A Light Comment almost 50 years ago and it still troubles - Butterfly Effect?

It was almost  50 years ago. We were having a chat about my stay for a year in Europe. I had loved the stay. I have no recollection of it except for a side comment I made and this was long before Nokia made the world conscious of the existence of Finland.

 If I had a say in where I was born, I would have chosen Finland.

Even today, long after my parents have passed away, I can still feel the unhappiness of my father. He did not understand my statement. Perhaps no-one did. 

I did not  wish to be a migrant - or worse, a refugee. However, that does not prevent me from a desire to have been born and brought up in a society which is egalitarian, caring, trusting and, I cannot explain, the feeling of being made comfortable and welcome even to a stranger like me. 

The trigger today was a forward I did not see, which said that we would not have known about it if "a CCTV camera had not been installed by my  brother".

I do not want to live my life worrying about a stranger robbing or killing me. That risk is negligible compared to each trip I take on the road -  whether driving or walking!

An Embarrassing Failure of Saving and Recycling Water - What not to do to save the planet

 I have long been bothered by using fresh water in a flush. I finally got a chance to  do  something about it when we decided to build an independent house.

I had a hard time convincing the contractor and the plumber of  what I wanted. The plumber was a little more emphatic that it won't work though he did not explain - unfortunately. 

I got them to separate the waste bath water and save it in two tanks - first one with a filter and second one to store it. The tank and pipes to the WC tanks were separate.  There was a separate pump to lift water from the grey water tank to the overhead tank meant for WC's only.

I moved in and the troubles started.

The waste water from the bathrooms wasn't much! Just the two  of us. Fortunately, especially with the water saving toilets, even the water requirement for the WC tanks was not much, despite 2 senior citizens needing to use the flush more often than they would have preferred.

So, the first lesson was that the cost of the additional expenditure did not match  the gain.

Worse was to follow.

I had searched a lot for filtering  grey water. There were the treatment plants which made no  sense at all for our needs and volumes. The rest were for rain water harvesting. Reminding me of the old crow and water pitcher tale. Bath water and washing machine water seemed quite clean. So, filtering with stones, sand and  charcoal powder seemed fine.

After a few days, there was a strange smell in bathrooms. We just couldn't figure it out. We called the plumber and he said that he had told us that it wouldn't work. The smell was the grey water smell and it will get worse. He  then said that he had made a provision to fill the WC tank with fresh water,  knowing that we will have to abandon the experiment. Shall he do so. And of course, I agreed.

I still had grey water. So, I got an additional small pump to use the grey water for gardening. 

Given the rains, I haven't used a drop of it for over 3 months now. Plus, even when it is bright and sunny, we consume enough to water a small part of the lawn.

I try to cheer myself up by trying to believe that every little bit helps even though my logic tells me - of course not. The upfront costs exceed the savings. I have made the planet a little worse.

I decided to share my learning experience in the hope that it may save someone from making the same stupid mistake and spending sleepless nights thinking about how could I have been so illogical and had refused to think through the implications.

" Tamil Nadu CM Stalin Wants Education Shifted from Concurrent to State List"  triggered the old memory of "question out of syllabus" experience. 

It is now over 20 years since the complaint of a faculty member Mr. X and students of another college that the Vice Chancellor had called a meeting and agreed with Mr. X. The VC said that we raise the marks of the students. This was done without even looking at the results. 

Mr. X had a  problem as raising the marks increase some students' marks to over 100%. He somehow managed. In my view, the process was unfair to students who had understood the concepts. But why does this incident still pain me like a simmering wound, a permanent damage with no hope of healing?

The real cause of pain comes down to the implicit and explicit remarks that I had told our faculty member to teach these examples in our college. The thought had never even crossed my mind that anyone could interpret it as such. Or the belief that "The correct answer must be written in the text book" ; hence, I must have cheated.

Making education a state only subject does not guarantee improvement. However, it does give me hope that may be one of  the states may do better. At least there is a possibility that somewhere over the horizon,  learning may become a focus point for the future generations.

Overcoming a bleak year

I butt dialed an old colleague and chatting with him made me realise how bleak the last year had been. Searching mails for a contact made me realise that at the end of 2021 we exchanged hardly any holiday greetings. The greetings at the end of 2020 were full of hope that the coming year will be better. It wasn't.

