Manmohan Singh falters

Today is a sad day for independent Indian foreign policy. I was always so proud of our independent non-aligned foreign policy. It was always so rightous, so self-standing, so non-dependent on anyone but ourselves. We led NAM, we kept South Africa and Israel isolated, we developed nuclear technology on our own, we were one of the handful countries which did not sign NPT as it is discriminatory, we tested nuclear device we serve our self-defence needs, and is the sole country to proclaim as a irreversible policy our no-first use of nuclear weapons.

And now, when Iran is being unjustly targetted by the western world solely for economic profit for themselves, India voted for the IAEA resolution. It asked Iran to stop enriching uranium to feed it's own nuclear reactor, and beg the west to supply that iff they toe the US line. This is so completely unjust as I had noted in a post before. And last I expected was for India to do a volte-face and take the easy way out. Put it's own national interest (allying with US) before something righteous. What has Iran done to condemn it to sell it's oil for it's energy needs, without knowledge of advanced means of producing energy? Nothing. except it has tried breaking into a coterie of greedy western powers. I have read all the for-arguments, namely India was responsible for waterng down the resolution and postpose a decision till November. But, ditching a friend in need is the most reprehensible behavior. It cannot be justified by any means. I respect Saran and his capabilities. But, he is taking too short sighted a view of things.

India needs to recognize that a strong independent foreign policy is a must for a great nation. Nobody wants to be a Japan. I am so much more comfortable in giving India's foreign policy decision to CPI/CPIM or BJP. They will never sell the soul for whatever benefits it gives us. The troika of India, China and Russia are more than capable of challenging the hegemony of the west very soon. And we should recognize that. Allying with US - a country which has one of the worst record of human right abuses (to citizens of other countries) and commiting terrorist activities for the last 50 years - is a bitterest pill that MEA has ever served us. I hope we rectify our mistakes in November and make the world more democratic.

Addendum: I had a very interesting discussion with Shu regarding this issue. He made me realize that the powerful ones won't give away their power so easily. The only way out for Iran is to force things, like India did, and break in. Make a bomb too, as they need to protect themselves against Israel and USA's motives. The world is not equal and never will be, always divided between have and have-nots, but we should always strive towards it. :-)

Rita ditched Houston

The bottomline is - Rita promised a lot, delivered little. And thank goodness, we decided to come back to Houston without spending time on the road. The evacuation was a big mess. Anyways, we had loads of fun on friday with everybody being at Rice. I took a bicycle tour around town on fridya late afternoon and came by many interesting views.
It started drizzling lightly from evening, and light winds too. Around midnight it was still the light drizzle and moderate winds. Felt nice after days of stiffling heat. Played lots og bluf at student centre with all. I had decided to stay in Duncan Hall, but decided to move to Grand hall where all the fun was going on. Valhalla was giving away beer at 25c, with the logo "eat, drink and be merry. you might die tomorrow". Played some football and frisbee. There was a glorious sunset with a full half circle of rainbow. And I slept through the whole night, woke up in the morning to find only some fallen twigs, leaves and branches.


Check out both pre and post Rita pictures at:

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~santa/pics/05Rita/

More Rita preparations

Tonite, we had a potluck dinner to plan on how to welcome rita tomorrow. We are going over in the morning to Rice. I surveyed on where to park the car. Somewhere high so as not to get the flood water, but not so high as to get more wind. My old apartment complex garage seemed a good bet, but aparently lots of people thought so too. :-)
Office and home both are all stocked up on food and water. Camera is loaded.

Graduate Student Shelter

To All Rice Graduate Students.

Please communicate this message to all graduate students in your
department.

For your safety during Hurricane Rita, I am requesting that all graduate
students living in Rice Graduate Apartments make arrangements to move to
McNair Hall, home of the Jones Graduate School of Management, on Friday
morning beginning at 8 AM. Please bring along a sleeping bag, if you
have one, and other bedding together with medicines and toiletries. We
will provide food and water, but if you have special food that you would
like to bring with you that will be fine. You should plan to be
sheltered at McNair Hall the entire duration of the storm which may last
until sometime on Sunday. I wish to emphasize that we are about to
experience a very serious storm and the safest place for you will be
McNair Hall. Under no circumstances should you attempt to make your way
to McNair Hall after the storm has started.

Graduate students who are not residents of Graduate Apartments and who
wish to be sheltered on campus should also make their way to McNair Hall
beginning at 8 AM on Friday.

Jordan

Dr. Jordan Konisky
Vice Provost for Research and Graduate Studies
Rice University

Stuck in Houston

Or rather with 175 mph winds, I should say unstuck at Houston :-)
anyways, my attempt at fleeing Houston for Dallas early today morning ended in a failure. Roads were too clogged.

