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Tesla’s Model S Experience

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Tesla’s Model S Experience

Recently, got a chance to drive Tesla Model S P85D. I guess it was luck by chance, was eyeing to drive a tesla from a long time, and then came the day. I entered the showroom with a couple of my friends, was not sure if  they would allow me to drive the car, but Tesla’s test product specialist broke all my assumptions and directly handed over the key to me. Some times things come very easy to you. We drove for 40 minutes around the city, thats the longest test drive I’ve ever took in an EV.

Needless to say, its one of the best car out there, due to the dual electric motors, torque is instant and acceleration is somewhat terrifying, 0 – 60 in 3.2 sec, can easily put a Ferrari to shame. The 17 inch screen sometimes took off the attention while driving but I think over a period of time one gets adjusted to it. The only thing which troubled me was the breaking, I never drove a car with regenerative breaking before and was not expecting the breaks to behave like that, but we made it through.

There were some moments when the car surprised me, one of them happened while changing lanes at high speeds, possibly the first glimplse of the new autopilot feature. The steering wheel had a haptic/vibrational feedback which was kind of very intuitive. While backing up the car for parking, the screen showed augment lanes on the rare camera feed, was something very helpful.

I must say that it was a great experience overall, tesla’s staff was very good and the car was crazy, they have put so much science into one car. All these years, everybody used to like the noise and drama of gas powered cars but Model S with its subtly of handling 700 horse powers is surely changing perceptions around Electric Vehicles. Here’s a short video of the day in the car.

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Long shadows

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Long shadows

Do not go gentle into that goodnight, see some long shadows in the remaining light.

Yesterday, I saw some of the longest shadows of my life, the sun was at a very low angle above the horizon and shadows were very long. It was strange for me because the summer solstice is still a month away but still we are experiencing such longs shadows. May be its because of Copenhagen’s geographic location in the northern hemisphere. Days are getting very long, sometimes theres sunlight even after 11 pm. Body clock has gone for a toss, but I am liking the weather. Here are some photos which I clicked.

 

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Hot Air Ballooning

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Hot Air Ballooning

On a chilly Sunday morning, got up at 4 AM and drove around 40 kms to a farm in Sterkfontein with the team. We were scheduled to fly in a hot air ballon over the scenic landscape just outside Johannesburg.Morning

The sun was still not out even after reaching the destination. We were around 30 folks, were divided into 2 groups, I was in a smaller group with total 8 folks in the blue balloon others were in a red balloon. The stage was being set, hot air was getting filled into the balloons and after 30 minutes they were ready to fly. We were instructed about the flight and safety rules by the pilot. I was hoping for a dramatic take off but it was very subtle, felt nothing. Slowly the balloon rose up, the scene beneath was super exotic, we were flying over a dam surrounded by grasslands.

The sun slowly started coming out, luckily the day was very clear without clouds, direct sunlight gave a bit of warmth. The shear beauty of nature, subtle wind and an orange sun was super refreshing. I could’ve stayed in that moment all my life, was very good.

The pilot had more than 2000 hrs of flying experience and was easily dodging our questions. I kind of tried flying the balloon, but realised that there was nothing to fly, once the balloon gets into a stable wind, pilot don’t do much, it flies without an effort. Slowly, we started decending into one of the farms, the landing was a bit rough but it was far exciting than the take off. After landing drinks were served and toasts were raised, I had orange juice 😀

We came back to the ranch and fed grass to a couple of giraffes, a heard of zebras also came over. Then we had lunch and drove back listening to Mohd Rafi, it was a good day.

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Chennai

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Chennai

Most of us become an explorer when we go to a city for the first time, we try to know more about the places , about the culture , food…

But when we leave a city behind it becomes something like a love affair 🙂

here is a video which I made on my last day in Chennai , had captured some of the happy moments with flat mates.

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is it a bird ?

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College is over , now what to do ??

