A weird dream

I am at a beach resort of some kind. I am with people I don't know. I am carrying my camera. And there's some activity happening on the first floor of an incomplete building structure.

And then, as I am walking towards the beach, I notice a few people playing beach volleyball. And all of a sudden, I notice one of the guys playing there. It's my buddy from Engineering College. I say "Uddhav, what the hell are you doing here, man?" and he says "Hey Mally" recognizing the fact that he was one of the first few people to start calling me Mally. And I say to him "you're supposed to be dead" and then he just smiled.

That's right. Uddhav Jagadale died April of last year while on a business trip to Malaysia.

Wonder what made him pop up in my dream.

Food poisoning, top of the table and terrible strokes

So I dropped the ball the last couple of days. So sue me :)

Had an impromptu evening dinner with a friend. We were supposed to go to a photography exhibition by a friend and since it was close to another friend's house, his wife wanted to join us. So we went, looked at some fairly ordinary pictures (decided I could have an exhibition of my own after seeing this one) and then went back to my friend's place where the evening progressed along just fine.

As the time approached 8:45pm, I was getting queasy as the Manchester United game against Rovers was on and I was missing it. So the TV was switched on and I had the pleasure of watching United thump Rovers 7-1 with Berba hitting 5 goals! What a game! We were level with points against Chelsea, had recovered the entire goal difference we had with them and were temporarily sitting at the top of the table! Now the only thing needed was for Chelsea to draw or lose their match on Sunday to keep us on top and to make this a good weekend.

We had an early morning tee off at KGA on Sunday. I was having a disturbed tummy for a while, but that got aggravated more during the round and I had to go for a "download" after 9 holes. Was definitely off my stroke, was unhappy with the way I played but wasn't entirely unhappy with the score (13 over) for the round. It's a different story that my partner and I lost the match 5&4 and got quite convincingly thumped!

The saving grace was getting back home and watching Chelsea manage a weak draw against Newcastle and ensuring that we are sitting at the top of the table with a 2 point cushion!

All in all, a nice weekend. Could have been better, but then again, could have been a lot worse. So I will take it the way it was.

Lights and roller coasters

Do you ever feel like you are on a roller coaster in life?

One moment, everything is fine and looking like it's on the way up. A steady rhythm clicking under your feet as you shuffle thro the day. And then all of a sudden…BAM! The floor leaves your feet and you find yourself plunging down towards some hell hole drawing you nearer like a magnet whose pull you cannot fight. It could be one call, one meeting or even a chance reading on someone's blog. And just when you thought gravity is going to crush you under the might of it's force, you pull out of that free fall are gliding on your path like the hell hole you just left behind never existed. Once again, the chance call from a friend or a piece of good new or just a funny video someone share on Facebook saves the moment, presenting the necessary distraction.

And then another plunge and another lift…and then another…and then another…and yet another. Until at the end of the day, you are exhausted and just want to sleep. But the ride does not end there.

Even in your dreams, you plunge and you soar and then plunge again, only to wake up covered in sweat to some unthinkable nightmare that you cannot even remember. And then a peaceful slumber in the arms of a beautiful dream…that you could not remember yet again in the morning…only remembering that you had a nice dream and that it made you smile as you woke up.

What has all of this got to do with Lights, you ask?

Absolutely nothing! He he he…

The only reason lights is in the title of the post is because I went out and bought a remote trigger for my speedlight yesterday. Yep, it's one of those cheapy Chinese made stuff that is good only for firing a strobe remotely and nothing else. But I tell myself that I am not even fit to be called a novice in this area and therefore don't deserve a PocketWizard or ElinKrome set of transceivers. So with my wallet a couple of thousand rupees lighter and the spring in my step a couple of inches higher, I tried out the combination last night. And came away with a big grin on my face :)

Just thought I will let you know. After all, I won't have a rant every day to put up here. And so this is my attempt at blogging at least once every day to get back into the habit.

It's what you say later that matters

Yep, this is me trying to get back to regular blogging. I know it's been a couple of days, but I've had a bit of a back ache, so sue me.

So you might recollect that I mentioned my buddy is in town. He is usually the one who carries my stuff from the US and his family is the one I piss off most with all my shopping packages landing on their doorstep :) Anyway, I had bought the Vibram FiveFingers (the most comfortable pair of shoes I have ever worn) online and needed someone to help me carry them back. Enter DC. So I got these guys together so one could pass on my shoes to the other to carry back. Lo and behold, they hit it off and had a lot of fun. So naturally, when this guy from the US lands up, we get DC involved and meet up for a drink…and that was last week.

DC invited us for dinner on friday night and most of the evening was spent ragging each other mercilessly…mostly everyone ganging up against me to try and get the better of me…apparently I am hard to rag…

That got me thinking (yeah, what were the odds) about what we say out openly and what we don't. I mean, when we were all together, we spent most of the time screwing the other guys…all of whom are close friends. How often do we say out loud what these friends mean to us…especially when they are not around?

Which makes me think…ideally, your best friend is someone who stands by you and speaks in your favour when you are NOT around. Anyone can give lip service and support you when you are there to defend yourself, but of all those people, how many of them would give their full throated defense to your case when you were not around. How many such compliments would you get? How many would you give?

