Word Cloud.... My new Language


Its really been a while since i updated this Blog as I was busy updating my other Blog on my cycling tour. As my previous post was on my trekking experience to Thadiyendamol, now its time for Science.

Very recently i came across a website called "tagcrowd.com" through my friend, and this site would show the variable font size of words relative to the frequency of occurrence of these words from a huge text file. When I used it for the 1st time by pasting a small article from google, I was not very much impressed with its logic as it seemed to be very simple. It goes through the entire text and calculates the frequency of occurrence for each word and displays the output by picking each word and displaying it with corresponding font size which is in proportion with the frequency. I just played for some time and completely ignored it (even forgot the name of the site).

After few days I came across a situation which was very adventitious. The latest movie of Manirathnam "Raavan" had mixed reviews both in Tamil and Hindi. Every site had their own view point and there were more than 100 sites. it was really a Hotch - Potch situation. I didn't have the patience or time to go through all the 100 sites, or even 10 sites with each review consisting of more than 500 words. Now the "tagcrowd.com" came as an abracadabra to my rescue. I simply tried to copy the articles from the 1st 20 sites and pasted it in tagcrowd and this was the output I got.

This output has a language in itself which doesn't make sense till we start analysing deeply. These are some of the observations that I made.



"Vikram" appears 9 times and Abhishek appears 7 times. So probably tamil version is better than Hindi as no review will keep stressing on an actor' name if it had a negative critic.

Raavan appears 4 times and Raavanan appears 5 times, not a big difference.

The word Superb appears thrice, so a good sign.

The words, "Tamil" and "Version" appears 4 times supporting my 1st statement.

The word "Watch" appears 6 times, again a good sign.

I prefer to Ignore the word "Beera" or "Veera" as its name of the protagonist and it has to appear in a every review.

"Dialogues" appear 5 times, again a positive sign.

"Watch" appears 6 times.

Water and Location has a frequency of 3, so probably the art and cinematography is good!!

Based on these observations, my hypothesis is the movie is defiantly watchable.



I was so excited and developed a deep affinity towards this new language. I chose a completely different topic for the 2nd time to confirm if what I just discovered is applicable to other set of articles. I will probably disclose the language post you do the analysis.

Yes, Its Deve Gowda. You see the word Yeddyurappa in such a big font for a reason. Not because he is the CM and Gowda was a former CM, but because recently Deve gowda used the word " Bloody Bastard" on Yeddyurappa. If i had increased the frequency to 100 from 50 words, it would have been visible.
And my last analysis was done on a very interesting personality, Mr Nithyananda, and formed a word cloud from 20 articles published.

Observation
The word with Maximum frequency is Nithyananda

The word with 2nd highest frequency s Gopika:)

We also have the word actress, ashram, CD and CID!!

The word suspect has a good frequency.

We have the key word "Video"

Hence, I need not go through all the 20 or 100 articles and I can just understand what the articles are taking about this man Mr.Nithyananda with just 50 words.

This new langugge really works. I have started using them to understand the performance of companies which will help me pick stocks. I will surely be a very frequent user of this tagcrowd .com. I am sure this will be of some help in future for you too as it was fructiferous for me. Now I strongly belive Steve Jobs quote "The dots will join at some point" So lets keep learning. All the best!!

Planner by profession, Trekker by choice!!

Mohan and me were always planning for a trek since last year and finally he took a solid firm stand this year and formed a group of 16 trekking enthusiasts who were willing to try something new. We had a final meeting on the 2nd week of Feb and finalized on going to Mullayanagiri and the budget per head was 1500 to be paid on the Salary day!!! I understand it’s a very aggressive way to approach but that is what he wanted to do. Finally till the day before we left he chased people and collected the 1500 from 7 of us (I do not know how may people would have cursed him, you might know what it means to give away your hard earned 1500 bugs on the day its credited).
On Friday till 7 in the evening Mohan and me were not sure where we are heading into as he wanted to got to Mullayanagiri and the hurdle was the trek duration was a minimum of 8 hrs and we would be reaching chikmagalore only by 11 in the morning. So we finally agreed on Thadiyendamol and I called up Prakash and finalized on his homestay for 300 per head for 1 night with free dinner.

