"Almost, but not quite entirely unlike Tea"

Dedicated to R - a fantastic cook - with whom my only disagreement has been about making Tea.

Douglas Adams' version.

George Orwell's rules.

Christopher Hitchens paraphrasing Orwell

Choice Snippets

The socially correct way of pouring tea is to put the milk in after the tea. Social correctness has traditionally had nothing whatever to do with reason, logic or physics. In fact, in England it is generally considered socially incorrect to know stuff or think about things. It's worth bearing this in mind when visiting. - Adams

Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water. - Orwell

And do not put the milk in the cup first—family feuds have lasted generations over this—because you will almost certainly put in too much. - Hitchens quoting Orwell

The Changing Times - New Year Greetings

I remember a time when New Year wishes were actually exchanged in person. This happened whenever you met the person the 1st time into the new year. This could be as late as the 3rd or 4th week of January. This was also complemented by a flourishing business in X-mas & New Year greeting cards. With the postal rush during the period, it meant that you'd have to mail your cards in early December to give it a chance of arriving on time. Quite often one would receive the cards in mid-Jan.

Cut to the mid 90s. With telephones becoming ubiquitous, and long distance charges dropping, a lot of new year greetings changed to phone calls. Usually around the stroke of midnight for your peers, and the morning of the 1st for relatives, elders etc. This meant that if you didn't wish someone within the 1st few days, you might as well save it for next year.

Come the late 90s, and free personal e-mail addresses caught on. This made things much easier. Especially for slouches like me. You could send out e-greeting cards to one and all. Didn't have to shop around for these one month in advance. Mobile phone penetration too had started growing around this time. These two changes reduced the greeting window to about a couple of days into the year.

Early 2000s saw the growth of SMS as a medium to exchange greetings. No sooner did the clocks strike midnight, than your phone would be inundated with a flood of greetings. The likes of me, would wait for about 30 minutes, go through all the messages recieved, copy the most creative ones, and forward that on to all our contacts. This to a large extent replaced the phone-call. But the e-mails continued to complement, since they were free anyway.

Gradually the e-mail volume started to come down over the years. This was being replaced by other forms of on-line greetings. The SMS continued. And the window for greeting reduced to about 12 hours.

This year, 2011, seems to mark the beginning of a new trend. For the 1st year in more than a decade, I got less than 5 SMS. It's not that folks were asleep. Logging into Facebook, I can see the time-line deluged with new year wishes, and exchanges. Facebook & Twitter seem to have not only wiped out e-mails as the primary medium of communication, they appear to have started pushing out the SMS as well.

And all of sudden I'm nostalgic for Bob Dylan.

Not quite the Golden Gate

Signs of Progress

 A Wi-Fi enabled bus-stop in Calicut, Kerala

Summer Temperatures & Vacation Timings in Muscat

Height of laziness in journalism? Today’s (28 July 2010) Times of Oman carries an article titled ‘Summer heat irks school kids’ on the front page of its local section (B1 or pg 17). The article seems to be nothing but a compilation of a few readers’ letters in the last week. The end result is an article that is highly biased and lacking in any understanding of the facts.

The gist is this: Indian Schools in Muscat region have summer vacations from end-May to end-July. International and Omani schools in Muscat, and Indian schools in the rest of GCC have vacations in July and August. Certain parents want the vacations to be rescheduled to July and August.

The two main complaints by a few parents are:
•    Indian students have to go to school during July & August, which are the hottest months
•    The vacations of the parents working in government or private institutions do not coincide with those of their wards studying in Indian schools.

Both arguments are baseless. The reporter has not taken any efforts to dig any deeper on this. No effort seems to have been taken to get the other side of the story either. As in, why are the vacations kept in June & July in the 1st place? What are the benefits of such an arrangement? No one seems to have spoken to any of the school authorities either, to get their side of the story. A couple of vague sentences that close the article seem to have been put in just to give a semblance of balance.


Here’s what is false about the article, or has not been looked into:

•    The hottest months in Muscat are May & June, not July, and definitely not August. It is July and August in the rest of GCC.

The rest of Oman also generally seems to follow the Muscat trend. Buraimi is similar to other GCC countries. Salalah has its peak temperatures in May & June. And appropriately the Indian school there closes for those months.

