indiana weather is depressing
it’s rarely pleasant to have to forego one event in order to attend another, and it’s even less so when both events are funerals for people you really liked; people who had tremendous vigor for life and were taken far before their time. people the world could’ve used more of. I wonder anymore if, as the saying goes, the good really do die young, or if the rest of us just grow bitter and old. let us hope the spirit they brought with them will stay above ground and live on with those who knew them. RIP John & Tex.
I try to look at the positive side of any situation, which is occasionally difficult when so many negatives seem to be apparent. being all but broke seems to fit into that category.
Not that I am criticizing any companies/individuals (okay I am), but if you come to a point where you aren’t in the financial position you’d like to be, the right course of action is not to sit back and hope someone comes along and bails you out. even if it takes futile efforts (as it turns out, most sit-down restaurants in the greater Lafayette area are, while cheerfully accepting applications, not interested in hiring) or drastic measures (anyone wanting to buy a laptop?) or, as I’m hoping to be the case, a kick-in-the-ass towards proving some caliber of knowledge in the skills I’m theoretically learning. Ideas about freelance graphics works, running my own design firm/website, programming a video game, etc, have always been mulling about in the back of my mind. they stayed there, though, because why bother if you don’t have the need?
okay, so let’s take this personal experience and expand it to take some actual message out of it, possibly applying it to the American youth I’ve apparently been representing over the last few years. let’s say American children just don’t have the financial need in order to truly innovate, and that’s why in the long run the foreigners will develop skills faster and be better motivated. would I have ever seriously started looking into doing freelance graphics work online had I not been in a not-so-great financial position? perhaps after college, or somewhere else down the road. now I see that the majority of the competitors in all of these freelance fields – graphics, coding, writing (even English), etc – all foreign workers, willing to work quickly and cheaply.
so is it a good thing that the rest of America is also going broke? depends on the timeline. people aren’t going to be happy about it anytime soon, and I certainly wish I could buy a nicer coat. the global economy will enter into a lasting recession, and though the stimulus will provide jobs, they won’t be at the same level as those they are replacing. major companies across every industry are laying off mass numbers of businessmen and women, technicians and IT professionals, 6-figure white collar and blue collar and any other collar. Now we’ll ask them to go put on some orange vest and rebuild infrastructure. It’s like the end of Office Space, only not so much out of choice.
in the long run, I see this as positive. but I’m not sure how many people allow themselves to look in the long run anymore. the short-run problems, such as the large amount of homework I have due in less than 12 hours, always seem to get in our way.
final night
we’re back in bangalore, which isn’t nearly as exciting as before. it’s not nearly as colorful as jaipur, and there is more traffic than in delhi.
i’m more or less over my stomach troubles (which we pinpointed to some fish that Bob, Liza and I ate and Brittany skipped, leading the three of us to some rough days), but we are ready to come home for some bland American food.
at the same time, leaving a wonderful land of amazing customer service, clean and spacious rooms with beautiful views, and expensive wines and champagnes, and returning to the world of rude Americans, dirty fraternity life and cheap beer is a little tough.
more and more I become confused why the people and places of American and India are so backwards. Indians work hard day and night, are friendly and welcoming to others, care for the family, respect all religions, believe in a harmony of environment, and modernize without losing their thriving culture. Americans are by and large lazy and large, rude and suspicious of others, care for themselves above others, hate all religions but theirs, promote causes because it makes them feel better, and try to export their culture on the rest of the world.
yet America is beautiful, our streets are clean, our houses are large, our tap water is pristine (…and still people drink bottled), our schools are advanced, our malls are gigantic, our cars can transport livestock, our workweek is light, our job safety nets are expansive, our paychecks are huge…
it probably has a lot to do, among other things, with population size. with a billion and change people, India can’t keep up. so pollution rises, traffic rules can’t be obeyed, there is no social security, and as we recently saw, the government can do little to protect its citizens from an increasingly hostile part of the world.
trying to get to a dinner last night, I was confused why there was so much traffic at 9pm. Apoorva told me it was Rush hour, which still didn’t make much sense to me. she explained, of course, that it was from all the people going to work at the call center, since they have to adjust for our daylight hours. it suddenly dawned on me that we have changed their entire culture, forcing people to work graveyard shifts just for our benefit. and yet, the best job in bangalore is still working these call centers, so that we can dial in and get “Joe” or “Mike” to help us with whatever electronic gadget we were too lazy to read the simple instructions for.
when things in nature are at such unequal levels as they are here, an equilibrium is always reached, with one side giving way and the other gaining. I fear for just how much way we are going to have to give in order to reach this balance, and I think my generation and my country is, as is typical, severely unprepared, unaware, and uncaring.
Three Things
First off, this article.
India losing it’s competitive edge? In the short term, sure. Weak infrastructure, unprepared and inefficient government. So if you needed your reason to go back to shouts of ‘USA, USA!’, there you have it. Just don’t count on it to last too much longer. All those H1B students returning home from US graduate schools will invest in the infrastructure, which will in turn bring more students home, and so on. Unless we did the intelligent thing and kept them here, but I so often forget the harsh realities of this post-9/11 world.
Second, this one.
I have no real problem with the content of the article, but as I was reading it I couldn’t help but feel like it was written by a third-grader. I understand that the new wave of online journalism enables anyone anywhere to become a ‘legitimate’ source for news and opinions, but we shouldn’t let that come at the cost of intelligent writing and thought-provoking articles. Poor writing leads to poor credibility, good writing lends credibility. In an age of wikis & blogs where unsubstantiated rumors and unverified sources pass as fact, determining a sense of credibility is key.
Finally, this.