We recently celebrated the Independence day , I thought to post this post on that day but couldn’t. Well its here now.

When I was a kid we used to go to a place called Gulab baag (Rose garden), where I played cricket as most young kids do and my mother used to teach my sister how to walk , she was little enough and since the place had a great big garden space, small kids like my sister used to learn how to walk. There was a big library there, where old people used to come to read books and stuffs. We used to have great fun there. Few days back I went there again, with my sister and we played badminton and enjoyed , and my sister told me about a new game , which was a bit odd to the first look but then after some time it gave me a mind full of things. The game was , we sat at a place and saw people around and searched for all those people that we would look like or be like in 20 years in future (20 saal baad aap). At that point of time it was fun and laughs, we pointed the worst as we could become ( filled with inter sibling competition ), but it tickled some deep points inside us that we don’t wanted to become any of those people who we were pointing to. Now I see it as the bigger picture, one day I was switching TV channels , what they show these days specially on the channel which shares its name with our country’s, is funny. (I wonder how good were those Surbhi days) , so among the 104 channels that my TV have I was waiting for one special thing, The President’s annual speech and I loved the way Mrs. Patil spoke in the absolute  of hindi ( I even missed some points which she said due the purity of her language). It had some very good points about the country which would make the country a Maha-Sakti or the Super power. I see people in the Television and others (including Mr Kalam) who believe that India have the potential to become a super power in 2020. It gave me enough material to write this post.

On one side I believe its already the last half of 2010 and only less than 9.5 years are left. But the other side says to be a superpower, you need super people. Super people ( haa, like super man , It’s a Bird It’s a Plane It’s Superman ), now lets define who these super people are ? An obvious answer is the people like Mr. Ratan Tata. But it doesn’t justify the mood, okay Mr Tata has made all of us proud. But there are million others who would’ve made us proud, its just that we didn’t looked at them or they are unsung. I take the example of Parliament’s (Lok Shabha‘s) session which I was watching on DD national, somebody (as on usual days) raised a question on the pollution issues which our country is facing and some other person answered it, stating that on so and so date we had this and this conference and we conclude that and that. The thing that struck me was the confidence of the answerer, I believe nothing substantial would change from the conclusion of that conference. And on that very same day, I heard Ravish Kumar ( a senior reporter in NDTV) saying “Kya aap sochte hain rikshe ke baare mein ?” (do you think about the Cycle Rickshaws?)  and then I thought why not allow these rikshas in the whole country and make this a rule,  well they are cheap , pollution free , can give employment to people and so on and so forth. Then I searched about them on google and came to know about Delhi – capital of India-  that only 99,999 (a small number,  contrasting the population of the city ) rikshas can be licensed and if you are caught without a license then only God can help you ( Reason: if you are a Riksha puller it means you are poor enough and cant deposit the heavy penalty, which forces you to leave the occupation and since you are also illiterate you’ll be having at-least 4 to 5 children and hence you cant afford them also so only God can help you), moreover the government have imposed some more rules that only one person can take one license, fair enough (if you can have only 99,999 rikshas in the city) but again “agar koi chaahe , toh woh 100 Mercedes rakh sakta hai, koi paabandi nahi hai, par 2 rikshe nahi” – a person can have 100 Mercedes, but he cant have 2 rickshaws. Then I thought If I were the Prime Minister ? then I could have changed anything, but mister thats not the story and this is reality. Then, as a true Indian these words came to my mind “Arre kyoun itna dimaag laga raha hai ?” – why I was brainstorming ?  and it diverted my attention away from a very beautiful solution to the problem of pollution.

In Science (especially astronomy ) there is a good old theory called the Big Bang theory (everybody knows that) and as most of the science people think it has made a dent in the universe (read its great) and has revolutionized the way people think to a very old question of humanity “How it all started ?” And there is another relatively new theory which challenges the day to day laws called the String Theory (or M theory) but still, it is helping to answer same old question that we always ask How it all started ?