We started exactly at 5 in the morning and even before crossing electronic city main gate and even before I could ask all of them to sleep as they had a long day ahead Thirtha asked the driver to play some music and even before the music started I heard Thirtha singing load and within few seconds Rakesh joined her followed by Savita and Mohan and in no time the entire team. Infact Thirtha even started dancing in between (what would have been the condition if it was a tempo traveler, Ram & Prerana being an exception)!! They did not stop the hungama till we reached coorg at 9 in the morning, they either sang or spoke. Probably this kept the driver awake and me too (not sure if he enjoyed it or was getting irritated, but he stayed awake).
We had few chai’s and photo sessions in between and stopped for breakfast at Gonikoppa by 9.30. We all had a good intake of calories to face the huge climb ahead. We reached Nalknad palace, our start point by 11.30 and with all sunscreen lotion massage we started off with 3 ltrs of water, 3 500ml water with electoral, few biscuit packs, 1 Gatoride and chocolates by 12. Initial start was pretty slow and steady through the narrow tar road, and the luckily the weather was very pleasant. Just for fun I made a statement asking them to aim at climbing the hill twice so that they can finish it once strongly. This casual comment gave me a new thought, why not do it twice and I gave the water bottles to Mohan and me pushed off. Even nature was in my side by hiding the hard sun rays with a grey cloud and after haln an hours walk I was at the foot hills and I could see the summit covered with white cloud. By 1 I was in the middle of the hill and I saw the gang approaching the foot hills, and they were really moving in a good phase in spite of many photo sessions in between. The last few hundred meters is very steep and you really need to take sufficient breaks after every few steps, so it was 1.45 by the time I reached the summit and it was so foggy that I could not even realize that I had reached the summit. The sad part was the clouds had covered the beautiful mountains around giving a look as though some one had sprayed tear gas around. Now it was time for me to go down and start fresh again, and on my way back down I saw Savita and Rakesh climbing up and they were almost ready to knock down the last steep climb. Few more meters, I find the entire gang almost making it to the peak and I kept going down till I reached the foot hill and started climbing again, this time my phase was pretty good as my body had a good warm up. I could see Mohan, Ram, Thirtha and Prerana resting just few meters before the summit.

By 2.40 myself and Rakesh hit the summit followed by Savita, Ram, Mohan, Prerana and Thirtha. We did it!!!!!!!!! It was time for some good photo session and after few creative formations we started to move back. This time Ram was with me and we started to move back collecting more than half a dozen of polythene covers and plastic bottles that were thrown on the way. Why can’t the tourism department do something about it? Why not have a security at the entrance and make sure that no plastic items are carried, if not at least make sure they get back what they carry to the top. I understand it involves cost, why not collect 20 to 50 Rs as an entry fee, a person spending 1500 for the trek will not mind paying 50 Rs to keep the place plastic free.

Me, Ram, Rakesh and Thirtha reached the palace by 4.30 (I was surprised to see Thirtha dancing and singing with so much of energy still left in her) and had cold Fanta with salt (there was nothing else available). Savita had a cramp in her stomach!!! and they came by 5. After freshening up with clod water flowing from a nearby water stream we started off to madikeri by 6. We reached Prakash’s place by 7 in the evening and we took bath (except Ram, Prerana and Thirtha J) and started our chit chat session around the bonfire by 8. Prakash sent us the food by 8.30, a simple sambar, rasam, chicken curry and curd which was more than a seven course meal for us. If you are thinking this is the end of our adventure you are wrong. By 12 we started off for a moon light trek (there was no moon light though, the only light being my torch) to a nearby temple which really looks scary at night. More than the ghosts we ware scared of the hunting dogs, so we just had a look of the temple and returned back to the homestay by 1.I had to leave early the next day morning as I had a personal commitment (though I hate to do it) and had to be in Bangalore by noon I went to sleep and when I woke up it was 6.30 in the morning. I immediately got ready asked Prakash to keep the breakfast ready for them by 8 as they might leave by 10 and I left to Madikeri in the cab. From Madikeri I took a bus to Mysore and a Volvo to Balnaglore from Mysore. I reached Bangalore by 3 in the noon with all the experience and memories I could carry and at the same time I was missing all the fun that I could have had on my way back.