Apple has finally grown tired of Psystar’s antics and filed suit. It will be interesting to see how well a vague EULA stands up in a legal court, but I wouldn’t have too much hope in Psystar making it out alive. Am I surprised? No, not in the least. Apple sued NYC for using a clip-art apple on it’s environmental campaign, of course they’re going to sue someone blatently selling non-Apple Mac-clones. My hope? Enough people got their hands on one to figure out how to reverse engineer the EFI emulation they’ve been using and get the osx86 success rate even higher. After quite a bit of tinkering, I have OSX Leopard running on an HP Tablet PC – and yes, the tablet works, pressure sensitivity and all. Is it perfect? Of course not – Leopard isn’t meant for an SSE2 processor, which is where most of the problems arise. But it is pretty cool? I think so. I’d like to try it on my desktop (SSE3 capable) sometime soon, but I need a large external harddrive, since the possibility of destroying everything on it is very real.
Also, I will meet the Chinese kids tomorrow night for dinner and tour the high school with them on Friday. I bought them some cheap plastic lead-covered novelties as a welcoming gift, to show them what we hold dear in this country. USA! USA!
Business Week Online
I think it turned out well, and all the points I wanted to make are in there. Tom Giles (the editor) did a great job of keeping my style and tone in tact but cutting down on some of that ‘verbose rambling’ that I’m fond of. Let’s see if people notice it tomorrow during the day. Maybe I’ll see if Bob can send out a nice-looking promo email about it. Either way, I’m happy with it.
recently
In between studying for finals, of course…
The two Indian students (Rohit & Apoorva) were in town last week for a whirlwind tour of the US. I believe they managed to go to Indianapolis, DC, Chicago, and Boston all within a week’s time, which left them (understandably) exhausted. But Brittany and I got to spend some time with them, and honestly had a blast.
Wednesday night we filmed a discussion moderated by Indy Star Business columnist Jon Ketzenberger and Bob, which went pretty well… eventually it was the two American students asking the other two questions and vice versa. We then went to Brittany’s house to have an interview with NBC’s Channel One news (it’s put on in homerooms in various high schools), which also was a lot of fun – very informal and very laid back. Bob took us out to dinner to Fleming’s Steakhouse (totally worth not getting a project done) along with most of the people who worked with the film.
Saturday I came back to Carmel and we took the two out to lunch and shopping. We ended up seeing a movie with them that night (88 Minutes, wasn’t great) before heading our separate ways. My impression of them was basically that the two of them could fit in perfectly in any American school – they have the same basic ideas, share the same sense of humor, enjoy the same things… frankly, if we begin to talk about ‘well-roundedness,’ I don’t know if I would consider myself well-rounded if I did not also consider them to be. They like sports, are involved in extra-curricular activities, volunteer, sing, etc. One-dimensional? Hardly. A lot of fun to hang out with? Definitely.
2 Things-
Bob is planning on taking Brittany and I to India this winter. Hopefully that works out with our schedules and everything.
Interviewed by the LA Times yesterday. Not sure when the story is running.
Also saw Obama speak last night. Will write on that later.
Today, Broadway… tomorrow, the world.
So, I am back from my exciting debut on national television. Bob will be sending me pictures eventually, including some pretty cool ones – me standing in front of Times Square, me shaking hands with Diane Sawyer, Liza Dittoe (the film’s PR) with P Diddy (after telling him he smelled really nice), etc. And some unfortunate ones, as I think Bob took dozens of photos while I was having makeup put on – as though he doesn’t have enough influence on me already, now he has blackmail material.
If you missed it, here’s the link to the video.
I’d like to clarify one thing that some people have talked to me about – that my comment at the end was ‘dissing’ Purdue or being ’smartass’ or whatever. I was just being honest about the amount of effort it took me to get here – without studying or preparation, I took a test that lasted maybe two hours and ended up with a full tuition scholarship. If that’s not ‘without much effort’ on my side, than I don’t know what is. But I definitely am not insulting Purdue – I love this university, love the program I’m in, and am very proud and excited to be here. It’s just that I didn’t actually do much to get here.
We also did a radio interview that was broadcast over Good Morning America Now, their radio program that I believe is on XM radio. I haven’t looked for a link to that, but I might eventually. I believe that interview was actually a little longer, allowing us more time to expand upon our answers. I talked about how it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that we push sports harder than academics, because the community around schools (especially a school like Carmel) wants to see good sports teams more than it really cares about good academics teams. No one wants to spend a Friday night watching a Brain Game tournament, because let’s face it, that’d be boring. So the question is how we turn previously boring things (learning, the educational process, classes, etc) into things that actually interest students to the point where they are either interested in them or, at the very least, see the value of them.
On another note, I had about two hours to wander around Broadway after the show and before my flight, and I can honestly say I’d like to spend some time there later on. It’s such a vibrant, fast-paced environment – a definite change from the slow and relatively calm streets of Carmel. Scratch that, painfully calm streets of Carmel. So add that to the list of places I’d like to travel to and/or live in. (It’s a pretty long list at this point).
back home
I’m not sure if it’s just that the words stand out to me more now than before, or if these issues are really becoming more commonplace, but for whatever reason I can’t seem to escape the reality of the situation detailed in the documentary.
Palo Alto Daily News
A nice reporter called me yesterday for this story:
http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/article/2007-12-1-12-01-pa-two-million
Incidentally, she also called my mom, which was more due to the fact that I accidentally gave her my mom’s cell phone number instead of mine than anything else. It’s a pretty solid story, and I’m content with my quotes in it. I don’t remember being a straight-A student, but add that to the “all-star quarterback” and I’ve got a pretty good resume going here.