So the Indian schools seem to have got it right when scheduling their holidays. The question really is then why do other schools close during July – August, and operate in June when the heat is maximum. The European and American schools have merely synchronised with calendar in their home countries, where the academic years begin in September. Not sure why the Omani schools also keep the same calendar.

•    Most offices do not have a fixed vacation period for their workforce. Educational institutes may have it. Maybe some other organizations as well. But the bulk of employers will not want all staff to take vacation at the same time. Clearly no commercial establishment shuts down completely for 2 out of 12 months.
•    Under the current setup once sees many Indian staff take vacations in June and the Omani & European staff in July – August. Think this is a better solution than all vying for the same time slot.

There are other benefits of the schools having staggered vacations
•    June, being the hottest month, will also likely be the month with maximum per head electricity consumption. Would be interesting to study what the impact on power generation would have been if all the residents of Muscat were in the country during the month of June. I am not certain if we would have been able to avoid blackouts.
•    Road traffic is a bit relaxed all through from June to August, since a sizeable part of the population is out for each of these months.
•    Airlines are able to manage better with the peak load spread over a greater period. Oman Air for instance, has a high load from Muscat to the sub-continent during June. During July this load continues with the transit passengers from other GCC countries. Ditto for the return leg, with the load spread from July to September.


Funnily the online version of this article credits the story to Reuters!


Some further links for reference.

Oman Temperatures
http://www.holidaycheck.com/climate-wetter_Oman-ebene_rid-id_281.html
http://www.worldweather.org/030/m030.htm
http://www.climatetemp.info/oman/
http://www.wunderground.com/global/OM.html
http://www.worldtravelguide.net/country/213/climate/Middle-East/Oman.html
http://www.wunderground.com/NORMS/DisplayNORMS.asp?AirportCode=OOMS&StateCode=&SafeCityName=OOMS&Units=none&IATA=&normals=on

Muscat Temperature
http://www.worldweather.org/030/c00112.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/city_guides/results.shtml?tt=TT002670
Sharjah http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/city_guides/results.shtml?tt=TT002910
Bahrain http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/city_guides/results.shtml?tt=TT002020
Kuwait http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/city_guides/results.shtml?tt=TT002530

Cute football quotes

Mostly picked up whilst following the World Cup. Some from memory.

The ball is round. The game lasts 90 minutes. That's fact. Everything else is pure theory. 

- quoted in 'Run Lola Run'. Original - Sepp Herberger.

Three years ago, Spain decided to keep the ball -- and the side still hasn't given it up. - Sid Lowe

If you have a Ferrari and I have a small car, the only way I can win is by putting sugar in your petrol tank. 

-Jose Mourinho

The best players of the world (and Xavi) - WTF headline from Daily Mail

I'm sure I saw him give the ball away once. - Alex Ferguson jokes about Xavi.

The Netherlands is a team in which six players defend, three attack, and Dirk Kuyt runs about. -

Jonathan Wilson

He cannot kick with his left foot, he cannot head a ball, he cannot tackle and he doesn't score many goals. Apart from that he's all right.

- George Best on David Beckham

You always lose when your opponents score and you don’t. - Raymond Domenech, who's mastered the art.

Pele should go back to the museum. We all know what the French are like and Platini as a Frenchman thinks he knows it all.

- El Diego

Soccer is a game for 22 people that run around, play the ball, and one referee who makes a slew of mistakes, and in the end Germany always wins. - Gary Lineker

I always score 1 against Germany. - Lineker after scoring 1 run in a cricket match. 

The Spanish Grandmasters

Watching Spain plod through the World Cup rounds, I keep getting the feeling that they play football, similar to a grandmaster playing chess. Xavi in particular being the mover.

• The score is usually 1-0.
• They play a series of small moves, and suddenly the whole layout has dramatically changed.
• They play moves and lines that you just couldn't see until they showed it to you
• Everyone but the aficionado gets bored watching them
• They know they have 90 minutes to win the game, and don't try to hurry it. Thus not giving the opponent a chance to capitalize on any error.
• No useless shots at goal (checks). One is good enough to win most games.