Epilogue
Remember me making this statement “asked Prakash to keep the breakfast ready for them by 8 as they might leave by 10”. I was wrong. They woke up at 1 in the noon as they had slept at 6 in the morning. They started off from Madikeri by 3 in the noon (I was in Bangalore), been to golden temple (not to see the monks, but for shopping, girls are girls!!) and left Kushalnagar by 6 in the evening. Here is a interesting character that I forgot to introduce, our Driver “Sidhu”. I do not know his full name and that is how he likes to be called. He is the perfect guy to come in the Monster Jobs ad. He is a diploma graduate and probably because of that he carries that ego. He likes to talk in English, and I am a guy waiting to talk in kannada (with full of slangs) as I am fed up of talking in English in the office. On the way back these folks collected some breezer and he asked them if they think if his cab was a bar!!! Firstly that idiot dose not know to differentiate between an alcoholic drink and a breezier!! Secondly, its a profession where he would meet all kind of people and if he has any such constraints he had to make it clear even before the deal was fixed.
I do not want to waste the space in my blog discussing about him. So all these folks reached Bangalore by 1.45 and stayed in Rakesh’s place.

by

Economics of Sachin

Caution: This article is not for hard core fans of Sachin as this statistically proves that he is no better than a Brian Lara or Mark Waugh, Ricky ponting or even Saeed Anwar.

Now, before I get into my theory let me make it clear that this blog is not meant to criticize Sachin or appreciate his performance (though I have enjoyed many of his marvelous innings rite from my childhood days), this is purely for Science and adventure enthusiasts and this article sees Sachin through a Economist's eye.

After the marvelous double century by Sachin against South Africa I was impressed by the way media portrayed him. He is treated like God in our country,
after all he is the best batsman in the world and no doubt about it. For those of you who have a doubt look at his records in test and ODI in the table below.

I believe in god, and I need data for the rest. Keeping this in mind I wanted to know what makes him the “best batsmen” in the world that other top batsman in the world lack? And the best way I could relate his records with others was with data. The methodologies that I have chosen to study his performance is, by picking few of his outstanding records and comparing it with other few top batsmen in the world and analyze what stopped them from doing the same.

Highest ODI score of 200
Sachin scored a double century on his 442nd ODI breaking the record of Saeed Anwar and Charles Coventry’s 194. When I peeped into Saeed Anwar’s statistics it says he managed to score 194 (almost a double century short of 6 runs) out of 247 ODI’s that he has played, which means Sachin had to play 195 more matches than Saeed Anwar to break his record. In terms of probability (observed value by number of chances) Sachin scoring a double century would be 2% where as for Anwar its 4%, 2 times more than Sachin, i.e Anwar had a probability of scoring 2 double centuries if he had played 195 more matches!!!!!!! How about Dhoni whose highest total is just 17 runs short of Sachin (183)? Sachin has played 336 matches more than Dhoni, so Dhoni has a good chance of scoring 3 double centuries (10% probablilty). There are lot many batsmen from Brian Lara to Mark Waugh to Vivan Richards who had a much higher probability of knocking a double century before Sachin but most of them started their carrier at the age of 21 where as Sachin started it at 16 and they all retired soon.
Its not a game of “Survival of the fittest, but arrival of the fittest”. You need to arrive first to survive.

I came across a mail in Time Magzine which tried to praise Sachin, but indirectly they they proved that the only edge Sachin had was he entered the right field at the right time and this is what it said

"When Sachin Tendulkar travelled to Pakistan to face one of the finest bowling attacks ever assembled in cricket, Michael Schumacher was yet to race a F1 car, Lance Armstrong had never been to the Tour de France, Diego Maradona was still the captain of a world champion Argentina team, Pete Sampras had not yet won a Grand Slam, Roger Federer was a name unheard of; Lionel Messi was in his nappies, Usain Bolt was an unknown kid in the Jamaican backwaters" But they all are the same in their own sport though they started late!!!