In India one often hears the words “chalta hai” and many people (including me sometimes)  have this kind of the attitude, isnt it ? Now lets fuse the above two concepts  and ask, how we all started to form the “Chalta hai” attitude, and from where we got this ? the answer would be from here and there, from our forefathers. But do we really believe in it or is that we take it for granted, that the country would work as it always had. Well, see I was born in the last Quarter of 80’s and ever since I’ve opened my eyes and to this date, I’ve seen some very positive changes like the way we (my family) used to be and the way we are now , the standard of living has gone up, the technology has, the thoughts of the people has and also my village used to have kacchi sadak and now it has got a good road. May be thats my case , but I still believe that jaisa chalta raha hai usme kuch change to hua hai, the speed is slow but the motion has started. What I see is we should stop the chalta hai attitude and make sure it doesn’t get passed to the next generation.

Ab “chalta hai” ki baat shuru ki hai toh “adjust kar lo ” bhi ched hi dete hain (trying to be humorous for TRP, cant translate that). We all have favorite examples of our Adjust kar lo moments, mine all time favorites are the ones from my several trips to Uttar Pradesh and God I am amazed how the people live there (Rajathan ki jai).
I give you another example which happened to me in the same context : on usual days I am very lazy to go out on foot to buy things to the nearby market, but one day I was forced to go and buy some things , which I did , but I forgot to take a bag with me (Rajasthan has banned the use of polybags ) and the shop keeper refused to give me a polybag , so jaise taise adjust karke I took the things back home. That day I started wondering, would the state ban can change the way it was, is it a step? Now the real twist in tale came when the Raj Ban indirectly opened ways to provide employment to the poor. Explanation: since the polybags were banned, people started facing difficulties in their usual day to day works, so some group of people (majority ladies) ( I am talking about my city, Udaipur) went to the kabaadi waalas and purchased newpapers & cloths in large quantities and now they have captured the full market and are providing home made paper and cloth bags at low cost. “Kya adjust kara hai“, just according to the situation. I believe people like them teaches us some things, don’t you ?

My idea was to write something about my country, which I really love, on its independence day. I don’t know what the readers would take from this post, but I request them to think and think positive about the country and about the meaning of freedom and being independent. So as Rajul Kuhad (my friend’s sister, who makes very good sketches) posted on her facebook account, thinks that independence doesn’t mean to do things which u want to do but it does mean doing such things which effect people at a right time and in a right way.. (so as I).

Thank you for reading the post, would love to hear you opinions/references/tales.

Music: mera joota hai japaani , patloon englishtaani , sir pe laal topi rusi, fir bhi dil hai hindustaani  .….

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filmi chakkar

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“Then I met a third kind. Sometimes in my dreams I can still see them making that long last walk. They never faulted. They never so much as broke their stride. But above all hows, I remember his eyes, how they looked at me. Clear, defined. Never wavering.“–James Mckinley, a character in Rang De Basanti

 

Main agni ko sakshi maan kar , yeh likhta hoon ki :
Todays topic is not philosophical its fictional. I am talking about movies , b/hollywood , HD and some filmi chakkar  (but it will continue afterwards .. )

 

Lets go back in time , year 20000BC , no not so back, some months back I had a chance to experience a rather interesting situation , we had a journey to some other city of the state to get jobs , and as a matter of fact I was not selected (went out in the first round, gave chance to other fellows 😉 ) , so I was (as usual) helping others for their interviews. The night before the interviews , I was with some a bunch of usual guys giving expert thoughts and almost behaving like a HR. Next day, everybody dressed upto the best, in whites , blues and greys (except some like me who were in different colors) with their resumes , certificates and things packed in decent looking folders, were visible chatting in the college premises. There was something in the air that day, all were in different domain of mind. I tried to create some humour to ease some pressure, they laughed for a bit, but I was almost unsuccessful. Then, the interviewees were called and everybody were giving everybody else some advices, looking at it at that time , the play felt pretty animated , talked to many new people , discussed new topics ,even took mock interviews of some.  But somewhere down the throat I was analysing their expressions and ultimatly their eyes , which were the point of my concern. I am unable forget the glare, recently I was looking at the pics of that day, given ..(continued afterwards … )

