nor the author's personality, ain't it? Was this not supposed to at least try to be funny? Wasted a few minutes of my life. And what is the shit about 'cleaning' that we see in the title?

Exactly - It is coming:

If you are regular follower of this blog, you would know that I started using this product in 2013. Given the Indian culture of using a mug or a faucet, this was a difficult habit to switch to (even if restricted to travel). I went through all the emotions mentioned above. 

Nearly two years and 5 travels later, I can attest to you that none of them exist and I have successfully switched to the new habit. As outlined above, I always keep the old habit as an option (for the reassurance), fears of physical/mental pains have vanished and with respect to more resources, I can vouch that even my reliance on the product is diminishing day by day, though not completely removed.

Now the title makes sense, no?

[carnivas]

Apartment Gym Users - A study of Goldilocks principle

The apartment complexes that I have lived have all had a not-so-great ratio of gym equipments versus the number of households. Rather, the ratio of "working" equipments versus the households. Given the quality of equipments provided by the most generous and trustworthy builders, anywhere between 40-60% of the equipments would not function at any point in time. During the first few days after an AMC renewal, you would find them all working. Then one after another stops functioning till the long term average of 50% is reached, in a few days.

This would be status quo till the next renewal happens after 2 years (yes, the ‘annual’ renewal is done every 2 years, usually with another vendor, at a higher cost, nudged by a newbie in the apartment). Unlike say elevator maintenance, the job of the companies that do gym equipment maintenance is easy - Just visit a couple of times with a proposal, then collect money, that is all. No one would bother unless all the equipments, nay all the treadmills (the only equipment regularly used) break.

This aspect extends to other devices as well in the gym, like wall clocks, weighing machines etc. They function for a few days in a year. Batteries of weighing machines get changed whenever a resident does an air travel and suspects his luggage is heavier than allowed. Needless to say, right after checking, the original batteries are put back. So if you need a chance to check your weight in the gym, wait for such a short-burst of time when the machine has working batteries.

Coming back to the original story: In spite of the ratio being low, it is usually not a great concern. You think this is because there are not enough people interested in using the gym. Right? You are wrong. It is because of a clan-ish organizational culture at display there, that follows the Goldilocks principle. Let me explain!

It is not that people are not interested - There are two times in a year when there is a sudden rush in the apartment gym. This is January and in May-June. As you easily guessed, January is the time when many new year resolutions happen and many people start hitting the gym. May-June is the time when a lot of tenants vacate and new tenants come in (academic year closure/beginning). The new tenants always want to explore everything in their new apartment complex/locality and gym is not an exception. 

Now, why does this rush not continue to the rest of the year? What happens to these people? You would be right to think that boredom hits people, people are inherently lazy etc. so as days go by, their new year resolutions get diluted, their curiosity about the new place recedes, and so on. However, those reasons are not all of it. The primary culprit is elsewhere - It is because Gym users follow the Goldilocks principle. Will you now allow me to explain please?

Before that, let us try to classify gym users. They come in 3 types: 

"Heavy/Power/Serious" users, "Moderate" users and "Low/Naive/New/Timid" users. The names are self-explanatory so I will not get into details. If you have monthly running statistics of the number of users who hit the gym, you will find that 'Moderate' users are in a constant number throughout the year. While the number of Heavy & Low users would be high in January/May/June than the rest of the months. To confirm your previous belief, you would think that this is obvious about "Low" users - They get in due to euphoria that follows a new year or when they move to a new place so they automatically drop off. You may be slightly confused about why "Heavy" users as well leave but may conclude that it is because of the lack of good equipment. You are indeed right, but only partially. Then? I better explain now!!

It is because of the clan-ish behavior of the 'Moderates'. They are moderates only in their usage of their gym. In their behavior towards others, they are extremists. They consider Heavy users as maniacs and consider Low users as idiots. 

Here is how they get rid of them:

When a Heavy user is using an equipment for anything greater than 10 minutes, they will walk around that place constantly looking at their watch, sigh a bit, look at the board that says no one should use a machine for more than 15 minutes, shrug their shoulders, make faces or simply stare at the Heavy user till he/she stops using it.

When a Low user is using an equipment, they would give a condescending smile and go to another slightly complex equipment. They would huff & puff, showing their skills off and give a look as if the Low user is doing something worthless. Low users would typically stuggle with operating the equipments, the buttons, the clips and so on. The moderate users would immediately show signs of frustration as they help the Low guys, like somehow they are a burden and not really qualified to be walking into the gym.

If there are 2 moderate users operating together, it is indeed very tough for others to handle. The wry smiles, the glances etc. can wear down even the thickest skinned Heavy.

Over a few days (worst case, in a couple of weeks, slowly may be, but surely), the extremism works. The Heavy guys find the nearest paid-for gym and join that. The Low guys (who already suffer from a case of laziness and the euphoria wearing off) feel threatended to go to the gym and continue with their sleep. The ones who stick beyond that time are then accepted into the Moderates club and they now become part of the clan! And then they are mentored, nurtured and very good cooperation exists, typical of a clan.

This is how the Goldilocks principle gets restored every time!

PS: Do go to your apartment gym and observe the principle in action, season after season. PPS: And no marks for guessing what sort of a user I am.

[carnivas]

Double Corrections aka Over Caution aka OCD.

If a meeting is scheduled for 18:30, I am usually afraid of my cognitive bias kicking in. That is, I may look at '8' and consider it as 8.30 pm. So I am cautious and tell myself not to fall prey and be clear that it is two hours before 8.30 pm.

Meanwhile there is another process running inside the head which is doing the same thing.

So I come to a conclusion that the meeting is actually at 4.30 pm.

Two hours get reduced two times!

Then something feels wrong and I then waste a few brain cycles to reinforce that it is actually 6.30 pm.

More worryingly, I recently realized that it is not about the 8 in 18 but something beyond that as well.

A conference call had been scheduled for 20:30. I wanted to ensure that it is not 10.30 pm but 8.30 pm. (Did you see that there was no 10 in the original time but still something happened). All well till then.

Suddenly, the second process also did something and I was severaly worried that it was actually 6.30 pm but my brain has fooled me into thinking it as 8.30 pm.

Got it double checked with a couple of colleagues on the actual time. Thankfully both of them told the exact time as "8.30 pm" and did not say things like '2 hours ahead of what you think'.

Else, I would have joined the meeting at 2.30 pm. Sigh!

Do you face this too? If you say No, let us simply conclude that you are too busy to notice these. OK?

PS:: Not sure if the image rendered properly above so one more time, here you go:

[carnivas]

Queued? Something new in gmail.