46 ODI hundreds and 93 half centuries.
The very first look on the above table is very impressive, but a bit of calculation put into it reveals a lot. Sachin’s scoring rate goes like this- of all the matches he has played he scores a century 10% of the times and a double century 21% times. Now a similar calculation for Lara says 6% and 21%, for Saeed Anwar its 8% and 17%, for Mark Waugh its 7% and 20% and for Dravid its 4% and 24%. This is how our brain calculates and Sachin tops the list, no doubt about that.
I have just picked Lara and Sachin’s contribution of scores grouped as per the order they came to bat.

In the previous section one crucial factor was completely forgotten. For a player to knock a century or a half century, the order he comes to bat matters a lot. An opener has got entire 50 overs as an opportunity but for those who come post order 2, the opportunity reduces drastically in two ways, if the openers get out late the overs remaining for the batsmen coming 3rd is less, and if they get out soon the pressure on the batsmen coming down the order is high. Hence either ways openers have an edge and when we compare Sachin’s and Lara’s batting position, Lara has played 80% of the innings on the 3rd, 4th or 5th position whereas Sachin has been an opener 80% of the times. This explains the competitive edge of Sachin over Lara which increases his chances of scoring a century by 4% over Lara’s 6%. But scoring a half century is easier than a century for a batsman coming down between 3rd to 5th position, hence Lara equals Sachin (21% half centuries).

DPMO – Defects per Million Opportunity
This is a Six Sigma terminology which tells us how many defects a process would produce out of 1 Million transactions or Opportunities. Every match Sachin plays is an Opportunity to score a half century or a century and let me define a defect as match in which Sachin fails to score a century or a half century. Out of the 442 matches he has played a. He has 46 centuries and 93 half centuries in his name (total of 139) and his DPMO would be 685520 which means, if Sachin plays 1 million matches he would not score a century or a half century in 685520 of the matches. Now if we look into the DMPO of Brian Lara, its 728187, Saeed Anwar – 744939 and Mark Waugh- 721311. So far so good for Sachin!!! Now if we keep Sachin’s “685520” as the benchmark, what it takes for Saeed Anwar, Lara or M Waugh to reach that? Brian lara had to play just 14 defect free matches or he should have played 19 more matches before he retired, Anwar should have play just 14 defect free matches or played 23 more matches before he retired and M Waugh had to play just 8 defect free matches of should hav played 12 more matches before he retired!!. I feel all the three batsmen could have met either of the criteria’s easily, but what stopped them from doing it?
My theory goes like this, my definition of a defect is scoring a half century or a century, and it has got nothing to do with the end team total figure (which is what is most required for a team). If a single system is meeting its metric ignoring the end metric for the firm it’s no good for a firm. Eg just imagine a machine producing the output at its maximum capacity with “zero defects” during “recission” when the firm is struggling to sell its inventory!! It means the system is not flexible, or the machine’s metric is not aligned with the firm’s end metric. Dravid has a DPMO of 720000!! Now if we look at the DPMO for the same batsmen in test match, it would be between 30000 to 40000 or 45000. In a test match individual score matters a lot to meet the end number. So the conclusion looking at the Sachin’s DPMO in ODI’s tells us that his focus was a bit more towards playing a defect free match (scoring a half century or a century). Hence compared to all these batsmen, he has very few matching winning innings in his plate. This is just my theory and always debatable.