 

One exceptionally different situation came a couple of months later, where with some fellows I went to a village near the India-Pakistan border to teach some children studying in government secondary school. The idea was to familarize people who haven’t seen computers with the technology , I would thank the OLPC initiative and people involved in it to provide such a great platform of knowlegde sharing at the very basic grass roots. So, the thing was very different than the usual , experiences like going (:o) and bathing in open air were first hand. Small kids dressed up in their uniforms (some werent) coming to school at 7 in the morning and we teached them how to use a laptop specially designed for school going kids. We were treated like the crew of apollo 13 (well the space craft that went to the moon ) , I enjoyed the respect that they had for us. Meanwhile , the thing which interests me were kids , simple and simpler , and the way they asked questions and the way they looked at me , curious eyes. And I can say only one thing , if you were at my position you would have felt the DNA in there.

 

So whats the whole point , everything continues back here . As far as I can remember, I was (am) always facinated about movies, specially science fiction ones and things which were out of the blue. Now if I draw a line between the above two situations I get almost similar shades on both the side of the line (which I just drawed), the trouble is that I am not getting the difference. Its like differentiating a mango with another mango. To find the reason, I decided to ask some intelligent questions to myself which i am not writing here (because they were pretty intelegent questions, ;)). And then I came to a conclusion :

 

In practice, the postcard of monalisa is not as good as the Leonardo’s one.
In simple words, I was looking at the situation as a second person or a first person, someone who was involved in all that whereas in movies you are a third person, narrated a story to. It was not a movie, not HD, it was real, and boy ! I loved it, offcource, with the curiosity and the science component of it , everything was an experience that B/Hollywood couldnt give me and I can still remember the words of a girl (I dont know her name) which she spoke , while we’ve having dinner after the interviews were over and I can say that it created one small some kind of a change in me and the way I see things around, some of you might have had such experiences as well.
 
Keeping the pace with my last post which was about engineering I want to add something called a bond (between you and others), a small group of people ( I say small , keeping in mind the relative population of our country), and in that bond there is something which they have for you and you have for them and you cant explain it to some one else who was not in that small group of people. And by some or the other way around everyone becomes a part of these small groups of people and these become the most powerful things you can ever own because you are the central character here [Emphasis added].

getting good in preparing Kichadi, don’t I .

Music : Jaisa filmo mein hota hai, ho raha hai hu bahu …
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here goes

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Today I have completed one more revolution around the sun, so officially its a new year for me and a good day to have a blog post.

Before starting, very best wishes to one of the most focussed man ever known to me , Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar , (I would always cherish the happy memories that you have given to me or in fact to the whole country, Sir).

The whole idea here can be extracted from a very thoughtful excerpt taken from Alice and wonderland :

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?  That depends a good deal on where you want to get to. Said the Cat. I don’t much care where — Said Alice. Then it doesn’t matter which way you go, said the Cat.”

Days come and go but what stays ? a recent thought in my head asked me , I was not able to answer it but still i am writing this post to remember some days that just went through me.

Engineering, I never thought what I was looking forward to do, may be because the word Engineering excited me a lot and others made it even more exiting. But, now being in the last phase of  it , I’ve started to have some definition of it in my own terms and I hope every body would have their own definitions. Though this meaning is hard to write but still here goes ..

DAY 1 : The moment I came to Bikaner, “Garmi” (a season usually between spring and autumn , but here it extends almost throughout the year ) became the key word , coming from a happy watery place called Udaipur , it was the most obvious thing that came to my mind. After starting when my father left me back alone , in a hostel , in the middle of the desert , I felt like … aap samajh hi sakate hain , on that very same day I gathered enough strength and scribbled some life defining serious notes on my school diary – which after that I always carry where ever I go – and went to sleep thinking what is in store for me for the next 4 years.