It seems as if I/we have gone into hermit-mode and interacting even with friends feels awkward. The most social contact has been with shop keepers! In fact, yesterday only, I enjoyed interacting with the owner of a bathroom fixtures shop. May be he too was affected because he gave me a very good discount😀

I had been perfectly content with the constrained life, except for not physically meeting grandchildren. The pleasure of such social interaction came alive again and surprisingly made me realise how I have unconsciously stopped making any effort to have any face to face social interaction.

I have to renew the effort but it seems so hard now😒

A way to get rid of reservation in higher education

 "Show me where is the answer in the text book!" - stated in an aggressive tone by a faculty member from another college. This memory was triggered by "The Habit of Copying: Are We Creating a Culture of Plagiarism?" 

 

I could not even have imagined that anyone could have such an expectation for a management information course. My disappointment with teaching is documented here.

 

If there is a shortage of supply, there will be malpractices and there is a shortage of seats for a decent education. Gaming the system, blaming reservations, etc will be inevitable.

 

Instead of trying to stop loopholes, what if we accepted that there is a shortage and that there is no perfect way to select the best. We could, of course, auction the seats. However, I doubt if that would seem ideal to anyone, including those supporting auction of coal mines and mobile spectrum! First come, first serve will also not be an acceptable option.

 

An alternate system is a random selection from among a set of shortlisted candidates. The selection for shortlisting could be very much like the current system; except that there is no queue; rather, a set of acceptable candidates. 

 

We can eliminate reservation of seats for varying categories of candidates. The focus can be to ensure and help candidates from deprived communities clear the entrance test barrier.

 

The tuition industry would suffer but, at least, I have for one would not shed a tear to see it disappear. 

A generation or two later - What if Corona Virus were handled differently

A great theme for speculative fiction novels:

What would the future be like a generation or two later depending on how the Corona Virus were handled. 

A pessimistic version assuming that the Corona Virus were as destructive as some have feared, especially for the older people,  and the societies couldn't control the virus. Would we still be an aging society looking for young people?

I was intrigued by the possibilities as I read the news that China is now encouraging couples to have a 3rd child! 

Furthermore, there was the news about the very high and worsening level of inequality now. How would this change were the pandemic let loose?  An obvious historical parallel is the black death and the Renaissance in Italy. 

The Black Death marked an end of an era in Italy. Its impact was profound, resulting in wide-ranging social, economic, cultural, and religious changes. These changes, directly and indirectly, led to the emergence of the Renaissance, ...

 An optimistic version. Personally, in spite of being in the very high risk group, I am convinced that the societies have overreacted. I was reminded of this by the efforts to control the spread of Omicron variant. 

Here is a simple question: If the Omicron variant is thrice as transmissible as the Delta variant - as is suggested tentatively by the existing data - why are we putting so many people in one holding area? Will this not ensure that many uninfected people may actually get the infection?

Some of the major outbreaks of the infections might very well have been because of our societies' efforts to prevent the spread! 

In spite of such questionable implementation issues, damage from virus infections has been more-or-less contained. This reinforces my view that the light touch of Sweden remains the most sensible approach to the handling of the Corona virus, even though it is very hard to find any articles which do not predict failure and doom for that approach.

What if societies decided to handle Corona virus lightly, realizing how vulnerable human societies are, focused on the imminent issues facing human societies, e.g. climate, inequality, desperate migrations.

Obviously, the former will sell, the latter will not!

A very clean memory

More memories of Andhra :)

My breakfast on each visit to Andhra was black grape juice and pesarattu. It probably started with a night's stay in Vizag on my way, I think, to Orissa. 

I can't recall how I wound up at the hotel, but it seemed nice from the outside. They had no A/C rooms available. Since it was just for a night, I decided to stay there even though I was taken aback by the room cost. After my experiences in the North, I had very low expectations given the price of the room!

However, the hotel lobby and the passage were clean and well lit. The room itself was very clean and remarkably airy. Sadly, I have forgotten the name of the hotel though the stay was very comfortable and pleasant.

Given the above experience, cleanliness doesn't have to be expensive. 

I have never understood - what prevents cleanliness in our societies?