Sachin and Tour De France
For those of you who do not know about Tour De France, it’s a 21 days cycling event where the cyclists ride approximately 3500 km throughout France and countries around and its divided into 21 stages. Riders are judged by the time each has taken throughout the race and it is possible to win without winning a single stage, as Greg LeMond did in 1990. In 2009, the winner received €450,000, while each of the 21 stage winners won €8,000, the difference between the winner and a single stage winner is €442,000 and also the respect that a stage winner gets is no way comparable to that of a tour winner. Lance Armstrong has won the Tour 7 times consecutively, and surprisingly the maximum stage races he won was 5 in the year 2004 and least being 1 in 2000. Every stage is an opportunity and every race stage they loose is a defect. Now Lance’s average DPMO is 850000. A person who win’s all the stage races will get €168,000000. This clearly proves that Lance is least interested in winning €168,000000 but is more interested in winning €450,000!!!!! Strange!!.
The entire world works on incentives, from Sachin to Lance Armstrong. Monetary benefit is one kind of incentive and the other kind of benefit is “recognition”. People like Lance Armstrong and Sachin play for this kind of incentive. Sachin would not be recognized if he had performance statics like Brian Lara or Saeed Anwar, and the same implies to Lance Armstrong, he will not be recognized if he had maximum stage wins. So who would get benefitted if Sachin scores a half century or a century? Sponsorers!! The requirement of a sponsor is a person who remains on the top for a longer period of time (a match winner can never be ranked as its hard to measure) and his job is directly or indirectly linked to the end product. Next question would be, is Sachin’s incentive based on the number of sponsor he has got? Nope, the sponsors will portray him as an expert in that pirticular domain in front of media and the viewers need more of what they potrey and as I said Sachin’s major incentive is recognition he will start playing for what fulfills his best interest. His fans respect him for the records he has got and as per the laws of economics he will start working more towards his records than his team's records. The same logic implies even to Lance Armstrong, he was a cancer survivor and he could see a big picture yielding a bigger incentive for him if he could win the Tour De France and he started concentrating more on that than on a monetary benefit. A monetary benefit will not interest a cancer survivor.

Conclusion
There is nothing to conclude. It was just my analysis and as I said its always debatable. This blog is neither for nor against any of the sportsmen or sports. I am just trying to find the intention and interests of people based on data. So I feel its more of understanding science than people.

Craze for cycling

After reading Lance Armstrong’s book “Its not about my bike” I developed a craze for long distance cycling. Though I never owned a cycle I started using the stationary cycle in the company’s gym and started
enjoying the results of my weight loss (straight 87kg’s to 75). From then on half an hour cycling with an average RPM of 113 became a normal routine. In the back of my mind I wanted to go for long distance cycling
But I had no idea of what was happening in the cycling arena in Bangalore. Once I saw a post by one of my friends that a club named “Cycling and more” is organizing a 150 km cycle ride in coorg. I was zapped!!!
Sweating out and burning calories in the western ghats, what more can you ask for. I was game for it. At the same time I had 3 issues.
1. Buy a bike, but I never had any idea on bikes.
2. I wanted to go for an economical one as I was not sure about how long this new passion is going to last.
3. Last but not the least, would I be able to ride 150 km’s? The last time I ever rode a cycle was a decade ago in class 10th.

I started goggling and I found that the best bike that would suit all my requirements was a Hero hawk which comes with 18 speeds. Then when I enquired about the availability in a shop near my place he showed me a bike named “FOMAS Road King” and I was impressed by the very first look (also with the limited knowledge I had). I brought it for 5100 INR.

Even Santosh joined me and he got a mountain bike with front shock absorbers.

The very next Friday as it was off (Thanks giving) I left to Nandi Hills at 4.30 in the morning. I had a bottle of gatoride, 2 apples and water as fuel. I took my first break near Elankha at 6.15 which was good 20 Kms from my place. By the time I reached airport it was 7.30 and my phase was dripping at a very fast rate and I was out of fuel. When i took the deviation to Nandi hills (20 more kms) there was a lady selling Idli's on the road. I was hungry, but i thought it would be hard to cycle once I eat, so planned to have on my way back. This was the biggest blunder that I did as i could not find food any where for the next 20 km's and I had to climb the terrain. My inexperiance created huge fuss as I was new to a bike with Gears and my legs were never used to this kind of a rhythm and more than anythin else i could hardle feel my bum after sitting in the seat for 5 hrs now. I had decided never to get down from the bike till I reach the summit, but I had to break the rule thrice as I could not take the terrain. I finally reached Nandi hills at 8.30 (4 hours).

The return journey till the foot hills was heaven. I had to take 5 breaks while coming back and I was dehydrating. I reached home at 1 in the noon.