DAY 3 : We had a very rickety kind of a way from my hostel to the college , and I tell you , I’ve seen some of the most exclusive species of animals and plants on my way from hostel to college and vice versa. Yes, I remember , coming early to the college that day our branch was celebrating Teacher’s Day function and as a non talkative person I was sitting on back benches with a group of people where nobody knew nobody and some how due to the abundance of hard luck and some other things I accidentally banged into the most ruling seniors of the time (who initially I thought of as being a lab assisted or something like it) I cannot name him here , (hint: the sir name starts with Rai***) , and he went crazy on me , I sensed serious trouble. I was nearly gone on that day ,  aur ab toh aap samjh hi sakte hain what would have happened to a fresher on that day if you know that senior. On that, day I recognised a lot of sides of me and got the true meaning of a very famous sentence “If The Phone Doesn’t Ring, It would be Me.”

DAY 4 to 2nd year : I met very very interesting people , and a lot of them changed my views about life and things like that. I remember the incident when I shifted to a room of 3 unknown people and they gave me one of the most strange looks which I was not used to get. But then I  learnt a lot from them, specially from the tall guy. One more incident or a series of them called as aandhi/toofan (fast moving wind/dust ) , one such day was my mathematics II paper , and as always I had to prepare 3 out of 5 units in the night before and suddenly light went out and aandhi/toofan hit us and chaos spread in the whole of our hostel as I wasn’t the only one who had left 3 units. My room mate had an UPS and a table lamp , which helped us for half an hour and in those 30 mints , till this date , I’ve never cramped so much. Paper went well I got 40 + marks and I thanked the almighty , in some sense the meaning of preparing early came to my mind but it quickly got lost in the following exams.

2 year DAYS : Most of the second year nights went gazing on the sky on the hostel’s terrace ( I loved it ) , with me and my new friend (kool) listening to FM which was just launched in the city and counting planes. This year was also marked with the keyword Team work which was a rather familiar term to me but with new twists , first instance was a Teachers day video , which a group of 4 people (including me , a good coder , a localite  and the guy who used to count planes with me in nights ) , it marked the first over night work for most of us in college. One more instance was a Freshers party and I credit the most of it to a single persons death defining sacrifice (though he didnt worked that much , we call him CP ) . Going through all of these I realised that I was in the center of a lot of fresh people with a whole lot of zeal to do things and I learnt a lot of things like exception handling ( I had a lot of exceptions , in the mean time) . Overall , a good second year , I even scored good.

Some 3rd year days : With 3 other people ( tall guy , kool and cp), I decided to shift to a house in some place where you can see people ( in hostel you can only see cows , crows and camels and other fellows and rats , but not people) looked rosy at that time and we decided to socialize the life , initial days were pretty expensive and hard working and auto riding , but soon we settled down , got a bike (51 % share ) , and we were all set to behave like seniors (isnt that cool ? ), I got a lot in this year too , name it : micro processor lab was the best lab I had , got to know about FOSS and Freedoms and some other tech stuff and even made a film with a crew of very good people , where everybody has ideas and everybody used to fight , but we finally made it working.

Days after 3rd year: Were bigger and busier though I have not attended any classes.  The starting wasnt good , but this time was the best of times, starting with my first online event  for which me and one of my good friend did a hell lot of planing and these days indeed were the best days of engineering because a) we were at the top and nobody would question us  , b) met so many new people and worked with as many new people , c) busiest days of my life waking at 7 am to sleeping at 4 am  packed for the weak . I appreciate the works of everyone who were involved and their patience for listening to me 😉 . The days after that , had more action , trip to the southern part of the country with a group of friendly juniors, meeting people who I always admired , making some international friends and on the top of all getting a chance to see India and its beauty. These days are still counting and I am still enjoying my engineering.

