How the Japanese see the Arabs

Today read a couple of articles about a book, 'The Arabs: A Japanese point of view,' by Nobuaki Notohara. The two articles were 'When individuality, privacy vanish' by Ahmed al Falahi & 'The Arabs from a Japanese Perspective' based on excerpts from a review by Muhammad al Rumayhi. These 2 write-ups have got me interested in the book. However it doesn't seem to be available in English. Seems it was originally written in Japanese and later translated into Arabic.

The 2 reviews bring up some thought provoking observations in the book.

• Arabs are occupied with the idea of a single style. Everyone dresses similarly, for instance. What this costs is individuality, and eventually the notion of privacy.
• Society takes prominence over the individual. Sense of individual responsibility vanishes. This can be seen in the way public property is treated. Parks, Roads & such.
• Rulers are unquestioned, whether it is the head of family or state. Hence rulers tenures are normally life-long.
• Why the Japanese don't hate America.
• Need for domestic & External criticism. And self-criticism

Would be interesting to ponder how other societies stack up, on these values.

ISM Inter-house quiz 2011

Had the pleasure of conducting the inter-house quiz at Indian School Muscat for the 4th year running. Some takeaways:

• Green house won. It was Yellow the last 3 years.
• Some good answers by all teams. The difference between the 1st and last teams was quite small compared to previous years.
• My fav question was on the link between Geococcyx Californianus & Canis Latrans. Was easily cracked.
• Best answered question was the one relating to Sarah Burton. Answered by the only girl in the audience. Unfortunately there was none on stage.
• A couple of the teams this year were a bit more tuned to entertainment questions.
• Q related to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' song O Children went unanswered but drew the most oohs & aahs
• Was held on a Thursday. Since school has shifted to a 5 day week, not much audience.

2 Types of Engineers

3 actually. But lets exclude those (~90%?)  who are not really doing any engineering work. Rather, like myself, filling in spreadsheets, and creating presentations.

Engineers solve problems. They create. They invent, design, build, operate....... Tools, Machines, Systems, Structures. The two classes of engineers are categorized based on the two types of problems that we have.

The 1st set of problems that we face has to do with constraints on our resources. This could be time, money, space. Engineers come up with solutions that help us use these resources more productively. Hence the tools that they construct may help us save time, space or money. Calculators save us time. Skyscrapers save us space. Google saves us time, space and money.

The 2nd group of engineers solves the issue of what to do with all the extra resources that the 1st set has freed up for us. They create smartphone apps.

The Barca after party

At work. Celebrating the success of FC Barcelona, and attractive football. Also to spite a few Real fans:-)

We're turning 19 soon!

And you're invited to the party

A banner at Anfield in 94. Soon after United won their 1st Premier League Championship under Sir Alex.

At Anfield in 2009.

Talk about comebacks!

Update:

Banner unfurled at Anfield by United fans during the Liverpool - Tottenham match.

Battling Corruption

If you have government, you'll have opportunities for corruption. One way to fight this is to have more stringent laws. Anna Hazare & gang have taken this route. And they seem to have got a lot of mileage as well. But this route is fraught with dangers. Laws always lead to unintended consequences, which could easily open up new opportunities to play the system.

Another option is to have lesser government. Smaller government. Reduce the role of government in everyday life. And leave it to the market to fill in. This reduces opportunities for corruption.

We can have both tougher laws and smaller govt. But if just one, I'd prefer the latter.

Reading Statistics & The G.O.A.T Federer/Nadal

One argument on why Federer cannot be considered the Greatest Of All Time is his record against Nadal. It stands 14-8 in favour of Rafa, with their 23rd competitive meeting scheduled for later tonight.

Their fascinating rivalry is also considered the G.O.A.T! They are the only pair in men's tennis to have finished 6 consecutive years as the top two.

I personally believe Federer to be the better player. And I propose to manipulate the stats to validate my case. This is also a good reason why stats should not be unquestioningly believed.

Splitting into court types the Federer -Nadal records show 4-3 on hard courts, 2-1 on grass, and 2-10 on clay. So one could argue that Federer is the better player on 2 of 3 surfaces.

But there's more to this. The 2 being the top ranked players for the last 6 years, would invariably be seeded to meet in the finals. If more meetings haven't happened between the 2, it's because one of them fell off before reaching the summit clash. This has been Nadal more often. Federer has been generally more consistent in reaching the finals than Nadal.

While Rafa has been the undisputed master on clay (over the decade), Roger has also been pretty consistent in reaching the finals of a good chunk of the clay-court tournaments the two participated in. This has led to >50% of their clashes being played out on clay, though going by number of tournaments this should have been less than 25%.

What this could mean is that while Federer was the 2nd best player on clay, Nadal was not the number 2 on grass or hard courts. Though he has been showing more consistency on all surfaces in the last couple of years.

I immensely like both the players. Roger for his graceful movement, effortless artistry and panache. Rafa for his tenacity, magnanimity in victory & defeat and humility. Also for being left handed;) And both for their talent, competitiveness, sportsmanship and excellence.

But I am wary of stats. And 6-sigma.