The one week Entrepreneur

This monsoon I had taken 10 days off from work and decided to tour Coorg on my bicycle, less cycling and more of relaxing in Prakash’s home stay located at the middle of a 10 acer coffee estate. After cycling 90 km from Virajpet I reached Prakash’s house and rested for few hours post awesome breakfast. Even Prakash happened to be free and we started our discussion casually and ended up discussing the decline in coffee price due to pre monsoon showers. Being a coffee lover I always used to wonder what differentiated the taste of the coffee that is served in Café Coffee day, Barista and the ones prepared at home. I asked him if he knew how different were the quality of the coffee seeds grown in his land and that of the ones sold at coffee day. He promptly said that the altitude at which it is grown makes a difference and the seed grown in his estate were of the same quality but they use it for themselves where as he sells his seeds in the market and this gets mixed with other low quality seeds as the volume is pretty low and hence there is not a big difference between his seed and the rest. After working on the Raw material tracing project for 6 months the Supply chain track and trace fever had bitten me. I asked him why he cannot sell his seeds directly to companies than going through the market. His answer was very weird, he said that there is not a huge difference as end of the day he is least bothered about the end consumer and was happy with the amount he gets paid. I told him that if he was confident that his seeds were of a much higher quality he can brand it and up sell his seeds to the companies than selling it to the market along with the other low quality seeds but he seemed to be least interested to take the extra effort. This seemed to be a good project to keep my 10 day vacation occupied and my dream of starting my own company. I began writing the business case. The problem was simple; I wanted to know what was the quality of the coffee seed in the coffee I was consuming and as a consumer I was ready to pay extra to get that information as there were enough coffee lovers like me in the consumer market. To get that information I had to link the Supply Chain from the estate to the Retail and I would do this with the help of simple emails which would get the receiving and shipping information of the Estate owners, Manufacturers and the Company. My company which gathers data will take a small commission from the estate owners and the companies who want to brand their product if they think it had an edge over similar products in the market. This seemed pretty cool and one of its kinds. The first thing I did was to explain the model to Prakash the next morning and he was not interested as he was not a computer savvy or a strategic thinker. He was just a rich farmer with limited literacy. I decided to give few more shots and took reference of 5 similar estate owners by nagging Prakash and also a manager in a Company called Coorg Coffee works, Bopanna. I called Bopana in the morning asking if can meet today but he suggested we discuss on the call as he was busy and will be out of station from the day after for few days (I think it was a lie).  I explained him the entire model and he seemed to be interested with this idea and said he would get back to me once he talks to his boss by evening. I decided to visit the Estate owners in the mean time and my ride on the bicycle to these estates was wonderful but the meet with owners were depressing. They were worse than Prakash as they hardly understood what I was talking about and I had to explain them diagrammatically. They were never convinced with the model and did not want to pay for something which would not yield any immediate gain. The second day happened to be depressing but a great experience though Bopanna never got back. By evening I had given up on the idea and planed to ride till Waynad the next day. To my surprise Bopanna called me the next morning telling the director wanted to meet me to understand more on this regards, but after a week. It was a good sign and I was hyper excited. Now I had a week’s time to prepare and the only concern were these Estate owners who were not supportive. As I started worrying about it I started to get a clear picture, “why should the estate owner pay for something that is not of his interest (long term gain)”. The immediate solution was the estate owners will just provide the data and the companies will be paying me for my service and the companies could pay as they had a huge margin in branding. But will the estate owners provide the data was another big question. Now I started seeing this as a game theory problem and in this model it never had “Nash Equilibrium”, which means the Estate owners and manufacturers did not have any incentive in emailing me the information. Now my focus was shifted to this new problem which seemed to defy the theories of economics. Entire third day I was trying to understand the psychology of the suppliers at the bottom most level of the supply chain. Monetary benefit could be a good incentive for the suppliers to provide the shipping information but that is not solution. By the end of the day I could come up with a dozen solutions rite from providing free computers to the estate owners to email information till they are tied up with the company, hire unemployed youth’s to work closely with the estate owners and provide the information and pay the youth’s some premium based on the quality of data they provide, assist the manufacturing companies in inventory optimization.. etc and I knew it would be done only till they all got used to the new model. I was convinced with this idea and on the 4^th day I started asking few questions to Prakash and he did not seem to have any problem with the new model. I approached 3 more estate owners to ask them if they would be happy with the new model and they seemed to never have an issue. It was a perfect day and I was satisfied on investing my vacation on this project. On Day 5 I did 100 km cycling till Tibetan camp and I also all my pricing information was ready. I will be charging 20,000/year from each company and investing close to 10,000/ year to get the shipping information from supplier and manufacturer. I needed at least 10 companies and had to invest 4 hours per week on the data cleanup and customer support which would give enough time to focus on my work for GE. It was a perfect model and everything fell in place.  I decided to get back to Bangalore to keep the paper work ready and come back after 2 days to meet the director. I prepared the quotation, catalogs, presentations…etc. I even emailed the high level process and presentations to the director for him to be prepare for the meeting and called Bopanna to inform the same. I called Bopanna to confirm if the appointment for Thursday afternoon still holds good and he confirmed. In an hour I got a call from the Director Mr Bidappa and as this was unexpected I was a bit nervous. He sounded very calm and started asking questions regarding the process and how he would get benefited. I could answer most within my reach and just passed the ones that were related to the quality of the coffee seed and the varieties.. etc. The call went on for 30mins and he seemed to be interested as he said it is not of a great benefit now but there is a good chance of branding his coffee powder in future. He also had a few concerns like, I was doing this as a free lancer and did not have a registered company of my own, it would be the first implementation and he saw a huge chances of failure over a period of time, . .. etc. I had no answer for these and I had to shut up and he said he will think much about it and get back to me which meant I failed. I was a bit upset as the vacation and the hard work had gone in vain but it was a great experience and I was convinced that this was a great idea and would implement it someday. I met my friends over the weekend and got back to my usual life with GE from Monday.