So, this was my definition of engineering which I believe depends on the events and actions which you come across and the freedom of moments which would echo afterwards. I’ve learned a lot and may be getting closer to engineering my life.

Thanks for reading such a long post , would appreciate hearing your definitions of engineering as well.

Music : oooh ooh ooh kyse kyse yeh rang hai , dekho na … la la laa life is crazy , kahati hai umang …

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The Color Theory

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Primary School : Blue Shirts , Royal Blue shorts

Middle School : Blue Shirts , Grey Pants

Secondary : Blue Shirts , White Pants

Senior School : All white

note : In winter I used to have Royal Blue Blazers.

Well On the Einstein’s Birthday I give the world my color theory with this post.

Colors as Colours – see the spelling differences

Colours as they say are  “Cool Outrageous Lovers of Uniquely Raw Style” or simply the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, yellow, blue … The idea of the post is to relate the world with colours in general and in 1st class AC.

What Colors mean ?

The first impression which comes to me when I hear or see the word ‘color’ is blue, I really like it , but I am here to write about the second impression which comes to me. Which says ‘colors as experiences’ , I believe colors comes to you with your experiences like learning to ride a bicycle brings the color “green for going ” , eating mangoes (Ha , I literally wanted to marry mangoes when I was in 5th or 6th class, but then I changed my mind ) brings the yellow color,  the dark shades of grey and black & browns feels like the villains or the situations which went the opposite way eg. coming second last in a test where everyone above you are girls except the topper who you dislike the most and the pain when he impresses everybody ( aaj bahut ho gaya , kal se padhai , aur iss baar topper ki essi ki tayasii ) . Moral: “We are living  colorful lives”.

The Color Divide

Colors do divide sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. But I dont divide colors for the bad and nobody should ( A Lesson ) . The divide can be shown through cartoons, films and other forms of popular expressions  : Popeye with Spinach shows green, Jonny Bravo shows yellow and Karan Johar’s movies puts in frosty blue kind of things completely different from that of RGV’s with all black or dark ones.

Painting with the right colors – hmm lets try

A painting or a drawing filled with all the right kind of shades can give some astounding effects take M. F Husain’s paintings, beautiful thoughtful form of art,  but some people are unable to understand the colors and their artistic freedoms. I have to admit many a times I also miscalculate like while at college studying computer science (which I am still trying )  my initial thoughts were greatly inspired by the colours of my school days , very bright and right. But as it is coming to an end , there is a sense of unease somewhere inside about what to do now , or how will it end or what after it ? Its like  “Dunia ka nara: Jame Raho” , the color seems to be changing pretty quickly , and I suppose its the case with the majority at its side. There is a one point question : Which colors to choose now ? First alternate revolves around what are the achievements and the second one takes me towards what I left . But then , was this all about getting somewhere , and achieving some things or its bigger than that, which I may not understand now. See colors have started causing confusion. I define this as the situation of the undefined.

Let them sing

A probable solution to the undefined state was infact  given to me by Stone Cold ( a wrestling superstar ) on TV some long time ago when I used to be a great fan , he said “Cease the moment and it’ll echo forever “, whatta great thought.  Let you colors sing and the delicious ambiguity called life will taste good. Trying different colors can also be good , some days before I got to know about a technique called the Role Reversal from a friend of mine. Its like, doing what you would have never done and reacting to the situation in the exact opposite way of yours. It can be fun sometimes and it would help to know your true colors. Even J. K Rowling , used it as she plotted Harry’s character the complete opposite of you know who. To me ,  Colors looks real , and chances are that White is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red and as definite as black…

My posts do have happy endings.

Music : Aajao patang leke , Apney hi rang leke , Aasmaan ka shamiyana , …. Baasi zindagi udaasi , Taazi hasney ko raazi , Garma garma saari ,Abhi abhi hai utaari..