Do we really know who our friends are any more?

You can make out from my tone that I have gotten even more cynical than what was earlier believed possible. Meatloaf was right…"Life is a lemon and I want my money back"

The world is your spittoon, the country your trash can

I'm finally back…after 6 month and a few days. Yeah I know…this is becoming my usual theme. I promise to be back and then there's a long silence and then a post.

So here's hoping to an improved attitude towards blogging and trying to be regular. I am immediately reminded of Master Yoda's statement: "Do…Or do not…There is no try". Now you know why I am not a Jedi Master yet. Wish I was tho. Would have loved to do the Jedi mind trick on so many people.

Now to the reason for the irate heading. And here starts the rant…

My buddy and I were walking from UB City to the office (had to do some shopping at the Apple Store) and we had to cross the hellish intersection that is Richmond Circle. In the space of a few minutes that it took us to cross the road, we heard so many car honks that we could not hear each other think, least of all hear each other's voice. And every one of those people who honked somehow had the impression that honking would make them move faster.

On top of that, in the same time span, I counted at least 7 people spitting or throwing trash out of their car. What the hell is wrong with these people? And to top it all, the traffic police constable at the intersection was the model of apathy. Can't really blame him for being apathetic, cause he probably sees what I saw a few hundred times every day. It's easy to get desensitized when you are overexposed to these things.

Now that got me thinking as I was driving back home from office. It was a rare occasion that I was leaving office before peak traffic hit and so made it smoothly home in 20 minutes. As you folks would have read in my earlier posts, I have a very intelligent car that is the Skoda Laura. On it's mainframe display, I get readouts on how many kilometers I have driven since the engine was turned on, what speed I was driving at and most importantly, how much fuel I consumed on my drive. And to my wonder, I had run a mileage of 14.7km/l for my 20 minute drive back from work. Which meant I had consumed less than a liter of diesel to get from office to my home. The worm in my head started chewing on something.

The next day, I hit peak traffic on my way to work and noticed that this trip, I had averaged 9.8km/l and taken 40 minutes of starts and stop traffic to get to office. Hmmmm! That evening, my buddy and I were meeting for a drink at The Beach in Indiranagar and thought it would be best to drive straight from work. Guess what…we covered just 3km from the office in 41 minutes! 41 minutes! That's insane. By the time we got there, we had spent almost an hour in the car (for a short 8km) drive and averaged 8.2km/l.

Now let's do a bit of math.

If I did not hit traffic every day, I would average between 3 km/l and 5 km/l better during every drive. My car has a huge 60l fuel tank. Even if I use the pessimistic number of 3 km/l, that means that my car would have run for a hundred and eighty kilometers more on the same amount of fuel! That's a saving of more than 15 liters of fuel…translating to more than Rs 600 for every tank of fuel I pump into my car! An improvement of 25%!

Here's another interesting figure. I have had my car for the last 3 years and am on the verge of hitting 40,000 kilometers in it. That means I am averaging about 12,500 kilometers every year. Now extending the same calculation as above, considering the same efficiency (that is not completely accurate as I tend to do long drives - I love to drive - and that drives up the fuel efficiency even higher…so we are still pessimistic in our calculations), we would be able to drive the same amount of kilometers every year with 33% less fuel. Let's see how much we save, shall we?

12,500 kilometers x current average of 11 km/l = ~ 1140 liters of fuel = ~Rs 48,000.

12,500 kilometers x efficient average of 14 km/l = ~ 890 liters of fuel = ~Rs 37,000.

A saving of Rs 11,000! Eleven Thousand Rupees saved by one car! Just by improving traffic conditions and therefore fuel efficiency!

Not to mention the implied benefits of lesser smog (from lesser stops and starts), lower noise pollution (hopefully) and time saved for everyone.

And here's the kicker! As per the Petroleum Conservation Research Association, 51% of India's domestic fuel consumption is done by transport vehicles…cars, busses, trucks, rickshaws and all the rusty old things you see on the road that make you want to get a Tetanus shot just from looking at them. From the same PCRA website, India has more than 75 Million registered vehicles. Think about the sucker punch I'm about to throw at you.

If every vehicle saved Rs 10,000 annually due to better fuel efficiency achieved due to better traffic conditions, we would have saved…wait for it…16 BILLION DOLLARS!

16 BILLION DOLLARS!

Say it again after me…

16 BILLION DOLLARS! Savings!

Savings worth 16 BILLION DOLLARS!

Imagine what part of that money can be invested to better the traffic conditions going forward. And as technology improves, we will have better, more fuel efficient cars which will only improve our savings number.

How's that for analysis?

But for sure, there are people already doing this analysis. From the PCRA page again, we learn the New Delhi alone burns more than 990 Crore Rupees due to stopping at traffic lights. Just imagine!

And here I come back to the heading of the post…part of the money that we save can go towards putting trash cans every few feet. I think the current problem is both lack of social decorum as well as lack of opportunity to demonstrate it. To give you my example, I carry litter in my pockets until I see a trash can (which can sometimes be once I reach home). More trash cans and a cleaner city will only shame some people into not spitting everywhere and making this country a better place.