Epilogue

More than implementation my interest was more inclined towards understanding the supplier psychology and tried similar projects whenever I got a chance to visit Ooty, Shimoga, Srigeri.. etc on Tea, Arca nut, Coconut..etc. I am planning to prepare a white paper on the same once I have sufficient data available.

Mullayanagiri - The Killer Mountain

It was quite some time since I went on a trekking expedition ( Yedukumeri was the last). Things had changed a lot post that, I had lost 8 kilos, continuously working on my stamina, lung capacity had improved and even the endurance as I used to walk for 25 kms on weekends. Now it was time to test my bodies endurance!!!.

The previous week Santosh had been to Kumara Parvatha with Vikram, Sunil, Bhaskar and Swaroop which I couldent make it. I had taken off on a Friday and Santosh was ready to join me and we were yet to finalize on a destination. I did lot of googling on Friday and came out with 3 destinations, Thadiyendamol in Coorg, Chembara in Waynad and Mullayanagiri in Chikmagalur. The information I could gather about Mullayanagiri was, it’s the highest peak in Karnataka (1,930meters), board a bus to Chikmagalur, from there take another bus to Mullayanagiri, from there start the trek through sarpa dhari.
So we zeroed down on Mullayanagiri and Santosh said he would pick me at my place to go to Majestic at 8.30 PM. I packed 10 chapathies and a MTR’s ready made pack of panner butter masala (which we never opened). We reached Majestic at 8 and there were too many busses leaving to Chikmagalur and we got into one that was leaving at 9. Though I tried to get some sleep the excitement and Santosh’s crazy jokes didn’t let me sleep. We reached Chikmagalur exactly at 3.30 in the morning and we didn’t have any busses going to Mullayanagiri at that time. We had to wait till 6 in the morning. We were not ready to waste 2 precious hours and wanted to start as soon as possible so that our exposure to sun during the trek is minimal. We took a rick who to Mullayanagiri foot hills and he charged us 180 rs (very expensive for 10km distance).
We started our trek 8km before sarpa dhari on a neat tar road which passes between estates and few huts and houses on both the sides and dogs scaring us quite often. It was 4 in the morning when the hill started to show its color through the raising terrain.By 5 we hit a junction of 2 roads, one going straight and the other twords the left. The only information I had was the trek route to Mullayanagiri starts through sarpa dhari which has a mettalic arch entrance. Initially we took the left and proceeded 1 km where we realized we were going to the peak through the road and not the trek route. We came back to the junction and took the other route in search of the arch and finally found one and I was shocked!!!!!!!!!

