cheapest computer

We have the cheapest car, the cheapest computer............
Now how about cheapest food?
Even a middle class person like me is getting anxious about going to the supermarket.

Telengana

Many people have the tendency to avoid facing problems.......in fact all of us have done it-some more some less number of times. I suppose the government believes that if they pretend not to hear the noises from Hyderabad, it will all go away.
Giving the people of this region a separate Telengana may not be difficult, but what about Hyderabad? I do not see any way in which Hyderabad can be resolved. Infrastructure in Hyderabad is pretty good..Hyderabad gets better domestic power supply than Bangalore...roads are better(were better with a recent setback thanks to AP TRANSCO)....rail connectivity to Secunderabad is good..........the airport, though far from the city is excellent. Where will Andhra find another city to match this? The money in Hyderabad is with the people from Andhra, they have invested in the city, but the land was bought by them from the locals at absurd rates ....... some even at Rs 10 per sq yd. The locals claim that this amounts to exploitation of their land resources. The arguments are endless............if only some political party had the foresight and had developed this region in the last 40 years.......
The down side of democracy is that there is no advantage in long term planning..........30 year plans do not garner votes........

when old age creeps upon you

I have a laptop that works at its own pace. It doesn't like to be hurried and likes to do things one at a time. It does not like me opening more than one tab on the mozilla.....what's the rush? you can only read one page at a time.............
Unfortunately, of late I have also become like my laptop.........can't multitask as I used to......my mornings which were like a one man orchestra have become sedate --- if I make tea, taht's all I do-- then I start the breakfast etc..a proper queue is maintained. As a result, I get late for work on a regular basis and drive like a formula one competitor out of the house much to everyone's dismay.
I am neither old enough to maintain a totally sedate lifestyle, nor young enough to manage multitasking with aplomb.... still, I hope this state lasts long.

GM crops

This link from Abi's blog makes me wonder if the GM crop advocates are reading it. In the case of earthquakes, the tendency of the government and its scientists would be to curb panic in the face of repeated tremors. That is perhaps understandable. Earthquakes are not in human control, so the call they had to take was just on the nature of response.
In the case of GM crops, the scientists are introducing some gene into the environment without knowing the consequences. It is not just a matter of responding to an imminent disaster, but possiblility of creating one. The honest thing to do is to say we don't know the long term consequences of GM crops because we haven't had them long enough.

Stress

The last month has been so stressful. I think most mothers undergo terrible stress when their grownup children are going through a tough time.
When your child is two, his troubles are easily mitigated and you feel good....a scraped knee, or a lost toy...but in their adulthood, it's really bad...one cannot make it 'all right' and one feels helpless.
I know no young person believes this, but usually, life goes on and one is fairly happy overall whether one gets what one wanted or not.

Lab Assts.

A blogpost that I wish to comment on at length------
this is about students having to beg for help from lab assts in the labs for. chemicals etc.
Surely this does not happen much at IISc where chemicals must be purchased through the research supervisor and the department /central stores(?) or through contingency grants, does it?
However, such things do happen.
Colleges and university teaching labs where undergrad and MSc students have their practical classes do have such lab assts. This is more so in govt colleges where the staff is unionised. Here, students need to beg for filter paper, solvent etc. If you have not kept him happy, the lab asst. may even give you the wrong compound for analysis thereby ensuring you do not pass your practical exam. If he does not feel like it, he may not set up the Kipps apparatus for the salt analysis. (This happened once when I was conducting an exam and I had to muck out a Kipps apparatus and set it up, but I did not dare reprimand the lab asst.)
The teaching staff either do not care or are helpless since the said lab staff are unionised.
The other side of the coin is , if you pay the man, he may tell you what compound you have got for qualitative analysis........a whisper to look for phosphate and cadmium or nitro and carboxylic group goes a long way!!
Long back, in an IIX, I have had the experience of spending 20 days to get an Xray that takes 90 minutes. Things speeded up a lot when a colleague working with my guide started taking the technician out for chai-samosa once in a way. All I had to do was give my sample to the colleague and lo behold the Xray would be done the next day!!! Then there was this technician in Mech engg dept who made liquid air, and always had problems with equipment everyday from 10 am to 4 30 pm. Miraculously, at 4 30 pm it would work, and I would get liquid air by 6 pm. (he gets paid overtime)
But by and large, I hope the IIX are not like University colleges (??)

housework

The child-rearing pundits say that one must assign children age-appropriate household chores. True. Many mothers of children in the age group 3-6 agree and find it effective. My two bit worth is this------- try it when they are 12 and really capable of contributing to the housework! See if it works.