Here is my first and second hand experiences about trying to leave Houston.....Map of possible routes;
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=houston,+tx&ll=29.850769,-95.443726&spn=0.304948,0.481407&hl=en

1. 8 of us in 4 cars tried escaping starting at 4 am today. According to info I had from 1 am today, I45 after beltway 8 was moving fast. So, we took surface roads to reach I-45/H6, but I45 is completely clogged up much further now. Came back using Hardy tollway south. All highways going north seemed completely clogged inching along. And as Rita has turned further as is almost along I-45 now, we dint want to take chances. attached are some crappy cellphone photos, stuck on I-45 and coming back on hardy tollway south (see the road going north)


2. One car tried taking 249, but gave up after a couple of hours and is coming back. One person made it out the same way (249, and then highway 6 and I-35 near waco) but had left at 1 am.

3. I-10 is totally clogged. One friend turned back after getting standstill.

4. US-59 is clogged. a bunch of ppl going to tennessee, had to come back after waiting 6/7 hrs along 59N.

CanRita down KatRina?

Right now it is 3:27 am, thursday, 22 Sep. Fleeing Houston right now for Dallas. Hoping that traffic will be least at around this time. People who left during the day took more than 10 hours to reach the 250 miles. Rita has turned into a category 5 hurricane blowing at 175 mph, the third highest ever to hit US. Whole day today was extremely warm and humid and exceedingly calm. All highways out of Houston are totally clogged.

Initially today evening, had bought 6 gallons of water and all sorts of food stuff. wanted to stay on in Houston and experience nature at it's best. But, then wanted to enjoy nature for a long time to come. so leaving. :-)

Moto Modding

Recently I again spent some time playing around with my Razr, which I had got almost 2 months back. Previously, I was only able to transfer pics from my laptop to the phone via bluetooth. But, now i can do more:
- I finally got a mp3 tune which I could send over the bluetooth and Razr recognized it. I think all my previous files were too big. It could handle upto 300 kb, but could not handle a 700 kb hindi mp3. And now, I have cool ringtones.
- I also bought a ringtone over the wap for a few bucks. Just to test, and I am not doing that again. Pretty neat tune though.
- Could get the Motorola Mobile Phone Tools sw via http://vxxxstuff.com/himself/vxxxprograms Neat thing. I can even dial via the sw from the phone over bluetooth. Could sync calendar, phonebook and multimedia. Finally, I could recover and put into my razr all my old numbers. (Which I had scanned and ocr-ed and kept ready for this express purpose)

And now I am onto modding. Started with my simple quest for a better search tool in the phonebook, now that i have zillions of contacts. It does not take in multi-letter searches and one has to scroll down after reaching the starting letter. And curse people starting with a or s. Anyways, so found these cool sites, where by you can flash the firmwire and get updated phonebook with this option. Aparently there are a lot of these from fixing various bugs, to unlocking phones, to enhancements etc. Need a usb cable though. There is a Motorola software called PST phone programmer which you can use to install all the new firmwares.
Here are a few links which might help one get started. Will do this after I move over to California, get my sim card changed to a local number, and get the amazon 150$ rebate :-)

The prime sites: http://www.motox.us/ & http://www.motomodders.net/
Also see these links:
http://howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=677865
http://www.motox.us/reflash.php
http://www.mob453.com/phones/motorola_v600/

Iran and nuclear needs

[As I had hurt a few friends by the following post at our bonglomeration common blog, I am cross-posting it on my personal blog. Just in the hope someone somewhere reads it, analyzes it, thinks about it, and then maybe forms the democratic opinion that every person (and hence every country) are equal and has the same "inalienable rights", instead of shying away]

I could not have put my feelings more aptly than
this report of statements by Ahmadinejad. Iran does not violate the NPT (even though NPT has no sembelance of fairness), USA does violate it. Every country has the right to go for alternate energy sources with rapidly depleting fuel supplies. The nuclear club just wants to keep it to themselves for financial benefits, so that they can sell the technology under licence to all other countries whom they force not to develop it themselves.

Some excerpts:

- "Disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons were the most important contents of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). A country, which possesses the biggest nuclear arsenal, embarks on proliferation of nuclear weapons in defiance of the safeguards (of NPT) and threatens to use them against others, is not competent to comment on peaceful use of nuclear know-how by other states,"

- "As a developing state, Iran should speedily increase its investment in different energy-related sectors. The United States, despite having giant fossil fuel reserves, has made considerable amount of investment in the nuclear energy field,"

Job Search

Finally after a summer of job searching, I have decided to accept an offer from a wireless networking startup based in bay area. I am very excited to get this opportunity; the kind of dream job I was looking for right after my Phd. Hoping to learn a lot, contribute a lot, make a name for myself, make money of course, and enjoy California.

Ramble on a bit about the whole experience. In total it took a little more than 3 months to finalize on a job. Much longer than the 1 to 2 months I had expected. But, then I was completely inexperienced in this regard, and had no idea that job right after PhD, fresh out of school is the most challenging task; made more difficult by the absolute necessity of the first job being the perfect and correct. A wrong career move at this time would be extremely detrimental to what I planned for my future. Other than research labs or academia, few places like to hire fresh phds. They would rather have masters with experience. Except those few jobs which require the design skills and breadth of knowledge that one acquires during PhD. And I was really looking for an industry position, an in particular a startup. Startups are really where much of the R&D takes place in computer science, definitely in computer networks. Joining a startup would therefore be right at the bleeding edge of technology. So was really happy to land up my perfect job.