I expected the arch to be something like the one that we have in RR nagar entrance in Bangalore but was hard to digest that it was max 6 feet tall which is hardly visible covered with tall grasses and when we went closer we also found a board stating the name of the donor of that arch. That was really funny!!. We started to climb the hill at 5.30 and we were sweating by 6 and taking deep breaths. That should explain how steep the hill is and to make things worse Santosh got cramps in between as he had done a trek the previous week.
We started to rest e very 20 mins and the climb was getting worse. By 6.30 we were half way through and the sun rise welcomed us and the view was mind blowing.

After few more breaks we ware on top of Mullayanagiri and there is a very old temple of lord shiva at the summit.

The priest served us hot coffee and charged Rs 20, trust me its worth more than that after such a climb.
The priest showed us a tower and asked us to follow that to reach Bababaudangiri or we can descend Mullayanagiri and we would get a main road where you have lots of busses that would take you back to Chikmagalur.

We decided to hit the road and later looking at our condition choose weather to climb Bababudangiri hills or go back to Chikmagalur. We started to descend Mullayanagiri by 8.15. When you are climbing a hill you knee and thighs would hurt, but when you are descending your toes would start hurting which is more painful. The descend was not as killing as the climb and we managed to hit the main road by 9.15. We asked a passerby how many km’s was Bababudangiri and he said it was 8. The very first thought that hit us was, its easily doable and we started off before we realized those 8 kms meant a hard 8 km climb over a hill.


The view from here was amazing but had no energy to feel it. We started the climb by 9.30 and we hit the tower by 12. We started taking breaks every 5 mins looking at the tower and it looked as though the tower, our destination was moving away from us. Whenever we crossed a small hill a new hill would popup in between. Luckily we carried enough water and dehydration was out of question. We had reached the end of Bababudangiri hills and we had to walk about 3 kms to catch a bus to chikmagalur which was out of question. Luckley a muslim family who happened to be there dropped us near the bus stop. We went to the nearby shop and I had 3 bottles of warm slice as none of the shops there had a refrigerator. The bus leaving to chikmagalur was parked in a distance and the driver told us that it would be leaving in 20 mins, so we went and slept off. When I woke up an hour later the bus was still parked in the same place and me and Santosh were the only 2 people in the bus .We never thought 20 mins would be 1hr 30 mins. Finally we reached chikmagalur at 2.30 in the noon and we found a decent lodge and when we paid the advance I realized that I had forgotton to draw cash and I went in hunt of an ATM which was 2 km from our lodge. We took bath and had a heartly lunch and slept at 4 and I woke up by 6 in the evening. As the bus stop was pretty close I went and booked the Rajahamsa which was leaving by 10.30 PM. We spent the evening roaming in the city and left chikmagalur having a decent dinner.
We reached Bangalore by 5 am and knew it would take a day or too for the pain in the leg to fade off but the experience and confidence would never.

For more pics please click the link below

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/sunilkaushik15/Mullengiri#

Numbers - Realistic or Relativistic

Numbers - The key word is numerical representation of what you see. When i see a tree, i write "1", when i see "2" i write 2. That is how we are taught right from the day we went to school. So we can say number is the outcome of what you see. So blind people do not feel Numbers??????? They do understand, so the number has got nothing to do with eye, So has it got somethin to do with brain or i probably think mind? Lets consider a scenario, suppose i am observing "a tree" with one of my friend and suppose this person starts "counting the leaves" of the same tree, now each one of us have different numbers registered in our brain, In my brain the number that has been registered is "1" as i am just observing the tree, but its not the same with my friend as his focus is on the "number of leaves", but the point we need to keep ion mind is that it is the same tree. So from the above observation, one thing that can be concluded is that "Numbers are focus dependent".So now the problem takes a different direction, i.e. is "FOCUS" real or "relative". As we all know from Special theory of relativity that focus is "relative", i can conclude that the numbers are "relative"