During my June through August job search, I came in contact with numerous companies. Some only 1 email exchange or phone call, some one or more telephone calls and some actual site visits following telephone interviews. My interviews took me to Bay area several times, Seattle and Albany. The top-notch interviews were whole day affairs starting from early morning till late afternoon, and some even including dinner. They generally consisted of many hour-long one-to-one interviews, and an hour long talk near the beginning for R&D positions. Some one-to-ones were algorithms/coding types (for the company ones) and some were your own and related research issues (for the R&D types). It is quite challenging be unruffled for the whole day, and I felt so completely drained at the end of it. Hardest was a 2 day back-to-back Seattle/bay area trip, both of which consisted the whole day. Was dead by the end. But, got the job though :-) Met some of the sharpest people during the interview process, made innumerable contacts, and had a great view of at least part of the industry. Two of my interviews with the only company R&Ds doing sensor networks turned out to be very useful for me as well. Getting real-life examples where my dissertation could be directly applied and getting good motivating industry examples. My thesis ideas turned out to be quite appreciated as well, leading to a job offer from one of those companies, and missing another by a whisker (3 month away graduation plans playing partly the role of the spoiler). So, emerged much more confident about my thesis ideas after being peer-reviewed by the industry. One startup interview was also spent in almost 4 hours of talking just about my research stuff; and getting an offer from them really made all my dreams come true and all nightmares vanish. The one hour of job talk was really the PhD proposal stuff padded with a few more divergent projects to show the breadth of research topics. You are supposed to show both depth as well as breadth.

One really hard thing was getting questions like "got a job?" from people all around. Was really getting on my nerves, but I guess I was partly to blame by informing people around me about the status of my interviews. Oh, and another question to avoid asking a guy after 5 years is - "when are you graduating". That questions would produce lots of grating of teeth as well. :-)

So, my advice is as follows:

- Take more time to plan and survey the scene. A great and relevant cover letter is a must, so is a polished resume (possibly customized) and a good research statement (for labs as well as generally good to write one).

- Do not start looking till you are mostly done with PhD. Because this is a full-time effort - physically as well as mentally. Concentrating on anything else is difficult. Also, you want to put full effort, as you want all your offers to come bunched together.

- Most companies and startups will want you to join right away, and quite a few companies shied away as I said I am still 3 months away.

- Cultivate and use contacts. Jobs for phds come about quite a bit through word of mouth.

- The number of good PhD jobs in industry is limited. And the number of candidates are many. So, tailor your qualifications to the industry you want to join. Yes, that means brushing up those skills you hardly used during your graduate studies.

- To be suitable for industry, you need to have worked on during your graduate life, both a sound theoretical problem, as well as showed promise in prototyping real systems.

- Be prepared for the personal or HR questions. I had no idea about those and had to brush up on them in the middle of my interview cycle. Questions like "Tell me about a situation when.....".

End of Summer

Feeling so so sad today! Ma-baba went back home today. Though they had been in DC for whole of August, still every day we were talking so many times. Felt soo bad again at living in this foreign land, with everyone back home. Well, next year will be better with new arrival, and hence lots of re-arrivals and all :-)
Saw today that ma had completely stocked up the fridge with the most delicious food. And started ....again while eating it. Pure torture! Now listening to a amjad ali khan recital, and soothing things.

Anyways, that how I feel right now. And my only vent is this stupid blog. I don't want half the things written here to be public, but just for my own record. Okey, so good news for everyone. Have a good offer at hand, which I will most probably be joining at the end of October. Climatically opposite of Houston. :-)

Yet another American genocide....

The recent Katrina storm showed the ugly face of the world's most sophisticated news doctoring country. As people - almost all belonging the neglected community - lay devastated by this catastrophic event, the government followed the capitalist policy to the hilt - don't do anything which does not involved profit. Governance here is not about taking care of people, but about taking care of corporations such that they can make their filthy wealth more easily. Many people around the world are saying that this is a punishment wrought about by nature against the country which has produced untold miseries to millions of people around the world lately. American hearts poured out at the victims, as they should. Sadly, not a miniscule proportion of heart had bled for the dying Iraqis how had to face the man-made fury. Only the sad thing was that this storm struck those people who are also oppressed in their own country and suffer from extreme poverty, and not those filthy rich who go around the world preaching democracy and capitalism by name, but in actuality to make more and more money by force.

Am I glad I am from a country whose government has a heart which bleeds for its people; despite being poor go all out and tackle all calamities. Where we have taken the ideals of communism and capitalism and blended it into a almost perfect brand of socialism. Where we take science and evolution for a fact, not a fiction. Where religion is practiced in the hearts and minds, not in the buildings and in preachings. Where a sitaram yechury and chandrababu naidu can balance each other out.
shey desh shopno diyei toiri, she desh smriti diye ghera......